In just six words, Hemingway evokes an entire scene and the backstory that led to that scene. Consider Hemingway’s famous six-word story: There’s really no limit to how short a story can be, though. Stories that clock in under 1,000 words are known as flash fiction and stories of 500 words or fewer are considered microfiction. Once you hit about 50,000 words, you’re in novel territory (and you’ve won NaNoWriMo!) You might even come across the term novelette to refer to a story between 7,500 and 17,000 words. Stories longer than 10,000 (but shorter than 40,000) words are generally considered novellas. Like we said in the previous section, short stories typically contain between 1,000 and 10,000 words. The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.If you’re looking to read a powerful short story and see how other authors communicate substantive themes in just a few thousand words, check out these famous, impactful works: While short stories have fewer words, simpler settings, and smaller casts than novels, they can have just as much of an impact on readers. You don’t need an extensive world with a complex magical system and an entire cast of three-dimensional characters to express a theme effectively.

Generally, long, intricate plots with multiple subplots are better suited to novel-length works than a short story.ĭon’t take this to mean your short story’s theme can’t be as deep as a longer work’s theme. Similarly, you can have multiple fleshed-out characters, but you can’t give every character a full backstory and meaningful character arc like you can in a lengthier work. In a short story, you can build a world, but not to the extent you can build a world in a (longer) novel. Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly What is a short story?Ī short story is a short, self-contained work of fiction that generally falls between 1,000 and 10,000 words.īecause of this length constraint, short stories tend to be less complex than longer works-in certain ways.

Fun types of short stories to write