Fiction Lengths
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* Bradbury Reminder
* Fiction Lengths
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
"The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age." Lucille Ball
For example, I am currently 26. Of course, I have 46 years' experience at being 26.
A New Short Story
"Conspiracy to Commit" went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It's free.
If you enjoy the story, please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else.
I read it. Good story, but there are two GLARING typos. Can you find them?
Bradbury Reminder
Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your Bradbury Challenge story info in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday.
Fiction Lengths
I haven't talked about this for awhile I guess.
If you're still glued into the conviction that a novel has to be a certain length, just know that's all a holdover from traditional publishing.
The tradpubs had to meet a magic number of folios (folios consist of pages) in order to meet a particular price point. It was all about money and price points. Nothing else.
It's what led writers back in the day to 'pad' their stories, and what led others to knuckle under to pressure and cut length by trimming 'fat' that wasn't always fat.
Numerous authors and author estates have re-released novels as a kind of 'writer's cut' so their readers could read the whole story, which they hadn't in the original traditionally published version. The most famous that I can recall is Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.
The bottom line is this: A story should be the length it (the story) needs to be. Your characters will typically tell you that length.
Of course most genres have general length guidelines, but those go more to reader expectations than anything else. For example, most cozy mysteries are around 35,000 to 50,000 words.
High fantasy (think Lord of the Rings) typically runs around 90,000 to 110,000 words or longer.
Westerns and SF both lent themselves to anything from novellas (under 25,000 words) up to around 50,000 words, but with the advent of so many SF series and sagas on film, SF has shifted upward in length these days.
Literary fiction (magic realism, etc.) was all over the place for length.
And so on. Look up "commercial genre fiction lengths" for more. But again, if you let a story be what it wants to be in length and in every other way, you won't go wrong.
Story length also goes to writer taste, but I won't get into that other than to say, for example, my Blackwell Ops books seem to settle out at between 30,000 and 40,000 words.
If I remember right, most of the novels in my SF series/saga The Journey Home settled at between 50,000 and 60,000 words.
On the other hand, the novels in my Wes Crowley saga ran anywhere from 25,000 to 60,000 words.
And as for short stories, the only difference between a short story and a novel is that the short story is about One Event and the characters' reactions to that event.
The novella is about a few events, and the novel is about several.
Oh, if you're wondering, here are my own general story lengths. I use them after the fact to set prices:
Up to 100, including the title, Flash Fiction
101 to 1999, Short-short Story
2000 to 7999, Short Story
8000 to 14999, Novelette or Long Short Story
15,000 to 24,999, Novella
25,000 to 44,999, Short Novel
45,000 to 79,999, Novel
over 80,000, Long Novel
The Novel Wrapped
So there's that. Sigh. On to the next one.
Oh, BO-42 is also published now. It will release everywhere else on May 24, but it's available right now at my StoneThread Publishing online discount store (see below).
I am SO FREAKIN' glad I'm not sitting on my hands waiting for some agent or editor at a traditional publisher to get back to me. And then, when it's finally accepted, waiting another YEAR or more for the tradpub to "slot" it?
And then, when it's finally published, I'd get pennies on the dollar as royalties, of which the publisher first pays 15% to that agent I mentioned?
Um, nope. Not my job to sacrifice my paycheck to help save the tradpubs. I ain't gonna bear that particular cross. That's just crazy talk.
But that's my cross to put down. If your results vary, that's your business.
Anyway, you can check out the cover and read the blurb at Blackwell Ops 42: Sam Granger. Yep, the day after it wrapped.
Or just swing by Your Morning Serial, subscribe (FREE) and start reading the brand new BO-42 in installments on May 1. :-)
Of Interest
Trigger Questions: The Worldbuilding Game-Changer
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 790
Writing of Blackwell Ops 42: Sam Granger
Day 1…… 2873 words. To date…… 2873
Day 2…… 1873 words. To date…… 4746
Day 3…… 3717 words. To date…… 8463
Day 4…… 2353 words. To date…… 10816
Day 5…… 3236 words. To date…… 14052
Day 6…… 3767 words. To date…… 17819
Day 7…… 4457 words. To date…… 22276
Day 8…… 5428 words. To date…… 27704
Day 9…… 4936 words. To date…… 32640
Day 10…. 3612 words. To date…… 36252
Day 11…. 3897 words. To date…… 40149
Day 12…. 1600 words. To date…… 41749 done
Writing of Blackwell Ops 43: Sam Granger | The Quiz Master
Day 1…… 2242 words. To date…… 2242
Fiction for April……………………….. 93589
Fiction for 2025………………………. 360539
Nonfiction for April………………........ 16760
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 98290
2025 consumable words…………….. 452319
Average Fiction WPD (March)……... 3744
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 9
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 25
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 113
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 295
Short story collections……………………. 29
Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.
There is a meme that says "I'm 25 years old with 50 years of experiences. How is that possible? Overwork." ;-)
Story length: I almost every time fail when I try to tell how long my story would be. I start to write, and most of the times the story is shorter than I thought it would be, sometimes much longer. Sometimes I decide to write a short story and I end up with a novel starts... But this is one of the best parts of writing. I just want to have the time to write everything I want.
A little brag: I reached my 100th Hungarian Short Story finished. On the same day I started to write the next one.
I don't even need to lie about my age. I got asked for ID last year and the clerk blurted out "I thought you're 25!" Nope, that's 11 years wrong.
I recently had a headache with a story where I tried to "trim the fat" to make the story fit into the short story range. If I remove a piece of information the climax of the story won't make sense.
The emotional parts are also needed or the story won't make sense.
The world and magic system need to be explained.
The story is 9000 words at it's leanest and I may need to add more. I'm mostly done, just doing a final cycle. There are spots where I feel like the point of view character wants to add a sentence. I also noticed some description in the beginning ties to the middle and climax of the story, which I hadn't intended or noticed. The writing is much more fun when you relax and follow the characters.