Short Stories vs. Novels

What is the difference between a short story and a novel? The biggest difference is the length. Novels are generally considered to be works of more than 40,000 words. A short story is a work of fiction up to 20,000 words long. (In between, 20,000 – 40,000 words, is the novella.)

A written work is considered a “story” if it consists of one main character, one event of some sort, and a resolution. If the story develops multiple themes and greater complexity, it becomes a novella or novel. The resolution of a short story can come suddenly, in the last paragraph, or the story can just smoothly unfold, without a dramatic climax, for the reader's contemplation.

A short story is usually at least 1,000 words long, but there is a relatively new form of short story called “flash fiction”, which is a story of only 500-1000 words. As you can imagine, a story this short is very economical with its descriptions. Readers have the opportunity to fill in a lot of detail with their own imaginations!

Flash Fiction

I stumbled across flash fiction during a discussion with my adult son. We were talking, in general, about the short story genre. I expressed frustration with the lack of action in many modern short stories. I complained that many of the tales seemed to consist of long paragraphs about the main character's inner turmoil.

“Oh, you mean like this?” replied my son. He struck a dramatic pose. “And then I watched my cat walk around the kitchen one more time, and I thought about my life.”

“Exactly!” I responded vehemently. “That's exactly the type of boring introspective dialog that I was talking about. Hey, wait a minute. I hate to say it, but that's actually kind of an interesting sentence. I wonder what type of story you could write that included that sentence, but wasn't sentimental and self-indulgent?”

He replied, “You know, I think this sentence was meant to be in a flash fiction piece.”

“What's flash fiction?” I replied.

Thus was born The Tiger, Chapter LIII I found a reference to tigers in Sir James Fraser's famous book, The Golden Bough , and the story evolved out of that reference. And I did include my son's dramatic sentence!

---(c) 2004 Cherie Renae - may not be reproduced without permission