The long and the short of it

I sometimes hear writers asking ‘how long is a short story?’
Short stories can be anything from 500 to 6,000 words. Anything under 500 words tends to be labelled ‘flash fiction’ or ‘micro fiction’ (although some would argue it’s still a short story) and anything over 6,000 is moving into novella territory.
However, I would argue above everything that a story is as long or short as it needs to be - an entry into the Global Short Story Competition overnight was little more than 700 words but did the job perfectly. You can enter at www.inscribemedia.co.uk


John Dean