How long should a story be?

People often wonder how long should a story be. One rule of thumb is 200 or longer for novels, 100-200 for a novella, under 50 pages for a short story. Used to be, a short story was 5-10 pages with a maximum of 3 characters and 4 scenes, but there are a lot of long short stories out there, by me included. A story should be as long as it needs to be but no longer.

The first draft of my first novel ran to 1,000 pages. I asked my then wife to read it, and after several weeks she said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t read this anymore.” It was then I realized many things. First, I had three novels in there, so I cut 2/3 of it and it was a lot better. I also realized that I didn’t know the first thing about writing fiction. All I’d written was academic stuff, which is no training for writing fiction. I went to the bookstore — before the Internet — and got a bunch of books on writing. I kept reading new ones until they all started sounding the same, and I signed up for a writing course through the University. That was a very good decision, and I learned a lot.

Next time—What is a Novel