Dear Indie | Writing Challenges & Word Counts

Hi Indies!

This is just a quickie. I’m not promoting or being sponsored by Reedsy, I swear–but, I wanted to share that they have weekly writing challenges on their site that pay out $50 a week to winners. So, if you love writing challenges and fancy a go, you might want to check that out. Also, their writing prompts are a bit like challenges, too, only without the payout, and the best part is that they offer prompts for different genres.

I also came across 10 free lessons for writing “Short Stories.” Now, I was reading 300+ page novels as a young teen, so when I used to hear “short story,” to me that was anything under like 80,000 words. I had to cut out 3,000 words to meet my publisher’s word count limit of 100k words on my first published novel. Actually, on every novel they’ve published – but my point is: What exactly is your idea of a full-length novel, novella, and short story?

I now know, thanks the NaNoWriMo, that 50,000 words is considered a full-length novel, yet some people say it can actually be between 40-50,000 to be considered full-length. 😐 Really? That’s half a book! So what do you call a 100,000 word novel, then, a double-length novel???

Honestly, I was excited about the free lessons, because I know I can’t keep things short (see? I called this a quickie, and yet here we are) But, according to them, a short story is no longer than 20,000 words and I’m looking at that like “Yeah…that’s not happening.” That’s a submission to the Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, which granted, would be a ‘short story’ by definition, but like…shorter. More like an essay.

If my book is under 100,000 words in length – guaranteed it’s part of a series. The whole story is not beginning and ending between those two covers. Especially, considering that I have actual series where each book is 100k words. But, I’m really TRYING to write a “shorter” stand alone novel, and the struggle is real y’all. It’s real.

❤ What do you think about novels lengths and their word counts? Any tips on how to write shorter books?