This is just for people who aren't familiar with terms like "drabble" and "ficlet." I tend to use the harder definitions, which are as follows:
Drabble - A piece of fiction that is 100 words, exactly. Exactly 100 words. A half drabble is 50 words. A drabble and a half is 150 words, and so forth. Using terms like "double drabble" or "triple drabble" to indicate 200 or 300-word stories is cool. I would also probably refer to stories that are under 100 words as a "drabble" even if they didn't quite meet the 100 word limit, though. So if you want to call a 74-word story a drabble, I'm sure nobody will argue.
Ficlet - Also known as "short short" or "flash fiction", this would be a story that less than 1,000 words. Since nobody can agree on what these terms mean (whether a short short is 500 or less, and flash fiction is 500-1000 or vice versa), then I figure they're all interchangeable.
Short story - 1,000 to 15,000 words.
Novella - 15,000 to 40,000 words. Or "novelette" if you prefer.
Novel - 40,000+ words. |
