Overweight*
Today I finished the new Inspector McLean short story I was working on. Well, when I say finished, I typed the last sentence. There's still a bit of finessing that needs to be done, points that need to be clarified and stuff like that. It didn't turn out exactly how I intended, but ain't that always the way.
The main problem is that, for me at least, it seems too long. It tips the scales at 7200 words, thirty pages of double-space 12 point Trebuchet (I prefer sans serif fonts for on-screen reading. When I print on paper I'll revert to Times New Roman). The previous one was just a smidgeon over 4000 words, the one before that the slim side of 3000 and the first one a healthy 3,900.
I knew as soon as I had the idea for this story that it wouldn't fit easily into 4k words, and maybe I'm being an idiot for always trying to get short stories to come in under that target. The story reads well, IMHO, and it needs almost all of the words I used. I can scrape and cut here, tweak there and massage the whole thing into a smaller dress size, but it's always going to be more than 6k long.
Should I care? Probably not. I've no specific market for this story. It might, just might, fit into an anthology that my agent mentioned was worth trying for, but details are scant on that at the moment or I would have posted them for everyone else to see (and I will, as soon as I get them). Most likely I'll treat it as a test run for the Inspector McLean novel I intend writing one of these days (if the dragons will let me).
But what length should a short story be? Bearing in mind my 7k behemoth is detective fiction with a demonic possession twist thrown in. And do different genres need different lengths? Vincent over at Dragons Fandango recently posted details about a competition SFX magazine are running. Write a shorty that's 1-2k words long and it might get published in an anthology they're going to give away with a future magazine (the deadline's April 1st BTW, and there's no money in it, just glory.)
1-2k seems really quite short for a short story, though Mr Stuart has a knack of writing them to that length. But I cut my writing teeth on Tharg's Future Shocks for 2000AD Magazine, and they're only three to five pages long, mostly pictures.
I suspect a story, short or otherwise, should be exactly as long as it needs to be. What do you think?
*No, not me. I'm positively svelte and slim. I go running and stuff. Well, OK, maybe a little bit me. I could carry around a few pounds less. But it's muscle, you hear. Not fat. Oh, no, no, no.
The main problem is that, for me at least, it seems too long. It tips the scales at 7200 words, thirty pages of double-space 12 point Trebuchet (I prefer sans serif fonts for on-screen reading. When I print on paper I'll revert to Times New Roman). The previous one was just a smidgeon over 4000 words, the one before that the slim side of 3000 and the first one a healthy 3,900.
I knew as soon as I had the idea for this story that it wouldn't fit easily into 4k words, and maybe I'm being an idiot for always trying to get short stories to come in under that target. The story reads well, IMHO, and it needs almost all of the words I used. I can scrape and cut here, tweak there and massage the whole thing into a smaller dress size, but it's always going to be more than 6k long.
Should I care? Probably not. I've no specific market for this story. It might, just might, fit into an anthology that my agent mentioned was worth trying for, but details are scant on that at the moment or I would have posted them for everyone else to see (and I will, as soon as I get them). Most likely I'll treat it as a test run for the Inspector McLean novel I intend writing one of these days (if the dragons will let me).
But what length should a short story be? Bearing in mind my 7k behemoth is detective fiction with a demonic possession twist thrown in. And do different genres need different lengths? Vincent over at Dragons Fandango recently posted details about a competition SFX magazine are running. Write a shorty that's 1-2k words long and it might get published in an anthology they're going to give away with a future magazine (the deadline's April 1st BTW, and there's no money in it, just glory.)
1-2k seems really quite short for a short story, though Mr Stuart has a knack of writing them to that length. But I cut my writing teeth on Tharg's Future Shocks for 2000AD Magazine, and they're only three to five pages long, mostly pictures.
I suspect a story, short or otherwise, should be exactly as long as it needs to be. What do you think?
*No, not me. I'm positively svelte and slim. I go running and stuff. Well, OK, maybe a little bit me. I could carry around a few pounds less. But it's muscle, you hear. Not fat. Oh, no, no, no.
Comments
I've read 600-word stories that were like torture, they were so bad.
So the length isn't necessarily an indicator of the quality. Some stories are big, others small, and as long as what's in there is essential to the story, it shouldn't matter.
I loved your last story. Can't wait for this one.
Maybe I should stick to books.
But either way, well done. I hope they bite.