short story

[themoonguard]

how is this ?

[DOB]

As far as I can remember from my schooldays (best days of your life year right), the short part refers to the length of time that the story relates to - i.e. the story could be pages long but if it describes an event that occurred over say a couple of hours, then it could be described as a short story.

[DOB]

of course that should say (best days of your life yeaH right) WHY CAN'T WE EDIT FFS.

[slowdown]

I think it's actually the other way round - 'short' refers to the length of the story itself (page/word count). Just so happens that its difficult to write about great swathes of time in a few pages, so a lot of them refer to small incidents. There's no hard and fast rule that determines when a short story becomes a novel - though I suppose that's why people keep referring to 'novellas'.

[bernardo]

Many years ago I heard that a novel is defined as being more than 39,000 words - but I have never heard the same definition again since, so I presume it was one person's opinion rather than a definitive thingy.

[DOB]

Check out this site for definitions of a short story, novella, blah blah, blah. http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Short_story

[WaldoMcFroog]

The shortest story that I know is as follows: For Sale; Baby Shoes, never used. Tragic, ain't it?