The end. Your writing project is finished. You have polished and slaved and spit-shined until it sparkles but now you are faced with the question of what to call it as you attempt to market it to the general public. There are several classifications for works of fiction, based on how they are written, and more to the point, the length. Below you will find a list of the most common literary classifications, based on length and style of the piece.
Novel - This is what every aspiring writer works for. Well, maybe not but it is the desired outcome of the National Novel Writing/Writers’ Month (NaNoWriMo, held in November each year) and the 3-Day Novel Contest (held over the U. S. Labor Day Weekend). The goal of aspiring novelists is generally 50,000 words of prose, or more, fixed around one or a small handful of main characters and a larger collection of secondary and more minor characters and that follows a relatively formulaic plotline (introduction to conflict to climax to resolution), or, in some cases, multiple, interwoven plotlines.
Novella or Novelette - Arbitrarily, this is a category of prose which is longer than a short story (20,000 words) and shorter than a novel (50,000, or more specifically 49,999 words) and which possesses many of the same characteristics of a novel in terms of numbers and types of characters and the architecture of the plotline. Because the length of the story made it easier to finish in a shorter period of time, a great deal of early classical literature falls into this category. Originally, “novella” referred to a work from Italy, France or Germany while “novelette” referred to the English efforts in the genre.
Short Story - If the novella classification begins at 20,000 words, it stands to reason that the short story range reaches that on its longest end. Where it begins is really up to whoever is writing the submission guidelines for the publication you might be submitting to, dependent on whether or not they both accept works of flash fiction and recognize it as a separate category. If not, then a short story is one that contains fewer than 20,000 words and tells a complete story (with a beginning, middle and conclusion/end). If flash fiction is accepted as a valid category then the division between the two often falls somewhere between 500 and 1500 words in length.
Flash Fiction - In some cases, flash fiction is viewed in the same way as a vignette but some editors see the two separately. As a stand-alone literary classification, flash fiction does something different from a vignette in that it generally has a clear, albeit very brief, plotline, complete with a beginning, middle and end, with some kind of clear conflict worked in. As a stand-alone literary classification, flash fiction is often seen as anything telling a complete story in fewer than 1500 words.
Vignette - Originally a theatre term, vignette has in recent years been adopted into the prose world. Much as it was, and is, in the theatre, a prose vignette is a piece of writing that focuses on one character in one moment of their lives. There may or may not be a clear conflict; often it is one the character is experiencing internally, and there may or may not be a discernable plotline. It is essentially a verbal glance through a living room window, offering the reader more aesthetic description than action.
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