There are story length definitions in the category file but I haven't figured out how you're supposed to make them show up while choosing from the menu in create content. If you go to the categories selection in the left column, you will see a Publication type, click on that and it will open up to show sub-categories, run the mouse over the story lengths there and you will see the definitions I put into the files if your browser supports the Java.

I used the ones from the SFWA, adding the short-short category.

The page lengths depend on formatting, figuring 350 words per page, my definitions come out:

Short-short - less than 500 words = about 1 or 2 pages
Short story - 500 up to 7500 words = about 2 to 22 pages
Novelette - 7500 up to 17,500 words = about 22 to 50 pages
Novella - 17,500 up to 40,000 words = about 50 to 115 pages
Novel - 40,000 words or more = about 115+ pages

Your standards above don't give enough information to make sure everyone came out with the same answer (what's the line spacing? what font? 12pt fonts differ). With single line spacing and a courier font, I get about 365 words to the page with your formatting, less than 5% difference from the above table. :) Use a Times font and the word count per page would be about 25% higher, about 450 per page.

But I don't intend to enforce any sort of standards, use the definitions you are comfortable with and the ones YOU think communicate to your readers what you want them to know.

Same for all the categories, this is not Transgender Ficiton 101, no one is getting a grade on a quiz. :)

Personally, I think 40,000 words is short for a Novel, I'd put that bar at about 55,000 words but the SFWA is going by what publishers will do. At 40,000 words, it becomes viable to publish a work as a book.

To me, novellas are very short novels, they have novel-like internal structures but are short on word count. Novelettes are long short stories with some novel-like features. Short-shorts are vignettes that suggest a longer story (like my Marilyn in Blue) or are very terse, telegraphic short stories, usually about a single encounter (like my Kissing the Rat) or they are almost like a joke structure (my Interview with Kitty LePew). To me, these considerations are actually more important than word or page counts.

{{Hugs}}
- Erin