A defense of the 8,000-word short story

Size matters.

I get it.

A short story must be shorter than… something. Shorter than what?

Consensus definition says 15,000 words, tops.

The real world says smaller is better.

Journals, anthologies, prizes, etc., tell us to stop writing at 3,000 words, or 4,000, sometimes 5,000. Generous establishments might say 6,000 or 7,000.

These are practical limits, reflecting how much editors are willing to read, or how much publishers are willing to spend on per-word costs.

Just imagine all the incredible short stories that can’t make those cuts.

Here are a few favorites I found in anthologies on my shelf (with word counts based on my own calculated estimates:)

—James Joyce’ “The Dead,” 15,000 words;

—Saul Bellow’s “Leaving the Yellow House,” 13,000;

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Crocodile,” 12,000;

—James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” 12,000;

—Katherine Anne Porter’s “Holiday,” 11,000;

—Nikolai Gogel’s “The Overcoat,” 10,000;

—H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” 10,000;

—Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The New Atlantis,” 9,000;

—Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” 9,000;

—Dorothy Parker’s “Big Blonde,” 8,000;

—Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” 8,000;

—Richard Yates’ “A Really Good Jazz Piano,” 8,000;

—Carlos Fuentes’ “The Doll Queen,” 7,000;

—Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal,” 7,000;

—Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of The House of Usher,” 7,000;

—Joyce Carol Oates’ “In The Region of Ice,” 7,000.

They’re beautiful, each and every one. Read them. Life is less without them.

Yet their existence won’t address practical word limits.

So what’s a writer to do?

Make it publishable, right?

Or recognize that whatever you are writing demands its own length. Unpublishably long? Fated to eternity in your sock drawer? Go ahead, love it anyway.

I don’t think I’m expressing a foolish frustration arising from my own self-assessed genius.

I’m an economical writer. I’m a retired newspaper reporter. For 40 years, newspaper editors bullied brevity into my style. Fiction editors often ask me to add words.

Even so, I write the occasional 8,000-word short story. No apologies. That’s how long that story is.

What was it Mark Twain said? “It’s not the size of the story in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the story.”

Or something like that.