Excerpts

Welcome to the DanniStories Reading Room! A word about the menu to your left: Series will be labelled as such. In order of the longest read to the shortest, it is not alphabetical:

Series

A string of connected books. Lord of the Rings is a series, and includes four wonderful books by JRR Tolkien.

Novel

What you see as a book. A long story with chapters that takes hours to days to read. They are usually longer than 150 pages and can be whoppers of a thousand pages [think Gone With The Wind]!

Novella

A short novel. Mine are divided into named chapters. These are usually 40-150 pages long but formatting can change the number of pages.

Novelette

A very long short story. I usually give mine chapters with names. These can be 20-40 pages or so.

Short Story

A story that takes minutes to hours to read. They can be 5 pages up to about twenty.

Short-Short Story

These are less than 5 pages, and take just a few minutes to read. I don't write many of these because most of my stories go on longer than this. Basically, a short-short is an anecdote, a story you might tell a friend in talking. It is one scene. All of my short-shorts will be available in Prude Reads from amazon.com

My page estimates are from 250 words to a page, written in Courier New font in 12-point size and double spaced. If formatted for a paperback book, or a hardcover, it might be less to a lot less pages! Books come in a lot of sizes. The print of the manuscript must flow onto the pages of the print book. Even word counts can change in the process of publishing! So these guides are from personal experience, not copied from another site. The guides and titles come from word counts of the Nebula Awards, awarded to outstanding science fiction and fantasy books every year by the Science Fiction Writers of America. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count

I include a link to the story on the excerpt page. I plan to take down my short-short stories in the near future, and put up Prude Reads. When I do, I will include the link. I will be combining short stories in little books, also.