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How many words is a novelette?
A novelette is 7,500 to 17,500 words, longer than a short story and shorter than a novella: about 30 to 70 double-spaced pages, and 32 to 75 minutes of reading.
Work it out
pages, single-spaced, Arial 12 pt, about 500 words a page
- Handwritten pages
- 40
- Reading time
- 42 min
- Speaking time
- 1 hr 6 min–1 hr 16 min
- Typing time
- 4 hr 10 min
- Paragraphs
- 50–100
- Sentences
- 500–667
- Characters with spaces
- about 60,000
Write it in the word counter with a goal of at least 10,000 words.
Open the word counterNovelette in pages and minutes
| Length | Single-spaced | Double-spaced | Reading time | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7,500 words | 15 | 30 | 32 min | 50 min–58 min |
| 17,500 words | 35 | 70 | 1 hr 13 min | 1 hr 56 min–2 hr 14 min |
Estimates for US Letter or A4 with 1-inch (2.54 cm) margins and ordinary paragraphs; reading at 238 words a minute, speaking at 130 to 150.
Who uses the word
Mostly science fiction and fantasy. Both the Nebula Awards and the Hugo Awards have a novelette category for works of 7,500 to 17,499 words, and genre magazines buy stories of this length. Outside the genre, a story of 10,000 words is usually just called a long short story.
Writing at this length
A novelette has room for subplots and several scenes, but not for the full cast of a novel. Many writers find it the natural length for a story with one strong idea that needs a few turns to play out.
Questions and answers
How many words is a novelette?
7,500 to 17,500 words.
How many pages is a novelette?
About 30 to 70 double-spaced manuscript pages, or 30 to 70 printed pages.