20 ms·
Hi, how did you come up with the 1000-word-limit? That is, like nothing. What is the reasoning behind?
by riidom 5y ago
Hi, how did you come up with the 1000-word-limit? That is, like nothing. What is the reasoning behind?
- keiferski 5y agoFew reasons: - Limitations spark creativity. I’ve read a lot of good short stories under 1,000 words (Kafka was great at this) - Just keeping things accessible for the first contest. - A lot of people (myself included) don’t have time for 500 page epics anymore. Shorter stories fit into life more easily. Future contests will have longer limits, but I think 10,000 max is still probably a good idea.
- riidom 5y agoLimiting it to short stories is absolutely reasonable, in my opinion. When writing my post, I imagined a limit of 2k, maybe 5k being nice. But I see you are going in that direction anyway, thanks for explaining!
- hooande 5y ago1,000 words is much more challenging than, say 4,000. It's also limiting in terms of several of your stated criteria. You get a certain kind of story at short length. Generally you can get a higher level of literature around 3,000-4,000 or more.
- alach11 5y agoIt's nice to hear not all contests will be limited to 1000 words. Some of the most well-known sci-fi short stories are much longer than that. The Last Question clocks in at 4442 words.
- a_bonobo 5y agoNature Futures, the short SF-heavy fiction run by the Nature journal, also has a word-count target of 850 to 950 https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=futures https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=futures Rules are here: https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/other-subs https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/other-subs They often have scientist-authors but also famous names like Charles Stross, Greg Egan, Ken Liu etc.