A short story has one main character and the story is told through that character’s point of view. Often it is told in first person or limited first person. A novel has a cast of characters and the story can be told from any of those characters’ viewpoints.

While a book is written on a specific subject without a fixed count for the minimum amount of words to be used, a novel is a book of a story or stories (in the case of the collection of short stories) written in not less than forty thousand words. Novels only contain stories and nothing more.

Short stories usually focus on a single event or crisis, where novels have much more time to explore multiple events with a complex plot. Like single events, short stories generally have less settings than a novel. A short story will often unfold in a single location, rather than multiple locations.

Literary and creative

• Poet.
• Novelist.
• Satirist.
• Short story writer.
• Librettist.
• Lyricist.
• Playwright.
• Screenwriter.

Best-selling authors, like romance novelist Nora Roberts, make millions from their books. In 2011, The New Yorker reported that Roberts had published 209 books and was worth $150 million dollars while writing at the breakneck speed of 5 books per year.

When you put these two criteria on an X and Y axis, you get four quadrants that define any author: Successful Authors, Unsuccessful Authors, Dead Authors, and Authors Who Play Dead. These four categories aren’t meant to oversimplify author behavior.

What is another word for writer?