@AWorldonaPage It depends on your goal for the story. If you're aiming for publication in a scifi magazine/website, the options tend to be more limited the longer your story is. My earliest version of this story was about 3k words, but it didn't feel complete, so I kept working on it. I'd finish a (longer) draft, think, "This is it," send it out, get good feedback or a close call, but ultimately no sales. This repeated multiple times, and the story grew in word count but also in sense of completeness. After a final close call, I decided I had to let go of the story and work on new stuff. With this story, I had to figure out the arc along the way, but now I really try to figure things out more clearly beforehand, so I have a better idea of word count and then suitability for publications. There was a great video on scifi author Brandon Sanderson's YouTube channel featuring a lecture by Mary Robinette Kowal on short story structure, and a sort of "formula" for estimating the length of a story based on the complexity of the idea—not set in stone but it's a useful tool. It also depends on style. I write in a more literary style, so it's slower, but others can write in a more fast-paced style and tell the story much faster, or more story in less words. If you're writing in scifi, look up the Hugo Awards or Nebula Awards, see who is nominated for best short story every year, and read what you can online. They tend to have a variety of lengths and styles.
