The Importance of Short Stories

The shorter you get, the more specific your story and your purpose needs to be. How fair do you think that is? You know, if I'm writing a 300,000 word door stopper, I can fit all sorts of concepts and characters and events inside my story. But if I'm trying to do something in 7,000 words, 5,000 words or 10,000 words then I need to be more focused. So many of these distinctions probably often come down to economics. A novella could comfortably be published by itself between two covers and sold on its own. Whereas a short story maybe being short enough that, yeah, you're probably going to want to put a