How long should a story be? The answer is nearly as long as it takes. Most people make two mistakes. They either put in way too many details that confuse people or they're too brief and they don't bring in actual dialogue and describe their characters in detail. If you're going on for 10 minutes, chances are that's too long. If you finished your story in 15 seconds, chances are you don't really have all the elements of the story.

Focus first and foremost on Have you really explained what happened. Have you introduced characters if you establish the problem? Have you recounted the conversation, the dialogue? Have you talked about how you felt the characters felt? Did you resolve some problems? And is there a lesson from this?

Focus on that and the time will typically take care of itself?