Thread:Atarumaster88/@comment-104549-20190824003005/@comment-104549-20200102204742

It's an intriguing question, particularly because Brandon didn't supply a definition for "vignettes" when he made the category. The common definition of "a short, one-scene, character-focused story" seems to apply, though; of the four works so categorized, all of them are one scene, and the longest is 2,319 words. Brandon's own contribution is substantially shorter than even that, at 306 words.

I think the "one-scene, character-focused" part is more relevant to the definition of a vignette than the "short" part, especially because, if a work holds to those first two requirements, the third one should usually follow naturally. In other words, short story/novella/novel is about length, while vignette is more about the nature of the content. On that alone, I don't see any inherent conflict in something being labeled both a short story and a vignette; if someone tried to sell me on something being both a novella and a vignette, I might be more skeptical.

I suppose the counterargument is that short story, novella, and novel—based as they are on word count alone—have hard, objective criteria which any user can apply to properly categorize a work. "Vignette" is more amorphous; it's hard to come up with criteria other than "shorter than a novella" and "it is because the author says it is". Maybe you could add a "no more than one subpage, with no scene breaks" criterion to enforce the "one scene" aspect.

Based on that analysis, what are your thoughts?