Here are some other specific examples of paranoia: 1  Loathing or hatred of activities you or normal people would usually feel comfortable in, such as parties, large crowds, and the mall.  Excessive worry about what people think about you, or that they are laughing about or whispering about you behind your back.
As a point of reference for the genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America define short story length in the Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having a word count of fewer than 7,500.
How long is a short story? Although a short story could be as long as 30,000 words, stories of that length begin to become too bulky for their genre. These days, editors of literary magazines are readily publishing short stories of approximately 3,500 words, and they are shying away from longer works.