Red's Laws of Estimating Word Counts

[TheRedChamber]

First Law: Any story will grow to be at least 50% longer than your initial estimate when you started writing.

Second Law: The first law always applies, even if you use it when calculating your initial estimate.

Third law: Any attempt to revise your estimate to a more realistic total at any time during the process is also subject to the first law.

 

[lovecraft68]

All true which is why I am now lawless, because it just doesn't matter anymore. I'm a writing anarchist.

 

[Duleigh]

I want to add a rule: any story you want to expand will only reach the target word count reluctantly.

 

[Djmac1031]

I'm apparently a major criminal then, because most of my stories wind up being way shorter than I expect.

I swear it can feel like I just wrote a fucking novel, but when it publishes, it's like two, maybe three pages.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I'm apparently a major criminal then, because most of my stories wind up being way shorter than I expect.

I swear it can feel like I just wrote a fucking novel, but when it publishes, it's like two, maybe three pages.

We should collaborate. It'll turn out more or less as we expect.

 

[RoperTrace]

First Law: Any story will grow to be at least 50% longer than your initial estimate when you started writing.

Second Law: The first law always applies, even if you use it when calculating your initial estimate.

Third law: Any attempt to revise your estimate to a more realistic total at any time during the process is also subject to the first law.

I think you can substitute dick size and how much money someone earns in your first law.

 

[KeithD]

Mine grow in size with each review and I almost never cut anything--unless I writing to a specific wordage requirement.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I think you can substitute dick size and how much money someone earns in your first law.

Funnily enough the three laws were the result of work done on how long it takes my wife to get ready in the morning. Nature works in strange ways, but the pattern is everywhere.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Nature works in strange ways, but the pattern is everywhere.

No pattern in any of my stories. It would never occur to me to set a word budget ahead of writing a story (unless it was a 750 word piece). They're as long as they need to be, once I've stopped writing.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

A story is never short, or long, but ends precisely when it needs to.

 

[TheRedChamber]

A story is never short, or long, but ends precisely when it needs to.

But not always at the deadline set...

 

[Djmac1031]

A story is never short, or long, but ends precisely when it needs to.

I read this in Gandalf's voice.

 

[SamScribble]

A story is never short, or long, but ends precisely when it needs to.

Oh that that were true. A good third of the stories I've read here dribble on way past the precise end.

Many years ago, I was fortunate enough to have a lunch with a chap who was then one of the stars of the short form, writing stories for publications on both sides of the Atlantic.

As an unabashed fan boy, I told him that I really admired how tight he managed to make his stories. He said that he would like to ‘claim the magic touch’. But, in reality, just about every one of his finished stories had ‘had a haircut’.

‘I write three or four thousand words, and then I go back a few days later and eliminate seven or eight hundred of them. Sometimes, as many as a thousand.’

 

[SimonDoom]

Not true for my stories. They seldom grow longer than I expect. But I don't gravitate toward writing very long stories.

 

[JGittes]

I never write short.

 

[12oclocktales]

Invariably:
First draft: 2500 words
Second draft: 3100 words
Third draft: 3500 words
Usually thanks to additional dialogue or totally thought up new scenes.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Oh that that were true. A good third of the stories I've read here dribble on way past the precise end.

Many years ago, I was fortunate enough to have a lunch with a chap who was then one of the stars of the short form, writing stories for publications on both sides of the Atlantic.

As an unabashed fan boy, I told him that I really admired how tight he managed to make his stories. He said that he would like to ‘claim the magic touch’. But, in reality, just about every one of his finished stories had ‘had a haircut’.

‘I write three or four thousand words, and then I go back a few days later and eliminate seven or eight hundred of them. Sometimes, as many as a thousand.’

As Churchill possibly never said, "Sorry about the long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one."

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Hmm... I don't write to a specific word count, unless I'm trying to keep it to 750 words, I write until the story has been told and screw the word count. If that means the story is over a 100,000 words then that's it. I have several on the border of the 100,000 word mark.