Word Count

[KindofHere]

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[ChloeTzang]

I’m revising a 132,007 word adult punkish/fantasy story I wrote. I don’t know how much I plan to cut, whatever needs to be gone is gone until it’s done, but it got me to thinking about: length/word count.

The first thing I ever wrote is was a 350,000 word fantasy, not sex-heavy or graphic sexually, back when I was 18, and I was reading Raymond E. Feist and Robert Jordan and I thought, man, I want this to be long. Everything is long. I remember when I first started buying fantasy books, they had to be long, and as the years went by, I read less, and I read shorter books. Now, when I read a longer book, I’m usually thinking—but not always—‘get to the damn point already.’ There are a lot of words in fantasy books that just aren’t interesting, if they were interesting I wouldn’t care, but when it’s not, it feels like filler. And now when I sit down to write, I think, if I'm going to write a book/novel, I don't want it to be more than 150,000 words (if it has to be, it has to be) but I should be able to say all I need to say in less (or maybe I'm lazy or maybe that thought comes from the last series I read feeling way too long for the content given).

My questions are: when you guys write or read, is there a word count you go after when it’s not a short story? A book length in pages? Does longer or shorter give the book a certain appeal before you buy it or write it?

When I'm buying a paper book I look for around 400 pages or more. If it's less than that I feel short-changed. Especially for science fiction, which I love and I mostly buy Baen books. Older used books I take as they come coz the older ones are way shorter. Those James Bond novels read like novellas these days and a lot of other books from that period are short. Look at Hemingway or Zane Grey or whatever. Romances not do much, that genre has its own standards that vary a bit so that depends on what I'm buying.

 

[oggbashan]

The question I might ask is:

What length is a short story?

Some writing contests have a strictly defined word count. 1500 words is a common limit. I write 50-word flash fiction. Those 50-word stories are the only stories I write when I know exactly how long a story will be when I start it.

For most of my story writing I start with a premise and a known ending. Whether the story ends up as 1,500 words or 15,000 depends on the development as I write.

Despite participating in NaNoWriMo several times I have never intended to write a novel. I write short, or shorter, stories and possibly a novella.

 

[Blind_Justice]

I've tried writing to fixed word counts. With careful editing, I made a 10.000 word short story work, but I had to dial back heavily on characterization and the readers pointed it out in the comments. Not fun.

My usual length is somewhere in the 30k+ range for completed one-shots and somewhere in the 3k to 10k range for shorter chapters. My current one is exploding while I'm writing, with around 25k words... and I haven't tackled the actual plot yet. But there has to be said so much before I can get rolling. After all, I want my reader to be immersed in the world. I want them to care for the characters, especially those I intend to murder in horrible fashion. I applaud the writer who can do that with a few quick paragraphs.

I am not that writer. I need space. And even so, I have heard that my writing is extremely "dense", with a huge amount of details within.

The person who said that is a much better writer than me, so it has to be true. I suck at self-analysis.

 

[NotWise]

My questions are: when you guys write or read, is there a word count you go after when it’s not a short story? A book length in pages? Does longer or shorter give the book a certain appeal before you buy it or write it?

I think few books tell a story that needs to be much over 350 pages, and I'm fine with shorter stories. Shorter stories sometimes imply greater craft. Longer stories often contain plenty of filler.

The length of a story in pages can be extremely variable. I once made a project of going through books on our shelves and comparing the character and page formats. Page sizes, margin widths, character sizes and line spacing are all manipulated to make a book longer or shorter (also more or less readable).

Odd that this topic came up at the family dinner yesterday. My kids and their friends (all 30+) were talking about the length of some SciFi and Fantasy stories and complained about the amount of filler in the longer stories. "Fellowship of the Ring" was held up as the prime example of a book with too much filler.

They agreed that one way a movie can be better than the book that it's based on is by taking out the filler. One way a movie can be worse than the book it's based on is by adding extraneous content.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't think there's an ideal length, especially for "quality" fiction. There are great novels under 200 pages. The Great Gatsby isn't very long, but it's as long as it should be. On the other hand, there are some very long books that earn their length, like War and Peace or Bleak House.

In terms of contemporary genre fiction, I think 300-500 pages typically is a good length. It's enough to set things up, develop characters, tell a good story with some twists and turns, and bring it all to a satisfactory end. Longer than that, and I often feel like the author isn't editing himself/herself well. I feel that way about some of Stephen King's books, for instance. They just go on and on, and you get the feeling King is biding his time trying to figure out how to bring things to an end. Under the Dome is like that; so his Kennedy assassination book, 11/22/1963.

If it's an epic tale, then a long novel is justified. Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth is about a thousand pages, but it's an epic tale, and it works, while his Eye of the Needle, one of the best spy thrillers, is about 400 pages, and that's just right for that story.

 

[TxRad]

Technically there is no word count for Novels. With that said, some publishers set limits. 40-60k for young adult and 60+k for adult novels.

Here are some other numbers.

Classification Word count
Novel over 40,000 words
Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words
Short story under 7,500 words

Write what you want, the way you want it. It will fit in somewhere. In any case, when and if you get it in front of a publisher, the editorial staff will chop it up pretty quickly. All you can hope for is a good editor and a publisher who wants what you've got. Word count has nothing to do with it.

 

[sr71plt]

Technically there is no word count for Novels. With that said, some publishers set limits. 40-60k for young adult and 60+k for adult novels.

Here are some other numbers.

Classification Word count
Novel over 40,000 words
Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words
Short story under 7,500 words

Those are good numbers for e-book works. For print, the numbers would be higher and there would be no novelette category. There also would be a cutoff number at the top of novel, because there's a limit what can be bound between two print covers. The limit doesn't exist for electronic works.

Talking pages in lengths doesn't mean much. A page can be manipulated in book designing to anywhere from 200 to 600 words on it and to still function as a separate page.

I normally don't make a standalone e-book out of anything less than 12,000 words or a paperback out of anything less than 25,000 words.

 

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

When I write, my stories end up around the 10k word mark just because I keep re-reading and refining what I've done over and over again. If I can't tell the story in about 10k words, it becomes too cumbersome to work with. I don't think most writers have that problem. I've learned that I can't set a hard limit though. I tried to keep one story to 10k words and a beta reader pointed out several flaws. An extra thousand words clarifying some too-subtle points helped imensely.

Since I switched to a Kindle, I don't even have a concept of how long books are any more. They just last as long as they last. Some I read in a few days, others a few weeks. With a few exceptions, most of the paper books on my book shelves are probably between three and five hundred pages. For Lit stories, I prefer stories or chapters I can finish in an hour or less. Call it four Lit pages max. I can't really leave Lit pages sitting open on my devices for others to stumble across.

 

[Weird Harold]

I’m revising a 132,007 word adult punkish/fantasy story I wrote. I don’t know how much I plan to cut, whatever needs to be gone is gone until it’s done, but it got me to thinking about: length/word count.

An early mentor of mine told me:

Sit down at the keyboard and start typing. Keep typing until you run out of words.

Then delete the two-thirds that are total crap and edit the rest into a decent story.

 

[KindofHere]

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[sr71plt]

An early mentor of mine told me:

Sit down at the keyboard and start typing. Keep typing until you run out of words.

Then delete the two-thirds that are total crap and edit the rest into a decent story.

I think if you are deleting two-thirds of your draft you are approaching writing in a scatterbrain mode. I'm deleting almost nothing. I'm adding. When I'm drafting I'm pushing through to the end, not fussing with it as I go along or tossing in irrelevant threads (which is about the only way you can be producing two-thirds of throwaway material). In review, I'm adding in detail and connections to later developing threads. If someone asked me for advice on having to cut two-thirds of their draft, I'd tell them to start from go in approaching writing and leave the kitchen sink on the wall in the kitchen.