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New Worlds #6 - Counting Your Words

Sept 24th, 2020

Word Count is a double-edged sword. Maybe triple-edged. Alright its kind of like a bundle of creative daggers ready to mess with your idea every way it can. But it seems so simple right? How many words did you write? This many. Okay, cool. Well don't trust word counts, they have many ulterior motives.

Is it so simple though? Is it really? Let's discuss.

***

Word count is used as a rough estimate of how long something is. Magazine articles can be 500 words for a short piece to 5000 words for an in-depth article on something specific. A novel could be 50,000 words or 250,000 words while a short story is less than 7,500 words. And we all remember the infamous 1,000-word essay from high school.

These numbers are a bit arbitrary however, a novella can be between 20,000 and 40,000 words instead of going up to 50,000. Really, word count is both frustratingly simple and hard to navigate if you are trying to get your work sold.

That all only matters if you are trying to get something sold and must play by the publishers’ rules. If you are writing for fun, just write. Ignore word count completely, do not even look at it. In fact, do not even question how long any piece of writing is until it is finished.

What really matters is the quality of those words you write, never how many there are. Ernest Hemingway famously won a bet by writing a story with only six words. I will transcribe it below, hopefully this is fair use.

"For Sale. Baby shoes. Never Worn."

The first time I ever read that, I hurt. Think a little on what all those words represent; from them we know there are grieving parents, a young life never to be and presumably financial hardship so desperate that the shoes must be sold. It also brings up many questions that are really dark, so I won't get into them here. But if you feel up to it, there's some homework for you; discuss what you take from those six little words.

My point here is, word count is crap, ignore it when being creative. But follow it strictly if you have a deadline or a commission, editors will likely not thank you for ignoring guidelines.

But still, word count is crap.

***

More important than total word count is perhaps how much you write per day. I remember hearing an anecdote about someone writing a novel over night and it became a classic, I can't remember the title or the author; not immensely helpful honestly.

Unless you can repeat this potential feat, likely you have a cap on number of words per day. Either because you consider a certain amount a good day's writing or because after a certain point your words turn to mush and cease to make any sense.

Myself, I tend around the 1200 word mark most days. Once I write that many words, I tend to get scatterbrained and lose focus on what I am writing about. However, I also do not like putting a piece of work down until its finished. Frequently I must force myself to either push out a few hundred more words or to go to sleep and finish the next day.

If you have never thought of this before, go over some old work you have after a few days and really ask yourself at what point you start editing a little harder. Really pinpoint the spot where you should have stopped, that point where you should have put the pen down and had a bowl of ice cream.

Once you find that spot, figure out how many words that is and use it as a baseline. For the sake of argument, let's say it was 1,000 words. Does that then mean if you hit that point you should stop writing for the day? Not really.

It is a guideline, and a guideline that is different for each of you reading this, so its hard for me to even theorize on some hard and fast rules. You will all have to figure that out for yourselves.

***

Theory aside, there are some standard lengths for various works of writing. I mentioned above some basic lengths in various forms of writing. But different genres also have some industry standard lengths.

Fantasy novels for example run typically from 80,000 to 120,000 words. There are exceptions, such as George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones novels that sit somewhere between 300,000 and 420,000 words. It also cuts the other way with Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban sitting at just shy of 77,000 words. My opinion of those works aside, the length does work for them.

Romance novels, in comparison, tend to be between 50,000 and 90,000 words. Young adult novels sit between 60,000 and 80,000 words. The audience does make a difference in how long a work should be. Hardcore science fiction nerds (of which I am one, so I can say that) love to get deep into the universe they find themselves in. Grade school readers typically do not have the attention span for longer novels.

Should you worry about this? I have heard many times that you should really know your audience before you start writing, that way you can have some guidelines on the how and what you should work on. I'm not so sure that is the best idea honestly.

Better to get your idea out as it is and then start worrying about your audience afterwards. I can see a notable exception here; if you are aiming for young adult, maybe keep the violence and sex to a minimum.

***

When all is said and done, word count can be a useful tool, but don't let it dictate what you do or how you do it. So, pay attention... Or don't. But do recognize it for what it is: a thing.

Eric

The links today are to some articles relating to word count, enjoy!

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