Word Count

Actually, you'd get a better answer posting this question elsewhere. But also, there are tons of threads/posts dealing with this same question as it comes up a lot. Check out Writing Novels or even the Round Table Forums.

Check these out to start:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88254
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87832

Hope this helps!

Try to focus on simply telling the story. Make sure there's a beginning, middle and end.

Then see how many words you've got and whether you need to expand or cut.

It is important to complete the book you've written first. After you've got a completed first draft, then you can worry about expanding or shrinking it.

Also, word counts vary according to genre, and if what you've written is enormously too long, you might want to split it into 2 or 3 books.

Are you more worried about going over the proper length, or being too short?

You have John Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy among your favourite reads so what on earth is intimidating about realising a novel contains 50,000+ words?

EndlessDestiny said:

I've been reading some really intimidating preferred word counts. 50,000, 80,000 words for a novel. I'm way to focused on word length now. I've got about 27,000 words so far and I keep worrying about the length. What do you all think?

Click to expand...

Is John Philip's unpublished brother?

Damn - a fraction of a second's glance at the bookshelf above my computer tells me I'm a prat!

scarletpeaches said:

Is John Philip's unpublished brother?

Click to expand...

Actually, for adult fiction, 50,000 words is only a novella, most novels are 175,000 words.

If you are writing young adult, children's chapter books, or short adult fiction (novellas) than you want to aim at 30,000 to 75,000 words for a novel.

If you need some examples of book sizes verses words per story, consider this:

Short stories such as seen in magazines and compilations average at 5,000 to 13,000 words per story.

Serial length stories (in magazines) are usually 60,000 words, and published in 6 issues at 10,000 words each part or 3 issues in 20,000 words each part.

Stories like the Nancy Drew series average 50,000 to 75,000 words.

The big-big books such as Stephen King's books or many historical romance novels are 250,000 to 300,000 words per novel.

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All that aside, you should not worry about how many words to write. Just write your story, and when you get to the end, know that you have reached the end. Do not feel you have to go back and add words or cut words, just for the sake of reaching a certain word count.

After you have finished your story, count the words and figure out from there, where to market it. If it's of shorter length, aim for magazine publication. If it longer length, seek out a book publisher that does books in that legnth.

Think of it this way: word count is just another term for writer's block. Forget about word count. Finish writing. You can worry about word counts AFTER you have gotten your story written.

Good luck with you writing!