How close are you to your target word count?

Coco82 · Mar 5, 2005

How close are you to finishing your manuscript, your target word count? I'm aiming for 60,000 words and have just about 30,000. Good luck to all.

black winged fighter · Mar 5, 2005

Having a set word count doesn't seem to work for me. I usually just let the story dictate the length/count, and then do editing at the end.

Mistook · Mar 5, 2005

As of yet, I've not counted the words. I work with each chapter as a separate Word document, all thrown together in a folder. I've never bothered to count the words in a single chapter - being that they are constantly under construction - and as for the WIP as a whole, I have absolutely no idea how many thousands of words I'm up to right now.

Galoot · Mar 5, 2005

24,671...No, wait...24,690...Hold up a minute...24,712...

I could drive myself crazy this way. I only pay attention to number of pages, and even then the goal is only to put out several a day. And no targets for me. If I go into it thinking "I need to stretch this to X pages" then I'll ramble. I don't want to ramble for money. I want to do that for free. Right here.

Lucky you.

azbikergirl · Mar 5, 2005

I didn't have a target when I started, aside from "somewhere between 80,000 and 120,000." Imagine my surprise when I counted > 180,000 words! :scared:

I'm in reduction mode now, and hope to reach 115,000 words when it's all said and done.

katdad · Mar 6, 2005

My first two novels came out at about 68,000 words each, and I expect my 3rd to be about the same, between 65k and 70k. So far I'm at about 20k but I'm not really counting.

The similar length is because I'm writing a series of private detective novels. They tend to be among the shortest of most genre novels. That's probably because the writer is telling one story about one "case" the PI is hired to work on.

However I have no specific target for length.

zornhau · Mar 6, 2005

My first draft vame to 80K. I need about 100K, which I expect to reach by fleshing out subplots and beefing up some of the description.

maestrowork · Mar 6, 2005

I targeted my first novel at 100K because I thought that's a good length for a novel (about 300 pages?) I finished the first draft at 95K. Very close. But after a few drafts, it went down to 75K because that happened to be the right length of the story. I cut out all the fat.

Sassenach · Mar 6, 2005

I hope you're not using MSWord word count...it's not the same as word count for a manuscript.

MarkEsq · Mar 6, 2005

Am I the odd one out?!

The first draft of my novel brought me to 55,000 which I understood, on good water cooler authority, to be a little short. After editing and in the second draft the number went UP and on draft 3 I am at 64k. I see from previous replies that this is unusual but I think I know why it happened. I am a former journalist, now a lawyer, so everything I have written for the past fifteen years has been bare bones ("just the facts, ma'am"). Now I have a little license to describe people and places, develop characters more and on reading through my work I see how necessary that is.
By the way, how does MSWord count differ? Up or down?? How else do I count words?

dblteam · Mar 6, 2005

Well, I was at 75K or so (on the second draft of a novel) when I realized I'd made some fundamental flaws in the characters and world-building. So I'm restructuring and starting over.

It's painful, but had to be done, I believe.

So now I'm at 2K. (Where's a sighing smiley when you need one?)

On the bright side, I'm actually looking forward to what writing time I can scrounge around my job, hubby and four kids. (It had gotten almost impossible to write--I knew something was wrong with the ms but hadn't figured out what it was or what to do about it.)

Valerie

edfrzr · Mar 6, 2005

word count

Hey guys, on this subject "word count". If I am using MS Word, times new roman, 12pt font, what is a good count for a novel? The first one has 117,000, and the second has 106,000 (per the tool bar). Are these counts good, bad or indifferent?

If anyone wants a sample, you can go to the "Share your work" thread and check one out. I would be grateful for the input.

thanks

katiemac · Mar 6, 2005

For the posters interested in counting words, this topic has come up many a time. There's threads all over the place, and can be found with a little digging.

Here is a link for just one of these threads, but it's going to open a new window and take you to the old board. I don't know the address of this place. It should be able to tell you anything you need to know.

zornhau · Mar 6, 2005

Here's good and authoritative as well

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/wordcount.htm

Coco82 · Mar 6, 2005

Yeah, this has already been talked about, the whole word count problem. I believe katdad figured it out.

Maryn · Mar 6, 2005

I'm hovering just past 35,000 words, but I'm allowing myself to write 'fat' on my first draft. (With these thighs, it's not like I had a choice!) I'm looking at a guesstimate of 110,000 on completion, which I will trim to maybe 85,000 words in the next pass.

These are Word words, not 250-per-page words, BTW.

Maryn

Velleity · Mar 6, 2005

When all I'm doing is tracking progress, of course I use Word's word count. For me it gives similar results to other word count methods, anyway. When it comes time to submit I'll refine the formatting and use... well, probably whichever method gives me the lowest count.

(139,513 words, down from a high point of about 155k. Goal: 120k, or as long as it needs to be. My instinct is that anything much over 120k is too long for this novel anyway.)

three seven · Mar 6, 2005

I honestly find all this very confusing. For my WIP I've written 2596 actual words, but it seems that my official word count is either 2400 or 3000, depending on who's counting. Sod it, I think I'll just get on with writing the words and worry about counting them later...

Maryn · Mar 6, 2005

Exactly, three seven! Just write the words...

Maryn, counting silently so as not to interrupt your train of thought

karenranney · Mar 6, 2005

Just remember...

Word counts for novels are getting shorter, not longer. Publishers are asking their contracted authors to stay on the lean side. That's LESS than 100,000.

alaskamatt17 · Mar 7, 2005

Reply

I'm new here, so I guess I should introduce myself first. My name's Matt, and I've been writing my current novel for just over a year now. I've done a little bit of fiction writing before -- never for publication -- and I've just completed the fifth revision of my sci-fi novel, Orion's Key.

I started my sci-fi project with an estimated final word count of 120,000 words, came out at 114,000 in the end, and have since revised the manuscript down to 105,000 words.

Maryn · Mar 7, 2005

Excellent, Matt. Lean writing in any genre is a major plus, and the ever-lowering word count shows your rewriting is doing just that.

Nice to meet you!

Maryn

Nateskate · Mar 7, 2005

Maryn said:
Excellent, Matt. Lean writing in any genre is a major plus, and the ever-lowering word count shows your rewriting is doing just that.

Nice to meet you!

Maryn

I accidently wrote nearly half a million words (Somewhere between four-five hundred thousand words). And realized that my trilogy would most likely have to be a series instead. But seeing that it is strongly recommended that first time authors stay under 100,000 words, I restructured the whole mess, and book one should be hopefully ready to shop around by the end of the month, in the 70,000 range.

I'll wait till I have more clout before I start trying the 120,000-150,000 follow-ups. Then again, if the market wants 70,000 word stories, I'll just (lord willing) publish alot more books than I initially planned. Oh what a wicked mess we weave, when we try to write an Epic Fantasy.

pepperlandgirl · Mar 7, 2005

The first draft of my current manuscript ended up being about 100,000 words. I imagine that it will be up to 115,000 before the revising process is done, if not 125,000. But I'm not worried, because in the following draft, I will trim it back down to about 90,000.

JohnGalt · Mar 7, 2005

My manuscript is 115,000 words. I think this will make it tougher to sell, but I can't make it any shorter.

- JG

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