Writers - reaching the right word-count

[A.J.]

How do you know, at the outset, that your Novel will reach the right number of words?

http://awaines.blogspot.com/2014/11/n...


A J Waines: author of Girl on a Train and The Evil Beneath
UK http://www.amzn.to/14M9mSw
US http://www.amazon.com/A-J-Waines/e/B0...


Both reached No 1 in 'Murder' and 'Psychological Thrillers' in UK Kindle charts.

[Renee E]

When the story's finished is a pretty good place. ;-)

Some of my favorites come it at 250,000+

[Gideon]

A.J. wrote: "How do you know, at the outset, that your Novel will reach the right number of words?

http://awaines.blogspot.com/2014/11/n...


A J Waines: author of [book:..."

why is word count an issues at all? I never bother unless I am asked for specific word count on a short.

[Brenda]

The story is told of Abraham Lincoln, a very tall man. On the campaign trail a local wit asked him how long a man's legs should be. Abe answered, "Long enough to reach the ground."

So that's the answer. A book is as long as it needs to be. A tree-killing 300K or a sleek and svelt 65K, makes no difference. It has to be the best possible book it can be, and if that involves 80 thousand more words -- or peeling out a hundred thousand of them -- so be it.

[Sharon]

Renee wrote: "When the story's finished is a pretty good place. ;-)"

This.

[Steph]

I'm not sure I understand. If you're writing to self-publish, surely you make the rules? Publishers and magazines set criteria such as word count to meet their own publishing needs, not the author's.

[[deleted user]]

I know the word count when my story ends where it should, without padding, without leaving anything out. My first novel was just under 95K words. My current work-in-progress, now in the editing phase, came in at 130K.

[Justin]

All great responses. I was going to write a blog post about this myself.

[Maria]

I tend to write small I guess... I'm good with 40,000-50,000. At this point I feel like I would be adding unnecessary stuff to it if I tried to add more. Well, I might be adding a little more to it, but not another 10-20 thousand words!!

[Renee E]

The whole word count business can really get to writers, especially working on a first novel.

One editor I know, like and greatly respect maintains that a first book shouldn't be over 65,000 words. Why? Because agents and publishers have given the impression that they aren't going to consider something longer? Or because some marketing studies seem to show that that's the length of book that sells most? Or is it arbitrary?

That mindset really set back several good writers I know, and I even found myself getting caught up in it before I walked away from my story for a few weeks, came back and read it and realized I needed to get that out of my head.

The story is as long as the story is. You start at the beginning and tell it until the end.

[Brenda]

The other true thing is that writers are like horses. We have our natural gait and our natural race. Some horses are bred to run the Kentucky Derby, 7/10 of a mile. And some horses will win the steeplechase, several hours over rough ground. If you take that Derby winner and run him in a steeplechase he will probably not even finish.

One of the things the the young writer has to discover is her natural length, the race she runs best at. Kate Elliott, for example, is a born tree killer. She's the fat-fantasy trilogy writer, and doesn't feel the ms has hit its stride until she breaks 200K. There are plenty of other writers who are natural short story writers, never writing more than 10K.

My natural length is just about 100K on the nose -- a one-volume novel of average size. My other natural length is about 6K.

[Micah]

How long is a piece of string?