Fringe Fiction Unlimited discussion
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Word Count, Is It Important?
I use word count as my benchmark for a day's work. It makes it easy to set an achievable goal: "Today I'm writing 1200 words."I write short novels. So far, my longest is about 63k (although Dragon Princess looks set to beat that by the time it's done) so I don't worry about it except in an abstract sense. I always end up adding words to my draft, but not because I'm trying to make an inflated "limit." It's just my...process.
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i don't really care for word count until after the story is done. like if i'm writing for this group's fringe stories, i'll write the story from beginning to end, short or long, it doesn't matter. as long as the story is finished. if I see that it can have things cut and still feel complete, then i'll do it. if not then i'll store the story for another time. If I need a longer story, i'll do the same. Check to see if things can be added while still maintaining that feeling of being complete (and not overly done), and go from there.
When there's a set word count (like, say, our 7 virtues project), I can't help but constantly check how many words I have left or how many I still have to write to fill the gap.Also, just like Jason, I tend to use it as my benchmark for a day's work, except I stick to character count rather than word count. I guess that's more reasonable approach.
i never bother with word count. i tend to choke when i have limits. deadlines are ok i can deal with that. though it can get difficult (im hardly aware of what day it is due to lack of sleep and the occasional collins or three). if it werent for newspapers or newscasts i'd never get things done (my puter, phones, and tablets are cheap shoddy & unreliable).it's easier to write too much & cut down for distillation than to write too few and gotta add more...
Since my first novel, I've tried to set a page number goal, which is the same thing in the end (quantifying your writing). But that's because when I wrote my first novel, I had no idea about industry standards, and my novel was 3x that of typical YA novels. After that experience, I started to set a pg # goal for each book. They typically go over, but I have a target when I start so I won't just ramble endlessly.When I edit, I also have a target pg# to cut. That might sound crazy, but I've found that even if every scene is necessary (which never happens), I can cut or tighten sentences, paragraphs, & scenes and end up at my target. It has never once hurt a book.
The only word count I think of is for keeping chapters roughly the same size. Not exact, but similar. As far as the overall count, it doesn't matter. If it gets out of hand, that just means I have a part 1 and part 2 :-P
Interesting comments.when I first started writing, and I suspect it's the same for a lot of newbie writers, I was obsessive about word count. Look at that! I wrote a whole 200 words. Wow, I must be getting somewhere!
Yeah. We all start off as naive.
I kept practicing, kept writing, exercising that writing muscle, and now, over 10 years later, I honestly don't think about word count anymore.
If I tell myself, I want to write at least 1000 words for a short story, I just sit down and write until the story is finished. When I check the word count, I'm pleasantly surprised it's at least 1000 words if not more.
At this point, the only measurement I use is time. I want to finish this short story in two hours. *checks clock* Done.
Word count and page count I only consider as a part of editing, to prepare the story for publication, in whatever format is best.
Maybe it's because of my naiveness, but I still think of word count as a good way of measurement. "I'll write for two hours" would probably end up in two hour staring at the blank page. "I'll write 3000 words today" or "I'll finish the chapter today" seems more... accurate.I guess it's just like in school - doesn't matter if you study for 15 minutes or 3 hours, what matters is whether you've learned the material. :P
I'm kinda getting that word counts works mainly as two things:a per day writing goal, to make sure that you continue to write, be it crap or not.
and as an editing tool mostly for when you plan on submitting to a publisher or something of the like.
Just keep prcticing. I was where you are now 10 years ago. Hard work does pay off. Eventually, it will get to a point where you honestly don't notice word count anymore. It's just a matter of training your brain.Granted, word count is a good place to start as any.
Oop, didn't see Michael's comment. Mine was a reply to Jacek. Sorry for any confusion.
I don't believe much will change over the years. I just know I need to set myself some milestones because that's the way I can keep writing on a daily basis.Of course it also all depends on the type of writing I do. I don't care about word count on short stories (and just like you, Lily, I rather set a target on finishing one in a specified amount of time) but as far as anything larger goes, "3000 words a day" seems more appropriate to me than "finish the novel within a year". Not like I'm obsessed - if I wrote 2500 or even 250 words instead of 3000, the world still didn't end.
But then again, I've always been about setting ridiculous milestones. Probably just the kind of approach I take in my life. :P The point is, I don't feel neither bad nor wrong about this thing. Some people count the strokes when they brush hair, I count words when I write. Each to their own. :P
People count brush strokes...? What a strange world.
I wish I had a schedule where I *knew* I could sit down every day and write. But I don't, so the word count thing as a daily writing goal wouldn't work for me. The first time I really counted words was during Nano this past November. For me, saying "I'm going to write a 300 pg novel" works better. I know I need to be at key plot points around X pg. It helps keep my plot on track. I guess you could do the same with WC, too.
See, I can't use other guidelines. I write almost completely organically, so I don't have a specified plot point to use as a benchmark. I don't have an estimated amount of pages or, therefore, an amount of time it might take. Word count, so far, is the only benchmark I can use as a motivator of progress-and I'm one of those people who, if I'm on a treadmill or something like that, continuously sets new mini-goals to keep myself moving. "I'm only .2 miles from the next mile mark." Hit that. "Now I'm 90 seconds from the next 5 minute mark." Hit that. Rinse repeat until the whole thing is done.
I used to write that way but my books tended to have very loose (if any) plots, and editing them is torture. If I realized it was 800 pgs when I finished, I'd just chop it in half and call it two books! Lol...
I have a writing quota that just longer than I normally take to warm up. So I know it's not just the cat-vaccuming tendencies if I want to quit after that.
Lena wrote: "I used to write that way but my books tended to have very loose (if any) plots, and editing them is torture. If I realized it was 800 pgs when I finished, I'd just chop it in half and call it two b..."I always end up having to add :) My first drafts are skeletal, moving very quickly from point to point without a lot of the necessary slow-downs and developmental beats.
the only thing i mind is my chapters. i try for ten no more than thirteen. that way i have a rough estimate how big the book is by the number of chapters. i write epic doorstoppers so my goal is to keep it under 350. the upper limit (for whatever reason) is 715 (due to printer limitations) but i try not to go that high. i lucked out with one book being split (demonic awakening). a lot of folks liked it and had to buy the second volume after the first (which was still considered book 1).
To be honest, I'm disappointed to see how many are obessive about word count. Lena's topic about short stories has been completely hijacked because of that obsession.I'm sorry if I sound offensive, but I'm getting a little offended myself about the disrespect shown towards the craft of stories by obessing so much about word count. It's like arguing there's no point in learning how to ride a bike, just cheat and use training wheels.
"That's not writing at all, that's typing." - Truman Capote.
Also, to answer the original question...word count can become important when querying agents/publishers. If I have a 300K contemporary YA...not gonna happen. Epic fantasy...maybe.
Lena wrote: "Also, to answer the original question...word count can become important when querying agents/publishers. If I have a 300K contemporary YA...not gonna happen. Epic fantasy...maybe."Exactly. Word count is only relevant after the fact when preparing for publication of some kind.
The word count is what the story demands :0)
The problem is that there is the Unpublishable Void in which you nowadays are stuck self-publishing and previously could not publish at all. Between about 25,000 words and 60,000 words, you could not publish the greatest masterpiece the English language had ever seen for the lack of venue.(At least in fantasy & SF.)
Mary wrote: "The problem is that there is the Unpublishable Void in which you nowadays are stuck self-publishing and previously could not publish at all. Between about 25,000 words and 60,000 words, you could ..."I guess it depends on your aim. If you're set on publishing, you could cut and publish it as a short story, or add to it and publish as a novel. Ender's Game comes to mind--started as a 'too long' short story, then was cut and published as a short, then developed further and published as a full novel.
Lena wrote: "If you're set on publishing, you could cut and publish it as a short story, or add to it and publish as a novel."Both of which are capable of damaging a story past repair.
Lily wrote: "To be honest, I'm disappointed to see how many are obessive about word count. Lena's topic about short stories has been completely hijacked because of that obsession.I'm sorry if I sound offensiv..."
Lily-is this in reference to the other topic, that people are being obsessive over word count?
What is "obsessive" over word count? I'm not sure if I'm interpreting that word the way you intend.
Mary wrote: "Both of which are capable of damaging a story past repair."
True, they are CAPABLE of it. But if an author is good enough to write a PERFECT novella (let's say 40K words), s/he would hopefully have the skill to edit it as needed if the goal was traditional publication. Of course, we've all read works by authors who are great at storytelling and not so great at editing.
This may be getting off topic and have more to do with a thread that was active a while back about our aim in writing (for self v. for audience). Sorry, Lily :)
However, this thread IS about word count, so it's probably the right place to obsess about it!
Jason, I appreciate that for some writers word count might seem super important. But for many more writers, it's meaningless. And I was starting to see a push and pull to cut out those who don't consider word count to be important. this is a genreal topic, both for and against.Back to the discussion. Carry on.
Word count is a good way of keeping score, but I only really look at it after I've finished writing.Rather than sitting down with a determination to write 1,000 words or whatever, I sit down to do "some writing" and then when I'm done I check and think "gosh, 1,000 words, that was quite productive. I do hope it's not rubbish."
That goes out of the window of course when it's deadline time on a short story competition / anthology submission, where I know I have just a couple of hours to produce another 2,500 words.
It IS however important to publishers. In general most adult fiction needs to be between 80,000 and 100,000 words to be seriously considered for publication although epic fantasy tends to be longer from about 100,000 - 120,000 words. Publishing is a business, remember, if a book is much shorter than above, it can be hard to market and sell and if a book is much longer than that it becomes too expensive to produce AND the publisher make a profit.
David wrote: "It IS however important to publishers. In general most adult fiction needs to be between 80,000 and 100,000 words to be seriously considered for publication although epic fantasy tends to be longer..."This.
I don't believe the length of book has such big impact on its costs. About 50 pages more can cost... how much? 3 percent of book's price? 4 percent? This isn't really huge difference, I reckon.
No, in fact the page count is a trivial percentage of the costs. It's the marketing and selling.One thing is precisely because adding more pages cost so little, you can jack up the page count and then the price, and by that means, cover all the multifarious fixed costs for a book.
Mod
On a sidenote - there are also some pretty smart ideas on cutting page count (but it affects mostly self-publishing authors); for example, 2% less margin can make you save up to 10% pages while it's barely noticeable by a reader. ;) So you can make up for a slightly higher word count by editing your paperbook properly. But that's just on a sidenote.
Hmm. I know a little whereof I speak here, as a publisher of magazines and occasional handbooks for the day job.When you print in bulk, it's not the same process as for print on demand stuff like Createspace. You print books in sections of a given number of pages (I've not done a full book for a couple of years, so forgive me for not knowing the precise number of pages per section, but let's say it's 64 - it'll be a multiple of 8, in any case), and part of a publisher's job is to juggle things so that a book makes efficient use of the pagination dictated by the number of sections. Think of all those books you might have seen in years past with pointless "notes" sections at the back.
Adding another section because of a longer wordcount makes a huge difference to the printing costs, trust me on this. Because you can't just add a couple of pages, you have to add another 64 (or whatever). You're paying for a whole ton (probably several tonnes) of paper, which costs a lot of money.
The actual printing costs, however, are only one aspect of book production. Distribution is usually the major expense in magazine production, though admittedly that comes in when we're mailing the magazines to subscribers. Even so, books are a lot heavier, and it costs a lot of money to ship them around the world.
This doesn't really have much bearing on anyone's wordcount when they're measuring how much they've managed to type in a day, but David is right to say that these length guidelines are very important to publishers.
Andrew wrote: "Hmm. I know a little whereof I speak here, as a publisher of magazines and occasional handbooks for the day job.When you print in bulk, it's not the same process as for print on demand stuff like..."
We're going a little off-topic here I guess, but just to straighten the facts: Andrew, do you consider 2000 copies "a bulk" already? Because what I've mentioned, was based on a very specific example - cutting down on 2-3 sections (usually a section is just 16 pages, very rarely it goes over 32; so it's about 32-48 pages more or less) in an about 400-page book (printed in 2000 copies) makes you save not more than 0.33$ approximately. Given that a book rarely costs less than 10$, a section or two this or that way adds or substracts just a small fraction of a price.
Of course the prices might vary depending on many factors (e.g. paper quality, printing quantity) but I don't think they would vary significantly.
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When you print in bulk, it's not the same process as for print on demand stuff like..."
I'm sure traditionally published authors or authors under contract may be asked to write a certain amount of words for their work to be considered. I don't know this for a fact but it sounds like something they would require their authors to do. In the case of cost I mean sure sometimes adding a few more pages may raise the cost of the book a slight bit but in terms of whether or not word count is important really all depends on the persons point of view.
Remember, big books are HEAVY and take up more space on a truck so that each truck can ship fewer units. This can dramatically increase costs in terms of shipping the same number of units and that then cuts into profits.
Everyone has their own way of working and if the OP finds word counts hinder their writing then they must act on that, but I, personally find that having a fixed goal in mind helps me to pace myself. It helps me to space out plot twists and revelations.That doesn't mean forcing yourself to change your writing style or trying to achieve the final length of the work in your first draft. It does help to know if your writing a short story or an epic, though. :-)
David wrote: "Remember, big books are HEAVY and take up more space on a truck so that each truck can ship fewer units. This can dramatically increase costs in terms of shipping the same number of units and that ..."Yes, but you may have noticed that the price goes up with the page count. . .
Mary wrote: "Yes, but you may have noticed that the price goes up with the page count. . . "Not necessarily and even if it does, not in direct proportion to the costs associated with production and shipping. I challenge you to find two different books in your local book store - one three hundred pages, the other six hundred pages. I suspect that you will not find a single solitary instance where the price of the 600 page book is double that of the 300 page book.
Case in point "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is 320 pages long and retails brand new in paperback for $8.99. Robert Jordan's "Eye of the World" from the Wheel of time trilogy (which is also a phenomenally popular big publisher book series) is 832 pages and commonly retails, again in mass market paperback, for...
$7.99...
Now of course there is also the demand component, but that is actually precisely why publishers are extra strict about word count with first time authors. If they don't know whether or not a book is going to sell, they are going to take as few risks as possible.
I write my story. That's it. My books have averaged between 85000 words and 106,000 words. Ironically, I've been told many times that the 106,000 word book wasn't long enough. (That's a good thing. They want more.) But, when readers have been asked, they usually say 60,000 words and up for a 'full' book.
I think word counts are only important if you're writing for a competition or anthology that has a word count or if your publisher gives you one! With my first novel, I was shocked to discover that most YA books were expected to be between 50,000 and 70,000 words. Mine was 125,000! My publisher said she'd give me 80,000 but no more. Fortunately, I'd tried to stretch the story out a bit because I thought longer was better, so there were some things I could cut, but it was still difficult, especially since she also wanted me to add a few things in the first half of the book. I eventually got it down to 75,000 words.
To go back to the original question: "Wordcount, is it important?", you'd have to define important. If it has to do with the usefulness, then, yes, it might be important.In bulk print, publishers prefer the size of the books they ship to be homogenous, so for them it's pretty important.
For digital works it's pretty much a non-issue. E-readers can store an enormous amount of pages on the same device, and it's one of the reasons why I bought A Song of Ice and Fire - A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons in ePub, because the print versions are close to unreadable to someone with less than perfect vision.
The reason wordcount is used is because page count depends on the font size and spacing. To work out the wordcount > page count, you can simply divide the wordcount by 250, which is the average amount of words on a page. So a 100,000 word manuscript comes down to 400 pages.
I prefer to check my daily productivity in wordcount, because 1250 words sounds better than 5 pages.
More important though is how many usable words you write...
Word Count. The part of writing that you either don't worry about or think of because you have such a great story that your not concerned with it; or your writing for a contest and they require a limit of a 500 word count. How do you feel about it? Do you feel it's important? Better yet do you feel it's important when writing your own work and you set a limit for yourself? I myself don't really focus on word count. I write what ever comes to my mind for as long as it's there and when it's coming to an end I look at the word count just out of curiosity. A writer shouldn't stress over a word count when it's up to them or when they are required to write a certain amount; just write what's in your mind and write your heart out. If you feel it's not enough, add more and if you feel it's too much, get rid of some of it. In the case of writing and exceeding a required amount, go over the story and figure out what you need and what you can take away. In most good cases, you'll write more for an expected amount, this is good, it shows you were eager to write the story and had ideas. All you have to do id figure out how it all comes together and what you can take out but the story will still work without it.
What happens when you stress over word count? Lots of things, lots of terrible things. For one, when your more focused on the word count you may end up adding stuff just for the heck out it and it either makes no sense or has no connection to the story. Another thing that may happen is your not writing it to the best of your ability. Your so focused on the number inside your head that you write and while you complete your quota, you go back and realize you could have worded things differently or been more descriptive then you were. Now sure you can go back but now you realize that you have to go back and start over looking at everything and fixing stuff up, more to stress over. Finally,if your more focused on the amount of words chances are your neglecting your own story. You write it, you complete it and when you submit it or read it to yourself you realize it's lacking substance, consistency, depth, you get the idea. It's not your best, you could have done better but because you were so focused on the count of words, you dropped the ball and the story is mediocre at best.