Writing Blog Number 2

20240117 Word Count

Word Count

This is something that comes up a lot in writing circles - what word counts are there for various forms of fiction writing? The answer is... complicated.

Yes, complicated.

First and foremost, my suggestion would be don't aim for a word count. Let the story take you where it wants to go and how it wants to get there. If it ends up being a short story, poem, novella, novel, trilogy... that's up to the work. Do not force it. Let it be natural. Write what you are writing and let the length decide itself. But that is my opinion.

See, in my experience, sitting down to "write a novel" is fraught with danger. You are automatically setting yourself up for a mental failure – on the terms you yourself have set – if you do not meet that arbitrary word count. Just sit down to write whatever story or poem you are writing. Do not press it for word count.


Lengths:
Now, I have dealt with a lot of different publishers over the past 25-plus years, and I have come to see the following definitions for lengths of works. Remember, poetry follows its own rules for length depending on style.

The definitions I have found are as follows. You will see multiple definitions for most writing length forms here, and that is because very few publishers tend to agree:
Drabble:
         exactly 100 words (this is standard, though some include the title in this word count and some do not)
Flash fiction:
         up to 500 words
         exactly 500 words
         up to 1000 words
Short short:
         500 to 1000 words
Short story:
         anything up to 10,000 words
         500 to 10,000 (or 12,500) words
         1000 to 12,500 (or 17,500) words
         500 to 9,999 words
Long short:
         10,000 to 20,000 words
Novella:
         17,500 to 40,000 words
         15,000 to 25,000 words
         12,500 to 25,000 words
         20,000 to 40,000 words
Novelette:
         25,000 to 40,000 (or 50,000) words
Short novel:
         40,000 to 60,000 words
         50,000 to 75,000 words
Novel:
         60,000+ words
         75,000+ words
         75,000-150,000 words

Yes, a lot of differences there! Some other novel-based generalisations (and these definitions can change from publisher to publisher, from country to country, from source to source) include:
         150,000 as a maximum because after that they will split into 2 books. (However some can exceed 200,000 words!)
         Horror, fantasy and sci-fi generally have a novel start at 80,000 words. However, some fantasy starts at 90,000 words and some horror at 60,000 words.
         Romance novels generally start at 40,000 words (no short novel), and some of these companies have a maximum of 80,000 words.

As an aside, when it comes to a short story, Edgar Allan Poe had three dictums (dicta):
1) Length: the story can be read in one sitting.
2) Ending: the story should end in its climax.
3) Unity of effect: the story should only have one mood.
(taken from the essay ‘The Philosophy of Composition’). When thinking about length, this is another way of looking at it.


Chapters.
The length of chapters in a longer work being pretty consistent is what beginner writers are told, to give them a guideline. But I have read a book recently from one of the Big 4 publishers which follows a 20-page chapter with a 2-page chapter. It's whatever the story needs and what works for the story in question. There are no set hard and fast chapter rules. Write whatever suits your story. Having said that, chapters that are too long may be edited into separate chapters by publishers/editors. May be. Not necessarily. Again, like everything, it depends on the publisher.


Conclusion:
This is all traditional publishing (which is all I do). In self-publishing, do whatever you want, I guess. No idea.

Now, for those who feel that they really want to hit that big novel right now, then think about it like this: a novel is written one chapter at a time. A chapter is written a paragraph at a time. A paragraph comes from a sentence, one after the other. And a sentence comes from a single word put next to another word. Don’t think of it as a novel and get overwhelmed. Think of it as one word then another word, and see where it takes you.