First things first, if you write for fun and fun alone then this is not a post aimed at you. Don’t even bother reading it. This post is aimed at writers who want other people to read their stories, especially in a professional context. Fair warning, I tend towards the super blunt on this topic because overwritten story are one of my pet peeves.

There are industry standards for word counts and you need to pay attention to them because they exist for some very good reasons which I’ll get into in a second. Before that, I want to add that I’m not giving you the standards because they can vary widely by genre. If you want to know what the standards are, google “genre word counts” and read a few blogs to get a general idea as to what people are saying about your genre of choice.

Now, back to the main point: why do word count standards exist?

Publishers look at overly long books the same way that we’d look at a 6 hour movie: if it’s that long, and you’re expecting a reader to invest that much time into it, it better be pretty damn good. Along the same lines, the fact that it’s that long indicates that there is a good chance that your story is going to be something readers will not want to read and, yes, I’m saying that as someone who has several favorite books that defy these rules.

They defy the rules and still got published for two reasons: they really are exceptional and most of them were written by established authors AKA those with previous works. Works that followed the rules and that’s worth paying attention to. The more well-known you are, the more readers and publishing houses are willing to risk on you. If you start out trying to publish your 300K monolith, you will not get published and very few people will pay money to give something that long a shot if they haven’t heard good things about your writing.

To drive this in, let’s once again look at Tumblr’s darling: Harry Potter. Book one is 76,944 words. Book two is 85,141 words. It’s not until book four, which is around the point that the series got truly popular, that the word count broke the rules and shot up to 190,637 words.

From book four on, Harry Potter got to defy the rules because people were obsessed at that point and it didn’t matter if the books were bloated to the point of major pacing issues because potter mania was strong and JK Rowling would have had to do something truly crazy to make people stop reading. (Yes, I don’t think the last 3 books are all that well written and I know that’s heresy, but we’re not getting into that here. If you seriously need me to defend myself, go ahead and send me an ask. Just note that I did not say they’re terrible or that I hate them. I only said they have issues.)

If you’re curious, the site www.readinglength.com will tell you the word count of most books. I’d recommend typing in some of your favorites, just to see where they land.

A final note mostly aimed at fanfiction writers: People put up with things in fandoms that they don’t in the “real world”. Someone will suffer through an overwritten, 250+ word monstrosity because they really want to see your take on their favorite characters in a setting no one else has tried yet, but if you try to change the names and get that thing published? Yeah, you’re going to have to chop the word count in half and I’m saying this as someone who has read a good deal of fanfiction in her day. I have never come across a fic that had an unusually high word count (150k+) that wouldn’t have benefitted from being cut down. Most of them, even the 200k+ ones, could have happily been cut to 100k and been better for it.

feuangfa:

kolduny:

So, a couple of years ago, I stood in front of a concert hall in Japan by myself as a white person. There was another white girl who engaged me in a conversation in English (since we were both white I guess). She asked where I’m from, so I said Germany (a European country). She was like, cool, I’m from Georgia. Let me stress again that I’m from Europe. So being from Europe, I thought she meant the country of Georgia and was super impressed at her English because she had no accent that would have identified her as Georgian. I also tried hard to think of anything I know about Georgia but since that adds up to “isn’t that where Stalin is from?” and “I liked this one Georgian singer in the ESC”, I didn’t say anything. It literally took me hours until I realized that she probably was from the United States and I’m really glad I didn’t ask her about Stalin.

Like, I’m sorry, but Georgia, Europe is a country and Georgia, United States isn’t.

Today’s pet peeve:

When characters in a movie or TV show punch in on a time clock without even looking to see if the right day on the time card is lined up.

It’s in the same family of carelessness as gesturing with a gun, waving an obviously empty coffee cup around, and continuing to talk on a land line phone after you’ve taken the receiver away from your face to hang up.

one of my biggest pet peeves as an 18 year old girl who just went through the whole college application process is that whenever movies, tv shows, or books have anything about the college process they get it WRONG. and i don’t even mean like the emotions or like stuff like that i mean like. FACTS. They talk about getting in early and how their parents being alumni helps when it’s a UC and they don’t have legacy. Or like when ppl apply to like 2 schools and theyre harvard and yale only. It’s honestly such an irrational pet peeve but i’m so frustrated every time some 40 something year old writes something about college and it’s wrong. OH or like when they’re applying to college in like May?? or they all get in on graduation day?? some pls tell me they relate so i don’t feel so ridiculous

softglenn:

literally fuck you

Doesn’t need to even be close to perfect… just make an attempt

This statement is true for both the working professional and for students. 

As a current graduate student, I’m honestly a bit … annoyed at the number of Slack posts where the answer is easily found through:

• Email inbox - At least 50% of the Slack posts are things like “Hey, sorry - when’s the orientation again?” Or “What readings are required before the first day of class?” Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that people feel comfortable posting on Slack and that it promotes discussion. But I just get annoyed when people can’t be bothered to read their emails for simple information!
• Google- If the information isn’t found through sent emails, there’s a big chance googling will help. Some Slack posts are like “Hey, are campus libraries open?” or “What’s the address for scholarships to be sent to?” 
• Graduate Advisor - If you’ve exhausted your inbox and Google, then the best contact to find information is our Graduate Advisor. I am surprised at how many posts ask for information, and then I’ll go email our advisor (who will respond within 15 minutes usually), and then I’ll comment on the Slack post with what I found. Is it SO hard for the original poster to do that?! (I am a big advocate of sharing information so everyone has access to the same resources, but people gotta learn to be resourceful and have initiative.)

Look - I get it. I would rather have an active Slack channel with stupid, redundant questions than a completely inactive Slack channel. But surely, there must be some in-between area? I’ve found that even though we are all were admitted to UCLA and that indicates we have passion and great work ethic, some of us are just … lazy. Or I mean, selectively lazy. 

… And this same concept applies to people in the workforce, too. 

Maybe people just get lazy in their positions after a couple of years OR feel entitled/superior either due to position or their age. It’s probably both. I also do think ageism is a thing. I work at a small company where most of the employees are mid-40s. As someone in my mid-20s, I absolutely hate it when employees ask me about IT help when we have a dedicated IT team. They assume that because I’m “young”, I am well-versed in IT - and that assumption is often correct. But I also have a busy workload and cannot help with IT requests, especially considering we have hired help for that exact purpose! 

Another thing my manager does is ask me to look up the contact information for a client or review peoples’ calendars to see the best time to schedule a meeting (often times, I’m not even in the meeting!). These are tasks that should not be delegated to me and are things that she is simply too lazy to do. And too lazy to learn to do herself.

Anyway, if you made it this far - congrats! This is the end of my rant, haha.

Messaging

I don’t mind it if people message me, just don’t start with something like ‘hi’ and then continue to message with bad grammar. It would also be nice if you try to hold the conversation too

People who dye their hair platinum blonde but leave their eyebrows black upset me

If you try and fuck me before I am finished with the blunt I’m definitely gonna fuck but be low key irritated I cldve been more high before the smash session fr fr ‍♀️

“I want to renew this book.”
“I can’t because it fills a request for another customer.”
“Are you sure?”

“I’m here to pick up a book on hold.”
“The book you requested hasn’t come in yet.”
“Are you sure?”

“Are you all open the day after Thanksgiving?”
“Black Friday? Yes we are.”
“Are you sure?”

(Not So) Short Opinion On Taylor Swift’s “folklore”

I feel kinda conflicted about folklore. The lyrics are amazing, but all the songs make me feel. so. damn. sad.

Like, pretty much every song sounds sad, and it’s kind of emotionally tiring. After listening to the entire album, I just felt emotionally drained, and not necessarily in a good way. And this is maybe just a personal preference, but I think an album is better if it doesn’t just have only happy sounding songs, or only sad sounding songs. There needs to be a little bit of a break. Lover was an incredible happy sounding album, but it still had some songs that sounded sad. Here, after a while, all the songs start sounding kinda the same. Which is sad (pun not intended), because now I can’t enjoy the lyrics as much as I normally would otherwise.

And I get that this is probably intentional. The focus is very much on the lyrics and the singing, so the music takes a bit of a backseat.

So yeah, folklore. Lyric-wise: ten out of ten. Music-wise: maybe a high five, low six? Somewhere around there.

And unfortunately for this album, my enjoyment of music is more determined by the music than by the lyrics.

Songs I currently feel are worth listening to more often:

betty, definitely betty (the key-change was heavenly, and the storytelling amazing),

my tears ricochet,

cardigan,

the last great american dynasty,

(and I guess also)

the 1.

2 additional notes:

1. Taylor’s singing is great, which, you know, kinda obvious, but I still feel like it needs to be said.

2. One of my biggest pet peeves is when song titles aren’t written with capital letters (same with “the”, “a/an”, “of” and similar words in titles of songs, movies…). This didn’t influence my opinion on this album, but it did annoy me to no end.

jeezllouise:

there is not one single video that has been or ever will be improved upon w a “this is what boys will be boys REALLY means” comment .

I always hate when someone tells me I look like some famous person because I don’t know what they think of that person. Do you think they are pretty and therefore I’m pretty? Do you think they are ugly? I need answers.

name your Tumblr user pet peeves!! mine is when I’m scrollin thru a tag and there’s about fifty million fanfictions, almost all of them h*rny self insert NSFW, and none of them are under a cut. so I have to scroll through this long ass fanfiction. and no matter how hard I try, every single time I end up readin a lil bit of some freaky ass sh*t.

this has gotta stop. please fanfiction authors, I am begging you. put your work under the cut, or externally and provide links. don’t put it straight out in the open. please

penny-anna:

penny-anna:

my no 1 biggest cross stitch pet peeve is like. ok so i completely understand that pre-digital patterns u had to split larger patterns across multiple pages in order for them to be legible. & no doubt some people like to print their patterns out, so it makes sense to provide a multi-page version of a digital pattern.

but!! digital patterns are zoomable! so u can also provide a single-page version & then people can zoom in and scroll around and look at whatever section they want! why not do this!!!! 

AAAARGH (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

my 2nd biggest pet peeve is when ppl post pictures of their work and they don’t have proper tension in their embroidery hoop so their fabric is all slack ):< makes me uncomfortable