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.

yanssiewriting:

How Long Should A Chapter Be?

If you scroll through my blog long enough, you’ll find that I’ve rebloged and/or have said something about how long a chapter should be. Though I don’t entirely disagree with what I’ve posted before, I think I need to make something clear.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional. I don’t have any traditionally published works (one day I will, hopefully), and I don’t have the experience of a pro. I am just an eager learner online sharing what I know and have recently learned. Corrections, suggestions, and constructive criticism are welcome.

Your word count per chapter isn’t thatimportant.

Keep reading

How Long Should A Chapter Be?

If you scroll through my blog long enough, you’ll find that I’ve rebloged and/or have said something about how long a chapter should be. Though I don’t entirely disagree with what I’ve posted before, I think I need to make something clear.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional. I don’t have any traditionally published works (one day I will, hopefully), and I don’t have the experience of a pro. I am just an eager learner online sharing what I know and have recently learned. Corrections, suggestions, and constructive criticism are welcome.

Your word count per chapter isn’t thatimportant.

Sure, most publishing houses in the industry have preferences on how many words you can fit in a book, but you don’t need to be strict on yourself with the numbers.

I have read books with chapters as long as 20+ pages andas short as 2 pages. In the same book, okay?

Your chapters don’t need to have a specific word count as long as you’re telling the story.

You can have one chapter with 3000 words, but so much stuff happens that you might as well cut it up into smaller parts that are easier to digest. You can also have a chapter with more than 3000 words, more than 5000 even, and it still feels like 1 solid part.

But don’t think how much you say doesn’t matter. It does. But how much you say andhow much happens are equally important.

You can say a lot about a small event. You can describe sensations, the way someone blinked then turned away, the way you caught your friend staring at you, the way your teacher stuttered and almost failed to save face, etc. Even if they’re short-lived and can only realistically happen in a second, as a writer, you can prolong that second by saying more. When you say more, the reader reads more. Thus, making the experience slower.

The opposite can be done with less description. If you want something to feel faster, explain less. Instead of writing a paragraph about a single action, limit your descriptors. That way, you’ll fit more actions in fewer words and in less time.

But slow doesn’t mean bad. Neither does fast.

It all depends on the scene.

What you say and how much you say should depend on how you want the reader to feel…how you want them to experience it. If it’s a fight scene with a lot of actions, and you want your reader to feel how quick your antagonist’s moves are, talk less. Show more.

But if you want time to slow down for them, make use of the character’s voice. Give them an opinion to share. Make your readers experience the frozen moment with your character. Describe the feeling of what is happening rather than just the initial event.

But if you’re as stubborn as I am, and you still want a specific number, google the average word count of a chapter within the genre you’re writing (also include the ideal length of the overall work: novella, novel, etc.).

According to wordcounter.net, the general guideline is 3000 to 5000 words per chapter. But really, it’s just a guideline.

“…chapter length should be defined by the story and that any chapter length targets you decide on are merely guidelines.”

What I learned online is that even chapters, the bricks you use to build the story, could have structure. In my opinion, if you can take the extra time to thoroughly build the structure of your chapters, please do. It’ll make it better in the long run.

But if you’re (still) as stubborn as I am, just make sure it has a BEGINNING, MIDDLE, & END.

You can start a chapter exactly in the middle of an action. That’s fine. For as long as that action/event is something that leadsto the main focus of the chapter. By all means, skip the idle scenes that give no meaning and serve no use to the story. But you don’t want your reader missing out on crucial details.

The chapter has to begin somewhere, lead to an important question/task/mission/whatever in the middle, and a solution (at least a half solution) - plus another question to keep your readers reading - in the end.

Remember, your word count doesn’t tell you whether you have a good story or not. It just says how long the story actually is. Just as a 15-minute Taylor Swift short film can make you cry and a 2-hour action movie can feel like it’s only been 10 minutes, stories consisting of 1k to 100k words rely on meaning, emotion, passion, and purpose to have value.

Thanks so much for reading! I hope this helped you at least a little. I’m open to suggestions, tips, submissions, corrections, and constructive criticism. Just send me an ask, submit or hit the DMs <3

s-graves-writes:

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s-graves-writes:

Someone please force me to write until I have exactly 3092 words for today! I already have 424 from last night, but for the most part I couldn’t write yesterday because i had a concert and now I have to make it up. 

So I’m not allowed to do anything else until it’s finished.

@bookishdiplodocus

replied to your post “Someone please force me to write until I have exactly 3092 words for…”

I wrote 3096 today and I challenge you to a duel. Beat me! For your honor!

Well, now that it’s a matter of honor I kind of HAVE to don’t I 

@feministhotline

replied to your post “Someone please force me to write until I have exactly 3092 words for…”

you are an arTIST. you have this PASSION. this is what you were BORN FOR now let’s get this BREAD

YEs

I think I’m going to try word sprints as a lot of you suggested! Thank you for all your encouragement!

So I was derailed by a stressful phonecall BUT I am back on track now I promise.

At 5281 words! Now I just have to write roughly a day’s total more! Aaaaah

I’m so bad at this “writing” thing

I have 1000 words left. My sister says she’ll give me a piece of candy if I make it. I don’t know, guys.

Ended the day with 6700 words! That’s past par! 

I’m definitely not winning that was so much work haha

Word count: 13,140

How is yours going?

Ideas for Writer’s Block

• Search Pinterest for photography relevant to your WIP. I find “nature” and “character inspiration” help a lot. Visualizing your character, their house, their car, can really help you break through writer’s block as it opens your mind to detail. You can just start describing what you see!
• Listen to music.This often sets the “mood” for writing. Not for everyone, but definitely works for me! I like to pretend my character is the voice singing and then ask questions, why, what, where, and who.
• Read, read, read books. I find that reading gets me in the mood for writing. I’ve gone through months of writer’s block and then the moment I pick up a book and start reading, I’m like “okay, where’s my laptop?”. And then a whole novel is spat out in a matter of days.
• Newspaper. Sounds old and boring, but I tried it the other morning and it worked. Just read through the columns and see if anything stands out. A lot of times, I use them to help me think up book titles. Magazines work just as well.
• Just let it flowand don’t stop. Don’t overthink it. Set a timer for 30 minutes and just write until the timer goes off. Sometimes we get caught up trying to make each sentence immaculate. That’s what editing is for later. The longer you hang up on a chapter or scene the worse is gets. Just write. Move past it. And don’t look back.

I hope these tips helped! Good luck! If you’d like to share your tips for writer’s block, please feel free in the comments below. ❤️

Writing Hooks

• Start your book with an onomatopoeia: (Sounds words)

Bark!

I jet up in bed with a racing heart. Why is Luna barking at this hour?

Bang!

The sound echoed through the woods, birds hurrying into flight.

• Start your book with repetitive phrases:

No. No. I stared at the torn picture in unbelief.

“Where’s dad? Where’s dad?” I asked, tears running down my face.

• Start your book with ADJECTIVES:

White swirls covered the top of my salted caramelcoffee.

Agiant blue wave crashed over the little blonde-headedgirl.

• Start your book with a personal experience:

I always loved the way rain sounded on a tin roof; it would lull me fast to sleep.

When I was five, my big brother had punched me in the nose. He used to always get away with bullying me.

• Start your book with SETTING:

The neighbors’ house was dark, always shadowed even on a sunny day. The black iron gate that surrounded the mansion kept everyone out and what was in, stayed in.

The park was full of children and their pets, racing back and forth through the sandboxes and dewy morning grass.

so i saw a dream the other week that i finished writing the book i’m currently working on and it ended up being about 41k words and i got so sad because it was smaller than i imagined and cried myself awake…

…so anyway, i reached 40k words yesterday while writing that book and i’m not even halfway done

Fun question: How long is TCF (part 1)?

To be more specific – how many words are there in the English version of the webnovel “Trash/Lout of the Count’s Family”?

I looked it up and of course, I found no answers. Which naturally meant I had to make research and calculations of my own.

(Bear in mind, I might have made a mistake or more somewhere. So take my results with a grain of salt.)

Here’s what I know:

• by checking many random chapters one by one, I discovered that while there is no standard chapter length, they’re always somewhere between 2,500 and 4,500 words (excluding the short prologue). There might be some shorter or longer outliers, but I haven’t come across them
• the most common length is somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 words per chapter
• there are currently 776 chapters in Part 1 (not counting the extra chapters released afterwards)
• I had to subtract a bit from the final totals due to additional words located on the website pages I was using, but it was less than 80,000 words, so I don’t think that number matters a lot (you’ll see in a moment why…)

Based on this information, I calculated that TCF Part 1:

• is at least 1.86 million words at Minimum
• has the Averageof somewhere between 2.25 and 2.64 million words
• atMaximumhas3.42 million words in total

(For reference, there are 576,459 words in the Lord of the Rings series, 757,439 words in the Bible, and 1,084,170 words in the entire Harry Potter series. Meaning TCF is probably at least as long all three of those combined.)

…Pretty jaw-dropping, huh??

This has gone well before, so let’s try this again.

Every note this post gets = 100 words I have to write.

I’ll leave it running for a while and then check back

When someone (who doesn’t write) complains about how hard it is to write something:

Week 44

Current word count: 100,000

Current draft: t̷͕̲̫̹͈̣͚̫͎̑͂̂̈́ë̶̢͚̩͓͔̲̘̬̘̒̀̉̓͒̽̔̈́̎̇̿̄̅̄́̕̕̚͝n̴̩̠̮̤͕̗̠̞̳̻͖̫̱̙̱̈͊͂͒͝?̵̖̮͓̗̣͚̹̎̅͌̀̓̊̾̑͗͊

Guess who’s back and still writing! IT’S ME. Betcha thought you’d heard the last of me. Gotten rid of me, maybe. Well think again because quarantine has only made me stronger!

Writing is a never ending process and that is no exception for myself and my wip. I’ll spare you the gory details that filled my life between updates, but to sum it up, even when you think you’re done, you are never done. Until the book is put in print and published for the world, it will never be done! And I say that in the best light possible! Because there is always room for improvement. For yourself and your story.

I’m going to be making a post soon about writing in general and writing in quarantine and just whatever fits into the text box, but to keep this related specifically to my current wip, we are still writing and the story is better than ever!

Hi babes, just wanted to update you all on Lost & Found chapter 5 (can’t believe we’re on chapter 5 already!!)

I don’t think I’m going to get it done for my usual time. Currently at 2k words, but we’ve got a lot to cover in this chapter so it may take me a bit! It will be posted some time in the next few days. Thank you all for your support and your patience with me as I navigate this fic writing business <3

@stardustsroses@nahthanks@jurdanhell@my-one-true-l @thefolkofthefic@greenbriarxrose@bookavert@queen-of-demons-and-hell@theviolettulip@lysandra-ghost-leopard@playlistmusings@black-like-my-soul @localgoof @garnet-babe @iamaprincessallgirlsare