Word Count and Why It Matters
Words, in and of themselves, are not valuable. They only matter when A) the word is paying you, or B) your contract stipulates a minimum word count, a maximum word count, or both. Most of the time, a working writer spends his days struggling to meet word count, but there are times when you realize you’ve got to cut to stay under the maximum. On the whole, it’s better to be over than under. A bloated book can always be edited, but even a great editor cannot manufacture five or ten thousand words that you failed to supply.
Have you ever read A Tale of Two Cities? The book is sold in an edited version for consumption by high school students. That’s because the book was initially published as a serial over 31 parts. It’s incredibly verbose because Dickens was earning money on each installment. (It’s a popular myth that the word paid him, but the story sure reads like he was.) It’s a great book, but without a doubt, it includes a great deal of prose that lends nothing to the story. You may own a leather-bound first edition that is absolutely beautiful to look at, but all those gilded affectations don’t make the novel any better.
Word count guidelines
Writing simply to hear yourself talk isn’t a virtue. This is one of the reasons editors are so important. Left to our own devices, authors tend to be self-indulgent. It takes the lens of an outside eye to filter out our worse conceits, and a bloated word count is one of these. Here are some basic guidelines for word count, first, for a fiction book:
- 1,000 words to 1,500 words: flash fiction
- 2,000 words to 7,000 words: short story
- 10,000 words to 18,000 words, give or take: really, really long short story
- 20,000 words to 40,000 words: novella
- 50,000 words to 60,000 words: a full-length novel but a relatively quick read
- 85,000 words to 95,000 words: The maximum length you should tolerate for a full-length novel
- 100,000 words and over: You had better be George R.R. Martin or J.K. Rowling
Next, here are some basic guidelines for a non-fiction book:
- 1,000 words to 1,500 words: Brief article or essay
- 2,000 words to 7,000 words: Feature article or long-form essay
- 10,000 words to 18,000 words: In-depth report or extended essay
- 20,000 words to 40,000 words: Short non-fiction book or extended guide
- 50,000 words to 60,000 words: Comprehensive non-fiction book or in-depth exploration
- 85,000 words to 95,000 words: The recommended maximum length for a non-fiction book
- 100,000 words and over Extensive research or scholarly work
These are just general guidelines. It’s not like you haven’t written something approaching a novella at 17,000 words; it’s just that there are some overlaps in the categories. A novel isn’t “full length” until it hits at least 45,000 to 50,000 words, but there’s leeway. None of these are laws.
Unless you’re scripting an epic fantasy novel, a 100,000-word novel is just an indulgence that will likely be ponderous and boring. If a story can’t be contained within less than 100,000 words, you’ve got too much plot, or you should be working on a trilogy. More than likely, though, it isn’t that you have more plot points than the word count will bear; it’s that your prose is bloated. If you get too wordy, you risk losing the reader’s interest.
The Art of Concise Writing: Finding Greatness in Fewer Words
There’s a reason writers like Hemingway, Robert E. Howard, and Moorcock are known for the sparseness of their prose (in comparison to writers like H.P. Lovecraft, who once wrote a sentence so long nobody has yet finished reading it. They were great writers because they said a lot with very few words. That’s the ideal for which you should be shooting. Yes, H.P. Lovecraft was also a great writer, but as difficult as it is to be brief and great, it’s even harder to be verbose and great.
Remember that writing, good writing, isn’t only about you. It’s also about the audience. Share on X Who are they? Who do you want them to be? And what does the audience want? The shift to e-readers means that, at least if you’re publishing in electronic format, you need to keep word counts lower. If you must write your magnum opus, remember that you are cutting your potential audience before you even start. Writing for the people who read your work does not somehow compromise your vision for your book — but it may mean you don’t get to be as self-indulgent while you type.