Editing Tips Part 12: Worrying about Word Count

Whether you’re considering writing for the very first time or have been drafting for years, there’s one question that crops up with every project: how long should your manuscript be? Depending on your manuscript’s category—short story, novella, or novel—there are some industry standards to aim for, but even those standards include a wide range with much variability. Once your manuscript’s category has been determined, however, we believe that it’s not the exact word count that matters—it’s the story itself. At Josha, we believe that each story is different, and what matters more than the length of your manuscript is that the story has been told effectively. 

During the drafting stage, many authors question how many words per chapter they should aim for to reach an industry-approved final word count. If you’re working on your first draft, though, we encourage you to ignore the word count and instead focus on simply getting your story written, letting your characters as well as their triumphs and tribulations come to life on the page. According to multi-genre author Neil Gaiman, when it comes to drafting: “This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” 

Once you have completed a first draft—no matter its length—you can begin self-editing it. As a part of the developmental self-editing process, you can assess if there are parts of your story that could be trimmed or if there may be aspects that would benefit from further expansion. Even at this stage, we recommend ignoring the total word count and instead focusing on improving your story and ensuring it appears on the pages as vividly and as clearly as it does in your mind. If you want to check your world-building and assess how engaging readers find your story, we recommend contacting an alpha or beta reader, as determined by your manuscript’s needs. 

Only once your story has been written from start to finish—and self-edited to ensure its clarity—do we suggest turning your attention to your manuscript’s word count. This is because focusing on word count during the drafting stage can become a distraction, whether in a way that pulls your focus from telling the story to how much “room” you have to tell certain parts in or even by limiting your creativity.  

For example, imagine you have allocated a maximum of 3,500 words per chapter, but as you write the climactic scene, the words pour out of you, leaving you with a chapter of over 5,000 words. If you resolve to reduce that chapter by 1,500 words right then, you may unintentionally cut parts of a scene that you could have moved into another chapter later or lose your inspired energy as your story begins its falling action. In other words, by focusing on your word count instead of your creative flow, you may wind up limiting your storytelling abilities as you’re trying to get the story on the pages. Instead, we recommend that, even if you have decided on a maximum word count for each chapter, try not to worry if you overshoot that during the initial draft—you can always cut it back down or reallocate content later. Likewise, if you set a minimum word count goal for each chapter but fall short, that’s okay; there’s room to expand and add content during the self-editing process, too. 

Of course, we recognize that some writers do operate a little better with clear, defined goals for every aspect of their manuscript, including word count. If you feel like that’s you, that’s okay—whatever method works for you is the one we encourage you to utilize.  

As we mentioned earlier, there are some industry standards that help determine the manuscript’s category, which influence how it will be marketed. It’s up to you whether you set your intended category prior to beginning to write; you may begin a project with the objective of writing a short story, or you may simply have an idea and decide to let the manuscript’s eventual final length set the category. Whenever you determine your manuscript’s category is completely up to you, but it’s important to remember that a category is different from a genre, and genres typically have their own industry-standard lengths as well. 

According to Writer’s Digest, the following lengths determine the manuscript’s category: 

• Short story: 1,500 words to 30,000 words 
• Novella: 30,000 words to 50,000 words 
• Novel: 55,000 words to 300,000 words 

In each of these categories, a manuscript should follow the basic tenets of storytelling, such as Freytag’s Pyramid, with a clear inciting incident, climatic point, and conclusion. The category itself, though, will determine how much writing needs to appear connecting those points (ex., rising action connecting the inciting incident and climax), because a short story will naturally have fewer words available to devote to detail than a novel would. Knowing your category is important because it will help determine how to pitch it to literary agents and acquisitions editors, who will be considering your manuscript for its merit as well as its cost to produce in conjunction with its marketability. For example, even once an author signs a contract with a publisher, sales from readers are not guaranteed; this means that the cost the publishing house incurs to produce the book is a gamble because they have no way of knowing with certainty what the return on their investment will be. Longer books cost more to produce (i.e., cost of ink and paper per page, variances in trim size as determined by length, and more), which means many publishers prefer to sign first-time authors with shorter books to keep their investment lower. 

As important as these business practices are to be aware of during the final stages of editing your manuscript as well as during the query process, these things shouldn’t be your primary concern while drafting. Instead, we encourage you to simply focus on drafting your story, however many words it takes to get a first draft completely on paper. 

Your final word count will vary from that of your very first draft, as your story most likely will, too. The objective with a first draft is to get your story out of your mind and onto the pages, and the drafting process is meant to help you perfect it. Along the way, as you edit, your word count will naturally change as you discover ways to improve your diction, more concise ways to word certain phrases, and find opportunities to provide greater detail to the world your characters inhabit. And because writing is a creative pursuit, remember that creativity should never be limited.