I see it constantly: authors posting about how many words they’ve jammed into their manuscript in a day, week, weekend, et cetera, but keeping tabs on your word count may be more important than you think.
I mean, who wouldn’t feel proud over squeezing out seven thousand words in a single morning between school runs and doing the laundry of seven kids and a husband who spends more time underneath his car than in the driver’s seat?
And while I’ve never compiled such a post myself – as far as I can recall – I know the feeling, and I absolutely don’t blame anyone for sharing such achievements with the world.
But how often do you think about the words themselves? Not just as the brushstrokes painting your story, but how important the word count could be from the time you type “Chapter One” to that sigh-inducing “THE END”, and beyond.
Anyone who has ever jumped onto (and probably jumped off) the agent-query train has encountered the reality that word count plays an important role in their consideration of your submission.
And yes, genres and subgenres certainly play a role in how much ink is allowed to spill onto your pages. For instance, a manuscript of 150K for Book One of an epic fantasy series might still crawl over the threshold of acceptability, but not for a young adult romance novel. No, for the latter, the door would likely remain firmly shut with a muffled “Go away!” shouted from the other side.
Every agent and publisher might have their own cut-off point and reasons behind it, but we’re not going to explore those borders. No, we are about to sniff around our own backyard and dig up the bones of reality for self-published authors.
The reasons I’m listing here may very well differ from those of other self-published or traditional authors, or they might share the same eyes and hair colour, but they are my personal reasons – pebbles I’ve picked up along my own path as an author.
And I hope they will help you look at your own work in a more critical light, because I firmly believe that every author should be their own worst and best critic in honing their craft, especially if you’re planning to make a career out of your writing or aiming to expand that nest egg for your retirement.
So, without further ado, let’s get cracking on my top 6 list:
Printing costs
Wrote an ebook only? No concerns for you there. But with printed stories, words fill physical pages, and each page between those covers costs money to print, and that money eats into your profit.
And as many readers probably won’t know, most authors tend to spend more money on getting their books into the hands of said readers than they get from sales or royalties.
So, unless money isn’t a concern, words cost money and you should use them sparingly.
Writing time
Every word written takes time to write, so every unnecessary word written ends up wasting time. And if you – like me – have a queue of stories waiting to exit your head, the more time you spend on one story, the longer the queue gets and the longer each story has to wait for its birthday.
Editing time and costs
With editing time, I mean every round of developmental editing, structural editing, line editing, copy editing and proofreading, which means each word takes exponentially much longer to check than to write. And if you have tens of thousands of unnecessary words floating about, you have tens of thousands of words being checked unnecessarily.
Not only does this take up time, but if you’re paying for editing and/or proofreading professionals to help make your book shine, you end up losing money on unnecessary words being checked.
Beta readers
Beta readers take time to read your manuscript, and the more pages they must read, the longer it takes for you to get feedback. And if you have too many words that don’t add value to the story, said feedback might communicate the opposite of what you wanted to hear.
Querying
Yes, I know I said we’d be looking at the impact of word count in self-publishing, but for many self-published authors, querying literary agents or publishers is still part of the process.
Because, let’s face it: deep down, self-published authors are curious about what’s engraved on the other side of the publishing coin, and it doesn’t hurt to run a finger over that side to feel what it’s like, right? It sure doesn’t, but again, it does take time. And again, agents and publishers have a cap on the number of words jammed into a manuscript.
So why would you waste time sending out queries to agents who wouldn’t make an exception for your oversized manuscript, no matter how good the story might be in reality?
Your story deserves better, and so do you
Overwriting. The pitfall of many an author. Myself included, at times.
Somewhere between all those unneeded words, descriptions and explanations, there might be a fantastic story, but because of all the clutter, no one can see it.
If your manuscript uses words as a crutch to prop up a poor story, it probably belongs back in the drawer until you can figure out what to do with it. Even if it means putting a match to it.
While that might sound harsh, always keep one thing in mind: even if you have many fantastic books sitting in your trophy case, would this story be good enough for someone who is a first-time reader of your work? If the answer is no, fix it or chuck it in the bin… with or without burial by fire.
Exceptions
As with most rules in life, there are exceptions to the rule of word count. You may be an author to whom such guidelines aren’t applicable, or it’s just your style to write willy-nilly and deal with the fallout later.
Or maybe keeping to the rules is impeding the advancement of your WIP, in which case another overriding rule comes into play: you can still edit bad writing later, but you can’t edit no writing, so rather write something than nothing at all.
The long and short of it?
As far as possible, be critical about the number of words you use, not only for your readers’ sake but yours too. If you have any additional reasons behind the importance of word count that you may have picked up during your own author (or reader) journey, please share them in the comments.
Happy writing!
ABOUT EATON KRONE
Backed by a career in journalism, PR and communications as well as advertising, Eaton Krone has been the author of funny sci-fi satire novels since 2017, although the humour in his LightSide stories often straddle the dark side too. He hasn’t won any awards and isn’t planning on doing so, as he has no space in his home for trophies. For reviews on Eaton’s books and where to get them, visit https://www.goodreads.com/eaton_krone and https://books2read.com/ap/xorOpK/Eato, or head on over to https://eatonkrone.com/books/.
