‘What are you writing?' can seem like quite a simple question until you consider the range of possibilities. I'm currently in the early stages of shaping a new story and I'm still not quite clear on exactly what it is 🙂 Will it be stand-alone, or the start of a new series? What word count should I aim for?
Word count distinctions
You might start out with wanting to write ‘a novel,' or a ‘short story,' or you might just start with an idea and then figure out whether it's got enough in it for a longer work.
Regardless of how you start., it’s helpful to know how many words you are aiming for so you can calculate how long it will take to write that first draft. Here are some of the main options:
Flash Fiction:
This is usually under 1,500 words and while difficult to sell for profit, it is certainly a great way to get your creative muscles working and to challenge yourself. It's also a way to get exposure to your work as you could give one or more of these stories away to build your mailing list or even circulate them in your author newsletter or on social media. Check twitter for #flashfiction to see some examples.
Short Stories:
A short story is usually considered to be anything up to 7,500 words, or the length may be prescribed if you're writing for an anthology or a competition. You can definitely make money with short fiction, although the amount will depend on the markets for it, and your production schedule. For more on this:
- Tips on writing short stories that sell by award-winning author, Alan Baxter
- Making a living with short fiction by Dean Wesley Smith
Novellas:
Novellas usually range from around 17,000 through to 40,000 words. They are now very much back in fashion thanks to the ebook revolution. Even James Patterson has his own series of Bookshots, a rebranding of shorter works with the tagline,
“Life moves fast—books should too. Pulse-pounding thrillers under $5 and 150 pages or less.”
Many classic books from authors such as H.G. Wells or Hemingway were relatively short. The trend towards longer books happened because publishers wanted book spines to stand out in physical bookstores to attract more attention.
But with ebooks, the spine plays no part in a reader’s decision to purchase your book. You get the same amount of (digital) shelf space whether you are selling a short story, a novella or a novel.
Novels:
Novels need to be over 40,000 words and different genres have different expectations in terms of word count. A romance reader will be happy with 50,000 to 60,000 words. For thrillers it's 60,000 to 90,000, for example, a James Patterson novel is usually around 70,000.
Epic fantasy can have 120,000 words or even double that. Fantasy fiction readers often have an expectation of longer books because the worlds are so complex and there are lots of characters involved. The main takeaway from this is that your word count needs to bear some resemblance to reader expectation.
Once you have decided what type of book you are writing, which genre you are writing in and the approximate word count, you can then consider which of two ways you will approach your writing.
- Start with an idea, develop your story, and then see how many words it ends up being
- Decide to write a book of 70,000 words (or a short or whatever you decide). Then, calculate how many scenes you will need and fill in the ideas later.
Standalone, Series or Serial?
The next question to consider is whether you are writing a standalone book, a series or a serial?
Let’s look at each of these as it will make a big difference for plotting, creating characters and deciding what you want to achieve with your books, assuming this is just the first of many.
The Standalone Novel
Within a standalone novel, all the story and character arcs are complete and there are no loose ends. Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Stephen King’s It are two examples of this. The standalone is equivalent to a feature film. It has a final ending.
Could you revisit these characters again in a sequel? Possibly, but it would be unlikely that you would want to as the endings have been sewn up so neatly.
Standalones are generally more difficult to market, however you publish. Although again, this differs by genre.
Romance might feature a happy ending with one couple which wraps up their story, but many romance authors will have series around a family (e.g. Bella Andre's Sullivans series), or a specific place e.g. a small town, with more characters to work with.
If you get a traditional publishing deal, it's likely that it will be for two or three books, therefore you will have to write more stories to satisfy your readers anyway and this is definitely easier if it is a series.
Alternatively, if you self-publish, having a series is the best way to make more money per customer, and it’s much easier to market a series. If you look at many of the best-selling authors in the world, such as James Patterson or Nora Roberts, they usually produce books in a trilogy or longer series.
My dark fantasy novel, Risen Gods, co-written with J.Thorn, is a stand-alone book, although we've considered writing in a similar theme based around the myths of New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. It is definitely more difficult to market because it's stand-alone. If you do choose to write stand-alones, then at least write them in the same genre so your readers might want to buy more.
A Series
There are two main options with a series:
- The main character continues from book to book in various different situations. Agatha Christie’s Poirot fits as a series character where the murder mystery is different every time. Lee Child's Jack Reacher, Ian Fleming's James Bond or Kathy Reichs' Temperance Brennan are other examples.
- The world remains the same and the characters come and go, but a complete story is told in each book. The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett fits this model.
You can also combine the two. My ARKANE series (so far) has mainly featured Morgan Sierra as the protagonist alongside Jake Timber, as they solve supernatural mysteries around the globe and stop the bad guys destroying the world!
However, One Day in New York features Jake Timber as the main character, teaming up with a new character, Naomi Locasto, and I'll be writing more with that pairing in my USA spin-off books (on the way!)
The main advantage with series is that once people are immersed in your world and involved with your characters, they are likely to buy all the books in that series and eagerly await new titles. Even if they discover you later in the series, they are likely to try the backlist.
It's also easier to get promotion and merchandising slots with BookBub, Kobo and iBooks if you have more books in a series as the return is likely to be greater.
The Serial
Serials go in and out of fashion. When paper was expensive, people enjoyed stories published weekly in magazines rather than in books. Charles Dickens originally serialized The Pickwick Papers ,and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin was also serialized. These days we are more used to serials in TV format, where the story is told over multiple episodes.Westworld was a fantastic example of this recently, as the episodes were addictive viewing, but you didn't know what was really going on until the end.
A serial is different from a series in that each episode or part ends on a cliffhanger. You have to wait for the next book to find out what happens. This enrages some readers and pleases others, so be very clear if you're writing a serial in book format and ensure releases are close enough together to keep readers engaged.
However, it is widely acknowledged in the indie community that writing a series and putting out the books in a relatively close time frame e.g. within 90 days of each other, is the best way to attract readers and sell more books.
Over the course of your writing life, you are likely to try a number of these options but hopefully, these distinctions will help you if you're just getting started. If you know what you're aiming to write, it will help you move onto the next step, which is fleshing out your story.
Do you have any questions about what you're writing? Please leave them below in the comments and join the conversation.
If you’d like more help with writing your first novel, check out my course, How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Finished Manuscript.
View Comments (17)
Awesome post! When I first started writing, I didn't care about word counts or labels. But that was because writing was just a hobby for me. Now that I've decided to make a career out of it, I've grown more aware of how important it is to know exactly what you are writing. I really appreaciate how clear and well-explained this post is. Thank you!
Hi Joanna
I have a question that is vaguely related to word count and didn't know where else to ask it. I've just done an update on my fantasy novel which is 90,929 words, and is currently an e-book on Amazon Kindle. I'm looking at Createspace and the possibility of going to hard copies as well. I was trying to find out what a book of this length would cost. I've read that it's worked out according to page numbers, and according to the Product Details my e-book is 234 pages (would this be the same number in a paperback?). I know that once these costs are worked out you can then set the book's price in order to cover costs. I just haven't been able to find the Createspace calculator, and I have searched for it. I live in France and use Amazon UK (as my French isn't good). I'd be very grateful for any help.
Many thanks
Jude
The Createspace calculator is here https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/ on the Royalties tab
Thanks Joanna, I've found it now. :)
I'm so glad it was useful :)
Great article, Joanna.
I write a mix of novels and novellas, in 4 series. The length of each book depends on the nature of the series. I favour novellas for my private eye (Chase Investigations) and spy (The Service) series, being shorter and punchier, more in the vein of a TV episode.
For my series The Division, novels are a better fit, as the stories are action-oriented spy thrillers and more suited to a movie-type script than the others.
My first entry in my YA series, the Nicki Cooper Mysteries, is a shorter novel, but longer than my novellas.
I definitely think a series is, in general, a better bet than a standalone. Personally, I read few standalones, but am dedicated to the series' that I like.
Normally a "pantser" I actually plotted out my latest book, The Shadow Dancers, and created a scene list on a rough timeline. It turned out to be my longest book yet! I would definitely do that again, it really helped when I was starting to flounder as to where to go next. I don't worry too much about the word count-some scenes are very long, like a battle scene, and some are very short but crucial, maybe a brief conversation between two characters that will later prove to be important.
I am naturally drawn to serials - but have ended up turning my serial into a more standard novel, since although it works for online sharing to have a cliffhanger and mini-wrap up every week - I couldn't work out how to sell that.
I've got about 90,000 usable words and am on the last 20,000 now - for first draft. It's fantasy, so I'm aiming for around 90,000 after editing - this is light, humorous fantasy rather than an epic tome.
I love your point about novellas' current popularity - and especially how they have the same on-screen 'weight' as any other book. That gives me hope for being able to indulge a writing whim in a new genre, or expand my current fantasy world, without committing to a full novel.
Brilliant!
-Sef
A great post sharing insights into how you can decide how and what to write, and how it can influence word count goals. Will be thinking about these things as I write my books. Thanks!
Thank you for having this info in an easy to find place. Last year when I committed to finishing my manuscript I had to search multiple sites to figure out what my word count should be and some didn't seem the most reputable. I'm glad the info I eventually found is in line to what you're philosophy is too.
I've haven't thought about novellas seriously previously but I like the idea of trying them with the smaller word counts and then possibly packaging them in one book.
I appreciate your blogs and podcasts as it gets my creative juices flowing! Thank you for all your hard work.
I have a (first) novel draft (literary fiction with large time frame, many characters, international settings, etc) which came out at 140 thousand words. A writer friend advised cutting this into three parts, to be more attractive to agents, the market etc. I'm trying to do this while fixing the story arc(s) to let each part stand alone, and have to supplement the material in order to do so. This exercise is proving an excellent opportunity for better treatment of themes and characters. I'm aiming at about 60 to 70 thousand words per book. Any comments?
Sounds like a very good idea :) If you go indie, having 3 books will help a lot as you can put the first on free deals and have the other 2 full-price. All the best!
This post was very useful, thanks!
I want to write about 65 000 words as well. Though the first scene I've wrote is about 4500 words. Do you think I should make this an average word count of a scene so I could count how many scenes I need?
Thanks for your time!
That's definitely a way to start and you can always break down the scenes into chapters later.
When I started writing in 2006 I had no idea how many words my first novel was but with edit upon edit it expanded to 122,241 words. The two novels after that were 107,867 and 104,784 words, and my fourth is 77,341. I have five non fictions that vary from 11,320 to 32,685 words. I write children's/teens short stories that vary from 10,810 to 22,737 words. All are standalone stories or books and all come under three author names.
Last year I wrote an adult series (under this name which I overhauled and made more adult), it was only going to be a three book series of novellas (120 hand written pages each, 41,904 to 47,030 words) but I added a fourth at about half the word count of 26,143 words which is the conclusion to all three stories. Since then I have written three more books in the series and have a bunch of short story spin-offs planned as my muse is pounding them through my head. So far they have just been hand written so I have no idea of word count, but handwritten page count is 389 for book #2, 303 for book #3, 782 pages for book #5 which will be the most epic book I've ever written and took 39 days across 7 weeks and I'm yet to write books #4 and #6 in the series. Short stories will run at 30-50 pages except for the novella I'm currently writing which will hopefully come in at 120 hand written pages. I have about 20 more short stories to write about the characters in the books, as well as three more short stories for my children's author name.
I'm also releasing some awesomely funky non-fiction books this year under my real name and they are in the process now and will pre-release from March across the year. Word count varies from 13,937 to 26,037 words.
Like you Joanna, I've become prolific and my brain won't stop. I had all these ideas last year and unfortunately, the four book series I had planned will just have to wait while I get the current series out of my head, otherwise I'll lose momentum with what I'm writing. Although I have to admit, after writing for five months now, I'm tired of this series, but they persist.
As for word count, I googled those numbers too and found they didn't work for me. Personally, I think 40,000 words is way to small for a novel and have read some publishers won't accept anything under 80,000-ish. So, I made up my own word count list that suits me and all that I do. I came up with -
SHORT STORIES - 1 - 10,000
NOVELETTE - 10,000 - 30,000
NOVELLA - 30,000 - 60,000
NOVEL - 60,000 - 100,000
EPIC - 100,000 - 150,000
Of course all of that is just a current guide for e-books that I've given myself due to all that I write and does extend past that which it will need to with my 782 hand written epic mega saga. I have no idea how many words that will turn out to be. The list I gave paperbacks goes by page count.
I cannot believe how exhausted this series has made me, thank god for shutterstock and picmonkey as I can do many e-book covers myself and save money. But I do get my paperback interiors/covers done professionally.
So that's my current writing plan for the year. It's half way through Feb and I'm already pooped!
Great article, thanks!
It's also very timely for me. I'm writing a -set- of six science fiction novels that are all set in the same futuristic time and place. Each novel is a hero's journey that centers on a different main character for each story. The stories can be read in any order for a 'create your own adventure' experience.
The main title for all the novels is Agents of DISRUPT. The subtitle for each novel is the main characters' name:
Memory LANE
Nano TEK
Mutant JEAN
etc
I haven't published yet and will probably go exclusive through IngramSpark, including ebooks to Amazon. How do I present a -set- of novels with a main title and subtitle that do not need to be read in any particular order?
Thanks!
Tom
Great article.
What do you think the word count should be per episode in a series?
Let’s say a detective series, with 8 eBook episodes in a “season.”
Thanks again for the great content.
Seasons are usually serial fiction, but the best thing to do is find a successful author who does what you want to do and see what word count they are doing. If there is a market for it, you will find examples of books doing this already.