First book word count, follow the curve or stray a bit?

[J.D.Rajotte]

I'm at about 86,000 words into my first book. I've read that the average adult book is about 90,000 and no more than 100,000. I'm about to start the books final chapter, but the past few have averaged around 31,000 words, and I see this one not far off of that mark. I feel a lot of pressure to fit it all into at least the 100,000 mark but I also want the reading to feel natural. Any thoughts as to whether I should compress, or just say "f*ck it" and write it out.

 

[sule]

Just write it out. There's a decent chance you may cut words when going through revisions anyway, but even if that doesn't end up happening you shouldn't be too worried about fitting within a certain word count parameter (and especially not while writing the first draft).

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Sff word counts are slightly higher than the norm (especially anything like space opera or epic fantasy) so you should be good. You might well find it contracting when you edit anyhow

 

[DLCroix]

My dear friend, if to all the difficulties of the profession of writing you also add a requirement of length, you are going to complicate and restrict yourself too much. I usually close the chapters at 10 pages and 5,000 words approximately, but also because I have been writing since I was twelve and I am 31. In this the first thing you should have is a lot of patience: you are not going to climb the mountain in one day, because if you take it seriously you will see that it is so.
Keep in mind that this is why it is called a first draft, because it is clear that there will be a second, a third and even a fourth, and by the way, if we follow S. King's rule, you should be able to remove ten percent of the text.
I humbly advise you to write freely even if you notice that you are getting out of the scheme (in case you have).
Second thing: let that eraser rest for at least a month, don't touch it.
Third: celebrate. Just putting the word The end has a lot of beauty and even glory, because even writing a bad book involves an impressive amount of work.

 

[tinkerdan]

You really should finish with what you have and with as much as it takes to get there.
Put it aside-or send it out to beta readers-and when you go back to it you will need to edit through to make it more concise.
Long ago I struggled with two unpublished novels--just to get a few hundred pages of story in double spaced eight and a half by eleven paper with one inch margins. No idea how many words as the smith Corona typewriter didn't do word count for me.

More recent when I started off of inspiration I ended up with 1400 pages of double spaced story that ended finally in two books one around 250K and the other at near 200K. The original was close to 700K . You will likely cut a lot of fat so don't worry.

I think that a fair size is probably 120K for a start.

As you can see I wasn't fair--or in the fair spot anyway.

I really think it is easier to cut than to have to find some way to add more.

My latest three efforts are all around the 100K to 120K spot and that can be as many as 300 pages in a print version.
The 250 k was around 630 pages.

 

[Biskit]

As has been said above - write it, finish it, and worry about length later.

 

[Thiswriterinme]

I write my own novels and I also work as a ghostwriter. Some of my clients in ghostwriting request a specific word count in their projects, or a word count range. Although I always make it work based on their preferences, I can say that I often feel like my work in ghostwriting isn't as good as it could be because of the word count limits. It is an unfortunate side effect of ghostwriting that other writers I know in that line of work struggle with as well.

So, I would agree with everyone else, write out whatever you have and don't think about word count. Stressing about fitting your book into a specific "box" can take away from the overall quality and could negatively impact the telling of your story.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Write the story in the best way you can, no matter what the word count. If it is a very good book and if you sell it to a publisher, if they want it shorter (or longer) they will tell you so and give you a chance to make adjustments. If you are thinking of self-publishing, then word count doesn't matter at all, except as it might make for a better or worse book.

Every story has its own best length, regardless of what is right for other books or what is selling now. At this point, you should be trying to find out what that best length is for the story you are telling.

If you have to cut it, there are ways of doing that which don't really impact the story much (or at all). But you can only figure out how to do that when you have the whole story in front of you. Trying to shorten it before you reach the end is not the best way to go about it.

 

[J.D.Rajotte]

Thank you guys so much I appreciate the advice!