The Ultimate Word Count Guide

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” said Pulitzer prize, and Nobel prize, winning author Saul Bellow. This is an understatement from one of the 20th Century’s great writers. Bellow was a man not known for mincing words, or word counts.

Humboldt’s Gift was over 168,000 words. Herzog, perhaps Bellow’s most famous work, was only 100,000 words, but he wrote it as a short story. Contrast those meaty tomes with pop fiction mysteries from Doug Patterson at around 90,000 words, and you can see how word counts play a part in the story being told.

On the opposite end of word counts you have articles, blog posts and “micro-blogs.” The average magazine article runs between 750 words and 1,000 words. Blog posts can reach 4,000 words, and Google’s SEO algorithm prefers lengthier posts, but the average post has under 2,000 words.

If you find yourself getting up in the middle of the night to write, you may have a full-fledged novel on your hands. Thankfully there are some rules around word counts to help you determine if you’re writing an epic novel, a pulp fiction fast-seller, or a blog post.

Word Count Rules

These rules are not hard and fast. Writing is an art and what ends up on the page is what was required to tell the author’s story.

That said, there is an economy to writing. A story must always be told with the fewest words possible. This is a hard rule whether writing novels or news snippets.

The story must also be readable. Written work must be read by more than just the author, otherwise it’s a journal entry. There must be a compelling story, with a conflict of some sort. Even the most boring stock market articles follow this tried-and-true rule.

All of which affects word count. A blog post requires as much attention to structure as a novel, and that means word count matters.

There are different guidelines to stick to, depending on what you’re writing. That could be a three pages double spaced report or a Tolstoy-style epic.

Word Counts for Books

The genre of the novel greatly affects word count. There is a marketing side to novels and if an author has a…