How many words in fic writing is enough

This post is for talking about how many words you usually write. Or when a certain amount of words is maybe too much or too little to read.

When I'm not writing a oneshot, I'm usually aiming for 3000-4000 words per chapter. Of course, it's not a problem if the chapter is a bit longer - but if it goes over 5000-6000, I sometimes move some of it into the next chapter.

Shorter chapters mean faster updates. Faster updates help keeping the reader's interest.

I try to keep things at 2500-5000 words for chapters. one shots might be a little longer, or shorter—I have two oneshots for the flash that were only 1000 each, but one was a drabbly thing, character introspection, and the other....dear lord, it's become a full AU in my head complete with 27 superpowered cats and it may be consuming my soul, so...

as a general rule, I try to keep chapters over 1K no matter what.

edited 30th May '15 8:20:18 AM by Ellowen

I guess I'm one of the few to post 10K per chapter a few years ago.

But I'm trying to see if 6K a chapter is okay too.

For me, it depends on what I need to accomplish in each chapter. Early on, my chapters averaged on 4k words, but as my series has gone on, the average is closer to 6 - 8k, with some 5k chapters sprinkled in, and longer, 10k+ chapters reserved for climactic moments.

My longest chapter was... I wanna say 13k words? But I wouldn't dream of doing anything longer than that.

I average 3500 to 5500 words a chapter. It depends on the story (I try to be consistent in length). Sometimes I go over. Oh well, that's what was required.

I posted my preference above but forgot to mention one thing. I never split up fight scenes. So if a chapter has one such scene, I make that chapter as long as I have to.

I agree. I don't split up fight scenes either unless I'm building to some sort of planned cliffhanger, in which case the split was intentional. Otherwise, its contained all within one chapter.

Same here. For a numeric example, I just looked up the numbers for my ongoing fic.

• Chapter before fight scene: 3590 words.
• Chapter with fight scene: 7017 words.
• Chapter after fight scene: 4222 words.

And most of that chapter wasn't even the fight itself, only its lead-up.

I do a lot of one-shots. They run from about 2,000-6,000 words. That's about the size of a chapter I do in a multichaptered work. My multichapters run around 15k-50k usually, with one piece that's about 100k (probably because it was co-created and my co-writer and I had a lot of ideas to bounce off each other).

It's not really a matter of "enough" unless I'm trying to even out chapter-lengths in long stories. It's more of "That's all that's in me for this particular plot."

I'm a rather concise writer and I like reading concise fic. It is difficult for me to get into anything long unless I'm reading something from the beginning. This puts me a bit at odd with my honey, Ark North, who has an opposite writing style from me - He can't stop himself from writing doorstoppers. I've edited/proofed original work for him and it was a PROJECT (a fun project, I enjoyed his first in series sci-fi novel quite a lot), but the fanfics... He has some work I have yet to read because "Oh, crap, do I have the attention span for that, dear?"

My one-shots are generally between 1000 and 5000 words, with some based on a brief event that are shorter. My multi-chap fics can be anywhere from 5000 to 25000, with one outlier that's around 88000. I have a concise writing style, which tends to be dialogue-heavy and description-light, except occasionally in first person stories with dialogue-like narration.

Most of my oneshots hover around the 1,000 work mark, and most of my larger multichapter stuff hits about 15,000-20,000 words?

1. always write enough to say what needs to be said.

2. don't write more than what needs to be said.

i don't try to stick to any sort of word count, but from reading my own stuff, i feel like i usually need about 2,000 words for anything interesting to happen with sufficient detail that I want. Sometimes it extends to more than that. But I also feel that with more than 6,000 words it usually means i'm rambling and i can cut down/streamline some of the writing, or there's enough material to split into two chapters.

keep in mind an average published novel is around 70,000 words.

The Lord of the Rings averaged about 160,000 words per book, and most people accept that Tolkien probably went into a little too much detail with his worldbuilding and probably should have kept the plot rolling along more.

i'd say if you're aiming for a proper novel, aim to write 100,000 words, then cut out the worst parts and streamline/smooth out your writing, eliminate unnecessary words, and you'll probably end up with something around 50,000?

edited 15th Jul '15 8:09:32 PM by willyolio

That works in most cases, but with a series like Kingdom Hearts that has multiple smaller stories as part of a cohesive whole, I think it makes sense for an individual fic to be on the longer end of things. RP Gs tend to have larger plots, and even the KH games have world scenarios that feel a bit rushed at times.

Fanfic is a unique medium, too, in that it's (usually) published as it's written. I've personally got no problem with a fic being 200k+ words if it makes sense within the story itself. When an individual fic ends up over a million words, though, that's when it starts to become overkill... Even 600k seems like a lot for just one fic.

edited 16th Jul '15 12:14:30 AM by Dorked

My typical approach to it is "as many words as it takes to tell the story, no more, no less". Which means that my chapter length can vary from anywhere to around 4K to 12K depending on what's going on. Obviously you don't want to use Padding to expand the word count, but you don't want the story to be anemic either.

For future stuff, I'm debating on whether to stick with 10K or keep it short to at least 6-7K.

My fanfic chapters typically average at around 2,000-3,000 words each. This isn't really as good as most other people here, but I can say it's an improvement to my earlier fic chapters clocking around 1,500 words each.

Do you guys have any tips on how to lengthen your chapters without padding it out? I think I manage to work in a good amount of description, though admittedly it could be better. I also try not to have too much go on in one chapter - in fact, I often get the feeling that this particular point would be a good place to end the chapter. I dunno, is that good? If not, how can I improve?