Ever decreasing word counts

Tweet

I was having a discussion on Twitter about the fact that flash fiction seems to be taking precedence over short stories, but additionally, the length of flashes themselves is also reducing, resulting in more drabbles appearing online. The big question seemed to be...why is this?

I think there are two main reasons behind the decreasing word counts of stories. The first is the perceived reduced attention span of readers. There are clearly more demands on a reader's time these days, and shorter stories are welcomed as a result. These demands range from work and home based commitments, as well as the increasing proliferation of stories online. In the days of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, there were not only fewer authors available, there were also fewer formats for literature, and also fewer things for the leisured upper classes to do. These all combined to provide the opportunity, and the option, to read much longer stories. It's hardly a surprise that many of the books written before even the 1950s can often take longer to get started, since readers were not so inclined towards 'instant gratification' as they are now. Perhaps the demand for 'bitesize' options stems from the desire to consume fiction between activities?

The second perceived reason is that of the reduced attention span of the writers themselves. They too have more demands on their time, and when we're constantly being urged to make as much work available as possible, we can feel harassed into producing more work that is shorter in length in order to satisfy demand. Moreover, word counts are less of an issue in a purely electronic format - a reader won't pay £8 for a 30,000 paperback, but they'll happily pay £2 for a 15,000 collection of short stories. Tied into this is the possibility that we're being slowly conditioned by the format of television or film narratives to except stories to delivered in a faster format.

So what should you do? Common sense would dictate that if the market tends towards shorter stories that you should follow suit, but it's often good business practice to do something to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Therefore, if everyone else is offering shorter work, you offer longer work to satisfy the demands of the niche who still crave longer work. After all, the popularity of George R R Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, containing truly gargantuan paperbacks, attests to the fact that people will still quite happily plow through a book with a word count well over 100,000.

As I'm odd, I worked out the word counts for my last eight Friday Flashes. They range between 121 words for Silhouette, my most recent offering, to 979 words for The Jar By The Door. Only three of the eight are less than 500 words long, and all of them are longer than 100 words. The average is 555 words per story. I'd conclude from that that I simply write to the length required by the story. Will I always do so, or will I start writing shorter stories?

Only time will tell...

Word counts can be your friend

Tweet

I was talking to Helen Howell, Adam Byatt and Larry Kollar last night about word counts, particularly since I was pleased I'd managed to put in 1800 words on my sequel to The Guns of Retribution. It sounds like a lot, but I've been working on a schedule of 500 words per day. It's a manageable amount, so that if I have to miss a day, I can catch up the following day with little effort, but I'm more inclined to write since it's "only" 500 words. If I want to write more, then I do, but I usually stick to my word count.

Why am I doing this? Well I'm aiming at a total word count of 30,000 as it's a novella, and I figured I could write my novella in just sixty days if I wrote 500 words every day. As I've said, 500 is a small enough amount to make it manageable, and it's a large enough amount to make a daily dent in my target. I've never skipped more than two days in a row, and as such, I'm still on schedule to finish the first draft by the end of March. It also means that I have time to work on the sequel, as well as working on my PhD and writing a weekly Friday flash. WIN!

I'm only really talking about it for the benefit of the people who say they don't have time to write. If you're the type who feels like you've not really done any work unless you've sat down and blitzed 2000 words in one sitting then no, you possibly don't have time. But if you're happy to chip away at your target on a daily basis, then you'll find 500 word instalments add up in no time. I'm already at 19,000 words! Since I've found 500 words easy enough to manage, I'm intending to up my limit to 1000 words when I come to write my next novella.

So give daily word counts a go and see how much more of that novel you manage to get down.