LC: How Many Words?

Hmmm---how many?

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? That little tongue twister was a favorite in my junior high group. We’d toss around things like: The flea, the fly and the flue. Said the flea what shall we do? Let’s fly, said the flea. Let’s flee, said the fly. So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

When I wrote my first book back in 1982 I had a lot of tongue twisters racing through my mind. Could I write a book, me a snook, write a book---well that’s not a tongue twister but here’s a question I think most beginning writers ask: How many words are in a book?

A book can have any amount of words: I once read a popular highly-touted diet book (paid good money for this thing) that had one word in it. Think. But the books most of us write have a definite range and it goes roughly like this:

Novella
20-25,000 words
80-100 pages
10-12 pages per chapter

Short Contemporary
50,000-60,000 words
200-240 pages
18-20 pages per chapter

Long Contemporary
70,000-80,000 words
280-320 pages
18-20 pages per chapter

Short Historical /Mainstream
90-100,000 words
360-400 pages
18-20 pages per chapter

Long Historical/ Mainstream
108,000-120,000
432-480 pages
18-20 pages per chapter


So aspiring writers, ready set go! Pick a length, dig out your imagination, and get to work! As for me, I’ll be aimlessly wandering around today muttering: How many words should an author word if an author could word words….

Lori Copeland (http://www.loricopeland.com/) lives and writes in Missouri.