On Word Counts, or How Tigers Can't Count

It has been 11 years since I published my first short story. I remember clearly the euphoria I had while drafting, and even more so the sense of cringe I felt when I read it a couple days later to start editing. But that’s a story for another day.

It was a measly 900~ words, not so dissimilar to the first story I posted under this account (1.5k). Sure, I did have some experience in the sense that I had read tons of furry fics (and mainstream novels) beforehand, but oh boy, did I struggle when it came to word counts.

I knew from experience, and my interest in getting published one day, that I should be aiming for 2-2.5k at the least. While for most writers that should be easy (or rather, the difficult part came on what to trim down), for me it was such an uphill battle trying to reach those word counts as an underwriter. Everything I drafted was around 500-800 words, and turning something like that into 2k+ is no easy feat, let me tell you. Sure, part of the reason for that was my inexperience in story crafting, regular struggles as an ESL person, and some preconceived notions that I had back in the day (e.g., if you change location/day, it has to be a new chapter.) However, against all odds, I eventually managed to do it and reached the 2k range. A range that I don’t believe I ever left under that account…

For quite a while, pretty much every story I made was about 2k words. Sometimes less but never crossing the 3k limit. And that was not by choice, it’s just something that happened. Now, I could technically write more if I did chapters or the like, but at the end of the day, I basically became the 2k word boy and I remember vividly how shocked I was when I went to a writing group, and someone complained about a max 5k word limit, saying they could not write something smaller.

As someone that not even in his dreams would ever dare to write a 5k word story, and could not even fathom what such a story would be like, it turns out I have that issue myself nowadays…

Now that I’m more experienced, I’m no longer stuck in the 2k range. Still, I’m now in a 4-6k rut. Which is not bad (in fact, it might even be too short for how stories are like nowadays), but my issue lies in that, just like when it came to the 2k before, I’m not choosing to write stories these long.

Sure, every writer that knows his salt will be able to tell you: number of characters/scenes/details/beats is what determines the word count in the end, the calculation itself is not that simple. For example, my latest story, Intel Gathering, which is basically 2 characters (3 if you’re being generous), is one of my longest so far at 5.9k words. It’s also basically also only 3 places, and not much happens in it, so it has no right being this big. Yet it does. Sure, if I wanted to trim it down, there are some scenes that comes to mind. I could remove the scene with the bouncer (it’s just a not-so-subtle foreshadowing), the background of the Lylat Wars (there for context for those who haven’t played the games), and that scene at the end with Pigma (original ending was set before that), and even if I removed all those parts, the story would still not be under 5k. Now, Intel Gathering might be an outlier (only story so far where I changed a single paragraph into 600 words while editing), but that does not change the reason why I mentioned it.

Intel Gathering was not meant to be 5k words long. I was aiming for 2.5k. In fact, I’ve been aiming at 2.5k for every single story I’ve made as Pawggers, yet barely any of them had been around that range. And that is an issue.

Everything is longer than I intend (hell, the latest outline I did was over 500 words, and again it’s just the outline, and let’s not talk about this post). In fact, one of the reasons I hesitated about opening commissions was exactly that, the word count, since I knew I would not be able to properly tell how long a given story would be, and even if they tend to be over 2k now, a part of me still doubts that I would be able to reach what was agreed.

Of course, part of the problem stems from me being an underwriter. About 50% or more of the word count of a finished story comes from the editing itself (even when I remove things during the editing), but coupled that with me being a discovery writer, it means that I have no right basis on which to calculate something and aim as needed for either shorter or longer works.

And I know the solution to this, write more. Though not just write in general, I need to start writing shorter stuff again, intentionally, just so I can get an overall idea of what a character—a scene—means to me.

But up until then, guess you guys will be stuck dealing with a tiger, engineering graduate, who can’t count…