First draft finishing word count

by David Castanho
15th May 2014

Hi writers,

I was wondering what is the average word count most writers finish the first draft on? I havent finshed my own yet, but my first draft so far is litrally plain and so bad I am fighting myself not to edit it eerrrrrrr...

So yeah if you guys could be super great and tell me!

Thanks writers :)

Replies

When I started to write I didn't even think about word count, it was only when I began looking at what agents needed to know that I realised there was much more to the game than I originally considered. Actually that's not strictly true, I started writing without ever considering anything... I just wrote, how naive can a man be! don't answer it's rhetorical. Anyway back to the question. The first draft of my first book was about 45,000 eventually it became 80,000 now not just me but other people to can understand what has been coaxed, forced and finally squeezed out of my head. But I never work to word count, I write till I have to stop, for one reason or another. I wonder how many words this is? (I have worked to word count for competitions, but that's different)

Regards Paul.

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Paul
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Paul Garside
20/05/2014

I was originally told not to exceed fifty five thousand words and just recently, three hours ago, was told ( just keep writing. If you listen to every opinion out there you'll never write a page, much less a word.) My answer, "Ok".

Thanks guys,

Stephanie

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stephanie cataliotti
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stephanie cataliotti june coldwell
16/05/2014

Wonderful pieces of advice. Especially the middle of chapter reads. Neat idea. Thank you too.

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Joe
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