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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41693
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41693
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Remember your goal: you have set out to tell a story. So **tell the story**. Forget the wordcount. You feel the story needs more meat, give it more meat. You feel you need to explore more themes, go ahead and explore them. (If you don't know what to write, that's a separate problem - a separate question.)

A story should be exactly as long as it needs to be. _Fahrenheit 451_ and _All Quiet on the Western Front_ are short. _The Lord of the Rings_ and _Les Misérables_ are long. Neither would benefit from trying to fit it to some Procrustean bed wordcount.

When do you close the story? When you've told it. When you've explored what you wished to explore.

I see sometimes books, and films too, that start out setting up a story, they start exploring it, and then suddenly they decide they must rush towards the end, plummeting towards it like the Niagara Falls. Those stories aren't satisfying. After plotlines have been carefully and meticulously laid down, we expect an equally meticulous resolution. You can't rush it, chopping off what doesn't fit. An example: _Farscape_. After carefully laying in the groundwork for season 5, the series got cancelled at the end of season 4. They had to wrap up the stories of a season in the space of a 3-hour miniseries. They did what they could, but many lose ends got resolved off-screen, and the whole thing felt a bit rushed. You are under no such constraints. Give the story the development and resolution it needs.

Original score: 17