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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41694
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Word count is a useful tool, but to feel compelled to cram an ending in when you are still in full stride with much of the story as yet unrealized is folly.

Your story will take as long as it takes and should not end before that. Sometimes, when someone tells me ‘see you when you get here’ I respond ‘and not a moment earlier ’. My book will be a series and, going by word count and general plot, I am half way through volume two. Unless it reads better as a larger single volume.

Mitchner could not have cared less for word count - his novels began the setting with the geologic creation of the location.

If Tolstoy had obeyed the rule of word count War & Peace would either never have been written or been released as three volumes - absurd.

Years ago, I was given the second volume of the Deryni Chronicles by Katherine Kurtz. I loved it - rich detail that brought all to life. I read the first volume - a slender thing that had no colour and little detail - just plot and the characters were brushstroked in. Had I read the first volume first, when she seemed unsure of her world and characters - or more concerned about word count - I would not have looked at the others.

Take as many words as your story needs and let it breathe.

Original score: 6