Open Novella Journal 2024

Making the Word Count

Hitting that word count - it can seem daunting, but one of the tips I give every year is to get ahead on the word count for your ONC entry.

The truth is while the final milestone is 20k, the story also needs to be finished between 20-40k.

Of course, don't divide the amount of work into thirds because there are three rounds. The reason I say this is because, in the first round, we're not just writing the first part of our stories. We're brainstorming those stories, trying to get just the right start to our stories out. As such, it's probably better to break it up into fifths, one one-fifths during the first round, and two-fifths for the other two rounds.

This, in turn, would mean trying to hit 4-8k during the first round, 12-24k in the second round, and 20-40k for the final round.

Of course, that may seem daunting, so another way to think of tackling this round is if you write a bit every day, you'll be writing 1-2k a week for the first two rounds or 150-300 words per day. For the second and third rounds, you should be writing 2-4k or 300-600 words per day. This, of course, doesn't factor in rough drafts, but...

Speaking of rough drafts, we are allowed to edit our stories for ONC, but what you need to remember is that it is any edit outside of the judging periods, and during judging periods, only do minor edits to the parts within the milestone being judged.

Of course, if you want to meet the milestones simply, that's around 75 words per day during the first round, 220 words per day during the second round, and during the third it is 430-1,150 words per day during the third round.