Word Counts & POV

WORD COUNT
The word count is how long you want the finished manuscript. It’s always beneficial to have a rough guess of this, as it helps you outline and plan your story as a whole piece of work. Much of the time it ends up to the writer themselves and how long they envision the story being. However, there is a rough estimate for word count lengths of adult fiction stories:
– Short story: 500 – 10,000 words.
– Novella: 10,000 – 40,000 words
– Novel: 40,000 – over
– Adult Fiction (commercial and literary): 80,000 – 100,000 words
– Science and Fantasy Fiction: 90,000 – 150,000 words
– Romance: 50,000 – 100,000 words
– Historical Fiction: 70,000 – 100,000 words
– Crime/Mystery/Thriller/Horror Fiction: 70,000 – 90,000 words
– Young Adult Fiction: 50,000 – 80,000
– Non-Fiction: is different.

POV
The Point Of View or POV is the view that your story comes from, and how you tell it. There are four main POV’s:
* First Person POV – This is a narration of one character’s view. Within the story, the text is not allowed to show anyone else’s thoughts or anything the narrator cannot see, hear, feel or smell. The narrator is always in every scene as they are telling the story. Things should always be told in the past tense.
* Second Person POV – This is instructions like; You say, “Blah, blah.” You have an idea of what the event is as you use your imagination by taking the instructions and feeling what it would be like if you, the reader were to do those things. It’s not good for long novels but is more suited to short stories.
* Third Person POV, limited – Third person limited point of view is a method of storytelling in which the storyteller or narrator knows only the thoughts, feelings and scenes of a single character, while other characters are presented externally. Third person limited presents a writer more independence than the first person, but less knowledge than third person omniscient.
* Third Person POV, omniscient – The third person omniscient point of view is a way of storytelling where the narrator knows the thoughts, feelings and senses of all of the characters in the story. This third person is not the same as the third-person limited, a point of voice that adheres strictly to one character’s perspective, it’s usually the protagonist.