Free tool
How many words a day to finish on time?
Enter your goal, your progress, your deadline, and how many days a week you actually write. The calculator gives you the daily target that gets the draft done, and the weekly figure that tells you whether the plan is humane. Runs entirely in your browser.
1,250 words a day
80,000 words to go across 64 writing days, about 6,250 words a week at 5 days a week.
Making the number survive real life
Set the cadence you keep, not the one you admire
Five writing days a week with weekends off outlasts a seven-day plan that collapses in week two. The daily target rises a little; the odds of hitting it rise a lot.
Give the goal a genre-honest number
Adult novels commonly run 70,000 to 100,000 words, fantasy longer, category romance shorter. A goal set at your genre's norm changes the daily math and how the finished book is received.
If the daily target looks brutal, move the deadline
A target over about 2,000 words a day, sustained for months, breaks most writers. The deadline is usually the variable you actually control.
Recalculate weekly, not daily
Progress is lumpy. Come back once a week with your new current count and let the daily target adjust, instead of carrying yesterday's miss as a debt.
Writing fast without breaking your story
A deadline pace is how books get finished, and it is also how continuity slips in: details drift precisely when you are moving too fast to reread everything you have established. That is the problem Bunsho exists for. The continuity checker reads a chapter on request and shows every contradiction with both passages cited, and writers publishing on a schedule are exactly who it is built for. The free story bible template is the manual companion to this calculator.
Common questions
How does the calculator work?
It takes your remaining words (goal minus what you have written), counts the days between today and your deadline, scales that by how many days a week you actually write, and divides. The result is a daily target and its weekly equivalent. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
What is a realistic daily word count?
Most working novelists land between 500 and 2,000 words on a writing day. NaNoWriMo's famous pace is 1,667 a day for 30 days straight. If the calculator asks you for 3,000 words a day, seven days a week, the honest fix is usually moving the deadline, not tripling your pace.
Should I plan to write every day?
Plan for the schedule you keep, not the one you admire. A five-day cadence with weekends off survives contact with real life far better than a seven-day plan you break in week two. The calculator lets you set writing days per week for exactly this reason.
How long should my book be in the first place?
Adult novels commonly land between 70,000 and 100,000 words, with fantasy running longer and category romance shorter. Set your goal at your genre's norm rather than a round number: it changes the daily math and, later, how agents and readers receive the book.
What happens to the words after I hit the goal?
Drafting fast is how long books get written, and it is also how a character's eye color changes in chapter nineteen. If you are writing at pace toward a deadline, a continuity checker catches what speed lets through: Bunsho reads your chapters on request and shows every contradiction with both passages cited.
Draft at pace. Keep the story straight.
Bunsho is a free manuscript editor for macOS and Windows with a continuity checker for when the draft is moving fast. Writing is never metered.