Okay, after fiddling around, I found wording the prompt like “Write an essay about a cat. This should be between 250 and 300 words. Report the word count after producing the essay.” to produce accurate word count responses, typically at the uppermost limit of the ranges I would provide. I’ve also found that you can ask ChatGPT to write out “X” amount of words for a prompt, and after it finishes answering, tell it simply to “continue on with more words” or “continue with another page” and it will simply keep spitting out information.