Word Count for Young Adult Novels?

Talkatoast said:

Yeah, I'm in a crunch here. I have a 180,000 word manuscript that I have to slaughter down to about 100,000 words. However, I'm still questioning the word count for a young adult fantasy novel.

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Well, here's what agent Colleen Lindsay has to say about it. Science fiction and fantasy are her focus.

Can you turn it in to two books (and still have two exciting, fairly self-contained stories?) Otherwise, yes, you're way over.

Did you read the entire link? When she's saying 120k she's talking about established adult manuscripts that are already on the shelves. She lists YA as 50-80k. I would guess 100k was your upper threshold.

Talkatoast, Can I ask what your circumstances are? Were you accepted by and agent/publisher and then asked to cut? or has your ms been rejected because of its length and you're working up to a new round of subs?

Talkatoast said:

Frankly, I think the word count's a little insulting for young adults.

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You're not going to be able to help change the publishing industry until you get your first book published, and that's not going to happen until you get it down around 100,000 words or lower.

i don't think it's so much saying YA readers
cannot handle big books (look at later HP books),
BUT a matter of money. big books cost more to
print. and with debut authors, that's money they
prefer not to spend.

i would suggest you definitely cut down to 100k
or below if you can. good luck!

The reason I was asking the OP, about their motivations is that my first YA was accepted at 135K, and my second (accepted) is currently 150k ( was cut at my agents request from 170k).

If you're only starting to sub 180k is definitely too long and I would most certainly advise cutting to 100 if possible, but don't fret if you can't get it on the money. Cut it as far as it can go ( be brutally honest. Let everything non essential go.) and then, when you have it as slim as you're happy with, let it go out.

On the other hand, if an agent or pub has said to you 'we'll take this if its 100k' then damn cut that baby til it bleeds :0)

It appears, from the other thread, that talkatoast is referring to what we call a beta reader when he/she says editor. Could be wrong about that.

Talkatoast said:

Yeah, I'm in a crunch here. I have a 180,000 word manuscript that I have to slaughter down to about 100,000 words. However, I'm still questioning the word count for a young adult fantasy novel. I've read plenty of young adult novels well over 100,000 words, but I have people telling me that I'm WAY over the word count limit. I know 180,000 words is a lot, but I can't think of only 30,000 words to snip out. There's always room for improvement and fat that needs to be trimmed, but tell me about young adult word count. I've also heard that fantasy novels can break the rules of word count.

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I have your same problem. Mine was 225k and, after asking on these boards, I decided to split it into multiple books. Even then, this first book (YA/Fantasy) was still at around 120k.

Now, after trimming purple prose and cleaning up scenes, I'm really close to where I want to be!

As for the cliffhanger problem, I have that as well, but I'm trying to still give the book a nice climax and end it with a "their journey will continue" feel.

You'd be surprised how much you can cut when you are focused. I just dropped a Mainstream/thriller from 208,000 to 156,000. Not as much as I'd hoped but maybe I'm out of the "eek!" and in to the "hmm." Took me about seven weeks and I came out with a much better product.

-MM

I think I read on Stephanie Meyer's site that her first book was 150k, and it's classified as YA....

I operate used bookstores as well as write. When I help young adults find a book, thin is in. I can stock 35 Adult books on a shelf. The same shelf will hold 75 YA books. Yes, there are exceptions to every rule. A 150,000 word book requires three times the resources for the agent/publishers various departments. Printing, shipping, display space costs are significantly higher as well. Unless you have a special hook to overcome those obstacles (have Frank Frazetta commited to doing the cover, or Stephen King includes a short story), you are making the bumps in the road much deeper.

A suggestion, as with Tolkien, the Hobbit was (guess) 80,000 words, followed by the massive LOTR trilogy. Why not write a 65,000 word book, get that published. Once published, if sales are good, the added costs have already been covered for your 150,000 word book.

The 65,000 word book could be a prelude to your already written work, as well!

Typical word count for YA is 50K-80K. Your best bet as an unpublished author is to stay within this range. But if you feel you need to go longer to tell the story right, then your pacing must be PEREFCT. Something must be going on on every page to make readers keep reading. If the pace is breakneck and you can't put it down, then a longer word count can be accepted. Anything over a 100K words for YA is very likely to get you an auto reject though unless your query is amazing.

Do NOT look at other works and think that is the rule. They are exceptions to the rules based on various aspects. Those one or two hugely successful books with high word counts were awesome to start with, which is why they sold despite the length. You can't count on that being the case for you. Ego will make you want to, but trust me, the JK Rowlings and Stephanie Meyers of the world are rare.

Also, bear in mind that the final word count is not necessarrily the word count they sold the novel with. My YA novel was 65K when I got my agent. We revised it, and she told me not to go over 70K words. She sold it, plus the next two books, and my editor has asked for more revisions which have brought the novel up to 73K right now, and climbing as I revise. It will probably be 75K+ by the time I'm done.

Twilight was 130K and before her agent sent it out it was 125K and by the time it got published it was 120K. However, when Stephenie tells the story, she always credits her agent's assistant for being a little new because she didn't understand that 130K word was a LOT of words. if it had been picked up by a more experience assistant, it would have probably been rejected on principle. So yes, Twilight was longer than average, but there was some definite luck in there too.

Def try to get to 100K.

Talkatoast said:

I guess I'll have to stick with 100k then, or try and see if I can't get it lower. Frankly, I think the word count's a little insulting for young adults. It's almost as if they're saying young adult minds are too tiny to handle anything above 90k. Most young adults are reading adult fiction in any case and I would think that a young adult who cared about how big a book was wouldn't like to read in the first place.

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I have a VERY short attention span and I'm a slow reader. I generally avoid long books. Pretty sure I like to read...

I do think for a young adult it is a bit long. I am working on 90000 word novel at the moment. I aim to write les.

Talkatoast, You think it's going to come in at 110k? Is that what you mean? Because if you're at 61K and you've five more chapters to write then it sounds like you should come in at 100k or less to me :0)

But I'm a little confused, did you not say that you had written 180k and were cutting it down? Do you mean that you have five more chapters to rewrite? Or are you talking about a different project? Or have I got turned around somewhere ( which at this stage in my schedual is more then likely)

Talkatoast. To answer your question, I'd say, yes, you're stressing unneccesarily. Finish the book, and then deal with the length. By all means, write with an eye towards keeping the word count down, but in the meantime, you have more important things to worry about.

Concentrate on ending that book well.

Here's an excellent blog post by Ally Carter (author of the popular 'Gallagher Girls' series). She has sage advice on all things YA - including word counts.

http://www.allycarter.com/2008/09/wrong-questions.html

Talkatoast, its only my opinion ( and in the end, that’s all I can give LOL) but I think that at this stage you should really only be concentrating on making your book as good as it can be. Word count should be the last thing on your mind when still writing the thing. In my opinion, you can't possibly write well and stress over how many words it's taking to tell your story.

I'm not saying that word count isn't a factor in getting agents publishers etc to read your work. From reading posts here, it's all too sadly evident that it is a huge factor. But it certainly shouldn't be any kind of factor at all while still writing. It should be the very last thing you consider ... at the very last stage of polishing, and even then, it should only come into play if you think your work benefits from the cut. ( and that takes a lot of honesty ono your part. Almost every work benefits from cutting.)

I know that my publishers are a strange and unusual crew, but they were deeply shocked to hear that so many writers are being stymied by word count. In their opinion, to reject a sub on word count alone is to lose who knows how many potentially wonderful stories. If they like the style and the story, they consider the word count as something that can be adjusted post sub. As I said, it's a rare view in this current publishing climate, but at some stage you have to ask yourself what is the writer meant to be focusing on? The writing? The story? Character development? It seems to me that our eyes have become firmly stuck on the word count clock right from word one, and that we're in danger of freezing ourselves solid.

I agree with Gary - there's no point in getting stressed about word count at this stage because you're still writing it. Although I see people throw out the 'guidance' figures of 50,000 to 80,000 words as being appropriate for YA fiction, you only have to browse the YA shelves of your local bookstore to see that they are exactly that - guidance figures and depending on what genre you're writing in, you can go higher.

To give you some comfort, I'm working on a YA fantasy at the moment and I think that my first draft is going to come in at around the 100,000 word mark. When it comes to revisions, that might come down. It might equally go up. But for me, what's important is whether all of those words tell the story that I want to tell. This is because all that matters at the end of the day is whether your words tell a story that holds together as a plot and makes the reader want to read on. That's what agents and publishers are looking for because that's what they know they can sell.

MM