Novel Length

Is there a preferred novel length? I keep hearing around 100,000 words or so. For instance, Mr. MacDonald mentioned 350 pages.

My current novel, a fantasy, runs in MSWord (double-spaced, 12pt courier) 743 pages and 188,807 and getting longer as I revise, edit, and rewrite.

Is it too long? Never having actually counted all the words in the fantasy books I read (which seem fairly thick and run in paperback over 500 pages), I imagine these must run near 200,000 words.

Thanks.
Ed

length

I wouldn't worry too much about length. Just get it written. In the fantasy market, books do tend to run longer. As a first-time author, it might be hard for a publisher to spring for an extra 100 pages. If a publisher has a length requirement, edit your MS to fit, or find a different publisher. But: Don't worry about it until you're done.

length

Average length for a first novel is around 100,000 words, but this doesn't really mean very much. You have to look at publisher's guidelines to see what a particular publisher wants for a particular line.

As a fantasy novel, yours isn't completely out of the ballpark for a first novel, so I'd just make sure it's as tightly written as you can make it, and then start looking for an agent.

Fantasy is one of those genres that's tolerant of longer lengths from first novelists. But close to 200,000 words is pushing it. That's not to say you absolutely couldn't get that long book published; but the length will scare some people away. I think you'll have a better chance if you can get the word count down below 150,000 (or can you split it into a duology?). There aren't many novels that can't benefit from being trimmed.

- Victoria

All good advice, but I echo 'get the story written before worrying about length'. Tell the story the way you want to tell it, don't let worries about length distract you, wait until you are done.

Isn't Lord of the Rings about three quarters of a million words? And before anyone says it, I know that's why Tolkien's publisher forced him to break it into three volumes. Just saying a story should be the length it needs to be to tell the story properly.

I agree with others: just write. If you have a story to tell, tell it the way you want it.

However, if you find yourself writing a lot more just to make it into a 150000-word epic, then you need to scale back. A novel is anything above 40,000 words.

Keep in mind that if your novel is very long (over 500 pages) it's harder for a publisher to want to print it unless it's really, really good. Also, some readers in certain markets (e.g. romance) don't want a big, thick book. Sometimes, "short and sweet" might be a virtue. Nicholas Sparks' first book, the Notebook, is only 50,000-word long. Albom's the Five People You Meet in Heaven is even shorter.

From my agent's web site

This is what my agent has to say about novel length--it makes sense.

A first genre novel, e.g., science fiction or fantasy, over 120,000 words is highly unlikely to sell. They are simply too expensive to produce (i.e., for paper, printing and binding) for publishers to risk spending the money on. Also, since wholesalers tend to buy by rack pockets or shelf spots, they are unlikely to buy more copies than will fit in one pocket or shelf spot. Hence, if your book is 150,000 words and only three copies will fit, they will only order three copies. But if your book is 100,000 words and five copies will fit, they will order five copies. Believe it or not, publishers consider this stuff when deciding to buy your book.

A mystery of less than 70,000 words is likely too short. I seem to be getting a lot of 40,000- to 60,000- word projects and, frankly, they are too short to sell in today's marketplace where a paperback is $6.99

Click to expand...

Note:

he says FIRST--after that who knows, depends on sales. But I did go to the book store and check this out--and I looked at a lot of first novels I have on my shelves, almost all of the firsts are "short."

Shawn

length

Your agent is pretty much write, but there are first novels every year that are very long or very short in every genre. And even a couple of top mystery publishers who think 60,000 word mysteries are just fine.

But you better your chances greatly if you know what publishers want.

And no story has to be any length. If you don't make it the right length, the editor almost certainly will, and her cuts will probably be much more brutal than yours.

Re: length

All good advice. I'm just saying that you need to get the story written first without worrying about length. You can then work on getting it down to the appropriate length for your market and so on as you revise. And hey, if you write a 200,000 word story, break it into two volumes. Then shop the first and tell the publisher/agent you already have a second novel finished.

Re: length

Chunky is right. My second draft was about 95,000 but by the final draft, it was shrunk to 80,000. I found that nothing really was amiss -- it was kind of painful to do the cuts because some of the proses are very good (I believe) -- but that's what you have to do as a writer. Michael Chabon had a bloodbath editing his The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (what a silly title, actually) which went on to win the Pulitzer.

Re: length

Good point about revising, Maestro. Almost every book on craft I've read has pointed out that you sometimes need to be merciless when revising. It is tough to 'kill your babies' as I've seen it referred to, but you must if necessary.

To soften the blow, I often take the text I've edited out and put it in a snippets file. :heart Just knowing that whenever I want, I can go in there and coo over how perfect the little darlings are, makes it easier to take them out of the manuscript I ultimately plan to submit.

Your agent's website

Would you mind sharing the URL of your agent's website?

Honestly

most agents don't care that you have a second book finished as it doesn't do much good to have a second book if the first can't be sold.

As to my agent's web site--I was posting his url in my sig. sigh, don't do that anymore. But if you look back you can find it in some of my other posts and despite trying to change my dang sig, ez boards refuses to accept the change.

Shawn

Re: Honestly

also, 'wordcount' is misleading. i don't recall anyone mentioning the fact it's more about space than actually pushing a 'word count' button and going by that. just from everything i've read, there's a formula for determining your word count, and editors really don't need to know it down to the very last word.

i don't remember the exact formula, but i think it's got to do with calculating your spaces into your margins and dividing it into the average word count per line, or something like that.

that's interesting seeing people talk about genre vs. word count. it makes me wonder how on earth books like 'sacajawea' and 'the elfstones of shannara', both pretty hefty tomes, were never parted out. 'elfstones,' in particular, seeing as how fantasy books at the time really preferred trilogies.

Re: Honestly

preyer: one common way is to count number of characters (including spaces and punctuation) on a complete line of text[1], multiplying by number of lines per page and dividing by 6 to get words per page, then just multiplying that by number of pages to get an estimate. For most setups it comes out to somewhere between 250 and 300.

[1]: if you're using a proportional font, you'll need to average a few lines, I guess. Just one of the reasons I use Courier.

Re: Honestly

If you're using a proportional font, stop.

Re: Honestly

How about in mainstream fiction? my story is a fictional Hollywood biography that tells the story of this character who lives during Hollywood's Golden age. It tells his misadventures w/drugs, women etc. I looked on amazon and such books run 200 some.

The length should be appropriate for the genre. Mystery tends to be a bit shorter, at 65k or so the minimum. Fantasy longer, at 85k-90k.

Remember that first time novelists will have more problems getting a very long novel placed than an established.

There's a "breakover" point regarding the cost of the book. If it's too long, then it will cost more because of the paper and binding. And the cover price will deter buyers, which will keep first time novelists off the shelves, and out of luck.

Not that it's a hard and fast rule, but a very long first novel may run to your detriment.

It seems that your novel, at about 180k, would be a bit long. I'd recommend not any longer. I can't tell you "Shorten it by 1/3" because I'm not the agent or publisher. You may however find that it's too long for a first-time writer trying to get published.

Also, regarding counting pages and such, just skip that. Use the MS-Word (or whatever) word count. It's not exact but it's close enough for your purposes.

Round down the length to maybe the lower 100 words and say that's the length. The agent or publisher won't care. And the final exact word length will depend on the result of editing anyway.

word count

Dear Shadow Ferret,
Your question is a good one, and one few early novelists and writers fail to consider. Diarrhea of the mouth is known in first-timers, who are shocked when no one wants to read their entire epic. And it can go the other way--an acquaintance told me she'd written a "mystery novel of 6,000 words."

The rule of thumb for published novels is 200-250 words per page. In manuscript format, a full double-spaced page with one-inch margins using Courier New is 250 words.

Mainstream commercial fiction novels are 300-350 pages.

Thrillers are more, usually around 100,000 to 120,000 words. This is a general rule of thumb too, but thriller/mystery/suspense writers often go 120k and pare to 100k or 110k in revision. These are the books you find in the "literature and fiction" section at Barnes and Noble.

If you hobble over to the mystery section, the books grow thinner (in general; James Lee Burke writes bigger books.) Romance? Harlequins are 50,000 to 55,000. I know a romance writer who puts out 3-4 a year on contract. There again, Norah Robert's books are bigger but her word-count per year may be the same as the romance writer.

You're writing Fantasy. I am not a fantasy writer, and have read few. My opinion is many fantasy books are way way way too long. I'm talking those over 200k. They just are not tightly written. I don't want to offend anyone and i'm not elitist about it--it's just an ignorant impression. I have read some wonderful fantasy over the years and enjoyed the ride. Heck, I even read Daniel Steel in a pinch in Mexico and had fun enough to read a couple more at home.

Yeah, write enough words to tell the story. But you're smart to be aware of what's going on in the business. Pages cost money to print. People like more pages for more money...if it's a good read.

You can test the numbers by typing out a page of a novel that interests you and see how many words per page, times total number of pages. Mass market and trade paperbacks, vs hardback differ in spacing, margins, hence words per page. This is fun to do when you're procrastinating the day's assigned writing.

Re: word count

Harlequins are 20,000 to 25,000.

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The shortest Harlequin lines, Halequin Presents and Harlequin Romance, want novels of 50,000-55,000 words. Most Harlequin novels run 70,000-75-000 words, and a couple of Harlequin lines ask for 90,000-95,000 words.

20,000-25,000 isn't even a novel, and is far too short for any of the Harlequin romance lines.

The Harlequin website lists length requirements for every line, along with a bunch of extremly good advice for anyone wishing to write a romance novel. www.eharlequin.com/cms/index.jhtml

romance novels/novellas

I only know what that Romance writer has told me, and the books she's shown me. I corrected the number in my earlier post; it should've been 50,000.

25,000 isn't much of a novel; but then again, 50k is a thin 200-pager--almost a short story and certainly by some standards a novella.

I'm not saying bigger is better.

Thanks for the additional info.

Re: harlequin

I only know what that Romance writer has told me, and the books she's shown me.

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It's really odd that a writer would give these lengths. To the best of my knowledge, neither Harlequin nor Silhouette has ever published novels that short, and I know they dont now. Neither does any of the other mainstream romance publishers. I know the shortest Harlequin and Silhouette wants is 50,00-55,000 words, and has been for many, many years.

I used to be a member of the RWA, and know some Harlequin and Silhouette editors. 25-30K is simply too short, by far, for any of them. They keep strictly to their guidelines, go over or under and they don't buy.

I wonder if this writer simply isn't counting the words properly?

As for Nora Robets, despite the number of books she writes, most are in the 90-100K range, and her yearly output is nothing short of astounding. I've been reading her since she started, and I think she has more than 200 novels out now, the shortest of which is around 55,000 words. Most are over 70,000, and some are at 100K or more.

Re: harlequin

James--I fixed my numbers already.

There was an anthology project the writer I talked to was in recently, and I had that number in mind. But her full books are around 50k.

I occasionally hit the local RWA meeting, and some of them know Norah Roberts. She's evidently fun as well as prolific.

Cheers.

Nora Roberts - A Super Novel Writing Machine?

I am also completely astounded by Nora Roberts too. I had a look at her web site and I've noticed that in 2004 she published 16 novels. How is that possible? And not to mention that they are pretty thick volumes too.

It makes me wonder how does she manage to do it? It looks like she is writing a novel every 3 weeks and a half or so.
Is there any other secret beside BIC?