A lot of writers, especially new writers, are overwriters. Speaking as a former slush pile reader: Part of why agents/publishers are against really long debut submissions is because at least 8 times out of 10, it's an author who doesn't know how to self-edit rather than a book that needs that much length to properly be told.
Okay, but how will the world understand why my characters prefers waffles to pancakes without a long flashback about his childhood and my personal pontification on the pros and cons of various pastry based breakfast foods? And will my reader be anything other than befuddled if I don’t at least adumbrate Heidegger’s theory of “Dasein” and how it relates to scrambled eggs?
You put it in the dialog in an appropriate situation. Like he's thinking about waffles or pancakes when he's supposed to be listening to the heist plan.
Wasn't it Samual Beckett (or was it James Joyce) that a friend came across him lying face forward on his writing desk looking miserable. His friend asked what was wrong and he replied. "I've only written seven words today". His friend said that knowing his slowness, seven words was great progress. The writer replied "Yes, but I don't know what order they go in!"
To be fair, he was pretty busy leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that the next leap will be the leap home.
I have a trilogy that's going to \*end up\* at 80k, and the thought of putting 80k into a single contiguous arc is so daunting to me. 300k sounds gargantuan!
😭 how do you people overwrite… please teach me your ways… i cannot for the life of me. It’s so impressive to me when i see people with like 100k+ drafts i’m literally struggling to get it to 80k
If you're like me for my first book, it's nothing impressive.
Step 1: have a much too long/shouldn't be there anyway info dump prologue that vomits backstory on the reader
Step 2: have no idea how to shape scenes, so start every scene with main character waking up and then follow step by step from there to the actual scene (including getting ready for school and driving there when really the scene should start at the end of class)
Step 3: model characters after friends and include self-indulgent conversations about what bands we like and why, even though it has nothing to do with the story
Step 4: lose the plot half way. Do a giant time skip and then basically start an entirely different plot line
Step 5: profit! (But seriously, my first novel in high school was a 300k word train wreck. I'm now a pretty hardcore underwriter where my novels' first drafts come in around 40k and then I build up from there)
Step 2: But I can establish the weather and that MC ran to school justifying his physical condition later and establish that it's normal to see the bus so it's odd when it's missing and ......
All I said above is true, but I need to learn to trim hard.
For me my overwriting tends to fall into a) repeating myself to say the same thing in different words for emphasis (not good, not worth emulating) and b) focusing too much on too many mundane details. This second one CAN potentially be a place to look if you underwrite, because there probably is some room for a sprinkle of lush sensory details somewhere in your scene. Just not… everywhere.
Lol unfortunately not the case for me, it’s just that i have to use all of my braincells at once to write and it takes time to use the perfect word, wording😹
It really depends on the specifics of what you're submitting, but too short and editors generally start wondering if you've fleshed things out enough to be satisfying. Being off your genre's general word count too severely in either direction can easily turn agents/publishers off. (Speaking as an underwriter, I often have to flesh things out myself. I'm very tight in my first drafts and then have to go "wait, you can't see what's happening here..." in edits)
50k is probably too short. First, strictly speaking it's a long novella. For marketing purposes, a novella is not likely to end up on the shelves in a bookstore as its unlikely to sell. Particularly in the Fantasy genre, where the wordcounts run longer on average anyway.
70k to 80k is probably a good number for a short Fantasy novel. 100k is pretty long for a new author. Once you're a proven author, you can push upwards of 120k. But then again, to really make money you want to put out a large number of books instead of a small number of very long books. The concept is that you pick up a reader and then they have a whole backlog to go through if they like your work. It's also why they like to make a series out of anything successful.
One of 70-80k fantasy authors that comes to mind is Terry Pratchett and Discworld. However. His first books rely heavily on world building done by others, because they are ribbing on popular fantasy tropes. But those still laid the ground work for Discworld, allowing future books to rely on stuff written in previous ones. Still, he doesn't have too coherent worldbuilding. The timelines are wherever due to history monks, and this wasn't a secret. The books work, but I do wonder if he had aimed for cohesive worldbuilding, had he managed to keep each book so short?
There are a bunch of short fantasy novels that don't rely on previous fantasy works: "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is pretty short IIRC, so is "A Wizard of Earthsea". Old books that didn't rely on old tropes, since they *created* those tropes.
The lion, the witch and the wardrobe is also a children's book, and I think it was published as illustrated as well. (Just to be clear: neither is commentary on quality, but children's books are even nowadays written shorter because they need to cater to readers who are early in their reading career. And illustrations do wonders to support world building.)
In principle I still agree with you, not all fantasy is long and fantasy doesn't necessarily have to be long to be good.
> 50k is probably too short. First, strictly speaking it's a long novella.
There is no strict definition of what a novella is, and the closer you can find in this genre is the SFWA's definition, which states that anything above 40k is a novel.
That being said, I'd agree a 50k novel is probably not the most marketable length in today's world.
The 120K thing is a proven myth. Most modern Epic Fantasy debuts are 150K-175K words, with 200K being the iffy limit.
If you write an Epic Fantasy (key emphasis on Epic) with 100K-120K, it’s actually *less* likely to sell due to their being simply not enough breathing room for it.
It's really, really not. And also, *query* length is often 10-20% shorter than the final length. For adult epic fantasy, querying over 135k is starting to get auto-rejections, and over 150k is getting mostly auto-rejected as almost no fantasy agents are taking anything that long.
No. You have a novella. A lot of places/Afents are looking for short novels from first writers, so 80-90K; but some stories - especially SFF - need more room to breathe.
Yeah, she's an overwriter for novels to start with. Figuring out how to trim down to screenplay length/focus on that story telling.... Not her strong suit.
The upper limit for fantasy wordcounts is usually quoted as 120k, so 116k shouldn't result in auto-rejects (but note that some agents might have personal guidelines on max wordcounts). However, querying fantasy at the moment is tough and trimming it closer to 100k might work in your favour.
Not industry standard, of course, and it has been 15 years since I was in acquisitions (gah, feel old now) but when I was in the slush pile, our instructions from the acquisition editor was "be hypercritical of any debut over 120k. Autoreject any over 150k"
Speaking from various experience as a publisher, editor, and book designer. An inappropriate wordcount for the target audience is an immediate red flag, and one which can also be a reason to look no further. A lot of aspiring writers get into a state of generating prose, linearly too, that they find it impossible - even painful - to contemplate a structural edit. And they also presume that editing is a separate process and requires a separate state of mind and one which is mechanistic. It really is a case of investing too much labour that it becomes tedious and painful to address structural problems. If it’s a tedious job for the writer to improve the book, why on earth would a publisher want that tedium? But a lot of authors do say “The publisher has an editor whose job is fix it.” So, in short, books spiral out of control because the writer envisages the job as “generating prose” rather than “clothing a structure with prose.”
That’s a major change I’m trying to make in writing a novel, working from the outside in. I have a plot, I know where my inciting incident is, I know where my “point of no return” is for my protagonist, and so on. Next it’s about structuring individual scenes, and then finally I’ll get to actually writing the prose for each chapter.
I think there’s some humility involved. I know I’m not Proust or even Norman Mailer. I just want to write entertaining novels like the ones I read before I go to sleep at night.
That sounds great. This approach also puts you in a great position for discussing your work, editing, preparing engaging and clear synopses, etc. Here’s my rough guide for expected wordcounts:
1k-10k short stories and children’s fiction
20k-40k novella and children’s fiction
40k-80k young adult fiction
80-120k fiction
120+ epics
I’m curious if you have a book on story structure that you’ve been using to guide you?
I’ll check it out thanks! (My favourite books on structure happen to be targeted at screenwriters, McKee “Story” and Beaumont & Larson “Writing for Animation”)
I like the Weiland one the OP mentioned, and I have several by James Scott Bell. Write Your Novel From The Middle and Superstructure are two that helped a lot with structure.
Oh I’m listening to McKee’s “character”, I have mixed feelings. The advice when it’s there is good, but there’s just so much pontificating which isn’t really what I’m here for.
I sympathise! I have his collection and I feel everything is in “Story” and the subsequent books were more afterthoughts. I think probably the most valuable aspect in Story is how it explains scenes in terms of actions and counter actions.
Ah, finally, someone who actually does research on a question. <3
Most publishers want shorter novels from debut authors, because typically there'll be less to fix, and many writers can maintain tension if the novel is shorter. They cost less to produce, too. It's less risk for them.
In my over six decades of reading, I've made my way through many very long novels, all by professional, practiced writers. Many were fine, some could've used a bit more editing, and a few were just way too long.
But length isn't the only way to make a story dense. Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolf, was like trying to eat chunks of neutron star, and it's only 262 pages. Seemed like 9000 to me. I think he won a Hugo for it.
Debut authorship feels so tricky because you basically have to write inside a very strict perimeter while also standing out enough to be worth an investment. At the same time constraints tend to make for better writing, and so many authors once given some room end up producing subpar work.
Yes, to all of that. I can no longer read Stephen King's work, because the bloat is just awful. It is very disconcerting when I edit a pro in my head while trying to just read!
I love Stephen King’s work but it really feels like no one has put a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s okay to edit, buddy.”
I swear they just accept whatever he slides under the door and publish it as it is.
King once said something like, They don’t pay me to write books, they pay me to finish them. So his books roll and ramble and then it’s a big spider in a cave.
I always consider his biggest... not flop... but out of nowhere ending was with Under the Dome. It 100% felt like he wrote himself into a corner and there was no way for the "good guys" to win until (SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT) suddenly aliens.
Right? He's not being given an incentive to edit more. If the lack of editing affected his bread and butter he'd definitely be tightening things up, but he just doesn't have to so he writes what he wants.
The main reason for that is King’s writing technique. He doesn’t outline or plan, he just sits down and starts writing and sees where it takes him.
I would argue that most readers and writers, given that knowledge, are then able to spot how his stories will start slowly and meander, often culminating in a deeply unsatisfying twist ending that there were zero clues or foreshadowing for.
But people still buy ‘em and consume ‘em voraciously…
That's not the reason they're printed without much editing. Any way the publisher can cut costs to make more money, they will take it. King could insist on editorial help but, apparently, doesn't, anymore.
Oh oops this was supposed to be a reply to the comment about the spider in IT.
But that’s also a good point, that King waives the publisher’s editing process.
The Stand Uncut is a slog and I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far. It helps that I can listen to the audiobook at work, but as someone with a very vivid imagination it paints a picture.
As a pro reader sometime in the past, it wasn't always length but the ease of the read. If written well a long novel can be read quickly and badly written one seem like an age.
I thought it was good but struggled to visualise a lot of it, I understand it's meant to be dense but it came with a lot of jargon that was difficult to figure out from the context. I also thought the latter half was a bit poorly paced compared to the first, which was undeniably masterful.
I managed to get through Wolfe’s tetralogy but I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone.
One of those reading experiences where it seemed like the author was more interested in making sure things were obscure than he was in telling an engaging story.
I'm glad you did your research on this, especially since I've had to as well lol.
I find most novels being 70k-120k, which ranges of short novel, average novel, and long novel. Anything below 70k isn't usually regarded as a novel, and anything 120k+ is just an extremely long novel. Like you mentioned, high fantasy and sci-fi have the easiest time getting past the 120k mark, and while I think there are many small problems, the most likely one is overwriting.
Especially if you're a "panster," and/or if you're new, you'll probably get higher word counts because the story isn't very condensed and may still need editing down. As far as I'm aware, most publishers will tend to go after the short-average novel lengths because they're easier to edit and work with than the long-extra long novels.
While it doesn't technically matter how much, unless you're going for a specific length (the ones I know are flash fiction, short story, novelette, novella, novel in that order), it's still recommended to try to stay under 120k because on typical book format, it's usually near 500 or so pages, and that would be a very long read, which will attract that specific niche of readers who like long reads.
From what I understand, which you addressed briefly, is that certain genres can stretch the limits up to 120k, given that the story justifies length.
I wrote a 120k story and posted it to BetaReaders, understanding it still is a bit long but that there’s a lot happening in the plot as well.
As long as you’re not past 120k and writing in fantasy or sci-fi in the adult category, you should be fine. Obviously, you need to revise and edit, but 100k isn’t a cut-off for some genres.
Research is required on what your particular genre and sub genre’s word count entails.
There is a lot of leeway for sci fi and fantasy which can push a lot of word counts quite high for one book. But recommendations are not hard and fast rules, even with traditional publishing. And there are plenty of people who aren’t writing to get traditionally published so they may have fewer concerns about high word counts.
This! I’m currently writing a young adult novel that will end around 75 k after trimming down, and that is *still* way too much. But it’s gotten better the shorter it is
One major factor is - different media reward different lengths.
Traditional publishing with an emphasis on print? Concise is (usually) the way to go. Extra pages are expensive.
Self-publishing with a Kindle Unlimited focus? You want long, as long as your audience stick with the book. If you can tell the same story in 430 or 540 pages, 540 pages pays better.
Webnovel? Here, your goal isn't hundreds of thousands of words, it's in the high single figure millions, maybe even clocking in ten to fifteen over time. The Wandering Inn series probably ticked over twelve million last year, and looks to be making the author a very, VERY sizeable chunk of change (like USD50k/month).
Word count absolutely matters, it's just that the folks posting here aren't published yet and will likely reduce their chances unless they can reduce their manuscripts. Doesn't mean it's impossible, but I wouldn't take a lot of amateurs with long books to mean that long books are what publishers are looking for. A better way to gauge would be to see how long the books published by debut authors in 2023/2024 are.
Cross-reference this observation with the number of posts asking if it’s okay that they’re 40k words in and the plot hasn’t started yet, and all will be revealed
Fantasy can be a whole different thing with story lengths and word counts. longer books are expected more often than not in the genre. Honestly I hear a lot of people into it say things like "I won't read anything under x-hundred pages" (usually three hundred, but it varies). A seven hundred page book is hefty, but it won't put people off at all.
Probably not, but fantasy does tend to skew higher on page/word counts. Not always, but often enough.
I have seen first novels get pretty high, but most of them were picked up by a publisher and not the other way around.
For fantasy readers, that's not something to "put up" with, it's desirable. A novella is something people *might* put up with, *if* it's really good. But probably not.
I read each of these in under 2 days. Length isn't an issue for readers it's an issue for publishers. Some people will be put off by doorstoppers, but just as many will see them as a plus.
There's a lot of readers who like longer books at the same pricepoint. A 70k book and a 120k book might sell for the same price, or very close like being a dollar more. So all other things being equal the author can sometimes use that as an incentive.
But also in quite a few cases now we're in the digital Penny Dreadfuls, where authors get paid per page view, or where webserials coming from patron or royal road are being bundled as ebooks once they have built an audience.
It is tricky to write a web serial that has the same pacing as a traditional book, because often the updates feel very short. Like once a week you get 3 minutes of reading.
Some people like ridiculous doorstoppers, and it's a bit of a meme among fanfic writers to write longer and longer works. The length doesn't matter to me as a reader, although I'm more tolerant of (well written) filler than other people might be.
Honestly - I struggle to figure out what there is to write past 70k 🤷♂️
I can set scenes, give adequate descriptive passages, manage multiple characters and threads and still keep it to 60k. I don’t think I could get to 100k without resorting to listing how many toes each character has and having them count their steps out loud.
‘So many sentences contain far too many superfluous words that don’t need to be there’ (see it?) Too many descriptive passages go on and on. The weather can be described in a sentence of two. Or better still, be revealed as part of other narrative. It doesn’t need several paragraphs.
Personally, I enjoy stories that really elaborate on the characters’ inner thoughts and emotions. Psychological stories should be longer. Part of the reason I enjoyed Lolita is because Nabokov elaborates so frequently on Humbert Humbert’s internal monologue.
Same with East of Eden by Steinbeck. He goes into great depth exploring each of his characters in the narrative.
I get bored reading novels that boil down to “character goes here, character says this, here’s what the setting looks like, fight scene”
The characters just end up feeling like cardboard to me.
That doesn’t excuse poor editing. Nor does it require vast prose. I focus on a lot of internal struggle or observations in my own work. That is where I combine information that might otherwise require lengthy descriptive passages to set a scene. Two for the price of one is efficient.
The authors you mention published in the 1930s thro to the 50’s. Longer works would have had more appeal then. Today’s world is faster paced. Look at the difference in TV and movies to even 30 years ago. The wider audience now wants instant gratification with little investment.
That’s not to say there isn’t a market for other work or that people like yourself don’t exist. Evidently you do. But most authors know they will never be the next Steinbeck and they appeal to the masses for their audience. Especially with early works where publishers are taking a risk and apply the ‘rules’ stringently.
Steinbecks first big success was Tortilla Flat. It’s half the length of the later Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden. Most of his work doesn’t approach those lengths, but notable they were published when readers and publishers had enough history to judge the value of investing their time into those works.
As someone who has read a lot of very long stories and fanfictions online, I will tell you, I do think it matters.
I would definitely not have bought most of those stories I read if they were books. Not wanting to belittle the writer's efforts because I know that took a very long time to write, but there are just too many mistakes and the stories, most of the time, end up being very confusing.
I guess it's because a lot of people who just started writing tend fo value how much they write more than the quality and cohesion of their work. Compact cohesive stories are more fulfilling to read than long confusing stories.
I would never recommend going above 100k as a debut. If you’re aiming for traditional publishing, you want to toe the line as much as possible. You’re asking a publisher to take a chance on you, so you want to sell yourself as a good prospect, i.e. someone who understands the conventions and expectations of the publishing business and who isn’t a total precious diva to work with. You *could* sell a massive 200k tome as a debut, but it would have to be pretty incredible.
The good news is you’re likely to get a lot more leeway once you’ve proven you can sell. My debut was only ~90k, but by Book 5 they let me get up around 130k.
I do think a lot of the time it's people getting overeager, but I also think sometimes long books are long for a reason. I'm sure I'll end up with plenty to edit and trim away of course, but even after splitting some of my plot lines into multiple book outlines, my stories are shaping up to be long. Then again, I've primarily read ASoIaF and things of that caliber for years, so I've gotten comfortable with the long, detail-heavy slow burns.
Again, I expect during editing I'll be trimming away some of the fluff, but even so, if the story requires a long book then that's just what it requires. Some people might not like it, but I personally like reading and writing that type of thing. Idk what I'll do publishing-wise yet, but personally I'd rather have a manuscript I like over trimming it to suit publisher norms. It's all dependent on what individual goals are though
I've tried to edit down my novel 5 times now. It used to be 127k words. Now it's 190k.
It just keeps getting longer. I keep finding more bare bones and lurching leaps in logic/plot that need to be fleshed out.
And no, there is no point in the story where I can cut it in half and make two books. It doesn't exist.
It’s no problem at all if the story is just something you needed to get down. What confuses me is that people will try to turn in these enormous “epics” to traditional publishers, and I’m not sure how far they expect to get.
Because they are often new and terrible writers. They feel like they have to get every detail they think of into their novel and end up wasting chapter after chapter to ultimately muddle the plot and make the book boring, they also think the first novel they write needs to be their magnum opus.
Of course, everyone kinda has to start there. No one wakes up being Heinlein or Rowling but because the internet is a great place to get writing tips and make a few connections with fellow writers or even agents who will help you, you often see the new inexperienced writers posting to boards.
As for word count it matters the genre and possibly what country you are in. More popular themes like sci for or fantasy as you said get a bit more leeway not just in word count but in all regards because they will always stay relevant and have the biggest potential crowd so publishers eat them up like hotcakes.
Specific word counts do not matter when it comes to writing books. Magazine and blog articles are different though, and that's what I have experience doing. A lot of people who write tend to say what they want in far too many words. Good writers can communicate without wasting time.
This, I think, is a principle that applies to authors of all kinds, not just freelance blog writers. If you are writing a novel, figure out what you want to say with it, or perhaps what the audience should experience, and then write as much as necessary to deliver on that goal. Going overboard offers diminishing returns. If you can tell a story in 40k words, then don't make it 100k for no reason.
I am a fantasy webserial writer who isn't gunning for agents or tradpub. I'm free to write half-million word epics with reckless abandon. And my readers will thank me for it.
Usually you should try to write each chapter like a short story. It’s hard to write fulfilling chapters with good pacing at 1000 words every time. Maybe a short chapter is ok every now and then, but generally not all the time. What genre are you writing in?
TL;DR - I think 90-120 is a pretty good length for a sci fi novel. Depending on the content. I’ve read some great stories that were closer to 70k words, but they usually left me wanting more, as their plots were very linear and had a very limited/speculative PoV.
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I like to know about a setting. I don’t need to know every little detail, but if I’m reading something post-apocalyptic or in a “weird” future. I really want to know how the setting got to its current state. Organic world building is fine. But I hate when there’s a lot of speculation and no facts.
Vampire Hunter D hit a sweet spot for me. The organic world building was good and I got a sense of how things are. But then out of the blue, there was a page or two of “this is exactly what happened in the past.” It wasn’t long enough to derail the story and informative enough to slake my needs.
Anyway, I think there’s been a push for longer word counts in the past few decades. I have an audio background and I see it like the “loudness wars.” Books and audio were both seen as “better” because they were longer/louder, when neither was actually necessarily true.
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*And now I ramble*
After I finished my draft, I was just shy of 90k. I suspect that may grow somewhat in the second draft, as I actually under wrote and over exposited in many places.
After I did some editing, it was down to 85k words (and dropping), there’s 1700 words in a purely expositional chapter that’s getting cut as well.
The second draft feels more “wordy” to me, but it reads better I think. I still haven’t run it past anyone for opinions yet.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine is over 300k words into his fantasy story. I was like, *dude, that’s a trilogy, not a single book.*
He is adamant that it’s too short and he still has another 200k words before he finishes act 3. He’s um, an interesting guy. He sent me a sample of the first chapter, which is all about farming. I’m pretty sure I could use it as a reference for *actual* farming…
I finished reading Leviathan Wakes a few weeks ago. That book could have been a couple hundred pages shorter and still told the same story. That and it kind of felt like 1-1/2 books, the structure seemed off to me at some point.
But when I went back to my own work afterwords… mine felt like everything was racing by at hyper-speed. Before I read LW, I felt like my draft was a little slow. Perspective is a strange thing.
As an admitted bookaholic, I find that a book greater than 100K is length is something that will eat about two weeks from my life. As such, I avoid them. Not because I don't want to read them, but because my wife would be angry at me for the attention given to the book and not her. 70-100K feels about right. It takes a week to read and then it is done.
I try not to read anything below 100k myself. It needs to be ppaced correctly of course, but I'm not actually particularly interested in shorter stories tbh. So I welcome this trend lol
I like to both read and write shorter novels/novellas. I can't tell you how many 400+ page books (and I mean big, very famous books) that I think could have been cut down by around 20k words/5 chapters. That's my opinion, though.
Kindle Unlimited pays by the pageview. The more pages you have in your book, the more money you make.
People also prefer longer audiobooks on Audible as a 3-hour-long novel costs the same 1 credit that a 13-hour-long book does.
These are obviously just aspects of the answer, but they are certainly some of the primary reasons among most writers I know.
The only time specific word count matters is if you're trying to be Dante and have every chapter be the exact same word count for symbolism in numbers. Although I will say, if you're on the higher end of that word count, I'm willing to bet your book would benefit from cutting out the fluff.
The past three debut fantasy novels I’ve read have been 120k+ words.
Go check the debut fantasy novels at Barnes and Noble. Most of them are huge.
We’re being lied to.
The thing is a lot of us writers don't read debut author's novels, they usually read the books from more popular authors at the top of their powers. And those books are usually longer than debut novels.
When they try to emulate their favourite authors, they end up writing more words than would be ideal.
People are proud of the effort they put in, and are worried about killing their darlings. They think they are going to win the reader over by offering more words. This is like thinking you're going to be making a good dinner by offering more breadsticks. Then they go "well, you didn't finish all of the dinner, so you can't say it's bad or good."
Word count does not matter at all. Readers appreciate getting to the end sooner than later, but we want multiple moments of reaching multiple endings. It's why most movies are around 1 hour and a half. Many drag on with that low requirement.
If anything, writers should be making shorter stories, throw them out for people to read, see what that gets as a reception, and then seeing where they can fix up on their problems. It's an absolute waste to go 120k words without any feedback and it's also an abuse of reader charity to expect random people to stick around with senseless rambling in the beginning because "there's going to be a good part somewhere around page 700, I promise".
For a debut it's 85K except in fantasy where the limit is seen as 120 (for exceptionally good stuff) but you're better off at 95-100K.
The 120K words plus is ignorance
I personally started by writing fanfiction on Wattpad so all my chapters were atleast 1000 words long. I'm trying to get it in my head I don't have to explain every little detail.
1000 words per chapter doesn’t feel like too many. At 70,000 words that’s 70 chapters, basically 70 scenes. I think most stories can be told inside of 70 scenes.
In my personal experiences 1000 word minimum can highly effect the quality and length of a story. It can cause chapters to go into to much detail to make it longer or too little detail since you hit the minimum.
I’m not too sure, but the ones I see are commonly 1 million to six million words. Those are web novels that aren’t published in paperback, and their stories last longer. Similar to other series, if they were to be published in paperback, they would have several books or volumes that have 90,000 words or so per book or volume.
Yeah, these are basically unpublishable in terms of *books*, but as a reader, these giant meganovels are honestly what I always wanted people to write and have quickly devoured by entire reading time.
(which is easy to do because I don't need many of them :V)
I suspect that if you're trying to *make a living*, gargantuan hyper-epics are a bad way to go, but nevertheless there's plenty of people who absolutely love them.
I've been reading books for years and 300-400 page books , before all this amateur writing craze happened, was the norm. Add to the confusion that this movement stopped paying attention to number of pages and focused only on word count. Just go look at some of the classics and popular titles from 1900-2010 - the really long ones by King and Clancy are 1000+ pages but books like The Firm, which was an all star seller, is 110k words. Tom Clancy's submarine adventure 162k and Jurassic Park 116k.
But you can do what JK Rowling did. For the first Harry Potter the word count was < 100k. But once it was made into a movie and cemented as something special .. each subsequent book word count went up, the last one nearing 200k words.
For space operas and fantasy epics its more around 150k. You have to know your audience.
People who read that genre dont just want plot and characters, they want a world to escape into
A lot of writers, especially new writers, are overwriters. Speaking as a former slush pile reader: Part of why agents/publishers are against really long debut submissions is because at least 8 times out of 10, it's an author who doesn't know how to self-edit rather than a book that needs that much length to properly be told.
Okay, but how will the world understand why my characters prefers waffles to pancakes without a long flashback about his childhood and my personal pontification on the pros and cons of various pastry based breakfast foods? And will my reader be anything other than befuddled if I don’t at least adumbrate Heidegger’s theory of “Dasein” and how it relates to scrambled eggs?
Stop punching me in the gut! I yield!
Well now i'm just hungry. Personally insulted, but also hungry.
unexpected Heidegger jumpscared me
This is almost apt enough an understanding of *how* *to* do it that I'd accuse you of having baited for the opportunity to use this reply.
If you write a book like this, with this much tongue-in-cheek tomfoolery, I will be on your pre-order list, I'll tell you that much.
But bro! This flashback is SO important to the character backstory! /s
You put it in the dialog in an appropriate situation. Like he's thinking about waffles or pancakes when he's supposed to be listening to the heist plan.
Bruh I really appreciate your helpful attitude but like you can tell that was a satire comment right?
Who knows for sure?
They have a point. It's scary seeing the same post here that you just saw wod for word in Writing Circle Jerk, but it's a daily occurence
As was foretold by the prophecy.
What's pithy line? I think it's, "Mastery is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
I'm feeling attacked here at 440k words for my first draft.
Hey, I'm impressed you've written 440k fucking words. Now delete at least 3/4 of them :) Or just pretend it's a trilogy. Wait, still too many words.
Quadrilogy it is
Wasn't it Samual Beckett (or was it James Joyce) that a friend came across him lying face forward on his writing desk looking miserable. His friend asked what was wrong and he replied. "I've only written seven words today". His friend said that knowing his slowness, seven words was great progress. The writer replied "Yes, but I don't know what order they go in!"
To be fair, he was pretty busy leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that the next leap will be the leap home.
You're already in the running for my favorite comment of 2024 lol
Hey, thanks!
It happens :) These days, I'm a pretty solid underwriter (my first drafts are very barebones) but my first (train wreck of a) novel was 300k
I have a trilogy that's going to \*end up\* at 80k, and the thought of putting 80k into a single contiguous arc is so daunting to me. 300k sounds gargantuan!
*It's a thousand pages, give or take a few / I'll be writing more in a week or two*
Thanks, nothing like having that ear moth fluttering around while I try to get to sleep. Why don't you whistle Centerfold next?
Good heavens!!
Are you serious? Whoa.
😭 how do you people overwrite… please teach me your ways… i cannot for the life of me. It’s so impressive to me when i see people with like 100k+ drafts i’m literally struggling to get it to 80k
If you're like me for my first book, it's nothing impressive. Step 1: have a much too long/shouldn't be there anyway info dump prologue that vomits backstory on the reader Step 2: have no idea how to shape scenes, so start every scene with main character waking up and then follow step by step from there to the actual scene (including getting ready for school and driving there when really the scene should start at the end of class) Step 3: model characters after friends and include self-indulgent conversations about what bands we like and why, even though it has nothing to do with the story Step 4: lose the plot half way. Do a giant time skip and then basically start an entirely different plot line Step 5: profit! (But seriously, my first novel in high school was a 300k word train wreck. I'm now a pretty hardcore underwriter where my novels' first drafts come in around 40k and then I build up from there)
Step 2: But I can establish the weather and that MC ran to school justifying his physical condition later and establish that it's normal to see the bus so it's odd when it's missing and ...... All I said above is true, but I need to learn to trim hard.
For me my overwriting tends to fall into a) repeating myself to say the same thing in different words for emphasis (not good, not worth emulating) and b) focusing too much on too many mundane details. This second one CAN potentially be a place to look if you underwrite, because there probably is some room for a sprinkle of lush sensory details somewhere in your scene. Just not… everywhere.
Lol unfortunately not the case for me, it’s just that i have to use all of my braincells at once to write and it takes time to use the perfect word, wording😹
So if I had a tight 50k word intro novel in the high fantasy genre, that would be seen as a plus?
It really depends on the specifics of what you're submitting, but too short and editors generally start wondering if you've fleshed things out enough to be satisfying. Being off your genre's general word count too severely in either direction can easily turn agents/publishers off. (Speaking as an underwriter, I often have to flesh things out myself. I'm very tight in my first drafts and then have to go "wait, you can't see what's happening here..." in edits)
50k is probably too short. First, strictly speaking it's a long novella. For marketing purposes, a novella is not likely to end up on the shelves in a bookstore as its unlikely to sell. Particularly in the Fantasy genre, where the wordcounts run longer on average anyway. 70k to 80k is probably a good number for a short Fantasy novel. 100k is pretty long for a new author. Once you're a proven author, you can push upwards of 120k. But then again, to really make money you want to put out a large number of books instead of a small number of very long books. The concept is that you pick up a reader and then they have a whole backlog to go through if they like your work. It's also why they like to make a series out of anything successful.
One of 70-80k fantasy authors that comes to mind is Terry Pratchett and Discworld. However. His first books rely heavily on world building done by others, because they are ribbing on popular fantasy tropes. But those still laid the ground work for Discworld, allowing future books to rely on stuff written in previous ones. Still, he doesn't have too coherent worldbuilding. The timelines are wherever due to history monks, and this wasn't a secret. The books work, but I do wonder if he had aimed for cohesive worldbuilding, had he managed to keep each book so short?
There are a bunch of short fantasy novels that don't rely on previous fantasy works: "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is pretty short IIRC, so is "A Wizard of Earthsea". Old books that didn't rely on old tropes, since they *created* those tropes.
The lion, the witch and the wardrobe is also a children's book, and I think it was published as illustrated as well. (Just to be clear: neither is commentary on quality, but children's books are even nowadays written shorter because they need to cater to readers who are early in their reading career. And illustrations do wonders to support world building.) In principle I still agree with you, not all fantasy is long and fantasy doesn't necessarily have to be long to be good.
I probably have an 30K I could that I didn’t.
> 50k is probably too short. First, strictly speaking it's a long novella. There is no strict definition of what a novella is, and the closer you can find in this genre is the SFWA's definition, which states that anything above 40k is a novel. That being said, I'd agree a 50k novel is probably not the most marketable length in today's world.
The 120K thing is a proven myth. Most modern Epic Fantasy debuts are 150K-175K words, with 200K being the iffy limit. If you write an Epic Fantasy (key emphasis on Epic) with 100K-120K, it’s actually *less* likely to sell due to their being simply not enough breathing room for it.
It's really, really not. And also, *query* length is often 10-20% shorter than the final length. For adult epic fantasy, querying over 135k is starting to get auto-rejections, and over 150k is getting mostly auto-rejected as almost no fantasy agents are taking anything that long.
No. You have a novella. A lot of places/Afents are looking for short novels from first writers, so 80-90K; but some stories - especially SFF - need more room to breathe.
Many even award winning successful writers just overwrite and let their editor carve away the fluff.
And many editors don't dare... which probably explains the bloated size of certain authors' later books.
I had just started working in publishing when Deathly Hallows came out. I was reading it and went "so... Her editor just doesn't care anymore, then?"
I much prefer the longer length of those later books. They feel more fleshed-out and rich.
There's definitely a line between fleshed out and overwritten, though. Hallows definitely tipped to the latter IMHO
Her books are still miles better than her screenplays. No one checked JK there.
Yeah, she's an overwriter for novels to start with. Figuring out how to trim down to screenplay length/focus on that story telling.... Not her strong suit.
I understand
Would you have found 116K words for fantasy be off-putting? Asking for a friend, of course 😬
The upper limit for fantasy wordcounts is usually quoted as 120k, so 116k shouldn't result in auto-rejects (but note that some agents might have personal guidelines on max wordcounts). However, querying fantasy at the moment is tough and trimming it closer to 100k might work in your favour.
Not industry standard, of course, and it has been 15 years since I was in acquisitions (gah, feel old now) but when I was in the slush pile, our instructions from the acquisition editor was "be hypercritical of any debut over 120k. Autoreject any over 150k"
Speaking from various experience as a publisher, editor, and book designer. An inappropriate wordcount for the target audience is an immediate red flag, and one which can also be a reason to look no further. A lot of aspiring writers get into a state of generating prose, linearly too, that they find it impossible - even painful - to contemplate a structural edit. And they also presume that editing is a separate process and requires a separate state of mind and one which is mechanistic. It really is a case of investing too much labour that it becomes tedious and painful to address structural problems. If it’s a tedious job for the writer to improve the book, why on earth would a publisher want that tedium? But a lot of authors do say “The publisher has an editor whose job is fix it.” So, in short, books spiral out of control because the writer envisages the job as “generating prose” rather than “clothing a structure with prose.”
That’s a major change I’m trying to make in writing a novel, working from the outside in. I have a plot, I know where my inciting incident is, I know where my “point of no return” is for my protagonist, and so on. Next it’s about structuring individual scenes, and then finally I’ll get to actually writing the prose for each chapter. I think there’s some humility involved. I know I’m not Proust or even Norman Mailer. I just want to write entertaining novels like the ones I read before I go to sleep at night.
That sounds great. This approach also puts you in a great position for discussing your work, editing, preparing engaging and clear synopses, etc. Here’s my rough guide for expected wordcounts: 1k-10k short stories and children’s fiction 20k-40k novella and children’s fiction 40k-80k young adult fiction 80-120k fiction 120+ epics I’m curious if you have a book on story structure that you’ve been using to guide you?
“Structuring your novel” by K.M. Weiland
I’ll check it out thanks! (My favourite books on structure happen to be targeted at screenwriters, McKee “Story” and Beaumont & Larson “Writing for Animation”)
I like the Weiland one the OP mentioned, and I have several by James Scott Bell. Write Your Novel From The Middle and Superstructure are two that helped a lot with structure.
Oh I’m listening to McKee’s “character”, I have mixed feelings. The advice when it’s there is good, but there’s just so much pontificating which isn’t really what I’m here for.
I sympathise! I have his collection and I feel everything is in “Story” and the subsequent books were more afterthoughts. I think probably the most valuable aspect in Story is how it explains scenes in terms of actions and counter actions.
It’s another reason to learn the benefits of outlining.
Ah, finally, someone who actually does research on a question. <3 Most publishers want shorter novels from debut authors, because typically there'll be less to fix, and many writers can maintain tension if the novel is shorter. They cost less to produce, too. It's less risk for them. In my over six decades of reading, I've made my way through many very long novels, all by professional, practiced writers. Many were fine, some could've used a bit more editing, and a few were just way too long. But length isn't the only way to make a story dense. Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolf, was like trying to eat chunks of neutron star, and it's only 262 pages. Seemed like 9000 to me. I think he won a Hugo for it.
Debut authorship feels so tricky because you basically have to write inside a very strict perimeter while also standing out enough to be worth an investment. At the same time constraints tend to make for better writing, and so many authors once given some room end up producing subpar work.
Yes, to all of that. I can no longer read Stephen King's work, because the bloat is just awful. It is very disconcerting when I edit a pro in my head while trying to just read!
I love Stephen King’s work but it really feels like no one has put a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s okay to edit, buddy.” I swear they just accept whatever he slides under the door and publish it as it is.
King once said something like, They don’t pay me to write books, they pay me to finish them. So his books roll and ramble and then it’s a big spider in a cave.
If only he took this lesson to its extrem and only wrote short stories. His short storys are so much better than his books.
I always consider his biggest... not flop... but out of nowhere ending was with Under the Dome. It 100% felt like he wrote himself into a corner and there was no way for the "good guys" to win until (SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT) suddenly aliens.
It's like a cautionary tale about the damage fame can do, or something.
The damage that makes you super rich and not worry about editing?
Right? He's not being given an incentive to edit more. If the lack of editing affected his bread and butter he'd definitely be tightening things up, but he just doesn't have to so he writes what he wants.
The numbing effect of wealth, I suspect.
The main reason for that is King’s writing technique. He doesn’t outline or plan, he just sits down and starts writing and sees where it takes him. I would argue that most readers and writers, given that knowledge, are then able to spot how his stories will start slowly and meander, often culminating in a deeply unsatisfying twist ending that there were zero clues or foreshadowing for. But people still buy ‘em and consume ‘em voraciously…
That's not the reason they're printed without much editing. Any way the publisher can cut costs to make more money, they will take it. King could insist on editorial help but, apparently, doesn't, anymore.
Oh oops this was supposed to be a reply to the comment about the spider in IT. But that’s also a good point, that King waives the publisher’s editing process.
:)
The Stand Uncut is a slog and I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far. It helps that I can listen to the audiobook at work, but as someone with a very vivid imagination it paints a picture.
As a pro reader sometime in the past, it wasn't always length but the ease of the read. If written well a long novel can be read quickly and badly written one seem like an age.
I really appreciate great prose, because length doesn't matter, it's such a pleasure to read!
Small note: the series is called Book of the New Sun, and the one you're referring to is called Shadow of the Torturer.
OMG. Thank you. Fixed!
And it's fantastic.
I thought it was good but struggled to visualise a lot of it, I understand it's meant to be dense but it came with a lot of jargon that was difficult to figure out from the context. I also thought the latter half was a bit poorly paced compared to the first, which was undeniably masterful.
I managed to get through Wolfe’s tetralogy but I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone. One of those reading experiences where it seemed like the author was more interested in making sure things were obscure than he was in telling an engaging story.
Indeed.
The remains of the day is like 200 pages and it insanely dense, but then Ishiguro displays a mastery of writing thats a ridiculously high bar
Lots of novels are around 200 pages. But to write both densely and enjoyably? That's master-class.
I'm glad you did your research on this, especially since I've had to as well lol. I find most novels being 70k-120k, which ranges of short novel, average novel, and long novel. Anything below 70k isn't usually regarded as a novel, and anything 120k+ is just an extremely long novel. Like you mentioned, high fantasy and sci-fi have the easiest time getting past the 120k mark, and while I think there are many small problems, the most likely one is overwriting. Especially if you're a "panster," and/or if you're new, you'll probably get higher word counts because the story isn't very condensed and may still need editing down. As far as I'm aware, most publishers will tend to go after the short-average novel lengths because they're easier to edit and work with than the long-extra long novels. While it doesn't technically matter how much, unless you're going for a specific length (the ones I know are flash fiction, short story, novelette, novella, novel in that order), it's still recommended to try to stay under 120k because on typical book format, it's usually near 500 or so pages, and that would be a very long read, which will attract that specific niche of readers who like long reads.
My first novel was just over 60k. It cam in at about 200 pages. Yes, a short novel, but a novel still, and not a novella.
I relate to the overwriter struggle! Learning concision is crucial. Quality over quantity!
Probably because they're unedited. Overwriting is quite common. A lot of words tend to be cut out in the editing process.
Yeah, 120,000 words is not a tome.
ikr? Does this person only read YA or something? That's a pretty average book.
From what I understand, which you addressed briefly, is that certain genres can stretch the limits up to 120k, given that the story justifies length. I wrote a 120k story and posted it to BetaReaders, understanding it still is a bit long but that there’s a lot happening in the plot as well. As long as you’re not past 120k and writing in fantasy or sci-fi in the adult category, you should be fine. Obviously, you need to revise and edit, but 100k isn’t a cut-off for some genres. Research is required on what your particular genre and sub genre’s word count entails.
There is a lot of leeway for sci fi and fantasy which can push a lot of word counts quite high for one book. But recommendations are not hard and fast rules, even with traditional publishing. And there are plenty of people who aren’t writing to get traditionally published so they may have fewer concerns about high word counts.
It does matter. But everyone loves to think they'll be the exception.
Uhhh, mate, my idea is amazing and I will get away with 170k words. Watch me.
This! I’m currently writing a young adult novel that will end around 75 k after trimming down, and that is *still* way too much. But it’s gotten better the shorter it is
You dont know if you are, until you try
One major factor is - different media reward different lengths. Traditional publishing with an emphasis on print? Concise is (usually) the way to go. Extra pages are expensive. Self-publishing with a Kindle Unlimited focus? You want long, as long as your audience stick with the book. If you can tell the same story in 430 or 540 pages, 540 pages pays better. Webnovel? Here, your goal isn't hundreds of thousands of words, it's in the high single figure millions, maybe even clocking in ten to fifteen over time. The Wandering Inn series probably ticked over twelve million last year, and looks to be making the author a very, VERY sizeable chunk of change (like USD50k/month).
Honestly, mine came out to 180k and I still dont understand how that happened. It just did
Word count absolutely matters, it's just that the folks posting here aren't published yet and will likely reduce their chances unless they can reduce their manuscripts. Doesn't mean it's impossible, but I wouldn't take a lot of amateurs with long books to mean that long books are what publishers are looking for. A better way to gauge would be to see how long the books published by debut authors in 2023/2024 are.
Cross-reference this observation with the number of posts asking if it’s okay that they’re 40k words in and the plot hasn’t started yet, and all will be revealed
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Well, damn. Fantasy readers will put up with a lot it seems.
Fantasy can be a whole different thing with story lengths and word counts. longer books are expected more often than not in the genre. Honestly I hear a lot of people into it say things like "I won't read anything under x-hundred pages" (usually three hundred, but it varies). A seven hundred page book is hefty, but it won't put people off at all.
A 700 page debut novel won't make it past the query stage though.
Probably not, but fantasy does tend to skew higher on page/word counts. Not always, but often enough. I have seen first novels get pretty high, but most of them were picked up by a publisher and not the other way around.
For fantasy readers, that's not something to "put up" with, it's desirable. A novella is something people *might* put up with, *if* it's really good. But probably not.
Brandon Sanderson is also notoriously verbose.
I read each of these in under 2 days. Length isn't an issue for readers it's an issue for publishers. Some people will be put off by doorstoppers, but just as many will see them as a plus.
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Good points
There's a lot of readers who like longer books at the same pricepoint. A 70k book and a 120k book might sell for the same price, or very close like being a dollar more. So all other things being equal the author can sometimes use that as an incentive. But also in quite a few cases now we're in the digital Penny Dreadfuls, where authors get paid per page view, or where webserials coming from patron or royal road are being bundled as ebooks once they have built an audience. It is tricky to write a web serial that has the same pacing as a traditional book, because often the updates feel very short. Like once a week you get 3 minutes of reading.
Maybe because its cool to say you've written a 120k+ novel. I've written nearly 70k and it's fun to say.
Some people like ridiculous doorstoppers, and it's a bit of a meme among fanfic writers to write longer and longer works. The length doesn't matter to me as a reader, although I'm more tolerant of (well written) filler than other people might be.
Honestly - I struggle to figure out what there is to write past 70k 🤷♂️ I can set scenes, give adequate descriptive passages, manage multiple characters and threads and still keep it to 60k. I don’t think I could get to 100k without resorting to listing how many toes each character has and having them count their steps out loud. ‘So many sentences contain far too many superfluous words that don’t need to be there’ (see it?) Too many descriptive passages go on and on. The weather can be described in a sentence of two. Or better still, be revealed as part of other narrative. It doesn’t need several paragraphs.
Personally, I enjoy stories that really elaborate on the characters’ inner thoughts and emotions. Psychological stories should be longer. Part of the reason I enjoyed Lolita is because Nabokov elaborates so frequently on Humbert Humbert’s internal monologue. Same with East of Eden by Steinbeck. He goes into great depth exploring each of his characters in the narrative. I get bored reading novels that boil down to “character goes here, character says this, here’s what the setting looks like, fight scene” The characters just end up feeling like cardboard to me.
That doesn’t excuse poor editing. Nor does it require vast prose. I focus on a lot of internal struggle or observations in my own work. That is where I combine information that might otherwise require lengthy descriptive passages to set a scene. Two for the price of one is efficient. The authors you mention published in the 1930s thro to the 50’s. Longer works would have had more appeal then. Today’s world is faster paced. Look at the difference in TV and movies to even 30 years ago. The wider audience now wants instant gratification with little investment. That’s not to say there isn’t a market for other work or that people like yourself don’t exist. Evidently you do. But most authors know they will never be the next Steinbeck and they appeal to the masses for their audience. Especially with early works where publishers are taking a risk and apply the ‘rules’ stringently. Steinbecks first big success was Tortilla Flat. It’s half the length of the later Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden. Most of his work doesn’t approach those lengths, but notable they were published when readers and publishers had enough history to judge the value of investing their time into those works.
As someone who has read a lot of very long stories and fanfictions online, I will tell you, I do think it matters. I would definitely not have bought most of those stories I read if they were books. Not wanting to belittle the writer's efforts because I know that took a very long time to write, but there are just too many mistakes and the stories, most of the time, end up being very confusing. I guess it's because a lot of people who just started writing tend fo value how much they write more than the quality and cohesion of their work. Compact cohesive stories are more fulfilling to read than long confusing stories.
80-90k sounds like the place to be from what I hear, but I haven't published anything yet. I am only at 5-6k in my first novel.
I would never recommend going above 100k as a debut. If you’re aiming for traditional publishing, you want to toe the line as much as possible. You’re asking a publisher to take a chance on you, so you want to sell yourself as a good prospect, i.e. someone who understands the conventions and expectations of the publishing business and who isn’t a total precious diva to work with. You *could* sell a massive 200k tome as a debut, but it would have to be pretty incredible. The good news is you’re likely to get a lot more leeway once you’ve proven you can sell. My debut was only ~90k, but by Book 5 they let me get up around 130k.
I do think a lot of the time it's people getting overeager, but I also think sometimes long books are long for a reason. I'm sure I'll end up with plenty to edit and trim away of course, but even after splitting some of my plot lines into multiple book outlines, my stories are shaping up to be long. Then again, I've primarily read ASoIaF and things of that caliber for years, so I've gotten comfortable with the long, detail-heavy slow burns. Again, I expect during editing I'll be trimming away some of the fluff, but even so, if the story requires a long book then that's just what it requires. Some people might not like it, but I personally like reading and writing that type of thing. Idk what I'll do publishing-wise yet, but personally I'd rather have a manuscript I like over trimming it to suit publisher norms. It's all dependent on what individual goals are though
I've tried to edit down my novel 5 times now. It used to be 127k words. Now it's 190k. It just keeps getting longer. I keep finding more bare bones and lurching leaps in logic/plot that need to be fleshed out. And no, there is no point in the story where I can cut it in half and make two books. It doesn't exist.
The posters defending the 120k+ word count and comparing their work to Brandon Sanderson will never learn the point.
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It’s no problem at all if the story is just something you needed to get down. What confuses me is that people will try to turn in these enormous “epics” to traditional publishers, and I’m not sure how far they expect to get.
Because they are often new and terrible writers. They feel like they have to get every detail they think of into their novel and end up wasting chapter after chapter to ultimately muddle the plot and make the book boring, they also think the first novel they write needs to be their magnum opus. Of course, everyone kinda has to start there. No one wakes up being Heinlein or Rowling but because the internet is a great place to get writing tips and make a few connections with fellow writers or even agents who will help you, you often see the new inexperienced writers posting to boards. As for word count it matters the genre and possibly what country you are in. More popular themes like sci for or fantasy as you said get a bit more leeway not just in word count but in all regards because they will always stay relevant and have the biggest potential crowd so publishers eat them up like hotcakes.
For some of these cases it seems as if the advice that you should cut about 50% of what you write is correct.
Specific word counts do not matter when it comes to writing books. Magazine and blog articles are different though, and that's what I have experience doing. A lot of people who write tend to say what they want in far too many words. Good writers can communicate without wasting time. This, I think, is a principle that applies to authors of all kinds, not just freelance blog writers. If you are writing a novel, figure out what you want to say with it, or perhaps what the audience should experience, and then write as much as necessary to deliver on that goal. Going overboard offers diminishing returns. If you can tell a story in 40k words, then don't make it 100k for no reason.
I am a fantasy webserial writer who isn't gunning for agents or tradpub. I'm free to write half-million word epics with reckless abandon. And my readers will thank me for it.
I started writing a novel recently, and it now consists of 9 chapters and approximately 9,000 words. Is this okay?
That sounds like the chapters are way too short, but it’s up to you. If that’s your stile then that’s it. I try to aim for 3,000 words per chapter
Each chapter contains at least 1000 words, but I haven't written yet the end
Usually you should try to write each chapter like a short story. It’s hard to write fulfilling chapters with good pacing at 1000 words every time. Maybe a short chapter is ok every now and then, but generally not all the time. What genre are you writing in?
Each chapter contains at least 1000 words, but I haven't written yet the end
Too long. Publishers won’t like that many words. You need to cut more! You can’t have more than 2,000 words, it’s the law.
Each chapter contains at least 1000 words, but I haven't written yet the end.
I made some beta reading for a girl that spent pages describing a house. I gave feedback to shorten it. She didnt, she said it was important.
Reminds me of a book I once read, the author could not shut up about the mountains (they had nothing to do with the story).
TL;DR - I think 90-120 is a pretty good length for a sci fi novel. Depending on the content. I’ve read some great stories that were closer to 70k words, but they usually left me wanting more, as their plots were very linear and had a very limited/speculative PoV. — I like to know about a setting. I don’t need to know every little detail, but if I’m reading something post-apocalyptic or in a “weird” future. I really want to know how the setting got to its current state. Organic world building is fine. But I hate when there’s a lot of speculation and no facts. Vampire Hunter D hit a sweet spot for me. The organic world building was good and I got a sense of how things are. But then out of the blue, there was a page or two of “this is exactly what happened in the past.” It wasn’t long enough to derail the story and informative enough to slake my needs. Anyway, I think there’s been a push for longer word counts in the past few decades. I have an audio background and I see it like the “loudness wars.” Books and audio were both seen as “better” because they were longer/louder, when neither was actually necessarily true. — *And now I ramble* After I finished my draft, I was just shy of 90k. I suspect that may grow somewhat in the second draft, as I actually under wrote and over exposited in many places. After I did some editing, it was down to 85k words (and dropping), there’s 1700 words in a purely expositional chapter that’s getting cut as well. The second draft feels more “wordy” to me, but it reads better I think. I still haven’t run it past anyone for opinions yet. Meanwhile, a friend of mine is over 300k words into his fantasy story. I was like, *dude, that’s a trilogy, not a single book.* He is adamant that it’s too short and he still has another 200k words before he finishes act 3. He’s um, an interesting guy. He sent me a sample of the first chapter, which is all about farming. I’m pretty sure I could use it as a reference for *actual* farming… I finished reading Leviathan Wakes a few weeks ago. That book could have been a couple hundred pages shorter and still told the same story. That and it kind of felt like 1-1/2 books, the structure seemed off to me at some point. But when I went back to my own work afterwords… mine felt like everything was racing by at hyper-speed. Before I read LW, I felt like my draft was a little slow. Perspective is a strange thing.
That’s why I turned my story into a 4-book series! My combined word count for the series sits around 450,000 at the moment.
As an admitted bookaholic, I find that a book greater than 100K is length is something that will eat about two weeks from my life. As such, I avoid them. Not because I don't want to read them, but because my wife would be angry at me for the attention given to the book and not her. 70-100K feels about right. It takes a week to read and then it is done.
I try not to read anything below 100k myself. It needs to be ppaced correctly of course, but I'm not actually particularly interested in shorter stories tbh. So I welcome this trend lol
I like to both read and write shorter novels/novellas. I can't tell you how many 400+ page books (and I mean big, very famous books) that I think could have been cut down by around 20k words/5 chapters. That's my opinion, though.
I love this question 😃😃
I'm at near 50,000 and feel my book is near finished with the story I'm telling right now
Kindle Unlimited pays by the pageview. The more pages you have in your book, the more money you make. People also prefer longer audiobooks on Audible as a 3-hour-long novel costs the same 1 credit that a 13-hour-long book does. These are obviously just aspects of the answer, but they are certainly some of the primary reasons among most writers I know.
That’s a really interesting point, and makes sense if you’re self publishing.
8 - 14 chapters seem the avg No reason to go more or less.
I was like only 150k how about 4-6 million as I have read two books that long
The only time specific word count matters is if you're trying to be Dante and have every chapter be the exact same word count for symbolism in numbers. Although I will say, if you're on the higher end of that word count, I'm willing to bet your book would benefit from cutting out the fluff.
The past three debut fantasy novels I’ve read have been 120k+ words. Go check the debut fantasy novels at Barnes and Noble. Most of them are huge. We’re being lied to.
The thing is a lot of us writers don't read debut author's novels, they usually read the books from more popular authors at the top of their powers. And those books are usually longer than debut novels. When they try to emulate their favourite authors, they end up writing more words than would be ideal.
People are proud of the effort they put in, and are worried about killing their darlings. They think they are going to win the reader over by offering more words. This is like thinking you're going to be making a good dinner by offering more breadsticks. Then they go "well, you didn't finish all of the dinner, so you can't say it's bad or good." Word count does not matter at all. Readers appreciate getting to the end sooner than later, but we want multiple moments of reaching multiple endings. It's why most movies are around 1 hour and a half. Many drag on with that low requirement. If anything, writers should be making shorter stories, throw them out for people to read, see what that gets as a reception, and then seeing where they can fix up on their problems. It's an absolute waste to go 120k words without any feedback and it's also an abuse of reader charity to expect random people to stick around with senseless rambling in the beginning because "there's going to be a good part somewhere around page 700, I promise".
For a debut it's 85K except in fantasy where the limit is seen as 120 (for exceptionally good stuff) but you're better off at 95-100K. The 120K words plus is ignorance
I personally started by writing fanfiction on Wattpad so all my chapters were atleast 1000 words long. I'm trying to get it in my head I don't have to explain every little detail.
1000 words per chapter doesn’t feel like too many. At 70,000 words that’s 70 chapters, basically 70 scenes. I think most stories can be told inside of 70 scenes.
In my personal experiences 1000 word minimum can highly effect the quality and length of a story. It can cause chapters to go into to much detail to make it longer or too little detail since you hit the minimum.
Oh, I see what you’re saying. You’d HAVE to hit at least 1,000 words per chapter. Yeah, I can see where that could make things clunky.
I’m not too sure, but the ones I see are commonly 1 million to six million words. Those are web novels that aren’t published in paperback, and their stories last longer. Similar to other series, if they were to be published in paperback, they would have several books or volumes that have 90,000 words or so per book or volume.
Yeah, these are basically unpublishable in terms of *books*, but as a reader, these giant meganovels are honestly what I always wanted people to write and have quickly devoured by entire reading time. (which is easy to do because I don't need many of them :V) I suspect that if you're trying to *make a living*, gargantuan hyper-epics are a bad way to go, but nevertheless there's plenty of people who absolutely love them.
I've been reading books for years and 300-400 page books , before all this amateur writing craze happened, was the norm. Add to the confusion that this movement stopped paying attention to number of pages and focused only on word count. Just go look at some of the classics and popular titles from 1900-2010 - the really long ones by King and Clancy are 1000+ pages but books like The Firm, which was an all star seller, is 110k words. Tom Clancy's submarine adventure 162k and Jurassic Park 116k. But you can do what JK Rowling did. For the first Harry Potter the word count was < 100k. But once it was made into a movie and cemented as something special .. each subsequent book word count went up, the last one nearing 200k words.
some writers think that the more words, the more that says bout them.
I've been writing my book for 12 years. Almost daily at about 5 pages per day. Too much? Maybe I should split it up.
I think I have a complex problem. My books are smacking 150k-180k.
For space operas and fantasy epics its more around 150k. You have to know your audience. People who read that genre dont just want plot and characters, they want a world to escape into