{"id":1121,"date":"2020-01-29T08:13:44","date_gmt":"2020-01-29T13:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2020-01-29T08:13:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-29T13:13:44","slug":"the-long-and-the-short-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/29\/the-long-and-the-short-of-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long and the Short of It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I start the post, last week I was interviewed on the pretty new Good Story Podcast, mostly about my forthcoming A Ceiling Made of Eggshells<\/em> but also about writing in general, because the podcast is for writers. My interview won\u2019t be out until May, but another may interest blog people, the interview with Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo. Here\u2019s the link: https:\/\/goodstorypodcast.com\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Onto the post.<\/p>\n

On December 4, 2019, Kyryiann wrote concerning NaNoWriMo, I ended with 60,000 words, yet still didn\u2019t finish my novel. The first draft was 76,000 words in the end.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a question: what about novel length? I like longer novels because I\u2019m a fast reader, but I know that other people like shorter novels because they can finish them in a shorter amount of time. Does novel length have anything to do with genre or audience? I would imagine that middle grade novels are usually shorter.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yay me on making it hard for myself.<\/em><\/p>\n

Writing Ballerina wrote back: I\u2019m of middle grade age, and I prefer longer novels, but I\u2019m more of a bookworm than average. A long book like LOTR or things like that are my heaven!! As such, I try to write what I\u2019d like to read and thus aim for longer word counts.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yay me on making it hard for myself.<\/em><\/p>\n

And future_famous_author wrote back, too: I have read Little Women (777 pages, but incredibly good for anyone middle grade and up), but I tend to stick to anything between 100 and 350. I know that\u2019s a wide range, but a lot of middle grade books are written in that range. Also, there is information on the Internet about lengths for different genres. A trend I see right now though is that Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are both really long and are both fantasies. I think (I may be wrong) that realistic fiction books are typically shorter than most.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m with future_famous_author that there\u2019s a lot available on the subject online. I pulled this from this site: https:\/\/careerauthors.com\/genre-book-length\/<\/a>. I picked it just because it popped up first:<\/p>\n

Readers of individual genres anticipate certain book lengths, and so do publishers. What follows is a rough guide to book length expectations in certain genres.<\/em><\/p>\n

Romance: 65,000\u201380,000 words (Most romance imprints have specific word count requirements that writers should know and observe before they submit.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Mystery: 80,000 words (Subgenres like cozies tend to be a bit shorter, often coming in at 70,000\u201380,000 words.)<\/em>
\nScience fiction: 100,000\u2013120,000 words<\/em><\/p>\n

Thriller: 90,000\u2013100,000 words<\/em><\/p>\n

True Crime: 90,000\u2013100,000 words<\/em><\/p>\n

Historical fiction: 100,000\u2013150,000 words (This may depend on the topic and demands of the marketplace.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Mainstream women\u2019s fiction: 90,000\u2013100,000 words<\/em><\/p>\n

Memoir\/Bio: 70,000\u201390,000 words<\/em><\/p>\n

Literary fiction: 80,000\u2013100,000 words<\/em><\/p>\n

Young Adult: 70,000\u201380,000 words<\/em><\/p>\n

Middle Grade: 40,000\u201350,000 words<\/em><\/p>\n

Picture books: 500\u2013700 words<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another site with somewhat different advice: https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/how-many-words-in-a-novel\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not endorsing either of these, and I\u2019m not an expert.<\/p>\n

A source I do endorse is Harold Underdown\u2019s The Complete Idiot\u2019s Guide to Publishing Children\u2019s Books<\/em>. I wrote a blurb for the book (see the back cover), and I know Harold, who is one of the most thoughtful people on the planet and a complete kidlit insider. (I don\u2019t get paid when he has a sale\u2013in case you were worrying.) I took this from page 70 of his book:<\/p>\n

Young middle grade: 48 to 60 pages;
\nmiddle grade: 80 to 160 pages, occasionally more;
\nolder middle grade: 128 to 200 pages or more;
\nYA (young adult): up to 300 pages.<\/p>\n

A double-spaced page equals about 250 words. I tend to think in pages rather than word count, and a double-spaced page seems to come out roughly to a page in a published children\u2019s novel.<\/p>\n

There are many exceptions to the average. The Newbery winning middle grade novel Sarah, Plain and Tall<\/em> is just 58 pages, roughly 8,377 words. Ernest Hemingway\u2019s The Old Man and the Sea<\/em> is very short, likewise Frank Baum\u2019s The Wizard of Oz<\/em>. At the other end of the scale, Margaret Mitchell\u2019s Gone With the Wind<\/em> weighs in at about 260,000 words–1,037 pages. When Harry Potter<\/em> first came out, it was way longer than most kids\u2019 books. Before Ella Enchanted<\/em> was published, I brought the manuscript with me to a conference to be looked at by a published kidlit author, who told me that it had to be under 200 pages if it had a shot at being published. Hah! (It’s longer.)<\/p>\n

The best writing teacher I ever had, the retired Bunny Gabel at The New School, was firmly opposed to worrying about length. She advised that a book should be no longer and no shorter than it needs to be to tell the story. I mostly agree with that, with the warning that today Margaret Mitchell would have a hard time finding an agent willing to read such a doorstopper of a manuscript\u2013and I\u2019ve read that it was much longer when she first turned it in. Publishing has changed and not always in a good way. I think publishers used to take more risks, and that attitude has been passed on to agents, who, unfortunately, are often the gate keepers.<\/p>\n

My books keep getting longer without my meaning them to. I\u2019m hoping that my current project, based on the Trojan War, won\u2019t be much above 200 pages, but I\u2019m on page 91 and I have a lot more to go.<\/p>\n

While I don\u2019t have an opinion about page count, I do have one about concision. I\u2019m a fan. We don\u2019t want flabby sentences. We want to watch our adjectives and adverbs, and we want to kill any we don\u2019t need. We pay special attention to words that weaken, like slightly<\/em> or almost<\/em>, as in, She was slightly ticked off<\/em>. If the emotion is worth mentioning, let her be ticked off. We want our writing to take a position, so that our readers will understand completely what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

And we want to keep an eye on our pacing. Are we doing anything to slow our story down, like introducing a fun incident just when things were getting exciting (as I think I just did in my manuscript)? We don\u2019t have to do anything about it in our first draft when we\u2019re spilling it out, because the fun incident may turn out to be important (pantser talk). But in revision, we should zap it if it doesn\u2019t advance our plot.<\/p>\n

Going the other way, we may be rushing our story and leaving out details that will bring it to life. Then we need more words to pick up the pace, even if that seems contradictory.<\/p>\n

Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write dialogue between Rumpelstiltskin and the miller\u2019s daughter. He has a lot to say, but she just wants to know if he can turn straw to gold. Have her keep cutting him off.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Tell a frame story and the story it\u2019s framing. Your MC is babysitting and reading to two children while a flood is rising outside their house. Decide whether or not she knows the danger they\u2019re in. Figure out a link between the frame story and the one that\u2019s being read.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Your MC gets lost on her way to visit her uncle, because he\u2019s sent for her. Imagine her on a variety of kinds of transportation, which may include plane, boat, train, taxi, camel, foot, or anything else. If this is fantasy, she can ride a magic carpet, lace up seven-league boots, or anything else. Trouble erupts on each leg of the journey. Decide how long you want the story to be, and let that determine the number of stages and the problems that come along. But if, when you start writing, you get swept up and keep going, that\u2019s fine. And if your story shape wants to be shorter, go with that.<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I start the post, last week I was interviewed on the pretty new Good Story Podcast, mostly about my forthcoming A Ceiling Made of Eggshells but also about writing in general, because the podcast is for writers. My interview won\u2019t be out until May, but another may interest blog people, the interview with Chris […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[273],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1126,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions\/1126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}