Wednesday, July 31, 2013

How Long Should A Novel Really Be?

Now that I'm in the full thralls to my book, I've recently been doing a lot of research on how long a novel should be, and am finding that word count appears to be a very confusing yet highly important topic.

There a numerous guidelines out there on this subject.  One source will tell you that anything over 40,000 words is considered a novel, yet others advise that you to have 50,000, 80,000, 100,000 and more.   No wonder new writers are perplexed!  And you can't simply ignore this issue either.  National Novel Writing Month requires that a novel be at least 50,000 words.  Yet some agents/publishers won't even read your work if it's not a certain word length (70,000-80,000 for example).  I actually can understand the theory behind this, knowing that once you are lucky enough to start going through the editing phase with a publisher, a huge chunk of your work is going to end up on the cutting room floor.  So where on earth do you begin, and more importantly where do you end?

Well, I found many examples that both support and contradict the above word count statements.  According to Indefeasible, a blogger who has done quite extensive research on the the topic, some of the greats tally in on the low end such as:  Fahrenheit 451 (46,118 words), Slaughterhouse-Five (49,459 words), The Color Purple (66,556 words), and The Sun Also Rises (67,707 words).  Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum you have Lonesome Dove (365,712 words), Atlas Shrugged (561,996), and of course I'd be remiss not to mention War and Peace (587,287 words).

So in looking at all of these mind-blowing figures I have come to the final conclusion that I will just write my book and see where it ends up.  Having just recently surpassed the 55,000 word mark, and knowing that I still have a little more story in me to go, I'm pretty confident that I'll end up with at least the minimum amount of words.  Then, once I am finished, I will go back and polish until I am satisfied that it is indeed "done".  I'm going to go with the theory that too much is better than too little.  While I'm not going to add a bunch of fluff just for the sake of word count, if there is something I feel I can add that might enhance the story, then I will add it.  It can always be cut later.

So off I go again, pounding out those words and ideas in the early morning hours before work and in the evening hours if I have anything left in me.  If at anytime you'd like to track my progress, I have added a word count progress bar on the right side of my blog with a loosely estimated "target" of 70,000 words.

Happy writing fellow authors and thank you for your support future readers!

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