If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel, “Train Wreck”, and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile, this post is for writers and readers alike and more questions than answers…
Whether you are a pithy poster of blog pieces or a verbose vendor of sagas, how much do you think about the length of the pieces you write or if you are a reader, do you have a length which you feel comfortable with and reader or writer, how does that vary with the category of writing?
These days, does anybody formally describe their book as a novella rather than a short novel? There are all sorts of guides, rules and categories but since I am writing a science fiction novel I understand that they are allowed to be longer than the publishing industry standard because of all the descriptions of new worlds that might be expected. Wikipedia has an article about the Hugo Nebula Awards who specify the lengths for competition categories.
From this, you can see that the novel word count begins at 40K which seems quite small went many other authorities suggest 90K for the average fiction novel – up to 120K for SciFi. One of my favourite “SciFi” authors – Kurt Vonnegut, used to give ideas for short stories to a fictional SciFi author who pops up in many of his books – Kilgore Trout – which I always assumed was because he had many ideas for stories that he couldn’t be bothered to flesh out and they demonstrate that you can convey the essence of some stories in no more than a paragraph…
So I have now reached that magical 40K which means that I can stop worrying about the length and just write what I feel I need to include – but if any of read the story so far – do you agree? Do you have a sense of “Train Wreck” being halfway through (or less) or do you think it needs a great deal more?
I have been involved with graphic design for 50 years since I joined the Printing Society at school and learned to set lead type. Later, in my first proper job, I designed forms and booklets for the Greater London Council and everything we sent to the (optical) typesetter, had to be counted up and the size of the type and its line-spacing calculated first – a process known as casting-off and very tedious it was… I have just scanned a page of Iain M Banks “Hydrogen Sonata” with my phone camera, character recognised the image and posted it into a word programme to obtain a word count of 298 words per page and since the novel has 605 pages, then this hefty paperback has a whopping 180,290 words and with the depth of Iain’s imagination and comprehensively developed “Culture” books, one does not tire of his books at any length.
Also, from that period of graphic design is the boilerplate text known as “Lorem ipsum” which is shown at the top of this post. Because it is in Latin, it is used to mock-up a design where you don’t want viewers to be distracted by the meaning of the content. Even in Latin, it is quite meaningless and you can find it on the web if you need to use it.
So should one play by “the Rules” or follow your heart on the length of the book – please give me your feelings, general or specific – go on – hit that comment box…
The topic of word count for novels keeps popping up on my timeline. Personally, I do like to adhere to the average overall count, but only if it doesn't compromise the story. That said, I'm a short story writer so my parameters are different from what need to be set for a novel.
Good luck with your novel. 🙂
Excellent question on the word count.
For blog posts: apart from pictures I feel a reader should not be required to scroll down miles and miles in order to read the post. Paragraphs help immensly and allow for short breaks.
Books: if I like the content and it's written brilliantly, I don't care how long it is. In terms of sales a publisher will probably want to break it up into 2 or 3 bands.
Thank you for your kind comment 🙂
Like Tamara, I don't care if it's a novel, a novella, a novelette (love this name!) or a short story, if it's good, no matter the number of words or pages!
SciFi and fantasy it seems are accepted as being longer than literary novels. Personally, I think so long as the story justifies the word count then short or long is fine. There are some writers who seem to want to hit a word count even if the story doesn't justify it – I'm looking at you Lee Child and Jack Reacher – most of those books need about 200 pages taken out of them!
https://iainkellywriting.com/2021/04/28/the-state-trilogy-a-z-guide-x/
My opinion, and it's not an uncommon one, is that "Harry Potter" revolutionized the word count for Children's Books, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi alike. Maybe it was other authors, too, but why not pick on the wizard boy? (Whom I love dearly, for the record). Anyway, pre-Harry we had fantasy and sci-fi in nice 50K chunks, 90K for the epic sagas. And then you read the trilogy or devoured the series. That's pretty much the way people thought of it. Take the core Star Wars (May the 4th be with you tomorrow!) – nine planned books! OK, movies, but I think the writer was an epic novelist at heart. If you want an actual novel example, there's the Pern Series.
Post-Harry though, books are allowed to be longer, especially if they are written for an adult audience, because we need that many words to really feel the epic world the author is building for us! If the kids can handle 77K to 190K, then adults can handle it more, right?
But a long word count the reader just can't get into is a lot worse than a quick read. With a quick read, at least the reader doesn't feel too invested in it, and will maybe grab the next one if it wasn't too bad.
But I just found your blog (Thanks for stopping by!) and I haven't followed your serial, so I can't say whether I'd enjoy the rest or not.
Hi Jen, I know you weren’t following my novel “Train Wreck” – included in the earlier posts in April, but I have now published another chapter and also links to all the reviews of sites that I wrote on the Road Trip so far plus quick links to all the AtoZ posts which it makes it easier should you want to have a read…
Yours
Andrew
https://how-would-you-know.com/atoz-2021-challenge