Novel length

I’m working on edits, and in the back of my mind, thinking about the overall word count. Reading all kinds of industry blogs, you learn what an “acceptable” word count is — 90,000 to 150,000, roughly, depending on the type of book or genre. Romance is generally at the low end or shorter, urban/paranormal fantasy more toward the middle, historical fiction toward the end of that range. Literary fiction is somewhere in the middle. Epic fantasy is at the higher end, and often surpasses it.

Keeping in mind that 75,000 is roughly a 200 page book, when you get up toward 150,000 words, then you’ve got a meatier book on (or in?) your hands. You start moving past that, you begin to enter BFB territory: Big Fucking Brick. Which is why epic fantasy is sometimes called brick fantasy. Or doorstop fantasy.

Well, mine comes in just under 250,000 words, so it’s not just a brick, it’s a cement block. True, it’s epic fantasy, but I’m concerned about that word count, not gonna lie. Which isn’t to say I’m going to start cutting things just to cut them, but I’m trying to be judiciously ruthless as I work through drafts, seeing if there’s anything I can tighten further, or shorten, or remove entirely.

Short of cutting out entire plot lines, however, I don’t see it getting down to, say 200,000. I’ve read that agents/editors won’t reject an ms out of hand due to a high word count, that if it grabs them from the beginning then they’ll make it work (though it’ll no doubt mean some painful cutting in the editing stage), but I admit I’m nervous about that big number that’ll appear in my query letter and the top right corner of my ms. Querying is hard enough as it is, as is getting your ms noticed in the pile of submittals and slush.

There’s not a whole lot I can do about it, other than to make the story the very best I possibly can, work hard on writing an outstanding query, and try to make myself shine enough for a potential agent to look past that scary number and keep reading.

Comments

[Jeena]

As someone who edits for a living, I think it's almost always possible to cut down more and more text. When I do any writing of my own, I figure that about a 1/3 of what I think needs to say is going to be overkill. Sometimes its hard for me to get out of my own head and let go of the pretty phrases I want to include, even though the idea has already been communicated twice.

Which is also why I really value having someone else edit my work. There's nothing like that somewhat-removed perspective to lend fresh eyes to a paragraph.

I bet you can cut this down even more than you think! And if not, I think it's fine to let the editor be the bad guy! :D

[Writer's Cramp]

Jeena: I know you keep reassuring me that I'll be able to cut it down. In fact, your confidence in me is the only thing keeping me from curling up in a fetal position.

But you're sooooo right on the fresh eyes perspective. That's exactly why your help has been so indispensable!