This past weekend I was at a bar with a few folks from work and the topic of writing and fantasy novels came up. This, to me, is always a perilous moment. Compared to a lot of writers, I’m not altogether that enthusiastic with talking about my writing projects with strangers (you know, aside from having a blog that is url’d with my name, where I literally talk about my writing projects with strangers…). But someone mentioned that I was working on getting published and inevitably someone else asked: “How long is your book?”

A book’s length is not measured by its pages. The same book can have diverging page counts depending on the dimensions of its print, font, or file (which is why ebooks can be so fickle to navigate). This is why publishers, editors, agents, and (god willing) most writers gauge their work based on the word count.

 

Yours

Imagine a seedy bar tucked between the cobbles of a depilated London scene, where writers congregate to whisper about arcane and unknown things (like “paychecks”) in hushed, gin-soaked tones. It’s dank and quiet until the bartender juts his chin at a new patron clutching a manuscript to his chest and asks, “Wots yer genre?”

“Young adult,” says the nascent novelist.

“Word count?”

“One hundred n’ ten.”

A prickling tension simmers across the room carried on the wry chuckle of the bartender. The answer teases at the tongues of the more embittered dwellers. There are sneers, then shouts. Fights break out. People abuse punctuation. Someone breaks a chair over someone else’s back. And then, abruptly, everyone leaves and blogs about it.

Do you see it? Good, you’ve just imagined the AbsoluteWrite forums (or really any writing forum, I suppose). Word counts, as with any standard in any art form, are as rapidly obliterated as they are reiterated, and they come with a nearly amusing amount of debate. But publishers do keep them in mind, as do agents, and so should you. A more comprehensive (and, albeit, accredited) list of traditional word counts based on genre/market category can be found here. But, to give you an idea, here’s a breakdown for what you should be targeting.

Literary/Commercial Fiction: 80,000-110,000 — This is a huge category, and there are many commercial successes that break that 110k limit, but it’s rather rare and not advised. Agents will screen projects out that are viewed as needlessly cumbersome, especially if this is your debut. Stick to around 100k.

Romance: 40,000 – 100,000 — Romance is a type of story, which means it can be written in many different sub-genres (like paranormal romance, or historical romance, or both if you’re feeling nasty and have a thing for the word ‘teet’). Minimums are important here, so aim for the happy middle of 80k. There is a ton of competition in this category, and you’re more likely to catch an agent if you’ve already done some editing.

Young Adults Fiction (YA): 60,000 – 100,000 — This genre is fickle because, since the market has shifted towards these adventure blockbusters, word counts have fluctuated dramatically (see THEIRS section below). Traditionally, the uppermost limit for YA is around 80-90k words, but it’s not uncommon to see higher. With the drastic overlap YA allows into other genres, it can be difficult to assess where your own work fits in. Try to not go above 100k unless you’re writing in high fantasy, science fiction, or dystopian.

New Adult (NA): 70,000 – 100,000 — Same as YA, New Adult comprises many sub-genres, and therefore harbors a drastic variation. I personally like longer counts in this category, since these titles are geared towards older readers. However, over-shooting counts in this category for debut novelists runs the risk of soliciting and outright and enthusiastic rejection, much like that U2 album that mysteriously forced itself onto everyone’s iTunes.

Science Fiction and Fantasy: 90,000 – 130,000 — A huge part of a great science fiction/epic fantasy story is the utter and complete immersion into a well-conceived world. Conversely, there’s nothing worse than a thinly constructed context for adventures in this genre. Readers of the Epic categories read for this immersion, so if you’re finding your novel on the thin side, it’s going to feel thin to readers who hunger for dense, well-built worlds.

Middle Grade: 35,000 — Obviously not every middle grade book is exactly 35k words. But most of them are near this benchmark. Seeing as how middle grade novels are written for, well, you know, middle graders, you’ll want to exercise brevity with those multi-chapter para-political manifestos (I’m looking at you, Ayn Rand), and just tell a good, simple story, preferably with a dog sidekick.

 

Theirs

I think the best way to illustrate this is to map out some popular titles and their word counts.

• The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe: 36,363
• The Great Gatsby: 47,094 (and approximately 1/3 are the words “old” and “sport,” usually used in tandem)
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: 77,325
• The Hunger Games: 101,000 (interestingly enough, all three The Hunger Games books are almost exactly the same length, where as JK Rowling couldn’t help but double her word count between her first and last HP installments)
• Divergent: 105,000 (and here’s a neat post by V. Roth talking all about her process with editing)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 198,227
• Lord of the Rings: 455,000
• Infinite Jest: 543,709 (yikes, David!!!!)
• Atlas Shrugged: 561,996 (double yikes, Ayn!!)
• The Bible (Old and New Testaments Double Feature): 774,746 (Yaaaas God YAS! Praise! Hefty and a half, even for the Epic Fantasy genre!)

Mine

For all my spouting about this and that word count, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an absolute mess when it comes to this dimension of my own work. I’m a wordier writer, and a large part of my current process is parring down on my current manuscript. When I finished the initial first draft I was clocking in at about 140k, nearly twice as long as any NA novel has any business being, and for a while I considered producing this project as three separate novellas.

But then I’d have to tell people I was a Novellalist, which sounds like a spell from Harry Potter that turns its victims into flagrantly gay, bespectacled trolls. (So, Truman Capote.)

And THEN I’d have to admit to having written an Omnibus–a bunch of novels published all together–which just sounds like what an old-timer white person might yell if they fell down a staircase they didn’t expect. Omnibus!!!!! Powgafudge!!!!! Flopadoodle-dooo!!!!

So I revised. Revised, with knives and scalpels and lots of coffee.

Right now, I’m querying a manuscript at (a still hefty) 110k words. I’m sure I’ll suffer some outright rejections based on length alone (yikes, this sentence!), but I’m hesitant to edit out too much content without an agent’s supervision (see? I saved it). Like, what if I edit out that one sentence that Janet Reid tweets? What if I delete the phrase that someone pastes over the photo of a sunset, and permanently eliminate my chances of becoming Pinterest royalty?

It could happen to anyone. It could happen to me!

So 110k it is, for now, which–you guessed it–makes me a hypocrite!

And FYI: Hypocrite also sounds like one of those old-timey cusses. Just saying.