each of his novellas were around the 120,000 mark anyway

Crikey! Can they really be described as novellas then?

Interviewed Andrew Taylor recently and he made the point that his first submission was around 120K words the feedback he received was much too long, trim off about 50k words.

he aid it felt as if he was murdering his first born but re worte it to the raget and found he had written a much better novel and the rest is history.

Back to Stephen King - he had to do that with The Stand, but years later, rereleased the unedited version.

Personally I've only read the short version. Which was long enough.

Been playing with the text stats on Amazon.com. Brilliant stuff. Very useful.

Colin M

54,000 words! Hah! My first completed attempt weighed in at 34,000 (if I recall correctly). I remember choosing a slim paperback from my bookshelf and counting the words on several pages, taking an average and doing the math. Came to 70k (oddly, exactly the level being discussed here - though I suspect this was chance).

I went back to my story and thought of doubling it.

As it happened, when I began to study why my story was so short I found it was a combination of factors, not just that the plot didn't justify anything longer.

1) Everything was 'wham, bam!', no-one every simply sat down and talked or planned anything - there was no 'down time' for the characters, no getting ready, eating, drinking, walking to somewhere. Even in novels which are virtually all action (Cussler, mentioned in the 'Comfort Reading' thread being a good example) there are still plenty of quiet moments.

2) I was short on description. Reading the work as though I didn't know it I realised that many of my scenes were mere sketches and that to someone else they wouldn't provide a good visual image.

3) There was nothing 'off topic'. Everything I had written was only about the story then and there. There was no back story to the characters, no history of the locations, no 'talk' about the town or the countryside. Stephen King takes this to an extreme but I had none of it at all.

4) And, of course, the plot wasn't up to it

Personally I really like my reading matter long. I like to immerse myself in the world being created and, reading at the speed I do, anything less than 120k goes by too quickly. Unfortunately, I think that it must be very difficult to write 'long' (as opposed to the piece of cake it is to write normally ) while keeping pace and not 'rambling'. Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy is HUGE but seems to be rattling along the whole time. I'm not sure I could ever achieve that.

Jon

My word counts have been all over. My first was spot on at 70k. As soon as I got there I thought, "right, that's it. Book finished. Time to put an ending in."

It doesn't take much imagination to guess it wasn't much good. - thankfully a long time ago. Since then I've been up to 96k and down to 47k, but the one I've just finished does everything I want at only 30,000 words. In fact, I ended up editing out a whole subplot to keep the story simple. I suppose you have to weigh up the story you want to tell vs the target audience, their expectations and tenacity. Not everyone can cope with a novel thick enough to stop a truck.

Colin M

Using the text stat feature on Amazon.com I found that Fight Club only weighs in at the 48k mark and Generation X by Douglas Coupland at 53k so it's possible to get away with short novels but how short is another thing.

Geoff

Well my novel is aimed at younger readers, hopefully 9-12, so it isn't unusual to have scripts this short. What it does show me is just how overly long my last effort was. It's a really useful tool to have.

My first novel was roughly 200,000. After revisions and editing, the published version will be just over 120,000! The new book is 125,000 words. I always think a book should be as long as it has to be, but somehow I seem to gravitate to the 120,000 mark. Perhaps it has a lot to do with one's personal sense of pace?

Reading wise, I can happily read an good epic without getting bored. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell left me wishing for more, and that book is pretty hefty.

JB

I've just measured mine. It's 29.7 cm.

I'm trying my best to resist making a daft remark.

JB