I've now written 30,000 words of my current novel, and am realizing that this one may be finished at 70,000.
My last one was approx, 92,000. I've read several times that publishers expect novels to be 90,000 - 100,000 words long? Should I be concerned? I know rules about this sort of thing aren't necessarily there to be followed, but I don't want to lessen my chances of being fished out of the slush pile by a covering letter saying the script is only 70,000 long...

I'd appreciate any views on this.

Sammy

Sammy, I see why you're worried, but any publisher with any sense would rather have a novel where every one of 70,000 words counts, than one fattened-up by another flabby 20,000 words that don't really need to be in there. And certainly to insist on 90-100,000 seems ridiculously prescriptive.

For what it's worth, when I've discussed it with friends in the trade, the verdict seems to be that anything between 75-80,000 and 120,000 wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Are you writing in a genre, or literary fiction? Slim volumes are fine in the latter, I would say, whereas different genres have different traditions.

If it's coming 'short', there could be a number of reasons, each of which might prompt a different solution.

Does the first draft lay down the bones of the plot rather barely? It's a great way of making sure structure and pace work, but you may want to go back and put some muscle (but not fat) on the bones, so that we feel place and feeling and character so on more vividly. You know all these things very well, and can conjure them up in your mind, but the reader wants and needs more help. Many trainee-novelists are so commendably drunk on words that they over-write. It's more rarely recognised - or talked about - that under-writing is also a risk.

Are you concentrating on one main plot? That can also make things seem bare and under-developed, and wastes opportunities: you may want to divert the action a bit to develop promising minor characters fully, or to explore a different take on the main themes of the novel - a comic version of infidelity, say, to balance the main, serious one. If you concentrate on developing minor characters more, you'll probably find they quite naturally grow their own sub-plots, which will beef up the word-count as a side-effect. You may then find that the main plot and characters need developing more to keep its dominance, and bingo, it gets even more substantial.

You could try simply adding another element. A novel I wrote was coming short but it was intricately plotted, and I couldn't see how to make it longer. Then I added a series of diary entries by one of the more minor characters. It was very useful - solved the back-story problem - but also I found it did all sorts of other, more subtle things about exploring different points of view and enriching the world I was trying to create. Several people said it was the best bit of the book.

If you think not, 'this must be longer', but 'this must be more substantial', it might help: you're adding substance to your world, not just extra words. Whether you go back now and work on what you've done then, carry on from here in the new style, or whether you finish the first draft in your current form, and then go back and change it, I'm not sure; it depends whether going back to get it right will damage your forward momentum, or give you more confidence to push on.

In the end, a novel has to be the right length for itself. Something only reads 'too short' if it feels unsatisfying, and 'too long' if it gets boring. If you're absolutely sure that everything is written about in as much (or as little) detail as is right, that you have as many plots and characters and as much action as you need, and none of it is superfluous, then a good agent or editor won't be worrying about length.

Emma

I think it depends how you write, Sammy, and I know it can be misleading to use what you’ve already done to accurately predict the final wordcount.

I know we’ve all heard the one about the second draft being the first draft minus 10% - I don’t necessarily agree with that. I tend to write my first draft very lean; lacking narrative description, often whole passages of dialogue with no action at all. Then, in the next draft, I build on it, adding texture and body.

I’d suggest you keep writing and see what you have at the end of the first draft, but ask yourself these questions. Do you have enough threads? Enough twists in the plot? Is the story complex enough for your market? Sometimes the answers don’t appear until later in the process.

Dee

Emma

Thanks for that. I love the image of adding on muscle and not fat. I was worried, that if i tried to increase the wordcount, it would end up with poor quality writing, but I can now see that, if I decide i want to do this , there are various ways of doing it.
At the moment I am happy with the main plot and I have one sub-plot. If I'm honest, it's probably the characters which could do with beefing up.

Which brings me on to your point,

Dee.
Thanks,again. I too, am writing quite a lean first draft, especially as I am trying a new genre this time - a sort of chick lit for the middle-aged woman, witty, punchy (hopefully), but as a consequence there's a lot less narrative description than in my first novel and it's very heavily dialogue-based. I guess the answer again, which I realized in another thread, is to put a lot of time and effort into the second draft.

Sammy

Hi Sammy

My novel comes in at around 78,000 words, which sounds quite slim compared to most, but it's what the novel came in at (i remind/console myself that gatsby's only about 178 pages) and also, however much i tried to avoid coming in at 13 chapters, i knew from around chapter 4 that it was going to be unavoidable... i guess the book really does decide its own length... something about that number thirteen that's followed me around my whole life... born on 13th hour, on the 13th day (the 3rd in my profile is a typo which i havent changed) of the 13th month of the decade.. grew up in house number 13, first flat was number thirteen, currently live on floor thirteen, and first novel has 13 chapters... i saw margaret atwood give an interview once and it seems she's very superstitious about numbers.. something about she doesnt have an odd (or could've been even) number of chapters, and doesn't go for multiples of three or something... odd.. sorry, completely off message..!

Hi Sammy

I guess a lot of my questions show my lack of experience/lack of confidence.Because I've read several times that a novel should be around 100,000 words, I haven't the confidence to say well,so what,
mine's brilliant at only 70,000. My latest one is having read somewhere that a hero and heroine should always meet in the first chapter...mine don't meet til chapter 4.
Hey, my husband was born on the 13th, we live at number 13...maybe it's something to do with the name 'Sammy'!

Sammy

SammyJay

I think everyone who starts writing flails around looking for advice, guidelines, rules... anything to help get a grip on which words of all the available millions need to come next. And yes, it takes confidence to reject advice that seems to come from an authoritative source. In certain moods, an authoritative source is anyone except oneself!

There are some rules that are a good place to start, and a bad straight-jacket to stay in - Show Don't Tell is a good example. Write What You Know I don't like as a guideline, on the other had there are plenty of newbie writers who should have it tattooed on both hands.

There are some rules that are right for some writers and wrong for others. I used to get really worried because so much advice on revising said cut-cut-cut and my revisions are almost always add-add-add (I suspect you might be the same). Eventually I had the confidence to say, 'no, that's not me.' Which isn't to say that I don't cut things in revision, heavens no! Just that the beast usually ends up bigger (musclier, sinewier) rather than smaller.

And there are some rules which are made after the fact by editors and agents to explain their sense of what works, what sells, and what doesn't. (The exception is when you're writing to a very tight formula indeed - M&B comes to mind - where your craft is put to the service of the brand.) Just because they look at successful Romances, say, and notice that they tend to be a certain length doesn't mean that yours must be if it naturally isn't. It's the same reason that it's hopeless trying to write for whatever someone's told you the current market wants. And if they say 'it's too long for a thriller' what they mean is, 'yours feels too long because it sags in the middle'.

As you say yourself, it's lack of confidence that makes one cling to rules. The best way to develop confidence is to work consciously to make your writing better, and to read tons of the best writing you can lay your hands on. No one ever wrote worse Chick Lit for being steeped in the Brontës. The stronger your sense of how good writing - yours or someone else's - really works, the stronger your instinct will be about when advice and rules are good or bad.

Emma

<Added>

Sorry, I realise that came over very preachily. Not my intention at all...

Emma

I think what you say makes utter sense, and the more I participate in WW, the more I realize that I should believe in myself a little bit more, and stop trying to please this fantasy figure in my head of the agent/publisher who might accept my work.

The other thing I'm realizing is that I don't and haven't been reading nearly enough, something which I am trying to remedy...

Sammy

Yes, that fantasy of agent/editor is probably your Inner Judge, successfully disguised and brandishing a glass of warm Chardonnay at your fantasy launch. Real agents and editors want you to please them by writing your book

I know that when I started writing, I felt I should be reading more, yet I actually read less, because I felt I 'ought' to read certain big names, and that I 'ought' to be reading very analytically, noticing everything.

I joined a reading group, which was great because it did make me read things I'd never have done otherwise. I'm so glad I read Philip Roth's The Human Stain. Boy can the man write! Boy can he write The Great American Novel. And I'll never have to read another of his, which is good too! And I wouldn't have missed Touching the Void for anything, though the writing's only adequate and I'm allergic to travel literature.

But I also realised that training your instincts needs to be done partly by reading instinctively, and that going back to my old habit of swallowing books whole worked just as well as analysing them, and restored the pleasure in reading too. If I think, 'goodness, this is exciting!' I might try to work out why, but mostly I'm just turning the pages and feeling guilty because it's 2am.

Emma

You're making me feel very predictable, Emma, because at the moment I am going through a phase of thinking I 'ought' to be reading so-and-so, to improve my writing.

Having said that, I've just finished reading the Da Vinci Code, which I found compulsive, even though, I know, in certain circles his writing is not considered something to which one should aspire. At least he's given me the confidence to stop worrying that my chapters are too short!

Sammy

Sammy, DVC must be doing something right, for so many people to have enjoyed it. Being able to tell a story so that 4 million people can't bear not to keep going till the end of 400 pages or whatever it is, is quite a skill, and I take my hat off to Brown for that. For a lesson in the writing powerful, subtle, satisfying prose, maybe he's not your man. (My current pinup for doing that is Michael Cunningham's The Hours. Most beautifully-written book I've read in years, and very short too).

In a way, I don't think it matters what you read, as long as you stretch yourself a bit beyond your defaults, because you've already learnt what there is to be learnt about them. I started a thread a while back about books you're embarrassed not to have read, and it spawned some surprising ones, and some interesting discussion about this business of 'ought'. I haven't read Lord of the Rings, but don't in the least feel I 'should' have, but the Tolstoy-shaped hole in my read-list is something I'd only admit to in a whisper, in literate company.

Emma

I have gone ahead and bought Carole Blake's book - I had to swallow my pride, seeing as she offered it to me at a discount in a rejection letter (i bought it from Amazon!)
BUT i have to say, it is full of useful information on writing, how to improve your work and is EXTREMELY insightful into the business of being an agent.

She says that most succesful commercial novels are about 100,000, and that anything much less than this shows agents and publishers that you
'can't be bothered to learn the rules of their trade'.
Food for thought.

Sammy

I find reading to be terribly important in shaping how I write. When I first began writing my attempts were terribly shallow - and I mean that both in terms of content and word count - and I looked at the books I read to see how they differed.

The answers weren't straightforward, of course, but here's some I came up with.

1) Complexity. My first novel (and I use the term loosely) was far too simple in it's execution. A character went from A to B and that was pretty much that. Most work tends to have a character go from A to Z and all the letters inbetween. Think of the DVC - think of the steps involved and the locations brought into play. In comparison my first work would all have taken place in one room in the Louvre.

2) The ordinary world. It surprises me how much of what I read includes the ordinary life of a character who is in the midst of extra-ordinary circumstances. For example, I'm currently reading 'Trance State' by John Case and one of his MCs is still going to her daily job despite two attempts on her life and there's a fair amount of time given over to describing her 'ordinary' life. We meet her co-workers, hear about what she's currently working on and so on, even though it has no direct bearing on the plot. In the case of this particular novel, these sections serve to provide a stage for the back story and soul-searching that otherwise would have to come in some form of narrative or less realistic dialogue.

3) Detail. A tricky one to balance this but I found my early writing lacked detail in descriptive passages. I think it's tricky because it's easy to go all poetic or flowery (as I sometimes do). It's also important, in my opinion, to realise that there are passages that don't need detail because it would interfere with the action.

4) Sub-plots. My first attempt had no sub-plot at all (there wasn't room between A and B) and looking at other writing I've seen anything upwards from three sub-plots whirling around. Something like Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy has so many they'd be difficult to count (mind you, that runs to something like 4000 pages over three BIG books so...). As with 2) above, sub-plots don't have to be anything to do with the main thrust of the book, they can be just something else the character has to worry about. Is a relative ill? What's happening at work? Do they have a pet or a child? Is their car reliable? Is their landlord a pain or are they in arrears with their mortgage and so on.

There are others I picked out but I think they become more specific to me and my own weaknesses.

Jon