Novel Word limit on a first novel?

How many pages are in your books? Over 600?

 

The first was 544. The second was 480. I haven't seen the galleys of the third yet but I'm guessing it will come in around 430.

 

Do you mind me asking how long each of these took you to finish?
How often do you write?

 

I don't mind at all.

Keep in mind I still work a full-time day job. My writing doesn't pay enough for me to do it full time (yet). I've also been divorced for the past few years and have custody of my son half the time, so that cuts into writing time.

My first novel took several years to complete. The first draft was an absurd 280,000 words long. It took a while to cut it down and whip it into shape. I also put it aside for a while to work on other projects.

My second took me about a year. I can finish a longish novel (130,000 to 170,000) in about a year. I outline my fantasy novels in a lot of detail because they're multi-book narratives and are plot heavy. I need an outline to keep everything straight.

The YA novel I'm polishing now took me maybe six months to outline, but when I sat down to write it I completed 100,000 words in 91 days. The damn thing wrote itself.

I recently shipped off a mainstream novel to my agent. It's about 76,000 words long. I didn't outline that one since it wasn't plot driven, it was a character piece and I had a pretty good idea of the narrative trajectory. That took maybe seven months to pull together, but I was not only working full time while writing it, I was also polishing up my third novel in my fantasy series and making rewrites for my editor. Actual writing time was probably four or five months.

If I could write full time I could complete a book a year, easily. Plus get to other, smaller writing projects that right now I simply don't have time for.

My schedule right now is to write in the evenings, weekends, holidays, or vacation days -- whenever I can squeeze in a couple of hours. I'm pretty disciplined so I can force myself to sit down and just get to it.

Once my first novel was published the others in the series became a little easier. Having a book in print means certain things are now set in stone -- I can't change characters or their names or the history I've revealed, stuff I could tinker with endlessly before I was published. It narrows the possibilities, which makes it easier to focus on the story and characters at hand.

Hope this helps!

Dave

 

she was writing hundreds of years ago!... and 40k is ok only for the YA market...

writers today must go by what publishers want today, not by what someone wrote long ago [in another country, to boot--if you're writing in the us]... and publishers today want work that's 80-100k in length...

when advising beginners, it's best to do one's homework and give advice that is relevant to today's publishing world...

 

I'm just wondering, does anyone know why books like The Invisible Man or The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells are 48,000 and 43,000 words each. I didn't look at the others by him but I assume they're the same too.

...because they were published in great britain, over a century ago, and not in the us of today...

...it's only the mss that average 250 words per page... books don't stick to that figure... paperbacks will have many more words per page and hard copies will vary according to the font used and the size of the page...

you're not paying attention to what the publishers want!... sure, there are lots of shorter books... but who are they written by and when were they written?... the fact you keep ignoring is that most publishers today want mss by a new, unknown writer to be 80-100k... and anything shorter or much longer is not likely to be acceptable...

 

Yikes. I wish I would write that fast.

 

I wish I could write that fast all the time!

 

I understand now. Thanks for the clarification.

 

Are you sure about that 'tedious' comment?

I wouldn't even say that anything less than 150,000 words is BORDERING on tedious.

The last Tom Clancy book I read had over 1,000 pages, and not once did it feel like he was writing more than necessary.
A well-written story should be an adventure that the reader feels could last forever, not a moderately soothing buzz in the ear that can grow tedious if played at length.

I mean. . .right? Do you really get bored if a book goes beyond 500 pages?

 

A good point. The tedious thing I think is more of a rule of thumb than something to live and die by (the only thing I live and die by is that Saturday is the day of rest cause God says so and Christians just take Sunday off for the heck of it ). I've read many books far past 100,000 and enjoyed them. Rainbow Six was one hell of a read.

What I mean by the comment is that most stories can be told in 100,000 words to more than anyones satisfaction. The reason Clancy books are so long usually, is because there is a lot of crap in them (crap as in stuff that doesn't really need to be there). In my paperback copy of Without Remorse he spends five pages talking about the Ka-bar, two talking about the Colt .45 and 4 more on how to rig a silencer for it, 2 pages on a boat, and dozens of other pages on random things that I really didn't need to know. Of course, I do enjoy the operational history of the F14 Tomcat put right in the middle of my favorite plot lines. Your right of course, just saying Tom Clancy isn't the best example for how to write a novel XD. COurse some folks like that sort of thing but I kind of just want to story. Anyone who really enjoys his stuff probably already knows half the crap half his books contain.

So the 100,000 thing isn't absolute. I think it's fairly easy to extend a novel to well past 200,000 and still keep a readers interest with proper pacing and development, but that practically, 100,000 is where I think the good mile marker is. Its a length at which a story can be completely told and explored without rushing (As I feel many novels between 50,000 and 80,000 words often are), and it can be read fairly quickly and allow the reader to move on. There's no rule for word counts. Different counts can serve a story in positive or negative ways and one should always take length into account once they have the experience to forecast how long a story is going to take to tell. But like how old fashion field artillery was used before the advent of GPS and what not, the first barrage is always a test case that will most likely miss your target. I think 80,000-100,000 range fits the purpose of the test shot perfectly and from that you can boost or shorten the length as the story dictates. Granted genre should also be considered.

I speak generally of course .

 

In that context I wasn't talking about publishing. I agree, a longer novel would be harder to get published. What I was saying though was that a long novel does not automatically mean that the reader will get board of it.

Just to pick up on this; it really depends what you're writing. I have a friend who has worked for Mills and Boon and she had to write four books a year for them. That's one book every three months. The thing is, they are so formulaic that a book every three months isn't too difficult. In the end she gave up because there wasn't enough variety for her.

Similarly, the last book I wrote only took four months between starting writing to being published. It was a commissioned piece (ghostwriting for a 'famous' person) and I had very tight deadlines on it but all the research was done for me. If you end up writing something like that then you often find that the quality that is sacrificed is mitigated as the people who buy it do so for the star on the cover. They don't care about the content. The writing was finished in a month and polished the following month.

I tend to write for about 4 hours a day, more if I have a slow work day. I have started using Google Docs to write so I can do it from anywhere, even on my iPod if I am away from the desk (although that's not the best way of going about it to be honest). I can write about 5000 words in that time when I am at full flow and, when edited, I suppose I loose about half of those. That's just the way that I do it though. I think that, really, you have to find your own methods.

 

thats just what i do, yes i know there are some sucesfull writers on this forum and one day hopefully i will be one of them. when i write books (usually fantasy) i let the book write its self as if it had a ming of its own and it has posessed me or something and im just putting it on paper. thats just my way of doing thngs and if you don't like it thats not my problem.

 

There's no set limit, but i think that much over 100k words is usually frowned upon for a first time novel. Of course if your book is very good then it may not matter, although in editing your books usually get stripped down a bit anyway.

 

Wow, that's a lot. I shoot for about 1,500 words per day, but often get over 2,000. Even on my best days, though, I was just exhausted by the time I got near 2,500. I would simply run out of gas before I get close to 5,000.

Dave

 

while clancy does tell good stories, you have to sift through a lot of chaff to get to the wheat... his books are always so overcrammed with show-off technical stuff and lectures, that out of those 1,000 pages, i probably read only 600 of 'em... same goes for most of his readers, i suspect... and critics have also commented on the annoying habit...

 

Me too XD. I'm sorry but when Mr. Clarke is about to kill someone I don't need the complete details of the gun he's going to use. All i need to know is its a gun and its lethal. Not that it was designed by so and so at this time for that purpose but this thing happened etc.

 

lol.

so many "there is no limit" responses.

guess i should have worded my thread title a little differently.

i know there isn't some official limit. lol.

i was just asking if there was a word count that publishers don't like seeing a new novelist go over.

but thanks for all the replies, guys!

 

Always read the submission guidelines of every publisher you wish to submit to.

 

Of course, you must read and follow the submission guidelines. The trouble with just telling people to read submission guidelines and nothing else is that they don't always tell you everything you need to know. Annick Press publishes for all demographics under 18 years, and says nothing of format, word counts, or any of the technical stuff in their guidelines.

 

I think it stemmed from my work in radio as we were always on very tight deadlines to get scripts in. I didn't used to be able to write that quickly. In fact I used to have a problem with writing, even though I always wanted to do it. About 8 years ago something clicked and ever since words just pore out of me. It would be great if that actually made me a better writer. Unfortunately it didn't

 

It depends on the publisher or the genre, but a novel usually falls between 50,000 to 130,000. I'm personally heading for 70,000-90,000 for my first book.

 

...for a first adult novel by a new and unknown writer, the vast majority of publishers today want only 80-100k mss... children's/'tween'/YA markets will take much shorter ones, naturally... and some houses will take somewhat longer adult market mss for fantasy/sci-fi...

...that's not what you should go by, since a new and unknown writer is held to a different standard than established and best-selling ones... plus, the market and genre will also make a difference in what will be acceptable and what not... see info above...