I was just wondering, when I see you guys talking about how many pages you have written, is this in terms of the size of a normal paperback book (like that in the 'read' view in Microsoft Word... or is A4 pages. And, in terms of A4 pages, how many is the usual amount of a medium sized novel. I ask this because a large part of my writing dilemmas is psychological - where I think that I am no-where near the size of a novel and can't flesh my story out to be so. Knowing this would help me at least with that. Thanks in advance
If I was to talk about page numbers I would be referring to the number that Word has collated. Typeface and font size make a huge difference to your page size, though. For example, I'm writing in Times New Roman at the moment and my first chapter (draft) is currently 7,500 words long and covers 13 pages and, while the page length could change drastically if I altered my fontsize, the wordcount would not. I think it's clearer to talk about novel/manuscript length in terms of thousands of words. I'm unsure what the average novel length is so I won't speculate here, but I'm sure many board members will know.
"I think it's clearer to talk about novel/manuscript length in terms of thousands of words." I agree. Definitely go by word count. As to length...I've heard between 90k and 125k being acceptable lengths for new writers looking to write a publishable book. Anything smaller than 90k won't look big enough to most readers on the shelf, while after 125k the books become more expensive to publish. I might be wrong, so check with more experienced board members definitely. = )
Thanks guys. Ugh, I guess this means that I really need to flesh these chapters out. In my story I flash from one POV to another POV (in different times in history) and in around 7000 words I have flashed 3 times... is that too much for that period of time. I'm really still establishing my characters and settings.
It's tough to say without reading the entire piece. If you're writing in different historical contexts I would be tempted to spend a decent amount of time in each setting (certainly thousands). Give your readers time to settle in to the settings (and enjoy them), especially at first. But these are general points and may not be applicable to your writing.
If you check the different publishers and their minimum and maximum word lengths you will get a good idea of what they want. It is between 70-100k usually. Fantasy is usually a bit higher 80k-120k. For a first time novel you want to be on the lower end of the scale for word count.
