The chronicles word counter!

[chopper]

Empire Dance Vol.1 (title still uncertain)
epic space flannel in a Weber/Hamilton/Lucas styleee
52000 words
complete and ready for the edit!

woof woof!

 

[The Judge]

Well done Robin and chopper. Finishing even a first draft is an achievement of which to be proud. Well done, too, meripie. for getting a third of the way through!

chopper - is around 50,000 words the norm for space opera? Or is it that length for a specific reason?

 

[chopper]

it's actually rather short. it was originally intended to be a much longer piece, but i couldn't get into the story at all. so i figured that breaking it down into more manageable chunks - like the classic serials of olde, or the (more self-contained) Dumarest tales might work better. Ian Sales gave me the idea, actually, as he has been working on the same kind of thing (the big difference being that mine definitely won't be very self-contained).

the plan at the moment is to write pieces of flannel when it's too difficult to write Malessar's Curse, and to make Empire Dance available through POD. i've been trying to format & typeset the ms as i go along and at the moment it comes in at 150-odd pages, which is a little more than i thought it would at the start (what can i say? i like type-setting...)

 

[The Judge]

Thanks for that. Firstly, it was interesting in its own right. (OK. I admit it. I'm nosy.) Secondly, I was having palpitations about my own flannel which originally came in at just under 100,000 - I'm good at editing but cutting it in half would have been something else entirely!

Good luck with it anyway. And with Malessar's Curse.

 

[chopper]

Malessar's Curse: Heir to the North
High Revenge Fantasy in 2 parts...
82500 words and rising
not a bad couple of weeks, spent putting Cassia into the city of Hellea and linking in a few characters from the Winter Road. if this carries on i may even hit 100k by the end of June!

 

[MaraFox006]

My book is around 14,300 or so words...

Is that short on regular standards???

 

[Ursa major]

Depends what you're aiming for. Here's a rough guide (from Wiki):

• Novel - over 40,000 words
• Novella - 17,500 to 40,000 words
• Novelette - 7,500 to 17,500 words
• Short story - under 7,500 words

These are for fiction in general (and even then, 40,000 may be too low, at least as reagrds getting a book published now).

For adult fantasy and SF, I think publishers are looking for at the very least 80,000 to 100,000 words (depending on the market/territory). I have no idea what the YA "requirements" are, or the figure for even younger readers.

At the moment, your story may be a Novellette.

 

[MaraFox006]

Ok, thanks! I was just writing a short story for my friends... (A little bit long then!)

So, i guess it's a novelette.

Thanks again!!!

 

[Ursa major]

These are only rough guidelines.

And if you're writing the story for your friends, I doubt it really matters.

 

[mygoditsraining]

It's been ages since I last posted about my WIP; I currently have about 80,000 words of the novel, plus a good 5-10k of annotations and notes for the first full re-work. While I've been writing it, I've had ideas, lots of ideas, and it's going to need a page-by-page, chapter-by-chapter rebuild to test them out.

Hooray for summer; at least I'll be able to sit outside and do it.

 

[chopper]

Malessar's Curse: Heir to the North
High Revenge Fantasy in 2 parts...
82500 words and rising
not a bad couple of weeks, spent putting Cassia into the city of Hellea and linking in a few characters from the Winter Road. if this carries on i may even hit 100k by the end of June!

Hmm. time to revise that timetable; i've hit another wall with this one. on the other hand, having a back-up project is defeinitely a good idea...

The Midwinter Fury - Empire Dance Vol.2
Continuing voyages of a wide-ranging sf romp
14000 and rising (target 50k)
having fun developing some of the situations i left as cliffhangers last time around - there's a lot to fit into 50k though....

 

[Nik]

P_for_Pleistocene

Unfinished
Novel: P_for_Pleistocene.
Genre: SF {ISOT ??}
Word Count: 38,000+
Status: After a flat week, I've just added two busy chapters {~4000 words}, which take me up to the end of Day # 014. When the away-team returns tomorrow with a lot to show & tell, I'm due another battle with heptagonal dialogue.

 

[mygoditsraining]

Current WIP: Power in the Blood (Working Title - stolen from an Alabama 3 song)

Word count: 86,118

Genre: urban fantasy

Status: First real draft completely finished with an end I'm happy with. Now to read the damn thing over and over and over and over and edit and edit and edit and edit.

First word: So,

Last word: it.

Favourite line: [FONT=&quot]Once the smile was gone, her face looked blank; like a wee, offended pancake[/FONT].

 

[chopper]

excellent score, MGIR. Also, a great line. (And I like the idea of first and last words!)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

Midwinter Fury (Vol.2 of the Empire Dance)
Episodic space opera
38000 and rising
Two more scenes to write to complete this one, but they're both bad-ass epics.

 

[mygoditsraining]

Two more scenes to write to complete this one, but they're both bad-ass epics.

Placeholder text: INSERT AWESOME HERE

 

[Nik]

P_for_Pleistocene

Unfinished
Novel: P_for_Pleistocene.
Genre: SF {ISOT ??}
Word Count: 51,000+
Status: Didn't write anything for a couple of weeks, but the flat-spot passed and I finished the current chapter today. That's Day#18 done. There's heavy rain overnight. Next chapter, they must sit around and grumble at weather...

 

[mygoditsraining]

Current WIP: Power in the Blood (Working Title - stolen from an Alabama 3 song)

Word count: 88,000

Genre: urban fantasy

Status: Halfway through the first major edit, some structural issues to sort out. My girlfriend agreed to do a proof/line edit and I can hear her tapping away at the keyboard with the vigour of someone who really cares about subordinate clauses. I'm a bit scared.

Onwards to chapter 21!

 

[chopper]

"subordinate clauses" sounds reasonably terrifying.

but really, in the grander scheme of things, unless they dominate your writing completely, are they so bad?

 

[mygoditsraining]

Finished pretty much all the editing of Power in the Blood I wanted to do, removing about 4k from the 3/4 mark and putting some extra in other places. Final word count is 87k.

Now to start something else.

 

[Ursa major]

"subordinate clauses"

AKA Santa's Little Helpers.