Epic Fantasy Novel Word Counts

[Jo Zebedee]

Many of the suggestions, like going to cons and networking, just aren't options at present for me. It's nothing to do with enthusiasm, either. Enthusiasm won't put money in my hand for a plane ticket, and time off work will do nothing if I can't afford to go to these places.

Writing groups are an idea, but I was in one a long while ago and I discovered something about the one I was in.

-No one in the group was a published writer, but several of them behaved as though they knew the writing trade inside and out and their opinion was more valuable than anyone else in the group.

-Practically no one in the group ever wrote anything but short stories, and few, if any, even finished those!

-Feedback was generally very nit-picky, and occasionally took the form of "well, I don't like fantasy, so I couldn't get into your story" or "I would have written a completely different take on this subject, so that's what you should have written."

What I would love, but can't get without paying for it, is for a published writer to read and critique/review my work.

Why so much emphasis on a published writer? Most people benefit most from peer review. Why not put something on crits here when you get to 30 posts? You won't get a published writer (or it'd be rare) but you will get some good, honest feedback. Start where you can and don't shoot for the stars, maybe?

My experience of writing groups has been wholly positive, mainly because no egos were brought into it. I've been lucky with the readers I have, none of them have been published (yet, for most of them it's a matter of time), but that hasn't reduced the quality of the feedback.

But feedback is nit picky, always. And challenging.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Though I think that both agents and editors have to balance "love" with "commercially viable". Sometimes "love" is shorthand for "I know a market that will love this, which makes me a happy agent/editor"

That's what the feedback I got with Mayhem suggested. More than one "loved it" the writing, characters and originality were praised in personal rejections (they mentioned aspects of the story). A few wanted it again in present tense but others said they weren't sure where they would place it.

I'm waiting til next year as an already published author is bringing out one with a similar premise - so I can point to it and say look there is one.

 

[HareBrain]

What I would love, but can't get without paying for it, is for a published writer to read and critique/review my work.

But presumably not the writer of this:

Actually, I was referring to a book that I feel is complete excrement, and I know a lot of people who agree. It was published in the early 90's...through an agent.

Springs is right, and you've just demonstrated it yourself: an opinion from a professional is not necessarily any more valid or useful than one from an amateur. It depends on the people. You need to find out who the "amateurs" are with the insight and knowledge you can trust. Don't let experience with your previous group put you off.

 

[WriterJosh]

Why so much emphasis on a published writer? Most people benefit most from peer review. Why not put something on crits here when you get to 30 posts? You won't get a published writer (or it'd be rare) but you will get some good, honest feedback. Start where you can and don't shoot for the stars, maybe?

My experience of writing groups has been wholly positive, mainly because no egos were brought into it. I've been lucky with the readers I have, none of them have been published (yet, for most of them it's a matter of time), but that hasn't reduced the quality of the feedback.

But feedback is nit picky, always. And challenging.

I guess I stressed published because they would know best what will turn off an agent or publisher. But it doesn't have to be someone published. Someone well-read in the genre would be fine, or multiple someones. I wasn't shooting for the stars, just expressing a wish. See, my goal is to someday have my books on the shelves beside theirs. If it was possible (it's not, at least not yet), I'd love to know what someone who's already been there thinks of my chances of achieving the same.

Yes, once I get to 30 posts I will be submitting something for critique/review. People who don't know me are less likely to just tickle my ear. Believe me, I don't want ear-tickling. I want brutal honesty.

 

[Hex]

I want brutal honesty.

We can do that

 

[WriterJosh]

But presumably not the writer of this:



Springs is right, and you've just demonstrated it yourself: an opinion from a professional is not necessarily any more valid or useful than one from an amateur. It depends on the people. You need to find out who the "amateurs" are with the insight and knowledge you can trust. Don't let experience with your previous group put you off.

Well put. I guess my own experiences with peer reviews have not been as positive as springs's.

It is so hard to describe my experience in that writers' group without making myself look like I just want my ego stroked. I guess I'll explain with this analogy.

Say you have just read a published book and you liked it, even though you could see it wasn't perfect. Then you go on goodreads or amazon and see a "no stars" review of this book. You wonder "how could something I enjoyed provoke such a negative response?"

So you check it out, and you find a laser-focus on minor grammar or sentence structure errors that apparently slipped by the author and the editor (I'm sure we've all seen those), what appear to be jokes or humorous asides at the author's expense but aren't funny and don't even really state what the critic found so awful (like a review that simply says "it sucks") and even just outright stating "I'm not really interested in this subject, so this book doesn't reach me, but if I were interested, my take would be completely different, so this book sucks because it wasn't my take."

In other words, no constructive criticism, no suggestions as to how it could be improved, just condescension and nit-picking.

But, on that note, not every experience has been negative. I submitted to another message board a while back the first chapter of my horror novel. Mostly the responses were "I don't read horror so I won't be reading this" or something like that. One guy, though, sent me an email with remarks inserted on my manuscript and although he also pointed out editing mistakes, his remarks were constructive and very helpful. He helped me see what parts of it didn't work, and how they could work better. So that was valuable.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I've had my share of poor critiques. My writing group were formed of people who already knew each others' crit approaches and responses. When I do, occasionally, throw my toys out, they mostly ignore me til I get a hold of myself. like Harebrain says it's finding the right ones to listen to, even those who break your book and you still listen to cos they were right to. You've had a bad experience, you're still writing; that's a lot of the process.

 

[WriterJosh]

I've had my share of poor critiques. My writing group were formed of people who already knew each others' crit approaches and responses. When I do, occasionally, throw my toys out, they mostly ignore me til I get a hold of myself. like Harebrain says it's finding the right ones to listen to, even those who break your book and you still listen to cos they were right to. You've had a bad experience, you're still writing; that's a lot of the process.

Indeed.

By the way, I just re-read my initial post about that writing group, and I believe it sounded like I was saying that because none of them were published, I couldn't accept their criticism. That is certainly not true. A couple of them had made previous submissions to publishers and been rejected. That was pretty much the whole of their experience with the industry. But their attitudes were that we should all pay attention to them more than anyone else because they "knew" more about writing and the industry than the rest of us did. I believe their attitude is why the group eventually stopped meeting.

Anyway, we're getting really off-topic and I almost feel like I jacked this thread.

 

[devaed]

Though I think that both agents and editors have to balance "love" with "commercially viable". Sometimes "love" is shorthand for "I know a market that will love this, which makes me a happy agent/editor"

This is kind of what I suspected - the sentiment is not completely untrue, but very much overemphasized for the author's sake, making a rejection sound more like it was a personal taste issue than anything to do with quality.

Which is good to know... otherwise the agent submission process would be a horribly broken system, relying as much upon luck (trying to happen upon an agent who shares exactly the same tastes and sensibilities as you), as upon any actual demonstration of skill.

But as you say Anne, I do think it's a mixture of 'love' and 'commercially viable' - and the two combine to inform whether they pick something up. For example (going back to the subject of word counts) - at 132k they might have to love the writing a little more than they would a 100k book, because 100k is more commercially viable. But they can love it a lot less than they'd need to a 225k book So I guess the less commercially viable, the more they need to love the manuscript for it to get taken on, and vice versa.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Josh, it sounds like you had a really bad writing group, but don't let this put you off getting feedback from other writers, unpublished or not.

I have to say that I avoid critiquing newbies' work these days, not because I'm trying to be selfish or anything but because any harsh criticism by me could be seen as an instance of "punching down". Hence I encourage writers to seek out like-minded peers rather than looking to those several steps above them on the career ladder.

 

[Kissmequick]

One thing you have to remember also is this

A good crit takes time, and that is something many published authors don't have a lot of! Most of us have day jobs, and deadlines, and regular crit partners whose stuff we read. I often don't have the time to crit something by someone I don't know (although my writers group does run a crit session at some cons -- we did one at 9 Worlds this year.) ETA: If you caught me at a good time and/or I like the sound of your premise, I might do it. But time...time is the commodity I don;t have!

Your one experience with a writers group didn't pan out, but that doesn't mean all writers groups are the same. Online or IRL, you have to find the right one for you. But I know I get just as much valuable advice from people in my writers group who aren't published as from those who are, and they are just as likely to know about the market as I am (maybe more so -- most of my ideas, the books I really want to write, aren't really commercially viable. Write what you gotta write. You can always tweak it for market viability later)

EETA: 132k for epic fantasy sounds about right for the UK market. Other sub genres maybe not so much

 

[Boneman]

Great link, Anne.

I recently critiqued a first chapter for a newbie - first draft, not shown to anyone else, ever. (Not a chonite, I hasten to add!) It was written with passion, had a great storyline that I could see progressing throughout the book (and into the series she planned...) but the mechanics of it were distracting and the dialogue was punctuated wrongly, the use of en and em dashes, and comma splices was poorly understood, and the sex scene in the shower was one cliche after another. But it had promise, and with judicious editing, I could see it would be a great read.

Very carefully, I stressed all the positives: obvious talent, passion, unique storyline, intriguing characters and so on. Then I pointed out the (what I told the writer were most definitely) small errors, that could be easily fixed. The writer was horrified and dreadfully upset, because they were so close to the work it couldn't be seen as anything other than criticism of a beloved and cherished child by someone who clearly didn't understand. Thank goodness I did the critique for free... I wrote back and spoke about someone criticising something we've created, how much it can hurt when we're so attached to it, and suggested it be put aside for a week and then re-read. The writer did. The writer began to understand, and the re-write was ten times better than the original. Phew, no pins stuck in wax mommet...

If a published author had written as I did, the punching down (I love that idea...) might have been ten times worse, because it's coming from an 'expert' - someone who's been where you want to go. But I believe a decent editor will always be better (okay, nearly always better, Patrick Rothfuss excepted*) than a published author. The published author will have an editor, who has suggested change and improvements. Naturally, it's up to the writer to argue and change/not change as they see fit, but an editor doesn't have an axe to grind, they're there to provide ways to inprove your writing, and they are dispassionate about everything except that.

I learned more about writing here at the Chrons, than anywhere else and I've been here 5 years. The critique section here is unparalleled, and I have made many friends, who give me honest - and most importantly - helpful critique, that has advanced my work to the point that I am getting more requests for full manuscripts. I worked with an agent for over a year getting it to the point he'd want to represent me. (The fact that he recently gave up agenting to study law was not precipitated by my writing, honest!) JJ didn't love my work (form rejection) but this agent did three separate critiques of my work in a year and I'm working through the final one now, after he'd departed. Long-winded way of finally coming to the point, sorry, but when I submitted it to him it was 132,000 words. It came down to 127,000 after the first edit and he wanted me to add more to the end section, because it felt so rushed, and said 135,000 would be no problem for epic fantasy as a first book. ('tis a trilogy...)

If you're going to pay for an edit (I did, years ago, and it was very helpful) try and be as sure as you can that it's as good as it can be, which can come about through writing groups, ( I accept you're having problems there - maybe advertise and start your own?) but more especially, this community. Don't rush things, take your time and be certain. And good luck!

*http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/526818-patrick-rothfuss-critiqued-my-novel.html

 

[WriterJosh]

Josh, it sounds like you had a really bad writing group, but don't let this put you off getting feedback from other writers, unpublished or not.

I have to say that I avoid critiquing newbies' work these days, not because I'm trying to be selfish or anything but because any harsh criticism by me could be seen as an instance of "punching down". Hence I encourage writers to seek out like-minded peers rather than looking to those several steps above them on the career ladder.

Yes, I did, and it turned me off to the idea for quite some time. But I really am in search of honest, constructive criticism. If something I wrote sucks, I want to know that, and I want someone to tell me in the most blunt way possible. But at the same time, they need to tell me why. Not just "it sucks" but "it sucks, because you have no sense of what makes a good analogy" or "it sucks because the in-depth description you gave of that sword-fight makes it obvious you've never even held a sword" or "it sucks because you are far too concerned with telling us everything a character is thinking, going on for pages and pages, but no one is doing anything" something along those lines.

So...word count. I've submitted to three agents at the moment. I did it recently, so all I can do is wait to see if any of them balk at the idea of 132K+ words, or if they "love" what they read enough to suggest that word count won't matter.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Except The Swivet, these are American sources and I know in the US books tends to be shorter than in the UK. Nonetheless, perhaps a debut author might be best aiming for something in the 100,000-120,000 range rather than 200,000+.

Maybe in the USA anything with elves and goblins in is called "epic fantasy", but so far as I'm aware, that part of the market is effectively dead in the UK has been for years.

Before starting this thread I found a blog post from an agent making generalisations on post counts in fantasy - the first comments were from Joe Abercrombie and Douglas Hullick pointing out themselves and the other authors they debuted with never came in under 180k. Can't find the link at the moment, though!

FYI the market for epic fantasy isn't really different, though some authors may be more popular in one country than the other. Or, to put it another way, epic fantasy in the US is made of nearly the exact same range of authors as epic fantasy in the UK. A lot of the most verbose authors Brian mentioned in the beginning are American, e.g. Martin, Rothfuss, Sanderson.

 

[nightdreamer]

I'm surprised I missed this thread earlier because it's a topic that interests me. Hmmm....

Mine weighs in at 251k. In the days (years) before I decided to self-publish (I don't think I'll live long enough to wait for those guys) I submitted it to a number of agents and publishers. Those who deigned to write a personal response said things like "well-written," "pleasantly surprised," and "definitely publishable," then suffixed that with a "but". The "but" was followed by things like, "we're not looking for that now" or "it's not in our marketing plan."

None of them came out and said that the length was a factor, but something in my gut tells me that it was. I believe that in order to be an editor or agent, one has to pass a course on writing letters that provide no helpful information. The larger the novel, the more expensive the production, and therefore the higher the risk if it's a flop.

If I had it to do over again, I would write something shorter to get my feet wet.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Just revisiting this thread, as I always used to worry about wordcounts - after all, my first draft 14 years ago was 700k words! However, with the current draft it's going to finish at around 130k. I guess I should have always worried more about quality than quantity.

 

[Tirellan]

Had a 'meet the agent' session today with my writing group and the visiting agent felt the sweet spot for fantasy novels is 120k

 

[ralphkern]

700K ?!? wow, one day, when your rich and famous, it would be interesting to see the unabridged version.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Well I missed the sweetspot again! My latest just got pubbed at 249K.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Brian G Turner]

My latest just got pubbed at 249K.

I didn't know you were writing epic fantasy - when did you self-pub that?