length does matter?

[Fitzchiv]

Now that I've hooked you with a suitably evocative smutty title, I was hoping for a bit of advice on a good guide to breaking down "length" of work when starting out.

I'm at that point where I'm ready to delve in to trying for something longer than a 300-word-challenge, and I've no real idea about putting a sensible cap on it. I like to have some kind of "target", which I know may well not be advisable in this, but the reality is whilst I work I'd like to know where my meandering is taking me in terms of what the "end product"

At what point does something expand beyond a short story? What's the smallest reasonable length for a "proper" book? What would expect a good, meaty trilogy to count in terms of words?

Whether it's to my advantage or not time will tell, but I tend to like to use words more than those around me - a concise work email is like a Hen's tooth from my Outbox.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Shorts range from 1000 (anything less is probably flash) up to about 30,000 words iirc. Then you're into novella length which goes up to about 60k. Novels start at 60k but that's very, very short, especially for genre (although I'm not convinced Neil Gaiman's last novel was much longer). 120k is considered the sweet spot for sff according to something I read recently. My trilogy, over the three books, weighs in at about 260,000k but that's relatively short and it will be longer if it was eg epic fantasy. Then you have all the variant YA lengths, dependent on market.

But, it's how long is a piece of string? Pat Rothfuss's debut is much, much longer than Mark Lawrence's, but they're both epic fantasy (ish - Mark's might be grimdark).

Um, so, really - it varies. The story will be the length it needs to be. I'd suggest getting the idea first and then seeing what it becomes?

 

[chopper]

write the story, not the length. and springs got there first....

 

[Juliana]

I don't know, I kind of like to know how long I want my particular piece of string to be. Then I plan accordingly. For instance, last novel I wrote was YA. I wanted it between 70-75k words, and I knew it was going to have three distinct parts to it. So I knew roughly how many words I needed to hit for each part, and planned my chapters accordingly (my chapters tend to be within the 1,500-2,000 word range, so easy to calculate how many I need).

Now, I'm a planner; I need the structure to write. That's just me; a lot of fabulous Chrons writers have a more organic approach. Fitz will have to work out what works best; we all have to find our own way.

 

[Venusian Broon]

At what point does something expand beyond a short story? What's the smallest reasonable length for a "proper" book? What would expect a good, meaty trilogy to count in terms of words?

Another way of looking at this question is to research your target market.

If you wrote a 'short story' of 30k words then submitted it to the esteemed UK magazine's Black Static or Interzone I'm pretty sure it would get turned down on length grounds immediately - my last look at them gave an average short story length of 5.6k. (Springs 30k for a short? novelette surely . Although I am sure there are markets out there who might accept such a huge beast as a 'short'.)

So look at the sort of market you think your story will be going to and, well just count! Just remember that the rules for beginners and well established authors are different in the traditional route. JK Rowling could produce Harry Potter 7 as a doorstop so thick you could use it to prop open a shuttle bay on the Death Star but if you are a first time author try and follow the rough guidelines given above. (Even in the short story market, established big names I have noticed get away with being able to write 'long' shorts as well)

p.s. Juliana <big-kiss> I always feel such a nobbie no-mates when I own up to being a planner. Planners of the world unite!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It depends on who you ask, what length a short story is, a novella, etc. Everything under novel length is considered short fiction, although not, properly speaking, necessarily a short story. For purposes of membership requirements and for the Nebula awards, SFWA sets the following guidelines: Short Story: up to 7,500 words. Novelette: 7,500 to 17,500. Novella: 17,500 to 40,000. Novel: 40,000 and up. Most (if not all) SFF genre magazines and anthologies classify stories the same way. However, publishers and publications outside the genre (but who may occasionally pick up something in the genre) may divide things up differently. Anything over 7,500 words is going to be hard to sell to a magazine or anthology. Kindle seems to have opened up a market for short fiction, a lot of it reprints, and I don't know whether it's a good market for originals at those lengths.

 

[RobPrescott]

The figure I've constantly heard thrown about is 70,000 words as a reasonable benchmark for a novel. Some can certainly be shorter and many great books are (Animal Farm is only 26,000 or so, and I'm pretty sure Of Mice and Men is the shortest I've read) but these days you'd certainly be hard to publish something like that, traditionally at any rate. More than 100,000 words does start to get into doorstop territory, though as others have mentioned above genre fiction does get kind of a pass in this area. Not sure how good a thing this is - I've put down books when browsing in a bookshop due to the practicality of having to carry it around when weighing up options. Also the sheer size of the damn thing is at least half the reason I've never finished War and Peace... (half a million words would stop a pretty big door)
Generally Google tells me that 40,000 is the 'minimum' for a novel. But I don't know. I think the ebook and self-publishing routes allow a lot more room, especially as you can set the price. When a book is asking £8.99 average a lot of readers (and yes, guilty of this myself) will want a certain amount of content for their money, even if this is no real benchmark for a books quality (see the two above examples for books I'd happily have paid more for). Ebooks can dodge that quite easily, though.
If you think you know what kind of thing you're wanting to write just Google novel lengths. Lots of pages out there have word counts listed for many well-known books, can be worth a look.

 

[Mirannan]

One point that needs further mentioning, I think, is the one of the natural length of a story. In particular, I think it would be a mistake to pad out (for example) a novella with extra material not vital to the plot just to increase the number of words.

I have a bit of a quandary in this regard for my current WIP. The protagonist needs, for various reasons, to establish an identity in a 21st century Western country (the UK in fact) that will stand up to a reasonable amount of scrutiny - from scratch, as she has no paperwork or legal identity for the very good reason that she doesn't come from Earth.

The quandary is whether to make a big deal of this in the story itself. The mechanics of setting up a fake ID have nothing to do with the main thrust of the plot and might well be seen as unnecessary padding.

Another point worth making, I think, is about the huge increase in average story length since the introduction of word processors. Many classic SF novels are a couple of hundred pages and maybe 60,000 words and tell the story well - and at the other extreme, we now have 1400-page, 300+k word doorstops that don't tell the story any better and pad out the length with tedious repetition. For example, the Night's Dawn trilogy. I got to the feeling that if I saw the phrase "neural nanonics" once more I would scream. :/

I'm convinced that the reason for this increase is the ease of manipulating huge amounts of text, and saving the results.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I have a bit of a quandary in this regard for my current WIP. The protagonist needs, for various reasons, to establish an identity in a 21st century Western country (the UK in fact) that will stand up to a reasonable amount of scrutiny - from scratch, as she has no paperwork or legal identity for the very good reason that she doesn't come from Earth.

The quandary is whether to make a big deal of this in the story itself. The mechanics of setting up a fake ID have nothing to do with the main thrust of the plot and might well be seen as unnecessary padding.

It seems to me you realise that it's padding, but the golden age SF fan inside you (I have one as well) wants to tell, tell, tell for a proper SF story .

As you are unsure, probably best to write it and just see what happens.

So I'd write the first draft with the Fake ID stuff in then put the story aside for a bit when you finish it, come back after a wee while and see if those parts scream padding to you clearly. It is always easier to cut words than to add them, I find.

Another point worth making, I think, is about the huge increase in average story length since the introduction of word processors. Many classic SF novels are a couple of hundred pages and maybe 60,000 words and tell the story well - and at the other extreme, we now have 1400-page, 300+k word doorstops that don't tell the story any better and pad out the length with tedious repetition. For example, the Night's Dawn trilogy. I got to the feeling that if I saw the phrase "neural nanonics" once more I would scream. :/

I'm convinced that the reason for this increase is the ease of manipulating huge amounts of text, and saving the results.

I heard this argument from Stephen King in the 1980s (Honestly Mirannan Word processors? I thought they died out in the early 90's How old are you? ) There might be some truth in that assertion, but on the other hand, because it is much easier to change things, I think I spend much more time on re-writes and new drafts. So in the big scheme of things I think my average word count per day is much lower than it would have been on a typewriter or just using a pen.

One of the reasons for the concise novels of the Golden age of SF is that they were sold cheap as chips, or perhaps more accurately the cash per novel that the authors got was so small - therefore to maintain a reasonable income many of the legendary authors could knock them out in blindingly fast times. Thus purely by the amount of time they had to finish them they could only be short novels. I'd guess as well that it was more expensive in those days to produce a book, so short also was probably favoured by the publishers to cut down on the expense. I remember reading that PKD got a few novels out in about 2 weeks tops (I can't remember which ones they were, so I can't tell you if they were his good ones or bad ones). When you have that sort of pressure on authors both in terms of time and cost, then it's no surprise they got to the point in 60k words!

 

[Mirannan]

Venusian Broon - I'm 56. BTW, word processors don't have to be dedicated machines.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I know, that's why I put up the smiley face

I think I last used the term word processors in 1991. It's just weird hearing/reading it. I spent a good five years using JOVE and VI editors for the nineties, then by the time I got to near 2000 and back to Microsoft it was 'Word' or 'document' if I had to use them. (of course I know that M$ Word is just a word processor)

Apologies, just a friendly little dig!

 

[Laeraneth]

I aimed for around 100k, safe in the knowledge that I would underestimate and end up higher at around the 120k mark I was 'aiming' for.

I'm on the verge of finishing, and I'm at 185k.

Make of that what you will... I don't feel like there's much padding at all. I've kept it 'real', ie, I don't gloss over stuff, I go into a fair bit of detail about what the people involved are thinking and doing but I've also excised fair portions that were light on anything interesting, and mostly involved getting from A to B, to keep the pacing a lot better than it had been at times during writing.

In short, I wouldn't be surprised if i can edit and trim it down to a tidier structure and end up somewhere around 170k, but it's still far in excess of the original 'plan'.

As others have said, i wrote to the length of the story and the story evolved and grew as it went along.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I aimed for around 100k, safe in the knowledge that I would underestimate and end up higher at around the 120k mark I was 'aiming' for.

I'm on the verge of finishing, and I'm at 185k.

Laeraneth - give or take a few thousand here or there and that's my story as well!

Originally thought I was coming in at 120k ish - ended up with just under 200k. My second draft is consistently taking it down - but I don't think it'll end up less than 185k at the end of that sweep.

I'm giving it out to a few Beta readers (and perhaps more) to get their opinions before really sitting down and seeing how to get it to a manageable size and whether it should be more than one book...

As others have said above I think it its best at first to get the 'natural' length first, then start the surgery.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Heh, my third draft was 190k words, and I wasn't sure if it could be edited down. Then I learned to be brutal - fourth draft is now under 130k.

I aimed for around 100k

IMO this is a good target to aim for with a novel.

 

[Juliana]

I'm the opposite. I write reasonably sparse, and then add at the editing stage (I also cut a lot, too, obviously, but at editing is where I notice scenes that need more flesh).

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

If you're interested in the 'proper' lengths of pieces, check the SFWA Hugo Award lengths. They're basically the industry standard for published SF. That's said, you're quite unlikely to see much between novella and novel length and, despite the novel category starting at 40,000 words, that is typically not considered a 'full-length' novel. The soft minimum there is around 60,000 words or more. Though more practically it's 80,000 words and up.

But the posters saying 'write the story, not the length' are right.

 

[Tyburn]

I seem to recall being told that 'Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy' is less than 60,000 words, which for me is good because I'm at 57,000 words and can't add any more without taking away from the story, pacing, and everything else. I'd considered adding another couple of scenes in order to at least try and get it to the 'magic' 70,000, but they'd slow everything down.