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Subject: Good story length


RedPhantom ( ) posted Thu, 23 October 2014 at 6:13 AM · edited Tue, 26 November 2024 at 1:34 AM
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I've been working on a novel and have finished the first draft.  Looking at the number of pages in the word processor it seems short. But I realize that isn't a good way to evalute it because that can be changed drastically by changing any one of many factors. I know that the number of words is a better measure. Can anyone recommend a good word count?


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TheBryster ( ) posted Fri, 24 October 2014 at 9:52 AM
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MS Word will give you the word count at the bottom of the screen. You can also highlight sections to give that word count too.

If you are not using MS Word, I wonder why your word processor doesn't give you a word count.

My first published novel was around 91,000 words and, according to Amazon, 239 Kindle pages. However, in MS Word this works out at 115 regular pages including appendices.

From what I have seen this seems like a good average for a reasonable sized novel.

In my opinion, it's not really the word count that is important, but whether you have written a complete work. If the story stands up then it doesn't matter how long it is. Your goal is not to leave your reader feeling dispointed that the story was too short.

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RedPhantom ( ) posted Sun, 26 October 2014 at 4:38 PM
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I'm using open office and it does give a word count. It's currently 120,000 words. I just didn't know what a good number was. I've told the complete story but I didn't want the reader to say, "That's all?"


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MistyLaraCarrara ( ) posted Thu, 06 November 2014 at 2:07 PM

If you're writing for a particular publisher, their guidelines usually give the word count they prefer.  

120,000 is average. 



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Chipka ( ) posted Sun, 09 November 2014 at 7:42 PM

Story lengths are like Abraham Lincoln's legs: they should be long enough to reach from the hips to the ground.

Also, genre determines story length: science fiction and fantasy stories tend to accept higher word counts for novels, though average is probably between 120,000 to 150,000 unless you're doing whompin' big Tolkein-esque or CJ Cherryh Russian literature length gonzo-huge-epics, where a whole book can be a "Prologue."  CJ Cherryh often breaks her major epics into bite sized pieces, turning them into trilogies and those even weirder "5-book-trilogies"...but that's simply because science fiction and fantasy stories tend to be stubborn and a lot larger than you think they're going to be.  They just don't leave you alone.  You're done writing your epic fantasy and suddenly, Princess Uvula steps forward and says: "By the way, did you know that the evil Queen Dyspepsia is actually my fairy-godmother, but she got into something of a tight-pickle with that low-life Prince Josephine who had issues with his parents for giving him that name?", and suddenly you've got Book 4 of what you thought was a trilogy, but books 1 - 3 have already been published and are recognized as a trilogy.  Now sf/f readers get to giggle at the idea that only in the fantastic fiction genres can you have a 5 book trilogy, which kinda also blows word counts out of the window.  All of this is to simply say that word counts are important, especially if you're writing to particular editorial specifications, but the only time to really worry about that is when you're deciding which market to sell to.  You should also keep in mind that it's also easier to sell novellas to the genre markets.  Mainstream fiction markets often limit themselves to short stories and novels with a big empty space in between, despite the huge number of mainstream novellas that once filled that market.


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