One subject that I often see pop up in areas frequented by aspiring writers is that of word count. I know it’s something myself have often wondered about, and so when I ran across these two great blog posts about the subject, I thought I’d pass them along to those of you who are hard at work on your first masterpiece.
The First is courtesy of Nathan Bransford, a literary agent (and great blogger) working for Curtis Brown Ltd., who, by his own admission, is a little lackadaisical about word count:
Within reason. If your (adult) novel is less than 40,000 words you’re in novella land (where publishers worry about how a bookstore is going to stock your book when it will have such a skinny spine). Children’s novels are generally shorter, but shouldn’t be TOO short. If your novel is going to be over 150,000 words and your name is not David Foster Wallace, Leo Tolstoy, or Vikram (Chandra or Seth), there had better be a darn good reason for it.
You can read the whole thing HERE.
The nameless scribe of Editorial Ass is a little more stringent when it comes to taking a look at submissions:
Either way, I have to admit my personal taste is toward shorter books. I really like submissions between 60 and 80k words. I’m relatively open-minded, but anything shorter than 60,000 words usually proves to be a little half-baked. (This is not always true, of course, but often it just comes up short–a good novel needs cohesive structure and enough development to pull a reader in, and often this can’t be accomplished in fewer than 60,000 words.) I also cringe whenever an agent tells me she’s sending me a 200,000-word debut novel. I think the upper limit of my patience for books I edit–even genre books–is about 120,000 words. I like all my books to cast off under 400 pages when they are typeset (and I like pretty spacious font so my readers don’t have to develop glaucoma over my titles).
You can check out the full post HERE.
Hopefully this shed’s a little light on the mystery!
You may have noticed (based on the photo greeting you to the left) that Drew Bowling’s young. Not only is he young, but he’s a good looking, college-age guy who one might expect has better things to do – say traipsing the streets of Madrid, his life stuffed into a backpack, a beautiful woman hanging off his arm – than write Fantasy. You might also be worried that a hip, good looking college kid should stay far away from the writing scene. Well, Bowling’s not afraid to show you why you’re wrong.