Comments on: How Many Words Are in a Novel? Word Count by Genre & More

By: Alyssa Bailey

Alyssa Bailey — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 19:30:04 +0000

Interesting Article. I write Romance in several sub-genres and find it differs in these areas considerably. Conversation among small publishers is to target 75K for a full novel but the emphasis is not so much word count as content. No surprises there. The story ends where it ends.
Indies I am working with are all over the place with their interpretation of the “correct” length. Anywhere from 40K, the reasoning here is it is the minimum word count to maximum return on price point, less work, same income.
But for those of us who love the story and are in the middle, we don’t look at the word count as much as the storyline. I find I do the rough draft without any other consideration but getting the story told.
Then, when I go back, I focus on hitting 50K knowing edits and re-writes will flesh the book out, often finishing at mid 60’s to mid 70’s and I have had no complaints.
I have written longer and told it is too long. My readers want to feel it was a satisfying story they can finish in a couple of 2-3 hour sittings.
Bottomline, know your audience. Great insight/information. Thanks.

By: Dave Chesson

Dave Chesson — Sun, 23 Aug 2020 01:57:52 +0000

In reply to Judson McCawl.

Oh wow…excellent work and thanks – glad you liked it.

By: Judson McCawl

Judson McCawl — Sat, 22 Aug 2020 18:47:30 +0000

Hi,

Interesting and insightful article, thanks for posting. I’ve written five books, a series fitting in the Religious (Christian) Fiction genre. Interestingly, with my first book, I set a target of 275 pages, not a word count. The word count ended up being 70,000, which is not far off your calculation of 75,000 for this genre. However, what also caught my attention in your article was the paring down of word counts.

After writing the fifth book earlier this year (still to be published), I felt that it was necessary to revise the first four books. The reason for doing this was because I felt that they needed to flow better, and follow the way I had written the fifth book, not the first one! When I started the revisions, I actually adopted the opposite attitude to when I first wrote them. With the first editions, I purposely included fill-in in the chapters. With the revisions, I purposely went about removing what I felt was truly unnecessary fill-in, or slowed the movement of the stories. Although I also included a whole new section in the first book, the end results for the first three books (fourth is still to be revised) was interesting:

1. First = 70,000. Second = 82,000 (3000 words removed).
2. First = 85,000. Second = 80,000 (5000 words removed; two chapters merged).
3. First = 90,000. Second = 83,000 (7000 words removed; twice two chapters merged).

Book One, Law & Grace: Journey to Calvary, was published a couple of days ago (available free), with Book Two, Law & Grace: Divine Intervention, to follow in about a week’s time. Thereafter I’ll tackle the revision of Book Four, while Book Three is being reviewed. With the word count for Book Four currently at 83,000, it should be interesting to see the outcome, but my objective will not be to match a word count, just to improve the flow of the story!

Thanks again for the insightful article.