Hatrack River Writers Workshop: How long is a novel?

This is topic How long is a novel? in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by ambongan (Member # 2122) on :

How many words in a novel?

I realize there are fancy ways of officially determaning word count, but just looking up the word count on Word will give a similar result.

Someone said 40,000 words can count as a novel, but I read another person saying 80,000 words.

I hope to write something that would be the equivalent of about 350 pages when published. I am wondering how many words (ballpark) add up to about 350 pages.

Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :

Ambongan

see here http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/2000-08-02-1.shtml

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

A novel is technically any work greater than 40,000 words in length. In reality, a book this short will be difficult to publish. the 80k word sounds like a good target for your first publishable novel, see the link already posted.

Posted by ambongan (Member # 2122) on :

Thanks for the link.

It seems that the avreage Orson Scot Card book is about 100,000 words, and I looked on my shelf and found that to be give or take 350 pages.

Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :

You're most welcome.

By the way, I'd love to learn more about Cebuano life and customs. Any links you can provide, in turn?

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

On average (or should I say something like "in the ballpark"?) a manuscript page is not as long as a printed page.

A manuscript page should have about 250 words on it--give or take.

If you want to know how many words there are in a printed book, count the number of words on a few pages (it will most likely be more than 250, though not a lot more--probably not more than 300), average that, and times it by the number of pages.

Posted by Balthasar (Member # 5399) on :

I tired to figure out how long a 100,000-word novel would be in your standard paperback. There are two problems or issues you have to take into account when doing it.

Frist, the font size can be different.

Second, the chapter divisions can through things off a bit. If each chapter begins half-way down a new page, that creates a thicker book than if chapters are merely separated by several blank lines.

That said, a 100,000 word novel, as I've calculated it, is approximately 275 pages, give or take 25 pages for the aforementioned reasons.

If you're really interested in how long a particular novel is, the best way to do it is two type out five pages or so, then do some math. I did this with Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World. Each page averaged around 400 words, and the novel's around 800 pages, so you're looking at about 320,000 words--about 1280 manuscript pages.

[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited August 01, 2004).]