I ask because as my novel nears completion, I did the word count of all the files the other day. It will need a good edit once I reach the finale and fill in all the gaps but I want to know if I should be aiming for cutting or adding or splitting into two works. I'm sure I'll do a little of both BTW.
Current count: 140,000 roughly...
Now in epublishing, the length matters little, and I think there's good space in that market for novellas (priced lower than novels) and other short works. And of course your big door-stopper 1000 page novels don't weigh any more on an ebook reader so they're a great use case for the ebook readers.
But your most important task is to finish that novel. Cut it if you feel like that's appropriate (most of us can stand to cut 10-20% from novels without losing flow) but worry about that after it's done. Getting over the "just finish the darn thing" hump is a limitation for many, once you're over that hump you can do ANYTHING. You have superpowers, as you've finished a novel!
Patrick Rothfuss's debut novel, The Name of the Wind, clocks in at something like 200K (I don't know the official count, but it's pretty thick), so it is possible, but then again his book was often lauded as one of the best new fantasy works of our generation. (Side note - the second book is finally coming out in March!)
Could I feasibly cut my book in half? I seriously doubt it. Is a length of 160-180K enough to get most agents to deposit the new heavy doorstop directly in the trash? Will they pull the plug on their printer after the first hour, curse loudly and the stupid n00b author and vow never to open an email from me again?
How far do you need to slice? I know there's fat to trim, but I don't see dropping more than 50% of a book and maintaining anything like a real flow. I'm sure there's at least one chapter in there I could excise in its entirety, but not that many of them. And I don't think disenvoweling ( --> dsnvwlng ) is an accepted practice for reducing page length.
Any thoughts?
[This message has been edited by micmcd (edited February 16, 2011).]
[This message has been edited by micmcd (edited February 16, 2011).]
Well, as said before, the first thing is to finish it.
Yours, btw, in my opinion, is very, very good.
Then, get more readers who can read it straight through, in order. (Potential readers: It's very, very good. You should volunteer.)
I've found in my own that it's often not that hard to cut about 25% without losing much, if anything. I need to let it rest a while before I can see that, of course.
If the length really bothers you, or if you try and no agent bites, look at whether you can separate it into two books and try again.
[This message has been edited by Meredith (edited February 16, 2011).]
First, thank you (and I would happily accept any volunteer readers; I do crit-exchanges, but you have fair warning about the length)
I haven't started fretting about length to the point of wanting to cut yet, of course. I actually have a sort of perverse pride in how long it's been getting.
I will dance a nice long jig when I get the book to be (in the parlance of my industry) "feature complete," which certainly doesn't mean it's bug-free. Length is just one of those things that I wonder about. 40,000 words away from finished is closer than I ever thought I'd be 150,000 words ago, and so I spend plenty of my non-writing time dreaming (and nightmaring, which totally isn't a verb but should be) about the future.
Love it. It's a word now, and I plan to use it!
Trying to write a book around a specific word count can cripple the writing, IMO. It never hurts to keep the length in mind, but don't let it stop you from going past that 120k word marker.