How long should my first novel be?
How long should a novel be? A question that every first-time novelist will ask themselves at some point during their writing journey. When I began work on my own first novel, I found very little information on this topic, so I thought I would share with you some of my own perspectives.
The short answer - about 80,000 words.
The long answer - this can be a very difficult decision for an author. You could argue that the length of a novel should be driven entirely by the story, that you shouldn’t be constrained by rules, you should just start writing and see where you end up. While the length of your novel is ultimately a personal choice, if you plan to publish commercially, there are some conventions worth bearing in mind.
Genre
Generally speaking anything in the 30,000 - 50,000 word range will be considered a novella rather than a novel. Full novels tend to fall in the 70,000 - 120,000 word range, with the length varying according to the genre of the work. Romances tend to be the shortest, possibly as little as 50,000 - 60,000 words; next come Young Adult, perhaps 50,000 - 80,000 words, then the mainstream commercial novels in the 80,000 - 100,000 word range; while sci-fi or fantasy works tend to be the longest, often getting into the 120,000, or even 150,000 word range. Readers will be used to the length of books in their preferred genre, so you should familiarise yourself with their typical format (Amazon can be an asset here). A note of caution: I recommend you focus on word-count rather than page-count as a font change can easily alter the page-count of a novel by 10 - 15%.
Commercial Considerations
Once you have established a typical range for your genre, as a first-time novelist you might want to limit yourself to the shorter end of that range. This is for simple commercial reasons. Longer books cost more to edit, more to print, more to ship, and they take up more space on shelves. For these reasons they are likely to be seen as a bigger risk for the publisher and so a longer novel may prove harder to publish. Notice how the early Harry Potter novels are much shorter than the later ones. The first book in the series is around 77,000 words whereas the last book is close to 200,000! We don’t know all the reasons for this, but it is probably fair to say that as a highly successful author, JK Rowling had much more freedom when it came to her later books. It is unlikely that many debut authors would have the freedom to publish a 200,000 word novel in the Young Adult category.
Word count is also a concern if you are planning to self-publish, as the cost of printing and delivery for both print and e-books will depend on the length, and physical or virtual size of the work. Amazon charges a delivery fee for e-books based on the file-size of the work. Of course, shorter novels are also quicker to write - something I will come to in my next post.
Generally speaking for these reasons, I would encourage you to lean towards the shorter end of the scale for your debut novel. Though I’m going to throw a slight spanner in the works at this point - some readers might feel they are getting better value from a longer work. My own mother refuses to buy any book that is less than 300 pages!
The Story and Style
I know that my writing style isn’t typical. I am very light on description, relying on the reader to fill-in the blanks using their own imagination. I’m not someone who will take twenty pages to say ‘the door was blue’. There are solid reasons for this which I will come to in another post. One thing I want to mention here, is that whenever I’ve been struggling for word-count and I’ve tried to pad the text with descriptive waffle, I’ve always failed. These are always the least compelling parts of the book and the first to be cut during the editing process. If you are struggling to hit your word count don’t be tempted to add superfluous waffle to the text. I would encourage you instead to go back to your story. Is it too light? Do you need another character, or sub-plot perhaps? Don’t just take twenty pages to tell me ‘the door was blue’ - Moby Dick I’m looking at you.
On the other hand, what if your draft is too long? What if you’ve reached the end only to discover you’ve created a 250,000 word behemoth? Well then you have a couple of options. Firstly you need to be ruthless with your editing, and if, after several critical edits, you still can’t wrestle it down to something manageable, then it might be time to consider splitting the book into parts. While this can irritate the reader (I have the negative reviews to that effect!), it I can be commercially advantageous, and does give you a lot more freedom.
Conclusions
Before you even put pen to paper you have a lot to think about. Or, you could just make it 80,000 words.