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Hey all, I’ve got a quick question.
What do you personally think is an average/good word count for a novel. Also, what are your own word counts?
I’ve estimated that mine will be somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000. It depends on how much I expand or cut out in the editing stage.
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Also, this is the book that I talked about (a long while ago!) in the ‘Novel Ideas’ section of the forum. I was just reading through all of your responses and realized that there was one thing that came through for everyone. “Are you mixing up history? / What do you mean by alternative historical fiction?” So here’s the answer. I’m not changing major events of history, like having Hitler win the war (although sometime I think that kind of thing can make for an interesting plot line), but am rather inserting something that didn’t really happen. Okay, that didn’t sound good, but think “Captain America: The First Avenger”; ‘Hydra’ didn’t actually exist, neither did the ‘Red Skull’, to say nothing of ‘Captain America’ himself, but Marvel made a movie about it anyway. That’s kind of what’s going on in my book. The setting is the Pacific War (read: The part of WWII that occurred in the Pacific region), but I’ve added in a greater conflict; An incredibly destructive weapon (far deadlier than an atomic bomb) is hidden in a remote location. When informants alert the Japanese to its presence, all of the lives in the pacific are in the hands of one girl who has sworn an impossible promise.
If anyone wants to know more, tag me in an update on your profile page, and I’ll give you better detail.
Sorry, that turned out far longer than I had intended! 😉Official Member of the Certified Club of Aussie Kapeefers
@clairec A lot of wordcount depends on genre. For a first time author, generally 60-90k is the way to go but some genres like fantasy/sci-fi are more like 90k-110k because of all the additional worldbuilding. My gut is that 80-100k would be fine for “historical fiction” since, like fantasy/sci-fi, there’s a fair bit of background information you need to fill in there. My own book is fantasy and is at 115k currently.
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Most YA novels are around 100k.
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I was not aware that this was a needed thing.ENTP, Aether-borg Hero with cape obsession and fascination with swords.
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*laughs maniacally and brings the roof down in a shower of plaster*I am the wrong person to ask about this. XD My WIP was roughly 535,870 words as a finished second draft. I’m still cutting, but it will never be the length of a ‘normal’ book. 😛
That said, 70,000 sounds about the kind of size I like in books.
@clairec 80,000 – 100,000 sounds reasonable I’m shooting for 50,000 in my novel (equivalent to 25-ish chapters.)
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@aratrea, @reaganramm, @kate-flournoy, @salome01w4g, Thanks guys! 🙂
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@clairec My novels usually run around 80,000, even though I am late. But of course, 50,000 to 100,000 plus is fine too. An author said to me once that the word count doesn’t matter too much though, it’s the story that counts.
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@clairec my pleasure!
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@dragon-snapper, Thank you! The more advice the merrier! 😛 I agree, it is the story that counts the most. 🙂
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I’ve heard that it’s really hard to pitch a first-time book to a publisher if it’s not in a normal wordcount ballpark. (70-100k words).
That said, when I read books that I like, it never satisfies me until it gets up to 150k. But its all a matter of taste.
Helpy?
@josiahdeboer, yes very helpful, thank you. 🙂
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I’m not sure if I can speak much into this topic, simply because it’s SUPER hard for me to keep my word count down. My first novel was 118,938 words, which made the book a lot larger than I anticipated!
I think a lot of it depends on what your plan is, if you want to get traditionally published/ pitch to an agent, or if you’re going to self-publish. With self-publishing, the more pages you have, the less you earn per book sale, but at the same time, a lot of readers LOVE fat books.
(On the flip side, if you enroll in Kindle Select, you earn more for having more pages…so I see pros and cons either way.)
Thanks, @livylynn. 😀
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