How Long Should My Book be?

The answer to this question is, "As long as it needs to be to tell the story."

That being said, there are some conventions that have emerged in book publishing regarding the length of certain works. Looking at fiction, we find that the average novel has between 70,000 and 100,000 words. But let's break this down a bit...

Standard novel - 70,000 - 100,000 words

Literary fiction - 80,000 - 100,000 words

Fantasy fiction - often exceeds 150,000 words

YA novels - 40,000 - 80,000 words

Novellas - 20,000 - 50,000 words

Short stories - hover around 5000 words.

None of that is written in stone, however! These are guidelines. And rough ones at that.

Paraphrasing what I said at the beginning of this post, the word count is dependent on the story being told. So, please don't fret if all of a sudden your magnum opus reaches a word count beyond these averages.

Keep in mind...

Your first draft is not going to be the final draft. At least that isn't very likely.

The first draft is all about getting the ideas out of your head and onto paper, so to speak. Even if you have crafted a detailed outline, it's quite possible--and very probable--that a fair measure of extraneous content will make its way into the manuscript. Red herrings tend to pop up, as well as over-exuberant descriptions and redundant or repetitive explanations. Your editor will ferret these anomalous pieces and passages out, and make suggestions to revise them for clarity, consistency, and plausibility. In many cases, removing them altogether will result in a better reader experience, which is, after all, the goal.

Refining your work through the editing process is like pruning a tree to remove the dead wood and leave a beautiful and pleasing example of the species (or genre, as it were!) for all to enjoy. In time, the story will evolve into its perfect form. Word count be damned!

As a member of several writing and editing groups on social media, I often see panicked authors asking what they should do about a seemingly high word count, or what the word count limit is for the type of story they are writing. The responses often surprise and alarm me.

Recently, I read a post by an author whose sci-fi novel was closing in on 85,000 words and he wasn't anywhere near the end. While several encouraging and supportive group members told the author not to worry about it and just keep going until the story was finished, one person replied with a very firm and admonishing statement that the book was already too long. "No reader is going to slog through a book that long!"

Tell that to Victor Hugo! Les Miserables has a word count of 568,751. (The original French version's word count is 655,478.)

According to Mental Floss, Marcel Proust's A la recherche do temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) boasts having 1,267,069 words. Originally published in 1913, it is awe-inspiring to think that Mr. Proust wrote every single word by hand. Wow!

The point is, don't waste your time worrying about how long your story is. Just write it!