Patty made a comment yesterday that prompted this post…thanks, Patty.

Let me start by saying that there is something that does remain a mystery to me, and that’s how authors – some of them, anyway – seem to know exactly how long a book is going to be before they even start if. They plan it meticulously, plan what they are going to say and what the characters will do chapter by chapter, and lo and behold, then they finish it looks just as they thought it was going to. I am much more haphazard. I know the ending, but I have no idea how many words it will take me to get there.

When I say that the present book will be 180,000, I mean that’s the aim. But we will see. I don’t want to sacrifice story coherence, and I certainly don’t want to pad, in order to reach that magical number. In fact, it isn’t magical at all…it’s just an estimation of how many words it will take to get this particular story written.

So how long should a book be, really, word-wise?

First of all, it depends on the genre.
Fantasy tends to be longer than Science fiction.
Historical fiction probably comes next in length, although sometimes it’s up there with the fantasies…

Far behind, comes mainstream and Young Adult and other genres. Many – perhaps even most – of these are under 100,000 words. Why?

Basically, it’s because with fantasy in particular, and to a lesser degree with historical and science fiction novels, the writer has to expend a large number of words telling the reader about the world. In a present day novel, you can say: Mary drove her dog to the vet’s because it needed its shots, and in twelve words you have told the reader that we are talking about a woman who has access to a car and has a pet that she cares about. If the writer says, Illusa-zerise laid a hand on Korden’s arm. ‘He is your Mirager, Magori,‘ you have no idea of what is going on unless the world has been well-portrayed during the course of the story. (That’s a sentence from Heart of the Mirage, by the way.) You don’t even know if the people mentioned are male or female.

However, anything over 180,000 starts to get a bit unwieldy and presents publishers with a bigger cost. Unless they are very, very sure that you are a rising star in the publishing firmament, they are likely to tell you to cut down the verbiage. If you have already proved your self with your large sales figures they will smile happily because they know the reading public is going to be delighted to see a lengthy book from their favourite author.

Here are the approximate lengths of some of my books:
Havenstar (standalone and the first published book): 156,000
The Aware (first book in Isles of Glory trilogy) : 126,000
Gilfeather (second book) :146,000
The Heart of the Mirage (first book in Mirage Makers trilogy): 143,000
Song of the Shiver Barrens: 163,000 (Third book)

I can’t remember the others, but I think they were in the 140-150,000 range. As you can see, I don’t have a set number!

So what is the right length for an unpublished author?
The answer is:
1) Take a look at the length of the genre/type of book you are aiming to write, especially those written as first books.
2) Don’t skimp and don’t pad.
3) When you come to the end, if you think it is too skimpy, then consider rewriting scenes or characters at greater depth.
4) if you think it is too long, go through with your red pen. Look at unwieldy passages – can you say it more simply? Look at repetitions – especially of the kind where you show the action and then have characters discussing it, or worse, you the author pontificating on it.

Here’s what agent Kristin on her entry for July 2nd had to say over at Pub Rants:

Some writers have an annoying habit of restating (via a thought their main character has) what has already been made apparent by the scene or the dialogue.

It’s amazing how much you can tighten up your writing and improve your book, simply by cutting down on the unnecessary.

So what is the right length?
Answer: There is none. What counts is how good your story is, and how good your writing.

But for someone trying to break into the field, I’d be cautious about doing something too far outside the norm lengthwise.

152,219 / 180,000 (83.0%)

Here’s the progress: the orangey bit is the new words, up from 148,707. Doesn’t sound very much, but I am also pruning as I go, tightening up the previously written, so I am well content.

Here’s the actual percentage of what I have gone through correcting, cutting and filling in the gaps:

72,409 / 180,000 (40.2%)

I haven’t actually written a book quite this way before. The normal thing for me is to write from the beginning to the end and then revise, revise, revise. Sometimes I do stop a couple of times (typically about a third and then again at two-thirds the way in) to reread from the beginning, just to make sure I am on the right track. And yes, I do tend to tidy up on those rereads.

{Word of warning to novice writers: it is easy to keep doing this, revising all the time, instead of ever getting to the end. So watch yourself – don’t go back and reread unless you have a reason, and don’t try to polish too much until you have a first draft in your hand. I suspect there are far more books begun than there are ever books finished. If you are writing your first book, your initial aim should be to reach the END. Never lose sight of that goal. You won’t have finished the book, but you will have a full draft to work with, which is more than most people ever do.}

This time though, when I was writing the first draft, I could see that the book was becoming too long, so I kept trying to keep the verbiage down.

Mistake. It ended up – as my first beta readers attested – being a story that had skimpy sections that were frustrating because the reader wanted the details. It also ended up 205,000 words long. Far too long, unless you are “a name” and can sell anything you write without publishers swallowing sickly at the length. (Just compare the length of the unknown Rowling’s first HP book to the length of the famous Rowling’s later ones.)

In other words, I had a story that was too long for the word length I had allotted.

What to do?

The answer was simple. I had to fill in the empty spaces to make it a good story. And I had to come to the end much sooner to make it a publishable story.

But the year was 2002. And other books got in the way. I had contracts for The Isles of Glory, and then more contracts for The Mirage Makers – and deadlines, one after the other. So the story of The Random Rain Cycle was abandoned while I wrote other things.

Re-reading the MS after five years away from it was great. It was clear that there was a natural ending at about 144,000 words. Just the kind of ending I like to give my readers – there is closure of the more immediate story, but lots of loose ends to entice them back to see what happens in the larger tale.

So that is what I am working on now – a complete story that has sections which need plumping out. There is one major new character too – the love interest of one of the others – who wasn’t there at all in the earlier version.

It’s fun, but tricky. Everything has to dovetail, and it is incredibly easy to muck up the continuity when you put in major insertions. Revision, once I have finished, will have to be very, very careful…