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Meg Waite Clayton

Author of the international bestsellers The Postmistress of Paris, The Last Train to London, and 6 other novels

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September 22, 2016 By Meg Waite Clayton

How Many Words Long Should a Novel Be?

typewriter-novel-lengthThis week’s 1 Thing Thursday asks the question: How Long should a novel be?

As the chart below shows, the range in huge, and the honest answer is: as long as it needs to be. Some of these novels are barely longer than a novella, which tops out at about 40,000 words. But the scope of their stories are novelistic. The longest is 10 times the word count of the shortest, and then some.

Author Title Words
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 46,118
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby 47,180
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five 49,459
John Knowles A Separate Peace 56,787
Erich Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front 61,922
Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway 63,422
Alice Walker The Color Purple 66,556
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises 67,707
J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye 73,404
George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four 88,942
Amy Tan Joy Luck Club 91,419
Toni Morrison Song of Solomon 92,400
Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird 99,121
Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights 107,945
Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice 122,189
Anthony Doerr All the Light We Cannot See 128,817
Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities 135,420
Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 145,092
Margaret Atwood Alias Grace 157,665
John Steinback The Grapes of Wrath 169,481
Joseph Heller Catch-22 174,269
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment 211,591
George Eliot Middlemarch 316,059
Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged 561,996
Leo Tolstoy War and Peace 587,287

The realities of publishing

On the other hand … Let’s just say if you are an unpublished novelist coming in with a book the size of, say War and Peace or even Crime and Punishment, it better be about that quality.
My contracts have generally called for a novel of approximately 100,000 words, which I’ve heard a number of agents and editors suggest is a good place to shoot for adult fiction. Others have said 80,000 to 90,000. So maybe 80,000 – 100,000 would be a decent place to shoot, if you can shoot?
Again, the story has to lead the way, always. But you’d be surprised, when you take a really good look at what you’ve got, how much can often be cut. And freeing a story of the weaker material can allow it to become its best.

Genre matters, too.

Some of what you are dealing with is reader expectation.
Historical fiction tends to be on the longer side. I have a dear friend who writes novels set in the 13th and 14th centuries, and her contracts require her to deliver novels of about 140,000 words, so almost half again as long as mine.
Fantasy also tends to be longer, in part I think because you have to create a whole world.
Children and YA books tend to be a bit shorter, Harry Potter notwithstanding.
Cozy mysteries and romance tend to be shorter, too.
So do stop in your local bookstore and have a look at the shelves you aim to be settled on. – Meg

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Filed Under: Meg's Posts, Publishing Tips, Writing Tips

Meg Waite Clayton


Meg Waite Clayton is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of eight novels, including the Good Morning America Buzz pick and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice THE POSTMISTRESS OF PARIS, the National Jewish Book Award finalist THE LAST TRAIN TO LONDON, the Langum-Prize honored THE RACE FOR PARIS, and THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS, one of Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. Her novels have been published in 23 languages. She has also written more than 100 pieces for major newspapers, magazines, and public radio, mentors in the OpEd Project, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the California bar. megwaiteclayton.com

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