Via Twitter. A piece re: word count protocols, by genre

[Katie-Ellen]

http://www.literaryrejections.com/word-count/

And a classification of genres:

http://www.literaryrejections.com/genres/

 

[Marc Joan]

Useful, thanks.

 

[David Steele]

Yep. Those two links are going straight into my bookmarks. Thank you,

 

[Emurelda]

Thanks. That site is a new (and old - I presume) writer's treasure trove. I've been referring to its many nuggets of info for many months now.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

Interesting and useful. Especially that Fantasy is generally 90 -100,000 and by sheer accident my first was 100,700 odd and the rest always between 97,000 and 100,000. But as stated in those links, it's not a hard and fast rule.

 

[Karen Gray]

I have seen other articles with similar word counts with the exception of fantasy which is usually classed as anything over 100,000, and 'fisrt books should be between 90,000 and 110,000). The reason being that when world building, the writer needs space to create an immersive world, which may be hampered by constrictive word count. George R. R. Martin and several others continually write novels of over 200,000. I think if you capture the reader's imagination, word count really doesn't factor in any more. It's a good starting point though

 

[Jason Byrne]

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series hovers up around the 400k mark. At least his clock in higher than the one I'm trying to publish.

I almost hesitate to admit — I wrote a book over the summer of 2005 that reached 565k... Longer than War and Peace, and had I tried to publish it, it would have ranked among the top ten longest published works ever. And not at the bottom. That was just ridiculous.

 

[Marc Joan]

565k in 3 months.....shock and awe! I might manage that in three years...

 

[Jason Byrne]

I was just out of high school, and nothing to do but write twenty hours a day every day for three months straight, and then come unhinged. Those times have come and gone!

 

[Emurelda]

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series hovers up around the 400k mark. At least his clock in higher than the one I'm trying to publish.

I almost hesitate to admit — I wrote a book over the summer of 2005 that reached 565k... Longer than War and Peace, and had I tried to publish it, it would have ranked among the top ten longest published works ever. And not at the bottom. That was just ridiculous.

Gordon Bennett! and his publishing troops!

The limits to what humans can achieve is superb....or what a high school leaver can achieve I should say

 

[1408]

I remember reading the word count post after I'd "finished" my book and thinking... well I thought quite a few things and none of them were good! I'm not sure if I've seen the genre post before, definitely useful. Thanks!