How Long is a Novel?

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How long is a novel? Well, of course that depends. But if you’re a first-time author and you’re trying to catch the eye of a traditional publisher (okay, okay, a mixed metaphor at best), you need to be concerned about length. There are a lot of reasons for this, but what it mostly boils down to is money. Longer books are more expensive to produce than shorter books. What you may be able to get away with ten years down the road in your career is not what you can get away with now. In general, aiming for around 80,000 words will get you in the right ballpark. It’s not getting to the 80,000 words that’s difficult for most writers — it’s cutting down to 80,000 words that’s hard.

So you have a 200,000 word manuscript you want to sell to a publisher. What’s an author to do? Here are some suggestions:

• Eliminate non-essential words, phrases, sentences, characters, etc.
• Remove any clichés. You know they’re there.
• Eliminate qualifiers such as nearly, a little, almost, sort of, along the lines of, etc.
• Don’t make yourself crazy. Take it one page at a time and try to reduce just that page. And then the next. And then the next.
• Think about what you’re saying. Why use ten words when four will do? Look at where you can be more spare, where you can tighten your language.