Do I have a monster in my hands? (word count)

Tilda

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Torgo

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Sure, you can write to 70K, but is it all good exciting interesting stuff? Few places will disregard a manuscript based entirely on word count, but if, 100 pages in, nothing much has happened, that's a big problem. Lots of these kid's fantasy manuscripts these days are unbearably, unreadably bloated. Much better and more attractive for a publisher to see a lean, concise one-volume fantasy adventure than a massive trilogy.

Remember: you're seeing Harry Potter at the end of the editing process.
 

Christine N.

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Most novels for that age group run around 40-60 K. Most first novels probably should come in closer to the 40K mark, just b/c publishers would rather take a chance on a new writer with a shorter book than a longer one - that darn bottom line.

Edit, then see where you are. As Torgo said, is it all exciting? If it is, you have two choices. One, submit it as is, and cross your fingers that someone will take a chance on a longer book by a new writer (which if the story is really good, you have an good chance) or two, split the book into two and try them as a pair. Books with sequels are in, especially with that age group. The trouble with it is that if the first book doesn't sell for some reason, you won't get the chance to publish the second.

Finish the book, really finish it, and then decide.
 

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Have you read a lot of books currently being published as MG? I'm only asking this because the books you mention (except for Harry Potter) were all published a long time ago. If not, I would go to the library or bookstore and take a look at the books being published for kids and young adults now - they're very, very different from the classics. I don't mean just style and tone but even structure: Anne, Emily and Little Women were all filled with separate incidents, tied together under the theme of 'girl growing up.' I think it would be very difficult to publish a book like this today. (I'm not saying that your book is anything like this, just pointing out one of the differences I've noticed between classics and modern children's books.) I think reading widely in your genre is very important to writing something publishable - not because something new and original won't get published, but because, as many people have said, you can only break the rules after you've mastered them. And because many times things that you think are original have actually been done a million times.

That said, I think that the word counts for MG/YA novels you see posted around the internet are arbitrary and rarely accurate. They say up to 60,000 words for a YA novel - yet Libba Bray's debut novel was around 100,000. However, I agree with Torgo that you should make sure you really need all those words. I just received a 500 page MG novel for review and it was so boring I fell asleep in the first chapter.
 

stormie

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Actually, in today's market, it seems that MG is targeted to the 8-12 year olds, young YA is 12-16 yr. olds, and older YA is 17-21 yr. olds. You might have a young YA instead of a MG, therefore you can go as high as 70,000 wds. Rule of thumb: put your ms aside for a week or so, then go back over it and you might/should be able to cut 20% of it anyway.
 

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Hi Tilda,

I didn't realize you weren't in an English speaking country. (Just goes to show you should never make assumptions about people!) Why not check out kidsreads.com and teenreads.com - they review tons of new books every month, and while it's no substitute for actually reading the book, I think it could give you a good sense of the different kinds of books that are being published. Plus, then you would have an informed opinion about what books you wanted to buy. I think that kidsreads and teenreads give you the number of pages in a book, but if not, you could always cross reference with amazon - a bit of a pain but again, that will give you a good sense of how long MGs tend to be. Or you can go to renlearn.com - if you choose 'order quizzes' and then type in the name of the book, it will give you the actual word count.

Good luck. And again, I don't necessarily think that 70,000 words is too long for an MG, so I would definitely do some research before you start cutting.
 

Tilda

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watcher

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Rule of thumb: put your ms aside for a week or so, then go back over it and you might/should be able to cut 20% of it anyway.

I've heard 10 % so it probably depends on the writer. Don't take out anything that's important. And Uncle Jim says write the story as long as it needs to be written.

Do what you can and then ask your beta readers what they think. Maybe ask them to tell you if they see any parts that they think aren't necessary. Trust your gut though, before anything else.

And yeah, you wanna put it aside for at least two weeks before editing it.

Congratulations on finishing the first draft!