Getting a feel for the right length of your novel is a puzzling thing. I know it shouldn’t matter – a story takes as long to be told as a story takes to be told BUT I do tend to obsess about it. I think I like guidelines – like to know I’m on the right track. So here are some for comparison – they’re my choice, books I love – some of them quite surprised me:
Louis Sachar’s ‘Holes’ – 47079
Candy Gourlay’s ‘Tall Story’ – 47405
Meg Rosoff’s ‘How I live now’ – 46920
Maurice Sendak’s ’Where the wild things are’ – 336 ( the film had more words)
Philip Ardagh’s Eddie Dickens ‘Dreadful Acts’ – 25104 ( Suprisingly long, they’re always over so quickly)
Alice Sebold’s ’The Lovely Bones’ – 97914
Kathryn Stockett’s ‘The Help’ – 158012 – really??!
‘Sarwat Chadda’s ’Devil’s Kiss’ – 68567
David Almond’s ‘Skellig’ – 31202 ( so short – who knew?)
Michael Morpurgo’s ’Private Peaceful’ 46316
Francesca Simon’s ‘Horrid Henry’ between 5,000 and 7,500 ( but you have to read them over and over again to persistent small children)
Sally Gardner’s ’I, Coriander’ 66497
J.K. Rowling’s ’Harry Potter and The Philosophers Stone’ – 77325
Strange how similar they feel in story weight – ‘The Help’ didn’t feel like it was 3 times as long as ‘Holes’.
This is fun too – for when you’re daydreaming about holding that finished book in your hand:
http://www.writersservices.com/wps/p_word_count.htm
Ok, maybe I’m getting a bit carried away…..and if I’ve listed your book – do feel free to dispute my word counts – I didn’t actually count them all myself – I’m not that desperate for procrastination tools…although….
