Perspective

[rynling]

A list of some novels with an average number of chapters & word count per chapter
https://aquiniawrites.tumblr.com/post/183745409506/thought-it-might-be-useful-a-list-of-some-novels

I tend to write (and enjoy, and translate) shorter novels and novellas, so it felt validating for me to get a bit of perspective on word counts. There tends to be a major privileging of massive word counts in certain communities devoted to writing and publishing, and this has always bothered me. Like, it's not a test score; more words does not equal more better.

This is not a criticism of people who write longer stories, of course. I love huge novels, but diversity is good.

For me personally, I think the sweet spot for a book is around 50k-60k words, although I also enjoy French and Japanese novellas and short story collections of around 30k-40k words.

This is one of the many reasons I appreciate fanfic, by the way. Although I actively seek out the publications of small presses, these presses tend to be extremely male-dominated. Mainstream English-language publishing houses promote way more women, people of color, and other minorities than a lot of liberal-leaning critics give them credit for, but the books they put out are still depressingly homogeneous in a number of significant ways. There are a lot of online fiction magazines that do fantastic work, but they tend to be strict about word counts, with anything above 6k-8k words being immediately rejected. It's therefore wonderful to have access to such a wealth of interesting writing that falls entirely outside the number-driven standards of what would ordinarily be published.

Comments

[runicmagitek]

It's funny, because for the longest time, I loathed short stories. Mostly because all of the short stories I had to read in high school and college bored me to tears and I found so much more pleasure in novels, where ideas could be fleshed out. Fast forward like, fifteen years, and I find myself appreciating short stories and novellas way more. Being able to concisely illustrate your narrative is not an easy feat. I keep having to actively edit my own words so I don't ramble on and on and on until the day I die.

Likewise, I feel like fics are a great area to have those rambly stories. A 200k+ beast might not be accepted in traditional publishing, especially if you're a new author, but in fandom? People gobble that good shit up like hot cakes laced with crack.

I've also been finding myself writing more and more stories in the 15-30k area. Like it's long enough to be something outside of a oneshot, but also short enough to keep a reader's interest. I dunno, maybe I'm getting old, but I just don't have time to read chapters that are over 10k with forty more after that.

Also, speaking of short story collections and diverse authors/topics, have you read All Out? It's a lovely collection of queer stories from equally queer writers and it's my favorite thing I've read this year so far.

[lassarina]

This is interesting! I like things of all lengths (except I'm so bad at actually reading long fanfic, sigh, I have so many things Marked For Later) but I find my own fictional "thoughts" (i.e. chapters) are generally 2-3K, except when it comes to Kain, because. Yeah.