Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Word count
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
== In fiction == Novelist [[Jane Smiley]] suggests that length is an important quality of the [[novel]].<ref>Smiley, Jane. 2005. Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 14.</ref> However, novels can vary tremendously in length; Smiley lists novels as typically being between 100,000 and 175,000 words,<ref>Smiley, 2005, p. 15.</ref> while [[National Novel Writing Month]] requires its novels to be at least 50,000 words. There are no firm rules: for example, the boundary between a [[novella]] and a [[novel]] is arbitrary and a literary work may be difficult to categorise.<ref>Edge, Tom, "Does Size Matter?" The Guardian (UK), Booksblog, Nov. 2, 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2006/nov/02/doessizematter</ref> But while the length of a novel is mainly dependent on its writer,<ref>{{citation|journal=[[New York Times]]|last=Quindlen|first=Anna|author-link=Anna Quindlen|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/23/books/writers-on-writing-the-eye-of-the-reporter-the-heart-of-the-novelist.html|title=Writers on Writing: The Eye of the Reporter, the Heart of the Novelist|date=September 23, 2002|quote=A novelist doesn't write to space, of course; 80,000 words, 100,000, it is up to the writer to say when the story is done.}}.</ref> lengths may also vary by subgenre; many [[chapter book]]s for children start at a length of about 16,000 words,<ref>Lamb, Nancy, Crafting Stories for Children. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, p. 24</ref> and a typical mystery novel might be in the 60,000 to 80,000 word range while a thriller could be well over 100,000 words.<ref>{{citation|title=Agents give writers the book on what's hot and what's not|journal=[[Austin American-Statesman]]|first=Carol|last=Thurston|date=August 3, 1997|quote=no one wants more than 60-80,000 words in a mystery, 110,000 for a thriller}}.</ref> The [[Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America]] specifies word lengths for each category of its [[Nebula Award]] categories:<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20211105052902/https://nebulas.sfwa.org/about-the-nebulas/nebula-rules/ SFWA Awards FAQ], [[Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America]] as follows:</ref> {| class="wikitable" |- ! Classification !! Word count |- || [[Novel]] || 40,000 words or over |- || [[Novella]] || 17,500 to 39,999 words |- || [[Novella#Versus novelette|Novelette]] || 7,500 to 17,499 words |- || [[Short story]] || up to 7,500 words |}
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)