My first book, Three Times a Lady was roughly 100,000 words. Here’s how I worked out the word count – I literally counted the words in a Cathy Kelly book, a Sheila O’Flanagan book and a Marian Keyes book and figured that 90 to 120k was about right! This was in 2000. (When I say counted – I counted the number of words on one page and multiplied it by the number of total pages – I’m not a complete lunatic! But you knew that, right? Someone in a writing class I once taught thought I was suggesting they count every word – honestly!)

Some of my other books have been shorter – 85k, 86k, some longer. 126,000 is the longest – When the Boys Were Away. That year publishers were looking for longer books and my story luckily just naturally longer.

I have a feeling the next adult book will be shorter. It’s for a slightly younger age group – older teens, 20s, early 30s – and so far the story just seems to be zipping along and not getting sidetracked by sub plots, which can stretch a book out. So I’d say 80 to 90k.

I’ve asked a few of my friends who write popular fiction and they are mainly in the 90k to 110k category.

Children’s books are a little more complicated. I am constantly asked how many words should a children’s book actually be?

Now, this is a rather vague question. So I ask ‘What kind of children’s book?’ And they say ‘Oh, you know, a novel. Anyone would love it. I’d say age 6 to 80.’ My heart always sinks at this, as it means the writer hasn’t grasped one of the fundamentals of writing for children – and this is that you must know your audience.

Children of 6 do not read the same books as teenagers of 14. And yes, of course there are rare ‘crossover’ books like Harry Potter or The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, but in general different age groups have different tastes. And their stories need different word counts.

Knowing you audience and their needs is an interesting one – I’ll make a note to come back to it at a later stage. But for now – word count.

These are very much just guidelines, oh writerly ones!

Picture books are short generally, people, SHORT. Read some picture books, count the words and get a feel for it. Usually less than 400 or 500 words.

Early readers are also SHORT. My Emma the Penguin book in the O’Brien Panda series is 800 words long, and, I hope, not a word out of place. Most publishers will tell you what word count they need for their early reading series – contact then and ask. Just ring O’Brien Press – 01 – 492333 (Dublin) and ask them. They are very helpful. I’m not sure what they are taking on at the moment, but again, that’s useful to know too – again, just ask them. Friendly folk, the O’Brien gang.

Novels for age 8/9/10 – 30,000/35,000 is the norm. Of course some books are longer than that (Yes, yes, you don’t need to mention Harry Potter), but if they are going to be must longer they need to be pretty darned good.

Novels for age 10+ – my Ask Amy Green books are usually around 50,000 words which is quite long for this age group I am told. Judi Curtin’s are about 30,000, Cathy Cassidy’s about 30 to 40,000. But Amy just has a lot to say I guess!

Older teens – less than 60/70,000 would be the norm. But fantasy books do tend to be longer.

The best thing to do is always – ALWAYS – to read a hell of a lot of books in the age group and the genre you intend to write for. Get a really good feel for it and then with that in mind, write your own book. Won’t you get influenced by other people’s work? It’s a risk worth taking. If you are influenced by excellent children’s books – and note I said influenced, by which I mean inspired, I am not suggesting you write ‘like’ anyone else but yourself – surely this is a good thing as long as you stay true to your own voice and your characters and plot are wholly original.

Below I’ve posted a section from the blog of American literary agent, Mary Kole who has some darned good advice and comments on word count on www.kidlit.com – check it out.

She points out that these are just estimates gathered from her (wide) experience. And they relate to the American market in particular, but are also useful for the UK/Irish market:
Word counts –

• Board Book — 100 words max
• Early Picturebook — 500 words max
• Picturebook — 1,000 words max (Seriously. Max.)
• Nonfiction Picturebook — 2,000 words max
• Early Reader — This varies widely, depending on grade level. I’d say 3,500 words is an absolute max.
• Chapterbook — 10,000 words max
• Middle Grade — 35,000 words max for contemporary, mystery, humor, 45,000 max for fantasy/sci-fi, adventure and historical
• YA — 70,000 words max for contemporary, humor, mystery, historical, romance, etc. 90,000 words max for fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, etc.

And here’s more useful stuff from Mary:
Now for the more practical, everyday truth. Personally — and this sounds extremely crass and judgmental of me, I know — the lower your word count, the more I like you, right off the bat. For example, right now, I’ve got about 150 queries and 8 manuscripts in my queue. And that’s from, like, the last couple of days. That’s a lot of words for me to read. When I get a query for anything over 80k words that sounds really cool, I groan a little bit inside. It’s not the word count, per se, because, if something sounds cool, I really do get excited to read it. It’s that I have so many other submissions on my plate, so I half-dread loving it a lot and having to read all those 80k words. And if I take it on, I’ll have to read those 80k words over and over again as we revise. It represents a big time commitment. I realize this is arbitrary and perhaps lazy of me but… welcome to the world of a very busy agent. Sometimes, we have these thoughts.
There are times, though, (and these are the rule, not the exception, I find) when an inflated word count isn’t earned, isn’t awesome, isn’t because every word deserves to be there. I usually find that first-time fantasy, paranormal or sci-fi authors are the worst offenders. They craft a redundant manuscript full of lavish description that moves at a snail’s pace. Then they send it to me and proudly say that there are 155k words and that it’s the first in a trilogy. I read the writing sample and see paragraph after paragraph of dense text with no breaks for dialogue or scene. These are the high word count manuscripts that are problematic. Because, clearly, the author hasn’t revised enough. And if I tell them what really needs to happen — that they need to lose about 50% of their words — they’ll have an aneurysm.
But, truthfully, if your word count is anything over 100k in children’s, it better be higher-than-high YA fantasy. And all those words better be good. Cutting words and scenes and “killing your babies,” as I like to put it, is one of the most hard-won revision skills any writer can have. And it usually comes after you’ve done lots and lots and lots of revision in your life. Many debut authors haven’t yet learned how to make — and enjoy — this type of word sacrifice. It shows.

Interesting, honest stuff! I’ll be keeping an eye on Mary’s blog from now on!

Yours in writing,

Sarah X
Word count of this blog – 1, 318!

Line edits come after the structural edit (sometimes there can be more than one of these if the editor has encountered lots of things they’d like to see changed or worked through) and accompanying author’s re-write. It’s when the editor (or sometimes a different editor) goes through each line of the book, making notes and suggesting changes; some small, like changing a word or adding a line, some bigger, like moving a scene, or checking a character’s motivation rings true.

It’s a vital part of your book’s progression from manuscript to finished bound book, and it’s important to put everything you can into it. By the end of the editing process you should a/ know every chapter practically off by heart and b/ be ready to let your work go, knowing you’ve done all you can to make it the best book possible.

And yes, you can get more than a little sick of your own book by the end of things, that’s kind of normal. It drives you on to write the next book and start the whole process all over again. Like childbirth, you forget the hard bits and keep writing regardless.

There are several issues that are reoccurring throughout my Amy Green book, which is now in its fifth draft. The main one is my ‘beats’ or lack of. ‘Beats’ are (and I’m quoting a book on editing here by Renni Browne and Dave King) bits of action interspersed through a scene, such as a character walking to a window or removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes – the literary equivalent of what is know as theatre as ‘stage business’.’

So there you have it – ‘beats’. Bits that spice up the dialogue, and often, make sense of what’s happening when characters are talking.

My problem – this is book 3 in the series. I now know my characters so well that the action unfolds right in front of my eyes. But I have to keep remembering that my readers don’t know my characters the way I do. They may need some nudges in the right direction. They won’t know Amy is staring at her feet and mumbling unless I say or show she is.

But too many ‘beats’ and the dialogue starts to sound stilted and unnatural. It’s a difficult balance.

‘Beats’ – good word, isn’t it? Better get back to the line edit – it won’t wait!

Yours in writing,

Sarah X

Humble apologies for the lack of posts recently. What with Easter and friends visiting, it’s been pretty hectic the last few weeks. At the moment I’m working away on the edits of the third Amy Green book – Bridesmaid Blitz (out in Oct). I had an email from my editor today and I’d like to share it with you as it’s lovely.

Writers work away in this funny vacuum, not knowing if what they are producing is hitting the mark. I am very lucky to have two editors in Walker Books, both of whom really know their stuff. After a pretty stiff and thorough rewrite – after a very frank editorial meeting in London with both of them – I submitted Amy Green 3 mark 2 nervously, hoping they would like what I’d done.

I’d hacked the middle out of the book. It was veering away from Amy’s story and I had to bring it back and the only way I could do this was to rewrite a good chunk of the main plot. So I got rid of about 1/3 of the book (about 17,000 words) and created lots of new scenes.

There were a lot of different subplots in the original draft and I got rid of several of these – including a school production of Grease that I was rather fond of – but by tearing them out, gave the main story (Amy’s story) room to breathe.

Luckily my editors liked what I’d done. However there are still three reasonably big plot problems/blips that I now have to iron out.

In the editorial letter (I didn’t get one for the 1st rewrite as there was so much to do!), my editor has broken it down into sections – bless – to make things easy for me.

I have to 1/ build up the Seth/Polly subplot – which I’ve just done.
2/ Work on a particular agony aunt letter that doesn’t quite click.
And 3/ work on Amy’s relationship with – look away if you’re an Amy Green fan, plot spoiler coming up – relationship with her new baby sister, Grace.

I spent this week working on the Seth/Polly subplot – researching breast cancer, treatment, drugs and clinical trials. Then I wrote new scenes using the research. But here’s the thing: I had no idea whether I’d overwritten the scenes (they are pretty sad – but cancer in all its forms is hardly a walk in the park!), used too much or not enough technical information; whether they held the reader’s attention or if they were too slow moving. I’m always aware that young readers have a hell of a lot of other demands on their time and, above all, I aim to hold their interest.

So I sent the new chapters to my editor for some feedback – and here’s a snippet of the email she sent me:

Wow! These new chapters are absolutely brilliant! I love them. There is so much emotion in there, and all the facts about the cancer/drug trial etc are really interesting – you’ve gone into just the right level of detail. It all feels so much more real now. Never mind Amy, I feel like Niagara Falls! (Amy cries a lot in the chapters)

Right, I’m off to mop up my mascara!

It made my week!

I’m lucky to have editors who care about my writing and who really get what I’m trying to do. I’m truly blessed. To the gods of writing up there, I thank you for bringing us together.

I wish you all such kind and thoughtful editors.

Yours in writing,

SarahX

As you know, one of my favourite subjects – and a vital part of the writing process.

On Monday I was over at Walker Books in London, my Amy Green publishers. In the afternoon I talked marketing with the team – website, events, filming a special Amy Green trailer, fanzine, cute pink leather heart shaped Amy Green luggage tag to give away to readers . . . endless amounts of wonderfulness. And fab choc brownies at lunchtime in the Walker canteen.
They were full of brilliant ideas and I can’t wait to see the finished campaign.

In the morning I met with Gill and Annalie, my editors. They had some pretty interesting things to say about book 2, Bridesmaid Blitz.

Basically they did a nice sandwich – we love the writing, the plot needs some work, love the characters, especially Amy and her voice is fab.

Spot that bit in the middle? The plot needs some work.

Ah yes. ‘Some’ might be underplaying it a bit. I need to unpick the whole plot and piece it back together again, with more emphasis on Amy and less on Mills, her best friend. They said it very nicely of course but it still pinches.

Writers secretly want to hear how brilliant their book is, how it doesn’t need a bit of editing, how it just fits together so seamlessly that not one little tweak would make it better. But unless you are Roddy Doyle or Marian Keyes (who I bet would all laugh if they read this – as I know they both work very hard indeed on their rewrites and edits) your book will always benefit from an experienced editor’s eye.

I’m so grateful that Gill and Annalie took the time to read and really think about how I could improve my work. The more editorial notes I am given, the more grateful I am. Even though it means a lot more work.

So for the next few weeks I have to rip Bridesmaid Blitz apart and piece it back together again – my very own patchwork quilt of words and sentences and scenes. It’s up to me to make it as good as I possibly can. I owe it to myself and to my readers (bless them) to put everything I can into this rewrite and hopefully make it better.

How much of the original book will remain? I’d say about 1/3 or less. 2/3rds will be completely new material. Scary stuff really. Quite the cull. But it has to be done.

I’m thinking of putting the deleted scenes on my website – as an added extra – like they do on DVDs of movies. What do you think? Or maybe they should stay exactly where they belong – in the deleted scenes file on my laptop!

It’s all a learning process and nothing is every wasted. Or so I keep telling myself.

If you are interested in an editor/agent’s point of view on editing – read this post by the excellent Nathan Bransford, Curtis Brown, US:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/11/how-to-respond-to-manuscript.html

Good luck with your own edits.

Sarah X

Anyway, I met several most interesting women who were also helping out, 3 of whom are writing and are very interested in the whole creative process. I told one of them I was editing my latest adult book (sorry folks, more about the darned editing – which I should be doing right at this moment in fact – but it’s important) – and she asked ‘What do you mean by ‘editing’ exactly?

Interesting question.

The way I see it there are many, many different stages to an ‘edit’ and some are not ‘editing’ at all.

I’ll go through it step by step just to freak out all those people out there who think a book is finished once the first draft is done and dusted.

Here’s what happens to my novels in a nutshell (the non fiction books are a little different):

1/Finish first draft – now I don’t rewrite much as I go along – so it’s a messy first draft and needs a lot of work.

2/ Print out the whole thing – I can’t edit on screen – I need to scribble – and read through the whole thing – A4 pad by my side, to write on and insert extra scribbled pages into the manuscript as necessary.
I delete scenes/chapters that don’t work, plotlines that go nowhere, delete a lot of descriptive passages and rewrite them in a sentence or two. Work on making each character stronger.

3/ I type in all the changes, print out and start editing on the pages again.
I might do this 3, 4 or 5 times until I’m happy that my editor won’t laugh me out of it.

4/ I email the book to my editors (at the moment I have 2 who work as a team) and now, my agents.
My previous agent didn’t actually read my manuscripts, but my new ones do – I have 1 who deals with the kids books, 1, the adult books. To get feedback from so many experts is fabber than fab. I’m very lucky.

5/ They all send me their notes – or I chat to them on the phone about the book. I make my own notes on the changes to be made.

6/ I mull over these changes for a few days, making more notes.

7/ I print out the manuscript again and scribble the changes on to the pages. Sometimes if I have to rewrite a long scene or add a new one, I’ll type straight onto my laptop.

8/ Then I type the changes in.

9/ Then I print the whole thing out again, read it again, and make more changes, type in.
And I haven’t gone near the actual writing yet – this is all mainly plot and character stuff!

10/ Once I’m happy with the actual story and characters, I send it to my editor again and she sends me a ‘line edit’ – a more detailed, line by line edit of smaller, but important changes.

11/ So I make those changes – this usually only takes 1 or 2 print, scribble on pages, type ins. And then I send it back to her, and if she’s happy she passes it to the copyeditor.

12/ The copyeditor does what Joe public thinks ‘editing’ is – correcting typos, suggesting word changes for repeated words; smaller changes, additions for clarity and deletion of unnecessary words.

13/ When I get those notes, I make those changes (usually on screen at that stage) start tweaking the language – taking any any unnecessary words, tightening up the dialogue, making sure each chapter starts and ends as crisply and with as much impact as possible.

14/ Then once I’m happy with that (after printing out and reading one more time!), I’ll send it back to the copy editor and once she’s happy and the manuscript is ‘clean’ – free of any mistakes – she passes it on to the typesetter – who puts it into the book’s format – with the chapter headings, page numbers, prelims etc.

15/ Final stage (thank God!) – I get sent the ‘galleys’ or the proof pages to check through – which I do carefully, every single word – small mistakes pop up even at that stage that have been missed (and it’s the author’s duty to double check for these I feel – no one cares as much about your book as you do).

16/ The book is printed.

Oh, and I’m usually half way through a new book (let’s call it book 2) when the edits for book 1 hit – so I have to stop writing book 2, edit book 1 – send book 1 back to my editor – get back to writing book 2 – get the edits for book 1 back – work on the edits for book 1 again – send them off – back to book 2 – etc etc.

OK, hold it there, you’re saying – isn’t that a lot of work?
YES!
But are all books written like that?
No, some are published with a lot less editorial attention – on the publishers and/or the authors’ part. And some books require less work for some reason. My first Amy Green book was a joy to write – just flew out of me – but the 2nd one needed more work as I was trying to do too much – I needed to pare it back, make it simpler, concentrate on what I was really trying to say.

So there you go – now you probably know far too much about my editing process. Sorry if I’ve scared you.

SarahX
PS Sorry trees for all the printing – I’m green in other ways, promise!