You’re a novelist.
Imagine for a moment the prospective reader for your novel is a partygoer eager to meet as many new people as time will allow. Your novel is one of the other guests at this party, an event full of potentially interesting people. Imagine your novel is talking—a lot. Imagine your novel is requiring an inordinate amount of time compared to others at the party. Your novel is telling a long story, a story with digressions, a story with backstory.
There are a few possible outcomes.
Worst case scenario: The partygoer/reader thinks your novel is exhausting, and no one goes to a party to be tired. Their eyes travel to more attractive corners of the room and the moment they find a chance to break away, they do. Your novel doesn’t get to finish its story.
Also a bad scenario: Your reader is too polite to walk away and they become embittered by the experience. They want their time back. They complain about your novel later.
Better scenario: Your reader’s attention wavers, but ultimately they feel it was a worthwhile, albeit long, story. Do they want to read more? Would they seek you out at another party? Uncertain.
Best possible scenario: All that back story was important, all those digressions were significant; your reader is fascinated and sad when your story ends and absolutely wants to see more of you.
Is that best case scenario a lot to ask of us as writers, especially before we even have an agent or an editor? Yup. Couldn’t it be enough to achieve that better scenario, and hope that with the right advocate we’ll get to the best case? After all, we wrote a worthwhile book! That’s amazing! A good friend might applaud us for that; we love our friends and they love us back. Would an agent or an editor be so generous? I wouldn’t recommend taking that chance. I recommend doing everything we can to achieve the best possible scenario. This means, most likely, we need to cut.
Would I, a professional editor who adores reading, really judge a book by its word count?
No. And yes. I’ve read doorstops that felt short because I was so riveted and slim volumes that felt long because I was bored. Some of my very favorite books of all time are BIG. And I love every word and will even reread them. And certainly some categories of fiction tend to be longer than others. Some novelists write longer than others. That said…if your novel is well north of 100,000 words, you must arm yourself with the knowledge that the size of your novel will strike fear and dread into some hearts. People are busy; it’s just a fact. Does this mean you should compromise your artistic vision if your manuscript simply must be 115,000 words? Absolutely not. But it does mean that you are that much more responsible to your reader—you have that much more of an obligation to make those words worth your reader’s time.
I’ve read major books—books this very year that got a ton of critical attention—that were flabby. When I purchased one of these books from my local bookseller, I asked him if he’d read it. He looked at this major book sheepishly and said, “Not yet.” When he heard I was planning to take it on vacation he said, “That’ll keep you busy.” It sounded like a warning. I sincerely doubt this bookseller will ever read that book.
How do you make sure your book is worth your reader’s time, that your word count won’t be viewed as a warning? Empathy. Read your work through the eyes and experiences of the friend, agent, editor, bookseller, librarian, whomever you want to read it. Consider your reader’s life, and the experience you are asking the reader to have. Hold every digression, every back story, to the highest standard: Does it contribute? Would the reader miss it if it weren’t there? Would the book’s meaning be lost? If the answer to those questions is no, you know what to do.
Happy editing!
Peternelle
P.S., If you’ve gotten this far, I have a request—please like and share? It helps with that creature called the algorithm, and don’t we all write to be read? Many thanks!
This is so true. Some long books seem short. That's true of Rowling's later Harry Potter books. Though they got longer and longer, they felt short because her stories were told in-scene, on stage, with lots of action and dialogue.
I agree! When I finished my novel it was about 123,000 words, and I loved it. However, I set it aside for a while and when I came back to it I was able to cut it to 112,000 without losing anything of value. I think I'll have a much better chance of getting an agent with the lower word count.