Fic help.

[SF_and_Coffee]

Okay, wasn't sure. I hear a lot of people say that 12,000 words or 18,000 words or even 20 - 30,000 words is a novel, and it isn't. 120,000 -- now that's a good, meaty novel! And 70k - 80k is a decent one.

Twenty-odd years ago, the threshold for something being "novel-length" was roughly 80k and up. Now some publishers consider 40k - 50k to be a novel, and I find I'm bothered by that for two reasons:

One, it seems to me to indicate that the general reading public's attention span either has slipped incredibly far, or is expected to do so, such that in order to be published and read, original fiction will have to be shortened so drastically that authors will either have to oversimplify plots or avoid any of the sort of detail that actually makes a story interesting. I really don't know that I want to live in a world where best-selling novels for adults will eventually be somewhere around the level of juvenile fiction I read in the mid- 1970s, which is what I fear could happen if the trend continues. (Not to mention that I'm averse to plunking down full price for a book and expecting several evenings worth of enjoyable reading, only to discover I've finished it in two.)

Secondly, it bothers me as an author who simply does not write short, simple stories bereft of detail and world-building. If the market for long work goes completely away, there's virtually zero chance of my ever being published by a publishing house, and precious little for my selling many copies of my work even if I self-publish.

Sorry to be on the soapbox, and none of this is or was directed at anyone here; I'm simply venting about something that has been in my awareness for a while and really bothers me.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Twenty-odd years ago, the threshold for something being "novel-length" was roughly 80k and up. Now some publishers consider 40k - 50k to be a novel....

When I wrote my first novel, which was in 1981, a novel was 50k. It is not a new movement--in fact, it's an old one. Most novels today are terribly padded to make the artificial 120k threshold.

Seaboe

[SF_and_Coffee]

When I wrote my first novel, which was in 1981, a novel was 50k. It is not a new movement--in fact, it's an old one. Most novels today are terribly padded to make the artificial 120k threshold.

Seaboe

I don't know how 120k can be an "artificial threshhold" when it isn't in fact the threshhold of anything to begin with. I was writing in 1981 as well, and according to everything I read or was being told in writing courses at that time, novels were generally expected to be 70k - 80k (obviously, there were outliers; there are always outliers). I've never heard of 120k as a threshold.

All I know is that if you took my ten favorite novels and tried to strip each of them down to 70k words or less, or worse yet to 50k, you'd have to sacrifice half the plot or all of the character development and setting, and the result would seem more like Cliffs Notes than an actual novel.

[SF_and_Coffee]

Seven of my favorite novels, with their publication dates, page counts, and word counts calculated from page count at 250 words per page (wpp):

"Earth" - David Brin, published in 1990. 708 pages according to Amazon, at 250 wpp, that's ~176k

"A Fire Upon The Deep" - Vernor Vinge, published 1992. 432 pages, at 250 wpp that's ~108k

"The Genesis Machine" - James P. Hogan, published in 1978. 338 pages, ~84,500 words

"Watership Down" - Richard Adams, published in 1972. 476 pages, ~119k (interestingly, this is non-SF and aimed at both the YA and adult markets)

"Dragonflight" - Anne McCaffrey, published in 1968. 320 pages, ~80k

"The Hunt For Red October" - Tom Clancy, published in 1984. 672 pages, ~168k

"Outlander" - Diana Gabaldon, published in 1991. 896 pages, ~224k

I'd have a tough time with the idea of any of these being pared down to 50k words or below, because the stories weren't padded. Bringing any of these down to 50k or less would strip out some element from the story that I think it would be poorer for losing. To really interest me, a story has to have character development, a well-described setting, and a plot that I can appreciate. Some novels can do that in 50k - 60k words, but some take far more words to do the job. I firmly believe in letting a story be as long as it takes to tell the tale properly.

[SaraBahama]

LOVE 'Hunt for Red October'...really, love any Clancy. Some of his technical passages mostly bogg me down, but I do skim through them and even on a superficial level he educates me.

[SaraBahama]

Anyone else read Edward Rutherford?

[SF_and_Coffee]

Not yet, but Sarum is on my to-read list.

[mathpiglet]

Anyone else read Edward Rutherford?

Indeed. My favourites are Sarum and London. I actually read London aloud to my boys when they were younger. I've reread each of those a few times. I was less impressed with the Irish ones he wrote, but did read them. I couldn/t make my way through the one he wrote on Russia, thought I tried twice.

I've read all the books on your list SF_and_Coffee.

I'm looking forward to Winter of the World by Ken Follett.

Long books are not bad for being long, but similarly short books are not bad for being short. A story is a story. I loved Stephen King's latest, 11-23-63 and it was very long.

[LT. COL. John Sheppard]

this is a different style of help but what do you think of this (this is my first Fic)

Spoiler:

Destiny’s Shadow
By Cameron Weir (LT. COL. John Sheppard)

‘The Destiny still in FTL near to the end of her 3 year voyage towards the new galaxy. I was first awake from the stasis pods, honestly I was shocked as no-one else had awakened, steam flew out of the floor under my pod similar to that of our Stargate. I walked away from my pod seeing all of the crew still in stasis, when my pod door closed I spun around to face it almost immediately on the door was a note it read “Go to the console” I took a moment all this was happening so fast. I reached the console at the end of the room another note was there it read “Gateroom “

[Whytewytch]

this is a different style of help but what do you think of this (this is my first Fic)

Spoiler:

Destiny’s Shadow
By Cameron Weir (LT. COL. John Sheppard)

‘The Destiny still in FTL near to the end of her 3 year voyage towards the new galaxy. I was first awake from the stasis pods, honestly I was shocked as no-one else had awakened, steam flew out of the floor under my pod similar to that of our Stargate. I walked away from my pod seeing all of the crew still in stasis, when my pod door closed I spun around to face it almost immediately on the door was a note it read “Go to the console” I took a moment all this was happening so fast. I reached the console at the end of the room another note was there it read “Gateroom “

My opinions?
Love the idea of the first person from Rush's POV. Keep it in past tense. Get us deeper, though. We're in his POV, so we should be able to feel what he's feeling, both physically & emotionally. Take us on the walk with him, past the other pods. Does he pause at anyone's pod? Is he cold? Is he hungry? Is he weak or his legs rubbery from lack of use? Maybe he stumbles and leans for support against one of the pods. Is it cold against his hand? BECOME Rush. First person is like being a body snatcher--you are inside the character's body, mind, heart, and soul. It is a very intimate form of writing. Grab us and hold us close so that we experience all that he does. Engage all of the senses, but don't wax poetic since Rush is a scientist and can be a bit hard-edged.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

SF, rather than looking just at your favorite authors, take a look at the books in the genre as a whole. You've listed 2 books from before 1975, and both of those were considered longer than average when they were published (IIRC, Watership Down was considered a monster). While I agree that today it's not a novel until it tops 70k, back in the 60s and 70s (and before) good novels were often written that were much shorter than that (After Things Fell Apart by Ron Goulart is 48k, A Princess of Mars is only 40k, Witch World by Andre Norton is 55k).

You may feel that anything shorter than 80,000 words isn't a novel and shouldn't be called that. It remains true, however, that many novels are shorter and are legitimately called novels.

ETA: cite to Wikipedia on the Nebula Award requirements, which define a novel as 40k

Seaboe

[mathpiglet]

this is a different style of help but what do you think of this (this is my first Fic)

Spoiler:

Destiny’s Shadow
By Cameron Weir (LT. COL. John Sheppard)

‘The Destiny still in FTL near to the end of her 3 year voyage towards the new galaxy. I was first awake from the stasis pods, honestly I was shocked as no-one else had awakened, steam flew out of the floor under my pod similar to that of our Stargate. I walked away from my pod seeing all of the crew still in stasis, when my pod door closed I spun around to face it almost immediately on the door was a note it read “Go to the console” I took a moment all this was happening so fast. I reached the console at the end of the room another note was there it read “Gateroom “

My opinions?
Love the idea of the first person from Rush's POV. Keep it in past tense. Get us deeper, though. We're in his POV, so we should be able to feel what he's feeling, both physically & emotionally. Take us on the walk with him, past the other pods. Does he pause at anyone's pod? Is he cold? Is he hungry? Is he weak or his legs rubbery from lack of use? Maybe he stumbles and leans for support against one of the pods. Is it cold against his hand? BECOME Rush. First person is like being a body snatcher--you are inside the character's body, mind, heart, and soul. It is a very intimate form of writing. Grab us and hold us close so that we experience all that he does. Engage all of the senses, but don't wax poetic since Rush is a scientist and can be a bit hard-edged.

This is great advice. If I may add a bit more - I had trouble remembering what FTL means, so you may want to expand that. I also don't know SGU very well, so at some point, very soon, you will need to tell the readers who 'I' is. But I can tell you are 'seeing' what you are writing.

[fems]

This is great advice. If I may add a bit more - I had trouble remembering what FTL means, so you may want to expand that. I also don't know SGU very well, so at some point, very soon, you will need to tell the readers who 'I' is. But I can tell you are 'seeing' what you are writing.

I often just write it full out in the beginning and then use the abbreviation afterwards, like how you would write it in full and then add the abbreviation in brackets in formal writing so you can simply use the abbreviation in the rest of your writing. Of course it's a bit different in fiction and especially in multi-chapter fics but if you just use the full version every now and then (let's say once a chapter if they're >5000 words) and just FTL for the rest.

[SF_and_Coffee]

SF, rather than looking just at your favorite authors, take a look at the books in the genre as a whole.

Well, first off, I wasn't looking at a single genre. I believe I listed works in three separate ones. Secondly, the point I was making in that particular post was in response to your seeming assertion that longer works are generally the result of padding. I was specifically pointing out that many of my favorites are longer and wouldn't work as well if they were shorter and therefore, their length is not the result of padding, but rather is necessary to those stories. Since the post was intended to be specifically about those works, of course those were the works I cited. If I'm discussing apples, it wouldn't make much sense to use oranges as my examples, would it?

And before you say it: yes, sometimes a longer work is the result of padding, filler, or unnecessary prose, but not always. And I still don't see where 120k has been considered a lower threshold for anything outside of a few authors who've misinterpreted the preferences of some editors.

You've listed 2 books from before 1975, and both of those were considered longer than average when they were published (IIRC, Watership Down was considered a monster).

I was already aware of that; thank you.

While I agree that today it's not a novel until it tops 70k, back in the 60s and 70s (and before) good novels were often written that were much shorter than that (After Things Fell Apart by Ron Goulart is 48k, A Princess of Mars is only 40k, Witch World by Andre Norton is 55k).

Certainly there were, but to the best of my knowledge that wasn't the average length, and those novels were considered "short" by many. Good, just short. (I do have a few favorites that are short as well.) I suppose I ought to have specified 'perceptual threshold' rather than publication threshold, as that is how the issue was addressed in my writing classes, and was what I was thinking about. This is what happens when I'm posting on minimal sleep and while trying to multitask -- I get sloppy.

Thing is, there doesn't seem to have been much of an upper limit for the length of a novel back in the 50s and 60s, either (else many of Michener's works might never have been published), whereas now the twin piece to having a lower limit is for some publishers to reject stories that go over 100k - 120k words as being "too long", forcing authors to cut out significant chunks of the story and skimp on character development in order to get their word count down to an "acceptable" range. It makes economic sense, I suppose, in the realm of dead-tree books due to production costs and shelf space in warehouses and bookstores in a world where people seem to read less overall than a generation or two ago, but so much is moving to e-pub now that I hope this will help to rejuvenate the interest in longer works.

I have friends who are published authors who have agonized over having to eviscerate their work. That's the most important issue I'm criticizing, because I do believe that a story should be given as many words as it takes to actually tell the tale properly. If it takes 45k, great. If it takes 150k, great. If it takes 30k, wonderful, but don't call it a novel. The fact that many of my favorites are in fact longer works is intended to point up the fallacy floating around these days (not necessarily here, but in general) that 'no one is going to read something longer than 80 - 100k'. That's rubbish.

You may feel that anything shorter than 80,000 words isn't a novel and shouldn't be called that.

I'd like to know when and where I said that.

ETA: cite to Wikipedia on the Nebula Award requirements, which define a novel as 40k

Yes, today. I don't know if it's said that all along since the first instance of the award, and I also don't see that it really has much to do with my point. Again, that's the lower threshold, below which a work won't receive consideration. Unfortunately, I've run into writers -- not necessarily here but certainly elsewhere -- who seem to have taken 40k as a mid-range or average word-count and now proudly announce that they've just written a novel whose word count is 25k or some such. Makes for a nice warm fuzzy to say you've written a novel, but if what you've really written is a novella, why not simply say so and be proud of that? For some of us, writing a novella would be much harder than writing a novel, because our minds simply don't produce such concise works. I'd love to be able to write good short stories and novella-length pieces, but that isn't how my particular creative process functions. I seem to have been issued a Muse whose literary tastes mimic my own.

[fems]

All my multi-chapter fics are well over a 100K and my 'short' sequel (5 chaps) to one is almost 30K...