223: When Your Book is Too Long To Query

 

Word count matters in traditional publishing, so it's important to stay within a certain range when you're querying to try and find a literary agent. In this episode, I give you 5 tips for shortening your book to ensure the pacing is tight and you won't get auto-rejected by agents for the book being too long.

 

Mentioned in this episode - resources for word counts:

https://reedsy.com/studio/resources/how-many-words-in-a-novel

 

https://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/word-count-for-novels-and-childrens-books-the-definitive-post

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When Your Book is Too Long To Query

 

And welcome back to your Big Creative Life podcast. Thanks for being here. This episode is going to dive into what to do if your book is too long to query. And I want to kind of set the stage for this a bit and explain why this matters in case you're new to the whole idea of querying, which is the process of trying to find a literary agent. And I do have a number of podcast episodes about the querying process, and there is a ton of information online about this. So don't stress. You can definitely learn about it and learn about it pretty easily. But in the traditional publishing world, if you want to get an agent, if you want to get a book deal at a major publisher or even a medium-sized publisher, the word count for your book matters. It matters a lot more than it does if you are an indie, like if you're going to self-publish your book. Because when you self-publish, You have final say over everything. That's one of the benefits of self-publishing is you have final say over the cover, the title, the release date, the word count, all of that good stuff, right?

And it's just something that publishers consider for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that it's more expensive for them to print a very long book. I mean, think about the pages that are required for a 200,000 word novel as opposed to a 70,000 word novel, right? There's automatically going to be a difference in the amount that it costs to print that. I've also heard from agents recently, and even my own agent and I have had discussions about this, that there seems to be a trend of books going even a little bit shorter than they were like 10 years ago in the traditional publishing world for a variety of genres. I write thriller, so I'm automatically kind of on the lower end of the adult, you know, spectrum. I will include a link in the show notes for a Writer's Digest article, like a little infographic that has information on word counts if you're not sure what your word count should be. That's definitely something that you can easily research. If you are writing any sort of speculative fiction that requires world-building, like fantasy, sci-fi, even horror, you are going to be okay going slightly over 100,000 words in the querying process. 105, 110, 115 for adult. If you're YA, maybe that's kind of the upper limit of where you want to be. YA is generally a little bit lower on the word count than adult fiction is. And if you are writing a genre like contemporary romance or thrillers or, I don't know, just like general fiction, 70 to 90, 95, you're generally in a good range. But again, I'll link this Writer's Digest infographic so you can see what the recommended range is for a word count.

Okay, so what this means is if you are writing a book that falls outside of that recommended range, you have options for what you do, but I do recommend that you do something. Because if you go into the querying process thinking that your novel is going to be the exception, your 150,000 word debut fantasy novel is the exception because you're like, oh, well, look at these authors that were traditionally published. Their first book was 150,000 or their first book was 180,000. So therefore it's fine. Or I just need all of those words because my world is really complex. I'm writing high fantasy. I'm writing epic fantasy. Therefore I need all of those words. If you go into it thinking that way, you're going to get disappointed because there are going to be so many agents who just auto reject you. They will see that word count and just auto reject it. Because if you're not even close to where you need to be, That's a problem. If you're at like 125,000, there might be some agents who are fine with that because they know they can probably easily shave off 5 to 10,000 words. But yeah, if you go way outside of it, it's a problem because you will get agents who just won't look at your sample pages because you're like, they're like, this person doesn't, like, that's just too long. So it's very important that going into the querying process, because you don't want to blow your shot. You don't want eight people to auto-reject you because of your word count.

And I talked about fantasy in that example, but even if, let's say that you're writing a mystery, a contemporary mystery, or a cozy mystery, that's 120,000 words, you will probably have agents look at that and think, no, way, that's just too long. So even for any genre, if you're outside of conventions of where your word count needs to be, it's an issue. So the first thing to decide is if you want to do something about it or not, because you could be one of those authors that just sort of decided to query because you felt like that's what you should do. Because you see all of these people talking about book deals and literary agents and you think like, oh, well, I guess that's just what you do if you want to be an author. But you get to decide. You do not have to query. That is not the automatic best option for people. And in fact, in a lot of cases, it makes much more sense to self-publish. So if you're at this crossroads where you have a long book and you're not sure what to do, first you have to decide if you want to pursue querying, if you want to pursue trying to get a literary agent, trying to get a book deal in traditional publishing, because it's not an automatic thing anymore that that's like just going to be the best option for everyone.

Again, like I said at the beginning of this episode, one of the benefits of self-publishing is you are not, you get to have the word count the way you want it. Now, for indie authors, I still think it's good to keep word count and genre and reader expectations in mind. Because if you write 45,000 words of high fantasy and call it a novel, readers are going to be disappointed because that's not what they're expecting. If you say high fantasy, readers are going to expect it's going to be long. And 45,000 is almost like a long novella. It's like not really a novel. Or same thing if you write, if you're saying like, oh, this is a cozy mystery that I self-publish and it's 180,000 words, that's going to be outside of what readers are expecting as well. So I think it's still good to consider, but it's just not as important. So that's the first thing. Decide if trying for traditional publishing is truly what you want. Maybe it's not. But if you do want to go down this road, if you want to try to get an agent, there are a couple of things that I'm going to give you to check, to look at, to try to cut some length from your book. The first suggestion that I have is for anyone who is doing speculative fiction, because that's often where I see manuscripts that are just too long, that can be cut because there's some bloat, there's some unnecessary stuff in it. And so the first thing I'm going to say for you, fantasy or sci-fi authors, check the world building. information, especially at the beginning of your book, like your first chapter, first couple of chapters.

Check the amount of world building and history and backstories. Make sure that you're doing, like, make sure you're not info dumping. Because that can often happen, especially with new writers who are thinking about this world and thinking about how to present all this information to the reader. Because if you're writing, if you're creating a new world, you have to tell the reader about the world, right? You have to show them what this is. If you are creating a magic system, you have to the reader's got to get familiar with the magic system. So there is more that's involved. That's why those genres can be a little bit higher on the word count, but it doesn't give you permission to just info dump, which is where you just... basically what it sounds like. You just dump all of this information, usually in the first chapter on the reader. You tell them pages and pages of explanation about things. That is something to cut. It's not an effective way to use your words, your opening chapters, your pages. You want to focus instead on like showing the reader those things, letting them move through this world, through your characters, instead of just stopping the action to tell them all these things and explain everything. Now related to that, my next suggestion ties into this with a prologue. A lot of prologues that I see from like in client manuscripts are just not necessary because they're doing exactly what I just mentioned.

They are opening 50 years before the events of page one to fill us in on some scene that happened at some battle back in history, or they're explaining the power structure, they're explaining the magic system. It's just unnecessary. So that's a good place to look to see if you can cut some length down. Now, sometimes prologues are essential or, a good place to open the story. It's not a hard and fast rule that you don't need a prologue. But I think that a lot of fantasy or any speculative fiction, a lot of authors just see published books that have prologues. And so they just sort of assume that that's something you need in the genre, but you don't. You can easily just start it on page one. That might be the perfect, like chapter one, page one. that might be the perfect place to open your story. So look for that. Really get honest if you can. Try to get as objective as you can, which I know is technically impossible, but really look at this clearly. Like if an agent is going to be looking at your opening pages, some agents only ask for 10 pages in your sample. And if you have a lengthy prologue, that's all they're seeing. in the 1st 10 pages. So really be critical about these opening pages to see if there's unnecessary stuff that the reader just does not need to know, or it's stuff that the reader doesn't need to know now, like in the opening pages of your book before they've had a chance to meet characters, explore the world, et cetera. My next suggestion, something to check, is to look at your subplots to see if they're necessary. To look at like plot points or plot threads throughout your novel to determine if they're truly essential. Subplots are just basically what they sound like, plots that are kind of running alongside the main plot. They're not the main point of the story. They're like a B storyline. Nose is itching.

But those Those subplots are a good thing. I'm not telling you to like cut your subplot of your book if it's a singular subplot. I'm just saying to make sure that every sort of like storyline that we have in the book is essential. Because as an example, let's say that you're writing fantasy and you have, I don't know, a minor character. in the novel, who's just there as like a friend character or, I don't know, a mentor figure for your protagonist. And we get this whole kind of tangent storyline of like their history and their backstory or something that they're going through. Maybe it's essential for the book, maybe not. Maybe it just sort of adds weight and doesn't really impact the book or make it better in any meaningful way. So just check your subplots and make sure that they're essential or see if you can condense them. Maybe they are essential, but you're like, oh, actually, in looking at the subplot, I realize that this takes up probably like 10 chapters and it really doesn't need to like throughout the book. So you can just shorten it down to tighten it up. Next is to ensure This is kind of related, but kind of a different suggestion. Ensure that every scene serves a purpose. I will hammer this until the cows come home.

But I want to explain what I mean by this. Yes, every scene of your novel needs to have a reason for being there. But that does not mean that the purpose or the reason is tons of action and moving the plot along. You could have a scene that the reason for it being there, the purpose of it, is to have two characters have a conversation where they just process the events of the previous scene and then make a plan for what they're going to do in the next scene. that could easily be the purpose of the scene. It doesn't have to mean insane bits of action. It could be a character strolling on the beach by themselves, kind of thinking and processing and like coming to grips with how they feel about a romantic partner, potential romantic partner in the book, right? But the point is just that there is a purpose. And something also to look at with this is if you go through and you look at every single chapter, every single scene to see if it serves a purpose, start to notice... One thing to be aware of is if you have multiple scenes that are serving the same purpose. So going back to that example I mentioned of like a character taking a stroll on a beach and just sort of like processing and reconciling with these romantic feelings that they have for this person and realizing like, oh **** I actually do care about them. I actually am attracted to them.

What am I going to do about this? If that's the purpose of the scene, but then you also have like six other scenes where the character is basically doing the same thing, that's probably an indication that you can remove some of those scenes because you don't need so many scenes to accomplish the exact same thing. The reader's not dumb, like they're going to understand it, you know. So look at those points where you feel like, oh yeah, the purpose of this scene is just this thing that I've already had six other scenes so far, like do that same thing, so it's probably not necessary. Okay, prologue was my next suggestion, but we already talked about that. Okay, another suggestion is to go after you've done all of those things. So I want you to do everything I just mentioned first. Look at your prologue, look at your world building and info dumping and backstories, removing any subplots or shortening them if you feel like they're just dragging on too long and taking too much of the book, ensuring that every scene serves a purpose. Once you get all of that stuff done, there's absolutely room to cut for most authors. if you go line by line, sentence by sentence, and remove unnecessary words. This, you would be astonished at how many words you can cut by doing this. As an example, even the sentence, I thought to myself, it's cold outside, I should wear a coat. Well, you don't have to say, I thought to myself, because the act of thinking it's inherently in your mind. Like you don't think to someone else unless you're thinking out loud. And in that case, you can just say, I wondered out loud, or you know, you put it in dialogue, like in double quotes, so it's clear that it's spoken words that are being said out loud to another person.

So you can remove to myself, or you could even just remove that dialogue or the thought tag completely. I just put it in italics. I wonder, or I forget what I said, I forget my example exactly, but I bet it's cold outside. I should probably bring a coat and just put that in italics. There, in that example, you've cut either 2 words or 4 words. And over the course of an entire manuscript, you can absolutely do that. Let me think of another example and just write it out here. Like the table that was located in the, okay, here's an example. The table that was located in the center of the room. You can just say the table in the center of the room. Like, you don't need to add those extra words. And if you're hearing me say this and thinking like, well, I don't want to mess with my style as an author. Like, I don't want to mess with my voice too much. You don't have to. I'm not saying that every writer needs to cut down to be so sparse and minimalistic with their language. That's not it. It's just like, there are often unnecessary words. in our writing and that's an easy way to cut down on length because you could easily cut 4 or 5,000 words just doing that over the course of your entire book. Now there are authors who... already write that way in a very clipped kind of, they have an economy of language where they're just not using extra words to begin with.

So for those people, yeah, there might not be extra length that you can cut. So if you're one of those authors, then probably there's something else that could be cut, a scene, a prologue world building, et cetera. So, but that should always be the last step in your process. I don't want you to go through line by line and do all of that intense editing before you do the other things that I mentioned, because you might be removing things, Yeah, and that's a good way, even if, like, let's say you're querying and you feel like your manuscript is like maybe 5,000 words too long, where it's not, It's not like you have to condense it a ton, but you're like, I'm a little bit worried about this being slightly over the recommended amount. I bet if you even just do that sentence level edit, you can probably shave off at least a few thousand words just doing that. So that's a good thing. Even like repetitive descriptions, I realized I was doing that recently when I was looking at a book. I described something, I had two sentences that described something, and it basically was repeating the same idea just in a slightly slightly different way of saying it. So then I just took one of them out because I'm like, I don't need two ways of saying this exactly like I'm expressing the same thing. So there are definitely ways to do that. And if all else fails and you're really not sure, this is where getting someone else to look at it can be so valuable. A beta reader, a critique partner, hiring an editor. This is definitely something I've helped clients with who are preparing for querying is like, okay, you know, they're like, I know I want to query, but this is like 150,000 words.

So I've always been able to identify, you know, here are some points where things can be cut. here are unnecessary scenes. Yeah. So I hope this helps. Don't stress if you're at this point of being where your book is just too long, especially if, I will say this, if you're on a first draft and you were still writing and you're not even finished and you're like, oh, I just know this is going to be too long, or like, I'm getting close to the end and I'm already at 130,000 words, just finish the book, get the first draft out first, and then you can go back and edit and do all of those things that I just mentioned. I don't want you to stress too much about word count on the first draft because it really is just you figuring out the story. And especially if you're someone who's more of a plotter, or I'm sorry, other way, if you're someone who's more of a pantser where you're just writing to discover the story, you might have a bit of like meandering and wandering in the book because you're still figuring out what the book is. And that's okay. You can always go back and cut that stuff later. Sometimes it is just you getting things down on the page, helping shape your understanding of the story the characters before, and then you can always go back later to address those things. So, okay, I hope this helps. Again, there is a ton of information out there about querying and even word counts. Like if you have a specific genre, you're like, I don't know if this is okay.

Check to see what agents are saying about it. And if you're querying specific agents or specific agencies, they might even have guidance for you on word count limits. I see that occasionally where an agent will say like, under 120,000 words for, I don't know, fantasy. So like they might even tell you what their limits are, which is always very helpful. But if they don't, and most agents don't, you can still find that information out there. And please, do not go into this thinking that you are going to be the exception. Of course, There are exceptions. There are exceptions to everything. But to assume that that's going to be you means you're setting yourself up for disappointment. And you, again, you don't want to get auto rejected for something like word count because you could have an incredible novel that agents would like just absolutely love to represent you and your work and you get a book deal, but they're not even giving it a chance because it's too long. So you really want to be aware of this. It's very important. All right. I hope this was helpful. Good luck on editing. And I'll see you next week.

Katie Wolf