Writing Tip #3: How Does Your Word Count Compare?

"No one tells me how many words." — Her Royal Highness, Queen of All She Surveys

My middle-grade manuscript, Hipponapped, was almost 38,000 words when I finished it. The story includes delightful three-panel comics in every chapter—ostensibly drawn by one of the characters in the book, but really drawn by my college-age son, Eric. When my agent read it she asked if I could lower the age just a bit (to suit the content better), and try to cut it down, maybe to 20,000 words, to bring it more in line with heavily-illustrated titles like Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I whittled hard, but I could only manage to get it to 30,000 words. I loved the result (cutting almost always makes manuscripts better), but any more trimming would have required me to omit plot, and possibly to chuck the verbose voice of the narrator, which I hoped not to have to do. At a certain point I had to stop obsessing over why my manuscript was still 10,000 words longer than Jeff Kinney's.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a book that's tightly plotted with polished prose is exactly as long as it needs to be. But writers are an insecure sort. We spend long hours alone in our homes, dressed like slobs, swimming in tea and popcorn, with the Internet at our disposal for obsessive-compulsive searching. Is it any wonder we want to ferret out how our manuscript compares with published books we admire or envy?

If you see yourself in that description, the tool to feed your inner crazy is Renaissance Learning, which is reliable in its word counts, adds new books at a rapid clip, and is also addictive. Search for the title of the book, and then click on the correct title on the next screen. You'll get word count, reader-interest level (Lower Grades, Middle Grades, Middle Grades Plus, or Upper Grades), and book level (a measure related to reading difficulty).

So yes, of course it's pointless to try to write a novel of a certain length. But it's not necessarily pointless to familiarize yourself with words counts of other books in your genre. For example, recently I've noticed a trend toward increasing length in young-adult fantasy novels: five or ten years ago they might have averaged around 60,000 to 80,000 words, but lately many of the big names are weighing in more toward 100,000 words (The Hunger Games is 99,750). This trend may have been reinforced by the later Harry Potter books (The Order of the Phoenix is a whopping 257,000 words, which is only 8,000 words shy of James Joyce's Ulysses) and Twilight (119,000), but fantasy readers have always had large appetites for words.

Following word count trends and seeing your book as an editor sees it—a product nested in a sea of other products—are useful tools. In moderation.

[For beginning children's writers who need rules of thumb about book lengths by genre, see Cynthea Liu's web site, and Harold Underdown's Purple Crayon site, where he covers picture books and easy readers, and novels and other books with chapters.]

Banking on Debut Authors

Laini Taylor wrote three YA novels and a graphic novel before her latest heavily-buzzed offering. Because of all that writing practice, her textured prose, vivid world-building, and strong character development set her work apart in its genre.

A couple of news items crossed my screen this week that have me thinking about publishers' strategies for making money. The first is that Forbes's list of The World's Highest-Paid Authors came out: five out of the top fourteen authors write books exclusively for children or young adults, and two of the adult authors dabble in those genres (Patterson and Follett). All of the children's and YA authors on the list have written popular series (not just stand-alone books), and most have movie and merchandise tie-ins. To garner salaries that high, they all have to be (or be on their way to becoming) multimedia powerhouses, not just authors.

The second item was an article in the Wall Street Journal about publishers making "big bets on new authors." The article focused primarily on Erin Morgenstern and her forthcoming novel The Night Circus, and postulated that publishers are looking for the next debut YA author to do what Jo Rowling and Stephenie Meyer did — create must-have series that become mega-sized franchises. The analysis was a little muddled: The Night Circus is a stand-alone novel originally geared toward adults, with probable cross-over appeal for young-adults, and thus isn't perfectly comparable to Harry Potter and the The Twilight Saga. Still, I think most people would say the broader trend the article points to does seem to exist: publishers are spending a lot of money on new voices in order to try to make a lot of money. I've also noticed, independently of the article, that the "debut" aspect of a book is heavily promoted to the public by publishers, almost like a "new!" sticker on food products. Was that always the case?

Right up front I have to say I'm not judging the trend. I was trained as a free-market economist; and as a writer I want publishers to make money. I may be the only children's author in the world who thinks that if the Simon and Schuster editors don't want to offer a contract for the fourth and last book in a series because it has ceased being profitable for them, it's a business decision and not a moral failing. Similarly, trying to orchestrate the next new "it" franchise may in fact be a reasonable strategy for publishers to maximize their revenue, as hit-or-miss as it seems to the outside observer. It's certainly a strategy they're putting some of their financial muscle behind. Six- and seven-figure deals abound in the WSJ article, along with expensive promotional events and themed book tours to create "buzz" — at a time when the average marketing budget for books has declined significantly, and creative, energetic authors invent their own tours. 

No, what piqued my interest as an economist is the growing trend for publishers to blow their wads on debut young-adult authors of late, rather than groom projects of seasoned authors into the blockbuster series they're looking for (or soliciting those projects), and why the trend exists. Yes, Rowling and Meyer happened to be debut authors when their first books were picked up. Yes, the average Joe on the street, knowing nothing about the craft of writing, might think it makes sense that fresh talent will have fresh ideas. But the usual path to becoming a great writer (or to becoming a great anything) is loads of practice. For example, Patrick Ness had written two adult books before thinking up his Chaos Walking trilogy. And Suzanne Collins (on the Forbes list at $10 million) was an established author when she wrote the series that finally went viral: before The Hunger Games trilogy she had written five books in her critically acclaimed series The Underland Chronicles, plus a picture book. That makes her as far on the "seasoned" end of the writing spectrum as many of this season's heavily-promoted new authors are on the "debut" end (one of whom says on her blog that she began writing in May of 2009).

There are a lot of extraordinarily gifted writers in the world. I know for a fact that many of them have more talent in their first raw attempt at a novel than I have after years of practice. But for most authors it's rare for their first attempt to show the level of craft that makes something great. And given the fact that there are seasoned authors in the world, the financial question that pops to my mind is, Why aren't more tried-and-true authors offering "hot" series to editors? And similarly, why aren't publishers approaching them and brainstorming blockbuster series ideas with them?

Don't get me wrong with that last question: I'm too literary to be pushing the "book packaging" model of Alloy Media and Marketing, where a team thinks up first the hook and then the characters and finally the rough plots of a series, and sometimes more than one writer is tasked to crank out the prose. I'm also too much of a snob to appreciate James Patterson's model of productivity, which apparently involves teams of writers composing under his name (in my house we call that "Koonsing it," after artist Jeff Koons, who farms out the actual production of his ideas to real artists). No, what I'm wondering is quite different: why don't publishers approach their existing, established authors and coax blockbusters from them? This is particularly curious given that some editors have concrete wish lists: "I've always wanted a teen version of The Bourne Identity." Why wade through the slush pile looking for an untried author who happens to hit on this formula, rather than make some calls to  authors they've already worked with, or authors they admire?

I'm sure there's an answer, and I hope someone reading this is an publishing insider willing to share his or her insights.

Racing My Way to a New Novel

 Photo credit: Derrick Story

I'm not sure who invented something as silly and pointless (and oddly fun) as potato sack racing, but if you told me it was my son, Eric (Boggy) Cochrane, I'd believe you. Boggy can turn anything into a cutthroat competition, even movie watching. He's currently racing his younger brother and older sister to learn how to drive (he's winning), he has set a goal of learning to cook multiple dinners this summer, and every day he competes online in Pokemon battles (at the age of twenty). When Boggy draws comics, he does it the way Diana Nyad goes for a swim: all the way from Cuba to the U.S. He sets an absurd daily panel goal, and doesn't go to bed until it's done, which sometimes means not going to bed at all. He sets a page goal for every week and every month, and pushes off his college homework when he falls behind. In short, there's nothing Boggy can't ruin (or is it improve?) with a contest, even when he's the only one in the game.

This summer, he suckered me into a race. We're having a novel-writing competition. After he goaded and taunted and questioned my manliness, I caved in. I'm writing a slightly dystopian young-adult novel, and he's writing a time-traveling fantasy with aliens..or are they monsters? He hates the premise of my book, and I don't really understand what's going on in his.

We write five hundred words a day, which sounds easy, but it's not. Five hundred words is about two double-spaced pages, which, believe me, is only short when you already know what you're going to say. When you're doing research and crafting an outline and a plot at the same time and trying to make the prose pretty, five hundred words can take all frickin' day. Or at least it can for me. On the first day of our tournament Boggy banged out his word total, while I...I had come up with names for my main characters. I'm not kidding. That meant the next day I had to produce a thousand words to stay on target.

Boggy reads my week's worth of writing on Sunday night (because he never goes to bed on time) and I read his new material on Monday morning (because he never wakes up on time). We give each other comments, like a writing group, except we do it while we're jogging. The winner will be judged by a combination of how well he or she kept up with the word count every week, and the quality of the manuscript, to be determined by a reader chosen at a later date. Raise your hand if you want to be said reader.

Our friend Aimee has joined the race, and technically she's winning the tournament so far. Boggy and I have about eight thousand words and Aimee has something like thirteen thousand. But she's writing high fantasy, so her word count should be higher, I figure. Half of it is probably made-up words, right? And she works at Google, where they have ball pits for their employees; I imagine her snuggled down in them, out of sight with her laptop, cranking out words out like a modern, girly Tolkein.

The great thing about the tournament is that it's forcing to me to write. It's painful, and it makes me bite my cuticles that I don't have a say over whether or not to keep writing each day. But at the same time I sort of like what I've written so far. It has real promise. It could—dare I jinx it?—become a book.

Boggy's novel-writing challenge doesn't allow me to wallow in worry, preparing to write, arranging to write—which are my biggest impediments as an author and habits I've always wanted to break. With the tournament I have no choice: I have to sit down and write, or I'll lose the competition.

Do you think Boggy, one of my biggest writing champions, planned it this way?

Visit Me at The Subversive Copy Editor Blog

(It turns out I have an em dash problem.)

I've written a guest post about my experience with copyediting at my dear friend and writing partner Carol Saller's Subversive Copy Editor blog. Please catch up with me there this week!

Cover Story

This is the sort of cover young adult authors are supposed to want. People think it appeals to teen girls. That it's lush, and classy. And maybe it does reach a certain audience, but I don't want it for my book. When I was a teen, I would never have carried this around in school in front of my friends: it feels empty to me.

This is Sarah Dessen's new cover. I don't want it, either. I'm so tired of headless bodies on YA covers. Really, publishers, I'd rather you take a stab at what you think the main character looks like than "protect my vision of her," or whatever you think you're doing.

Because this is what happens when you choose such a benign, statement-less cover...someone else makes something exactly like it:

Now, these next three are covers I would flip over. They are a dying breed.

Seriously, publishers.

ILLUSTRATIONS. They're not just for middle-grade.

Okay, this last one is a little reminiscent the cover of A Tale Dark and Grimm, but it's still A-A Acme awesome.