{"id":245,"date":"2012-06-19T04:52:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T04:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/2012\/06\/19\/as-a-writer-how-do-you-measure-the-length-of-a-novel\/"},"modified":"2012-06-19T04:52:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T04:52:00","slug":"as-a-writer-how-do-you-measure-the-length-of-a-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/2012\/06\/19\/as-a-writer-how-do-you-measure-the-length-of-a-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"As a Writer, How Do You Measure the Length of a Novel?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-cMqvtGy9ncQ\/T9_K0OyXi-I\/AAAAAAAAAlU\/2Jw5bSpVE1Q\/s1600\/tapemeasure.jpg\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"192\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-cMqvtGy9ncQ\/T9_K0OyXi-I\/AAAAAAAAAlU\/2Jw5bSpVE1Q\/s320\/tapemeasure.jpg?resize=320%2C192\" width=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been writing novel-length stories for well over ten years now, and during that time from reading articles in &#8220;Writer&#8217;s Digest&#8221; magazine to now trolling through blogs, it seems that the discussions on &#8220;novel lengths&#8221; has changed dramatically. But as authors we tend to see &#8220;novel length&#8221; in various lights. There&#8217;s<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Wordcount Length<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Page Length<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Amount of Time Passing in the Novel<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>&nbsp;How Long It Took to Write<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And other general fun parameters like that.<br \/><b> <\/b><br \/>I&#8217;ve been thinking about this particularly since finishing the preliminary edits on CROSS\/\/Rebirth. When the first draft was finally completely finished, it was about 360k. Since then, with the preliminary edits, I&#8217;ve chopped it down to about 340k. (Easy math!) Surprisingly, that wasn&#8217;t mostly scene cuts. (Yes, scenes got cut, but that&#8217;s not the point!) Most of that was from simply tightening up the writing, getting rid of obvious redundancies, and rewriting sentences\/paragraphs that eventually wound up shorter than before. It&#8217;s amazing how all of that adds up to 20k. That&#8217;s a short novella right there! But for me a a novel over 250k is completely normal. Fantasy series and all that.<\/p>\n<p>Which is probably why it seems like it takes me so much longer to write my novels than some other people.&nbsp; This novel, just in first draft form, took me three years to finish. Three years to write 360k that covers about&#8230;a month? Maybe a little over. That&#8217;s an intense month!<\/p>\n<p>When I define the lengths of my novel, I tend to go by word count. A word count very&#8230;normal for me. But I also think about the length of time I put into them.<\/p>\n<p>How about you? How do you define the length of your novel? What&#8217;s a &#8220;normal&#8221; novel length for you in any of the above categories? Could you imagine ever writing a 350k novel??!?!?! (if you don&#8217;t already, of course!)<\/p>\n<p>Sigh. And I&#8217;m in the process of writing two more drafts of the same length. This is why I have to be so diligent in writing so much every day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been writing novel-length stories for well over ten years now, and during that time from reading articles in &#8220;Writer&#8217;s Digest&#8221; magazine to now trolling through blogs, it seems that the discussions on &#8220;novel lengths&#8221; has changed dramatically. But as authors we tend to see &#8220;novel length&#8221; in various lights. There&#8217;s Wordcount Length Page Length&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[257,208,249,107,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crossrebirth","category-editing","category-length","category-question","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRtqI-3X","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}