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Length and transition

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Darwinist:
I've toiled with a novel for the last couple years but it proved to be too big for me, so I'm working on another one instead which is progressing much much faster.

My question is, I'm attempting to write a novel. My initial story blew up to about 160 pages before it just got too big for me, this one is only about 40 pages and feels like its nearly complete. I'm intending to break it into multiple arcs that would be spent over three separate storylines that intertwine. Forty pages feels small in comparison to works by Butcher which are several hundred pages. I'm wondering if I read too much into it. What is the usual transition from a doublespaced 10pt font MS Word, to a paperback or hardback novel?

In other words, realistically - what page count should I strive for? I don't want to drag the story out, obviously. I'm wondering if instead of making it three separate stories - if I should make it one big novel, with three novellas composing the narrative. How many pages would an editor or agent desire in a story? It's not intended to be a short story - I'd love it to be a serial that I can pick up and expand on in the future.

If anyone's interested in giving it a read. I've posted about half of it online so far. Some feedback would be awesome as well.

edit :took down the book for now out of concerns for plagiarism

Starbeam:
Don't go by page count, go by word count.  Word does have a thingie somewhere to get word count, but it also counts everything, including chapter headings and anything like that.  I don't know what kind of word count to shoot for, but 50,000 is a good start. I know that's the word count to hit for NaNoWriMo.(National Novel Writing Month)

Darwinist:
Ah tyvm - that helps immensely man. I'm at 16k now and at about the halfway point of where I expected to be. Looks like I'll likely go with the tri-novella idea.

meg_evonne:
I received an e-mail from one of my writing groups before signing in here.  She spent a full hour with a face to face with an agent (was supposed to be 30 minutes, but the agent had the next person wait!).  One of those incredible click type meetings.  During the first 30 they talked about the publishing industry, the 2nd 30 they pulled apart her novel, rearranged it, highlighted areas that needed help. 

So some of the goodies she shared was that most agents are looking for 80,000 to 100,000 word manuscripts, that manuscripts need to be 98 to 99% perfectly edited and that hiring (or bartering) a professional editor was important, and that the publishing industry sucked right now for new writers.  (So what's new huh?) 

So go for the word count, Darwinist and those editors love 12 pt. :-)

RobJN:

--- Quote from: meg_evonne on July 16, 2009, 02:32:39 AM --- the publishing industry sucked right now for new writers.  (So what's new huh?) 

--- End quote ---

"right now"...? LOL

I vaguely remember reading that a lot of publishers aren't looking for trilogies from new writers. Of course, it's been six or seven years since I was last involved with the publishing business, though I'm sure some things don't change all that much. (see above ;) )

I've also heard to go 'by the word' rather than 'by the page' since pagination can be vastly different between word processors. (MS Word breaks one file down to 220 pages, while Pages has it at 230. That's pulled from an RTF of the project from Scrivener, and the word count is the same.)

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