Young Writers Society

I'm writing a novel, but it's getting quite difficult for me to reach anything beyond 45000 words. Roughly calculating, 45k words maybe about 180 pages. Is it enough? Please reply.

You're probably going to need more, as in school, 200 pages was considered quite short. If yours is only 180, you're going to need about 20 more pages. Perhaps you could add in a side plot?

Here is a link that has a general ballpoint of where your word count should be at. It also states that there are lots of exceptions, but stresses that you shouldn't count on being an exception.

Based on that article, you're about 10K off, which isn't too bad! Have you considered putting in a new Sub-plot (as magpie said), putting more into the main plot, or developing a minor character further?

Remember that this is your novel! If you feel like it's done, leave it! You don't want to drag it on.

My novel is actually a dramedy on life of a thief. I guess I can drag upto 50k words, but anything beyond that looks difficult. [Even my genre is unusual. It's basically a satire on law]

That sounds interesting! c: But I wonder if that might fall under adult instead of young adult. That's something you should consider.

A general rule of thumb to go by, find three books similar to your own, count how many words there are per page, and then multiply that by the number of pages. Average those three books together, and that is a good goal for your word count.

If you intend to publish online, I would say that is definitely enough. Most people on e-readers or computers don't want to stare at a screen for long enough to read a long work.

I think adding a subplot will definitely help me add few more thousand words.

Or, you can add another character! Too many subplots can get really convoluted, especially if you make it romance (those have a nasty tendency to take over the plot).

What age, exactly, are you looking for? Because that wordcount range is about right for 9-12, which is middle grades. But different age groups require different plots.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:Or, you can add another character! Too many subplots can get really convoluted, especially if you make it romance (those have a nasty tendency to take over the plot).

What age, exactly, are you looking for? Because that wordcount range is about right for 9-12, which is middle grades. But different age groups require different plots.

I'm looking for an age group of 16 to 30 [I know that it should be adult, but I have read books which are about 230 pages or about 57k words]

I like your idea about adding another character. I'm planning to expand one of the minor villains in the story who plays a major role during the climax of the story. This way I can add more pages and create a powerful villain which would help me flesh out the conflict in a better way.

Yeah, adding another character or expanding the role of a pre-existing character is probably one of your better bets. I'm always very surprised at how many words I get out of one good character relationship, and I found myself cutting out a lot of the relationships I wanted to include in my novel because the scenes, while wonderful, were taking too long and meandering too far away from the main plot.

You're going to need 80k+ words for that age-group. Though for a comedy type it will be probably be less. I'd aim for 60k if I was you.