By Kathryn Evans

Getting a feel for the right length of your novel is a puzzling thing. I know it shouldn’t matter – a story takes as long to be told as a story takes to be told BUT I do tend to obsess about it. I think I like guidelines – like to know I’m on the right track. So here are some for comparison – they’re my choice, books I love – some of them quite surprised me:

Louis Sachar’s ‘Holes’ – 47079

Candy Gourlay’s ‘Tall Story’ – 47405

Meg Rosoff’s ‘How I live now’ – 46920

Maurice Sendak’s  ‘Where the wild things are’ – 336 ( the film had more words)

Philip Ardagh’s  Eddie Dickens ‘Dreadful Acts’ – 25104 ( Suprisingly long, they’re always over so quickly)

Alice Sebold’s  ‘The Lovely Bones’ – 97914

Kathryn Stockett’s ‘The Help’ – 158012 – really??!

‘Sarwat Chadda’s  ‘Devil’s Kiss’ – 68567

David Almond’s ‘Skellig’ –  31202 ( so short – who knew?)

Michael Morpurgo’s  ‘Private Peaceful’ 46316

Francesca Simon’s ‘Horrid Henry’ between 5,000 and 7,500 ( but you have to read them over and over again to persistent small children)

Sally Gardner’s  ‘I, Coriander’ 66497

J.K. Rowling’s  ‘Harry Potter and The Philosophers Stone’ –  77325

Strange how similar they feel in story weight – ‘The Help’ didn’t feel like it was 3 times as long as ‘Holes’.

This is fun too – for when you’re daydreaming about holding that finished book in your hand:

http://www.writersservices.com/wps/p_word_count.htm

Ok, maybe I’m getting a bit carried away…..and if I’ve listed your book – do feel free to dispute my word counts – I didn’t actually count them all myself – I’m not that desperate for procrastination tools…although….

Kathryn Evans is the author of  More of Me. She’ll be appearing at  YAShot on 22nd October 2016.  If you enjoyed More of Me, please vote for it in the EdBookFest first book award You have until the middle of October. Thanks!