One of my goals in writing The Dread Hammer was simply to write a short novel. I aimed at 60,000 words, and ended at 65,000. This was very satisfying, because up to this point every adult novel I’d written had been longer than the last one, with the one exception of Limit of Vision, which still managed to be significantly longer than my first two novels.

The sequel to The Dread Hammer is called Hepen the Watcher, and I’ve been working on it over the summer. I wanted it to be no more than 70,000 words, but my basic nature is reasserting itself, and so far I’ve exceeded that by 8,000 words. As I do the revision I find myself reluctant to add scenes, background, or more explanation because that will make it longer (gasp!).

I think it’s a matter of pride, and a need to believe that I can write short, but worrying about length is slowing me down. So, stop worrying right? And just do the thing right.

I’ll console myself by knowing that even if it goes to 85K (and that’s not at all likely), it’ll still be 11K less than my shortest adult SF novel–and less than half of a lot of epic fantasies.

Word Counts for the SF Novels
The Bohr Maker – 96,000
Tech-Heaven – 111,000
Deception Well – 121,000
Vast – 130,000
Limit of Vision – 118,000
Memory – 132,000

Posted on: Monday, August 22nd, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Categories: Writing.
Tags: long novels, novel length, short novels, word count