What—and How Much—Belongs in Your Novel?
By Donald Maass | September 2, 2020 |
“How long is too long?”
The question comes up at every conference. How long should a novel be? It puzzles me that this anxiety persists. We are in a literary era that tolerates length. Game of Thrones, anyone? Even at 292,000 words, George Martin’s first novel in his epic series is not even in the race. Gone with the Wind is 419,00 words long. War and Peace is 560,000. Even those do not compare to Marienbad My Love by Mark leach, which clocks in at 17.8 million words.
(To be fair, Marienbad My Love is an “open source” novel created by a conceptual artist and which leans heavily on found texts. It’s a desert island story in which a filmmaker “attempts to persuade a married women (sic) from his past to help him produce a science fiction-themed pastiche to the 1960s French New Wave classic, Last Year at Marienbad.” It includes a UFO, Nazi/alien collaborations, mind control, a Cthulu-worthy green monster and the end of the world.[1] Plenty to say there, obviously.)
At the other end of the spectrum lies the fear that a given novel may be too short. That anxiety, too, strikes me as odd. No one told Aesop that his tale “The Miser” was too short at 160 words. Here it is in its entirety:
A miser sold all that he had and bought a lump of gold, which he buried in a hole in the ground by the side of an old wall and went to look at daily. One of his workmen observed his frequent visits to the spot and decided to watch his movements. He soon discovered the secret of the hidden treasure, and digging down, came to the lump of gold, and stole it. The Miser, on his next visit, found the hole empty and began to tear his hair and to make loud lamentations. A neighbor, seeing him overcome with grief and learning the cause, said, “Pray do not grieve so; but go and take a stone, and place it in the hole, and fancy that the gold is still lying there. It will do you quite the same service; for when the gold was there, you had it not, as you did not make the slightest use of it.[2]
If it makes you feel better, you can add the twelve words that convey the moral of the story: “The worth of material wealth comes from what you do with it.” In truth, there are few publishing categories—as in certain short contemporary romance lines, for instance—in which absolute length limits remain in place. Even the old dictum that YA novels should not exceed 75,000 words has been blown out of the water.
The standard answer to the question that I and most industry professionals give at conferences is your novel should be as long (or short) as it needs to be. That glib advice, though, for me glosses over the deeper question which is really the one that should be asked: What—and how much—belongs in my novel?
That question, in turn, masks a different and even deeper anxiety, which is about whether any given material on the page actually belongs there. I observe that anxiety in particular in workshops when participants ask about “that interior stuff”; meaning, the heavy exposition inherent in deep POV writing. How much of a character’s internal thoughts and feelings is right? How much telling versus how much showing?
Even those questions, for me, don’t get all the way down to the true issue. The true issue is whether any given words, whether dialogue or action or exposition, are doing the work of storytelling. Are all words on the page necessary or are some extraneous, possibly even self-indulgent? More simply, how do you know what belongs and what doesn’t?
The practical answer is not precise but is founded on a principle which can guide you through composition, revision and editing. The answer: it depends. On what? On your story type and intent, and in what is necessary to create the effect you want on your readers.
Aesop wanted to make a point. Few words were needed. Margaret Mitchell want to convey a woman’s experience of an era in history. That took a few more words. In each case, though, the words were the right words: nothing extraneous, all the words always needed. Let’s take a look at how and why any given material on the page becomes essential.
What Belongs
André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name (2007)—you may have seen the movie—is a gay love story (by a straight author, note) that tells the anguished tale of a teenage boy who falls in love with a male guest at his parent’s mansion on the Italian Riviera. (I know, I know…poor kid.) The time isn’t stated but the novel’s languorous pace and charming metachronous affectations, such as substituting “B.” for the name of a nearby city, suggest a closeted culture and era when same-sex love was not openly accepted.
So tormented and obsessive is the situation that the two subjects do not even receive names until well into the story. (They are Elio and Oliver.) The author’s intent is to convey the anguish and longing felt by Elio, which he does at length throughout in passages like this about Oliver’s first stealthy night visit to Elio’s room:
…I feigned to be fast asleep, thinking, This is not, cannot, had better not be a dream, because the words that came to me, as I pressed by eyes shut, were, This is like coming home, like coming home after years away among Trojans and Lestrygonians, like coming home to a place where everyone is like you, where people know, they just know—coming home as when everything falls into place and you suddenly realize that for seventeen yeas all you’d been doing was fiddling with the wrong combination.
Later, Elio tries (fruitlessly) to kick himself of the habit of obsessing over Oliver:
I should learn to avoid him, sever each tie, one by one, as neurosurgeons do when the split one neuron from another, one thought-tormented wish from the next, stop going to the back garden, stop spying, stop heading to town at night, wean myself a bit at a time each day, like an addict, one day, one hour, one minute, one slop-infest second after the other. It could be done. I knew there was no future in this.[3]
Could the same sentiments not have been expressed in far fewer words, such as I was glad when he snuck into my room or I wish I could quit you? Certainly, but if so the hot torment felt by Elio would not have the same force and effect. It would be a thin treatment of Elio’s inner state. Given the novel’s purpose and intent, it would shortchange readers. We would not have the experience the author intends us to have.
The opposite of the exposition-heavy, deep POV writing so popular in our era is perhaps the punchy, two-fisted storytelling of the noir period. Mid-twentieth Century readers, or crime readers anyway, evidently did not need to know too much about what was thought and felt by the anti-heroes of the likes of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Showing was all. Telling was left for others.
In noir fiction desire is a transaction; a sometimes cheap, always lurid, representation of a corrupt world in which no one can be trusted and truth comes at a cost. In Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury (1947), his tough-as-nails protagonist, PI Mike Hammer, races to find a killer. Along the way he investigates twin sisters, the Bellemy’s, one of whom is (in contemporaneous understanding) a nymphomaniac. Dressed (barely) in a sheer pink negligee, she quickly comes on to Hammer:
[Note: Before I quote this laughably/horrifically sexist passage, please consider that it was published in 1947, not to excuse it. I am taking this text from its Signet paperback edition, twenty-fifth printing, with 1.6 million copies sold. Spillane’s dedication—I kid you not—is to “MY WIFE”. What she thought of this passage is not recorded, as far as I know.]
“Tell me,” I started, “how can you tell the difference between you and your sister?”
“One of us has a small strawberry birthmark on the right hip?”
“Which one?”
“Why don’t you find out?” Brother, this girl was asking for trouble.
I perhaps don’t need to quote further, but the passage doesn’t end exactly as expected…well, not entirely:
I was only human. I bent over her, taking her mouth on mine. She was straining in the divan to reach me, her arms tight around my neck. Her body was a hot flame…[oy, I’ll spare you]…Now I knew why she hadn’t married. One man could never satisfy her….
I grabbed my hat and jammed in on my head. “It must be your sister who has the birthmark,” I told her as I rose. “See you later.”[4]
Not much introspection needed, is there? I mean, what can Hammer say? The situation says it all. What the reader should feel is left up to the reader and, in another way perhaps, literary critics.
Read today, this passage makes me sad at the cold, transactional portrayal of the relationship between men and women at the time, so different than now…or is it? From a technical perspective, though, the choice to leave Hammer’s thoughts and feelings largely out of it exactly serves the purpose: This is a world in which feeling is dangerous and introspection is weak.
That’s what Spillane wanted to get across. For him, showing was the forceful and right approach. Telling would only have detracted from the effect.
Aliya Whiteley’s The Beauty (2018) offers an altogether different take on the topic of yearning and desire. In this story world, all women have sickened and died. Only men are left, the last generation; indeed, the last of our species. The novel’s narrator is the storyteller (yes, around campfires) in the Valley of the Rocks, Nate, who discovers growing in the forest over women’s graves mushrooms that suggest that women are not entirely gone nor is the history of our species over. A pair of men, Ted and Thomas, are going to have a baby.
What is the right approach to bring readers into this experience? What belongs on the page? Showing? Telling? Whiteley opts to give Nate an elevated perspective. He is as much sociologist and historian as storyteller. Here is how he looks at the coming radical change:
For the birth of this baby will be the miracle that will unite us once more. The line draws its strength from its invisibility. Nobody wants to talk about it and I am forbidden to mention it, so the line grows stronger and stronger. William, Eamon, the farmers, the older men: they all think there will be no baby and they hate the idea that there could be hope. Because hope takes the form of a joining rather than a continuation.
We will meld to grow. Part human, part Beauty. Could anything be more wonderful, more terrifying? The offer of salvation in the form of a baby who is not a baby. I can finally begin to understand why men kill.[5]
Ask me, there is a ton to unpack in that short passage. When we readers have no context or way to exactly empathize with the people in this story world, Whiteley’s approach is cerebral. If we cannot feel as Nate and the surviving men feel, we can at least have a way to understand. Whiteley’s emphasis is neither showing nor telling, but explaining. Her effect is not to immerse us, nor is it to hammer us, but rather to make us think.
That is her intent, I believe, and passages like the one above make it impossible not to set down her book for a moment and contemplate, wonder and see ourselves anew.
How You know
So, how then do you know what belongs on your pages? How much is too much? How much is too little?
Perhaps the glib advice—as much as it takes—now makes a little more sense. It starts with knowing your intent, which is to say what you want your readers to think, feel and experience. If you know that then you have a measure by which to weigh the words. Is what you’ve set down in this line…and that one…and that one…contributing to the effect you want to have? Are you immersing us, or chilling us, or making us think?
If you want to immerse us, a good deal of interiority is not amiss. If you want to give your readers a visceral experience, strong action delivered with a bit narrative distance can work well. A story of strangeness can grab us by the brain, objectifying the impossible and making room for us to take in what we cannot fathom.
None of that is absolute, there are many approaches—fiction is an art form—but what belongs on the page is what works on us as readers and causes us to experience what you want us to experience, feel what you want us to feel, and see what you want us to see.
Timeless storytelling is neither short nor long, and does not make narration choices based on fashion or rules. It simply does the job at whatever length it takes to do it—no more and no less.
How do you decide what belongs in your novel—or not? What have you read in the work of others that belongs—or doesn’t?
[1] https://www.marienbadmylove.com/
[3] Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, © 2007 by André Aciman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
[4] I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane,© 1947 by E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc.
[5] The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley, © 2014, 2018 by Aliya Whiteley, published by Titan Books.
[coffee]
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
I’ve always believed that stories find their own length the way water finds its own level. But that principle aside, the gatekeepers of the book industry have their own rules and standards, driven by market forces, perception, and sometimes (it seems) sheer contrariness.
I found your article perceptive and thought-provoking, as usual. I think you really drilled down to the essence of what “it depends” actually means. But what do you say to those among us who have written a long book and despair that it will ever get a first look from an agent, let alone a second one, simply due to length? I have to wonder if even relatively recent novels like A Game of Thrones would make it past today’s gatekeepers. The story matters, quality of writing matters, but length seems to matter most.
There’s no simple answer, I realize. This is just one of those things writers obsess and despair over. Thanks for offering your perspective.
“But what do you say to those among us who have written a long book and despair that it will ever get a first look from an agent, let alone a second one, simply due to length?”
Speaking as a gatekeeper myself, I would say first that my job is not to shut the gate but rather to open it. I don’t make any money saying no to manuscripts.
(And how I wish that every manuscript submitted could sell. If so, I would be responding from my 200 foot yacht on the Mediterranean Sea.)
Second, I would say that long length is not by itself an automatic no. I would love to find the next GoT. That said, long experience shows that long length is needed to tell a story only rarely.
In reality, most manuscripts that clock in at 140K words need to lose tens of thousands of those words. If you are getting resistance from gatekeepers over length, it is probably for that reason.
I’m not saying your long manuscript doesn’t need to be long, I’m just pointing out that you are waving to me from a sea of submissions crowded with manuscripts that are sinking under the weight of too many words.
(Man, that was a tortured metaphor, but I hope you see the point. Don’t give up just because of length–but do be sure that all those words are serving your purpose, as I am saying today.)
Hey Don, how was your summer?
I just finished reading John Scalzi’s latest THE LAST EMPEROX, and I could have done without, what I’m going to call, ‘The Old Earth Trope’ This is scifi specific where an advanced interstellar human civilization searches for the mythical home planet that birthed humanity. Asimov’s FOUNDATION’S EDGE made this central to the plot to great effect. Frank Herbert on the other hand barely mentions Earth in his DUNE series, but says enough to make a reader’s imagination go wild. I don’t think it fits well into the trilogy Scalzi just finished. It doesn’t help that the least interesting character goes on a quest for Earth at the end of the trilogy. There’s no knowledge, resource, or decrepit society that they could find that’d interest me, so I don’t see why Earth needed to be mentioned at all. I would have been interested if a character named Kiva Lagos (maybe Scalzi’s best character ever) went searching for Earth, but where they end up fits the overall story much better.
Hey James, my summer has been…challenging.
I love your point. Is Old Earth genuinely important to a story set elsewhere in the universe? If that focus doesn’t feel justified in John’s novel, but is merely a trope, then it may be that he hasn’t sufficiently justified it, as you say.
Unnecessary tropes…huh…could be the topic for another post. Thanks!
I know of a person who skipped the folktales that the rabbits in Watership Down told, when the folktales, their oral history and legends, were exactly the thing that interpreted their current situation and sometimes directly impacted the actions they took. There is also a lot of description of the English countryside that someone might argue seems indulgent, but again, this deep love of place is juxtaposed against the threat that it is being destroyed by men, little by little.
Whenever I talk to book clubs about my second book, The Words between Us I ask if anyone skipped the poetry. There is always at least one person who will admit it. Poetry just isn’t their thing. But for those who do read the poems and take time to think about them, they add layers of nuance to the character who wrote them and connect her to the classic novels she and her friend have been sharing. To extend that, if someone read all of the novels mentioned in the story, and then reread the story, they would find additional points of connection and meaning.
I loved Watership Down, but for me there was far more description of English flora than I needed. I skimmed a lot of that, but then again I am not a rabbit.
Poetry and song in novels is always a bit risky, I think, but not when it is truly justified and necessary to tell the story. Is adding “nuance” enough reason? Sounds like for most of your readers it is, and for a few it is not.
I would say it’s not necessary to please all readers–indeed, it’s impossible–but it is interesting to find out what readers are responding to, or not.
A good article about what to put in a novel. I finished my novel recently and one of my final edits before sending it to an editor was to decide what could be taken out for another book and was not necessary in the current one.
Word length is important, but what is in the words seem to be more important. After I took out stuff, I realized there were passages that needed more to avoid the “telling.”
Telling can feel lengthy or extraneous, but it depends on how it is handled. That’s a long topic that I’ve addressed elsewhere, but ask me it boils down to this: Is the “telling” surprising?
Writing a novel is creating a world–one filled with people and their choices. Inviting the reader into that world sometimes requires holding back, before offering more. The writer must make a connection with the reader. Some readers are open, others might pursue and then give up. I have as a reader stopped or skimmed. It’s always the world we are creating that matters and your examples of how to create that world are instructive. Your analysis of interiority and narrative are helpful, especially when one is editing. I like to believe that there is a mental flow, a connection in the creative process that finds the right balance. I think many writers search for that. As I always, thanks.
You’re right about finding the balance, and it’s different for every author–and, in fact, for every project.
Because our current literary era values deep POV narration (I prefer the term “immersive POV”), I notice a bit of bloating in novels generally. Not enough to turn me off but enough to make me wonder whether novelists are all cases truly weighing the story need of every word.
Editorial feedback and critiques have been valuable in adding and removing elements of my novel. Studying the works of others has helped sift through that as well. Possibilities for probing this can be genre related novels and movies.
Movie scripts are humbling to read. They are story pared down and dialogue kept tight as brogan shoelaces.
Then again, what we see on the screen is enhanced by actors, soundtrack music and a hundred other factors. Novels don’t have those, so the words must do the work.
In general, I would say that most manuscript need a few less words. In any event, it’s rare–really, never–that I read a manuscript where I mentally cry, “Please…more words!”
I’m currently revising my 86K novel, which I describe as Jane Austen with a dash of Charles Dickens and a generous dollop of witchcraft, and I’m struggling with what to cut, or not to cut. Now, it’s clear that the style I’ve chosen to write this story in needs to be considered in deciding what stays and what goes. Thanks!
Great! I don’t think a length of 86K words is going to set off any alarm bells, though. Not that you shouldn’t trim where needed but I wouldn’t panic!
Thoughtful as always.
I have my own rule about stylistic choices like this: precedent. That is, “How much detail could I commit to using in *every* passage similar to this?”
Do I feel one approach is incomplete, or maybe is just short enough if I put more thought into how to place its few points? Do I want to be the person who adds more layers to all of these, and does the work to know how many possibilities I can draw from?
On the one hand, I find that helps me clarify what a passage should be to me, putting its possible effect in terms of the effort and the techniques it might need. On the other, I think it helps readers anticipate and enjoy how I’ll pace each thing.
“Less is more.” That’s the saying, though sometimes I think the idea in contemporary novels is “more is more”.
I hope my post today is causing folks to consider how much, and what, is truly necessary to serve story purpose.
Don,
I find this article so freeing. I have often been told by industry professionals (mostly agents) that for debut authors word counts are critical. Webinar after webinar talks about “I won’t read your query if the wordcount doesn’t comport with the genre limits”. One agent in a conference even asked me how many words (I write part historical thrillers with paranormal elements – like time-travel, reincarnation, etc.) and I said I am at 95k words and she said – too long. Bring it to 90k and then send it to me :-(
But your words here completely resonate with me – the wordcount should be “as much as it takes”. Also, “knowing your intent, which is to say what you want your readers to think, feel and experience. If you know that then you have a measure by which to weigh the words. Is what you’ve set down in this line…and that one…and that one…contributing to the effect you want to have?”
I LOVE that.
I have direction now as I head off to the editing land. Thank you.
Wow, 95K is too long, yet 90K is just right? I wonder where that agent got that idea…
…although, honestly, it’s a rare manuscript that couldn’t afford to lose a few thousand words and be more effective for it.
That said, genre “limits” are rules–until someone breaks the rule and makes it work. Can you imagine telling Diana Gabaldon that Outlander (640 pages) is too long to sell?
Much food for thought here, Don, and thanks for all the examples. My critique partners have been very good about pointing out the sections that need more interiority and explanation. And they’ve also pointed out the sections that could go–the problem, no microtension. I am really enjoying this polishing phase.
Ah, microtension! Shhhh…don’t tell. It’s the secret to making anything work on the page, even extended passages of “telling”. So glad you’re tuned to that idea.
Don, this reminds me of being introduced to a book by reading it in the old Readers Digest Condensed Books my parents used to get. I still have a few of them, one being David Dodge’s To Catch a Thief. I kept that because I’d found it impossible to pick up the unabridged version as it was long out of print.
A few years ago I was able to get the full version and just re-read it last week. There was very little in the full version that was essential to enjoying the story. What was cut out in the condensed version was detail or repetition for the most part. On the other hand, I did enjoy reading it the way the author intended. The extra details and repetition did do some work, but the story was still strong without them.
I didn’t see Call Me By Your Name other than a few clips, but I did read it. When I read the first few lines while browsing through it on Amazon I immediately got that anguish and longing and ordered it instantly. It surprised me often as I read, but didn’t disappoint me at all.
Readers Digest! Oh, what an instructive institution that was! There are contemporary online sites like mashable or quora that boil down complex ideas for busy people, too.
It’s interesting what you say about original novels versus their Readers Digest versions, there’s something to be said either way. There is also something to be learned.
There is a “gist” and everything else is an enhancement. Now, the enhancement is necessary but how much of it? In Hollywood none of it, except what you can get across in an elevator.
In a bookstore, though, a bit more is needed, it’s just a question of how much.
Hello, Don:
My approach: Less is more. Unless it’s not enough.
It is worth noting that the dictum, “Murder your darlings,” is itself a darling. (The writer, an obscure English teacher — not any of the famous authors to which this bon mot is attributed — could have said something like, “If you find yourself overly fond of a piece of writing because of its eloquence or craft, be sure it is actually necessary. If not, cut it.” But that lacks the zing of the pithier, punchier alternative. So even he who would have us murder our darlings chose to rescue his.
I do believe overwriting is the far more common problem, and we need to develop the skill of seeing where we’re repeating ourselves. Annie Dillard points out what she calls the “old one-two,” where an author, having written something well, then adds a rephrasing of it, as though unsure the reader will understand what was meant or out of fear the reader will think the author doesn’t really understand what he himself is saying so has to explain himself (needlessly) to justify the initial, strong phrase.
Especially when we in the grip of the Muse and charging forward, when the words just tumble out, this is when caution is needed during revision. Forward momentum often becomes susceptible to needless repetition. We’re on a roll, we’re not worrying about such things. That’s why, as Eudora Welty put it, “Writing is re-writing.”
Also, during revision, for each scene we need to ask: What am I trying to accomplish here? What does this scene add to the story? How is the reader supposed to feel at its conclusion? What do I need to accomplish that? How does this set up what immediately follows? Be careful not to remove so much that the elements that add all color are stripped away, but clutter undermines impact.
Finally, one of my favorite quotes, this one from Joshua Mohr: “Learn to respect the pages the reader will never see.”
Hope you and your lovely family are healthy and safe.
Hi David, thanks, we’re healthy and safe, as I hope you are too.
I have long puzzled over Annie Dillard’s “the old one-two”, which I see on the page often and, surprisingly, tolerate. Why? I think it is because the repetition of a thought creates a brief interval of time in which the brain processes the thought.
Is it necessary? No, I don’t think so. Is it over-used? Yes, I think sometimes. As with cardamom as an ingredient in pastry, I would say “use judiciously”. It works well for Scandinavians, but they’ve had long practice with it.
Good to see you, my friend. This quarantine time has me so thwarted and frustrated that I am close to tears.
Anyone handling teenagers on top of Covid, and who has yet to commit a felony, holds my deepest respect. Hang in there, Don. And may you all remain healthy.
Thanks for this post. The book I’m writing went over 80,000 words today, making it the longest of my manuscripts to date–and I’m only about to begin the third act. It’ll need tightening, of course, but I confess its deviation from precedent has caused me some alarm. That said, it’s a different WIP in many respects, including genre. I’ve been telling myself to respect the story, that I’ll sort it out later in edits. According to the criteria you’ve set out, that’s the right approach for now.
Thanks, Jan. Respect the story. Yes. Exactly. Hope you’re hanging in, too.
It’s not how I envisioned spending the year, but we’re doing okay, thanks. Better than many so I try to stay in gratitude.
I own a gallery. This is a very common question for artists, How do you know when to stop? It is a large part of the skill set, paint, brush, canvas, and done.
Story may be similar. You have your palate of character, plot and setting. Only the artist knows what is intended, when is done. The canvas is full. Crisp tight story or lush languid ballad, the writer is king. wether it sells and people want to read it or not. A story has been told. Unlike the artist, there is Agent, beta readers, and editors ready to chime in. Just think if Picasso had an editor, or Pollock had beta readers.
Perhaps content is a better gauge of length?
I am thinking about Pollock’s beta collectors: “Can’t you cut some paint? Where are we supposed to look?”
Or Picasso’s agent: “She looks deformed, how am I supposed to pitch that?”
Yes, only the artist knows how much and what belongs on the canvas, but the artist makes a choice nevertheless.