Tag Archives: word count

Middle Grade Book Length

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The dormant math teacher in me is needing to click at a calculator for a minute.  Word count.  This pesky thing is really starting to irk me.  Time to do a little math.  I’ll do it for you, no need to bring out your calculator too.

Wherever you look, it is estimated that middle grade fiction should be between 20K and 55K words.  The average number of words on a page is 250.  That means book length is between 80 pages for lower middle grade and 220 pages for upper middle grade fiction.

My middle grade novel is hovering around 70,000 words or 270 pages.  I would really love to get it under 250 pages.  With this in mind, I decided to take a quick survey of popular middle grade fiction and its page count.

book case

From my bookcase: Title, number of pages, year published, *denotes non-standard formatting

  • Johnny Tremain, 1943, 300 pages
  • The Cricket in Times Square, 1960, 151 pages
  • Bridge to Terabithia, 1977, 163 pages
  • Night of the Twisters, 1984, 153 pages
  • Number the Stars, 1989, 137 pages
  • Maniac Magee, 1990, 184 pages
  • Fever, 2000, 243 pages
  • A Single Shard, 2001, 148 pages
  • Penny from Heaven, 2006, 256 pages
  • Schooled, 2007, 208 pages
  • The Fabled Fifth Graders of Aesop Elementary School, 2010, 170 pages
  • I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced, 2010, 176 pages
  • Breaking Stalin’s Nose*, 2011, 151 pages
  • Dead End in Norvelt, 2011, 341 pages
  • Inside out and Back Again*, 2011, 260 pages
  • The One and Only Ivan*, 2012, 300 pages
  • Tua and the Elephant*, 2012, 202 pages

From this very small sample of middle grade fiction I can conclude book length is trending higher than previously.  So, let’s look at what came out this year.

From the Chicago Public Library’s list of Best Older Fiction of 2014

Out of the 30 books listed

  • two were written in verse
  • one graphic novel was 80 pages
  • of the remaining 27 books
    • 1 was under 200 pages
    • 10 were between 200 and 250 pages
    • 7 were between 251 and 300 pages
    • 4 between 301-350
    • 5 had more than 350 pages

This list was determined by librarians.  I figure they may have a higher tolerance for longer book length than the average consumer.  This brought me to the New York Times Best Seller’s List.

From December 12, 2014’s  NY Times best seller’s list for children’s middle grade

  1. House of Robots, James Patterson, 352 pages
  2. Wonder, PJ Palacio, 315 pages
  3. Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods, Rick Riordan, 336 pages
  4. Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson, 336 pages – in verse
  5. The Fourteenth Goldfish, Jennifer Holm, 208 pages
  6. The Princess in Black, Shannon Hale, 96 pages (for 5-8 year olds)
  7. The Care and Keeping of You 1, Valorie Schaefer, 104 pages (non-fiction)
  8. The Contract, Derek Jeter with Paul Mantell, 160 pages
  9. The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate, 300 pages
  10. Leroy Ninker Saddles Up, Kate DiCamillo, 96 pages (6-9 year olds)

It appears that book length doesn’t turn away the average reader either.

Ideally, it would be great to keep word count below 50,000. I know I love to zip through a book and when it’s shorter, it’s less intimidating to reluctant readers.   This data, however, suggests that it is not a gatekeeper.

The bottom line is: Write well, with vivid language that creates a mental movie for the reader.  Take the reader to a place they can’t go in their everyday life, help them have experiences they might not have on their own.  Don’t get hung up on word count, but make every word work for its space on the page.  Then, when your vivid writing with a strong voice attracts an editor, be ready to kill the darlings.  Until then, write, revise, write better, pay attention to word count, but don’t get hung up on it.

A few pages on word count if you want more information.

From writer’s digest

Literary Rambles

Young Adult verses Middle Grade

Top Ten Little Things to Edit Away

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Here’s a list of small things to pay attention to when editing your Work in Progress (WIP).

1.  Do you have any ticks?  I seem to like the words but and just a lot!  What words do you overuse?  A neat way to find out is to take a chapter of your WIP and copy it to Wordle. Wordle.net will take your text and make a word cloud of it.  The size of the word correlates to the frequency of its use.

2.  Examine your minor characters.  What makes them stand out as the unique individuals that they are?

3. Check your chapters for sensory description.  Have you used all five senses at least once per chapter?

4.   Does your main character, antagonist, sidekick have any nuance?  If so, do they carry it through the whole story?  Or do you throw it in heavily in one area then forget about it?

5.  Try writing a scene that still gives you trouble from a different point of view.  If your story is written from first person, write the scene in third person omniscient so you can get a broader perspective of what’s going on.  If it’s written in third person, switch to first person.  Get inside your character’s head and understand what they are thinking and feeling.

6.  Try to reduce word count by 10%.  Ya, that’s a tough one!

tongue out clip art

7.  If your not sure about the direction your story is going, try making a what-if tree.  Kind of like a family tree, but instead of people, give each event 2 or 3 possible outcomes.  For each outcome, give 2 or 3 new situations.  Go crazy and push your brain.

8.  Check settings.  Is the setting clear in each chapter.  When you shift settings, what does your character notice there?

9.  Write out the major character traits you have for each of your main characters (protagonist, antagonist, sidekick).  Do they stay true to the core of who they are throughout?  If not, are any changes justifiable and believable?

10.  Dialogue: Can you take out the dialogue tags and tell who the speaker is?  If not, fix it.  There’s very little room for neutral lines.  (Like “Ya, I know).

What is missing from this list?  Write a comment and share your wisdom!