Saturday, September 20, 2008

52K!!!!

Yep, that's right. I got "The Ultimate Evil" up to 52,000 words! Can you believe it? I found an old trial query letter that said this story had 48K. Not anymore!

Still this is VERY short for YA. Maybe I can think of some more twists and turns to add to the plot. We'll see! :-)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on reaching 52K!

From what I've read of your query letter on AW, you have plenty of material to work with -- just beat up your MC some more. Nothing adds to the action than a blow (physical, mental, spiritual, etc.) for her to recover from. =)

Madison said...

Oh, I have one! I think I need to give away more 'secrets' in my query letter than I thought. I'll get it right one of these days! Thanks so much for your comment!

Ray Veen said...

You know Madison, your story only needs to be as long as it needs to be - know what I mean? If it's 50k and it feels done, I'd say don't tinker with it.

Just one guy's opinion. Take it or leave it.

I've read hundreds of YA books; most are longer, some are shorter, but the rule is: there's no rule. In fact, I've read that publishers are preferring lower wordcounts these days (higher profit margin).

This doesn't bode well for me considering I just wrote the longest book of my life. 115k (And no clear way to cut it down).

Madison said...

Yeah, "Ultimate Evil" is pretty much starting to get to the point to where if I add any more I'm going to start taking away from the story. I heard that lower words counts are hot right now, so I'm trying to finish my story so I can query it off! :-)