Tuesday, July 14, 2009

WIP

I know it's not Wednesday, but it's been a while since I've been able to post any sort of progress on anything substantial - and it is only 5 minutes till midnight here in Australia on a Tuesday night so it's not far away.

My WIP doesn't have a title at the moment.

It does have:

a 1400 word outline
a 500 word bio on the two main characters, the antagonist, and five other characters so far.
Pictures (lots of them) to help me get a mental fix on one of my characters. Strangely enough, I have perfectly good mental pictures of all the others.

And the beginnings of the first chapter. Can anyone tell me if there is a suggested size and number for chapters in a YA novel. I know many of you have done this before so I figured I'd get it straight from those in the know. Cheers in advance.

I think I'm right in thinking YA tends to be between 45-60,000 words...

I shall set the bar at the bottom and work my way up - until told differently ;c)

Is 45k and 15 chapters, making that around 3000 words per chapter for those of you without enough toes and couldn't be stuffed getting out the calculator, too short for a YA novel?

4 comments:

  1. Not short at all. Some of my favorite YA are the shorter ones. Harry Potter was an anomaly for length.

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  2. Be ready to hear "novella" from some agents. Others won't care.

    When I started querying The House Eaters and Rock Gods (42K and 40K respectively), I turned some off with the length.

    Truth is, most YA does fall between 40-60K. Such is life. Good luck.

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  3. Okay, so I'm hearing that longer is probably better so if I can aim closer to 55-60k I will alienate less agents...is that right?

    Nat - Mr Bean has just done a Basic Instinct in your direction as he waved hello - he's such a bean whore!

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