Plan your beats
Tell us how long your book will be. We'll show you where the big turns of the story should land, by word count and by chapter, and how your length compares with other books in your genre.
How long?
Your beats
| Beat | Around word | Chapter |
|---|
These are rough guides, not rules. Plenty of good books move a beat by a chapter or two.
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Story shapes
A story shape is a plan for where the big turns go. They all agree on more than they differ: something starts the story early, the middle turns around, and things look worst about three quarters of the way in. Pick the one that matches how you think. Each page explains it beat by beat.
- Three acts beat sheetThe classic shape. Act 1 sets things up, act 2 is the long middle, act 3 is the end.
- Four acts beat sheetThree acts with the long middle cut in two at the midpoint.
- Five acts beat sheetRising action to a turning point in the middle, then the fall to the end. The shape of Shakespeare's plays.
- Save the Cat beat sheetBlake Snyder's screenwriting beats, as Jessica Brody laid them out for novels.
- Hero's journeyJoseph Campbell's journey, in Christopher Vogler's 12 steps. A good fit for quests and fantasy.
- Heroine's journeyA journey where the lead wins by building a team, not by fighting alone. After Gail Carriger's book.
- Story CircleDan Harmon's eight steps around a circle: you, need, go, search, find, take, return, change.
- Seven-point story beat sheetDan Wells's plan: decide the ending first, then build back to the start.
- 27-chapter methodThree acts, each cut into three blocks of three chapters. Fill in 27 chapters and you have a plan.
- Fichtean curveStart in trouble and never let up. One crisis after another, climbing to the climax.
- KishōtenketsuA four-part shape from China and Japan with no fight at its center: introduce, develop, twist, bring together.
- Romance beat sheetThe usual shape of a love story, in four parts: meet, fall, pull apart, come back together.
- Mystery beat sheetThe usual shape of a whodunit: crime, clues, a wrong answer, then the truth.
How long should my book be?
There is no right answer, but there are guidelines. Agents and publishers expect books in each genre to fall in a range. A book far outside it is a harder sell to them, and readers notice a book that feels too thin or too thick for its shelf. A great book can break the rule. A first book usually has a harder time doing it. If you plan to send a first novel to agents, 80,000 to 100,000 words is a safe place to start for most adult fiction.
| Genre | Most books | Still fine |
|---|---|---|
| Literary fiction | 80,000 to 100,000 | 70,000 to 110,000 |
| Women's and book club fiction | 80,000 to 100,000 | 70,000 to 110,000 |
| Contemporary romance | 70,000 to 90,000 | 60,000 to 100,000 |
| Historical romance | 80,000 to 100,000 | 70,000 to 110,000 |
| Romantasy | 90,000 to 110,000 | 80,000 to 120,000 |
| Category romance (publisher lines) | 50,000 to 75,000 | 45,000 to 80,000 |
| Mystery | 80,000 to 100,000 | 60,000 to 110,000 |
| Cozy mystery | 60,000 to 80,000 | 50,000 to 90,000 |
| Thriller and suspense | 80,000 to 100,000 | 70,000 to 110,000 |
| Horror | 70,000 to 100,000 | 60,000 to 120,000 |
| Historical fiction | 90,000 to 120,000 | 80,000 to 130,000 |
| Science fiction | 90,000 to 110,000 | 80,000 to 125,000 |
| Fantasy | 90,000 to 120,000 | 80,000 to 130,000 |
| Epic fantasy | 100,000 to 150,000 | 90,000 to 200,000 |
| Western | 55,000 to 80,000 | 50,000 to 90,000 |
| Young adult | 60,000 to 80,000 | 50,000 to 90,000 |
| Young adult fantasy or sci-fi | 70,000 to 100,000 | 60,000 to 110,000 |
| Middle grade | 40,000 to 60,000 | 25,000 to 70,000 |
| Chapter book | 5,000 to 15,000 | 3,000 to 20,000 |
| Novella | 20,000 to 40,000 | 17,500 to 40,000 |
| Memoir | 70,000 to 90,000 | 60,000 to 100,000 |
Picture books are a different thing: most have under 600 words, over 32 pages.
If you publish it yourself, you answer to readers, not agents. Look at the books your readers already buy, and match them. Self-published romance and series books often run shorter than these ranges.
In a query letter, give your word count, not your page count. A typed manuscript runs about 250 words a page, double spaced, and a printed book about 250 to 300.
Where these come from: agent and publisher advice, including The Manuscript Academy's guide to what agents want, Writer's Digest, BookEnds Literary, the submission pages of Crooked Lane Books and Flame Tree Press, and Harlequin's guidelines for its lines, plus the Nebula Awards' lengths for the novella. We rounded them. Nobody enforces them.
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