I am in the process of editing a fantasy book aimed at children (11-14 years roughly). It's current length is about 98,000 words and I felt like I was finally ready to send it to agents. Naively I thought this length would be fine until I searched through previous Q&A's about this on the Writer's & Artists website as well as other others. It has really knocked me realising that I might need to chop off another 10,000+ words!
Has anyone else experienced this? And come out the other end, without going crazy? Thank you
The length of a children's book should be between 15,000 and 40,000 words. It's best to have an idea of the word count before you start writing. Once you have a rough idea of how many pages your book will be, you can use that number to estimate how long it will take to write. The average children's book is about 30 pages long, with each page containing 500 words. If you want to write a picture book with 32 pages, then that means each page would contain 1,000 words. You also get the help from https://samploon.com/free-essays/the-book-thief/ to learn how to increase the value of certain points. The length of a children's book should also be appropriate for the amount of time that you have available to read it. If you're going out soon after bedtime, then look for books that are shorter than 30 minutes.
Thanks for the feedback and reassurance. I have left my book alone for a bit and I am going to have another look this week :)
Hi Sarah,
I haven't experienced this, so unfortunately I can't offer advice - but maybe you don't need to chop off quite so much. Obviously I haven't read it, so I can't really say. There are, however, quite a few books aimed at 11-14 that are such a length. Fantasy always seems to be quite long! The Eragon books are over 500 pages, I think, and while I can't really work out how many pages 98,000 words would fill I'm sure that the principal must be the same: if the book is engrossing, children of secondary school age and perhaps younger will want to finish it. The Harry Potter series, too, is enormous. I'm 16 now, so I'm almost in the target audience age!
Sorry I haven't been able to offer any advice as to the edit, but I hope I've reassured you to some extent! As I say though, it's hard without having seen the book itself. I hope things work out, though. Good luck :-)