by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Generally, from what I’ve read, it seems a thriller’s “sweet spot” is about 100,000 words. I read a comment on Facebook from someone who said *40,000* was what the industry wanted and I call bullshit — that’s barely more than your typical novella. It’s comments like that that make one feel more stupid than before you read them.
But anyway, I’m shooting for something no longer than 140,000 for each book I’m working on. It was when I wrote the whole story out as one book and it came out to be 200 scenes or 200,000 words that I decided to split the story into two, ending the first book with a cliffhanger.
The reason word count is so touchy for me is I have the structure of these two novels mapped out after about three years and I hate the idea that after all this hard work, they’ll be rejected not because of my bad writing but because they’re just too fucking long.
But I’m prepared to self-publish if need be. I just know I’m working really hard to make these two novels as fast a read as possible, so hopefully a literary agent will notice that and forgive me for how long they are.
Only time will tell, I guess.