I settled in the auditorium of the DFW Writers Conference early Sunday morning for the annual query Gong Show. This is the event iin which writers submit their anonymous literary queries to a panel of agents and editors, who strike table-top gongs to signal the point at which they would stop the read if receiving such a query in their own emails.
As I hoped against hope not to hear a repeat of the usual agents' complaints, something new startled me. The word counts cited in some of the entries.
After several years of relentless gonging at this contest, canny writers know opening with a 135,000-ish word count is a nonstarter.
What startled me out of an insufficiently caffeinated daze was carping about a 70,000-word entry for middle grade readers. "Middle grade" is a publishing term for readers aged approximately 9-12 -- those old enough to read independently.
Novels aimed at adult readers can easily hover around 80,000 words -- higher for science fiction and fantasy works. Even classic middle grade novels such as the original Harry Potter clock in at over 75,000.
How far out of bounds was a book of 70,000 words?
Ask a dozen agents, authors, and internet sites and you'll get two dozen answers. Writer's Digest, in a post updated in 2021, cites 20-55K for middle grade, with slightly higher word counts for science fiction and fantasy works.
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WD also states that middle grade word counts have been trending up lately.
But agents at DFW said otherwise. That the opposite, in fact, is the case.
The reason -- the pandemic shutdowns of many schools that hit when the middle graders of 2024 were barely beginning their journeys as fluent, independent readers.
Shutdowns of in-person learning, hopefully saved lives. But coupled with Zoom classes and other online learning venues, they hit younger readers at a uniquely vulnerable point in their development. Conference agents expected to see the lower-word-count issue follow into YA (young adult) books as readers who were in elementary school during the pandemic reach their teens.
Will the trend eventually age out? We're waiting to see. In the meantime, authors of books for young readers need to be particularly aware of their needs.
Oh, and those doorstop-sized Harry Potters? Besides getting extra word leeway for being a fantasy, it was first published nearly a quarter-century ago. To a readership who were only getting their first taste of the internet.
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Now, a return to the rest of the Gong Show results.
DFW reader George Goldthwaite zipped through 11 randomly chosen, rapidly gonged queries before hitting paydirt with number 12, whose breathless author rose to take a bow.
Otherwise, too many authors -- not paying attention to this blog's repeated warnings -- spent far too much of their query on synopsis-like plot descriptions.
One query made it almost to the end before being hopelessly gonged, but even that ran to a second page. (Repeat after me: one page, 300 words max.)
Aside from the middle grade hopeful, writers were generally good at stating the word count and genre of their stories. However, more than once queries failed to follow through on the expected tropes of their genre or leaned on generic descriptions. Other dislikes involved talking down to the agent (and potential readers): "I don't need time travel explained to me."
And the ultimate, never, ever -- an entry beginning, "This is the query you have been waiting for!" The author may well have intended this opening to be funny, but it triggered multiple simultaneous clanging of gongs.
(Host Russell C. Connor admitted he had once, no doubt long, long ago, submitted a query with a similar opening. And was gonged. Whoever the unlucky author was, they were not alone.)
Agents did offer positive suggestions such as:
- Color-coding words, allowing authors to visualize repeated ones and remove them
- Reading lots of back cover blurbs for suggestions on what works in a query -- remembering, "all we need is an effective hook and a pitch"
- Allowing the author's unique voice to shine
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