So you want to write a novel, but you’ve got questions. Does my book have to be that long? How many scenes do I actually need to write? Does it matter if my fantasy book isn’t even 300 pages? The true answer is that it depends. Rules are meant to be broken, but in this blog you will find some guidance to how long your fully developed novel will be.

To dive into the realm of book math (yes, I said math), we need to break your novel into measurable units. For a novel, this unit is a scene or chapter. While scenes can span multiple chapters or only part of a chapter, a good average is one scene per chapter. Your scenes will be measured by the number of words in each scene. Assuming you want snack sized scenes—since it’s impossible to eat just one—then each scene and chapter will be about 2,000 words.

Now you want to zoom out and determine what genre you’ll be writing. You’ve notice the difference in length between serial romances and adult high-fantasies. The difference in length isn’t just a difference in how much the author had to say or the amount of world building. The difference is because of the expectations that your readers will have for certain genres.

• The word count range for fantasy is 90,000-120,000 words.

• The word count range for science fiction is 90,000-120,000 words.

• The word count range for romance is 50,000-90,000

These expectations are here to guide you, not to draw boundaries around your creativity. Use them as a starting point for your rough outline or use them to make a detailed outline. It’s okay to draw outside of the lines when you’ve giving your novel the room to be a fully developed story.

Go ahead and pick up a few of your favorite books in the genre you love the most or the genre you’re writing in. Look at the lengths of the chapters (a standard page in publishing is around 250 words) and look at the amount of chapters in the book. What lessons and ideas are coming to mind?

The math goes a little something like this:

(genre average word count) / (snack sized scene) = number of scenes in your novel

If math is not your thing, use this calculator as a guide while you plan or outline your novel: