: Re: Is there a method to estimating the length of a work before writing it? I am writing my first novel, which I think likely will end up being several volumes. Although I have a lot of experience

@Welton431

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Patricia Wrede addresses this in her blog about writing here. I will summarize some of the points she makes...

1) You may get better at this with experience (not helpful just now, I know, and also some people DON'T really get better at this...I am looking at a certain author who's novels are currently a popular television series).

2) If you want to approach it in a logical way, focus on the types of scenes you have and how you tend to treat those types of scenes (but I would add the caveat that how you treat the same scene in a novel vs a short story may be drastically different). Her example is to consider if you tend to put more detail into character development and gloss over action scenes, then you would adjust your anticipated length according to how many character development scenes vs action scenes you have.

3) It's possible to adjust a lot of stuff in the whole novel writing-revision process...in fact it is pretty much impossible not to! For many writers, whole scenes and chapters move around during editing, or they add or cut 10,000+ words...

I also highly recommend her other posts, especially about how the planning process is different for different writers. You might find another method of planning that appeals to you that will be more flexible when you don't know exactly how/if you're going to break your work up.

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