Genre guide · Fiction
Humorous Fiction: word count & book length
How long a humorous fiction book should be, which trim sizes suit it and what that means in printed pages. Typical length: 60,000–90,000 words.
60,000–90,000 wordstypical length
28,022works in Open Library
About humorous fiction
Novels where comedy drives the experience, from satire to farce to warm-hearted comedies of manners.
Printed length in recommended trim sizes
| Trim | Pages at 11 pt | Spine (white) |
|---|---|---|
| 5.5 x 8.5 in Digest | 236–358 pages | 0.53–0.81 in |
| 5 x 8 in | 280–428 pages | 0.63–0.96 in |
Page counts for these lengths
Tips for this category
- Comic timing survives typesetting better with generous paragraph spacing in dialogue.
About Humorous Fiction
A comic novel is a novel-length work of humorous fiction. Many well-known authors have written comic novels, including P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Fielding, Mark Twain, and John Kennedy Toole. Comic novels are often defined by the author's literary choice to make the thrust of the work—in its narration or plot—funny or satirical in orientation, regardless of the putative seriousness of the topics addressed.
From the Wikipedia article “Comic novel”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Most-published humorous fiction works in Open Library
| Title | Author | First published | Editions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | 1865 | 3,547 |
| Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain | 1876 | 2,623 |
| Gulliver's Travels | Jonathan Swift | 1726 | 1,810 |
| Don Quijote de la Mancha | Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra | 1600 | 1,595 |
| Candide | Voltaire | 1746 | 1,079 |
| Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass | Lewis Carroll | 1889 | 545 |
| A history of New York | Washington Irving | 1800 | 472 |
| The Importance of Being Earnest | Oscar Wilde | 1893 | 455 |
| The History of Tom Jones | Henry Fielding | 1749 | 435 |
| Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow | Jerome Klapka Jérôme | 1880 | 433 |
Open Library lists 28,022 works under this subject.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a humorous fiction book be?
Typically 60,000–90,000 words. Novels where comedy drives the experience, from satire to farce to warm-hearted comedies of manners..
What trim size is best for humorous fiction?
Common choices are 5.5 x 8.5 in Digest, 5 x 8 in.
Sources & data
- Subject statistics from Open Library.
- Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).