Word count lengths—epic fantasy

[vonHelldorf]

Hello everyone,

How are we all today?

As I'm working through my novel I'm growing conscious of my word count. I've read in a lot of places that between 100,000 and 130,000 is the aim for first novels. But then again I've heard people say the story is as long as it needs to be told. I'm leaning more to the latter philosophy. Epic fantasy books tend to be weighty.

Anyone got any guidance on this?

Also, anyone know anything about chapter lengths? I've read 2,500 is the average. I've taken a flexible stance to chapters. Some are long, others short—it depends what's happening in it.

 

[millymollymo]

How do! Welcome (belated )
Epic fantasy is longer than most yes. But there are guidance steps for newbies too. The "Epic" from debut authors are on the modest side of 100,000, closer to 90,000

I guess "Doorstopper" achievements must be earned

Having 'been there done that' and pulled out my hair on word counts far more times than is safe or sane. I know this isn't what you want to hear but: Write it. Edit it. Revise it. Get feedback on it. Edit it... head on over to the crit thread for help on that.

Worry about synopsis, worry about query letters, worry about grammar. Worry about whether your laptop will hold out...

Then worry about the word count.


Chapter lengths. 2500 is long in general but average yes, for epic. Like you say, chapters serve a purpose in the story, some are shorter than others. Work them as a whole, and make them be part of the page turning process. Words for the sake of words are pointlessly expensive for an author.

Have a look at Chopper's (Steven Poore) Heir to the North, Christopher Husburg's Duskfall, Brian's Turner's Gathering and Marc Turner's The Chronicles of the Exile series. All examples of epic and all published in the last 2 years.

 

[vonHelldorf]

Thanks Milly, that's really helpful stuff. Editing is the necessary evil! Will definitely check out those books.

 

[Brian G Turner]

We've had this discussion before now, and while traditional agents/publishers tend to ask for around 90-120k words for normal SF/F books, epic fantasy is an exception and 160+K words for a debut is much more common.

However, two are two big caveats:

1. A book needs only as many words as it need to tell the story. Early drafts will tend to be over-written, and at some point you may well butcher a lot of it down through a serious editing draft. Whatever words you are left with is what you need;

2. Traditional publishers are extremely selective when it comes to picking up epic fantasy. It doesn't seem to make sense when you think of how many successful epic fantasy authors are out there. But there are very few agents who will represent it, few publishers who will publish it, and very very few debuts published in any given year.

Of course, if you're looking to self-publish, word count won't be an issue - but Amazon's epic fantasy category is extremely competitive, not least because most every fantasy novel published there - by indies and traditional - tends to be dumped into it.

 

[tinkerdan]

If you self publish there is one caveat to consider with word count and that is to try to keep it closer to 160k and no more; experience has shown me that word counts above 250k may be daunting for some readers.

 

[Tim Murray]

How do! Welcome (belated )
Epic fantasy is longer than most yes. But there are guidance steps for newbies too. The "Epic" from debut authors are on the modest side of 100,000, closer to 90,000

I guess "Doorstopper" achievements must be earned

Having 'been there done that' and pulled out my hair on word counts far more times than is safe or sane. I know this isn't what you want to hear but: Write it. Edit it. Revise it. Get feedback on it. Edit it... head on over to the crit thread for help on that.

Worry about synopsis, worry about query letters, worry about grammar. Worry about whether your laptop will hold out...

Then worry about the word count.


Chapter lengths. 2500 is long in general but average yes, for epic. Like you say, chapters serve a purpose in the story, some are shorter than others. Work them as a whole, and make them be part of the page turning process. Words for the sake of words are pointlessly expensive for an author.

Have a look at Chopper's (Steven Poore) Heir to the North, Christopher Husburg's Duskfall, Brian's Turner's Gathering and Marc Turner's The Chronicles of the Exile series. All examples of epic and all published in the last 2 years.

Love the "door stopper" comment. I have just an epic, 265,000 + words to deal with, after the second goes through the edit mill!

 

[anthorn]

So is 2500 words considered long in chapter form? I thought it was short.

 

[Toby Frost]

It feels short to me, even if it isn't. I've always found it hard to do what I want in less than 5,000 words. Otherwise it hardly seems worth jumping to a different point of view.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

So is 2500 words considered long in chapter form? I thought it was short.

That made me go and look at my own WIP. Each chapter is as long or as short as I think the story needs it to be. My shortest chapter is currently 130 words, the longest around 2,300 (although this might change as I edit). I've a feeling there's no right or wrong in this, just so long as the story flows, keeps moving, and makes the reader want to keep on turning pages. The late, great Sir Terry didn't bother with chapters at all.

 

[Juliana]

Epic fantasy is longer than most yes. But there are guidance steps for newbies too. The "Epic" from debut authors are on the modest side of 100,000, closer to 90,000

Traditional publishers are extremely selective when it comes to picking up epic fantasy. It doesn't seem to make sense when you think of how many successful epic fantasy authors are out there. But there are very few agents who will represent it, few publishers who will publish it, and very very few debuts published in any given year.

As several people have said above, I think it depends if you're aiming to try for an agent and/or trad publisher. In that case, you'll probably find most of them won't look at something too big.

Re chapters, I think most writers tend to have a length that comes naturally to them. Mine is around 2000 words – some chapters are a little smaller, some go up to 2500/2600, but most of mine fall around the 2000 mark. But that's not a conscious decision, it's just the story rhythm (in terms of scenes, etc) that works for me.

 

[Dan Jones]

As Brian says, there is a dormant thread somewhere in Chrons which lists word counts for some of the more well known epic fantasies.

The received wisdom is that it's almost impossible to do epic (depending on your definition) in less than 120,000 words. For debut authors, going much above that apparently is a struggle.

Having said that, my book got bought at a word count of 130,000 and Harebrain's got snapped up at 160,000, and neither of those are epic fantasy (mine is SF and HB's is fantasy, but not in the medieval or epic sense). So what that tells me is that you need as many words as you need. Make them good ones.

 

[CAKnight]

I'm aiming for about 80k for my first novel. Easy people in

 

[The Bluestocking]

So is 2500 words considered long in chapter form? I thought it was short.

It feels short-ish to me. Mine are often between 2500 to 3500 words with most falling closer to 3000 words.

Then again, I'm headed towards a monster draft (lengthwise) and have to cut like 50,000 words *whimpers*