Eye of the world word count
I can’t imagine approaching this series as a neophyte (even though this is technically my first reread!). The Wheel of Hour has been part of my life since 1992. I scan the first several books countless times. The series was the sole tie I kept with fantasy during my college years. Brandon Sanderson picking up the reins after Jordan’s untimely death reignited my interest in fantasy for good.
The entire series stretches close to four and a half million words. It is a fair estimate to tell that I have read over ten million words written by Jordan, counting all my rereads and the other Jordan books I have read. The wide-ranging majority of that was with a single set of characters (admittedly a pretty big set). I have a connection with these characters like no others. Even with Tolkien, the story is much smaller, and the characters not as fleshed out in the end.
Starting up my reread this time, then, much like starting up my reread in anticipation of A Memory of Light, is an feeling experience. A single line can instantly recall an 8-book story arc. Romance rarely works for me outside of The Wheel of Time, but a series of this scale has a singular advantage on that front. We ex
When someone first begins writing books, one of the first things they learn is that page count is far, far less important on the writing conclusion of novels than it is for the reading end. Books are rarely the same dimensions, whether that be in length, height, or both. Line spacing, margins, font and font size, even the way chapter pages are set, all mean that even if books were the same size, physically, they don’t necessarily have the same synonyms count. The same substance. The same amount of story.
The second thing that a beginning creator learns is that it is next to impossible to locate the word counts of most books. Wikipedia and Goodreads may have page counts set down somewhere for the curious reader, but nothing for the curious author. That poses a challenge in a big way. Because if you ask,”How long should my story be?” the supposedly correct answer is, “However drawn-out it needs to be.” This is only true to a point. Have a story too big, and you’re going to be asked to cut it down because more pages means more money to publish and a bigger financial risk to the publishers. Too short, and it’s hard to market as a full-length novel.
When
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
Petrik’s rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Here it is, I’m riding the winds of time! Wheeeeeeeeeee!
Another massive fantasy series to finish, a new epic adventure to undertake. Like many contemporary fantasy readers, the last three books finished by Brandon Sanderson played a huge motivational operate in my attempt to begin and finish The Wheel of Time. I honestly find this series to be even more intimidating than Malazan Book of the Fallen due to the sheer number of word counts in it. To give a bit of information on how intimidating this series is, the last two massive series I began and finished last year was The Realm of Elderlings (4.1 million words) by Robin Hobb and Malazan Book of the Fallen (3.3 million words) by Steven Erikson; the entirety of The Wheel of Time consists of 4.4 million words. That’s how gigantic this series is. If it weren’t because Sanderson is one of my top favorite authors of all time and the fact that I’ve completely run out of his adult fantasy books to read, I probably wouldn’t acquire started this series at all. That being said, no matter what the initial reason is, I’m really glad that I’ve taken the important
Word length is something beginner writers tend to obsess about. It is good to know the basic rules of thumb, but you shouldn’t get too bogged down in the detail.
Here’s the most basic rule of thumb: an adult novel is 80,000-100,000 words.
Different genres do have their different expectations, of course. Relationship tends to be shorter; monumental fantasy tends to be longer (but not as long as you’d think, for a debut novelist!). But, really, there’s not a lot in it.
Young individual novels tend to be quite a lot shorter, but include a greater range: anything between 45,000 and 80,000 words is probably fine.
Children’s books are of course shorter still.
For more detail, check out the excellent articles at http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/Word+Count+For+Novels+And+Childrens+Books+The+Definitive+Post.aspx
http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html
http://literaticat.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/wordcount-dracula.html
Also, below you can see some estimates of pos count from various books (I think I used this tool for some of these; others I worked out myself by counting the number of words on one page and extrapolating).
What about shorter fiction? Writer’
Updated:
Jun 2025 – The Wild Road, Michelle West
Jan 2025 – some updates to eastern classics at the bottom of the page
Dec 2024 – Stormlight 5, Sanderson
Nov 2024 – The Navigator’s Children, Tad Williams – Overcaptain, Modesitt
Oct 2004 – Michelle West, upcoming – Cherryh, Foreigner
June 2024 – more Tchaikovsky
May 2024 – Janny Wurts finale, Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (added the two smaller books)
Feb 2024 – Modesitt – all of Recluce // Abercrombie Age of Madness
Nov 2023 – Hamilton more precise counts Reality Dysfunction 385k > 372k, Neutronium Alchemist 393k > 378k, Naked God 452k > same
Oct 2023 – Michelle West
Jun 2023 – Esslemont, Forge of the High Mage
Sep 2022 – Solzhenitsyn, not fantasy but epic in all the wrong ways
July 2022 – Into the Narrowdark, Tad Williams
May 2022 – Jenn Lyons, complete
Jan 2022 – Jenn Lyons, A Chorus of Dragons
Dec 2021 – The Expanse, complete
Nov 2021 – Diana Gabaldon – Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone
July 2021 – Added Instrumentalities series by Glen Cook (sadly suspended a