I lied...

[sleigh]

Back on 2/22, I mentioned that I was about 130,000 words in the draft of A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL, and that I expected to be finished with that draft in about 10,000 words or so.

I lied. I hit 140,000 words a few minutes ago (mostly because the snow caused NKU to cancel classes and thus give me an extra day of writing), and I figure I'm still maybe 10,000 words from "The End." *sigh* Big Fat Fantasy, that's me!

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Isn't bigger better for fantasy novels?

B

[maiac.livejournal.com]

"Big Fat Fantasy, that's me!"

What a straight line....

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Just call me Costello... :-)

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I don't know if 'better' is the right word, but they usually run longer than science fiction novels. Guess that's why they're called 'epic' fantasy, eh?

The long novel

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Is this a situation where, no matter how much you write, you will always have 10,000 more words to go? This would be the infinitely long fantasy novel. You will finish it "tomorrow" because tomorrow never comes.

Nate

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

What I mean is: don't larger fantasy novels sell better?

B

Re: The long novel

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

The Moebius strip novel -- you never reach the end! :-)

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Anecdotally, that's probably a good hypothesis, but it'd be interesting if someone correlated word count with sales to see what the data indicate. From what I've seen, the usual fantasy reader likes to stay in the fictional world as long as possible -- that's why endless series are so popular in the genre.

Where's that grad student in need of a thesis topic?

Re: The long novel

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Just don't rename the novel Zeno's Paradox.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I think I'll do the last 10,000 words as a pantoum...