I feel that’s too short when there’s a lot going on at certain points in the story, and it wouldn’t make any sense to change chapters just to stick to length. I’m writing a fantasy novel and was worried when my chapter ran in to the 7,000 word mark. Keep in mind this applies to first novels only. After five long years of writing, editing, and revising, I self-published Aether Warriors with Outskirts Press in 2013. The time I had spent pouring over these different fantasy novels meant so much to me that I realized I wanted to share it with others.
My friend and I were discussing chapter length, and one site suggested 3,500 words (general fiction). Even Stephen King had to save one of his manuscripts and submit a shorter one (Carrie) to be published, … Most-likely the novels you looked at, the author had been published before, but new authors cannot publish very long books on their first go. Fantasy and science fiction novels are known to be lengthier than other books. The guidelines I have read specify between 35,000 and 50,000 for a fantasy novel in the young adult genre.
The stakes are high and time is running out, do you have what it takes to survive in a YA fantasy novel?! This post on Fantasy Author’s Handbook does point out that many of the bestselling books of all time (of which many are fantasy novels) are not the 200,000 word epics many associate with the genre. Welcome to the fantasy world of EVERLESS , where time is literally money and rich aristocrats live for centuries, but the commoners are not so fortunate.
How Long Would You Last in a YA Fantasy Novel? At 13 I caught the writing bug, and started writing a fantasy novel, Aether Warriors.
That said, the average word count for science fiction and fantasy novels generally lies between 100,000 and 115,000. Fantasy, in particular, takes the cake: some books in a fantasy series end up exceeding 140,000 words. How many words should a fantasy novel be? Without extensive sales statistics it’s hard to say how the size of a book does or doesn’t affect its popularity.