Interesting post: Fantasy by the Words

I stumbled across this post at a blog that seems to be called Self Published Fantasy Month, which is an odd title for a blog. It seems very temporary. Still, here is this post: Fantasy by the Words

All writers have heard it: “You’re not the exception. Follow the rules.” But when it comes to the rules of word counts, there is one major exception that everyone seems to overlook. Epic Fantasy.

I think this rule is overstated, plus Historical is just as much an exception as epic fantasy, and so is what we might call epic science fiction. However, this isn’t the part that caught my eye. What did, first, was that this author is separating epic fantasy from high fantasy, which is great. She’s not doing it exactly as I would, but I’m happy to see someone else who doesn’t think the terms are synonymous, which they clearly are not.

But this post is really about word counts. That’s why I found it, because I googled “word count kushiel’s dart” because I wanted the rough word count of a long debut novel, and this one sprang to mind. The word count is given at 276,000 words, by the way, which is about what I expected. It’s a really long book, and really good, though you have to be okay with scenes that are not just explicit, but also include a strong sadistic flavor. But my point is, I intended to point out that many novels do not fit the so-called guidelines for word length, and this is true for debut novels from non-established authors. That is the exact point this post is making. It was written by Chelsea Harper, by the way. I think this is most likely the right Chelsea Harper, and if so she only wrote one book, so possibly life interfered.

Regardless, Harper says: Literary Agents Read Too Much

And I think she is right. Here’s what she says about this:

But the more agents read, the more they get frustrated with seeing the same things over and over. “80’s Fantasy” came back into style about fifteen years ago, and it went back out of style before many readers ever got tired of the revival. Why? Because agents and editors saw so many books in that style (undoubtedly hundreds more than they published) that publishing got over-saturated and bored with the common tropes in those fields long before the reading public did.

This is true. Actually, the reading public never gets tired of ANYTHING because (a) normal readers don’t read as many samples of badly-written Terry Brooks / Twilight / Hunger Games clones per week as agents do, and (b) normal readers are continually being created through the normal process of shifting from picture books to novels. Agents, editors, and professional critics all say, “Another Twilight clone, yawn,” but there is, was, and will be a market for however many similar novels get written. That’s what I think, and I’m glad to see a post that lays this out nearly the same way I would.

Harper then adds: Traditional Publishing Misreads Why Some Things Don’t Sell

I think this is also true, and I think the example given here is perfect:

Hunger Games was a sensation, but Divergent wasn’t as good. Not because it came later and people were tired of those tropes, but because the book actually wasn’t as good. Tris was a boring character who rebelled simply because she wanted to feel pretty and was forced into the revelation that she was “special.” In contrast, Katniss was someone who wanted to sneak by under the oppressive ruler’s radar and took calculated risks for the benefit of people she loved, who sacrificed herself early in book one to save her sister. In the long run, Tris was proven to be the one person born with special powers that confirmed a theory of humanity, while Katniss remained a normal girl who fought against being something she wasn’t and eventually confronted the fundamental corruption of rebellions that create figureheads for promotional purposes. From book one, Hunger Games kicks Divergent’s ass. Post-apocalyptic YA novels that sort children into factions aren’t out of fashion, YA novels with boring characters are out of fashion.

All of which I agree with, but also, the worldbuilding for Divergent was utterly ridiculous. I don’t know how many readers cared about that, but I did. It was ridiculous because dividing into castes according to a chosen virtue would be impossible — human people do not act like this, it’s obvious people do not act like this, I honestly don’t see how anyone could take this backstory seriously. Also, you don’t teach kids to fight by saying, “Go to it!” and standing back. Even if you’re both sadistic and an idiot, it’s very plain that this method of quote teaching unquote would not be at all efficient. I’ve seen this kind of idiocy in other books too, and it seems remarkable to me. Does the author genuinely not realize that it works far better to actually teach the kids to fight if you want them to learn how to fight?

I rather enjoyed Divergent, by the way. It’s just I was also aware that it wasn’t very good.

But here’s something I didn’t think of, that is probably also true: Traditional Publishing is Scared of Failing

That’s not a new or interesting observation. Here’s the part that’s new (or I hadn’t thought of it, anyway) and interesting:

To combat the damage that self-publishing did to their safety nets, publishing made a decision. Books over 120,000 words are high risk investments, even in a subgenre where books surpass 200,000 words regularly. What they’re missing is that those word counts are killing the epic fantasy subgenre. People are combining epic fantasy with high fantasy and scaling the definition back to just “anything set in a secondary world” because there’s very little outside Brandon Sanderson that even fits the more traditional definition of epic fantasy anymore.

Now, I haven’t noticed a lack of epic fantasy, but I haven’t been reading a lot for the past few years, and I certain HAVE noticed a frequent inability to distinguish between EPIC fantasy and HIGH fantasy, in exactly the way this author describes. I’m not sure this is at all new, however. It’s been a common issue for as long as I can remember.

Let us consider the word counts of one or two very recent traditionally published SFF novels.

When the Moon Hatched is estimated at 150,000 words.

The Pomegranate Gate is estimated at 178,000 words.

Of Blood and Fire is estimated at 175,000 words. I don’t know anything about this book, by the way, I just googled “recent epic fantasy” and plugged this title into the wordcount estimator I found. I think it’s grimdark, so don’t dash off and buy it unless that’s what you want.

How accurate is the counting tool linked above? It may be undercounting; I don’t think it’s overcounting: it tells me Tuyo might be 125,000 words, and it’s actually 160,000, so its estimation is 20% too low, a big difference. It pegged Tarashana at 200,000, which is close enough for horseshoes, but a little low. It suggested 285,000 for Tasmakat, which is 10% too low.

Given these results, I’d say the three novels above are WAY over 120,000 words, which is often cited as a limit for fantasy. Two of them are debut novels and the other is the author’s third book, so I don’t think I’d say she’s necessarily established.

Therefore, although I do like this post about Fantasy by the Words, I also think the ultimate conclusion, that publishers are getting much more rigid about upper limits on wordcounts and that this is killing epic fantasy, may be overstated, for two reasons: I’m pretty sure people have been conflating epic fantasy with high fantasy for decades, not just a few years; and it only took a few minutes to find three recent traditionally published fantasy novels that are massively longer than the supposed upper limit.

Which is good, because hard rules about “We won’t even look at anything over 120,000 words” are bad rules. On the other hand, self-publishing is so viable now that I’m not sure it would matter all that much if every traditional publisher in the world did institute that kind of hard rule. But it would still be bad, so I’m glad this doesn’t necessarily appear to have happened.

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