[BettyCross]

The Eye of the World (1990) , 305,902 words
The Great Hunt (1990) , 267,078 words
The Dragon Reborn (1991), 251,392 words
The Shadow Rising (1992), 393,823 words
The Fires of Heaven (1993), 354,109 words
Lord of Chaos (1994), 389,264 words
A Crown of Swords (1996), 295,028 words
The Path of Daggers (1998) 226,687 words
Winter's Heart (2000), 238,789 words
Crossroads of Twilight (2003), 271,632 words
Knife of Dreams (2005), 315,163 words
The Wheel of Time books are not the only ones that grow to stupendous length. ASOFAI books are many hundreds of thousands of words long.

The fantasy novel I'm working on right now has a projected length of 125,000 words. The sequel will be about the same length. Does any body have any idea why fantasy novels are so long?

Betty Cross

[Sheets]

From what I gather, it mostly comes down to publisher demands? It's felt that readers won't pay $8-10 for a book unless it's of a huge length, so writers are told to expand their stories to fill that space regardless of what the story calls for. It's not just fantasy (although fantasy does have that extra demand for unending sagas...); books in other genres tend to be pretty long compared to how they were in decades past.

[imaster]

Supply and demand. Fantasyreaders expect long books so writers write long books. I very much prefer to read a book in the 300k-word league rather than shorter books. They last me longer, they have more chance to immerse me in the world and have a better opportunity to create another world. I like doorstoppers.

[DailyRich]

Then again, if it's rough going, you're looking at a longer slog to the end.

[Bond]

Read and find out.

[avysk]

Does any body have any idea why fantasy novels are so long?

Probably one of the reasons that fantasy is very much about escapism (contrary to SF, which is often about toying with new ideas/concepts, whatif-s etc.); and for escapism the bigger is better, giving better feeling of immersion.

[MattNY]

Probably one of the reasons that fantasy is very much about escapism (contrary to SF, which is often about toying with new ideas/concepts, whatif-s etc.); and for escapism the bigger is better, giving better feeling of immersion.

Agreed. That is how I always looked at.

[NickeeCoco]

Not only for escapism reasons, but fantasy is often set in an alternate world, which means that the author needs to add a lot of extra elements to relate that world so that the reader is fully immersed in it and understands the it. The author needs to relate many things, a handful of them being the social structure, how the world looks, the culture, a magic system, etc. The author is presenting the unknown and needs to be able to make sure the reader understands it.

[MattNY]

I agree with that, but that does occur in scifi novels as well, and in that genre, they seem to get it across with less words.

[Arkeus]

Probably one of the reasons that fantasy is very much about escapism (contrary to SF, which is often about toying with new ideas/concepts, whatif-s etc.); and for escapism the bigger is better, giving better feeling of immersion.


given that Sci-Fi books can be as big or bigger than Fantasy one....

Some Fantasy books are big, some are smallers. I would say that there has been a trend in the 90s to make very big books, but it's not a rule or anything.