Forum: Story Recommendations

Thanks. I have Arlene and Jeff on my reading list already. I will look into Florida Friends.

Kinetic by Hammingbyrd7 is about a young man gaining a frankly terrifying amount of power.

But not the epic length that the OP asked for.

Eh, it's longer than Gilgamesh. And most online stories are stupid long these days. At least in my opinion, which I'm forced to admit is far from universal.

Eh, it's longer than Gilgamesh. And most online stories are stupid long these days. At least in my opinion, which I'm forced to admit is far from universal.

Most dead tree fiction is longer than you seem to think.

Average novel lengths by genre:

https://www.publishingtalk.org/writing/how-many-words-in-a-novel-average-word-count-for-books-by-genre/

Début fiction: 80,000 words – for the reasons outlined above. Though there are outliers.

Literary Fiction: 50,000–150,000 words. Because 'literary fiction' is used to describe any novel that doesn't easily fit onto a specific genre, it's hard to give a 'typical' word length – because it can be very wide ranging! It could be as short as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (177pp / 48,000 words) or as long as The Secret History by Donna Tartt (503pp / 140,000 words).

Romantic Fiction: 70,000–90,000 words. Tends to be shorter than literary fiction, or other genre fiction. Examples include The Corner Shop in Cockleberry Bay by Nicola May (328pp / 83,000 words).

Historical Fiction: 90,000–120,000+. Tends to be longer than average. Examples include: The River Between Us by Liz Fenwick (512pp / 130,000 words, The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie (368pp / 112,000 words). Outliers include Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (604pp / 166,000 words).

Science Fiction: 70,000–120,000. Examples include Isaac Asimov's Foundation (240pp / 70,000 words), and Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel (352pp / 98,000 words).

Fantasy: 100,000-150,000 words. Examples include The Hunger Games (384pp / 100,000). Outliers include Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire (912pp / 250,000 words).

Thrillers: 80,000–100,000+ words. Examples include The Girl on the Train (416pp / 114,000 words)

Crime Fiction: 80,000–150,000 words. Examples include His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet (288pp / 80,000 words) and anything by Val McDermid, such as The Distant Echo (576pp / 150,000 words)

Horror: 80,000–100,000 words. For example Misery by Stephen King (384pp / 105,000 words). His It is an outlier at 1,088 pp / 300,000 words). Shorter horror novels include We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (176pp / 50,000 words).

Young Adult: 50,000–80,000 words. YA novels tend to be shorter than adult fiction. For example A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness is 240pp / 65,000 words. However, obvious exceptions include anything in the fantasy genre aimed at young people – such as the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (book 3, The Amber Spyglass, is 560pp / 150,000 words).

At 82,826 words Kinetic by Hammingbyrd7 is well within typical novel lengths and would be at the short end for several genres. And the only category in which it would be above typical length is Young Adult.

Epic length in dead tree would be in the range of 200+ kw.

The story mentioned by the OP as an exemplar is 3,474,271 Words

Also worth noting that the above numbers are for established authors. First time authors are usually expected to be about 30% shorter than the average for their genre. Newer but non-debut authors will also usually be encouraged to write shorter books until they build up a following.

With rare exceptions, publishers today aren't buying single books, they're investing in authors.

length

From the Clitorides award category of Epic Story:
Any erotic or sex story, more than 100,000 words (500 KB and up of text).

My own definition of an epic-length fiction would be 300,000+ words.

Not anywhere near the length of story I was hoping for... but the premise sounds interesting. So adding it to my reading list. Thanks.

Yea, but unless you are a 20 year old, that story aint ever getting finished at the pace it is going. It has slowed down to a GLACIAL pace at this point, and the author has been running into issue after issue and pissing off a large chunk of his Patreons, of which I was one.

What is unfortunate is ever since Tefler started publishing his work his chapter updates are usually months apart

The only problem with reading Tefler's work is the LONG delays between new chapters which a LOT of us got tired of and gave up, plus in a few cases he CLEARLY phoned in chapters with 9-10 pages of basically fuck all but stroke filler

This was a good read, thanks, am on book 3 now.

Thank you for recommending this! I'm about half-way through the first book and I think this is great.

-FB

I agree. I have always considered do-over stories as an opportunity to imagine and to explore. You call it 'the great unknown'; I call it the 'the great what if.'

This is probably an interception with a fairly wide genre Alternate History.

With Do-Overs (same-universe time-travel do-overs, at least - mine has pre-existing divergences, and e.g. aroslav's 'The Transmogriphication of Jacob Hopkins' doesn't involve time travel), we're actively living through the point where things diverge and should see the way things become less predictable, whether in small ways or big.

I agree in principle for do-overs, but in both Variations and Transmogrification, the changes began quite a bit before the restore point (e.g. Dave/Darla's birth).

Xianxia authors are really good (well, the better ones) at expanding the settings and the stakes as the protagonist levels up.

Also, the plot is ended by the end of the (very long) webnovel. It's a tradeoff of one very long novel vs. multiple sequels with possibly meandering, "pantser" plots.

How do they end their stories once their protagonists become gods?

Some end very abruptly. One author sometimes uses the motivation to be able to resurrect some loved ones as a major plot motivation, and once MC achieves godlike status, the last, short scene of bringing his dead ones to life concludes the novel.

Sometimes a brief statement about plans to leave the universe to discover yet other, more exotic wonders.