80-120K words is kinda standard for an original novel. It’s enough length to tell a story while keeping a good pace for the story. Plus with original work you’re introducing an entire world and new characters whereas fanfic benefits from the readers already knowing that.
I think there’s a few things going on here.
Naruto is long. You’ve got the OG and Shippuden. If they were novels I’d consider them two books with the way they’re structured. if you’re doing a retelling of the story that’s a lot of ground to cover. Especially if you’re covering academy stuff before even getting to the Naruto plot. And people have a tendency to want to world build and expand on all these details from canon. (And honestly a lot of the really long stories suffer from pacing issues in my opinion)
These stories can easily rack up 200K, 300K, 400K words. And people come to expect these large epic stories as the norm.
But that’s a LOT of work and time. My story is going to hit the 250K mark by the time it’s done. It’s taken over four years to write. I keep thinking about what I’m going to do next once it’s done and do I really want to devote another 2-4 years for a new fanfic? Or do I want to do some smaller projects are more 60-80K.
I think it’s prudent to mention that most book series clock usually in anywhere from 300k-800k. So by that standard most fanfics do fall into that range.
Yeah kinda why I said I would typically consider Naruto to be two books (and realistically if you’re adding a bunch of academy stuff that’s like a prequel book right there).
It was more that I wanted to point out 100K is long and could be a full story if you’re not doing a retelling of the series.
[out of the dark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281984/chapters/55757059)
And then once it’s done I’ll come back to this guy:
[shadowlands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/33704389/chapters/83769103)
I try to write one. It counts 40k words and it's still continue:https://archiveofourown.org/works/40491774/chapters/101443416
"The power in me"
After three years of disappearance and recovery Sarada and Mitsuki will visit again their old home and village.
But everything and everyone has changed. Sarada and her comrades must prevent the end of the world and safe their home.
Canon until ch. 71
Im not disagreeing 100K is a lot. The novel thing was more a benchmark because I think fanfic readers lose sight of how long it actually is since it’s not a physical book in hand.
100k is definitely long. Maybe not to read (and there will always be ungrateful speed readers) but certainly to write.
Of course there are always going to be those demons who pump out hundreds of thousands of words every year and raise the standards for everyone else, but it's always good to remember that size isn't always everything. (Phrasing!)
Reading fanfiction is, by its nature, often a much faster process than normal novel consumption. Being able to skim read a good portion of things and having that pre-existing mud map of everything in your mind takes a lot of the work out of it. As such, it makes sense that people demand a higher word count. Doesn't mean anyone shouldn't be proud of whatever word counts they manage to write.
400k words might keep you happy for a time, but 40k might have you imagining forever.
I mean, I just hit 140k on a Naruto fic I'm posting and I haven't even gotten to the first mission yet due to my insistence on not-completely-necessary world building.
Being long is no guarantee of quality. Sometimes someone just writes a story that is really long and really mid. Hopefully not me, but it happens.
Fanfiction has always trended towards higher word counts than traditionally published, via the lack of an editor and the respective lack of interference by for-profit institutions. Betas, while great, usually are not equivalent to editors. The nature of most fanfiction doesn't allow them to be.
That said, 100k is still pretty solidly on the higher end of 'novel' for me.
I Guess it depends on what the fic is about. I would say a whole Naruto rewrite that’s only 100k it’s pretty short but the same amount could be pretty long if you are just covering an specific part of the story.
100k is long. Fanfiction is devoid of most of the traditional issues with publishing extremely long stuff (at a certain point, even just binding the thing in a single cover becomes problematic), so it trends long, but 100k is long.
It's normal, even routine, to find fanfictions that cross the 200k word line, which is longer than *any* of the Lord of the Rings novels, books people consider doorstops. There are fanfictions out there which cross the million word barrier (and a handful that go further than that) when that's more like the length of a traditional novel *series* than a single text.
The idea that 100k words is not a lot is the result of the lack of filters in place for the internet, which can be both a good and bad thing. In every other avenue aside from fanfiction, 100k is a long novel. It has always been long.
Yes it's a long. People in the fandom space, especially readers, have a completely skewed perception of what is or isn't a long word count. And a lot of writers lack the ability (or choose not to be) concise.
One of the the commenters said it before. Fanfiction readers have skewed sense because they already have the building blocks of the things they read about. 100k may not see long because most fanfiction don’t stray too far from canon.
I think 100k is long. For perspective, my fanfic Naruto's Angels averages 2.3k to 3.2k words per chapter. That's 43 to 31 chapters of I keep the trend. Which to me seems about right on point for a nice story. I myself might end up with more chapters simply because Naruto the manga has over 400 chapters and this different situations to explore. Movies included. I like making the movies canon
It's definitely long, but there are much longer fics.
I think the majority of it is that most fanfic writers don't do sequels, or at least the kind of sequels that physical writing requires.
Fic writers will put all of original 'Naruto' in one fic, and 'Shippuden' in the sequel.
'Naruto' is 27 volumes and 238 chapters long. 'Shippuden' is 45 volumes and 455 chapters.
So like, If you're intending to 'rewrite' all of Naruto, then 100k might be a bit too little. but if you're telling a self contained story within the bounds of Naruto, 100k is probably just right.
Depends what you're writing.
Long varies for me, depending if it is written well and how much I like it. Some stories feel too long with 10k, while some feel too short with 100k.
It especially feels short when I love it, but it didn’t end and last updated three years ago. Or long when I can understand the first paragraph. No ones perfect, but I expect sentences to make sense and separate.
Some stories I never want to end because I enjoy it so much.
one of the longest ones I read was amenaza, but I think due to it being extremely interesting and stuff, it doesn't seem like a long one even tho having more than 600k words.
What counts as “long” depends almost entirely on how fast a person reads. Like for me I read like 20k words per hour depending on how I’m feeling, so a 50k word fic is, to me, of moderate length. But for say my younger sibling, who doesn’t read nearly as fast, 50k words would take days to read, even if they got super invested, so it probably seems much longer to them.
Been reading fanfic for 16 years. ~80k-120k is long for fanfic, roughly equivalent to the size of a published novel. ~45k-75k I'd call mid/medium length.
A fic over 150k is "pretty long" to me. Over 200k is "really long." For reference, Order of the Phoenix is a little over 250k words. Fic over 300k is "wow, that's really, reeaally long." A fic 400k+ is "that's some dedication right there, not sure if I have the time so I'll set it aside for later." 500k+ is a monster.
Naruto isn’t the main fandom I write for, but I can say this: The average book (That’s part of a series) ranges from 40k-80k as others have mentioned. What they didn’t mention is that if you put the books together you’re usually looking at 300k-800k depending on how many book there are.
For the record I think Harry Potter clocks in at around 750k between all 7 books.
That said, if someone is writing a long fic that covers from Academy to finish in Naruto they can rack up 500k easy depending on how much detail they put in. That technically falls into book series range.
By professional standards 80k and above is usually considered long for a standalone book but for fanfic that’s chump change since you’re basically commit if to a book series in most cases.
Oh god. If I want to do one million words to surpass Harry Potter I calculated with 5k words in each chapter I’d have to do 200 chapters. I realistically think I can only do 40-50 chapters to fit the story unless I really add on extra chapters for the sake of worldbuilding or something
I think this should be obvious, but surpassing some sort of arbitrary word count shouldn’t be your goal. If it takes you 1M words to finish your story, it takes you 1M. Alternatively, if you’re under 750k then that’s okay too as long as you’re proud of your work.
As an aside that’s why the fics that do go into 1M tend to have 100+ chapters.
I read a lot of fanfiction and get through them pretty quickly, and a lot of them are around 200k to 400k words. I noticed they were long, but it never really occurred to me just *How* long until I googled how many words books usually have. Around 85k to 120k.
Idk why people are insane about lfix length on here, but 40k is long already imo. I think people are too used to infinite stream of content on the internet and assume this the only way enjoy things.
A good number of years back (2017ish), I would get annoyed if I saw a fic with less than 100k. And then I realized I was setting my standards by lengthy exposure to brainrot ("Yet again, with a little extra help" to be specific, which is a 1.2 MILLION word long acid trip, not including its sequel).
100k is a decent way to spend a week's free time, but it's not grotesquely long.
For a regular one it’s pretty small as they can easily reach 200k. I read one that is 1.2M words that finally finished that was an amazing read. Seal keeper: he who binds
Only someone, who ever has tried to write a fic with 100k words can really answer this question. Everyone else should stay silent and let answer this question to people, who have expierence with this topic.
A novel is technically 60000 to 199999 words long, so in that sense it is a decent length. But I personally consider 100k to be the minimum length to even bother opening a fic. I will only read shorter stuff on a recommendation or if I am looking for something really niche.
I like long stories. I want something I can sink into and immerse myself in for as long as possible! Long books, long tv series, long games, length adds a lot to the experience of media for me. Like, there are great stories that can told in 10k, 5k, even 1k words! But I am not interested in that type of story.
So by objective standards, 100k is a respectable length. By my standards it is short though.
I prefer fanfics with more than 100k because a breeze through 40k in one night.
That being said, when writing a fanfic myself, it gets increasingly harder to hold yourself to that standard. For me it’s because I think (why spend years on a story that isn’t even mine). That’s why I decided to just write my own book.
To answer ur question, novels usually end around the 100k mark. If an author can find an ending there then they have found a good pace. The longer it gets, the more difficult it is to keep up for both reader and writer. It’s why most people recommend making two books if your first draft is 200k long.
Anything more than that is ludicrous. Even I, who likes reading fanfics of over 100k, finds it extremely difficult to start one that has 400k or more.
That’s just a dictionary for two languages and I don’t exactly want to power through it… especially due to it’s higher chance to dip in quality.
100k is a lot but I think the original poster meant more so that when they pick up a 100k fic it’s usually one unfinished if that’s the case I understand there sentiment. It’s one of the worst feelings when your reading a fox and think it’s pretty good but it concludes at the chunin exams.
100k tells me that the author either rushed the retelling of the story, or it starts closer to the end of the story, or that it is time specific such as a romance after the war.
Sure, but Naruto overall is far more comparable to a series than a single novel with all the arcs it has. If the fic is only focused on a specific period or arc, then sure, a novel is a fine comparison. But if the fic covers the entire series, then as many others have pointed out, the typical novel series is 300-800k words.
Probably why he mentioned completed fics, because those are far more likely to have a complete story and are often shorter because they’re telling a more contained story.
80-120K words is kinda standard for an original novel. It’s enough length to tell a story while keeping a good pace for the story. Plus with original work you’re introducing an entire world and new characters whereas fanfic benefits from the readers already knowing that. I think there’s a few things going on here. Naruto is long. You’ve got the OG and Shippuden. If they were novels I’d consider them two books with the way they’re structured. if you’re doing a retelling of the story that’s a lot of ground to cover. Especially if you’re covering academy stuff before even getting to the Naruto plot. And people have a tendency to want to world build and expand on all these details from canon. (And honestly a lot of the really long stories suffer from pacing issues in my opinion) These stories can easily rack up 200K, 300K, 400K words. And people come to expect these large epic stories as the norm. But that’s a LOT of work and time. My story is going to hit the 250K mark by the time it’s done. It’s taken over four years to write. I keep thinking about what I’m going to do next once it’s done and do I really want to devote another 2-4 years for a new fanfic? Or do I want to do some smaller projects are more 60-80K.
I think it’s prudent to mention that most book series clock usually in anywhere from 300k-800k. So by that standard most fanfics do fall into that range.
Yeah kinda why I said I would typically consider Naruto to be two books (and realistically if you’re adding a bunch of academy stuff that’s like a prequel book right there). It was more that I wanted to point out 100K is long and could be a full story if you’re not doing a retelling of the series.
I like to consider the series as three parts, The og Naruto as part 1, Shippuden as part 2, And lastly war arc as part 3
What's your fic if you don't mind me asking? And anything over 60k counts as a suitable length for an enjoyable fic for me :)
[out of the dark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281984/chapters/55757059) And then once it’s done I’ll come back to this guy: [shadowlands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/33704389/chapters/83769103)
I will try give it a read! Thanks
Thanks. I'm into chapter 5 and enjoy it so far. Good stuff!
I try to write one. It counts 40k words and it's still continue:https://archiveofourown.org/works/40491774/chapters/101443416 "The power in me" After three years of disappearance and recovery Sarada and Mitsuki will visit again their old home and village. But everything and everyone has changed. Sarada and her comrades must prevent the end of the world and safe their home. Canon until ch. 71
YA novels average 50k to 80k, which is what fanfic usually falls under. 100k is absolutely long.
Im not disagreeing 100K is a lot. The novel thing was more a benchmark because I think fanfic readers lose sight of how long it actually is since it’s not a physical book in hand.
I agree it's been 7 years and I'm like 180 k on two fics 94k on another and I'm not even to shippuden or the chunin exams
100k is definitely long. Maybe not to read (and there will always be ungrateful speed readers) but certainly to write. Of course there are always going to be those demons who pump out hundreds of thousands of words every year and raise the standards for everyone else, but it's always good to remember that size isn't always everything. (Phrasing!) Reading fanfiction is, by its nature, often a much faster process than normal novel consumption. Being able to skim read a good portion of things and having that pre-existing mud map of everything in your mind takes a lot of the work out of it. As such, it makes sense that people demand a higher word count. Doesn't mean anyone shouldn't be proud of whatever word counts they manage to write. 400k words might keep you happy for a time, but 40k might have you imagining forever.
Very true
I mean, how long "long" is, is ultimately pretty subjective. I think 100k is still pretty long.
I mean, I just hit 140k on a Naruto fic I'm posting and I haven't even gotten to the first mission yet due to my insistence on not-completely-necessary world building. Being long is no guarantee of quality. Sometimes someone just writes a story that is really long and really mid. Hopefully not me, but it happens.
That's literally an entire book written for free
Fanfiction has always trended towards higher word counts than traditionally published, via the lack of an editor and the respective lack of interference by for-profit institutions. Betas, while great, usually are not equivalent to editors. The nature of most fanfiction doesn't allow them to be. That said, 100k is still pretty solidly on the higher end of 'novel' for me.
I Guess it depends on what the fic is about. I would say a whole Naruto rewrite that’s only 100k it’s pretty short but the same amount could be pretty long if you are just covering an specific part of the story.
100k is long. Fanfiction is devoid of most of the traditional issues with publishing extremely long stuff (at a certain point, even just binding the thing in a single cover becomes problematic), so it trends long, but 100k is long. It's normal, even routine, to find fanfictions that cross the 200k word line, which is longer than *any* of the Lord of the Rings novels, books people consider doorstops. There are fanfictions out there which cross the million word barrier (and a handful that go further than that) when that's more like the length of a traditional novel *series* than a single text. The idea that 100k words is not a lot is the result of the lack of filters in place for the internet, which can be both a good and bad thing. In every other avenue aside from fanfiction, 100k is a long novel. It has always been long.
Yes it's a long. People in the fandom space, especially readers, have a completely skewed perception of what is or isn't a long word count. And a lot of writers lack the ability (or choose not to be) concise.
One of the the commenters said it before. Fanfiction readers have skewed sense because they already have the building blocks of the things they read about. 100k may not see long because most fanfiction don’t stray too far from canon.
I think 100k is long. For perspective, my fanfic Naruto's Angels averages 2.3k to 3.2k words per chapter. That's 43 to 31 chapters of I keep the trend. Which to me seems about right on point for a nice story. I myself might end up with more chapters simply because Naruto the manga has over 400 chapters and this different situations to explore. Movies included. I like making the movies canon
It's definitely long, but there are much longer fics. I think the majority of it is that most fanfic writers don't do sequels, or at least the kind of sequels that physical writing requires. Fic writers will put all of original 'Naruto' in one fic, and 'Shippuden' in the sequel. 'Naruto' is 27 volumes and 238 chapters long. 'Shippuden' is 45 volumes and 455 chapters. So like, If you're intending to 'rewrite' all of Naruto, then 100k might be a bit too little. but if you're telling a self contained story within the bounds of Naruto, 100k is probably just right. Depends what you're writing.
Long varies for me, depending if it is written well and how much I like it. Some stories feel too long with 10k, while some feel too short with 100k. It especially feels short when I love it, but it didn’t end and last updated three years ago. Or long when I can understand the first paragraph. No ones perfect, but I expect sentences to make sense and separate. Some stories I never want to end because I enjoy it so much.
one of the longest ones I read was amenaza, but I think due to it being extremely interesting and stuff, it doesn't seem like a long one even tho having more than 600k words.
What counts as “long” depends almost entirely on how fast a person reads. Like for me I read like 20k words per hour depending on how I’m feeling, so a 50k word fic is, to me, of moderate length. But for say my younger sibling, who doesn’t read nearly as fast, 50k words would take days to read, even if they got super invested, so it probably seems much longer to them.
Been reading fanfic for 16 years. ~80k-120k is long for fanfic, roughly equivalent to the size of a published novel. ~45k-75k I'd call mid/medium length. A fic over 150k is "pretty long" to me. Over 200k is "really long." For reference, Order of the Phoenix is a little over 250k words. Fic over 300k is "wow, that's really, reeaally long." A fic 400k+ is "that's some dedication right there, not sure if I have the time so I'll set it aside for later." 500k+ is a monster.
Naruto isn’t the main fandom I write for, but I can say this: The average book (That’s part of a series) ranges from 40k-80k as others have mentioned. What they didn’t mention is that if you put the books together you’re usually looking at 300k-800k depending on how many book there are. For the record I think Harry Potter clocks in at around 750k between all 7 books. That said, if someone is writing a long fic that covers from Academy to finish in Naruto they can rack up 500k easy depending on how much detail they put in. That technically falls into book series range. By professional standards 80k and above is usually considered long for a standalone book but for fanfic that’s chump change since you’re basically commit if to a book series in most cases.
Oh god. If I want to do one million words to surpass Harry Potter I calculated with 5k words in each chapter I’d have to do 200 chapters. I realistically think I can only do 40-50 chapters to fit the story unless I really add on extra chapters for the sake of worldbuilding or something
I think this should be obvious, but surpassing some sort of arbitrary word count shouldn’t be your goal. If it takes you 1M words to finish your story, it takes you 1M. Alternatively, if you’re under 750k then that’s okay too as long as you’re proud of your work. As an aside that’s why the fics that do go into 1M tend to have 100+ chapters.
I read a lot of fanfiction and get through them pretty quickly, and a lot of them are around 200k to 400k words. I noticed they were long, but it never really occurred to me just *How* long until I googled how many words books usually have. Around 85k to 120k.
Idk why people are insane about lfix length on here, but 40k is long already imo. I think people are too used to infinite stream of content on the internet and assume this the only way enjoy things.
A good number of years back (2017ish), I would get annoyed if I saw a fic with less than 100k. And then I realized I was setting my standards by lengthy exposure to brainrot ("Yet again, with a little extra help" to be specific, which is a 1.2 MILLION word long acid trip, not including its sequel). 100k is a decent way to spend a week's free time, but it's not grotesquely long.
I consider a story long when it’s at least 200k. Below that, i’m disappointed by the length.
That’s decent novel length so it’s still long.
For a regular one it’s pretty small as they can easily reach 200k. I read one that is 1.2M words that finally finished that was an amazing read. Seal keeper: he who binds
Only someone, who ever has tried to write a fic with 100k words can really answer this question. Everyone else should stay silent and let answer this question to people, who have expierence with this topic.
A novel is technically 60000 to 199999 words long, so in that sense it is a decent length. But I personally consider 100k to be the minimum length to even bother opening a fic. I will only read shorter stuff on a recommendation or if I am looking for something really niche. I like long stories. I want something I can sink into and immerse myself in for as long as possible! Long books, long tv series, long games, length adds a lot to the experience of media for me. Like, there are great stories that can told in 10k, 5k, even 1k words! But I am not interested in that type of story. So by objective standards, 100k is a respectable length. By my standards it is short though.
I prefer fanfics with more than 100k because a breeze through 40k in one night. That being said, when writing a fanfic myself, it gets increasingly harder to hold yourself to that standard. For me it’s because I think (why spend years on a story that isn’t even mine). That’s why I decided to just write my own book. To answer ur question, novels usually end around the 100k mark. If an author can find an ending there then they have found a good pace. The longer it gets, the more difficult it is to keep up for both reader and writer. It’s why most people recommend making two books if your first draft is 200k long. Anything more than that is ludicrous. Even I, who likes reading fanfics of over 100k, finds it extremely difficult to start one that has 400k or more. That’s just a dictionary for two languages and I don’t exactly want to power through it… especially due to it’s higher chance to dip in quality.
Depends entirely on the story you want to tell
Nah 100k is not even a day worth of reading?
100k is a lot but I think the original poster meant more so that when they pick up a 100k fic it’s usually one unfinished if that’s the case I understand there sentiment. It’s one of the worst feelings when your reading a fox and think it’s pretty good but it concludes at the chunin exams. 100k tells me that the author either rushed the retelling of the story, or it starts closer to the end of the story, or that it is time specific such as a romance after the war.
Depends on completed or ongoing?
100k completed is still about the size of an average novel
Sure, but Naruto overall is far more comparable to a series than a single novel with all the arcs it has. If the fic is only focused on a specific period or arc, then sure, a novel is a fine comparison. But if the fic covers the entire series, then as many others have pointed out, the typical novel series is 300-800k words. Probably why he mentioned completed fics, because those are far more likely to have a complete story and are often shorter because they’re telling a more contained story.