Fic authors deserve more credit.
Story time: I started a book about 23 hours ago and just finished it. Also in that time I slept for 10 hours, spent time with family, was at work, etc. Anyway, I enjoyed the book (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda). But it felt like it flew by, so after I finished I looked up the word count because what are pages? Pages are meaningless. I only function in word counts anymore.
The estimate I found was 58,580. My immediate reaction was āoh, thatās why. Thatās nothing!ā But what a shitty response. Because no. Thatās not nothing. Thatās a whole. Damn. Book. An entire novel! And Fic authors regularly bust out 30k, 50k, 100k, 150k words. AND THEY DO IT FOR FREE. WHILE WORKING AND LIVING THEIR LIVES.
So anyway, thank your favorite fic author today because they deserve it. Because theyāre amazing. Theyāre the MVPs.
Some rough word count equivalencies for you, via famous novels, just to give you an idea of what OP is saying:
30k fic = Animal Farm by George Orwell
50k fic = The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
75k fic = Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
100k fic = To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
150k fic = The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien
200k fic = Moby Dick by Herman Melville
250k fic = Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling
300k fic = A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin
350k fic = Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
400k fic = Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
I WROTE SOMETHING AS LONG AS MOBY DICK AND I DIDNāT EVEN KNOW
I canāt believe Iāve surpassed Animal Farm.
Holy shit.
This is awesome. With that said, huge appreciation also to fic writers who write shorter fics - 10k, 5k, 1k, 500 words. Because yeah, huge long fics get a lot of love, and a lot of labour goes into them, but the same is true for tiny fics as well. Not everyone is banging out huge great novels, but little ficlets are fantastic and still bring readers a ton of joy.
So if youāre feeling a bit downcast because you canāt write that 50 chapter epic or your latest WIP is āonlyā 2k and it still took you ages - thatās amazing. Seriously. Not everyone is naturally wordy or prolific. And you can say a ton with just a few hundred or thousand words.
Props to short fic creators - you guys are awesome.

























