Word Counts

So, today I managed to write 10,000 words, and I’ve decided that’s worthy of some sort of celebration.  I might post more background fluff for what I’m writing, then maybe dig up Poser and create more models for some of the characters.  I did one of Jen a while back, but the colors and the lighting were not very good, or the description of her character which has obviously evolved a bit as I’ve actually written her.

But on the subject of words and word counts, I was curious so looked up the word counts of several novels.  Fortunately it turned out there were a few sites that had lists of such.  So here are some:

Harry Potter Books
Philosopher’s Stone – 77,325
Chamber of Secrets – 84,799
Prisoner of Azkaban – 106,821
Goblet of Fire – 190,858
Order of the Phoenix – 257,154
Half Blood Prince – 169,441
Deathly Hallows – 198,227

No real surprise there.  Just looking at them on the shelves you can see them get progressively thicker.  A few others:

30,644 – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

47,094 – The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

49,459 – Slaughterhouse-Five  – Kurt Vonnegut

Myself, I’m aiming to have at least fifty thousand words to my story, which I think I will get to quite easily.  I’m only up to the first – well technically second – murder.

The wordiest novels on the list are:

561,996 – Atlas Shrugged  – Ayn Rand
587,287 – War and Peace  – Leo Tolstoy
591,554 – A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

The Lord of The Rings measures in at 455,125 (I’m guessing that’s the entire trilogy, since there are seperate word counts listed for a couple of the books).

Not listed on the site, but the King James Bible has a word count of about 788,280.  The author even left it open for a possible sequel (but beware of anything unofficial).

And the main source for all this is here.

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