: How many different words are in the average novel? I realize there's going to be a bit of variation here from one author to the next and depending on length of the novel, but the range shouldn't

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I pieced the below data together from a number different websites. Basically putting the text versions of the three titles shown, individually into a site that can quickly filter out the unique words. I then used the data to feed into a homemade random word generator to be used it typing practice.

It is more challenging to get newer titles, but this gives a cross section of what you could come across.

Hope this helps.

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

Word Count: 54,050
Unique Words: 6,418

The Outsiders, by S.E Hinton

Word Count: 49,444
Unique words: 3,898

Catcher in the Rye, by J.D Salinger

Word Count: 74,193
Unique words: 4,206

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Last year, I looked up average word counts for Historical Fiction (which is what I write), but I ended up taking notes for several other genres (though not all) out of curiosity. Here they are:

adult novels in general: 80,000-100,000
(this includes literary, crime, romance, ...)
sci-fi and fantasy: 90,000-115,000
(though the limit 120,000 is often mentioned too)
historical: 90,000-110,000
(though the limit 120,000 is often mentioned too)
mystery: 70,000-90,000
(though Agatha Christie's average was 40,000-60,000)
romance: 50,000-100,000
(so, from really short to general adult novel length)
YA: 55,000-80,000
(though 55,000-70,000 is often mentioned too)

At the time, I saw tens of pages until I came up with these averages, since some websites had conflicting numbers for some genres, but here are some of the first links to pop up after a similar google search:

link 1
link 2
link 3
link 4

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While I can't answer the "big" question of an average, I can answer the smaller question of whether anyone's heard/seen anything on the subject before. If anyone has answered a question like this I would assume it would be Franco Moretti or someone doing similar computational research into the statistical profiles of large literary corpora.

Wired did an article on Moretti's research a few years ago. He floats a concept of "distant reading" wherein we cover a lot of ground traditional criticism can't meaningfully cover through statistical methods. I haven't read him widely, so it's possible he's covered this somewhere. I've emailed him before and he was responsive to my questions, though I note from his faculty page that he's on leave this year which may have some effect (as might any pending publications he has on the topic). He also has related books, like Graphs, Maps, Trees & Distant Reading.

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This is almost impossible to answer with any degree of accuracy as it depends on so many variables. However, as a very rough and general guide the average novel length is about 80-100,000 words of which about 5-10,000 words would be unique and differentiated.

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You know that you have an important question when your topic already has a recognised acronym NDW.

However it is typically used in the medical field rather creative writing. It appears to have arisen from the rehabilitation of patients with brain injury such as stroke.

The University of Albert Department of Linguistics has a fairly extensive discussion on using NDW as one measure (among many) in interpreting the complexity of texts.

And the short answer to your good question: IT DEPENDS on a huge range of factors. Any "average" value is likely to be meaningful only for the sample from which it was calculated. You could calculate an NDW for Stephen King novels but that would have little value in making predictions about the work of Umberto Eco.

A concordance of the Bible gives an interesting way to examine some of the issues. (Although this is KJV. I would be interersted to see the differences in GNT.)

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