Been working on a dark / low fantasy for four years and five months. Currently at 95874 words (339 pages), and I would say that I'll end up in 900-1000 pages, so like 280-290k words....this is way too much. I want to try and publish, and seeing as I don't have a name in the industry (not published), it will be an uphill battle even with a perfectly lengthy novel...which is around 100-120k for fantasy right? So yeah, this novel is pretty much my baby, I mean I work on it every day (had a few breaks to clear my mind), and with all that effort I've put in, and my general liking of the stories I have created, I refuse to abandon it. Yet I will obviously want to throw it out of the nest, so to say, with best chances of flying. I thought about cutting it in two, but I can't find a logical cutting point. Every PoV character is tailored perfectly to this first novel, their chapters push up to the best possible climax ending. So what am I to do? The problem is not only publishing a book of 280-290k words...I actually want people to read it too, and as an avid reader myself, without knowing the book or author, there's no chance in hell I'd pick up a lumbering beast of a thousand pages. So I have some options...I think. I would like your advice on what to do, if anyone here have experienced similar. Or some reassurance because I'm currently freaking a bit out Option 1) Create a prequel (which seems heavy-handed and doesn't solve the problem of 1k pages) This would help getting a name, if that prequel got published. Therefore I may be able to stretch the length of main novel. So maybe a I could get it to 500-600 pages? Option 2) Major overhaul to cut book in half...or three. This option could go hand in hand with option 1. Option 3) Make it into two parts, yet it would still require a satisfactory ending for the first part. (which would result in overhaul to the mid (current) storyline) Option 4) Create a new plotline for book one, yet include some points of current plotline in order to trim length of following books too (could almost be counted as a prequel). Then push back the current story of book one into book two then book three and so on. (This would also require major overhaul.) Urhhh this one seems heavy handed too, and might unnecessarily make my series one or two books longer...(I don't know how many books before I reach the end by the way...I know where I'm going though) Option 5) Finish as is, find agent and pray that his edits and thoughts could trim down the size. (perhaps trimming down the fat in every chapter would result in a massive drop in word count? One can pray right?)
Well from what I have seen, most publishers prefer 80-100k and a few go up to 150k. You might skip going direct to publishers, and look for an agent. Or you could chop it in two parts. That is what I did when I hit around 123k, but then again I epubbed. Though you don't have to break it up if you don't want. Try finding an agent once you are a bit closer for it to be ready to be published. It is all up to you on how you see it and think it will work. As for myself when I split it up in to two parts, I left it on a pretty big cliff hanger on top of the fact that there will still events/plot/subplots that had yet to be resolved, so you kinda know the story will be continued. The second picks up like 10 minutes after where the first ended off, so as not to feel like the reader will miss out on anything between the first and the second. It is always good to cut the irrelevant stuff out, or shave it down. By the end of my first it was 127+k, and it got whittled down around 4k in the end to 123 and change.
I would look HARD at what you've written and see what you can cut. Post a few chapters for critique here and let people know you're looking to cut length, and keep an open mind. I honestly, honestly cannot imagine a story so complex that it absolutely must take almost 300K words to be told. I think you're probably including a lot of stuff that's nice, but not totally necessary.
The Mists of Avalon By Marion Zimmer Bradley, is 912pages, and it is the first book in a series. So they do exist even as parts of a series or standalone. Though Marion Zimmer Bradley is kinda famouse and known. But from a someone who we don't know, probably putting out a bit of a big chunk all at once.
I'm not sure what you're using Mists of Avalon to prove. Is it meant to be an example of a book that couldn't have anything cut? Trust me - I could cut quite a bit from that book. (all the parts I skimmed...)
My advice would be to finish the book first. If you think it's going to be three times longer that it is at the moment then don't worry about length at the moment. Chances are there will be lots cut once you start to edit/send to beta readers, the plot could take a different direction than what you initially intended altering the word count in the process, you may find that, once finished, you can see two perfectly good places where you can end one book and begin the next, thus creating a series of three. I really wouldn't worry too much about length at this stage.
@BayView that it is very long, and has a complex story. I wouldn't know as I have not read it, but I blame another author for ruining Fantasy for me.
Brandon Sanderson is an absolute favorite of mine. His baby was Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive) which was over 1,000 pages. The sequel is also 1,000+ pages. However, it wasn't the guy's first novel. He shelved it for a while so that he could work on other projects. When he'd built a name for himself, he went back to his editor and publisher and convinced them to do it. Maybe that's something that could work for you.
Here are some errors I made in my very first attempt at a novel, the first draft of which came in at more than 400K words: 1. Spoonfeeding the reader. Probably a habit from writing papers in grad school, where everything had to be documented up front. Better to leave room to the reader's imagination. 2. Too much description. Do we really need to know that the rain was slashing down at a rate of an inch-per-hour, that winds were blasting at hurricane strength, and that said winds had resulted in power outages in some places of the city (and which places they were) but not in others? Or can we just say it was a dark and stormy night? 3. Too much backstory. I suspect this may be a particular trap in fantasy, where there is a need to describe a very different world. But a lot of backstory is material that you, the writer, needs to know but the reader does not. 4. Unnecessary dialogue tags. Best to only use them when needed to keep track of who is speaking. Dialogue between just two people will need relatively few tags (see Hemingway, who wrote some stretches of dialogue that ran for two pages or more with nary a "said"). Also, combining dialogue and action in one paragraph can also eliminate tags as well as economizing on word count in general. 5. Is this subplot really necessary? Put another way, some subplots grow so large as to take on a life of their own. Maybe what you see as a subplot is really a separate story waiting to be written. After correcting all these errors, I was able to pare it down to 140K words, at which point I decided it had taught me everything it had to teach. Hope this helps. Best of luck.
400K words?! Holy moley! That's impressive.. I myself find me just doing the exact opposite and I would be lucky to barely break 55K after my first draft which I will have to bump up to 80-90K in my second and third draft. How did you got the patience to write 400 000 words down without going insane? Hats off for you, I have nothing but respect for that. How many words did you end up eventually having?
I'm not verbose. I'm tersely challenged. It actually stemmed from having a poor concept of what the story was actually supposed to be.
I know @BayView will take me to task again, as we just finished this discussion on another thread ! @Albirich, I agree with @Viridian. At this phase, don't lose that valuable momentum you have built up doing what is already an impressive piece of work. Don't stop now and start revising, or you may not ever finish it. Get it to the end. Then go back and see what you can cut out, or where a break point might suggest itself. But have the story intact before you dissect it. You are exactly where I was, with the same doubts when I began resurrecting my WIP after a 13 year hiatus. Already 100,000 words and I hadn't gotten my Romans to China yet. And when I finished, it was originally 260,000 words, I had to use a double wide 5" 3 ring binder to hold it all, and it was over a thousand pages. One of my friends is David Poyer, a contemporary US Naval Academy alumnus (he is '71, I am '70) and a well-published author with over 40 pieces of contemporary naval fiction to his credit, one of my favorites. And at this time, I had never written anything but technical stuff, never taken a creative writing class and couldn't tell POV from a character arc. He offered, at one of his book signings at the Academy, to take a look at my first chapter. So I went and got my five inch ring binder out. He did read the first few pages (a big favor, he explicitly does not review drafts of any sort) but shook his head and said "where are you going to break it up?" So in the course of editing for a year, I got rid of 20,000 words, got the length down to 800 pages with proper formatting. Some beta readers got very enthusiastic on this, including some here, my editor liked it, and didn't think it lent itself to breaking it up. So I decided to market it as is. I didn't spend a lot of time on agents, and for personal reasons, I chose to self publish. Interestingly it typeset at just 550 pages, 1 1/4" thick... big but not enormous. And it is selling quite well. So just finish it. You may find some of the stuff you introduced goes nowhere and just take it out on the first edit. You may find that you are over-descriptive and can cut back on that. But save that for when you are finished. Just write on! Sorry, @BayView!
I agree with @Lew . Keep writing. I also agree with @EdFromNY —you will probably find a massive amount of chaff that can be cut, during the edit stage—once you get the initial draft finished. My own novel's first draft came in at 312,000 words. Yoiks. However, many revisions later, it's now sitting at around 206,000 words. And that's more or less where it will stay. Like Lew, I plan to self publish, so this isn't a major matter. (It's still about 40,000 words less than Gone With The Wind!) What was a major matter was the amount of over-writing I did the first time. And, like Ed, I discovered things about my story that I thought were important at first, but turned out not to be. I also discovered a tendency to over-write and to re-state most everything for emphasis. That was easy cutting, once I realised what I was doing. I cut without mercy, and also wrote a couple of new scenes and one new chapter—so it wasn't just cutting. It was Revision. At no point was my goal to reach 90,000 words. Instead, I wanted my pace to be immersive, the story to be complex and the revelations to take their own sweet time. I filled in the time with incident, character development and interaction, so it didn't drag, and I created 'mini-conclusions' along the way. But I believe a story takes the time it takes, to tell it properly. I wrote the kind of story I would like to read. I cut everything that didn't work. And added in stuff to sharpen the focus in a particular direction. I wrote it, then I crafted it. I think Fantasy does have a place for ongoing serial stories, however, so if you can find a place to 'stop,' while still making it clear the story isn't over (like George RR Martin does with the Song of Ice and Fire, and Joe Abercrombie did with The First Law) I think you might get away with marketing three or four volumes via traditional publishing. Especially if all the pieces are completed. You might want to consider that sort of thing as you write. Can you organise the story into three or four distinct parts? Not stand-alone stories, but stories that a reader can take a short break from?
Don't apologize - it's a valid perspective. But it's premised on someone being willing to self-publish, with all the issues that come along with that approach. And the OP sounded like publishing (with a publisher) was a goal, so...
It's harder to get an agent than a publisher. You start with an agent because they can get the best deals, and if that doesn't work out you go to small publishers. Not the other way round. I also agree with this. Worrying about length when you're writing your first novel is fruitless, because you're going to make so many mistakes that will need rectifying, and most of that rectification will affect word count. In my experience it's easier to gauge final length in subsequent novels, but in the OP's position I'd just keep writing. And then get a lot of critique.
Absolutely. The universe of publishers accepting unagented submissions is quite small. Someone had also recommended university presses to me, but not all university presses publish fiction and those that do tend to limit themselves to fiction about their own regions.
Thanks for all the advice. I think I'll just wing it and not allow these thoughts and "issues" that can occur in the future stop me from writing the way I see the story right now. Once finished I will take forth the abhorred shears and cut my darlings :'))
