I’ve been working for several years on a novel, and in a lot of ways it’s been fun. I have some very interconnected themes, some plot twists that tread the line between being surprising, and meaningful, and a fair few characters that develop through a lengthy confrontation.

I’ve started to consult an editor about tuning it into something publishable. Due to the way I was writing it, I only recently got the tools to calculate a total word count, and we realized that in the end, it’s far longer than I wanted it to be; on the order of 370,000 words.

Apparently people like George R. R. Martin can sometimes get away with this length, but I understand this is way out of line for a first time author. I’ve been looking at ways of trimming this down, and admittedly, there’s a few chapters with low hanging fruit I can get rid of; but I think I’m in need of a lot more than that. My editor was suggesting getting rid of entire main characters that don’t have as much development as others.

But at a lot of turns, it feels like trimming out X causes 5 other problems (plot points lost, throwbacks disconnected) that might threaten to either make the book soulless, not make sense, or even fail to reduce word count when I tie things together.

The option of simply splitting it into 2+ books has been there, but…it doesn’t seem practical. There’s a very clear villain, with a steady buildup to their dethroning, that would feel unsatisfying pushed off to another story.

If I assume publishers, or even just readers, would show only mild interest in a 300k word book, it makes me feel a bit stuck. I’ve already committed a lot of time to the story, and it feels grueling to go back and redo large parts of it; while also aiming to make it shorter.

Curious if anyone has thoughts on what they’d do in this situation.

  •  Saixos   ( @Saixos@beehaw.org ) 
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    11 year ago

    I enjoy reading stories on RoyalRoad, and in general people who read web novels have a far greater patience for long stories than standard publishers would - The Wandering Inn has over 12 million words, and it’s not over yet. Mother of Learning, the top rated novel, has a word count of around 800,000.

    That said, trying to trim down your book has a good chance of improving the story as a whole. One of the reasons why Mother of Learning is so highly rated is because every single detail that is mentioned always leads somewhere, and it all gets brought together nicely at the end. If you wanted to trim it down, I think that trying that approach would likely work better and probably improve the novel.

    I think what you do depends on what kind of future you’re imagining for yourself as an author.