Recently I learned through several author blogs that B&N and Borders have been pushing publishers toward shorter novels (80K-90K). In some cases the distributors have insisted that publishers split novels into two, rather than publish one big fat fantasy work of 160K or so.
Naturally, out of idle curiosity (and about 4/5ths of the way through a final polishing), I did a full character count--with spaces--on my thirty-one chapters. Divide by six. I get 177.6K total. Insert panic here.
The other alternative, apparently, is to split the novel into two. I'm afraid mine might not manage that without some significant reworking, because the story's halfway point isn't currently written to wrap up enough threads to provide a solid resolution, and the second half doesn't include a chapter or so to re-introduce readers to the ongoing conflict. Crap! Like one of the authors pointed out, a two-parter for the first book published seems like career suicide. If it were published as hardback, that's $25 from readers for an unknown author with a story that doesn't even wrap up by the end of the novel. Smaaaaaart.
So the first question is: what are the chances that my estimate on word count is way overboard by being too accurate (compared to the usual count characters in line, multiply, multiply, count pages, multiply, etc)?
And the second question is: 120K? 130K? What's a safe area?
Yes, I'm aware that if the story's demanded all these details, they should be in there. And in some ways, there are additional details of tensions because these characters will show up again in other stories, so such were retained for consistency. But it can't be all bad to say, okay, must weed out roughly thirty thousand words--tightening can be a good thing, done judiciously.
However, right now I'm looking at needing to cut roughly 57.6K to get the story down to 120K, and I'm wondering whether that's too much--or too little. At least a ballpark would be a good thing.
(I didn't plan to write 177K...)
Naturally, out of idle curiosity (and about 4/5ths of the way through a final polishing), I did a full character count--with spaces--on my thirty-one chapters. Divide by six. I get 177.6K total. Insert panic here.
The other alternative, apparently, is to split the novel into two. I'm afraid mine might not manage that without some significant reworking, because the story's halfway point isn't currently written to wrap up enough threads to provide a solid resolution, and the second half doesn't include a chapter or so to re-introduce readers to the ongoing conflict. Crap! Like one of the authors pointed out, a two-parter for the first book published seems like career suicide. If it were published as hardback, that's $25 from readers for an unknown author with a story that doesn't even wrap up by the end of the novel. Smaaaaaart.
So the first question is: what are the chances that my estimate on word count is way overboard by being too accurate (compared to the usual count characters in line, multiply, multiply, count pages, multiply, etc)?
And the second question is: 120K? 130K? What's a safe area?
Yes, I'm aware that if the story's demanded all these details, they should be in there. And in some ways, there are additional details of tensions because these characters will show up again in other stories, so such were retained for consistency. But it can't be all bad to say, okay, must weed out roughly thirty thousand words--tightening can be a good thing, done judiciously.
However, right now I'm looking at needing to cut roughly 57.6K to get the story down to 120K, and I'm wondering whether that's too much--or too little. At least a ballpark would be a good thing.
(I didn't plan to write 177K...)
