Thank you all for all your constructive comments. Sorry I took long to come back with this acknowledgement. It's the time difference, you see. I write this from Europe and was asleep while you were all putting in your tuppenny worth.
There's always someone around, typing when we're asleep. I'm in the UK and wake up each morning to a nice long list of threads to catch up with. It's good.
I get the picture, thanks. What I thought was perfectly constructed work, built with precision over many years, is not so perfect and needs to be re-worked. I still haven't figured out how. And I certainly cannot go to a professional line editor because I simply can't afford it. I sacrificed much to finish this work ... yes, even income! To be honest, I had a different view of the length. I did all my market research but never really questioned the length. That was a grave error and I am now facing the consequences.
Once again, thank you all for your interest.
I don't think you need an editor right now. I think you need to look at your nearly-600k novel and consider what you can do to make it less long.
In my experience there are different reasons why books get far too long. The usual one is that the writer doesn't really know what they're doing with the story, and their characters lurch from one adventure to the next and the next, with no coherent plot or ending. There's not much to be done with books like this, I'm afraid. Or the writer puts in far too many words and descriptions and all sorts of exposition, and when that's cut there's a more reasonable book left.
However, there are two other sorts of overlong books which can be shaped into a number of new books, instead of just one big one. The first is the book which is actually several stories, consecutively told. This is relatively easy to chop into parts. The second is the book which is also several stories but this time they're told concurrently. It's a lot more work to unravel the different books in this case but it can be done and when it is done, you end up with fabulous parallel books which are very fun to read. Take some time to consider what you have.
What's SYW? I'm new to this forum so I really don't understand the abbreviations.
Share Your Work.
