Slogging away at the novel.

[matt_doyle]

I am, I think, finally committed to The Hellion Prince as my next project; I have 27,000+ words written, in nonlinear, fragmentary scenes (I estimate at least 10k of these words will be cut eventually, but still).

This is a much bigger book than I thought it was.

Running In Her Veins, when all was said and done, tallied up at 91,723 words. That's not a very long novel, maybe 300 pages at most. I knew Hellion Prince would be longer - maybe half as long again, I estimated, a nice respectable 400-pager.

Even if I assume those 10k words of fluff are going to be cut... I'm not even ten percent done with the damned thing. Even if I were, 170,000 words is still Later Harry Potter Territory, and more than that... yikes.

Presuming I ever finish this, how the Hell will I sell it?

Comments

[kessie.livejournal.com]

Honestly, right now I would worry about getting the thing finished and then freak out about the size. By the time the draft is finished, you might have no need for certain subplots or whatever that you can cut or recycle in something else.

The first draft of TWFF originally spanned a month--this draft spans about a ten days to two weeks. There's a day or two I skipped because nothing needed to be mentioned, or it could be mentioned in a paragraph or two. The major reason for cutting so much time was that everything needed to be tightened and the consequences needed to be upped a lot.

Granted, I just figured out how to convey information to other characters that my main character and the reader already knows, so I am clearly no expert in these things.