So when it comes to my latest novel, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ve reached my 90,000-word goal. The bad news is I’m only barely past the halfway point.
I’m always worried about having enough material to make a full-length novel. That’s my biggest fear as a writer. Naga Story turned out to be 90,000 on the dot. Fairy War was about 50,000 which was perfect for the target audience.
I have a bad habit of writing short but the market wants long. So when I plan a novel, I try to add in more scenes than would be strictly necessary. They like Stephen King doorstoppers because that’s what makes the buyer feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. Doesn’t matter if the book would be served better by editing.
So to my surprise, this novel’s turning out to be long. There’s definitely chaff to cut. The problem is I don’t know what should be cut. I’ve got some plotlines that, upon writing them out, now seem a bit thin. But they all seem equal in terms of cuttability. Do I remove plotline A because it’s B-story romance? Or, now that I think about it, Plotline B doesn’t seem all that necessary to the story, although it does serve the theme. Or maybe trim down that one long scene that has no callbacks anywhere? Or maybe everything is equally important and this is just a 120,000-word novel?
I won’t know any of these answers until I start on the second draft. And maybe not even then. I figure I’m going to need a reader to tell me what mattered and what didn’t.
