Lorna
Inkling
Hi,
I'm Lorna, I'm from Preston, Lancashire, which is in the north west of the UK. I've been reading and writing since primary school. I achieved an MA in philosophy in 2005 and since then have been developing ideas for what was at first going to be one fantasy novel, and following several years of drafting has become eight, (and possibly twenty four)... The first four I've written in draft form, they form a quartet with a definite ending. Over the past few months I have been working on the first part of the first book. I've been writing in Word in 12pt Times New Roman and assumed that the part was about 200 pages, which would mean I'd be aiming at 200 words for each of 3 parts and a book of 600 pages. Then when I started looking at sites on the lengths of novels that publishers require I realised it was by the word count. And my first part is actually 120000 words- the length of a novel. When I counted lines across and down in an average book I realised to imitate that lay-out I needed to use 16tpt text and that the first part is 320 pages. So I've come here searching for advice on whether it would be better to edit it down to about 70,000 words / 200 pages per part or to try to publish the first three parts as a trilogy. I guess my worry would be that if I did the latter the parts would not be strong enough to stand on their own, as for example the ending to part one does not provide a resolution to the core story. On the other hand to cut it down by a third would miss out alot of character development and explication of the world. Yet if I were to do this for each of the first quartet that would make 12 books, followed by another 12. I'm not sure if the readers would stick with the same characters for this long. I'd love to know if anyone else has had similar difficulties and can offer any advice!
I'm Lorna, I'm from Preston, Lancashire, which is in the north west of the UK. I've been reading and writing since primary school. I achieved an MA in philosophy in 2005 and since then have been developing ideas for what was at first going to be one fantasy novel, and following several years of drafting has become eight, (and possibly twenty four)... The first four I've written in draft form, they form a quartet with a definite ending. Over the past few months I have been working on the first part of the first book. I've been writing in Word in 12pt Times New Roman and assumed that the part was about 200 pages, which would mean I'd be aiming at 200 words for each of 3 parts and a book of 600 pages. Then when I started looking at sites on the lengths of novels that publishers require I realised it was by the word count. And my first part is actually 120000 words- the length of a novel. When I counted lines across and down in an average book I realised to imitate that lay-out I needed to use 16tpt text and that the first part is 320 pages. So I've come here searching for advice on whether it would be better to edit it down to about 70,000 words / 200 pages per part or to try to publish the first three parts as a trilogy. I guess my worry would be that if I did the latter the parts would not be strong enough to stand on their own, as for example the ending to part one does not provide a resolution to the core story. On the other hand to cut it down by a third would miss out alot of character development and explication of the world. Yet if I were to do this for each of the first quartet that would make 12 books, followed by another 12. I'm not sure if the readers would stick with the same characters for this long. I'd love to know if anyone else has had similar difficulties and can offer any advice!
Auror
Troubadour
