by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The sweetspot for a novel written by a first-time author is somewhere around the 80,000 to 100,000 word marker. It’s my impression that any more than that the cost of physically publishing the novel’s paper grows significantly. I have finally gotten my outline where I want it to be, but surprise, I currently have way too many scenes if you figure the average scene is about 1,000 words.
So, I have to make a decision. Keep the existing structure of the novel or slash and burn the scene count to cut things down to a more marketable size. Here’s the problem — while I have a starting point later on in the story, I just feel as though the only way to engage readers is with a longer story.
If I start the story at the later point I’m thinking about, then I just don’t feel audiences will really care as much. Yes, I get to the point of the story a lot sooner, but my concern is the story just won’t be as engaging. The characters won’t be as fleshed out and, as such, the overall story won’t be as readable.
Another thing is — the specifics of the novel, even in second draft, is very much in flux. What’s more, scenes aren’t always 1,000 words. The first draft of this novel was 120,000 words. My few alpha readers have found the story “intriguing” by not so much that they’re all that eager to read the whole thing. So, the thinking is if I really flesh out the characters and make readers care about them that they might actually want to finish the whole story.
