by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I have a number of reasons for splitting the novel I’ve been working on into two stories. The now two different stories can be written faster. The two of them now are a lot more coherent. And, what’s more, each story will be about ~100,000 words if things work out the way I hope.
I hope my heroine is as interesting and compelling as Lisbeth Salander.
But there are risks.
One is, who wants to read a novel that is, for the most part, a story about a woman struggling to own a newspaper? So, in a sense, my first novel would be if The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was about a power struggle over the Millennium magazine, rather than solving a decade’s old murder.
But I do think that because the story will be really interesting, character driven — and does have a murder in the third act — that it could be interesting enough to be successfully queried. And, what’s more, because of how I’m splitting the novel, I have the original murder mystery story that I can write out pretty quickly.
So, rather than one novel done this year, I could have two.
And, given that I want to write a third novel, a scifi western, I could soon have three novels to pitch in some capacity within the next year.
That, at least, is the plan.
