by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Things are going really well with this novel but for one thing — word count. I have a nice beginning that lends itself to a symmetrical ending. And, in general, I understand the story now to the point that things should move at quite a nice clip.
But I continue to worry about how enormous my first act is. And, yet, the story is a real page turner. There’s lot of sex and drama that would make people want to keep reading. It’s just on a structural basis, I’m alarmed at how big the first act is shaping up to be.
It’s going to be equal to the entire second act.
And, yet, that’s just scene count, not word count.
But there is an added complication — everything has changed so much in the first act that I have to re-imagine the rest of the novel to accommodate these changes. That is going to slow me down some.
Meanwhile, it is becoming more and more clear that I have to work on a backup novel in case this novel balloons to 160,000 words. That’s just too fucking long for a first novel by an unknown author. I keep thinking about splitting the novel in two if that is the case, but the thing is, I’m struggling to figure out the new structure of the first novel in the two part story if I do that.
So. I dunno.
My only hope at this point is either the novel isn’t nearly as long as I fear it will be or I can get over myself and spend some of my time working on a backup scifi novel to pitch. If that novel is good enough, then I can say, “Oh, by the way, I have another novel I’ve been working on…”
Of course, all of this is happening in the context of the looming Fourth Turning, Petite Singularity starting in late 2024, early 2025. UGH.
