Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Extended length or expanded story?

Just like that, my 58K word novel is 68K words and I feel like I've barely started. Blood of the Succubus.

Linda says it's good, it's great; the best thing I've done since Led to the Slaughter, which was her favorite. 

It certainly is coming easy.  Too easy.  I'm pretty sure an asteroid is going to land on my head, because it is so easy and the universe demands balance.

Went for a walk in the Badlands yesterday. Thought it was going to be cool weather, but halfway through the walk, I realized I'd made a big mistake wearing a black shirt. It was about 80 but felt hotter.

Anyway, made my usual circuit, wrote half a chapter, and came back home.

The whole book with expansions is mapped out.  I just need to sit down each day and write at least one chapter and I'll be done in no time.

What's cool about it is that it doesn't contradict or disrupt the existing story in any way. Hopefully it only enhances it.  The only difficulty so far is trying to decide where the chapters fit best.  I'm making my best guess, but I'll need to read it through when I'm finished to see if it works.

I had a comment that Led to the Slaughter wasn't "long" enough for a mass market book. So I decided to push Blood of the Succubus into 80K words. The bonus is that I think it is improving the book, giving it extra layers of depth.

But last night I looked up Led to the Slaughter and it was 78K words, which I would have thought long enough for mass market.  I think the format -- a larger tradepaperback -- and the font -- Garamond -- made it seem smaller than it was...

Anyway, Blood of the Succubus will be the size it is -- probably around 85K words, I'm guessing now.  I might be able to push that to 90K words by further fleshing out.

Doesn't matter, I suppose. The book has been improved by expanding. Enough so that I'm determined to take the extra time to do that to all my books. But not so much because of the extended length but because of the expanded story.

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