They Say Size Doesn’t Matter

As predicted, we were not ready to start our read through of the music novel last week. The good news is that we started it last night! The main thing that slowed us down was the need to write imaginary record reviews. The first step in that process was accomplished ages ago when Jen developed the band’s discography. Next came discussions about the band’s sound. Then we had to find the right voices (the reviews aren’t all by the same person, natch). It turns out that music reviews are a completely different style of writing than straight-up fiction, even when the music itself is fictional.

All this to say that the second draft we started reading last night is 187,251 words long (!!!).

Gulp.

They say size doesn’t matter, but this is a bit daunting. Conventional wisdom has it that it’s hard to sell any novel over 100,000 words. There’s allegedly some wiggle room in that number when it comes to science fiction and fantasy, due to the need for more extensive world-building. And that we have in spades.

During last night’s session we got about 50 pages in and removed about 10 words. At this rate we’ll have it whittled down to a mere 187,000 by the time we’re done!

As we read we’ll be looking at the pacing, and the tension level. If those 187,000 words are all good ones, and they propel the story the way they should, then there really isn’t a problem.

At one point Kent predicted/worried that we might hit 200,000, and we still might. It’s unlikely that we’ll need to add any new scenes, or beef up existing scenes to the tune of 13,000 words, but there is still one aspect of the novel that’s not quite finished. In our other books we have epigraphs, snippets at the beginning of each chapter that expand the story world. This novel will (probably) not have epigraphs. Instead it has other supporting documentation that currently accounts for 20,000 of our words. Now that the second draft is so much longer than the first draft, we will require more of this supplementary material, which we lovingly call the Wingnut Chorus. We won’t know how much until we get the story part of the novel edited and divided into chapters.

To get a feel for the flow and pacing, we need to read quickly, like a real reader will. We hope to be done within a week. And then the next round of edits can begin. Luckily we have each other’s shoulders to cry on.