Should I turn my enormous novel into a series?
I am currently writing a novel and am 25,000 words into it, but only about 10% of the way in total.
My intention was to write a single novel, but as I write, it has clearly evolved into what I can only imagine will be a monster (at least 200,000-250,000 words, which is somewhere around 800-1,000(!) pages) of a book. As I didn't want to release a tome so early in my career as a writer, it naturally led me to consider the option of releasing the story as a series (perhaps a trilogy, without meaning to sound clichéd).
However, this will obviously come with its own problems, such as having to think about how to split one large story into three smaller stories which carry on from one another without wanting the readers of the first two stories to feel as if each respective installment has been ended abruptly in an attempt by me as an author to squeeze more money out of them.
I have been told by a number of published authors that my story is, and I quote, "really very good indeed" and each had expressed surprise. One author said, "Actually, this is very good stuff!" Therefore, I don't want to ruin that effect by releasing it in multiple volumes, but I also don't want to deter (or even bore) my readers with a single, enormous book.
Naturally, one the first draft is finished, I will redraft and will chop and change a lot of it, but the finished article will still be immense (hence my earlier estimate of 200,000-250,000 words), but this still leaves me with a 200,000 word book in the best case.
Any advice and/or examples of similar cases that you know of would be a wonderful help.
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1 answer
- This sounds closest to The Lord of the Rings, which is one enormous story split into three physical volumes. Each volume contains two parts which Tolkien labelled books, but Tolkien himself thought of it as one work, not three (or six).
- GRRMartin's fourth book of A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones) got so unwieldy that he split it into two, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. He chose to separate it by character and geography rather than time, which is unusual, but since he has about eleventy billion POV characters, he can get away with it.
- David Eddings's first series, the Belgariad, was originally three books, but his publisher talked him into splitting it into five. I think the Malloreon (the sequel series) was planned as five, but then he and his wife released two more series with three books each.
So yes, it can certainly be done. I would only suggest that you try to divide your books at reasonable "act breaks" and not just end abruptly mid-scene (which is what happened to Eddings when he changed the Belgariad from three books to five).
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