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Q&A Submitting a partially complete draft?

I'm 50,000 words into my first book. Based on my plot and roadmap, that's about 25% of the way into it, so about 200k. I have roughly 110 pages in a good place, as I've already re-drafted three or...

1 answer  ·  posted 8y ago by kmunky‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:08:00Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/21354
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar kmunky‭ · 2019-12-08T05:08:00Z (almost 5 years ago)
I'm 50,000 words into my first book. Based on my plot and roadmap, that's about 25% of the way into it, so about 200k.

I have roughly 110 pages in a good place, as I've already re-drafted three or four times, polishing it up to get it ready for submission. This part is ready, but obviously the remaining 3/4 of the book isn't even drafted yet.

The question is: do I need to have a first draft completed to the ending in order to start talking to or submitting to publishers or agents? Is the first five chapters enough?

* * *

_(Aside: I've done my research and I recognize that 200k is very long for a debut novel. But it's not unheard of, so I'm writing it first and I'll worry about word count later.)_

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2016-03-16T20:27:44Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 10