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Jamesaritchie

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Much as summontherats says, market, meaning MG YA, or adult, is not determined by the age of the protagonist, but by theme, by how graphic the novel is, by use of language, and by story.

Many novels for adults have very young protagonists. I can't remember title, but I remember reading one with a protagonist who was only seven. and it was very much a novel for adults.

Anyway, when you start thinking about dividing a story into two books, or three books, you;re probably in serious trouble. This approach almost never works unless the story was written from the start with two or three books in mind. The structure is just not the same. If yu read trilogies, you find a distinct story in each book, even when it takes all three books to complete the overall story. Breaking a single story that has the structure of a single story into two or three books means readers feel like they're paying three times as much as they should to read your novel. And if it's broken into three books, the middle book isn't going to be structured well at all.

Books aren't broken just for length, but because the story is designed for being told as two or three books.

Your best bet is to cut the book to acceptable length, and I guarantee much of your story can be cut without harming a thing, and probably by improving much. If not, you're a very unusual writer.

Barring this, tight it as best you can, and try to sell it as is. If it's good enough, and I mean spectacular, this will work.

What almost certainly won't work is telling an agent or editor that it needs to be published in more than one volume because it's too long for one volume.
 

J.S.Fairey

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I'm as concise as I can possibly be and though I haven't finished my novel yet, it's at 104,000 words and I expect it to run to 150,000 (at the least.) It's more of a middle-grade / young adult fantasy novel.

I'm going to put it out there and so no, no you haven't been as concise as you possibly will be. If you're writing YA, then 150K is extremely long; if it's MG, I'm fairly sure it's unsellable. Which means, in the long run, that your book doesn't HAVE to be that length. It really really doesn't.

I haven't read your writing, so I can't comment on it, but at that length there's possibly extraneous stuff you can cut. And even if your writing is 100% clean and efficient, it means your plot's too complex for your genre. YA and especially MG don't need to be on the same scope as ASOIAF or LOTR, and are generally more intimate and one character focussed (generally: there are exceptions). Take a long hard look at your plot; do you need that sub mission? Could you combine these characters? Don't think whether you LIKE that point; consider whether it's NECESSARY.

However, if you're self pubbing you can do what you want (though reviews will suffer if the book's too long). If you're traditionally pubbing, you're gonna have to stick to the laws put down by the people of power, until you're a big enough name to mould them to suit yourself :)
 

Thomas Vail

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Your best bet is to cut the book to acceptable length, and I guarantee much of your story can be cut without harming a thing, and probably by improving much. If not, you're a very unusual writer.
This is why I asked if you'd gotten any feedback from readers, or worked with an editor on your book. Especially at that length, there are surely entire arcs that can be pulled out without harming the story, but as the writer you're too close in too see them as clearly as someone not so intimately involved may be.
 

Quentin Nokov

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Anyway, when you start thinking about dividing a story into two books, or three books, you;re probably in serious trouble. This approach almost never works unless the story was written from the start with two or three books in mind. The structure is just not the same. If yu read trilogies, you find a distinct story in each book, even when it takes all three books to complete the overall story. Breaking a single story that has the structure of a single story into two or three books means readers feel like they're paying three times as much as they should to read your novel. And if it's broken into three books, the middle book isn't going to be structured well at all.

Books aren't broken just for length, but because the story is designed for being told as two or three books.

Originally when writing the story I had in mind that it would be four books. Each book would end with a completed goal. MC defeats Satan minion 1, Satan minion 2, and then eventually the "Satan", himself in the last book. The books can't stand alone in the sense that MC hasn't killed "Satan" yet and there's still more to do. Things are completed, but there are still loose strings.

My thought was instead of making book 1, 2 ,3, 4, make 1 book or combine books 1 and 2 and combine books 3 and 4.

I'll go through the story and see if there's anything I can remove. It's just so complex. For example, besides the planet the MC is on, there's a spirit world helping her toward her goals. In fact, the Satan villain breaches the spirit world and so there's not just fights between the living but fights between the spirits, as well.

The others are right, it most definitely falls into the SFF genre.

I'll have to reread what I have so far and see if there's another way to get around it without certain elements that I have right now. I will ponder it.


By the way: Thanks to everyone who has replied. Even if I don't want to cut things out for the sake of word count I will. I read something about how, yes there's exceptions to rules, but writer's should always follow the rules and not assume they'll be the exception.

Once I'm finished I'll also have a better idea of what to do. Perhaps I should cut out a few more characters. :p
 

Quentin Nokov

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This is why I asked if you'd gotten any feedback from readers, or worked with an editor on your book. Especially at that length, there are surely entire arcs that can be pulled out without harming the story, but as the writer you're too close in too see them as clearly as someone not so intimately involved may be.


I haven't gotten much feed back, except from family which everyone knows doesn't hold much merit. I'm going to look at possible arcs being removed. I've already removed 3 or 4. There is one that's in my mind right now. That might subtract 10k, but I'll be rereading my work and seeing what I could slice.
 

RN Hill

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I'm going to make one small, humble suggestion:

FINISH THE BLOODY BOOK BEFORE YOU WORRY ABOUT IF IT'S TOO LONG OR NOT.

You're already cutting and rearranging, and it's not done yet. IMO, not a good way to go about it. Finish it. Let it sit. Work on something else. You are too close to it right now, and even after you put "the end" on that last page, you will be too close to it. Walk away for 2-6 months and do something else. Then, you can come back to it and probably you will see a thousand things to cut and a way to either get it down to the 100K mark, or divide it into two books easily.
 

BethS

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Yeah, it's very much the positive weighting thing (you will give more credance to the 1 report you want to believe than the 10 you don't).....But when I was writing I searched this meticulously - for obvious reasons - and despite my shelves at home being almost exclusively full of thick SFF books, the general professional response was "over 130K is an auto-reject"*....I was just suprised to actually find something from an actual agent (rather than a writer or fan)...

I've had dealings with two sff agents who were/are open to longer manuscripts. And there are others I know of, though I never approached them.
 
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