[Article originally published in Italian. English translation made by -Orion-, with the additional revision of JoSeBach.]
In the publishing trade the unit of measurement is the word count.
Depending on the texts length, following the Jodie Renner's Guideline, they are divided into the following categories:
- Micro-fiction: up to 100 wordsshort short: from 100 to 1,000 words
- Short stories: from 1,000 to 7,500 words;
- Novelettes: from 7,500 to 20,000 words;
- Novellas: from 20,000 to 50,000 words;
- Novels: from 50,000 to 110,000 words;
- Super Novels: over 110,000 words
Most publishing houses will hardly accept stories over 110,000 words (they would publishing the story as long as the word-count is below 100,000). If it's also a trilogy... wait until you've published at least 5-10 successful books first.
A lot of authors, especially those writing fantasy stories, have this problem.
You might start with a lot of ideas and more keep coming, one after the other, then you make some edits and add some characters, etc. And you end up biting more than one can chew.
What could you do, at this point?
Here are some suggestions:
1. blend more characters in one: if two characters have two minor and not so different roles, blend them;
2. remove something: exactly, you'll have to cut ideas and characters out, if they don't affect the plot, at least if they don't carry the story in the direction you want;
3. change the meaning of the story: this is the most difficult step, and it requires the realization that your story wasn't going well. It's not pleasant, but that means you've grown as writers.
Write for your own pleasure, but at least recognize you may have to do a lot of changes; for example, according to a lot of people, George Martin doesn't know where he's going with his story, since it's been 10 years since he's started writing his next book, and yet there's no news.
How did this problem come out? In the first place, as time passes, he must have lost inspiration, in second place he introduced so many characters that he can't give a major role to them all.
However likely is for a character to have brothers, parents and cousins, if them don't have a central role in the story, one or two of them are fairly enough. Characters have to be functional to the story!
If you focus too much on details, you'll risk losing the main goal.
You have to revise the writing style and add two short narrative arcs? You can revise the writing little by little, but work on one arc at a time. Otherwise, you'll just work both sides of the street and your perfectionism will make you forget that the real reason of writing is personal delight.
Fanwriter91
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