When One (Book) Becomes Two

So I’ve spent the last couple of years beta-ing and re-writing courtesy of a whole raft of lovely generous people. And, my god, is the manuscript better for it.

Or rather, manuscripts…

Oops.

Yeah, that happened.

See, the thing is, I’d been fighting with the structure and pacing for a long time. And, although I felt I was making great progress with editing the words I did have, those pesky [missing link: write more here] sections weren’t getting sorted nearly as quickly as I would have liked. Nothing felt quite right.

It wasn’t until I hit 100k words that I realized, the problem was staring me in the face. It was so damn unwieldy because the bloody thing is actually two books.

Facepalm.

I started off with a single book, three parts. Somewhere along the line, that got split into five parts. That’s fine, I told myself. Fantasy, historical and historical fantasy (that’s a thing right?) all have larger word counts. No biggie. It’s not unusual.

Except the first three parts comprised approx 72k of my word count alone, whilst parts four and five were only at the skeletal stage. Then there was the ongoing fight with drafting queries, hooks and twitter pitches. I just couldn’t seem to nail down the arcs in the word count required. My storygrid was a mess.

Until I split it into two books, that is. As soon as I did that, all of a sudden 140 twitter pitch was able to encapsulate exactly what I needed it to, one pitch for Book One, one pitch Book Two. It was so damn obvious.

But here’s the lesson. It would have taken me a lot longer to figure out, if it wasn’t for guidance of my great critique group who kept pointing out the pacing was off. As a result, I’ve also changed where the end of part three falls which definitely gives a big emotional gut-punch to the finish, and hopefully leaves the reader wanting Book Two. Again, I’d read it so many times, it never would have occurred to structure another way. Thank you, hivemind.

Plus, I feel way less guilty about how long it’s taken me to get to this point. I mean, it’s still a long time, but hey, two books. Two books.

If I get Book One properly polished, I can query it whilst faffing over Book Two, which is a lot more productive than trying to get one overwhelming doorstop of a book finished… and still being here another ten years later.

My word count for Book One is currently hovering around the 78k mark. Once finished, I’m expecting it to clock in at around 80-85k, which is pretty healthy. In the meantime, Book Two is at 23k and growing.