It’s that time again…

…when I start to look at the length of my series and ask whether I should divide the books into smaller sections. My books tend to be around 100K words in length. For comparison, Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was shy of 70K while the last book in the series was over 200K. 100K is fairly standard length for a genre novel. Of course, that is an arbitrary standard. But I find it to be a helpful one.

When I wrote my first series, I had no idea how long the books “should” be. This is one of the downsides of working on your own. So, those books ranged from 150K to 200K in length. After finishing that series, I deliberately wrote a half dozen short stories. I needed to force myself to make a complete story within a shorter framework. I enjoyed that process and it definitely did help me focus my narratives. My standalone books – which came after the short stories – are all less than 100K. L.A.ser boy is just over that length. So far, the rough drafts for Book 2 and Book 3 in the series are right at 100K, also. Being that I am mimicking comic book storyline structure (as much as I can without a visual element), the material lends itself to be told in smaller sections or, as I call them, chunks. Sometimes those chunks revolve around one character. Sometimes they are the intersection of several smaller storylines into one “big moment” in the narrative (i.e. a climatic fight scene or a secret being revealed).

It would speed up my publishing pace if I wrote a section then put it up for sale then wrote the next section then put it up then… I’m reminded of the old Faberge Shampoo commercial with the tagline “and so on, and so on, and so on.” Those of you old enough know what I’m talking about.

One of the distinct features of comic books is that they are published monthly in a manner much like I just described. The material is highly constrained by regular deadlines. Maybe I should mimic that element of superhero stories as well as the character types and other tropes? I don’t have an answer right now. I’ll have to puzzle this one out.

Happy Memorial Day!