Paid more is good! Is the job-first thing a matter of, if you have the job they will pay you to do the course?
Too short is... look, the "correct length", i.e. what American agents think is saleable (and there are so many more American agents than British ones), for an SF novel is between 80,000 words and 120,000 words. RD topped out at 134K, or 126K if I lopped off the last three chapters. Could have stood to do it for the first two of those, but I really wanted to keep the last. This is probably why I can't find an agent. It has those structural issues I mentioned (and which I would still love you to look at if you have the time) but they're not a problem in the first three chapters.
STAS, at the moment, is nearly 40K at what I reckon (from a purely psychological standpoint) is two thirds of the way through. This equates to 60K when finished, i.e. around 20K too short to qualify as an SF novel. Of course, there are so many stages to go, including finishing the dratted first draft, and I have two action sequences still to write (among much other stuff), including a minimum of one flaming row between Calad and Aoife, and both those things can get longer than anticipated. Also I've currently managed to complicate Connor's life to an outrageous degree and I may not have unravelled all the knots with what I think is going to be the solution - there's such a thing as too elegant an outcome. Still. 20K or so too short. And that's before editing, which slims a book, or should.
There are other factors - for instance I really don't know if I have included enough of the world: think I may be about to write a 500-word sideline that achieves nothing except an expansion of Logan's character and a smidgeon of worldbuilding - and like I said, complications have been added and can become more annoying if I need them to. Also the "thriller card" - thrillers can get away with being shorter than other flavours of books in the same sub-genre - it depends on so many factors, including the precise type of thriller. Idk. I think I need to get it to 80K completed, though, and I've no clue how I'm going to do that. It's as if I've suddenly developed "compact" and I don't know what to do with it. :/
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Too short is... look, the "correct length", i.e. what American agents think is saleable (and there are so many more American agents than British ones), for an SF novel is between 80,000 words and 120,000 words. RD topped out at 134K, or 126K if I lopped off the last three chapters. Could have stood to do it for the first two of those, but I really wanted to keep the last. This is probably why I can't find an agent. It has those structural issues I mentioned (and which I would still love you to look at if you have the time) but they're not a problem in the first three chapters.
STAS, at the moment, is nearly 40K at what I reckon (from a purely psychological standpoint) is two thirds of the way through. This equates to 60K when finished, i.e. around 20K too short to qualify as an SF novel. Of course, there are so many stages to go, including finishing the dratted first draft, and I have two action sequences still to write (among much other stuff), including a minimum of one flaming row between Calad and Aoife, and both those things can get longer than anticipated. Also I've currently managed to complicate Connor's life to an outrageous degree and I may not have unravelled all the knots with what I think is going to be the solution - there's such a thing as too elegant an outcome. Still. 20K or so too short. And that's before editing, which slims a book, or should.
There are other factors - for instance I really don't know if I have included enough of the world: think I may be about to write a 500-word sideline that achieves nothing except an expansion of Logan's character and a smidgeon of worldbuilding - and like I said, complications have been added and can become more annoying if I need them to. Also the "thriller card" - thrillers can get away with being shorter than other flavours of books in the same sub-genre - it depends on so many factors, including the precise type of thriller. Idk. I think I need to get it to 80K completed, though, and I've no clue how I'm going to do that. It's as if I've suddenly developed "compact" and I don't know what to do with it. :/