The downside of a small start
Promoting Toreas at this stage in a large fashion, would be a mistake. I gave the link to a few people and also received some nice offers of help and crucial feedback. But the story as such is not yet ready to be made publicly wide known.
By all means tell everyone you know about it, but for this very moment in time, I hold back with asking everyone I know to link to me.
The main problem here is the length of the story. Right now the story is 2 chapters and an introduction long and has total word count of 5513. As I have mentioned on that other blog I’m running, some of the larger books (and just one book, not the entire story) clock in at roughly 300’000 words. That’s 55 times as many words as you can currently read on the page. True, there are more novels now that are closer to 200’000 words, but some large ones come in at around 400’000 too.
It’s not my intention to write a book. I’m writing a story. So I have no boundaries of how long this story will be or can be. I don’t have to bring the story to a stopping point or cliffhanger before the next book starts.
Although I consider the first chapter to be strong, I decided to run a detour for chapter 2 and 3, a very important one. I could have shuffled it around, moving chapter 1 behind 2 and 3, and then continue there, but this break flows nicely in my overall concept. Which ruins again the per chapter concept a little.
As a reader, you are just dipping your toe into the world that is Toreas. It has dragons. It’s got some other very unpleasant beings and locations. But also a lot of wonder and beauty, as well as romance. But until I release a chapter in which I can show you, these things do not exist. So for now the world is rather small. The intro gives you an outline, a planetary overview in a very rough sense. We are not in Kansas anymore. Chapter 1 shows you the smallest speck of the world, an old barn with some forest around it, hinting at some settlements outside. Chapter 2 introduces the city of Northwood, it’s surrounding mountains and the great plains to boot. But this still is a small part of the world.
I think until chapter 9 or 10, the world is not big enough to draw someone in really deeply. And that is the goal. I want to get people to feel gripped by the story, wanting to know what happens next. Fearing for characters, feeling with them when they are angry or happy and hopefully enjoy the ride as it goes along.
Until there is a clearer picture of the world, it’s rather unlikely to hold the attention of those who like this kind of story. Or in words, somewhere around the 30’000 total words mark.
There are also upsides of course. I can just do what I please without many people getting affected by it. And I can experiment freely. After all, it’s an experiment too and I tell this story using this experiment.