: Re: My first act is lengthy. And I cannot shorten it. Any Suggestions? After the great amount of encouragement that you all gave me here, you'd be happy to know that I finally started writing

@Frith254

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the first act should end when the novel reaches around 25% of its length

Aaaaaaaah!

the wordlimit for a debut author is 50K [comment to Lauren's answer]

Aaaaaaaah!

Listen, XORGate, you have a problem, but it is not your writing. You think arbitrary limits are God's commandments. They are not.

Many writers succeeded, because they broke rules intentionally. Don't be a slave of rules other people made up. People you do not know, are probably long dead, and of whom you do not know why they made these rules.

First, after 25% shouldn't end the first act, there should be the first turning point. It really doesn't matter how long your act is. But even this turning point can be somewhere else if it works for your novel. They just say it should be there, because that works for the majority of novels. So it looks like a good idea, but that does not guarantee that it is one.

Second, word limits are one of the most arbitrary limits ever invented by human beings. If you want to publish traditionally and they like your book, if they are hooked by the beginning, if they see that the story flows, they will publish it, no matter if it has 50K or 80K words. Can you really imagine a publisher saying: "Well, excellent book and it would sell well, but sadly it's too long"?

Besides that, in the world of today self publishing is an option. So you can write and publish whatever you want. And now don't tell me, that you know a reader who asks for the word count before picking up a book. The thickness of a book does not tell you anything about the word count. If readers want smaller books in your country (what I doubt), then you can fake that with the correct layout and most won't even notice.

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