It Might Be A Trilogy…

Normally, when I reach about 120,000 words, I’m in the home stretch.  “Home stretch” for me being, depending on the story, anywhere from the last 10,000 to the last 20,000 words.  Some denouments are quick and some…aren’t.  When I reached this point in The Demon of Darkling Reach, I thought I had about 10,000 words left and turned out to have something more in the order of 18,000.

At this point, with my stand alone project, I probably have 100,000.

Originally, I was planning on splitting the story up into two parts.  As so often happens, at least with me, I wasn’t clear on what exactly my ultimate word count would be.  I’ve mentioned this before, but I was fairly certain that The Demon of Darkling Reach itself would be a stand alone novel.  What I’d expected would take up the first couple of chapters turned out to be the entire first book.  Because, of course, the characters come alive and, as they do, the story evolves–always.  Every time.

Which is a good thing, but can also be frustrating.

So this begs the question: in terms of my current project, how long should each installment be?  How long will this story end up being?  Am I looking at three 85,000-ish volumes, two 130,000-ish volumes, or three 100,000-ish volumes?  Is it more fun to read two rather long books or three normal-sized books?  If “normal” is even a word that can be applied to a book?