@monksjj You definitely need to educate yourself and gain a little perspective. I do not mean to come across as patronising or rude or arrogant, but what little context or history I can glean from your comment... you do not sound ready to become a published author. For starters, if you have not had anything published before, an agent is going to take you complaining about being told your manuscript is too long at 170,000 words as unprofessional. Yes, they do read these comment sections.

When I briefly studied screen production, a professor told me that the first thing you have to ask yourself about a part of your script is if it tells the audience anything about your world, characters, or their path that the audience did not already know. If the piece of script does not tell the audience something they did not already know, out it goes. A debut that is 170,000 words suggests that there may be things in it which are, to put it another way, redundant. My first manuscript was around 200,000 or thereabouts. When I finally figured where the story was and what I needed to tell the audience, the manuscript came down to 120,000 ...

The genre also determines, to an extent, the desirable word count. A fantasy or science fiction novel generally needs to be 100,000 to 120,000 to properly tell a good story. But the further you go over that count, the bigger the alarm bell the agent hears. There are sites around that state the average or expected word counts by genre. I find it hard to get a story under 100,000 words once it has all of the pieces it needs to tell the story well. But that is another point you need to consider. I do not know how to put URLs in a comment or if it is allowed but here goes:

https://thewritelife.com/how-many-words-in-a-novel/ One source for my word count points.

*Deep breath* ... How much of the worldbuilding in your novel is necessary for the audience to make sense of the story? This is a question fantasy and science fiction authors grapple with all of the time. An excellent example of this is the opening crawl in Star Wars. George Lucas' original version rambled about the fall of the Old Republic, the attacks upon the Jedi, and so forth. The version that ended up in the theatrical release told us about the Death Star, Princess Leia, the plans of the Death Star, and Leia's mission to get the plans into the hands of someone who can figure out how to destroy the Death Star. In other words, like every good opening crawl, it told us what we needed to know for everything in the coming film to make sense, and nothing else. Indeed, a smarter adult could infer some of the things in the opening crawl from the words and actions of Imperials in the film.

Another good example is the 1984 atrocity called Dune and the first film Denis Villeneuve made based on Dune. The earlier film has Virginia Madsen staring into the camera and telling us a lot of things that we did not need to know. The most critical piece of information, that the spice can only be found on one planet, is an "oh, by the way" at the end of said introduction. In the first Villeneuve film, the opening narration gives us the bare bones from the limited perspective of a native woman, ends with her question about who the next oppressors will be, and the film tells us what we need to know when we need to know it.

These examples are crucial things for science fiction and fantasy authors to understand. How much information are you giving? How much of this information is needed? Do they need to know the information right now? Is this the only way you can deliver the information? I did a lot of film critiquing before I made a serious effort to finish a manuscript, and these questions mattered.

My readers do not need to know that my heroic Dwarvish King has a total of eleven aunts and uncles, nor that one of them is in reality his father, until a future story that may or may not get written. Right now, all they need to know is that his ostensible father is a complete bastard, that every good thing in his boyhood including his name is the direct result of his Human mother telling his "father" the word no in multiple languages, and that a lot of what is going on in the novel at the beginning is a tertiary consequence of how short the life of a Human like his mother is compared to the life of a Dwarf.

Similarly, they do not necessarily need to know that the first group of Dwarf folk did not record which women were the mothers of which line of their first King's descendants because they feared discriminatory infighting, not in this novel. They may need to know that the hero Dwarf King is a direct descendant of this first King, however.

Just like I have used so many words to impress upon you that you need to look at every word in your manuscript and ask yourself "can my audience learn something new from this?". Because if any agent agrees to look at your whole manuscript, you better believe *they* will be asking the same thing about every sentence you wrote.

Adventure Fantasy 80k

QM 7/28/24
FR 11/12/24

Picture Book: 387
Mar 10, 2025

@monksjj So a lot can be a factor in this. My epic sci-fi is over 180,000 words long, but being an EPIC sci-fi, the longer word count has a reason. There is a ton of world building and on top of that, character backstories. Most sci-fi books are longer for that reason, but even mine is a bit long where epic sci-fi rest somewhere between 160,000 - 120,000 words. When I hear Historical Romance, I feel like I need more information to understand if your book is at the right length or not though. The historical part is too open for me to really give you a good answer here. For all I know, you have a great action packed adventure that takes place in history that cutting anything would ruin the whole storyline, and that could justify the length completely.

The other thing that I read someone else point out is debut authors. It's true that being a debut author is much harder to prove your worth. When an agent sees a manuscript that's twice as long as they normally would see in that genre, they look into the author's past. But if that author has nothing in their past, there's nothing to compare it with. So my suggestion is that if you want to keep your story that long, and by all means you know more about it than anyone else and should, then I would write something new that's shorter and release it. Either something fanfiction, or self published works the fastest. But I will warn that if this new project doesn't get received well by the community you create it for, it won't help. If you do this, the agents need to see a fan gathering or sales behind it; and fan comments that are positive are really good to have. This can be simple things like poetry, and short stories as well. What you are doing here is creating a sample of your writing skills and storytelling that is much easier for an agent to read and see how well you did. Like a portfolio in a way. This shows them if you can or cannot build a fanbase or sell your work. I know that's discouraging to have to write something else on top of what you already did, but to be honest, I had so much fun doing it when I did. I knew right away that a 180,000 word sci-fi was going to hit a huge wall with agents. So I wrote a 90,000 word fanfiction so I could display my storytelling and the fact that I have a large following of fans just from that alone.

But here's the real reason I responded to this. It's not about the length of your book as much as it didn't grab the excitement of the agent enough for them to justify the length. That in NO way means your book is wrong or needs to be changed either. All it means is it wasn't something this agent found to be something they want to champion. If they don't feel excited about it, then 170,000 words is a lot to have to read and help edit. A lot of writers get discouraged because the perfect agent for them didn't pick them, but what we all have to understand is that you don't want an agent that just likes your book. You want an agent that loves your book as much as you do. From what I have read about Maeve, she didn't see the length of your manuscript and turn it down like a lot of agents I found do. No, she took the time to carefully read everything you sent her and it just didn't click for some reason. It's not your fault and not something anyone should ever beat themself up over. It's just not the right agent and we all have to keep looking when rejected. The agents are doing all of us a favor by reading what we wrote in the first place. And some go further and actually tell us why they rejected us, but you can't blame them or yourself for that rejection. It just isn't a fit is all.

Without reading what she wrote to you, I can't say much else. But I will say that I would take her advice to heart too. From what I have looked up and found, she is a terrific agent that cares about the writers, even if she doesn't sign with them. So if she gave you any advice, I would take it to heart and thank her for it afterwards.

@monksjj I have no idea the content of your book, but it's at a perfect length to split into a "Part 1 and Part 2" book kind of situation, or a sequel that takes off right where the last one did! It's super hard to hear "it's too long" because you spent so long getting it there, but it doesn't mean you need to let go of anything! You can pitch it as a book with a ready-to-go sequel! Wishing you the best of luck!!