It’s done.
I just posted the final chapter of Unmasking Mr. Darcy on Radish. It clocks in at almost 83,000 words and 46 chapters. I’m kinda relieved because I was worried it was going to top my last story which was a whopping 125,000 words. Not that super long novels are necessarily a bad thing, but the longer the manuscript, the harder it is to manage (i.e., edit, format, etc.).
Generally, when you write by the seat of your pants, it’s hard to plan for things like your manuscript’s word count. As with plotlines and characterization, you’re mostly going by instinct. If you’ve read hundreds of books (I’m old okay), you will know whether you’re at the beginning, middle or end.
Then there’s the thing that sometimes happens where the story ends up like nothing you had initially intended it to be. Which is what happened here.
As the title hints, this is an hommage to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. This had been the plan from the beginning and I managed to stick to that, at least. I won’t tell you what else I’d planned in my head that ended up not happening but it was a lot. The original title was “Control” (it’s now the name of the series), and when it became clear to me that this wasn’t going to be the story I intended, I changed the title. “Unmasking Mr. Darcy” is a reference to a masquerade costume party that happens in Act 1— an idea that hadn’t yet been conceived when I started writing it but became a super important plot point. The level of pantsing I do is kinda bananas. Please don’t try this at home.
The last chapter (“Answers”) is now up on the Radish fiction app. After a few weeks it will be available (for free) on Wattpad.