My novel has a 98,000-word count already and it was far from over. Should I be concerned that my novel is getting bloated or is this normal? Heck, my mc is still on the first continent out of 5 and yet I'm planning on adding different planes that will converge at the end. What do I do?
If this is your first or second draft, don't bother about the word count yet. Just keep on writing. If it's already at the editing stage and you haven't reached halfway point yet at 98,000 words, you should start being worried.
If this is the first continent out of 5, then it's perhaps time to think about making 5 volumes. To put it in perspective, The Two Towers, the second book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy has 156k words. The entire trilogy has over 570k words in total. People do read long novels.
There is just one problem with pulling a Tolkien. Are you good enough to write a story that remains engaging like LotR? Chances are, you aren't good enough. Even Tolkien wasn't good enough and required the assistance of paid editors. He had so much doubt about his own abilities that he kept scrapping his novels. His novels were completed by his son.
Most people can't write long stories. That's why most traditionally published authors refused to even try. So if you ask if 98,000 words is bloated or not, Ai-chan's factless opinion is that it's very likely very bloated. It's factless because Ai-chan has not read your story and assumes you are copying chinese standards, with its redundacies and repetitions.
