Do you want to publish that debut novel? Do you want it to be a success? It'd be a good idea to heed the advice of Mark Sarvas on The Elegant Variation, who read a ton of debut novels for a literary prize last year.
From the piece...
They try to take on too much. I read too many overstuffed novels, books that seemed to be trying to record and solve every social problem or cultural phenomenon. But first-timers seldom have the chops to maintain control over this kind of material, and so one gets stuck with a book spinning frantically in a million directions at once. Lesson: Ambition is great; challenge yourself, push yourself – but don’t try to be Atlas the first time out.
They don’t take on enough. We are still living in the wake of the literary elevation of the micro, the attention to the small, quiet moment. Individually, these moments can carry great power, and the short story naturally fits this impulse. But too many of these first novels have taken the slenderest conceit imaginable and attempted to hang a novel on it. You can feel the spindly branches bending under the weight, almost to the point of breaking. And there comes a point in the story when the reader begins to wonder why the author felt there was a novel in this idea. Lesson: Tea towels do not a novel make.
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