Querying SF novel with only four chapters?

[John Jarrold]

It's a slow, organic change. No one suddenly thinks 'I'm not going to publish fantasy with elves and dwarves any more'. They've just disappeared from the class acts' fiction over a ten-year period or so...Tad Williams found analogues for them in THE DRAGONBONE CHAIR, almost twenty years ago...but those basics I mentioned earlier in the thread remain vital.

 

[Susan Boulton]

Unfortunately I'm like a dog with a bone! I always finish the books and stories I start (at least, that's been the case so far). So far, I've never started on one and lost interest in it half way through, which I admit, seems unusual. There are times (obviously) when I struggle through particular parts, but I'm always encouraged by how I imagine the end result to be of the story as a whole. At the moment, I have four on the go at various stages - they won't get abandoned, but naturally, they'll take longer to complete.

FOUR!!! I have trouble with one at a time!! least ones that I plough through to the end with. I need to be single-minded. Only the one set of characters/plot in my head at a time when creating. Editing is a different matter as I am working from a completed draft.

As for abandoned work. They are mostly abandoned because the main characters didn't jell with me, they never become complete people in my head, if that makes sense. I still have the working outlines, and beginning drafts of about half-a-dozen. A couple I might return too one day, don't know. I would love to return to the very first attempt at novel I wrote, bad as it is, and make it readable lol....