For authors who have started from zero, when did your novel finally stop feeling like a project you were experimenting with and start feeling like an actual book? 

Was it 10 chapters, 50, 100, or when strangers started commenting? 

I’m currently 21+ chapters into mine and I’m curious where that turning point happened for other authors.

my novel 


Ascension of the Ant King: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/183713/ascension-of-the-ant-king

When I saw the cover page.

I would say I really got into it around Chapter 50. That’s when I started to feel like my main characters felt real, I guess. It’s the same kind of feeling I get when I read a new work and encounter new protagonists but don’t really feel a connection with them yet. It takes a while before I can get obsessed with and fully immersed in a story.

I think for me it was when I was halfway through the second arc and I was feeling the second arc drag. The antagonizing feeling of I don't want to mess this up and the drive to "do it for the mc" was when it truely clicked for me. This is more than some silly project.

Rereading those chapters is like... wow. I wrote this?  I don't think I'll be able to capture that magical feeling again. 😅

DraftingMoon Wrote: That’s when I started to feel like my main characters felt real, I guess.

I know the feeling. 

Also the day I decided to try to make an image of my MC for my own guilty pleasures really sealed the deal for me. 
I haven't shared the images besides the cover probably never will because of the whole AI debate. But an MC hits different when you see them as a picture.

The day I started writing it. It was already a book in my head.

The problem was figuring out how to present it.

But I guess your question is more of a pantser-question?

I'd say once I'd finished it was a big milestone, as was finally getting my own cover.

Once I got art of my characters, though, I finally felt "real".

When I write "The End" is probably the closest I ever get to that feeling, but I'm gonna be real even with my finished projects I pretty much never feel like it's real. Even if I ever reread it it's difficult to get my brain into the story without it pointing out a thousand things I could fix/tighten up if I didn't have the certainty to declare something "done." A book is never truly finished or real, it's just a heap of words you tinker with until you make yourself stop because you want to write more than one idea in your lifetime lmao

I still don't know after writing 93 chapters. I just write any sh*t that comes to my mind

I think when I completed the outline of my first draft, I realized I am actually writing an actual book.

Oh its when my world felt like they were starting to come to life.

I'm working on chapter 26 sooooo... I think its.....

18?