Writing - Novel 2

76,331 to 77,763 in about 45 minutes tonight. Continuing to march forward towards the final scenes of the book.

Hey, what happened to April?

Unfortunately, April was overflowing with other responsibilities and I had little time to write. As we get into May I will be trying to get this book finished up.

74,289 to 76,331 today.

70,939-74,289
4:10p-5:40p

Pacing

Something I've consciously chosen to try with this novel is to effect a very specific pacing. It's basically alternating dialogue/slow action chapters with high action/conflict chapters. There's some conflict in each chapter, of course, otherwise it gets boring quickly - "the trees were bright green" description for an entire chapter gets old fast - but with my outline this works out well.

Here's an example. Let's say our heroes are on a mission to find the mystical foobar. We'll start off by having them talk about why it's important to find the foobar, and set out on their mission. Then, they run into a nasty storm and have to fight their way through it in a gripping, life-or-death situation! After that, they get to a town and ask around for the location of the foobar, and some of the heroes show their flaws by (verbally) fighting with the group's leader. Next up, they move on to the location of the foobar, and encounter the foobar's guardian in a big showdown!

My hope is that this keeps readers interested and gives good opportunities for character development. We'll see how it works out, but so far it seems to be pretty good. I'm at 29 chapters right now; my expectation is that the book will end at about 38-40. It's not precisely alternating "one chapter slow, one chapter fast" but it's close enough that the pacing seems to work out.

What comes next?

I've been asked what comes next for this book, and what it means to say that I'm at "67000 words" (or whatever).

A novel is considered something over 75000 words, and once you get up to about 150000 or so it becomes an "epic" (aka a really big novel). I'm aiming for something like 100000 words; my first book was about 105000 when it was done. So if I say I'm at 67,000 words I'm about 67% of the way done on the first draft.

But the last half of the book usually seems to go faster than the first, for me. I've got the outline done; I know where things are going in my head, it's just getting them on paper. That speeds things up - for me, at least.

Once I'm done with the first draft, I'll do a first editing run on the computer. This is where I do major changes - pulling out entire scenes or chapters, rearranging events, ripping out unneeded exposition, backfilling details and clues to match up with later parts of the book.

Next I'll print out the whole manuscript and go over it on paper with a pen. Here, I'll look for issues with phrasing, tense, pacing, etc. that I didn't catch on the screen. Sentences will get rearranged or cut. Description will be added. Things like that.

After I do those edits, I'll be ready to send the manuscript out to people who have asked to be on the F&F review list. Hopefully they'll get comments back to me relatively quickly :) I won't agree with all of the feedback, of course, but they're good pointers as to what needs to be updated (and if several people tell me the same thing that I don't want to hear, I'll probably decide I need to listen to it anyways!).

At some point, I'll even pick a title!

Writing - Novel 2

65,471 - 68,646
11:40a - 1:02p

and... 68,646 - 70,939
11:29p - 12:18a

Writing - Novel 2

64083 - 65,471
4:20 pm - 5:10 pm

Did some editing as well on the way through, not just writing. The last couple of weeks have been very busy, but I hope to get some good days in over the next few weeks.

Writing - Novel 2

61564 - 64083
3:43pm - 4:50pm

Writing - Novel 2

59891-61565
3:53pm-4:40pm

Writing - Novel 2

56,268 after pulling out the outline/unneeded prologue/etc. Wrote from 11:45am to 1:11pm and got it back up to 59,891.

Writing - Novel 2

57949 to 59949, 1:07 pm to 1:57 pm. 2000 words exactly. How did I do this today and exactly 3000 the other day? I don't know! It's craaaaaaaaazy!

It's also about time for another editing pass. I think the time has come to rip out the background info, dropped scenes, and outline into its own document, which will give me a more realistic word count (probably dropping me back 3000 words or so, but that's not a bad thing), because I'm not referring back to them regularly any more - the story has its own momentum and I know what's left in the outline well enough that I just need to glance at it once every other writing session or so.

Writing - Novel 2

7:34 pm to 8:32 pm
55056 to 57949

Writing - Novel 2

51130 to 55056, 1:25pm to 2:49pm. Making more good progress. I want to finish the first draft by the end of March, and finish edits and reviews by F&F (friends and family) by the end of April (hopefully sooner for both steps) to start sending it out to agents by May 1.

If you're interested in taking a look at the first draft and sending back suggestions/reviews, drop me an email or a note here.

Writing - Novel 2

49445 to 51130, about 45 minutes from 11:30 to 12:15.

Writing - Novel 2

46445 to 49445 (exactly 3000, somewhat oddly). About 10:45 to 11:50am.

Writing - Novel 2

44237 to 46011, from about 11:45 to 12:35pm.

46445 after some updates to the outline, bringing the outline up to the end of the story. Yay! The story framing is done, and the writing is nearly halfway. Things should really start speeding up from here.

Writing - Novel 2

40392 to 43,277. About an hour's worth on Friday, 8pm to 9pm.

A little bit more tonight - only 15 minutes or so - up to 44,237.

Writing - Novel 2

37137 to 40392. 11:30pm to 12:30am. Good stuff, much progress!

I'm heading out on Friday night to a cabin at a nearby state park to camp out and enjoy being out in a bit more of the wilds. Hopefully I'll also get the urge to do some writing while I'm there.

Writing - Novel 2

As expected, I pulled the scene I wrote the other day. Instead, I took things in a somewhat different direction today, and got to another major milestone in the outline. Now things really start to happen in the story.

34711 (though 1700 of that doesn't count, as I just copied the cut scene off in case I wanted to use part of it later, where it fits better) to 37,137. 12:10 to 12:50, things went quickly today as I knew right where I wanted to go.

Writing - Novel 2

12:00 to 12:45, 33029 to 34711. Stopping early because I'm not sure about the scene I just wrote. It seems a bit... well, out of place or overly sappy. Might just have to do with my own emotional state of mind tonight, which is kind of a no-no as far as I'm concerned. When I let that filter into my writing, I end up with one section that has a different tone than the rest, and it always seems jarring. So I'll let it sit overnight and read it over tomorrow, and might end up chopping most of it out for a replacement. Sometimes that's how the process goes!