As I sat there Tuesday night, having just finished my pay-job work for the day and preparing to start my nightly writing session, a thought occurred to me. I am about 27K words into this novel and I've hit what could easily be the lead-in for the climax. Derp. So, I either need to make some additional interesting stuff happen between the beginning and now, or I need another plot twist. OR I need to stretch the end out for about another 25K words. Umm, yeah.
Now, I am not expecting the final word count to be as low as 50-55K. If you've been here a while, you know I write pretty lean first drafts. There's little description. I have long stretches of nothing but dialogue, during which you can't tell who's talking. (And I even I have a tough time figuring it out during edits sometimes.)
But yeah, my first draft of this thing should be around 50-55K. Then it'll end up at around 60-65K and we'll all be happy.
Anyway, the last time I wrote, I was getting bored, so I threw in a plot twist. Except I didn't ponder how major this twist was. Until I sat down to write some more words. Then DERP.
So, I took last night off writing so I could ponder what the hell I'm going to do. One day off won't kill me. I have until October 15th to get this done, so it's all good. I mean, it's not all good. But it will be.
Just another day in paradise.
Been there. Done that. Still taking time off, but for small little bits and pieces that I have to fit into a whole for the Penumbra book. My problem is doing what my editor wants on the next RDR book. I have to figure out how to give him what he wants without my inner first responder melting down. (The opening of the book is set during a hurricane down on the Texas Gulf coast.)
ReplyDeleteIf this is paradise, I need a vacation someplace else. ;)
Hey, a major plot twist can be fun! Run with it!
ReplyDeleteGotta admit, your current problem is one reason I'm a confirmed plotter. My outlines start out several pages long and tend to grow as I get new ideas, then shrink when I don't have space to flesh out all those ideas. But they get shifted into my next-book file to get used later.
(Um, yeah, I'll leave quietly now.) :-D