Once I had a beginning and ending worked out, it was time to decide upon length. According to many sources, a salable, entry-level high fantasy novel should aim for 80k to 120k words.
So how do you know how many words you are going to write? Unfortunately, there’s no (immediately apparent) hard and fast rules for hitting a target word-length. There’s no “average length for a chapter” either, because chapters end and begin for all sorts of different reasons. A 120,000 word novel can have 30 chapters, and an 80,000 word novel can just as easily have 50. I even read about an avant-garde writer that made one of his chapters a single sentence.
None-the-less, I tried bridging the beginning of the book to the end using chapter titles and brief descriptions of what happens in each of them. I failed miserably. I was only able to make it to chapter twelve before I got stuck.
There was still a massive gorge between the beginning and end of my book. I needed to build a better bridge to help get the reader (and myself) across.
There was no way I could make the leap from chapter 12 to the end by freewriting alone unless I wanted an inconsistent mess of a story on my hands.
Holly Lisle suggested writing down brief descriptions of all the scenes you ‘can’t help but enjoy writing’. She called them ‘candybar scenes’. I kind of liked that idea, so I put aside my chapter list and wrote down my beginning, my ending, and a bunch of the scenes I had in mind that I thought would be the most fun to write.
After I was done, the full idea of the book was coming into better focus. Instead of having a gigantic gap between the cluster of chapters at the beginning and ending, I had fairly evenly spaced moments, forming a bridge.
The bridge was somewhat serviceable; like a rickety rope bridge with occasional wooden planks within leaping distance of each other. Some of the wood planks were weak and cracked, but I figured they could be repaired later.
Much smaller gaps were easier to work with. It was just a matter of bridging them with a few more planks.
I learned something very important around that time:
The average length of a SCENE is 1,000 words!
*angels singing*
(Yeah, this was a huge revelation for me. ^_^; Hopefully, you’ll find it useful, too.)
It’s fairly safe to assume this number as you write. So I decided to aim for eighty scenes.
80×1000=80,000 words. Brilliant! Ahhh. Isn’t that wonderful? It makes planning a novel so much easier.
I applaud you. I’m glad you have found a technique that works well for you. I have a boyfriend who also has plans writing a novel and the hardest part for him is the whole time-line thing — Putting together his thoughts from beginning to end. It’s usually a big mess that has to be sorted delicately into chapters to keep the different scenes separated. I a lot of work, I don’t think I could do it. I’m more into the illustration of a story, lol.
But yay! It seems like you are on the right track! I hope this candybar scene technique continues to work for you. It will surely make it a lot easier, I bet. :)
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Comment by Latrina — September 16, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
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Comment by Latrina — September 16, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
I have no idea what addon makes the avies. I guess it’s just included with this layout.. sorry I can’t help more!
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Comment by cirellio — September 17, 2008 @ 6:32 pm
It may be just me, but I instinctively write whatever length I want, with a small overshoot margin. It works out in the end. Write a basic outline, figure out the end, and don’t worry about it. The pacing will feel better if it’s done naturally.
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Comment by elizaw — September 19, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
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Comment by cirellio — September 19, 2008 @ 8:56 pm