Writing wins!

[JLiana]

Another 4 chapters down! Well done! Keep it up! As you said, Writing Wins!

How far along in the story do you think you are?

I am totally pantsing it so...no idea.

My characters met in Ch11 and they've pretty much only just started their journey, but I have a rough idea of what emotional/adventure beats I want to hit specifically. I'm just going where the writing is taking me and letting it be bad for now instead of thinking too hard.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I am totally pantsing it so...no idea.

My characters met in Ch11 and they've pretty much only just started their journey, but I have a rough idea of what emotional/adventure beats I want to hit specifically. I'm just going where the writing is taking me and letting it be bad for now instead of thinking too hard.

I'm totally pantsing too, the endgoal is around about 15-20 chapters but I have no idea if that'll be enough. I have decided to make Act 2's chapters a fair bit more 'beefy' than act 1's chapters to hopefully get stuff done.

I have a general idea of where I want the story to go, but almost nothing is 'planned' except for the characters and even THEY like to go off script sometimes. Granted they're (typically) still in character so I keep it.

 

[JLiana]

I'm totally pantsing too, the endgoal is around about 15-20 chapters but I have no idea if that'll be enough. I have decided to make Act 2's chapters a fair bit more 'beefy' than act 1's chapters to hopefully get stuff done.

I have a general idea of where I want the story to go, but almost nothing is 'planned' except for the characters and even THEY like to go off script sometimes. Granted they're (typically) still in character so I keep it.

I'm at chapter 19 at the moment (I am on fire at the moment) and I think I average between 1300 - 2000 words per chapter. I've come up with a few things I want to happen but I'm still worried my book is going to be too short, or I'm going to run out of predicaments to put my characters in.

It's all learning though. I've never written a book so I'm not gonna worry myself to death over it.

 

[pmmg]

Easy way to solve not having enough to fill it is add another character. Too many of those, and it will be hard to keep the book shorter.

Keep going. Its important to get to the end, even if its not novel length.

 

[JLiana]

Easy way to solve not having enough to fill it is add another character. Too many of those, and it will be hard to keep the book shorter.

Keep going. Its important to get to the end, even if its not novel length.

Oh that's a great idea, actually! I don't know why but I always think so rigidly when it's my story and I can kind of...do what I want.

And thank you, I will. 🩷

 

[pmmg]

You may even find, if you add one, that you may want to go back and backfill them into scenes that have already passed by. That is not uncommon.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I'm still worried my book is going to be too short

Don't stress about length. For starters, a story should be as long as it needs to be and not longer. There's nothing wrong with writing a novella instead of a novel (if anything, they're easier to write as a first endevour since they're shorter...). Also, at 19 chapters, you're closing in on novel length already (which "oficially" is 40k words).

And secondly, it's very well possible that if you work on a second draft you add a lot of words. Now, this doesn't happen to everyone. Many people cut words in the second draft, especially if they have longer first drafts. But for me, I tend to add something like 25 - 50% between my first and final draft. My previous novel had a first draft around 75k words and ended up being 105k words (or something like that). As I was writing later drafts, I found I needed to add a couple of chapters and expand others to make the story stronger and more fleshed out.

So ending up with a 50k first draft is completely fine.

Also, nice progress!

 

[JLiana]

Don't stress about length. For starters, a story should be as long as it needs to be and not longer. There's nothing wrong with writing a novella instead of a novel (if anything, they're easier to write as a first endevour since they're shorter...). Also, at 19 chapters, you're closing in on novel length already (which "oficially" is 40k words).

And secondly, it's very well possible that if you work on a second draft you add a lot of words. Now, this doesn't happen to everyone. Many people cut words in the second draft, especially if they have longer first drafts. But for me, I tend to add something like 25 - 50% between my first and final draft. My previous novel had a first draft around 75k words and ended up being 105k words (or something like that). As I was writing later drafts, I found I needed to add a couple of chapters and expand others to make the story stronger and more fleshed out.

So ending up with a 50k first draft is completely fine.

Also, nice progress!

Thank you! I think it's because I'm a total beginner so I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing.