Writing Day 16 It’s another glorious day at the writing desk, and I mean that. I’ve been chomping at the bit all day because I want to tell more of the story. Or perhaps it would be better to say I’m eager to find out what happens next. I see so many cool possibilities that the details are as much a surprise to me as to my readers. Seriously, being a discovery writer is a joy. Back when I started writing, my chapters seemed to come out to between five and six thousand words. I attended a multi-day writing shop by Mike Stackpole and Aaron Allston back in 2010 and one of the bits of information I picked up was that they thought the best chapter size was between two and three thousand words. The shorter length let the reader read the end of a chapter and be encouraged to read on. I also made the book read faster. When I looked at some of my previous works, I found there were two scenes in each. Easy to change how I did my chapter breaks to make them shorter. I’ve wrapped up the draft of chapter one and am more than halfway done with chapter two. I’ve decided to share some short snippets from each chapter once it’s complete. Not much, but enough to give some flavor to what I’m creating. I’m sure the details will be refined when I edit. These words will be what poured out of my head with no critical scrutiny. No wordsmithing to enhance the visual or emotional elements, and no tidying up of messy grammar and awkward phrasing. I’m doing this because I learned to write in serial fiction. The story was released to readers while the story was still being told on a weekly basis. I’d usually be a couple of chapters ahead of what I released, but not always. The joy of sharing it was like a drug. I’m not going to release the whole chapters, but I can share some of it. Things I particularly like. Enough of that. It’s 7 PM and I should be writing. Daily hours in the chair: 1 Daily word count: 1,300 Monthly hours in the chair: 29 Monthly word count: 33,500
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 01:30:16 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015