Writing Report September 2, 2022

I schedule my year for two major book-length writing projects -- one starting on January 1, the other on June 1 -- with the intent of finishing each within 3 months.

For a variety of reasons, it looked like I wouldn’t make my deadline for my June 1 project.  While some of this were various delays that interrupting my writing schedule, the real problem was that the goal line kept receding from me.

When I start working on a project I typically have a word count in mind for the final product.  Targeting short stories isn’t much of a problem; I’m generally within 300-500 words of my goal and usually come in under the goal.

But novel-length works are challenging because I tend to write shaggy and loose in my first drafts, adding lots of detail and backstory, repeating information because I don’t know where I want to reveal it in the final draft.

I find it easier to trim things out and condense dialog and scenes than to try to shoehorn necessary material in later.

When I started the June 1 project, I figured I wanted the final draft to come in around 70K, so a first draft of 80-85K would be acceptable.

Actual word count?  99,241.

That’s actually not a bad clip for me.  I strive to maintain a 1,000-1,500 daily word average but have easily gone over that on many occasions.  During August I suffered 8 days where I wasn’t able to commit any word to paper or pixel (on the 9th day, August 31, I rested after finishing the project the day before).  Five days saw me turning in fewer than 1,000 words (and at least two of those were days when I concentrated on blog entries).

Of the remaining 17 days in August, 11 found me in the 1,000-1,500 range, one day at 1,718 words, and four that easily cleared 2,500 words, and one at 3,154 words.

My last week of work on my June 1 project saw me writing 15,241 words.

But I was already at the 84K mark when I started that productive burst.

The reason I went above and beyond my project first draft goal links back to both my shaggy and loose writing style but also my half-plotter / half-pantser approach to book length projects.

For those unfamiliar with the terms, a plotter carefully and meticulously plots out every beat of their story before starting to write in, down to and including all the supporting characters.

This system can work very well for many writers and types of stories.  It’s certainly helpful in media production where a detailed outline can let the production side of things start anticipating and budgeting for the actual shooting schedule before the script is complete.

But a lot of writers prefer to just start writing and let the story reveal itself along the way.

I typically do this with the fictoids I post on Tuesdays, which are based on a variety of story prompts.

I try to keep those down in the 300-500 word range, so there’s really not much in over thinking them.

 But longer works tend to fall betwixt and between.  For short stories of 1,500 words or longer, I like to have an idea where the story is heading before I start writing.  For novelettes / novellas / novels I tend to work up a lot of ideas and characters first, many of whom never make it into the first draft, much less the final one.

I have a lot of ideas on deck that I still need to figure out their finishes before I can start writing.

That’s okay, I’ve got plenty of others that I can work on in the interim.

Sometimes I write these ideas down, sometimes I just keep them in my head.

My January 1 project started with a 170-beat outline, but I jumped the rails on that around beat 40 and while the story continued in the same general direction, it no longer followed my plan.

Likewise the June 1 project started with a set-up, some characters, and a rough idea of how the story would go.

Exactly how it would end I hadn’t a clue, but I knew by the time I got there the conclusion would present itself.

With pantsing, when you trust your creativity, all sorts of interesting things can happen.

I’m a little loath to discuss projects before they see print, but I’ll provide an inside here.  Forgive the vague posting.

My characters are doing something secretively.  I could just focus on the actual doing and ignore all associated issues, but where’s the fun in that?

And besides, if you’re a fiction writer, complications are your friend.

Doing the secret thing requires a certain real world technology.  To operate that real world technology means maintaining it.

The complication of maintaining the technology so the actual owners aren’t aware it’s being used gives my characters something else to worry about in the story.

Now, they could easily buy replacement parts on the open market, but again, where’s the fun in that?

How much more fun if they steal those parts.

But how do they steal them?  My titular character would be the last person one would take on a burglary, none of the other characters working with them on the secret project would be likely to get directly involved, either.

Bu…

Early in the story my titular character is briefly menaced by three anonymous teenagers.  The teens serve no real purpose other than to provide a brief moment of suspense to be relieved by the appearance of another character who would be germane to the story.

Well, since that character and the three teens know one another, why not recruit the teens to do the burglary.

Now, I could easily write that crime in a few short paragraphs -- get in, get out, quick mucking about.

Repeat after me:  “Where’s the fun in that?”

So they don’t just get in and out all easy-peasy, pudding and pie.  No, first there’s the complication of the parts they want being locked up in a secure area, then there’s a nightwatchman to avoid…

So by the time I’m done, something that could have been easily ignored and never addressed in the story now occupies three chapters and gives me three new characters who can hang around the periphery of the story, stepping in to help whenever needed.

The burglary, when discovered, adds another level of complications that keep the suspense going:  “Will our guys get away with their scheme or not?”

Those extra complications now color and inform a lot of other scenes and characters in the story. 

Suddenly a wide variety of things get much more tightly knit that originally envisioned.  Motives are created for supporting characters that will add to the complications of the protagonists later on.

And that’s how I shoot past 84K on my way to a 99K first draft.

Like they say in the military:  “You never know where you’re going ‘til you get there.”

© Buzz Dixon