Chapters and Scenes: Determining How Long They Should Be

 This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking about Managing Word Count. Do we rewrite to hit a certain number? Do we have a chapter/scene word allotment?

So, a lot of you know that one of my nicknames is the Meticulous Volcano. This comes from me being born on the Leo/Virgo cusp, which a friend informed me makes me a meticulous volcano and they're not wrong. I really am half and half - and this shows up in many ways. Yes, I have the passionate Leo nature, but I'm also the detail-oriented lover of spreadsheets. In my writing, this manifests in my total, far-end gardener/pantser/write for discovery process, which I track down to the tiniest detail, with charts. 

Do I have a chapter/scene word allotment? Yes, I do. It varies from book to book - something I land on intuitively - with some books and series running to longer chapters and some to shorter. The shortest chapters, which creates a brisker pace, are generally about 6-7 pages long, or about 1,700 words. Longer chapters give a more epic feel, a more luxurious pace, and can be as long as 23 pages (my record) and about 7K words long. On average, however, I keep longer chapters to around 16 pages or 4,500 words.  

For scenes, I follow the 3-Act 8-scene structure, which looks like this:

Mostly I use this structure as a series of guideposts, to know where I am as I write the book, which is always linear, from beginning to end. And this helps me to predict when I'll finish. Once I have Scene 1 complete, I can predict the final word count (8 times the word count of Scene 1). This number is solidified once I have Act 1 in place. Generally my books are 85K - 120K words long, so how long the individual segments are varies from about 11K to 15K words. 

In truth, "segment" is probably a better word than "scene," as applies to my novels. This structure is from screenwriting, so scenes can be more or less a single sequence. For me, a scene in this context is a contiguous segment of the story, one where a particular mini-arc is begun and completed. 

As for rewriting to tighten the shape? Sometimes I do that. Usually not. I often worry that some segment will bulge out and need trimming, but it usually is fine by the end. Sometimes I break up chapters or trim parts that go on too long. Mostly I let the numbers be a loose guideline and I decided intuitively how to edit. 

Painted Yourself into a Corner? Retcon FTW!

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "World Rules and Painting Yourself into a Corner: What's a rule of your world established in a previous book that complicated things for you in a later book?"

This has happened to me SO MANY TIMES.

It's a downside of writing for discovery or being a gardener - which some people call "pantsing" - because I discover the world as I write the story. Sometimes I'm writing a later book in a series and I discover that some decision I made in an earlier book is limiting what I can do. The real bite is this is almost always some minor, stupid detail that I just threw out there for no good reason. Very often, it could've been left out entirely and nothing would've changed.

I've actually learned from past errors this way, and I'm much more careful these days about adding random worldbuilding details unless I'm SURE I want to live with them.

Mostly, anyway.

Except for one I found recently.

I've been writing book 3 of the Forgotten Empires trilogy, THE PROMISED QUEEN (cover teased above). That means I've been listening to the audio books of THE ORCHID THRONE and THE FIERY CROWN, just to gather up all the threads of the story. Well, I found a careless remark in THE ORCHID THRONE that blows a huge part of the worldbuilding reveal in THE PROMISED QUEEN. As in, totally contradicts what we discover later. 

And it's not even important, that toss-off line in THE ORCHID THRONE! I could've deleted it and no one would've cared or noticed. 

But no.

What to do???

I had three choices, I figured:

1) Change my big reveal in THE PROMISED QUEEN*

2) Pretend I didn't know about that line in THE ORCHID THRONE**

3) Retcon*** it.

Door #3, please! 

I'll even confess here how I did it, though I won't give the details of the exact mistake. I had Lia said she lied. It actually works just fine because she's an accomplished liar - self-confessed - and she had good reason to lie about that thing, at that time and place. Is it perfect? Maybe not. Does it work? I think so. 

And now you all know...

___________________________

*No way
**Risky, because I know one of you would pick up on it
***For those who don't know, retconning is short for "retroactive continuity" and it means to "revise (an aspect of a fictional work) retrospectively, typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events."

Encouraging Creative Flow and Gradually Increasing Word Count

We revealed the cover of THE FATE OF THE TALA! So now everyone knows who the mystery protagonist is. (If you can't guess from the image, the description - and preorder link - are here.)

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is a challenge to write a drabble related to our most recent book or series. (A drabble is a scene in exactly 100 words. No more, no less.)

As usual for me with writing challenges, I'm going to pass on this one. I have good reasons for it, which I'm talking about on today's podcast. I'm doing daily podcasts at First Cup of Coffee during NaNoWriMo encouraging writers to embrace creative flow, i.e.: Pants that NaNoWriMo story!

On yesterday's podcast, First Cup of Coffee - November 2, 2019, I talked about building up daily wordcount gradually. So I've resurrected a previous post that gives a suggested strategy for hitting that 50K in November NaNoWriMo goal.

Here's the essence of it:

I take my own advice. The sort I had the opportunity to hand out a couple of weeks ago when Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, visited our local chapter meeting, something I mentioned in last week’s post, too. One gal asked if Chris had advice on how to get going on writing those 1,667 words/day to make the 50K words/month that’s the NaNoWriMo goal. He said he didn’t so I offered mine. I told her that the temptation is to do the math exactly that way – to divide 50K by the 30 days of November and focus on achieving 1,667 words for each of those days. The problem with that approach is that writing that many words on the first day is akin to learning to run a marathon by going out and running ten miles right off the bat.

Yeah, you can probably do it, but you’ll feel the pain later.

In fact, you might be able to do it for a couple/three/four days – and then the crash occurs. Like my recovery time recently, it’s a natural sequel to going flat out.

Better, I told her, to treat it like that marathon training. Build up a little more every day. Stop before you’re tired, because that energy will translate to the next day. Consider setting up a schedule for NaNoWriMo like this:

1 100
2 200
3 300
4 400
5 500
6 750
7 1000
8 1250
9 1500
10 1750
11 2000
12 2000
13 2000
14 2000
15 2000
16 2100
17 2100
18 2100
19 2100
20 2100
21 2100
22 2200
23 2200
24 2200
25 2200
26 2200
27 2200
28 2200
29 2200
30 2200

By the end of November 30, you’d have 50,150 words. Best of all, by the time you’ve got yourself doing 2,200 words a day, it will feel very easy and natural. Because you’d be in shape for it.

Another great aspect of this method is that if you're feeling like you're "already behind" - with this schedule you're not!

Worldbuilding - Foundation Process or Procrastination?

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven - one entirely appropriate for science fiction and fantasy authors - is "spending time on worldbuilding vs. actual drafting – what’s your balance?"

I've included a map here that first appeared in THE MARK OF THE TALA, the first book in the original Twelve Kingdoms trilogy. (For those who don't know - I didn't before I drew the map - the split down the middle is to accommodate the book binding.) Quite notably, I didn't draw this map until after the book had been written, the next books sketched out (very sketchily), and a couple of levels of editing completed with my publisher. At that point my editor asked me for a map of the world in the story. He thought it might make it easier for readers to follow the travels of the heroine, Andromeda, the middle princess.

So, I drew a map. Before that, the world had existed only in my head. But I'd envisioned it in vivid detail, so the task of drawing it out ended up being fairly straightforward. I spent most of my time figuring out how fantasy world maps should be drawn, and fixing logistical details like putting the split down the middle.

Later, however, I discover that most people thought I was crazy to do it this way. In fact, many SFF authors spend considerable time, even years, detailing their world maps and building out the details of the society, before they start writing.

Some of this approach, I think, comes from storytellers emerging from role-playing game experiences. In those, a great deal of effort goes into creating the world and rules before the game can be played. This is not me.

I also think that worldbuilding can be a form of pre-plotting. By creating the world and the details, the writer creates a kind of framework or outline for the story to evolve in. This is also not me.

So, it could be that I worldbuild the way I do - which is discovering what it's like by riding around in my characters' heads and observing it - because I write for discovery. That's how my process works on all levels, and faithful readers know I always say the most important thing is to own your process.

There's another reason, however, that I don't do worldbuilding before I write. I decided long ago that the only way I'd get a book written was to put down words. That sounds self-evident, but the decision is a profound one. I made a choice that NOTHING mattered more than putting down words - which includes things like drawing maps and other worldbuilding exercises.

When aspiring writers ask me about worldbuilding, when they tell me what they're doing to create their worlds, I'll say those things are great but they don't count as writing.

Only writing counts as writing.

Early Stages - Who Should Help You Plot?

In keeping with our story-writing theme - last week we talked about how much space to give to the denouement - our topic at the SFF Seven this week focuses on the Early Stages of Plot Development. Do we work alone, with critique partner, developmental editor, or in a round-table group.

My answer is that this has changed dramatically for me over the course of my writing career - and it can vary by book. Plus, just recently I've done something Totally New, which isn't even on that list.

First off, for anyone who *doesn't* know this about me - though I'm not sure how that's possible since I feel like it's a big neon sign over my author-hatted head - I don't pre-plot. I'm going to make that distinction, pre-plotting vs. plotting. In some genre communities, people are given to calling writers either plotters or pantsers. A "pantser" is someone who is perceived as writing "by the seat of their pants," a description that simply oozes with pre-plotter panic to my mind. The way I write feels nothing like what it seems many imply with it - that there's somehow no plan at all.

Interestingly, there are myriad definitions for that phrase. It turns out that it's early aviation parlance. Aircraft initially had few navigation aids and flying was accomplished by means of the pilot's judgment. It meant "going aloft without instruments, radio or other such luxuries." In our analogy, I suppose the instruments, etc., would be an outline of the story. As far as the idiom is concerned, I found this definition very interesting: "To use one's judgment, initiative, and perceptions as events unfold in order to improvise a course of action without a predetermined plan."

Now, that last *does* feel like how I write. I don't feel like I can plot a book before I write it because I don't know how events will unfold. And I do trust in my writer's instincts and the skills I've honed over time to make those judgments as the story goes. Several of the definitions used the word "intuition," which I think is spot on.

I don't really think my stories through, I intuit them.

I have a critique partner (and good friend) that I talk through stories with a great deal. She's very much a thinker. She plots out the stories ahead of time and is always asking me questions like what is my heroine's goal or her internal wound. I inevitably get irritated by these questions - not that I don't know the answers, but that I can't articulate them. They are feelings to me, not easily definable in a few words. That said, this friend is great at helping me figure out my stories. I can tell her "Oh, my heroine is like this, and her mother is this way, but the hero is this other thing to her - so what would happen if...?" And she has great answers. I don't always use her ideas, but they do help to guide me.

I seem to work best that way, brainstorming what my characters might do, talking it through with one or two other people. I love to do it with other people's stories, too.

Just recently, however, I got to do something new and very fun. Last week I announced that I have signed with a new agency, Nancy Yost Literary Agency, and that I'll be working with Sarah Younger there. I couldn't announce this change immediately, as the contract with my former agency asked for 30-days notice. But, until Sarah could officially act as my agent, we discussed several projects I had in mind as possibles. She picked one as her favorite - and as the most marketable at the moment - and gave me some ideas to think about. What she gave me helped crystallize the project and injected it with life. Which is so much what I was hoping working with her would be like!

This is an aspect of working with an agent that I think some writers, especially those exclusively in self-publishing, perceive as being "told what to write." It doesn't feel like that at all. Instead it's a "wouldn't it be cool IF" scenario. Agents are passionate about books, by definition, and widely read. The right agent can bring fantastic perspective to a proposed project.

But, and this is key, whoever a writer talks to in the early stages of a story has the power to profoundly affect the direction of it. Or even to kill it with careless criticism. Choose those people with utmost care, for a new story is precious and fragile. Don't hand that baby to just anyone.