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. 

Accountability Goals: Words vs Chapters

 This Week's Topic: Managing Word Count

Do I write to hit a certain number?

Do I have a chapter/scene word allotment?

I have daily goals for word count in the drafting phase. Please note the absence of the phrase "net word count." Expecting consistently to add to the total tally sets me up for failure. Often, during the next day's re-read of the previous day's work, "What did I mean? That makes no sense!" and "That is some impressive plotless bunk, Krantz," cause my net word count to be negative. D'oh! Don't worry, rewrites don't equal a trip to the guilt guillotine for me. Certainly not in the drafting phase. I'd rather fix what's broken during drafting than during the editing phase. It saves LOTS of time in the long run.  

I have daily chapter goals in the editing phase. Some chapters don't need much revision while others have to be overhauled. I have a general sense of which arcs I can breeze through and which need a lot of work by the time I finish the first draft. My daily chapter goals reflect that. Note: this is in my editing phase, not the "professional editors have returned the marked-up mss" phase. 

When the professional editors return the marked-up mss to me, I attack that by type of revisions: the easy word tweaks vs character refinement vs plot thread redevelopment. My daily goals are based on the Level of Effort, not chapters or word count.

As for chapter/scene word allotments, they tie back to chapter word limits. I have limits because I can prattle with the best of them. /jk, sort of. Truly, it's to ensure I'm not info-dumping and killing the pace of the story. Also, reader expectations are different by subgenre. UF chapters tend to be shorter at ~2500wpc while HF chapters are ~5000wpc. Word count length on the chapters naturally influences any goals based on chapters. Theoretically, I can get through UF chapters faster because they're shorter than HF chapters. Theoretically...because a screwed-up UF chapter is going to take longer to fix than a clean HF chapter.

Now, you'll notice I didn't give numbers for each of the goals. It's not because I don't want to confess I'm a slow writer (long-time readers of this blog are well aware of that); rather, it's because the word/chapter count goals vary by book. Some stories are hard to write, while others are wham-bam-all-done-ma'am. Also, real-life obligations impact the goals. For example, I need to spend more time with my flesh-and-blood family and friends over the winter holiday season than with my fictional family and friends. I don't fight that, I plan for it. All my creative goals reflect that. 

Remember, goals should not be pathways to guilt. Reasonable expectations lead to reasonable goals.  Give yourself wiggle room. Overestimate the time it will take to hit milestones. If you finish early, you can reward yourself. The same thing applies if you hit your personal due date. If you don't hit your goals, then learn from the causes and apply the lessons to the next round of goal-setting. Don't beat yourself up. That will never help you.

My daily goals are my method of holding myself accountable for actually...working. Since I alone control my deadlines as a self-published author, I'm allowed this flexibility. If I fart around and don't accomplish what I've set out to do by the dates I've set out to have them done, then the one most hurt by that is me. I'm no dummy. I don't like to hurt. 

I'm too damn old for that kink. 

Dragons, Vampires, or Aliens? Genre Expectations and How to Analyze Them

 

Photo by Loren Cutler on Unsplash

Why do you need to care?

You want people to read your book, right? In the indie book publishing world, there are over 2 million books being published every year, according to Berrett-Koehler Publishing. Readers won't just stumble onto your book on Kindle and buy it in droves, you need to work at it. If you're traditionally published, your agent and publisher will need you to identify comparative titles and tropes to help them market your book.

You can write your book for yourself, the way you want it. But when you put it out into the world and you're looking for readers, you need to fit your book into current trends and ideas. 

Readers expect certain things when they pick up a book. Think of how writers pitch a tv show or movie: "I read this book series, Game of Thrones. It's like The Tudors mixed with LOTR." "How about a High School Drama, but with Vampires? She's Buffy the Vampire Slayer." 

If you're J.R.R. Tolkien or Tamora Pierce or Octavia Butler, you can be a pioneer, but even then they are building on what has come before. Although the belief in a tortured genius who is misunderstood in their own time is a powerful dream, it disregards the hard work authors put in to understand their craft and to communicate through their work with their audience. It's also elitist patriarchal malarkey.

What can you do?

So how do you find your genre expectations and incorporate them into your work?

 

Read, read, read

All the posts this week reiterate the most important point. Kristine focuses on reading in your genre and adjacent ones, reading reviews, finding reader comments online. Alexia puts it succinctly: "Don't forget to read." 

“Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You’ll find what you need to find. Just read.” – Neil Gaiman 

The more you read, the more you will learn, and the better you will write.

What are the bestsellers in your genre? Search Amazon and Goodreads if you don't know and read them. Read as much as you can and start to notice the similarities. Is there always a Gandalf or Dumbledore who helps along the way? Does a mysterious warrior save the day? Are the aliens misunderstood? How is the coming-of-age character described as insufficient (or shy or unaware of their power) at the start and how do they develop throughout the story? Ask questions and be observant.

Study, study, study

 I am an obsessive plotter and pre-writer. The longer I can sit with the ideas and imagine my story before I write a first draft, the more confident I feel about the characters and narrative. 

Jeffe, in her post, reminds us that writers start as readers--and we can't take shortcuts in learning our craft.

As part of my pre-writing, I love reading about plot frameworks and researching craft advice by more experienced authors. Find the big writing books in your field, read them, and take notes. Inspire yourself by reading blogs and reviewing story beat templates. 

Here are a few of my favourites:

• Story Grid is such a helpful framework, if overwhelming for beginning writers. You don't need to follow it slavishly, but their studies of major novels and movies helps you to see the patterns at work.
• The Hero's Journey and Save the Cat are two helpful outlining/beat tools. There are many others out there--look around and see which ones appeal to you.
• Wonderbook is a feast for the eyes and a great way to push your thinking about setting and creating world outside of the box.
• KM Weiland is one of many bloggers and writers who are worth following.

Look at tropes lists

When I first started writing, I thought I only needed to have some good characters and a solid sense of the beats. Tropes were too cliche. Now I see that tropes are a short-hand to help readers find SFF stories they like. Some fantasy romance readers love enemies-to-lovers, while others champion friends-to-lovers. In YA dystopian fiction and Urban Fantasy, the bad-ass female warrior never seems to go out of style, but her appearance and personality change with time. Alien relationships have changed forever thanks to Ice Planet Barbarians--and readers can't get enough of them.

As a writer, you will have your favourites, so lean into those and have fun with them. Do you like the Archie-Veronica-Betty triangle? Gender swap and put them in a world governed by strict class and geographical boundaries and make it life or death (aka The Hunger Games). Do you love a good seduction and abandonment story? Make it vampires and set it in New Orleans (aka The Vampire Lestat). There are so many possibilities!

You can find some fun tropes lists here:

• 101 Science Fiction Tropes For Writers. (Funny if you like Sci Fi blockbuster franchises)
• 80 Sci-Fi Tropes for Writers (More informative and helpful)
• 10 Fantasy and Sci-Fi Tropes Fans Love (a bit of hodge podge, but spot on) 
• 21 Popular Fantasy Tropes for Writers (you will recognize all of these)

And everyone should listen to this podcast to be responsible in their representations of indigenous peoples in SFF:

• Métis in Space  (important considerations of indigenous steretypes in SFF)

Join reader groups

In her post this week, Marcella describes her experiences listening to fandom readers talk about what matters to them. Writers have amazing opportunities to hear from readers today and to learn what expectations they have. Scroll through Goodreads, join some Facebook groups or watch videos from Booktok. This research will help you understand your audience and what they want.

Remember that everything you read, study, and hear goes into the simmering pot of your story. You have to find the sweet spot between genre expectations and the book inside of you. But ignore genre expectations at your peril!

“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” – Lisa See 

Until next time, Mimi

Figuring Out What Readers Expect When They Don't Know They Expect Anything

HAPPY PRIDE!!

I must learn to stop suggesting topics I want the answer to. I should keep in mind that at some point, I'm going to have to pretend to know some version of an answer.

So yes. Analyzing genre reader expectations is something I'm interested in understanding. I have a friend who speaks in terms of hitting reader buttons. One of her examples is that somewhere in the first third of a romance, the heroine sees through the hero's BS. She sees who he could have been (and could still be) if only he hadn't been forced to develop callouses and scars on his heart and seeing that dichotomy makes her MAD. Now, I would never have ID'ed that particular point, but thinking it through, I see it. So it got me thinking about what other hot buttons I'm reading right over the top of unseeing.

I know what *I* want to see in a story. I'm not entirely certain I'm the best benchmark, however.  Then I got involved in a fandom for a show (a rom com). The fandom skews younger than my typical audience and I do a lot of listening. The fan analysis of the show has been DEEP and I'm soaking it up because I'm getting glimpses into what lights these young people up. One of them made a great observation that they aren't like the generations before them who all want to be comforted and made to feel content and happy. She said, "We don't want any of that. We *want* you to rip out our hearts and squeeze them dry." There were many pile-on comments affirming this, though I won't take it as The Truth for an entire generation - but for this rabid and insanely loyal fan base, I will take it as gospel.

I'm still trying to process it and see if somewhere in my own work I can pull some angst into the mix. My take away: Read. Yes, absolutely. But don't stop there. Seek out stories in every format and look at the beats. What happens where? When? Why? What sticks with you? In my case, having this totally over the top fandom picking apart every scene, every nuance, and every breath the characters take has been an amazing master class in understanding what touched the most people in the biggest way. Spoiler: It was tiny detail in the developing relationship - not the big gestures. The smallest touch at the point of greatest danger ruined the Twitter feed for that fandom for months. Months. That's the kind of genre reader expectation I'm looking for - an expectation readers might not be able to name, yet crave all the same without knowing. Then, if I'm clever, I turn that expectation on its head a bit and leave my readers in puddles on the floor. But no pressure.

Consuming stories is a good start if you're analyzing expectations but I feel like it's possible to consume passively - to just take in and experience. The real power comes from a sense of curiosity around what makes something affect you, how it affects you, and why it affects you. Only then can you parse out the pieces and rearrange them to your own purpose. Finding a group of people who are impacted by the same story you are and who are willing to obsess about it at length with you helps enormously. But it's 100% optional.

Don't Forget to Read

When you pick up a mystery book you’d be disappointed if it ended up being a portal fantasy—even if it’s an excellent portal fantasy. So, as an author, how do you analyze genre expectations for the genre you’re writing in?

READ

Yes, KAK and Jeffe said this already this week, but it’s worth saying again. When you’re ready to put your book out in the world, be it querying an agent, submitting to a publisher directly, or self publishing, you need to understand your story in order to sell it. And if you describe something other than what you wrote, your reader will be disappointed.

What have you read recently? Was it in the same genre as your current WIP?

Analyzing Genre Expectations

I just returned from WisCon, which was a delightful, warm, sort-of summer-camp version of a con. I had a great time. I also got to visit the farmer's market and get a wonderful jump start on spring. 

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: How to analyze genre expectations for your genre.

You know, I have one answer to this question, which is pretty much the same as what KAK said yesterday: READ.

I feel like people are often looking for the shortcuts in this business. And certainly there are the shovel-salesmen eager to sell the gold-miners the newest-fangled device that will make their job SO MUCH EASIER. So, sure - there are tools and surveys out there that purport to analyze trends and bullet-point the expectations of the hot genres. 

But nothing substitutes for reading. And reading what's current, as well as the canon the new stuff builds upon. Genre and the expectations readers bring to their reading are fluid and ever changing. I once advised an aspiring author - a woman who'd been very well published 20 years before, had a life-lull, and was looking to get back into it - who hadn't read anything published in her genre in the last couple of decades. She couldn't understand the feedback she was getting from agents and editors because her reading lens was calibrated to what amounted to ancient history genre-wise.

Also, reading refills the creative well. All writers begin as readers first. (At least, I hope so. A writer who doesn't love reading seems to me like a fish who swims but doesn't like water.) If you don't have time to read, make the time. Replace watching shows or scrolling on your phone with READING. You don't have to finish everything you read (I certainly don't), but you should read at least some of what's popular and what your readers are reading.

Did I mention read? Yeah: do that. 

 

Great (Genre) Expectations

 This Week's Topic: How to Analyze Genre Expectations of Your Genre

Pithy answer? Read in your genre. Then read in the adjacent genres. Then read the genre/authors that frequently get lumped into your genre by salesmen and gatekeepers only to wind up flamed by readers. What are the similarities? Differences? What themes, tropes, and archetypes have endured? Which ones have changed? 

Think you've got a handle on it? Great. Go read a dozen or so review sites for your genre (or watch Booktube reviews, or both). Make it a mix of review styles. Find those that have one reviewer and those that have multiple contributors. The reviews of value can pinpoint what works and what doesn't for the reviewer. Lots of times it's a plot issue, poor pacing, or flat characters that leave a reviewer feeling less than love for a book. But if an author hasn't delivered on the genre expectation, the reviewer will notice and decry it. It'll be a reoccurring objection in assorted reviews about the book.  

Feeling like you've got a clue now? Wonderful. At this point, you should be able to sort reader expectations from reader entitlement. Test yourself. Do a web search, and make sure Reddit results are in there too (opinionated avid readers abound there). Can you spot personal preferences over genre expectations? Group-think and trends versus genre expectations? 

Have you noticed it yet?
Genre expectations aren't that numerous.
Regardless of genre.

You're confident at this point, aren't you? Excellent. Now, be bold and ask the question on your socials. Once you get through quality-control expectations, you could find some succinctly-worded gems. 

Of course, asking for opinions could cause you to rue the day you ever followed my advice. 😇

Who Reads Me

I've gone and done it again - forgotten what day it is, what my name is, all the things. New day job started on Monday and the transition has been -- transitiony. Apparently, I don't handle that as well as I'd like to. So once again, my apology. Technically, in my time zone is still Friday. Barely. So let's go. 

What's my demographic.

SFR has a small but dedicated audience. It's a rare reader who wants me to get scifi in their romance and romance in their scifi, but like Reese's Peanut butter Cups, the two things are better together. When I contemplate where to find readers, I start with the obvious: I market to readers of other SFR writers and SF writers who write with romantic elements. Cant I say that the great bulk of my readers identify as female? Yes. But in no way do I want to say that's who my books are for - that's not for me to decide. I will claim gamers as potential audience but only RPG gamers and probably only RPG gamers who identify as female who are between 20 and dead. When I'm buying ads, I'll probably split my audience by age and do A/B testing to see what kind of click through I get from each so I can then laser in my targeting.

The great thing about science fiction and fantasy readers is that most of us will cross the streams. We usually read both. So while I might focus most of my advertising efforts on self-identified scifi readers, I won't hesitate to enter fantasy spaces in a limited way to do a little cross pollenization. I'm not spending money on ads at the moment. As I finish up a WIP, I begin working my author FB page and Instagram page and Tik Tok (if I'm going to commit to doing that) to develop engagement. No selling. Just engagement. Generate page views. Generate interaction. Start conversation if I can. That way, when I finish a book and begin promoting, my ad buys will be served to people who have already seen, heard, chatted with me. If I want to tap a PNR or fantasy audience, I tap the author coop I belong to. Newsletter swaps, blog swaps - there are plenty of options that aren't going to chew up a lot of money. 

It's not a great marketing plan yet. In part because I don't have production nailed down yet. I need something flexible but scalable over the long haul. I do still firmly believe that the best advertisement for your current book is your next book. But a plan for helping people find your books is a good and necessary thing.