1,000 Words at a Time

[rynling]

How I turned an idea into an outline
https://bookishdiplodocus.tumblr.com/post/178570150561/how-i-turned-an-idea-into-an-outline

Then I calculated how many scenes I need in which part of the story. My wip is a YA or 12+ book, so I want it to contain about 75,000 words in total. I want my scenes to be around 1,000 words long to keep it snappy, so I need 75 scenes.

This is an interesting and useful post about how to plot a novel, and I appreciate that it succinctly cuts through the bullshit of so many mainstream writing guides that are often treated as one-size-fits-all industry standards. I tend to structure my plots a bit differently than the method suggested in this essay, but it's still helpful to think of a huge project like writing a novel as "75 chunks of 1,000 words, give or take." What this set of numbers means is that, if I can write a thousand words in a week, which is absolutely doable for me, then I can have the first draft of a novel finished in about a year and a half. Nice!

As an aside, I'm going to have to admit that I find the obsession with wordcounts a bit ridiculous. I understand that wordcounts help writers keep track of the progress they're making, but it bothers me when it's taken for granted that wordcount defines genre. What I love about literary fiction, as well as fiction published outside the United States, is that it defies the unwritten rule that something needs to be a certain number of words or pages in order to have market value. I actually really enjoy novellas and longer stories and essays that don't fit into neat American categories! I resent the expectation that a manuscript needs to weigh in at 130,000 words in order to be taken seriously, but I can start evaluating the market once I have something to sell. Until then, I might as well enjoy myself without worrying too much.

Comments

[runicmagitek]

This is more or less how I outline! Thought it's more like... 2k-4k words per scene, depending on what I'm writing, but it's a great way to get a rough estimate of what your end product will be. Like the high school fluff AU I'm working on is about 300-350k, depending on how much I ramble in each scene, which... yeah, I hope it doesn't become that much of a beast, but we'll see how it goes.

I also get immensely frustrated with the obsession with word counts in regards to published fiction. Like I just don't give a fuck how long or short something is, so long as it's good. This was one of the many factors that discouraged me with my original fiction draft I was trying to polish. Max word count for a sci-fi story was 130k (I think) back in 2014 and my draft was 185k. So many places won't even consider looking at your manuscript if it's your first time publishing and you're over their random ass word count. But if you're established? Then it just doesn't fucking matter and it pisses me off, because you get "famous" writers who shit out novels that are over 600 pages and it flies simply due to the fact they're "famous" and said shit will sell and that's all that matters. Every time I try to get my toes wet with original stories again, I'm always reminded of the word count bullshit and get discouraged all over again. I understand selling copies is how people get paychecks and live or whatever, but I'd much rather take one great story that's over that word count limit than fifty okay-ish books that meet that word count requirement. don't mine me I just have Feelings™ about all of this

[lassarina]

Thank you so much for this link. I think it'll be really useful for me.