A good, solid day of writing. But I'm a bit worried now. As I've mentioned, I'm writing a mystery novel -- my first dive into that genre. I read a lot of mystery novels and know that this genre should be no less than 60,000 words. NaNoWriMo's goal is 50,000 in thirty days.I'm past the mid-way point in the novel and have realized that I may not have enough meat in my plot to get me past much more than 50,000 -- great for NaNoWriMo, bad for a mystery novel.
I started to panic a little, questioning why I didn't think it out further before I jumped in.
But worrying is a wasted emotion.
I got it out of my system and decided to move forward. If by the time I'm done I have 40,000 words, so be it. That's the story that was produced. However, I have confidence in my characters. I have a feeling that they'll throw a couple of curve balls soon, extending the word count in a natural organic and meaningful way.
But one thing is for sure, I will not add empty scenes, empty words, or empty subplots. A good story with escalating conflicts and deep characters generate words. Words do not create a good story.
Day 12's total: 3,880
Overall: 30,515
Fight the good fight!
Even if you only get 40 or 50K for your first draft, there's always plenty of layering that can go in on the later passes. I tend to skimp on setting and then layer it back in (in small bits) to set the scene and keep the reader grounded. Plus it helps provide deeper POV if I can make it specific to the POV character for that scene (like what a cop would notice about a room compared to an interior designer).
ReplyDeleteI also find that I have to ramp up the emotion during revision.
Anyway, you're really killing it this year. Great job!
Those are great points, Gwen. Setting has been very VERY thin and emotions, like internal dialogue has been off an on thorough the manuscript. The movement of this story has been driven by the characters and their dialogues. So I can definitely see how the manuscript will fill out in a natural way. I'm glad I know smart people :)
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