Novel Progress

[mabfan]

As of today, I have just finished the first draft of Part One of the novel. This first part is approximately 46,000 words in length. If Part Two and Part Three end up the same length, my 100,000 word novel will end up more like 140,000 words. (I doubt that will happen, though.)

The next step is to go back to the Outline and make some important changes, based upon what has already been written. Then I need to expand the Outline so I have a better handle on Part Two and Part Three.

This always feels strange to me. On the one hand, I know that doing the Outline is a necessary part of writing the novel. It's work that needs to be done for the project to be completed.

On the other hand, something in me resists that notion. Even as I work on the outline, since I'm not able to add to the word count as I do so, I feel as if it's not really getting anything accomplished.

Comments

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

What if you build yourself a word-count equivalency chart for stuff like that? Or does madness and cat-vacuuming lie thither?

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Yes, I must go vacuum the cat. :-)

The problem is that even if I write, say, 1000 words of outline, since it's not "pay copy," as it were, it just doesn't feel the same.

Kind of like rewriting. I don't measure that by word count quota, but rather by time spent doing it. Even though it's necessary, it just doesn't give me the same feeling of accomplishment. Ah, what to do, what to do...

[neilfein.livejournal.com]

You could always (gasp) work without a full outline, get a little more sketchy in the outline stage and see what happens. You might surprise youself.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I've tried, and that simply doesn't work for me. I need a fullish outline to work from when writing a longer work. Sometimes I've even used an outline for my short stories.

And it's not like the story sticks to the outline. Part of the reason I need to go back to the outline is because I made a few changes to the book as I was writing it. For example, the original outline didn't even have one particular character in it. I invented him as I was writing, and now that character has become vital.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's annoying to backtrack, but in the long run you'll be glad you kept careful track of everything.