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La, a note that follows Novel
16 years ago
General
I ended up spending an entire vacation day working on the second draft of Smiley and The Hero (it has a title now! (not a good title, but at least it is a title)). Last night I rewrote this scene in which a guy gets killed. Not to go all Ben Kingsley on you guys, but it's so intense for me that it leaves me shaken. It's difficult to write on a visceral, emotional level, which is something I've never experienced before. I hope that means it's actually good, and not just freaky and fucked up. I have considered taking it out, because it dramatically changes the tone of the story when it happens -- but the problem is that it changes it in a way that it needs to be changed. I dunno. We'll see what the workshop/editors say.
Current word count of the second draft: 30754
Original word count of the drafted portion: 23464
That's 7290 new words, or a 30% increase. And this in a story that I was already worried was too dawdling. I worry that Johnny lives in his head a little bit too much in this story, spends too much time soul-searching and exploring his motivations. It's also a very chatty story -- I like dialogue, but maybe I like it too much. The only thing is that I'm pretty sure the stuff I've added improves the story, grounds it, fleshes it out, makes it more real, solidifies character motivations, and draws them more thoroughly into their arcs. I'm pretty sure I'm making it better.
I've got 17680 words remaining of the original draft to revise. If I keep making additions at the rate I have been, that will end up being about 22984 words in the final copy, for a grand total of 53738.
I started this project planning for it to be a short story. Then a novella. 50k words is the bottom limit for NaNoWriMo -- that is, this is technically a novel now. I had started to think I would never manage to write one.
The problem is, it's only technically a novel. Realistically a novel is around 75-80k; that works out to 300 pages normally. So I'm in this weird limbo where the thing is too long to be a novella and too short to be a novel, and plus all my friends are sick of hearing me natter on about it by now.
Ah well. Perfectionism murders the artistic drive. It may be oddly-sized, overly self-reflective, and have a tendency to wander, but it's mine, god damn it. Right now I'm just focused on finishing this second draft, on fixing the problems I can see and address. And there's a lot of awesome sauce in it too -- more than in the first draft by far, I think. I'll let it become what it wants to become, and then I'll try to help it fit in someplace.
Current word count of the second draft: 30754
Original word count of the drafted portion: 23464
That's 7290 new words, or a 30% increase. And this in a story that I was already worried was too dawdling. I worry that Johnny lives in his head a little bit too much in this story, spends too much time soul-searching and exploring his motivations. It's also a very chatty story -- I like dialogue, but maybe I like it too much. The only thing is that I'm pretty sure the stuff I've added improves the story, grounds it, fleshes it out, makes it more real, solidifies character motivations, and draws them more thoroughly into their arcs. I'm pretty sure I'm making it better.
I've got 17680 words remaining of the original draft to revise. If I keep making additions at the rate I have been, that will end up being about 22984 words in the final copy, for a grand total of 53738.
I started this project planning for it to be a short story. Then a novella. 50k words is the bottom limit for NaNoWriMo -- that is, this is technically a novel now. I had started to think I would never manage to write one.
The problem is, it's only technically a novel. Realistically a novel is around 75-80k; that works out to 300 pages normally. So I'm in this weird limbo where the thing is too long to be a novella and too short to be a novel, and plus all my friends are sick of hearing me natter on about it by now.
Ah well. Perfectionism murders the artistic drive. It may be oddly-sized, overly self-reflective, and have a tendency to wander, but it's mine, god damn it. Right now I'm just focused on finishing this second draft, on fixing the problems I can see and address. And there's a lot of awesome sauce in it too -- more than in the first draft by far, I think. I'll let it become what it wants to become, and then I'll try to help it fit in someplace.
