Another Chapter Down
08. Nov, 2009 
6 Comments
When you work for yourself, Sunday tends to be a work day just like any other. Sunday also has lots of distractions like football games and, for me, indoor soccer. The game today was in the mid-afternoon, which gave me time to write a chapter today, which I did. It came in at 2632 words and took a bit longer than normal to write. This was because I needed to revise my map to make some things work and because I needed to hit the Bible to pull up some quotations.
The map revision was the harder part of the two. Geography has certain realities that must be accounted for, involving rates of travel and lines of supply. I had to make sure I had a location that had strategic value and good lines of supply, otherwise there would be no reason for it to exist. It had to be in a position to constitute a threat, and yet be far enough away that heading over to it and wiping it out wasn’t going to be a stroll in the park. (And I still don’t know how I will take it apart, but that’s a problem for later.)
And the toughest part of all that was actually finding an eraser to make map revisions. (You don’t want to know where I found it.)
The map alterations got put on my large map of the world, then also got copied into a tactical map in my notebook. (It’s located right below the notes I made on Bible passages. Those are in pen, the map in pencil.) I’m not sure how the American publisher or German publisher will handle the maps. It would be kind of cool to have tactical maps scattered around the book. If not, I’ll put them on the website for those who want to approach this more as historical fiction than fantasy. I know that not every reader is concerned with logistics, but I have a fair number who are. I tend to be a bit of a logistics nerd anyway, and I’d go insane if I didn’t actually make sure things synced up.
I’m officially halfway through the novel and things are on track. Things have not gone exactly the way I thought they would, but that’s also fairly standard when it comes to books. The story is much better for the differences between where I thought it would be and where it is, so I’m happy with the progress. I’m very much enjoying writing this book and, as I have said elsewhere, this work is much too hard to do if you are not having fun.
The week was a fairly productive one. In six days I added just over 25,000 words to the manuscript. I need to do that this next week. On the plus side, I get Monday which I didn’t have last week. On the bad side, I have two half days at the end of the week, and then I shall be out of town until late Sunday. While I will have my computer with me, I don’t know if I will get work done. But one thing I will make sure of is that if I do get work done, it’s backed up on a thumb drive so I won’t lose it in case of a crash.
November Word Count: Hard: 25392 Soft: 5617
Eraser: Let me guess, couch cushions?
In six days I added just over 25,000 words to the manuscript.
Impressive. Most impressive.
it’s backed up on a thumb drive so I won’t lose it in case of a crash.
I don’t know if you are in the market for one such, but if you are, I can unreservedly recommend a LaCie external hard disk. I have a 160 GB one—it’s small, like one of those Western Digital Passport ones that they sell at Best Buy—that I bought nearly two years ago, and I have all but used it as a hockey putt in the intervening time. It’s still working perfectly.
Nope, not in couch cushions. Nothing under them, but then I don’t think I’ve sat on my couch much in the last month.
Thanks for the recommendation on the Lacie. I have one of their desktop drives and I like it a lot. Since I’ll only be backing up a few files, the thumb drive will work for the moment (or I could just save them to my webserver, I guess) but they will be backed up, which is the most important thing.
…wait, isn’t this novel set during the Revolutionary War? I don’t think changing the map is allowed!
The political situations and pressures are analogous to the Revolutionary War, but this is another (distantly parallel) world. so I can change the world. Just takes a really big bulldozer.
So just based on your comments, your “usual novel” runs about 100,000 words? most of them have clocked in at around 400+ pages, so does that mean that this one, which sounds more like in the 50,000 word range, is going to be more like 200-250 page range?
what kinds of sacrifice do you have to make to create a setting, over the course of three books and novellas as well as short stories you have mentioned, when you are only allowing yourself half the page space as, say, the Dragoncrown War Cycle?
Ah, one point I’ve not made… Coming into November I already had 50,000 words in on the novel. The target length for this book is 150,000 words, and I just hit 80K.
Pages are never a good indicator of page length because type size, line spacing and layout will affect the size of the book. Compare, for example, a paperback and a “large print” version of the same book. Word count in the measure. (But, just for your reference, the old Doc Savage novels used to run 50K words, and in paper came in at 125-150 pages depending on type size.)
The DragonCrown War books all came it at 200,000 words or more. Still, there’s no sacrifice in world development. You use and explain the elements that matter to the story. If you have more room, you could add more elements, but the critical thing is that stories revolve around characters. No matter the length, you only use what is vital to the character’s developing growth arcs.
For huge books with tons of world development, I recommend the work of Steven Erikson. Massive tomes and really good.