The chronicles word counter!

WiP1 - it has become unfinished once again - has now lost over 50,000** words (and is all the better for it, in terms of structure, reading experience and flow).



But removing 43 words out of 1043? Now that's hard. Good luck with it, chopper.





** - down about 57,000 words from its bloated peak.
 
me and my overwriting skills....

but losing 57k??? crikey that sounds like slaughter!
 
Unfinished
Novel: Talesi
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 127,491
 Status: I have the rest of the book plotted out in detail, which is something I rarely do. Most of the time it seems my books turn out better when I only have a general outline, and let the story and the characters evolve freely - within logical limits, of course! But with Talesi I think it is really important to know almost exactly what will happen. It's more complex and involved than anything I've written so far. That doesn't stop if from being very enjoyable to write.
As the for the usual prediction, it has gone up. To 160k, precisely. While plotting a few scenes came up that I had never thought of before, but which are necessary.
I also have a deadline now which I am setting for myself - I find that, at the climax of a book, it is actually conducive to try and get it done within a certain time frame. At least, that's what I have done for every book so far. The deadline is the 22nd of July. If my math skills don't fail me that is quite fair, and I'm sure I can hit it.
Sorry for long winded posts - I'm in a perpetual epic fantasy mindset.
 
chopper said:
me and my overwriting skills....

but losing 57k??? crikey that sounds like slaughter!
Click to expand...

Not really, chopper. I had a major POV character whose place in the story changed so much (by WiP3) that I thought it would be dishonest to keep quiet about what she was doing in WiP1. While I lost some scenes I really liked, there was no way I could keep them in**. There was a similar problem with another POV; only one scene remains (and that is only hanging on by its fingertips).



On top of that, I had a quite complex frame story, in two parts:
  • The outer part may have made suspension of disbelief problemmatical for a reader, so I've reduced it to a single chapter (there had been two longish ones, plus four short ones) at the end of WiP1.
  • The inner part could have blown the suspension of disbelief out of the water***; and while it provided a very useful means of explaining important things that were sometimes tangential to the plot, I was able to lose nine (out of ten) chapters (each of medium length) without too much trouble. I'm left with one chapter which was originally near to the beginning of the book. It has become the penultimate chapter and is followed by the outer frame story, which bolsters the suspension of disbelief rather than undermine it.
It all comes of trying to be too clever by half and tripping over the complexity. (Oh, and WiP1 was 203,000 words at its peak: far too long.)


** - If you've read some ASoIaF, imagine Littlefinger POV chapters where he omitted to even think about what he was doing; or chapters called "Varys".

*** - Until the end of WiP4, which would not be fair on anyone.
 
sheesh. mind you, i'm finding it hard going just keeping to a single POV all the way through the Epic Novel - being too clever for my own good, i decided to keep the reader as ignorant as the protagonist....

but the word count rises:

Clockwork Eyeball
alternate 1950s post-steampunk Earth short story/novelette
ticking over nicely (ouch!)
4039 words
 
Work in Progress - Fantasy novel (untitled)

Current word count - 40,053

Phew, another 10k milestone, which means another 10k out to my test readers for their thoughts. I thought I was going to struggle a little there, but letting my characters naturally clash with one another has spun out some interesting dialogues.

Still rough as the badger's proverbial derriere but its 4 times longer than anything I've previously written and I've not been put off it yet, which must be a good thing.
 
Latest Project
Novel: Harvester
Word Count: 3 706
Δ: -
Timemark: July 11th, 2009
Interim Goal: 10 000
ETA: August 1st, 2009
Estimated Final Word Count: 100 000
 
Latest project: Manchester Fiction Prize
Word count: 4,200

Spent yesterday hammering out the first draft of a story for the upcoming competition. Given the nature of the prize fund, it'll probably be up against some serious competition, but that's no reason not to give it my all.

Also it was great practice at just taking a flash of inspiration and turning it into a complete piece of speculative fiction. The ending was a bit duff, but I've had an idea to turn it around since, and my excuse for the first draft is that I was getting called endlessly on skype to talk about enzymes.*


*and if I had turned Skype off, my mobile would've been going nuts.
 
oh the joys of modern communications....

meanwhile, back at the ranch:

Clockwork Eyeball - 5500 words and rising!
this one could conceiveably run and run - we haven't got close to the device in question yet.
 
CotM (v5.1) - 88 621 words.

I'm gearing up towards the end game, while continuously thinking how bad writer I am. Self-confidence is such a hard and bitch opponent to fight against. I just feel that after I finish this project and put it (un)successfully in bed, I do a crime mystery in Finnish (at least I've said that for many years now.)
 
4,849 on the competition entry. An entire morning spent putting a new ending on (I was so grumpy at being endlessly interrupted last night, the last line of the document read "then they all went to get ice cream THE END", which I had forgotten about) and then doing the re-draft.

For the first time in a long time, I've written something that doesn't struggle against the constraints of the word limit for the competition (5k in this case).

Going to send it to my trusty critics this afternoon for feedback, and get back to the novel. I need to think of a bunch of new names, and having just read Isabel Allende's Zorro everything seems to pale horribly in comparison to the classic awesomeness of Don Diego de la Vega.
 
I actually somehow managed 550 words today while at work (or despite being at work, I suppose). Almost feels like I'm kind of sort of maybe approaching getting my groove back. Perhaps.

Project: Untitled
Genre: Elf-punk? High fantasy? Not too sure just yet
Wordcount: 4559 (including some cuts at the end of the doc, so probably around 4250 in reality)
Status: Alive! For now...
 
Culhwch said:
I actually somehow managed 550 words today while at work (or despite being at work, I suppose). Almost feels like I'm kind of sort of maybe approaching getting my groove back. Perhaps.
Click to expand...

Don't worry. You'll eventually get your groove back. I was in my groove for a good year, then fell out of it again for another year. Now it's back. Once a writer, always a writer, no matter how long a hiatus you take.

Unfinished
Novel: Talesi
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 135,720
 Status: Nearing the end. 15k more should bring it. Every event is plotted perfectly in my mind. Everything is coming together. The next time I post it should be finished, and since I'm a workaholic it won't be long until I post a chart for my next book.
 
Jon_Sauve123 said:
Unfinished
Novel: Talesi
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 135,720
 Status: Nearing the end. 15k more should bring it. Every event is plotted perfectly in my mind. Everything is coming together. The next time I post it should be finished, and since I'm a workaholic it won't be long until I post a chart for my next book.
Click to expand...

It's definitely going to be 145-150k. Nearly done, at 137k (could have been at 140k but I was unable to write yesterday). Also, I have started my next book already, since I was stuck only with a notebook for a time while I was watching my baby brother. Here's the chart so far. Maybe my next post will have two charts!

Unfinished
Novel: The Invisible Guest (working title)
Genre: It's hard to classify, it's sort of sci-fi mixed with horror, but told in a modern setting.
Word Count: 577 (that'll shoot up quickly once I start on it full time)
Status: Kind of on hold until I finish Talesi, I might do a few hundred words per day until then. My normal daily output is about 2900k if anyone's interested; that's about 5 pages in times new roman 12 size font.

 
Monday seems a good day for an update....

Project: Untitled
Genre: Let's go with epic fantasy
Wordcount: 5521 (in my defense, I went backwards before forwards)
Status: Trudging ever onward...

I'm considering doing somethign on this one I've never done before - advanced planning. Usually I just come up with some characters, do a little (or a lot of) worldbuilding, and have at it. Hasn't worked for me so far (stalled at forty thousand on one occasion, twenty on a few others). So I'm flirting with doing a detailed plot outline to have at least the semblance of a road map going forward. I hesitate because I'm concerned I won't even be able to flesh out a plot outline, let alone the whole novel.
 
Xelebes said:
Latest Project
Novel: Harvester
Word Count: 3 706
Δ: -
Timemark: July 11th, 2009
Interim Goal: 10 000
ETA: August 1st, 2009
Estimated Final Word Count: 100 000
Click to expand...

Latest Project
Novel: Harvester
Word Count: 5 190
Δ: 1 484
Timemark: July 19th, 2009
Interim Goal: 10 000
ETA: August 1st, 2009
Estimated Final Word Count: 100 000

Notes: I did a thousand words on the 12th and then let myself do other things for a week. Did a bit of work today and it should be going up sooner.
 
Culhwch said:
I'm considering doing somethign on this one I've never done before - advanced planning. Usually I just come up with some characters, do a little (or a lot of) worldbuilding, and have at it. Hasn't worked for me so far (stalled at forty thousand on one occasion, twenty on a few others). So I'm flirting with doing a detailed plot outline to have at least the semblance of a road map going forward. I hesitate because I'm concerned I won't even be able to flesh out a plot outline, let alone the whole novel.
Click to expand...

Definitely at least do a vague outline - I normally keep a document where I can just type down every neat idea I get for a scene or a conversation, or anything which might come in handy. I also have a time line of events, either in my head or in another document. I never follow this time line perfectly, but it gives a good foundation to build on. By the time I reach a scene I have planned out it no longer fits well with the book, but I find I can salvage several ideas from it, and use those. With this strategy, I mostly avoid writer's block.

Finished!
Novel: Talesi
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 148,172
Status: Complete, since the 18th. It's 1 AM now on the 20th; on the 19th I added a good hundred words to really make it feel finished. The last two novels I've written have fallen neatly 2k words short of my estimate. Perhaps a trend is emerging? A good revision will follow in a while, but I think this may be the best first draft I have ever done.

I'll update again once I make a proper start on the next project.
 
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