The chronicles word counter!

[Jo Zebedee]

Well done to all who've finished.

Got rid of a scene today which never worked and replaced it with much tighter scene doing the same thing, and down at 125000 words and moving into more sellable 1st novel territory, so pretty happy; now moving into the real central story, so I'll have to work at keeping it down. about a third of the way there, now.

 

[The Judge]

Provisional title: Black as Night
Genre: Fantasy (still no dragons but a corzzato has made an appearance)
Word count: 40,080
Status: for the characters -- the men have finally left the tunnels. Huzzah! Chais back on dry land but rowing of a different sort happening.
.......... for me -- still wondering what the plot might be.

After an horrendous couple of months for writing, I've finally started to climb out of the pit, and at last I've reached another milestone:

Provisional title: Black as Night
Genre: Fantasy (no longer just one corzzato...)
Word count: 50,016
Status: for the characters -- the men still not at the city, and dastardly doings cause further delay. Chais waking up.
.......... for me -- trying to develop a magic system that works and makes sense.

 

[Nik]

"I've finally started to climb out of the pit..."

Finally reaching day-light, there's a terrible stage when you expect the sides to crumble at the last moment and dump you back into the dark...

Glad you're back on terra firma.

 

[JLawrenceDavis]

Title: Cloaks: Book 1: The Royals
Genre: Fantasy (more likely S&S than High Fantasy)
Word Count: 50,700 words
Status: working on third draft by reviewing line by line. After third draft done, will be sending it to any beta readers I can attract.

I've been thinking of the world and the magic since last winter, outlining characters and stories. In the last month, I've written the story and have been editing since. By reading some comments in this thread, I'm getting more motivated in editing and working on sequels.

 

[The Judge]

Thanks, Nik! I'm not taking anything for granted, but I think I'm getting there.


Hello, JLD --glad to see we're helping motivate you! As a matter of interest, since you make no mention of increasing word count, are you planning to keep around the 50,000 mark? That's short for a complete adult fantasy, as you probably know, but I think chopper is writing and self-publishing instalments of a larger series of around that figure.

 

[chopper]

i am indeed, although mostly because my mind refused to consider the plot unless it was broken down into smaller, more manageable chunks. and TJ - 50k! woot! always good to break that barrier.

meanwhile:

MC2 (HKV)
epic fantasy sequel
~43000 words (target 120000)
endured a rough chapter, found some fresh impetus through throwing in a gratuitous fight, and now looking at Waking the Shieldmen.

ED4 (The Packard Defence)
episodic space flannel serial
#2000 words (target 50k approx)
on the backburner for now, plot settling nicely into shape.

 

[JLawrenceDavis]

Word count has been a challenge for me. As I'm working through drafts and making edits, I've been adding scenes for added character development and relationships but may not be adding too much more. When I first set out to write the story, I did research on word counts and know how it's shorter but I'm not too bothered by it at the moment, although maybe I should be considering some of the word counts I see in this thread.

 

[The Judge]

chopper -- a gratuitous fight scene? I trust it wasn't in a bar. There are only so many cliches we can allow, y'know! Well done on the progress -- though shouldn't the space flannel be coming out at timely intervals?


JLD, it very much depends what you want to do with the story. If you're hoping to get published by the traditional route, it's far too short -- anything under 100,000 is unlikely to be looked at over here. If you're self-publishing, then it's a different matter. But in that case, I think it would help to be able to write the stories and publish them relatively quickly to keep up the momentum.

 

[chopper]

timely intervals: true enough, though 1 a year amongst my other projects may have to be the limit for now...

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Well, I've done it and finished the edit. Got it down to 75000 words, a little shorter than planned. I have a bit of feedback to come from someone much more knowledgeable than me on my military scenes, so there might be a bit of an edit in there, but by and large that's me.

One more readthrough, and then I have someone kindly giving it a review for me, and then I might, finally, be able to let go of my protagonist and return to some form of normal life, and stop neglecting my poor family.

(My husband says, in my defence, I always told him I planned to write this book so he was warned in advance!)

 

[Phyrebrat]

I've been all over the show lately and really dropped the ball on the two short WIPs I posted above. Partly because I needed a fresh impetus but mostly down to needing both stories to percolate a bit before I carried on. So..they're in the Slow Cooker at the moment..

Which means I have picked up on one of two of much longer WIPs, in particular Soot which stalled when I had to introduce three new characters (which I knew was coming but...), but reading this thread over the past three weeks, I got the boot in the rear I needed, so;

Novel: Soot
Genre: Supernatural thriller
Start Date: 11/03/11 (that's March to my Stateside friends )
Current Word Count: 22,069
Target: 80,000
Brief Synopsis: Female protagonist coroner becomes involved in finding out why London Underground staff are dying from nosebleeds. With the help of a West African man who is more than he seems at first, she's up to her neck in The Black Death, Traditional African shamanism and corrupt capitalists.
Status: After tearing through the set up of around 15,000 words, I stalled with the introduction of some ancillary characters. I have now overcome my lack of investment in the 3 characters and fleshed them out to my satisfaction (in terms of a first draft). In the past fortnight I've added around 7,000 words.

I'm happy with my progress for the first time in a long time. Now I just have to re-order my overarching story strands as they have shifted with the characters' development.

Judge...what is a corzzato?

 

[The Judge]

Judge...what is a corzzato?

Ah... I could say you'll have to wait for the book to appear to find out... but it's my invention of a cross between a giant pangolin and a large dog -- a pangolin in appearance, except a bit bigger, but with a head that's more like a dog's in shape, and its characteristics are more dog-like, which means it doesn't confine itself to eating termites. (The Italian word "corazzato" means armour-plated.)

 

[Phyrebrat]

Oh.. that explains why it didn't come up in my dictionary or thesaurus on my mac. Thank you for the explanation (and indulgence!) and apologies for the misspelling.

Pangolin's are wonderful. When I was a kid we had to do a 'project' on them in primary school. I didn't do very well, I must admit, but I enjoyed it and until I discovered pike they were my favourite creature

 

[The Judge]

No -- you didn't mis-spell it -- I adapted the Italian to make it slightly different, but not too much, so there was still a link to it. Hmm. Pike. I'll be having a pike-like creature making a fleeting appearance in my SF. You don't like centi-/millipedes as well, do you? If so, we've got a hat-trick!

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'm so lazy, I should have checked up the thread and seen the spelling

Can't say I'm a millipede or centipede fan...but I'll raise you a kingfisher or velociraptor to make the hat trick!

Delighted to hear about your pike inclusion. I used to keep pike - well, one - in a six foot tank before I moved to London. Got quite expensive buying goldfish but I won't go into that for fear of upsetting anyone. Anyway, I look forward to reading it! I recently finished a 'short' about a 100' long pike that lived in the Thames.

Phyrebrat
*Carrying the banner for pike since 1983*

 

[Azzagorn]

Unfinished
Novel: Mason ( Working Title)
Genre: Sci-Fi
Word Count: 3987
Status: Active though not progressing as fast as i'd like

 

[Perpetual Man]

Finished the last short story I was working on, but in this current mass it is the first one I've been back over a couple of times and am not happy with. So I'm going to leave it for now and move onto the next - 'Just A Gardener'

9,500 words, Fantasy

 

[chopper]

MC2 (HKV)
epic fantasy sequel
~43000 words (target 120000)
endured a rough chapter, found some fresh impetus through throwing in a gratuitous fight, and now looking at Waking the Shieldmen.

MC2 (HKV)
dat dere epic fantasy sequel
~48000 words (target 120k)
the Shieldmen are Awake. or at least, the first four have woken. now for the rest of the army. and then, the long march North....

 

[chopper]

MC2 (HKV)
dat dere epic fantasy sequel
~48000 words (target 120k)
the Shieldmen are Awake. or at least, the first four have woken. now for the rest of the army. and then, the long march North....

sorry for the double post, but i wanted to get this through before the year was out...

MC2 (HKV)
genre: go on, have a guess...
50000 words and rising.
50k! 50k! only another 70k to go.....

 

[Mouse]

My new thing. First novel started in yonks and hopefully 'The One'.

Novel: The Beautiful Man
Genre: Urban fantasy/paranormal romance without much romance. Kinda.
Word count: 4945 including 132 words of notes. Four chapters.
Status: Pootling along. Write one chapter, fiddle with said chapter, write next chapter.