Welcome to yet another guest-hosted installment of Write On!
FACT: 75,000 to 80,000 words is the ideal length of your first novel submission. Just where did I get this expertise on such a matter? Obsessively reading writing blogs, advice articles on how to find an agent, and wild speculation, of course. Where else?
FACT: That is a lot of words.
Really, I’m just using that ballpark so we’re all on roughly the same page when we’re talking a full length, non-NaNoWriMo effort. No matter what your expected length or topic, it’s a lot of words when you’re talking about a novel. If these little writing sessions are like treats or snacks, then a novel is like a whale.
Still want to write a novel, for some insane reason? Me too, so let’s start talking about how to eat a whale.
Writing a novel is an intimidating prospect: that’s a lot of words and a story that has to make sense all the way to the end. It’s easy for me to get lost in the immensity of the task, like standing at the base of a mountain and just gawking at how high the peak is. Does that count as a mixed metaphor, since we started with eating whales?
Regardless, the point is I have to avoid that state of mind if I’m ever going to get anything done. Ultimately, this is one of those corny Zen and the Art of… things, the whole “journey of a thousand miles/single footstep” idea: The meal of an entire whale begins with a single bite.
I used to try and start banging out the story in a single document, trying to write it from start to finish like some caricature pounding away madly at an old-school typewriter and stacking the pages as I go. I wrote a lot of cool scenes or vignettes, but I couldn’t make any real headway on a single coherent story. Reading back through my work started to remind me of a little kid eagerly explaining my own story to me.
“Oh, this part is great, they’re having a fight in the bar- oh, wait! This is the part where she tells him the big secret. Then, there’s this one part, I don’t know where it goes, but it’s so good…”
Eating the whale wasn’t going to work that way, stuffing it down my throat in one never-ending dinner.
I don’t know why I resisted for so long trying any other approach, but I did. I’ve found that I need a plan to even start having something resembling a story that can fairly be called a “narrative”. I start out with a big picture document that has the broad strokes (plot summary, outline, notes on characters or mood or whatever else grabbed me at 3 AM right as I was starting to fall asleep), then I make a proper, old school, school report style outline.
It doesn’t need to be pretty, but it lets me get my thoughts down. Re-reading it later lets me spot things that don’t make sense, are out of order, or maybe I want to combine some and split others. So now I’ve got an outline. You could do this by dividing it up into three acts or steps of the hero’s journey or whatever structure you prefer and then putting down ideas, but that never works for me. I find it’s easier to think of the story I want to tell, then worry about tweaking its structure after the basic idea is down.
So, I’m usually listing major plot points, then sub-points for scenes/ideas that will make up the plot point. At this point, I’ve got a pretty decent story skeleton. More importantly, now I have the story broken up into a number of steps dividing up my story. Now I just need to divide up those hypothetical 80,000 words among the steps. Let’s say when I finish I’ve got 10 major plot points.
Ten major plot points? Sounds like ten 8,000-word chapters.
8,000 words? That’s like 10-15 days where I get some writing done for an hour or two.
10-15 days of writing for a few hours? That’s just about 600-800 or so words each time. Now that’s a manageable bite-sized chunk of a whale. I type a rough word count next to each section, and now I’ve turned those little chunks into a plan. I’ve got clear goals I can work to and check off, which helps me stay organized and motivated.
It gives me something to shoot for without getting bogged down in the big picture. Sit down, and just try to get to 800 or so words, one day at a time. It’s a little methodical, but I find it makes it much easier to break through writer’s block. Instead of trying to write an entire story, I’m just trying to write a single scene, or part of one. It’s a lot simpler to focus on making that scene work, making everything fit that single objective, instead of trying to keep the entire big picture in mind. It doesn’t need to be perfect, and since I have an overall idea for the story, it’s easier to bounce around to keep me interested and going if I get stuck on one part. It’s a psychological thing, really: I’m not trying to write an entire novel, I’m just trying to get through a list of writing practice exercises.
Obviously, there will need to be a once-over with a fair amount of editing to make sure everything flows neatly, prune away inconsistencies, and otherwise hammer out the dings in story structure and integrity that arise. That’s okay, though: knowing that all that revising is coming frees me up to just write and worry about the rest later. I need to remind myself that since this is all a rough draft anyway, I’ll probably be gutting or tweaking a lot on my first real pass, so I don’t have to worry about if it will all fit seamlessly together. Besides, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy, so I can careen off course when and if I feel like it.
Eat a bite when you can, and keep coming back to it for another when you can again. It took Melinda Mae 89 years; I can eat it a little faster (I hope!) but I have to eat the whole thing one bite at a time. Full disclosure, I don’t have a full novel yet, so these are not the words of a master, just someone trying to avoid indigestion telling you what’s worked so far. I went from producing only a few thousand words a year spread across countless notes, files, and scribbles on pieces of paper to about 30,000 words over the course of the pandemic. Granted, it’s divided up between three novels, but it’s still a huge leap forward in production for me.
That’s how I try to eat a whale, anyway. But maybe you have a different method to keep yourself moving towards that goal? Let’s hear how you plan to eat this whale (and, in some of your cases, how you ate your last whale and what you learned about eating them). I learned the hard way to open myself to new approaches, I’m eager to hear how you approach the task of telling a tale.
Do you wing it, or do you come at it with a plan? Where do you start? Do you take big bites or little ones? Gorge one day, fast the rest of the week? Regular meals every day?
Let’s hear how you’re going to eat that whale.
Tonight’s Exercise
Tell us how you’re going to eat the whale. Alternatively, you can write a short scene where two characters face a monumental task before them. Let’s see how they handle the situation. You learn a lot from seeing how people act under pressure. Bonus points if the scene includes a whale.