on blown deadlines and story lengths
Aug. 4th, 2011 02:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingSo I completely blew my extension deadline for my NFE fic. Alas. I am still writing it, though, in hopes of getting it done and submitted before posting begins. In fact, I just got through another big emotional scene -- this one, oddly enough, I had not expected to be a big emotional scene, and then when I arrived at it, it was so blindingly obvious that it was a major tipping point that I cannot figure out how I didn't see that before.
Anyway.
I have now written enough words that I am, as I suspected I would be, forced into splitting the story into at least three LJ posts. This is going to be longer than "What Isn't Broken." There is no way on earth to avoid that, not with the amount of plot (and character arc repercussions) that I still have to plow through.
For reference, What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed) is 24,500 words long. So yeah. When I say my NFE fic is a monster? I am not kidding.
...
You know, it strikes me as interesting how my reaction to the length of a story is shaped by how I define that story when I start writing it. "The Way of the Apartment Manager," for example, is about 75,000 words long, but I don't think of it as being particularly long. That's because (aside from maybe two days during the earliest outline phase, when all I had was a vignette and not a plot) I always conceived of it as a chaptered story, and by about three or four chapters in, I was thinking of it as a novel. (Which it is.) "Secrets" is even longer -- 140,000 words, give or take, with one chapter and an epilogue still to go -- but there again, I was always thinking of it as a chaptered novel, so the length doesn't feel excessive.
But I went into this NFE fic thinking of it as A) a non-chaptered oneshot, and B) a short story -- meaning about 7,000-9,000 words maximum -- so the idea that it won't fit into a single LJ post and is really more of a novella has been throwing me badly.
Funny how the mind works, yeah?
Anyway.
I have now written enough words that I am, as I suspected I would be, forced into splitting the story into at least three LJ posts. This is going to be longer than "What Isn't Broken." There is no way on earth to avoid that, not with the amount of plot (and character arc repercussions) that I still have to plow through.
For reference, What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed) is 24,500 words long. So yeah. When I say my NFE fic is a monster? I am not kidding.
...
You know, it strikes me as interesting how my reaction to the length of a story is shaped by how I define that story when I start writing it. "The Way of the Apartment Manager," for example, is about 75,000 words long, but I don't think of it as being particularly long. That's because (aside from maybe two days during the earliest outline phase, when all I had was a vignette and not a plot) I always conceived of it as a chaptered story, and by about three or four chapters in, I was thinking of it as a novel. (Which it is.) "Secrets" is even longer -- 140,000 words, give or take, with one chapter and an epilogue still to go -- but there again, I was always thinking of it as a chaptered novel, so the length doesn't feel excessive.
But I went into this NFE fic thinking of it as A) a non-chaptered oneshot, and B) a short story -- meaning about 7,000-9,000 words maximum -- so the idea that it won't fit into a single LJ post and is really more of a novella has been throwing me badly.
Funny how the mind works, yeah?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 03:26 pm (UTC)I was shocked to realize that, except for this last chapter, I didn't outline any of the Naruto novel. And, I mean, I never outline, it's not part of how I write usually. But usually I'm writing less than 10,000 words at a time! So this time I kind of look around and go "...what, really?"
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-05 06:02 am (UTC)A whole novel without any outline? Wow. I usually can't write anything longer than about... mmm... 7,000 words, before I start feeling the need for a framework. Which can be as minimal as a single paragraph telling myself roughly where I think I'm going, or as complicated as a scene-by-scene breakdown with several paragraphs devoted to each scene (describing what happens, when it happens, and what the point is, generally), but after a while I simply can't hold the whole story in my head. Outlines are my prosthetic memory, so to speak. :-)