More Writee

No writee here = writee in novel


The thing that's sticking in my craw now is that Character B's scenes are still too short. I had a big climactic confrontation with cops and explosions and people getting set on fire and everything, and it only clocked in at 2200 words. That's small, even for Character B. I've only had one of his scenes with a 1 in the thousands column, but its been a struggle to keep it that way. The problem is, this is both a good thing and a bad thing.

Currently the novel weighs in at 154,000 words. That's hefty, and that's because each of the character's story lines is about novel length, which I did not intend, it just ended up that way with the stuff I had them do. And that's just now. I've still got one more scene, two or three for the ending, and then a bunch for a 'mysterious third party', that mostly serves to break up scenes. How the hell did this thing get so long? Even Blood 2 wasn't this long. Did I have them do too much? Am I overwriting?

The length isn't really the big deal. I think a lot of stuff can be condensed. The problem is that I'm afraid Character A is overshadowing Character B because I have more words on him, and therefore more focus. It doesn't feel like I'm making him do any more or less. His scenes just end up longer. This means the reader's going to spend more time on Character A, when I wanted them to be evenly matched. My hope is that I can inflate Character B's scenes and reduce Character A's, hopefully, without taking away any scenes, so that it ends up even. I just worry, that's all.

I want to make sure my next novel doesn't end up to be a whopper like this one and last. I'm in the planning stages now, but I'm wondering how much to include. I'd like it to come out so I have a 90,000 word novel, not a Lord of the Rings epic. These big ones just take too long to write, and try my patience.

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