Thesis: Rethinking Goals
Update 17 28 Sept-4 Oct 2020
Welcome to my thesis diary. After 17 of these I figure most of you know what this is all about… but just in case, I’m in the middle of my classes to complete my MFA. I have about 9 weeks until I get to my capstone class, which requires me to revise my finished manuscript. BUT… I’m writing an epic fantasy novel aiming for 150K (I’m beginning to think that I’m going to hit 180K)… anyway, we are PUSHING hard to finish the rough draft. But maybe not hard enough?
Goals: 16 Week Plan
So, this week was week 7 of 16. Way back at week one I sat down and did the math, looking at where I was and where I wanted to be, 150,000 words. Doing all the math it came out that I needed 5300 words a week to hit my goal. So, I aimed for 5500 a week to give myself some cushion.
Over the last 7 weeks we have hit goal+ each week. But I’m beginning to think that I might have to go further than 150k. As such, starting next week I will be upping my goal to 6500 words per week. That would allow me to hit 170,000 words by my goal date.
WEEK 7
Anyway, all the above goals and worries aside, this week’s goal was 5500 words. We smashed that word count over 4 sessions with a total of 7421 words this week. Yay!
I completed chapter 24 and started #25.
Chapter 24 followed up the lost of Nemo to a failed spell, we went into Keegan’s pov as he was walked through an Ashen city and sat down and talked to about the end goal of the novel. I revealed some of the dangers and a little more of the religion and secrets of the past in this chapter. As the ashen have a different reckoning of history.
Chapter 25
Following that world building we get to chap 25, coming back to Caitlyn’s pov… she’s been working on a bit of archaeological dig. Kind of just ignoring her problems and taking a break in the middle of her story. Yes, I know that sounds odd. Besides again putting a little more world building on display, it also allows more development of all the secondary characters in her group.
Her storyline is also ramping up the horror components of the story, as she’s slowly getting deeper into trouble and leading her group into danger. I will admit that I feel like I’m perhaps taking it a little too slow into the chapter. I want to get them to the point where the action is really happening, but I’m having fun with the slow build.
Hence why I feel that the book is going to go well past the mark. I mean I’m already skipping days to weeks of travel between set pieces, so that’s kind of making me feel a little off.
Week 8 Plans:
The next few chapters are going to be a lot of Caitlyn and Rune, both of their storylines are days to weeks behind the other three POVs… I have a lot of ground to cover. I have to think about cutting some of the more luxurious details. (I have a habit of spending whole pages in characters thoughts and perhaps going a little purple prose…)
I will finish chapter 25 with Caitlyn getting trapped with her crew under a pyramid and dealing with cannibals who have been surviving in the catacombs for centuries. Chapter 26 will have Rune arriving in the “Oasis of Death.” If I get beyond both of those chapters then we have Slater going thru the battlezone of the Mantis with Keegan. Then a Nemo chapter where he is trapped in astral space and about to be launched through space and time.
The more I look at the outline (which incidentally has a large blank that segues into Act three… meaning I planned for even MORE material to go in that space)… the more I wonder how I thought this wasn’t meant to be a 300,000 word book.
Actually it Was…
Here is a bit of a story… you can find this story in a couple of my older posts, but this is a shorter version of it. When I decided to write novels in this world (a world that was created from numerous RPG campaigns and novels when I was a teen) I had a plan. I was going to write a duology, then a standalone “doorstopper” novel, then a 5-book series.
My current WIP is the standalone 3rd novel in the list above. The original plane was for the two books to each be about 100-150k, the 3rd book was going to be 200-300k tome of doom, and then the books in the 5-part series were each aiming for 200k. But when I decided to scrap the first two novels (both in various levels of finished) I knew I couldn’t sell the Ashlands as massive first book. I cut the story to only a few points and decided that a lot of the “trudging through a desert looking for oases on a map and surviving” could be glossed over.
Do readers really want to read a day by day itinerary of travel? Sometimes it’s really good, but really a couple pages could handle the week of walking through a badlands and then the action scene or mystery of the oasis is a lot more interesting to read.
Even with the travel smoothed out and changed up, the set pieces handled in one or two chapters only, and the combats kept to a few pages, instead of entire chapters… having five POVs each with their own secondary casts, their own storylines, their own wants and goals, and trying to give them each the same amount of screen time. It all adds up.
Back on topic
Digression aside… school is going well. Besides a bunch of reading I don’t actually have a lot of work going on. Since I only took one class this term. I still have a bunch of painting to do, and we have some house work issues that need to be handled. Specifically, next Sunday is going to have a lot going on, so I have to get all of writing done earlier in the week, which could be difficult.
The new word goal is 6500 words and that should be more than doable.
I’m also still planning on starting a gaming journal for the Shadowrun game that is about to start. It’s going to be a sporadic game so the updates/journals will only happen once in a while. Maybe two a month. I need to see how it eats into my writing time; these updates already take some of my writing time per week.
Thanks for reading and hope to hear from some of you.
