McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

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Enjorous:
*shrugs* I find it helps keeps things tight when there aren't random tangents flying all over the place. That's the spirit of it I think.

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: Kali on May 25, 2010, 08:06:00 PM ---But Stephen King also is a "big" writer.  I don't mean famous, I mean he naturally writes excessively.  He writes a WHOLE lot of words in his first drafts, so he has to trim.  I write lean.  My first non-NaNo draft came in around 66k words.  I need to loosen up, not subtract 10%.  All depends on what your natural inclination is.

--- End quote ---

My first drafts almost always need an extra 20% added to the last third or so so that someone who isn't me has some hope of understanding what's going on, fwiw.

Starbeam:
Stephen King doesn't plot anything out.  He just lets the story go where it wants to, and he's also extremely verbose.  So there's likely going to be more that has to be edited out of his work than say something like Dresden Files where it's been plotted out.  Plus some people, in rewrites, discover subplots that need more fleshing out, or details that they understand but that there isn't enough for readers to understand.  And word length depends a lot on what kind of novel it is.  An urban fantasy can be something like 100-150k words while an epic type fantasy can be up to 300k or more.  Well, if you write like Robert Jordan, anyway.  The NaNo goal is 50k, which I suppose could be typical for non-genre specific work, though I've never looked into that.

KevinEvans:
My wife and I write together. Our latest novel (all most done, just revisions on the last chapter) I plotted and wrote 67K, also I put in plot tags where my wife dropped in her half of the story line. The two of us together create better content than either of us alone.

The real deal though is to run on the popcorn system. That is, keep writing. No one pops corn one kernel at a time, the reality of the publishing world is that, a book can take upwards of 4 years to hit print. Even books written on contract run a year or more from deal to publication. Research your market and write, write and keep writing.

Brandon Sanderson had the seventh novel he had written come out as his first book, just as he had finished his eleventh novel. That netted him a contract, and his ability to stay two years ahead of his deadlines, gained him (in part) the WoT contract.

So Write, Write more, and then keep writing. The trick is to fill the pipeline and get in front of the curve. And (you guessed it) Keep Writing. (Grin)

Best of luck,
Kevin

SCARPA:
True that.

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