Today I realized that I’d planned and outlined more than I can fit into 90,000 words.
I figured out my number of chapters, figured out that I’m averaging 3000 words per chapter, and had to remove about five segments of story from my existing outline — and now will finish the book in just five more chapters, one of which I wrote a lot of today.
Which meant re-outlining the ending. I’m not doing any cliffhangers in this series. Every single story has to stand on its own, in spite of also holding down a big piece of the action of a whole MUCH larger story that will take place over five books.
But I did the re-outline, tightened up a lot of the action, and replotted the ending.
And discovered that by doing this, I’m gonna have a LOT of fun doing the rest of these chapters.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend. I plan to.
And I’ll be leaping back into the novel fray with delight and enthusiasm next Monday.
Looking good Holly!
When you say “segments of story” do you mean chapters? Or something at a more granular level? (Maybe something akin to what a lot of writers call “beats” — which sounds so fancy that it took me a long time to learn it’s just a sort of a catch-all that means “a piece of story” without specifying length.)