by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I continue to mull how different, in some respects, the structure of this first novel is compared to Stieg Larsson’s stuff. One thing I’ve noticed his novels encompass a lot more time than my novel does. They cover a few months of time, sometimes depicting events in different chapters that have happened concurrently.
When I try to write about events that happen over a few months, I endup with a novel that’s 200,000 words and then out of desperation have to split the novel in two.
And now I find myself in a situation with this first draft of my first novel where it definitely seems like I’m heading towards around 160,000 words, which is way, way, way too long. Now, this is not exact. All I know is this: 40, (40, 40,) 30. That’s the breakdown of scenes for each element of the novel. If each scene is, on average 1,000 words, then, well, I’m going to be somewhere between 140,000 and 160,000 words, depending on what the final average is.
But there is hope.
This is the first draft. And I would rather have too many words than not enough. So, the point is just to write something ,anything, finish it and then I can get to work paring back the novel down to a more manageable 100,000 words.
Or something like that. I just need to stop overthinking things and get a first draft done. I feel like I’m kind of running out of time. If I don’t finish something sooner rather than later I may be in a hospice. Ugh. Being old sucks.
