MANAGING THE WORD COUNT

A few weeks ago, I was asked if I could add another 20,000  to my current word count. Whilst this sounded daunting at the time it hasn’t been as much as a struggle as I imagined it might be.

To help me on my way, I was advised to try and even out my chapter lengths to 3000 words plus. This advice was given based on the length of my first chapter which was about 3200.

Each of the four parts of a novel should ideally be of equal length. To help me to achieve this I have always kept a chart where I record the number of words and MS pages in each chapter. When I looked at what I had already achieved, I was able to see where I should focus my efforts to add the extra words.

As I was now looking for a revised total word count of 75000, I set a target of 18750 for each part and set to work. By the time I had read and edited my material, I’d added another 12000 words to the count. A glance at the new totals showed me where I still needed to focus my attention to keep the balance right.

As I post this, I’ve got about another 3000 to go. Part Three which covers events from the Recommitment Scene at the halfway point to the Crises at the three quarter mark still needs about 1700 words to be split between 6 chapters. At average of just 283 words per chapter this isn’t too much to achieve. Part Four which deals with the Scenes to Climax, the Climax itself and the Dénouement only needs another 1100.

Although we all deal with problems in our own way, this method of keeping the balance right has always worked for me. Using a target figure for each chapter has taken the stress out of achieving the higher word count required.

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