{"id":1017,"date":"2011-01-20T16:26:38","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T22:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1017"},"modified":"2011-01-20T16:26:38","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T22:26:38","slug":"milestone-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1017","title":{"rendered":"Milestone 30"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love it when the zeros line up (or at least I wave at them as I go by…)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I just crossed the 3o,000 words marker (that includes the chunk moved from Crisis of Vision<\/em>), with page length at 153. \u00a0 New production (written in the last two weeks)\u00a0 is\u00a0 20,905 words ,\u00a0 and 103 new pages of manuscript.\u00a0\u00a0 Usually I wouldn’t stop in the middle of a workday to post here, but could not withhold the good news.<\/p>\n

Technically, what’s going on at this stage in a book?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, whether it’s a standalone or a group book,\u00a0 the story arc for this volume is rising.\u00a0 For a book in this group, that’s about 17-18% of its total final wordage…in a standalone, you want all the major players in place by a third of the way through (often earlier.)\u00a0 “In place” can include “talked about but not home yet from the voyage”–but readers need to know major characters before the “turn” of the plot in midbook.<\/p>\n

Group books are a little more complex, as they have both a volume arc and are themselves part of the long arc running through multiple volumes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With so long a story,\u00a0 new characters with important parts to play (but not protagonists) can appear in an interior volume and wander off again, to return or not in a later one, even past the 1\/3 mark.\u00a0 However, the characters most important to the long arc should not be tossed in at the end.<\/p>\n

So at the 30,000 mark,\u00a0 we’ve had chapters from three POV characters well established in previous books.\u00a0 Established secondary characters are in there, too, but since one chapter involves a journey, and journeys involve new people,\u00a0 some new one-volume characters have shown up.\u00a0\u00a0 (Another Armsmaster…in a different royal salle. )\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As usual I have a fairly good\u00a0 idea of where this volume should end up, but not how to get there, especially as it needs to move along the time-trail really quickly so that Book V really is the end.<\/p>\n

Despite the first speed bump, the book’s still moving strongly onward and not yet to the tricky middle third, in which I sometimes have to throw everything into it, including much that will come back out, to make the right stuff float to the top.<\/p>\n

However, it’s time to get back to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love it when the zeros line up (or at least I wave at them as I go by…)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I just crossed the 3o,000 words marker (that includes the chunk moved from Crisis of Vision), with page length at 153. \u00a0 New production (written in the last two weeks)\u00a0 is\u00a0 20,905 words ,\u00a0 and 103 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,107],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}