Good morning everyone. Today is a fun day. Today things start to feel real. At least this is where they always feel like I am actually getting started when I do this. Today’s Task is a two parter. Let’s jump into the first part.
Task #35 Part 1: Pick the starting scene for your manuscript and write one paragraph about it.
Seems simple right? We have been looking at the basic plot lay out and the emotional journey. We have our three acts more or less shaped up. But we need to pinpoint exactly where we want to start the story. In almost every plot there are usually multiple options. Let’s take Bob for example.
We could start Bob off on a typical day. In which case our paragraph might look something like this.
Bob wakes up and gets dressed. Feels blah. Looks out the window to see what the weather looks like and even though it is sunny he tells himself it will probably rain just in time for him to leave work so he won’t enjoy the sunshine. He moves on auto pilot. Has a momentary spark of happiness when the barista at the coffee shop remembers his name and daily order, but then gets depressed again when he gets to the office and finds henry there rearranging his paperwork. This sparks a fight and we see the tension between the two.
This has the appeal of showing how depressed Bob is when the story starts.
I could also start the story in the middle of an emergency. In which case the opening scene paragraph might look like.
Bob walks in from the parking lot and immediately hears klaxons going off. He races to the floor to find someone messed up the delivery schedule and someone is about to overload something. He yells to get everyone stopped, sorts it out and is sweaty and exasperated by the time he even reaches his office. Once there he finds Henry and sees that all the careful paperwork that would have shown the schedule and prevented the morning’s near disaster has been rearranged.
Each of the entry points into the story gives something to the story and were I actually writing Bob I would need to figure out the first presentation. That is something I will have to do for the story I am breaking out and as part of your task today it is part one of today’s task. It is also key into beginning our chapter break outs. After all if you don’t know where to start you can’t break out what follows.
We are also doing this one on a Friday so once it is done, you can let it sit. Something may occur to you over the weekend and on Monday we will of course do a read through to make sure we still like our starting points. But it helps to let it sit for a couple of days.
And now to part two.
Some of this is math, but don’t worry, it is really easy math.
Next week we will be breaking out chapters. I find it easier to do if I know more or less how many chapters I am going to need. It will end up varying a bit in the final draft, but for planning it helps me to have an estimate.
When writing I know that my chapters generally run between 2500 – 3500 words. Occasionally I will have a longer chapter, but that is my average. So when figuring out my chapters I generally figure on about 3000 words per chapter. Most of my books end up around 100,000 words. If you divide 100K by 3k you end up with 33.3333, so I round up to 34 chapters as the plan. (You can do this by page count if you want, estimating maybe 5-7 pages per chapter and go from there, I just generally use word count as it is easier).
I don’t know if you remember the ratio we used when breaking out our acts but it was 25% for Act 1, 50% for Act 2 and then 25% of our manuscript for Act 3. So we use this to see where our chapters fall. For this we find that 34 chapters divided into four quarters (25%) is 8.5 chapters. I tend to put the extra half in Act two. So the break out for this would be
Act 1: 8 chapters
Act 2: 18 chapters
Act 3: 8 chapters
Will it shift as I start writing? Usually, yes. I may find I need those little extra bits somewhere else or I may find I end up with thirty eight chapters instead of 34. But this is the sort of math that lets me get started in building the final road map as we start chapter break outs.
So Task 35 Part 2 is to figure out how many chapters you need. I am writing a fantasy novel in my writing challenge so there is a good chance I will be over the 100K mark by the time my draft is through. With mysteries, they can generally top out around 85K which is different math. Feel free to use the numbers I went with for yours or adjust to the way you write and the genre you are writing.
But there you have it, our Task 35. Have a great weekend and I will see you Monday morning.
Ten til Midnight 