I’m at 12,000 words and feeling fairly comfortable with the shape of the story. I still haven’t gone past the endpoint of those first two dozen pages I wrote originally – that’s how much extra material I’m adding in.
The nicest part is that I’m now already one quarter of the way through Jannin’s arc – he’s narrating the first half up to about 40,000 words. Then Rana will take over for the next 40,000 words, picking up from a point about halfway through Jannin’s narative, and we’ll see what she’s been up to when Jannin’s seen her wandering about the palace hallways soaking wet. She’ll also bring the story through to the conclusion, taking it past where Jannin’s narration stops.
At least, that’s what I think’s going to happen. I only have a series of disconnected incidents in mind to guide me, so we’ll see. But one quarter through one half of the story sounds pretty nice (especially after last year’s effort went to a massive 195,000 words – if I could work out how/where to add in another 50,000 words I could split the damn thing into a trilogy, for crying out loud).
Though I did get more words done than my target, I didn’t work on this WIP every day. Instead, I had another go at the synopsis for the 195,000-word monster. It came out better than the first try, but it still doesn’t really capture the complexity or flavour of the book, or even most of the action. Yeah, let’s you see summarise the plot, characterisation and character relationships, and tone of a 400-page book in a single page…
