There's a point in the journey of writing a novel when the story starts to come together, all the action begins to converge, plot falls in line, and there's a real story heading toward completion. I'm not talking about early plotting exercises, outlining, a couple chapters. I mean when you're halfway through the book and although there's still some εuρυχωρiα--sea room, room for your characters to maneuver, get their ships turned around, buy guns, cast spells, and learn to fly helicopters, you pretty much know how it's all going to turn out, and all you must do now is get down to the business of finishing.
It isn't the finish line--the finish line may not even be in sight, but it's all starting to gel. You know what I'm talking about. You can feel the plot heading right for that glutinous consistency that characterizes an almost--or gonna be--finished novel.
Well I'm there with my latest, not done, but the story's starting to go all gelatinoidal on me. Long way to done, probably sometime around January, early February, but I just need to write now. The story's pretty much set. I'm not making up the next piece of the plot--which is the way I work, btw, an outline, rather loose, and although I know this guy needs to get from A to B and do some badness to C, I haven't necessarily put thought into how he's going to do that. I'll let the story and character purpose guide some of that process. Most of that is done.
Writers seem to work well with a certain length of book; some write 85k and can't break the 100k barrier if their life depended on it, others have trouble keeping it under 300. I always seem to end up with four or five chapters I don't need, somewhere around 130k words, and I know I need to plan on pruning back to around 110k for the completed book. It's the way it works for me.
What's your experience? Where are you in your current story? Starting to gelatinate? Still rather runny? Characters running amok, anyone flying helicopters?
Here's to many gelatinousnesses!
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