9 Responses so far

1. 1. Rob Darnell on Sep 12th, 2007 at 6:26 pm

   I wonder what the word count is now, if you’ll have 75-80,000 words when the draft is done Thursday or Friday.

   About how many words do you usually get a day?

2. 2. Mike Brotherton on Sep 12th, 2007 at 11:30 pm

   My first draft of Star Dragon was low 80s, then low 90s when submitted, and right about 100k in the final version. My first draft of Spider Star was just over 100k. Contract called for 120k, and I hit 124k with a major revision, leaving out a “science of Spider Star” appendix that I’ll be posting on my website.

3. 3. Mark Terry on Sep 13th, 2007 at 9:25 am

   What I find most interesting here from a writer’s pov is that writing dogma, at least for beginning writers, is that first drafts are long and as you clean things up they get shorter.

   What I’ve found in my own books is that they seem to come in pretty much where I aim them to–80,000 to 90,000 words or so, sometimes up to 100,000, and they’re like that at first draft through final. I try to THINK MORE, WRITE LESS, which is the best writing advice I ever got, and I do save myself a fair amount of throwing away and rewriting by thinking things through a bit, not an outline, but to say, okay, today we’re writing this, but if I do that, then this, this, and that’s gotta happen, and I don’t like THAT, so what if I do, THIS, then That, That, and THis is going to happen and yeah, I like it.

4. 4. Josh on Sep 13th, 2007 at 11:17 am

   When you revise, do you find the word count tends to bump up or down? My usual revision finds me chopping off at least 10% of the final product, but that’s because I know I tend to overwrite. Just wonderin’.

5. 5. Shara Saunsaucie on Sep 13th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

   You’ve been reading a lot of YA? Would you care to share some of those titles with us? I’ve starting browsing the genre as well, and while I’ve found some fun fantasy/urban fantasy stuff, and have noted one SF series (Scott Westerfield), I haven’t noticed any OTHER YA SF and was wondering if perhaps you’d found some?

6. 6. Tobias Buckell on Sep 13th, 2007 at 3:53 pm

   Lots of questions to respond to You all do want me to finish the third book, right? Right? Kidding

   Here we go:

   Rob, right now I’m just shy of 73,000. I range pretty wildly in wordcount, depending on how much I get set on fire by what I’m doing and how detailed my outline has gotten to guide me.

   Josh, my word count usually goes up a bit, I don’t like angst and introspection much, and I just drop anything that bores me to write, so it tends to be very lean. As I pass back through I’ll often add more, or tweak the plot to introduce cool points.

   Shara: I have read and enjoyed:

   Nancy Farmer
   Philip Reeve
   Kenneth Oppel
   Scott Westerfeld
   Justin Larbalestier
   Timothy Zahn (dragonback)
   Philip Pullman

   That’s off the top of my head. I usually just wander into the YA section of the bookstore and pick up whatever looks interesting.

7. 7. Shara Saunsaucie on Sep 13th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

   Thanks, Toby!

8. 8. Mike Brotherton on Sep 14th, 2007 at 10:59 am

   Josh, I think there’s a difference between novel draft revising and normal text editing where you’ve got all the information in there already, at least for me and it sounds like Tobias works similarly. That first draft, you get all the action in, all the plot points, but maybe you skimp on the setting or characterization or those introspective passages. Those need to be in the final draft for a rich, well realized universe. Also I usually find my themes after the first draft, and try to amplify them in the revision. These are different kind of revisions than cutting fatty prose down by ten percent, which is usually a great and important thing to do.

9. 9. Tobias Buckell on Sep 14th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

   Agreed Mike. Also, since I cut my teeth on short fiction, I tend to be pretty lean from the get go.