The working model of my novel is broken into nine chapters that I plan to make approximately 5000 words each. This may change as I progress, but I like the breakdown of story parts and piecing together of the protagonist’s journey into the sections that I’ve mapped so far. Writing the first chapter is slow progress with the establishment of so many things that will carry through until the end of the novel. If I get this right it will give my work substance and allow for the characters that have depth and dimension. If I get this right I will craft a story that I’m happy with. I want to write something that other people will enjoy but bottom line – I want to be happy with it.
The research that I’m working in to lay the foundations for the overarching story has caused me to go back and write in some more where I had moved on from last week. Again I have cut and pasted, re-written and shuffled around the order of paragraphs. Another thing that I’ve done quite a bit of is take sentences from paragraphs and put them elsewhere to give another paragraph more connection to the story-line. I’m starting to like this process and flag parts in my mind as I write in new sections that at times don’t quite fit yet. Going back I often find that I have found the perfect spot for parts that I wasn’t certain of moving from where I had created them in the story-line, and it works well.
I’ve written 2800 words that I’m happy to keep for now, the document has 6500 words, so there’s quite a few words there that I haven’t factored in yet. About 2000 of those words are at the end of the document waiting patiently for me to reach that part of the chapter. I keep writing more so I’m trying to be mindful of not rewriting from scratch because I do have material to work with. It’s tempting to get swept away with writing, but the words that I already have written serve as a good reference for where I’m at and where I’m going.