The Numbers Game

I'm in the part of the book now where, at least for the first act, it's time to tighten and polish and get that truck draft out to the betas. Which means it's time to do word counts. (Note: all the numbers in this post are about my writing, reflecting my pacing, and aren't meant to be suggestions that other writers should follow. They're just here as illustrations. Don't get paranoid about numbers.)

I've talked before here about pacing, and about how acts should get shorter so that the reader senses the turning points coming closer together and feels the pace pick up. That means that in a 100,000 word book, the first act should be right around thirty to thirty three thousand words. Roughly. Much longer than that and the reader starts to get used to the story and loses interest. You need to throw in something that turns the plot in a new direction about a third of the way in, or the book dies. So the act ends on a turning point and you're off to the races again in Act Two and a brand new book. In theory.

Which means one of the duller things you have to do is analyze the word counts in your chapters, not because you're writing to a goal, but because the reader is reading your scenes and subconsciously gauging the pace of the story through scene event and length. An average scene for me is about two thousand to twenty-five hundred words. Big set-piece scenes might go longer because they're more complicated, but even then, too long and the reader starts to look at her watch.

So I count the words in each scene. Well, the computer counts the words, but I keep track:

(If you click on the image, it will open up larger.)

That's fifteen scenes, which is a little short for me, but 34,974 words in the act. That's pretty good. I need to rewrite some of the scenes anyway, and I can always cut, so even if there are additions, I can get it between 30,000 and 33,000 easily. Once I had to get it down from 45,000 words. That was not a good day.

The key is to look at where I got wordy, and I have helpfully highlighted those counts in red: Scenes 1-3, 1-9, 1-11, 1-13.

1-3 is the Red Box scene, and four thousand words for that is ridiculous. It has to come down by a thousand at least. I'm trying to front-load the book with info and that never works. So even though I like that scene, a quarter of it is going to go, either to another part of the book or into the trash. The third scene in a book is a terrible, terrible place to do flabby structure.

1-9 is a set-piece scene, Liz in a bar waiting for Molly and talking with three men: Duff, Cash, and Vince, although Vince only has a line or two at the end since they pass in the door as she's leaving and he's coming in. I'll let a set-piece go longer because they do so much and the action is pretty fast, but not 4000 words. I'm just being self-indulgent there.

1-11 is back in the bar talking to Vince. I'm a romance writer at heart, so 3000 words of banter with the Good Guy is right down my alley, but I can tighten that, too.

1-13 is another set-piece, but I already know a chunk of that is moving to Act Two, so that's no problem.

But what about the scenes that are underfed? If a scene drops much below 1700, I start to look for what I didn't develop properly.

1-2 is right at 1700, but that's really a transition from 1-1 to 1-3 that sets up the pay-off in 1-3, so that one's okay.

1-4 is short, but it's also a transition, and it works as it is: nothing is undeveloped and it does the job it's supposed to do. I'm leaving it alone.

1-7 I'll look at again, but I think it's going to stand, too. There's a lot of tension in that scene and Liz wants to get out of it, so I'm okay with it being on the short side.

1-8 is another scene that's basically a transition; it really finishes off 1-7, and gives the reader a breather before she's thrown into the set-piece in 1-9, so I'm good with that.

1-14 is going to get a major rewrite. I knew it was coming, I knew I'd bobbled that scene, so this is no surprise. It's an important scene, it's the center of a three-scene sequence that ends with the act's turning point, and I phoned it in, thinking I'd get back to fix it later. Later is now.

Still, over all, I'm pretty happy with this word count. Fixing it is feasible. I'm probably okay here.

As long as Act Two is 25,000 to 30,000 words. And from where I'm sitting, it's looking looooong.

You know, some people just pace their stories naturally. They don't have to go through all this crap.

I aim for them when I drive.