Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

I’ll admit that as I’m writing, I keep half an eye on my word count.

It used to mess me up to do that. But now, I think it’s like checking my speedometer when driving a car—it just helps keep me in line so I don’t get into trouble later.

If you’re way over or way under the target word count for your genre, it’s going to mean some work later on. You don’t want to feel like you’re adding fluff to a book to get up to the target count and you don’t want to feel like you’re slashing important scenes, either. Sometimes it’s easier just to watch it as you go along.

When I’m done with a first draft, it’s usually a short 68,000 words. I write pretty sparely now—it used to be that I’d babble on and on when I was writing and wasn’t sure what direction I was going to take the plot next. Now I just stop writing when I get to that point and do some quick brainstorming. Otherwise, I have filler to remove later.

My target is 75,000 words and my manuscript goes right up to that after I add setting, character description, and the small subplots that I love including.

If you’re a newer writer, though, it might be better to just write the book you want to write and worry about the word count during revisions. I know that worked better for me while I was getting my feet wet.

I know some writers worry that word count limits creative freedom. But we can write whatever we want and make the book as long we want it….it just might not sell. If our goal is to sell our finished manuscript, at some point word count is going to have to be considered. Unfortunately, even if your book is excellent, it’s going to be hard to have it read by an agent or editor if it’s too long.

Here are some useful links to consider if you’re at the point that you need to take a look at your word count:

Word Count for Novels and Children’s Books: The Definitive Post

Think twice before querying your 291,000 word book

A Few Words on Word Counts: How to Beef Up or Slim Down (especially for freelance writers, but some tips that will help novelists, too)

An agent on word counts (and here, where she defends her position)

Writing Nowadays–Word Count Violations and You

Bolstering Your Word Count

How To Get Ahead When You Are Behind On Your Word Count

Do you watch your word count as you write, or is it something you worry about later in the process?

Before I emailed the Memphis 3 manuscript to my agent on Monday, I followed a checklist of problems to look for and things to do before submitting the document.

I tried to read the first five chapters as if I were a brand-new reader for the series. Would it all make sense to someone reading about these characters for the first time?

I made sure I’d sketched out the characters and setting—and not just kept it all in my head and thought I’d written it out.

Readers let me know (they’re good about that :) ) that they wanted more chapter breaks. I put in breaks around every ten pages.

I looked for my favorite words that I overuse.

I looked for wishy-washy words that undermine my writing: “I think,” “maybe,” “I guess,” “a little,” “some,” “seem.”

I looked for filler words.

I looked for repetition in the story and repetition in dialogue.

I looked for anything murky that sounded confusing.

I made sure the characters seemed consistent from start to finish (unless I wanted them to change—and I made sure I had good motivation for a change.)

I looked for continuity errors and other boo-boos.

I sketched out a timeline as I read the draft and made sure the story was linear and made sense with the timeline.

What kinds of things do you look for when you revise? And…if you write different genres, do you look for different things?

Part of my busy weekend last weekend involved travel. :)

I visited San Diego with my college roommate—just to go somewhere that was scenic and relaxing, that we hadn’t visited before.

But I needed to finish my manuscript and send it to my agent yesterday—so I used every minute of that five hour flight to and from San Diego to Charlotte, to work. I inserted place description, character description, chapter breaks, and a full subplot. I’ve a feeling, actually, that I might have driven the folks beside me nutty with my typing.

But after ten total hours of flying, I had a manuscript that was ready to turn in.

Both flights were totally packed with people—not a seat was free. And the flight to California from North Carolina was stressful at times.

When we were waiting at the gate in Charlotte to board the plane, there was a toddler of about 13-14 months who was absolutely pitching a fit.

I think every one of the passengers was praying that we wouldn’t be seated next to that baby, or near him, for the five hour flight.

Fortunately, I wasn’t. But that child had quite a set of lungs on him. His wailing—no, really, it was screaming—lasted for the entire fifteen minutes before boarding the plane and a full hour after we got on. He certainly had stamina.

What was interesting to me was the reaction of the other passengers on the plane. And what that reaction seemed to say about them.

There were some people who just looked stoically miserable.

There were some passengers who turned to look angrily back—at the parents.

There was a woman who looked concerned about the baby.

There were a couple who somehow managed to go to sleep, making me wonder why they were exhausted enough to doze during that racket.

I saw one young woman in her early twenties who put down her Cosmo magazine, looked back toward the baby with great irritation and rolled her eyes at me when she saw me looking at her.

I saw several people plug their ears with earbuds and listen to their iPods and not think twice about it.

I heard one elderly lady behind me tell the person next to her, “The poor thing. He doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

I heard one person say, angrily, that the parents shouldn’t fly a child that age for that length of time.

For me? I just worked right through it for the hour. Anyone could correctly draw the conclusion that I had kids of my own, a lot of work to do, and was immune to the noise.

The nice thing about showing character through reaction is that we can actually let the reader draw their own conclusions—even incorrect ones. That gives us room to write surprises into our stories. We can lead the reader to believe one thing about a character and make a surprising revelation about them later.

There were a few people on the plane who I figured weren’t parents—just solely based on their angry reaction. But my impression could easily have been wrong.

They might just be really impatient people who would be just as upset if their own babies were screaming like that.

They might have just been unusually tired or flying to a stressful situation—like a family member in the hospital. Maybe a situation like that one wouldn’t ordinarily have fazed them, but did this one time.

Do you use character reactions to a situation to show something about them? Do you ever purposefully give a misleading impression of a character? How else do you give readers clues to a character’s personality?

A few times lately, I’ve heard writers who’ve gotten a great idea for a story—or a fully-formed character—at an inconvenient time. Usually right when they’re in the middle of another book.

The phenomenon actually has a name: Shiny New Idea Syndrome (SNIS).

The question that comes up, of course, is whether you should continue writing the book you were working on—or whether you should start writing the new idea you’ve had…the one you’re excited about.

I’ve had this happen a couple of times in the last year—I’ve gotten ideas for new series or gotten ideas for things that wouldn’t fit in well with the current series I’m writing.

Because I’m under contract for the books I’m writing (and have already been paid for them), then I didn’t have a choice about which to write. I just spoke into a voice recorder all the ideas I had connected to the new idea and then saved it for later and continued working on the current manuscript.

But it seems to me that there are some questions to ask yourself if you’ve gotten a case of SNIS:

What’s your goal—right now—with writing? Publishing? Writing for your own enjoyment?

If you’re writing to please yourself, decide which story you think you’ll take the most pleasure in writing—is it a turbulent story that will actually be cathartic? Something light and humorous?

If you’re writing for publication, which story is more marketable?

Which story is fuller-formed and better-realized?

Which requires more research (and do you have the time to do it?)

Has this happened just because you’ve reached a difficult spot in your current manuscript? Could you jot down your idea and just brainstorm ways to work through the rough part? And remind yourself that it’s fine to write a horrible or disorganized first draft?

Could you put your current manuscript down for a couple of weeks and work on the new manuscript? You may find that the new manuscript isn’t all that exciting or that you return to the old one with fresh eyes and can easily polish off the first draft on it.

If you’re in the middle of revisions for the old manuscript, you could work on both books at once (I frequently have to do this.) That way you’re doing something creative (penning a first draft) while doing something a little more mechanical (editing/revising.)

I think the danger in putting down an unfinished manuscript is that we won’t return to it. Or that we’re setting a precedent with ourselves that it’s okay to leave a manuscript unfinished.

Have you ever been struck by Shiny New Idea Syndrome? How did you handle it?

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter for the past week.
If you’re looking for a particular topic, just plug in your keyword into the search box at the top left-hand corner of the blog (on the black header right above my blog name…next to the Blogger symbol…the small search window is next to the magnifying glass) and the roundup with your subject will come up. To narrow your search down on the page, do a CTRL+F, type your subject, and hit enter.

Facebook: Personal vs. Professional: http://dld.bz/4Evn

Elements of a Scene: http://dld.bz/4Evb

Why Do eBooks Cost So Much? (A Publisher’s Perspective): http://dld.bz/4EuW

Blogging 101: How to Get Feed Subscribers: http://dld.bz/4EuV

How Do You Know When Your Book is Cooked? http://dld.bz/4EuR

So Your NaNoWriMo Novel Sucked–Why You Still Gained: http://dld.bz/4Eue

You Don’t Get to Choose Whether You’re a Writer: http://dld.bz/4Et7

The iPad for writers: http://dld.bz/4Etn

A tip for starting out our day–and our writing–with momentum: http://dld.bz/4MRC

Do novels need to be nice (vs. gritty?) http://dld.bz/4Etb

What your profile pic really says about you: http://dld.bz/4BKM

3 Novel-Writing Alternatives to NaNoWriMo: http://dld.bz/4BKq

Storyboarding on a shoestring–freebies for writers: http://dld.bz/4BKd

Writing the Story Premise: http://dld.bz/4BGe

The Skill of Critiquing Part One: Guidelines for Etiquette: http://dld.bz/4BFX

How To Create Believable Characters: http://dld.bz/2zzn

Why and how one writer decided to self-pub: http://dld.bz/4BFQ

Myst. Lov. Kitchen: An Easy Take on a Classic—Chicken Pot Pie http://bit.ly/9HB8NY @CleoCoyle

One writer’s pet peeves for writing: http://dld.bz/4BEH

Book Marketing and Book Publicity: Why a Book’s Subtitle is So Important: http://dld.bz/4BE6

Taking Control of Your Twitter Log-in Info: http://dld.bz/4BEy

The #1 Reason Every Blogger Should Use Disqus: http://dld.bz/4BEt

Food, wine, and drink in our writing: http://dld.bz/4EtU

Character Planning: A Little About Backstories and Inner Demons: http://dld.bz/46um

How To Prep Yourself and Your Schedule For NaNoWriMo: http://dld.bz/46ua

The Five Stages of Publishing: http://dld.bz/46tW

Mystery Writer’s Guide to Forensic Science – Poisons III: http://dld.bz/46tG

How to write, produce and market an ebook: http://dld.bz/46tx

Anatomy of a Best-Selling Novel–Structure Matters (Part One): http://dld.bz/46sS

10 resources for writers: http://dld.bz/4BCY @Buddhapuss

Congrats to my friend Cleo on her pb release! Holiday Grind Pub Party: 3 fave @CleoCoyle Holiday #Recipes & Giveaway: http://nblo.gs/9Yy7M

Steampunk Character Type: The Savant: http://dld.bz/46sE

On writing across formats: http://dld.bz/459s

e-books 101: http://dld.bz/459c

5 Reasons Nonfiction Writers Need a Book Proposal: http://dld.bz/458F

One writer’s NaNo tips: http://dld.bz/458c

7 rules of blogging (for writers): http://dld.bz/457E

No NaNo? No Problem: 5 Other Ways to Put 1667 Words-a-Day to Work: http://dld.bz/457A

5 Beliefs That Hinder Your Organizational Skills: http://dld.bz/4zNw

Could you give writing up? Are writers gluttons for punishment? http://dld.bz/4zNv

Alexa rank: What you need to know as a new blogger: http://dld.bz/4zNf

Communication Lessons Learned From The 2010 Midterm Elections: http://dld.bz/4zMY

Want to Write? First, Find Someone Who Cares: http://dld.bz/4zME

Best tweets for writers (wk ending 10-29): http://dld.bz/4623

Myst. Lov. Kitchen: Christmas Cookie Contest! http://bit.ly/abMI8n @CleoCoyle

WhenYou Have an Offer From a Publisher…But You Don’t Have an Agent: http://dld.bz/4zMm

30 Days to a Stronger Scene: http://dld.bz/4zHZ

Writing For Publication-101: http://dld.bz/4zHN

Creating word pictures for your readers: http://dld.bz/4zHG

10 Resources and Tips for Character Creation: http://tinyurl.com/2ayeo5d @Buddhapuss

Tips for pacing your novel: http://dld.bz/4zH5

What Motivates Your Character? http://dld.bz/4zHv

3 Mistakes Writers Make in the Quest for Publication: http://dld.bz/4zHp @jodyhedlund

A Whale, A Gun And A Doll House: A Writer’s Reading Diet And Why It Is Crucial To Stray: http://dld.bz/4zGM

Overcoming Resistance (A.K.A. Fear): http://dld.bz/4wvZ @ultraswan

Three Elements Every Novel Needs: http://dld.bz/4wvm

Free rhyming dictionary online: http://dld.bz/4wvk

Tips for bringing your story back from the dead: http://dld.bz/4wve

Improper use of emotion words in fiction writing: http://dld.bz/4wu7

5 Techniques for Managing Group Critiques: http://dld.bz/4wuw

Juxtaposition: The Power of the Unexpected in Fiction: http://dld.bz/4wuv

Tips for creating well-written, focused scenes: http://dld.bz/4wuu

How to Get Motivated in the Morning: http://dld.bz/4wun

Casting characters for our book: http://dld.bz/4b28

13 Places to Find Inspiration: http://dld.bz/3XPz

Putting on a Reader Hat to Revise: http://dld.bz/3XPm

Setting–Adding Dimension to Your Fiction: http://dld.bz/3XPd

NaNoWriMo Workshop – Point of View: http://dld.bz/3XPa

Captivating words: http://dld.bz/3XNj

Why do writers do it? http://dld.bz/3XNh @jodyhedlund

Front-loading your work as a writer: http://dld.bz/3XMw

The YA View: What We Like in Our Books (and What We Don’t): http://dld.bz/3XJT