At the beginning of August, I made a decision regarding the next book in Spectrum Legacy. At the time, I had written about 45,000 words for Paragon of Shadow after working on it since Paragon of Light came out. I previously shared the fruit of my 15-day personal writing challenge, where I set a goal of writing 50,000 words for this book. After thinking about the story all summer, the words came easily, and when I got to the end of my writing challenge and had more than doubled the length of the book, I was confident I was near the end. A few more days to write and it would be finished, last quarter off to my editor, and on we’d go to the next story.
That was the idea, anyway. Not quite what happened. A month and another 44,000 words later, the book is done, but how did the writing run so long when I’m normally really good at projecting how long a book will be when finished. When I assembled a quick index card outline for The Witch and the Wyrm, for example, I guessed it would be between 45,000 and 50,000 words long when it was done. Guess how long the finished book was?
48,723.
The first draft was a little shorter, but well within that 45k to 50k range. I know I tend to under-write, so my books will grow a little from the final draft, and I plan accordingly. If I need to hit a minimum goal, as I sometimes do when I want all the books in a series to be roughly the same length, I try to outline appropriately and break down my outline based on how long I think each section will take me to achieve. It’s a method that has never let me down before, so what happened this time?
Easy enough to explain.
I forgot stuff.
Not just in the respect that I forgot some plot threads until the last second and had to go back and work them in, but I also woefully underestimated the amount of time it would take to move characters around to wherever they needed to be. For example, while a lot of travel scenes can just be skipped, the POV character crossing the entire country on foot is a big enough happening that it needed a few paragraphs or two to explain how it was even possible.
Another big failure was a simple underestimation of how long it would take to cover some of the big things that happened, and also failing to account for the emotional fallout the characters would suffer after each big hit. All of those things deserved more space on the page than I had allowed them in my outline, which is why by the time I got to 70,000 words, I was just starting to hit the stuff I’d planned for the midpoint.
The end result was conveniently even, though, because it’s not like I missed these things only in one spot. It was consistent throughout my outline, so the story pacing was ultimately the same as what I planned at the beginning.
The biggest downside is that it put me behind on my intended writing schedule. I was supposed to start writing the final book in the series this month, but instead, I’ll be working through edits on this one. Not the end of the world, since everything is still overall on track: Paragon of Shadow will be out in November, and the final book will most likely be out in the spring, so the publication timeline hasn’t changed at all.
It does mean I won’t be done with writing the series by January, though, which was part of my big plan for 2025, so I guess I’ll have to do some re-evaluation… especially considering I don’t know how long the last book will be, and I need to brace myself for a potential repeat.
I don’t think it will be as long as Paragon of Shadow. I think this one is my longest yet and will stay my longest book in print for quite some time.
Until the next big idea, anyway…