Chapter 9 Progress

800 words tonight. Until now I've mostly been doing revising and prewriting; also character development on several of my more minor characters who are now making an appearance in the narrative for the first time. It's hard to write scenes for characters you don't know, so my first order of business had been getting to know them. The scene I'm currently writing is longer than most of the scenes from my last few chapters; it's interesting writing for me, because I'm getting to explore the Elaine character in greater depth than I have yet in the narrative.

In other news, I've been advised by a reliable source that the average length of first novels in my genre is usually 75,000-85,000 words. With this in mind, I've decided to lower my target word count from 95,000 words to 80,000 words. I might still write more than that, but that's my new target. I've known from the start that I would need a new sub-plot to ever make it to 95,000 words--now I don't have to manufacture something new just to hit a length requirement, so I'm happy about that. I think the novel will be plenty complex and yet still fast-paced at the length I'm currently shooting for.

21,837 / 80,000 (27.3%)