Fic Talk > General Discussion
Question of the Day - Part 4
Rose:
When you are writing a story, do you ever intend it to not go past a certain amount of chapters? Or what makes you decide to make something really long or really short?
Usually I have an amount in mind. Though I'm flexible. HWS I planned to do ten chapters though I think that might be 11 as I transition to them going to London. RMTW I didn't have a number attached, but I knew it'd be over thirty chapters based on the plot alone. Undead - I don't think we knew for awhile how long it would be till the last few months when we finally outlined the rest of it. We just knew it'd be lengthy. So sometimes I have a specific number, and other times I just have a general idea.
RokofAges75:
I never put limits on myself, nor do I set out to make a story a certain length. However many chapters it takes me to write the story I want to tell is how many chapters long the story will be.
The type of plot, the way I go about planning it, and my writing style tend to dictate the length. With most of my stories, I plot the major points in advance, but don't necessarily plan in great detail how I'll get from Point A to Point B to Point C. I think that's why stories like Broken and BMS got to be so long, because I let my writing take more of the long and winding road between those points LOL. They would have been shorter if I'd gotten rid of the subplots and just focused on the main storyline.
With Curtain Call, I really did stick to one storyline, and it was still long. With that one, I just had a timeline, and for each point on the timeline, I had to decide if that was an important enough event to warrant a scene in the story or if I could just summarize it and skip past it. I wrote the ones that I thought added something to the story I wanted to tell and let it go on as long as it needed to. That story was about a journey, and it was important for me to show that journey from beginning to end.
Secrets of the Heart is the first story I plotted out literally chapter by chapter. I knew I needed to plan it out in advance because of the way I wanted to weave together two intertwining storylines and make sure they worked together. With that one, I always knew it was going to be a set number of chapters, and that number was a lot smaller than in previous stories. I think my outline started out as 27 or 28 chapters, and I've since revised it and pared it down to 25. Shocking, I know! LOL
I will say, I have this OCD thing about numbers, where I like stories to end on round numbers. Like for Secrets, I was glad to get the outline down to 25 chapters because 25 is a better number than 27 or 28. For Broken and BMS, I worked really hard to make each part 50 chapters long, even if it meant making the chapters leading up to each 50 a little longer or shorter than normal. I was so determined to end BMS on an even 200 chapters and not 201 that I invented a "Post Epilogue" to go after the Epilogue LOL. I have this thing with numbers in real life too, especially with the volume on my TV. I prefer it to be set on a multiple of 5, but an even number will work too... never a prime number, though! *shudder*
Sakabelle:
I missed a whole bunch of questions today! I'll try to summarize my answers.
Music is a big inspiration for me, and I have definitely been in the position where songs have come on, inspired a scene and that scene ended up changing the entire course of the story. The most recent time that has happened was with Girl by The Beatles and I'm sure that I'll never be able to listen to that song again without thinking of that scene. Not only did I envision the scene once when I heard it the first time, I replayed it over and over again trying to flesh out the scene in my mind, and then again as I wrote it out. So yeah, the song and the scene will be forever tied together for me now lol.
I try not to put limits on myself, but my stories do end up usually coming in at 20-25 chapters. The only exception to that I guess would be when I have no choice but to go over, like when writing a story that takes place day by day. I've done that twice now, and each time they come in at 40-45 (Running Up That Hill will end up being 45 when it's done I believe)
Julie, I'm so glad you mentioned the numbers thing, because I'm exactly the same way! I need the stories to end on a round number! I have one that ends on 26 chapters, and it still bugs me when I go look at it. When I outline, I definitely try to make my stories fit into that constraint. Oh, I also have a story that's sitting at 199 reviews and has been for a week or so. It's actually driving me kind of nuts. I don't care so much about getting another comment, I just need the number to flip lol. If it could get to 200 and then stay there, I would be very happy. My friend joked that she was going to make an account just to post a review that says "You're welcome." haha
mare:
I am kind of like that too with even numbers. LOL Everything has to end on an even number.
I didn't link up my pivitol scene response but I saw most of you did. I am too lazy to go back and find these chapters.
As far as length, since I don't really outline, I usually go in blind as to how many chapters something is going to be. In my head I can pretty much figure it out by scenes I picture.
RokofAges75:
--- Quote from: Sakabelle on July 23, 2012, 07:07:01 PM ---Julie, I'm so glad you mentioned the numbers thing, because I'm exactly the same way! I need the stories to end on a round number! I have one that ends on 26 chapters, and it still bugs me when I go look at it. When I outline, I definitely try to make my stories fit into that constraint. Oh, I also have a story that's sitting at 199 reviews and has been for a week or so. It's actually driving me kind of nuts. I don't care so much about getting another comment, I just need the number to flip lol. If it could get to 200 and then stay there, I would be very happy. My friend joked that she was going to make an account just to post a review that says "You're welcome." haha
--- End quote ---
I'm glad it's not just me! LOL I'm like that with reviews too!! I just went to your AC profile to see if I could find that story and fix the problem for you, but it looks like it's not on AC.
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