Developing Your Manuscript - Part 3

Whew! You made it through the first 5 steps and now you are ready to move forward in your manuscript. Welcome back to part three of the Developing Your Manuscript series. I hope you continue to find this information helpful, and invite you to ask questions in the comments section below. Now, let's dig into the next few steps, shall we?

Step 6: Give yourself a hard deadline.

In the last step, you came up with a soft deadline, a guideline to help you stay on track. Now you need to set a hard deadline. For instance, I have a goal to finish two books by the end of the month but I understand that life can sometimes get in the way. My soft deadline was the end of November but my hard deadline is the end of December. Sit down and think about your writing goals. Ask yourself what you would like to accomplish and when you want to complete it. Now look at your daily activities. What do you do that are important tasks that must be completed? After you have figured this out, you can schedule your writing time around it. Will you be able to commit to writing an hour a day? Two hours? Five hours a week? Be honest with yourself and set a goal based on a timeline you can stick with for the long run. Take into consideration to basic word count necessary for a novel. Unless you are writing a series, you typically want your novel to be about 71,000 to 90,000 words. Anything below that is too short and anything above 100,000 words is an Epic or Saga (in other words, too long for a novel.)

Step 7: Set up a time to write each day.

Let's say you want to write a novel in three months. You want to write an hour a day, five days out of the week (60 days.) Considering that you may cut out sections and add others here and there, you want to shoot for roughly 80,000 words. That means you need to write roughly 1,333 words each writing day. That is totally achievable as long as you write for about two hours a day (based on how many words you can write.) You can adjust that time accordingly and also factor in some down time you may have that will allow you to write a little more.

As long as you have a plan, you can achieve your goal. But, you must stick with it and don't get caught up in the ever moving deadline.

Step 8: Write your first and last sentence for the chapter.

I will start this off with a caveat. Everyone does not work the same and what works for me doesn't always work for others. Having said that, this is the suggestion I give to help you get through your storyline. Since you already know what you want your book to be about, and you have already written your outline, it is time to fill start filling in the lines.

I like to start by writing the last sentence of the book. This helps me shape the story around the ending so that I can have some structure. From there, writing the end of each chapter helps you shape the chapter. The first line of each chapter helps you figure out where you want to start. If I want to start with a story, or where I left off in the previous chapter, I now have a mini-guide, in addition to my outline, to help me accomplish the story I am trying to write.

One bonus tip: Do yourself a favor and pay attention to your tense while you are writing these sentences. They can help you stay in the right tense throughout the book.

That's it for this week's writing tips. Tune in next Wednesday for more. It's the final week of NaNoWriMo so I wish everyone the best who participated in the event. I look forward to seeing you next week!

carmLkisses,

Carmen L. Hendrix

Carmen L. Hendrix is the author of the short story collection "When Honeysuckles Fall" and the novel "Eight Moments." To read some of her short stories, visit her blog here. She will be pleased to make your acquaintance.

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