Pacing, Plotting

By Michelle Van Loon, on May 14th, 2010
Today’s exercise works best if you can do it with at least two other people. You’ll all read the passage below from Hilda van Stockum’s wonderful book The Winged Watchman. (http://www.amazon.com/Winged-Watchman-Living-History-Library/dp/1883937078/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265747756&sr=8-1_)
You’ll each then take a piece of paper, go off alone for 15 minutes, and write your answer to the question: What happens next? [...]
Pacing, Plotting

By Naomi Musch, on November 27th, 2009
A Novel is More than a Beginning and an End
Here are some novel facts:
Most average novels run between 55,000-80,000 words.
A “long novel” is considered to be a novel upwards of 80,000 words and stopping at about 100,000.
No matter how you hammer them on the page, that’s a lot of words.
When, for the first time ever, [...]