Too Much Plot

My current WIP has a May 1st deadline and a 20,000 word limit. I'm up to 16,000 words at this point, but I having a problem, one I really haven't experienced before. Too much plot.

I don't normally do a complete outline for a book of this length, but I will create a set of notes, including a scene list. In the case of "Wild About That Thing", I've got way too many ideas! Already I've scotched three or four of my projected scenes, but I NEED the remaining ones in order to bring the story to an appropriate resolution. I'm really worried, though, that I don't have the word count to complete the tale.

Now probably any authors who are reading this are thinking, "Heck, just cut something earlier in the story." That's easy to say, and I'm sure the story includes some fat that could be excised, but not whole scenes - at least, I don't think so. As it is, I'm concerned that I haven't taken enough time to develop the relationship between the heroine and her two lovers (this is a ménage). I don't want to make the story even less plausible. It's hard enough to believe that my heroine falls so quickly for a man she's just met. If I shorten their joint scenes, that will just make things worse. At the same time the plot requires some of the non-erotic scenes in order to clarify the heroine's situation and her internal conflicts.

I've been writing romance novellas for a couple of years now. This is the first time I've run into this difficulty. Usually I'm very good at estimating how long a story will be based on my initial concepts. I've never yet had to perform surgery on my first draft in order to shorten it to the specified length.

I'm not sure what's going on. I will say that I feel like I know my heroine really well, perhaps more deeply than is usual for one of my novellas. Maybe I'm trying to expose too much of her personality and her history. Or perhaps my premise is just too complex for a work of this length, though it doesn't seem like it should be.

If I had more time, I'd send the work to one of my crit partners for cutting suggestions, but it looks like I may be right up to the wire. (But maybe I can beg someone to give me a really quick turn around...)

Does anyone else suffer from Too Much Plot when you've got an upper limit on length? If so, how do you handle it?

Word Count

I was feeling pretty good yesterday, after devoting much of the day to writing. I'd added more than 3000 words to my novel in progress. That's not a great deal by some authors' standards, but my writing time is limited and so a solid chapter's worth on a Sunday really cheers me.

Actually, though, the real reason for my glee wasn't the amount I'd written, but the quality. Recently, I'd felt that the characters in this book had lost their spark. They'd turned into cardboard cut-outs, without any intrinsic motivation. I was just moving them around like chess pieces, trying to push my concept of the plot forward. Yesterday, they seemed to resurrect themselves. (I had solicited suggestions from fellow authors for techniques to give the characters CPR, and I guess some of those notions worked!) All at once, Rafe twisted a crucial conversation out of my hands and sent it in an entirely new direction.

I was surprised and delighted. The conversation ended up exposing a conflict that I knew I wanted to use, but hadn't known how to introduce. It also subtly altered the emotional and power balance between the two main characters in a way that I intuitively sensed was right.

Anyway, I titled this post "Word Count" because I wanted to talk about how those document statistics are really a double-edged sword. If you're an author, you probably check the current word count every time you open a WIP, and then check again at the end of your writing stint. It's likely that, like me, you set word count goals. "Today I'm going to produce at least 2K." "I need to get 10K down by the end of the week."

In one sense, these goals can be helpful. They give you a way of measuring where you are and how far you need to go before you're "done", since many publishers specify the sort of work they're looking for at least partially in terms of word count. Word count goals also help me get my "butt in chair, hands on keyboard", even when I don't feel like writing. Surveying the numbers after a tough session of fighting with characters or plot is bound to improve my mood.

In another sense, though, I find that thinking in terms of word count can be dangerous. Because ultimately, the question of how many words I write is not important. What matters is the quality. In fact, I have a tendency to be overly verbose, and in many cases, fewer words would be better. A focus on word count may tempt me to spew out 3000 words of boring crap, rather than spending my time and effort crafting 1000 words that really touch the heart and mind.

An emphasis on quantity -- on a daily quota -- is particularly dangerous for me personally because I find my writing has a great deal of inertia. Once I've gotten something down on the page, it's agonizingly difficult for me to make major changes. I edit as I write, partly because I know that wrenching the story in a different direction afterward will be well-nigh impossible. So most of those 3000 words of less-than-excellent work are likely to end up in the final product -- for better or worse.

I try not to obsess about this sort of thing. I try to just open myself and let the words and ideas flow out. Sometimes, though, I have severe constipation of the imagination. Then I'll sit at the keyboard, partially out of stubbornness, and force myself to meet my objectives, regardless. Is this a bad thing? Maybe so. Maybe it would be better for me to go read the newspaper, or play with the cat!

I'd be interested to know the opinions of other authors on this question.