If you go to my Fiction page, you can read my NaNoWriMo 2020 novel in seventeen posts. They’re longreads, so you might want to save them or even print them out.
Some days, I wrote only one chapter, but there were a few days when I wrote two, or even three chapters.
I had originally planned to post them as they were written, but I just couldn’t do that. I had to revise. Even just do a quick proofread, but I couldn’t stand the thought of posting the unedited version.
Some of my typos are just not for public viewing, and sometimes sentences just made so little sense, I needed to fix them before asking my Readers to read them.
I don’t think I’ve posted this piece of advice before, but one problem I think a lot of Writers may encounter near the end of their stories is that they might become impatient.
It’s almost over. Just that last chapter, and then it’s finished. I want that written, now!
I struggle to follow this advice, but I think the last chapter of a book is important. Rushing through it probably won’t improve its quality.
It seems like the last chapter of books is often either too long, too short, or just doesn’t feel integrated with the rest of the story. Maybe most Writers feel what might be called “approaching the end tension.” For me, it’s a jittery feeling that makes it hard for me to concentrate on actually writing the story. I stop being able to get inside the characters’ heads as well as I usually can, and it’s as if the sounds of their voices become faint and distorted.
In the last chapter of my still untitled romance novel, it feels like emotional responses are missing, there’s probably way too much dialog and not enough action and description, and if you read it, you will probably be able to tell that I wanted to finish the story right then and there that day, in that hour, in the next minute.
Impatience can be a good thing. If you just can’t wait to get going and start writing a story, then many chapters will be written, but as the story goes on, and especially at the end, patience becomes more and more necessary to keep some sort of balance between the incentive to finish, and the need to stay in the characters’ heads longer and deeper so the ending becomes neither too long, nor too short.
In seventeen days, I wrote 50,903 words, at an average pace of 2,994 words per day.
How do you meet the challenges of impatience or patience? Please leave a comment.
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