How do you structure your novel? How many words in a scene, or pages in a chapter? I get that question a lot, because the truth is there is no “rule” and the answer seems to vary with author. Here’s my formula, and why. I write many different length books for different genres: Contemporary Romance, Long Historical, Short Romantic Suspense, Novellas… but they all have the same story structure. (Or, if you follow MBT teaching the same LINDYHOP. Life, Inciting Incident, Noble Quest, Disappointments, Help!, Overhaul, Perfect Ending). This means, on average, the First Act (LIN) is 15% of the story, and the Third Act (HOP) is 15-20% of the story. Poor D, or the Second Act takes up 60-70% of the story. Which is why, of course, you want […]
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How to Write a Suspense Chapter 2 – Moving the Character toward the Noble Quest!
You’ve jump started your story with an inciting incident, and home world (maybe not in that order, but definitely in the first chapter) and now you need to write…Chapter 2. Last week we talked about the considerations in crafting Chapter 1. To see the checklist, click here. And, to catch up with the story to date…Chapter 1, Scene 1 Kenzie, Chapter 1 Scene 1 Luke That first chapter is key for pulling your reader into the story. They need to like the characters (and worry about them) enough to keep reading to chapter 2. But now, you need to give your reader a reason to go on the Noble Quest with them. This chapter is all about giving your character (and your reader) enough motivation to go on the journey. […]
Read the RestPutting it all together: Adding the Romance beats to your first chapter
For the last two weeks on the blog, I’ve been going through the 10 beats of a romance that we discussed last February so as to refresh our minds before we start putting the elements together. This week, we’re going to dive into taking those beats and combining them with our story structure so that we can actually build our novel. Just to sum up, we’re going to be working with the first three beats as we start putting together Act 1. Beat 1: Boy Meets Girl: In this component, there is an event, goal or circumstance that occurs to bring our hero and heroine together—Usually this happens in the first chapter, but it definitely needs to happen by Chapter 3. Some examples that you thought up […]
Read the RestChapter 3.2 Clean!
Wow, it’s amazing how much easier it is to read without all the read squiggles. And as I got further into the piece, I appreciated RH’s comments more and more – it’s a good lesson – when you are going over the critique of a partner, make sure you have two versions – their comments, and a cleaner one to help you really evaluate them. I made more changes…and this is going in the Final Rough Draft Vault. Hope you like it! Next week, we’re going to shift gears and approach this like we might be sending it out as a proposal to agents and editors. I’m going to start with showing you how to put a synopsis together, using what I call the “Plotting Roadmap.” Then I’ll show […]
Read the Rest
