A couple of posts in, a couple of mentions of a mysterious novel, and I thought it was about time that I actually talk about it a little bit. It’s a real thing. You can touch it, see it, read it.

Well, YOU can’t read it. No one but me is ever going to read the first draft. But I have read it.

And I can verify, it does exist.

The Deets

The novel is a work of high fantasy. I actually had to look that up. I always thought “high fantasy” to be a bit pretentious. I don’t mind being pretentious, but I do want to be accurate.

It turns out that “high fantasy” really just means fantasy set in a completely made up world as opposed to the real world. The Lord of the Rings is high fantasy not because of its epic nature, but because Middle Earth isn’t a real place (sorry fanboys).

So, my first novel is a high fantasy. There are knights and wizards and the world is completely made up. High fantasy. So there.

The working title: Regent of Aldun.

Before I made the decision to pants the draft I did try planning. I’m an engineer, planning is what I do. While I was researching various ways to plan a novel I ran across the Snowflake Method developed by Randy Ingermanson. It’s a method to develop a story in small, systematic steps.

I didn’t get very far with it, but I did manage to get a one sentence teaser out of it.

A young girl seeks revenge against the invincible empire that destroyed her life.

Deep. Shit.

Really, that’s the premise. Given that I’m pantsing the shit out of the first draft that’s really all of the original planning that still exists. That, and a map of the book’s world I first drew back in high school.

Progress

The publishing industry uses a standard of 250 words per page to estimate word count. I doubted that when I first heard it, so I checked it out myself. Yes, nerd. Shut up.

250 words is actually a pretty accurate estimate from the dozen or so books I checked. So, when you’re estimating the length of your own work keep that in mind. Word counts in programs like Word are great, but the industry still uses the 250 word per page estimate regardless of what software says.

That said, 250 words is a helluva underestimate for my first draft. I physically counted the words on the first 20 pages. Because I’m writing longhand and I have freakishly small handwriting I average close to 450 words per page. Go me.

So, the total…

As of this morning I’m at 101 pages. Averaging 450 words per page, that puts my current word count at 45,450 words.

That’s right around 45% (because math) of an average length novel, 100,000 words.

My Goals

I’ve got a couple of goals that I am working toward with this book.

First, I want to finish the book. Kind of a biggie…

But I also have considered what “finished” means.

The average length for a fantasy novel is 100,000 words. The fantasies I usually read more than double that, so I’m not entirely sure that’s realistic. I’m not convinced a high fantasy can be told within that word count, but sources around the intertubez insist that 100,000 is the bogey. So I’m considering that the world count goal.

Above that, the story will take as long as it takes. I’m not going to force it into 100,000 words, at least in the first draft. Who knows what will happen during editing.

I also have a deadline in mind for the first draft. In On Writing (considered the writing bible by many authors) Stephen King says this about first drafts:

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity.

So the modern master of horror, one of the most prolific writers of a generation, suggests no more than three months working on a rough draft. I’m a firm believer that if you want to succeed in something you should emulate those that have already succeeded in that area. If you want to be a successful author there are worse people to emulate than Stephen King.

So, three months it is.

I keep a regular, hand written journal with near daily entries. It turns out my mind is an even more frightening place when I KNOW that no one will ever read my thoughts.

But anyway, according to my journal entries I started the first draft of Regent of Aldun on May 1, 2014. That puts the three month target at August 1, 2014. I’m working on beating that deadline, because I like beating deadlines, but there it is.

The first draft of Regent of Aldun will be finished on August 1, 2014.