You Know What They Say About Small Packages

As we work on the climax of As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1, we’re finding that the scene lengths are suddenly shorter. This is entirely expected, because setting up the dominoes takes a lot longer than knocking them down. It’s good for morale, because we feel like we’re writing faster.

We say we aren’t surprised that these scenes are shorter, but a more honest take is that we were only surprised briefly. There was a moment of confusion about it, because the fact that this is what everything’s been leading up to kind — it’s the biggest big deal in the book — implies that these scenes should take up a disproportionate page count. Also, there’s a lot going on! These are mostly action scenes. Again, that means it’s a good thing that they’re concise, but they feel so weighty that their brevity is counterintuitive. That mental disconnect, that an event’s magnitude within the story isn’t related to how many words it takes to describe it, is a lesson that we seem to relearn on each project.

A writing partner is someone to get excited with during the exciting part.