NaNo Day 10 - Back to the real world

The last two days I was completely consumed into my story world and I had a lot of fun with my characters. I even socialized with real people too!

So why is the weekend over so fast and I'm forced to resume my normal computer job? WHY AREN'T THE HOLIDAYS HERE YET?!

....Sips coffee....

I have recently undergone training to resist the vacation monster that has rented an apartment in my head. He is paying me rent, but god he's noisy.

I also want to give a sincere apology to my write-o-thon buddy for cutting the session short yesterday!

Instead of being together all day, I think it was only about 3 hours...I'm kinda ashamed about that and it sucks there is such a wide hour difference between us. The next time we schedule a session, I will make a crock-pot dinner so that it's already done! That way "dinner" cannot lure me out of the house again :)

Now that apologies and rantings are over, it's time to get bad to writing! Recently I've been wondering if I should plan my chapters as I write. I'm just going with the flow, but sometimes there's such a "gap" in getting to the point, that I wonder if a chapter structure could hold me to the plot a little bit better. So I did some research at the two books I just finished reading:

"Eon" and "Eona" by Alison Goodman.
( For the first book, the real "call to action" event happened in the middle of Chapter 5 )

• Looked like there was an average of 12 words per line, and 31 lines per page
• There was an average of 16 pages per chapter
• That means there was ~ 6,000 words per chapter
• There were 24 chapters in total
• I estimated ~ 144,000 words for the whole book?

"Hero's of Olympious: The Lost Hero" by Rick Riordan

(Filled with action from page one, but the main event was at least 100 pages in)

• Average of 12 words per line and around 25 FULL LINES per page (lots of short dialogues)
• Chapters were dependent on scene: the lowest chapter was 6 pages and the highest was 17 
• In total he had 56 chapters, with 551 pages 0_o
• I estimated ~ 164,000 words for the whole book?

Comparing both of these "YA" novels together, I found that I like smaller chapters. If I was tired, reading Eon was a hard because I must finish a chapter before I put it down. It's not common for me to just stop in the middle. 

So I'm calculating that for my own story, I will do a combination:  base my chapters on scene, but try not to make it too long. That means I now have:  5 CHAPTERS!!!! Each one is between 3000 - 4500. I think that's a nice number to start with :)

Just started Chapter 6 with an amazing word count of:  17,396 

EXCERPT

Lying back with his hands behind his head, Jason stared around the room hoping for answers. Moonlight streaming through the double windows bathed the dark city below in a gentle glow. With all energy sources switched off in the nights, the group had no trouble sneaking back into the Community Building undetected.

He still had all his clothes on, although he flung his shoes off before collapsing in bed. Funny enough one shoe had landed in a padded chair next to his backpack. His pack. The book!

Jason shot out of bed and remembered a passage that he had read on the trip over here. “…legends of fire giants that would walk the ground and it didn’t burn…” he breathed aloud. That was a really strange coincidence.

Wait a minute. Did he seriously just compare a fairy tale with a broken video clip? Jason sighed and plopped back onto the bed. He needed to stay with the facts, not make wild theories about fire monsters being real. Of course as soon as he thought that, the need to search through his leather book became twice as strong.

Less than a minute later his flashlight was shining on book’s open pages spread across his lap. He thumbed through the beginning of the book, now reading the bits of fiction with attention.

                “These are the energies that can shape the physical, but it is the veil that contains the presence. On one side, the laws of the physical are ever-present and active in a temporal state. On the other, matter is subject to change. The unseen becomes seen and the forces of this world are reversed.” […put more description here..]

                “The unseen becomes seen,” Jason thought to himself. “I wonder what that means.”

He scribbled some more notes in his journal, looking for more description of ‘things unseen.’ Many colored bookmarks stuck out the top of the book when his eyelids started closing of their own accord. The pencil slid from his hand as dreams of theories and facts lulled him to sleep.  

Again the darkness surrounded him and swirled around his limbs in a dark embrace. The air was thick and forced its way into his lungs. All he saw was velvet black. Fear froze him in place. His senses went into overdrive, but found nothing he could use. There were no smells or sounds that could link him to the reality he knew. The silence was like a vacuum and he couldn’t even hear himself breathing. Shaking, he dared to turn his head. A speck of white flashed in the distance and was gone when he blinked.

Jason gasped as he tumbled to the floor, the nightmare rushing from his mind as quickly as it had come. Another breath and he gasped for a different reason, his sweat giving a foul odor from under his armpits. He was soaked. Whatever had plagued his thoughts had also stolen his rest, and he felt more tired than ever.

Realizing how bright the room was, Jason picked himself off the floor and looked toward the windowed wall. It was still early morning, but he had no idea what the Mayor had scheduled for the Waymakers this morning. Did he still have time clean up? Ah what the heck, he reeked.

The cleaning locker was on the right side of the room, tucked behind a door next to a desk and set of chairs. He walked inside and stripped, flinging his dirty clothes into a pile at his feet.  The sensors at the top of the tiled shower detected his presence and began the sanitation cycle. Small bursts of light impacted his skin and made his muscles relax. Slowly the grime and sweat was picked off. Jason stepped out of the small space feeling clean. Then he picked up his clothes and held them in front of the sensor – perhaps the bombardment of sanitation particles would take the dirt from his clothes as well as his body. It sounded lame, but just might work.

                “Ewww, I can see your white butt!” came a girly voice behind him.

He was hit with realization that the locker door was still open. “Then why are you looking?!” he yelled, making a wild swing with his arm behind his back. Where was the stupid door handle?

                “Why didn’t you shut the door? Oh geez, I’ll just leave.” The apartment door swished twice and the room was silent.

For a moment he just stood there, not wanting to acknowledge what just happened. Angrily he pulled his clothes out the shower and tried to shove them back on. With one leg in his pants, he slipped on the other pantsleg pooled at his feet and fell over cursing.