Your own work, or is this something you have to think about? I've always had to battle the association of my work with not really having much of a plot.
I could elaborate, but as you know, I tend to go on and on sometimes. particular about plotting book by knowing what happens in the middle.
Like for example:
- They arrive at the big event.
- They get themselves in trouble.
- They try to get themselves out of trouble.
After the first five or so character arcs are written. Yet now it's like reverse engineering a 1,000,000 year advanced universe shuttle. Good luck with that.
The only thing that's remained is, I now know the longer the book the longer I spend establishing character at the beginning. Though I don't mean laundry lists. More like "the story collection before the main plot" sort of thing.
Like, if I know there are two sisters. And one tends to -- I don't know something random -- chop down tress, then I pre-plan it as if we already see hints of her liking to cut down tress before the main plot happens that gets them in trouble. I can establish who they are first before the plot begins.
Why you care
What is going on
Who is going to do what about it
Someone on fire or something
Seems like a good place to stop writing
I ended up figuring out 22,500 words on my cyberpunk novel just by accident. Although at this point I kind of hate the term cyberpunk, in a way I can't really articulate into English at the moment.
That and looks like it's not close to stopping till 30K, well without an abrupt ending.
I may have mentioned once, I'm more of a novelette person being more suited to 10K. I got around that by plotting as two different books with a tie in at the end of chapter 10.
Edit: And what do you know, got a 30K novella under my hat.
