How long is a long day?

So... I've been busy...

I've been working on my book, and I've completed the first draft at approx. 111500 words. Now, let me set out the scene a little:

I have never consciously tried to force my story to follow any sort of structure... I haven't split it into scenes and analysed what characters have as objectives, and what causes conflict, and so on... I have, of course, organised the story and structured it, but only naturally. I sort of feel that forcing it to follow some sort of route will make it less natural, more... 'manufactured'.

Anyway, I think this might be posing me a problem now.

Okay, so my story takes place over about a month, and there's a couple of points where it jumps ahead by a week or so... Anyway...

There's a stretch of 6 chapters (22000 words) that all happen on day 20 ... Now, this is almost one fifth of my book, all taking place in a single day... And it's not a dramatic, action-packed day, I just went into a lot of detail. I think this kind of distorts the pace of the story a little, but then, maybe it's not a problem at all! I'll outline what happens:

Chapter 10: One character rescues the DAMSEL IN DISTRESS.
Chapter 11: He and the DAMSEL IN DISTRESS run off to a nearby city to seek shelter.
Chapter 12: PoV switches to other group of main characters. They arrive at BIG EXCITING MAGICAL CITY...
Chapter 13: The characters find a restaurant that contains a SCARY, MYSTERIOUS MAGICAL DEVICE that reveals interesting new abilities and information about one of the characters
Chapter 14: BIG EXPOSITION SCENE!
Chapter 15: Now everyone knows what's going on, they need help to do what they have to do, so they 'call up' some friends.

Chapter 16 and 17 stick with these characters, but are the following day, and a week later, respectively. Chapter 18 returns to the other protagonist and the DAMSEL IN DISTRESS!

So... Yeah...

There's a few solutions that I can see to this (perceived) problem (it might not be a problem at all!):
-Split up the day, pace it more evenly.
-Extend other parts of the story to balance this section.
-Shorten this section and condense down the chapters.
-Rearrange the plot to spread out these events.

Hmm, what do you all think? Am I just being neurotic?

Doodlebug said:

Congratulations on finishing your first draft!

I also think it's great that you have a solid idea of the time frame of your novel. I really wish I could remember where I read this (some 'how to write' book, I'm sure), but I've heard that many writers have no idea of the time frame of their story (does it occur over a year, two years?).

Click to expand...

Thanks

Hmm, well, I suppose there is a lot happening, actually, but there's none of the "Die Hard explosions and gunfire" type of action that takes place elsewhere

Actually... Now I think about it... There is some action in chapter 10... Hmm...

I think I just freaked out while I was filling in my spreadsheet and realised that I had so much happening on one day. Here's the list:

Prologue - Day 1/2
Chapter 1 - Day 2
Chapter 2 - Day 3
Chapter 3 - Day 3
Chapter 4 - Day 12
Chapter 5 - Day 13
Chapter 6 - Day 14/15
Chapter 7 - Day 19
Chapter 8 - Day 19
Chapter 9 - Day 19
Chapter 10 - Day 20
Chapter 11 - Day 20
Chapter 12 - Day 20
Chapter 13 - Day 20
Chapter 14 - Day 20
Chapter 15 - Day 20
Chapter 16 - Day 21
Chapter 17 - Day 27
Chapter 18 - Day 34
Chapter 19 - Day 34
Chapter 20 - Day 34
Chapter 21 - Day 35
Chapter 22 - Day 35
Chapter 23 - Day 35
Chapter 24 - Day 35
Epilogue - Day 3

There's a few points where time leaps ahead a bit, and actually, most of the conclusion of the book also takes place in a single day... Many of the chapters take place over a whole day, or at least cover a large portion of it, which is why I worried about that chunk of chapters all covering one day... I don't know, I worry too much!

I'll have to ask my beta reader (if she ever moves her arse and finishes the bloody thing) if the sudden jumps are a problem... Hmm...

Thanks everyone

Libbie said:

That's great that you finished your first draft! Yahoooo!!!
I think your next step might need to be evaluating your story by scene, and really scrutinizing each one. Does it advance the plot? Does it really need to be here? It's easily the toughest part of polishing up a ms.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

I think you're right... I mean, I can think of a few scenes here and there that don't advance the plot very much, but develop the characters... But they aren't very long... It might be a good idea to move the dialogue from the non-plot-developing scenes to those that do. Hmmm... This won't be easy

I might also have to go through and trim out "filler material", because there's probably quite a lot... I suppose by having a large word count, then trimming out the crap, I'll end up with a condensed, much better story

I'll probably add another 10k words or so with this current revision, but after that, I might go hunting for "pointless paragraphs".