Desiderius Price

I go with word counts because page counts are so easy to manipulate (font size, page size, font type, spacing, etc) – I remember playing with those back in school when a teacher would specify “X” pages and I’d come up otherwise short. I’ve tried 3Kwords, I’ve tried 25Kwords, and I’ve settled on a general rule of thumb for 6k-8k. However, I’ll tolerate less/more if the chapter/circumstances demand it. At 10k I’m generally looking to see if there’s a good way to divide it. Below 5k, and I’m considering whether the chapter should be condensed with another, or something should be added. Too short, and nobody gets engaged to click that “next” button, and too long, well, both makes it more daunting to me as an author and gives fewer natural “resting points” for the reader to set aside and come back later (I mean, if it’s a really long story, they need breaks).

36494

36492

36490

For significant characters, I try to make sure they have hobbies, phobias, and perhaps an allergy or two. (Like names, I’ve got a random picker app that makes suggestions.) Culture/ethnicity is simply one piece to the character, not the full picture.

Every character you write will have, at its core, a reflection of you, after all, writing is a form of Schizophrenia that won’t get you locked up (well, normally).

36488

36486

36484

36482

36480

36478

36476

powder

marshmellow

36474

36472

You can toy with the reader further by adding in some red herrings, misleading the characters and readers to the wrong conclusion, at least for a while. As to the level of hints, you can pepper both subtle and more obvious, as desired, as some readers will appreciate them, others, well, they’d gloss over them and be in for a bigger surprise.

36470

36468

36466

36464

35462