Hi everyone,
So I'm taking part in NaNoWriMo next month and I've been writing an outline for the story I'm going with this year. I managed to get about 18 chapters out of the idea and was wondering would this be enough for a debut YA Fantasy novel?
If anyone could please share any advice with me I would be extremely grateful!
Kind Regards
David Castanho
Hi Adrian and Helen!
Thank you for the great advise, I really appreciate it. As to Helen's question about blogging, I'm currently setting up a new blog over on blogger as I want to post videos and be more interactive with potential readers. I'll be sure to come back onto this site to inform you all once its finished!
Hi David,
I agree with Adrian's assessment, and if you are a Planner type of writer this is definitely the way to go. However, if you're more of a Pantser, start writing and you will find the chapters will occur naturally at a break in the story, though once again I agree with Adrian that they shouldn't be too long.
The key to NaNo is to start writing and not stop - I did it last year and got a novel out of it, though at just over 50,000 words it wasn't finished. I've since added another 25,000 words and am now on the edit stage, so expect to have a lot of editing and reworking once the month is over. Good luck with it!
And, are you still blogging?
David, it depends on the length of your chapters. 18 chapters at 5000 words each chapter is 90k words, which would be enough words, (90,000 - 125,000) for your genre. That is 16-17 pages a chapter which is to many.
However, it is not necessary for chapters to be uniform in length. I would aim for 8 -12 pages a chapter, 3000-4000 words. Less than 8 pages is fine, but no more than twelve pages. Some of your chapters may only merit 5-6 pages, but I have rarely seen chapters in contemporary novels that have less than 3 pages.
As a guide, I would outline 30 chapters with working chapter titles. That may seem a lot, but it's only 30 ideas to advance the plot and storyline.
I would also aim for a minimum of 3000 words a chapter.
I hope that helps.
Good luck.