Hello, dreamers. It’s another busy week for me, especially on the writing front. On the bright side, as it’s been raining non-stop for the past few days and looks like it’ll continue through the end of the week, I have little better to do than sit and write.

As I mentioned in this week’s Writer’s Desk, I’m juggling a lot of writing projects right now, some of which are more time-sensitive than others. Thus, by necessity work on Aquarius 1 has slowed. But I haven’t forgotten about my new work-in-progress, nor have I been idle. That said, here’s the latest:

Aquarius 1

Last week, I wrote about my recent reworking of recent chapters, removing unnecessary subplots. But even as I was doing that, I still felt the story was being rushed. Much of that dealt with a fundamental issue: chapter length.

I always tell writers on Twitter asking about chapter length that a chapter should be as long or short as it needs to be. There are no widely-accepted rules, so each writer decides on a rough average chapter length. When I began working on Aquarius 1, for reasons I cannot remember I settled on a standard chapter length of around 2500 words, with 3k as a hard limit. Perhaps this arose from having spent the past year focused mostly on short fiction, where publishers are currently looking for works no longer than 5k words, preferably shorter. Regardless, as I wrote Aquarius 1, I began to notice a problem.

The best advice I’ve seen on chapter length is that each chapter of a novel should be a story unto itself: it has a beginning which sets the scene and introduces the character, building action or drama, a climax, and a conclusion. But as I wrote Aquarius 1, I frequently found myself scrambling to tie things up before reaching my word count limit. Over time, this led to a tendency to skimp on dialogue, omit minor characters, and sometimes cut action short abruptly so as to wrap things up. I felt like I was always scrambling to tie off loose ends before hitting that 3k limit. I began to doubt my ability to write this novel. I began wondering if my novel-writing skills had dulled to the point where I needed to step back.

Then, late last week, I did something I’d been meaning to do: I took a look at the average chapter length of Pioneers. It was an eye-opening experience: it seemed most of my chapters ran about 4000-5000 words, capped at six.

Suddenly, everything made sense. I was scrambling to wrap up chapters, rushing through Aquarius 1 because I’d cut my chapter length in half. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing in many works of fiction. But sci-fi leans heavily on worldbuilding, especially hard sci-fi. I frequently had to choose between building the setting and introducing the science, or engaging in the sort of character development my work tends to rely on. More often than not, character building was suffering.

This revelation has led to a fresh re-think of the novel. I’ve since written a new chapter and part of another, now embracing the longer Pioneers word count. But while I’d like to simply press on, this would create a problem. I’m not writing a collection of short stories; I’m writing a novel. The events earlier in the story inform each new chapter. By continuing on at this point, I’d need to fill in much of the character development I’d neglected early on. This, in turn, would inevitably require me to go back and extensively rework the earlier chapters to reflect the new information.

Thus, between this new information and the sheer breadth of my other current projects, I’ve reluctantly decided I need to go back and rework the earlier chapters before forging ahead. I have a partial chapter in my work file, which I intend to complete in the coming days. But after that, I’m going back to the beginning, to give this novel the introduction and character-building it deserves. I may combine my planned pre-query editing pass on Pioneers with that process, allowing my previous work to inform the new project. And I believe it will be better for it.

I still feel very strongly about Aquarius 1. It’s fresh, innovative, scientific, and I haven’t been able to clearly see the progression of a story like this since I first began work on Pioneers. But a story like this deserves to be done right. And the stilted chapters I’ve written thus far don’t do it justice.

So, amid everything else going on, Aquarius 1 is getting a revamp. By this time next week, I’ll be able to fill you in on how it’s going. Until then, as always, dare to dream. – MK