Warning: I hit 100,000 words on my novel draft and realized something scary

I've been writing this fantasy story for about 8 months now, and last week I crossed 100,000 words. I thought I'd be happy but instead I noticed my plot started dragging hard around chapter 15. I went back and counted - 30,000 of those words are just descriptions of forests and meals that don't move the story forward. I mean, maybe it's just me, but if you're tracking your word count like a milestone, check if your pacing is actually working. Has anyone else hit a big number and found out their draft was bloated?

3 comments

3 Comments

averymartin1mo ago

Chapter 15 is where I lost my first fantasy draft too. I cut 20,000 words of a feast scene that took four chapters to describe. My beta readers told me they skipped straight to the part where a character gets stabbed. That was the wakeup call. Now I print out my manuscript and highlight every paragraph that doesn't advance the plot or reveal character. Usually comes out to about a third of the draft. You can always cut the forest descriptions down to one sentence and save the meal details for when they actually poison someone.

the_elliot1mo ago

Oh man idk, I get where you're coming from but cutting a third of your draft seems a bit extreme lol. Maybe just trim some sentences instead of full paragraphs?

taraanderson12d ago

Ugh, is this really that serious?