Hit 50,000 words on my novel last night and I'm still not sure if the plot works.

I set a goal of 50k for NaNoWriMo and somehow actually got there. But now I'm reading back and half the scenes feel like filler. Do you push through to the end or go back and fix the mess first?

2 comments

2 Comments

rayc891mo ago

Man, 50k is no joke, congrats. I hit the same wall on my second attempt last year. Got to 45k and realized my main character spent three chapters just driving to a town that turned out to be a dead end. Felt like I was just padding the word count. I pushed through to the end anyway, and yeah, the whole second act was a mess. But finishing gave me a better sense of what the story actually needed. Went back and cut about 15k of that drivel later.

jennifer_west521mo ago

Oh dude, I just read something the other day that said "bad first drafts are just you telling yourself the story for the first time" and honestly that hit way too close to home. The driving chapters thing is painfully relatable, I once had my character spend like four pages deciding which socks to pack because I was so desperate to hit a daily word goal. It's wild how much of NaNoWriMo is just building up garbage scaffolding so you can see where the actual house needs to go. I think cutting 15k of that stuff later is honestly the real victory, not the 50k itself. Like yeah you hit the number but more importantly you learned what the story isn't supposed to be about. That's the part nobody talks about when they hype up the word count.

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