I’m at 33 k, and I went back and fixed it to remove 5 additional characters who were clogging up the works. That took some time, but there was no reason to haul around two entire fireteams of marines, so I killed off a fireteam and offed two of the shuttle crew while I was doing that. Overall, I changed a few hundred words.
I also wrote 1500 words yesterday. I will need to rewrite the scene for conflict.
Today I’ve broken down all the scenes I have so far. I have 32 scenes (so far). They average 1047 words each. In an 80,000 word novel, I’m 40% of the way through. A review of the scenes shows that some are information only, no conflict, and will need a rewrite to introduce goal/conflict in each scene.
So I’ll take what exists and rewrite the scenes for conflict. Extend them to create more uniform length. Shortest scene: 47 words. Longest scene: 3800 words. The rewrites will fix the pacing and structure. I can see that my structure, in order to sit correctly in the Larry Brooks sense of things, needs to have that first plot point somewhere between words 16000-20000. That is not correctly set right now, which will be fixed by controlling the scenes and length.
I’ll also plot out the rest of the scenes, so that each scene has conflict/goal, each scene accomplishes what it’s supposed to accomplish for that part of the book, and it all comes together with precision.
I see the only problem with having the structure be so defined is that someone who knows structure will be noting the important points while reading their kindle, since it tells you percentage-wise where you are in the book if you choose that information (or tells you location, or how many minutes are left in the book). That’s thrown off if there’s a hook chapter at the end of the book so you get sucked in to the sequel – your 25% plot point might be more at 23%, so it looks like it’s early when it’s not. But… if people want to see the underlying structure, fine, so be it. I want it to be obvious that we’re hitting the plot points when we should and that all is right in the universe, writing-wise. Those who hate structure and don’t care, that’s fine, they can ignore it and just enjoy the book, which will seem awesome for some strange reason they don’t understand, like the fact the plot is structured perfectly. 😀
Author Matt Bowes and the Dog's Breakfast 
Yeah, getting those plot points in the right place while keeping the story flowing the way you want can be a challenge. My first two books, I really focused on the timing of the tent poles and wound up making stuff up to make it all work out right. (I have a midpoint but need 8 more scenes to fill in from the first plot point. Now what?) And that’s fine as a learning exercise. It is really hard to keep plot on pace, characters interesting and the tent poles in the right place all at the same time. By my third book, things finally fell into place. During my final read through on the Kindle preview, I got to the midpoint and looked at the position marker. 2502 out of 5011. Right on the money. And I really didn’t plan it that way; it just hit right. (whew!) I’m really looking forward to this combat book we’ve been hearing about for a while. Can’t wait until you have it ready.
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