#bc undoubtably the answer is 'well I did an unhinged thing and then another one and then I stacked a third one on top and added decorations

[tavina-writes]

oh i just saw your chapter lengths excel and as someone who’s wishing they could write longer chapters, do you have any tips for how you write/outline? like how did you decide the projected word count and stuff?

Hi nonny!

I'm not entirely sure I have good suggestions for this since my chapters have always tended towards being long, and my outlining is uhhh "well, it happens?" but I do have several thoughts that might be helpful!

The thoughts got really long, so they're now under a cut!

I only really think about the projected length as a benchmark, based on how "big" a story idea I think I have. For the fic that you're referring to, I knew that it was a setup I really enjoyed (arranged marriage) and that it would cover a number of years (so stuff has to happen in those years), and I thought it would work better in a four act structure (in the beginning) so I thought like "oh it'll probably be four chapters with 10k per chapter, so that'll be a 40k fic!"

As things progressed this obviously became not the case given the absolutely giant status of the chapters and the fact that three act structure worked a lot better with where I saw the ending going so there's four parts in each "act" as it were hence 12 chapters. (Originally I was going to do a fairly long epilogue type situation focused on Xichen and Ningning's descendants in "act four" but I've since yeet that into the sun bc I didn't like it lol.)

I adjust the projected length based on having finished chapters since my chapters tend to be pretty evenly split length wise (give or take a few thousand words), so since the first act was ~90k it's probably going to be closer to 270k than 250k but I'm currently in denial about that bit lmao, so really! after you have the first couple chapters, and you have a forecast of how many chapters it's going to take, projecting a project length is fairly simple math to do!

Okay that said, how do I actually project/outline/do the writing process? This is complicated because I'm very much a chaos writer who uh, doesn't write in order and doesn't finish scenes and doesn't start scenes at the beginning or finish at the end (I tend to write scenes in thirds or parts and then stitch them together so, that's the state of affairs here lolsob. I don't think that helps anyone very much.)

BUT: I find it really really helps to have goals, sometimes multiple per scene and to check back on those after I think the scene's done. The goals can be:

plot related -> introduce character A, introduce motivations for character A, provide a transition from setting A to setting B, further the conflict between character A and character B, etc

character emotion related -> establishing that Character A has changed since a previous scene, Character B introspection, filling in background on why Character A or B believes x or y or acts in a certain way

details and research related -> this for me is generally related to time period, setting, time of day, time of year, what the characters are physically doing in each scene and how they're oriented in relation to each other, etc which I find really important to like, decreasing white room syndrome and grounding the characters in a real place as they talk or fight or have a sad cry in the bath or whatever, so after the plot and character emotion related goals are through I also check like "hey is his bathtub floating in some undisclosed location or?"

So basically I "outline" by breaking each chapter down into "okay: where do I want all the characters and their various subplots to be by the end of the chapter vs the start of the chapter?" and I go backwards and fill in all the scenes I think would make sense to get characters from A to D or however, and then after I do that (or tbh as I'm writing) I shove in more scenes that explain how characters get from like, A.5 to A.7 which I didn't initially think needed explaining and back and forth until A->D has been achieved. This also means (for me and how I write) normally if all the other chapters have been 21-24k and I "finish" a chapter that's only 19k I've dropped a plot point somewhere and need to go back and spackle it back in.

Another really helpful longfic tackling thing that I have going on is where I keep a "notes" or "character index" document where I periodically update with like: new OCs and their details, new setting details, that one nice source I found about incense burners, the music I was listening to for x or y vibe, my meta thoughts about how or why a certain character might be acting a certain way...etc etc.

For example, my most recently completed novella-length fic (after court, returning to different doors; 39k) had this as its original "outline"

Then, after I got a fair ways into that I made a new set of notes about what I wanted to achieve based on what was going on with the scenes I'd written and what I still needed to fill in:

and then while I was writing the mountain ghost thing I stopped to type this down about WZL:

And then I filled in the situation at the Yunmeng Discussion Conference with Hints Of A Past, etc.

Basically I think your outlining should be whatever you think will help you remember what goes where, and it's really helpful to have goals about what you want to get done every chapter rather than "I need x amount of words per chapter." Some fics want long chapters! some fic want short chapters! some fics are long! some are short!