By Inanna Carter
For me, the hardest part about writing a book is realizing just how much there is to write. Word count is becoming more important in traditional publishing every year, and whether you outline carefully before typing a single word or write freely as the ideas come along, if your completed manuscript ends up too short or too long it could be difficult for you to get (again, traditionally) published.
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody is a writing resource that many authors, published or not, have relied on to plot their novels. She uses fifteen beats (and percentages) within three acts to track certain aspects that nearly every novel, no matter the genre, should have. Those beats include:
ACT ONE
Opening Image (0-1%)
Theme Stated (5%)
Setup (1-10%)
Catalyst (10%)
Debate (10-20%)
Break Into Two (20%)
ACT TWO
B Story (22%)
Fun and Games (20-50%)
Midpoint (50%)
Bad Guys Close In (50-75%)
All is Lost (75%)
Dark Night of the Soul (75-80%)
Break Into Three (80%)
ACT THREE
The Finale (80-90%)
Final Image (99-100%)
While Save the Cat goes into a lot more detail—I highly recommend purchasing the full novel—you can find its beat sheet and other related resources like this one for free online.
For some people, the beats are all they need to get started. For someone like me, however, it still felt overwhelming in the sense that there was a lot that needed to happen over the course of these fifteen specific plot points. Before I really thought about plotting, I already had a loose idea for my novel. Ideas would suddenly pop into my head and I’d word-vomit onto the screen. And yet, there was this fear hanging over my head that stopped me from writing.
One day, however, while I was fiddling around with Scrivener, I (a word-count goal hater) decided to put some word counts into my chapter titles, using Save the Cat’s percentages as a guide.
For example:
Pt. 1 (12.3k/19k)
Ch. 1 (1,978)
Ch. 2 (3,022)
…
Pt. 2 (2.4k/37k)
Ch. 8 (2,427)
…
Pt. 3 (0/19k)
Ch. 18 (0)
I take my anticipated word count (for example, 75k) and break that down into Brody’s recommended percentages. This got me 19k words (20% of 75k) for acts one and three, and 37k words (50% of 75k) for act two. Then, within those acts, I break the word count down even further.
If the theme (beat #1) isn’t stated by 5% of the book, or 3,750 words in, or, approximately, page 15, then I might reevaluate whether I need to add another chapter. If I’m 25k words in and I’ve not yet “broken into two,” (beat #7) then I might need to see why things are moving so slowly and whether all my chapters, scenes, or even characters are important.
There are a few reasons I think of my novel in word count rather than in pages, despite how micromanage-y it might seem, but the biggest reason is that it’s a lot less scary. Instead of tackling an entire novel, I can take things one act at a time. Instead of having to write 75k words, I can write 19k, see where I am, see what might need to change going forward, and then get started on the next act. This method just … clicked.
Writing a book is hard. But no matter how you tackle it, you’re doing the thing! And I think that’s pretty amazing. I hope this tweaks something in someone’s brain as it tweaked something in mine and helps you make writing your novel a lot less daunting.