Finally heard from Agent!Kate! on the proposal for the sixties story-- sort of.

She's read it. She likes it and thinks it's going to be really, really strong. She also has some notes about plot progression and pacing (always my weak point) that she's going to try to get to me by Wednesday.

::goes to corner and curls up in fetal position::

Although... she did say she liked it. I'm cautiously optimistic.

That sounds good.

Looks like another 1000 words for chapter 6 last night despite a trip to the store during writing time. I'm wondering if the break between chapter 5 and 6 should be moved back a little bit, there's another natural break. Oh well, not every important.

At the end of chapter 6 I'm running into a dilemma. My group of characters ends up unexpectedly taking some captives who are essentially civilian enemies. The leader wants to kill them all to leave no loose ends, there are objections and he apparently relents coming up with a plan so they can free themselves after awhile. However he subtly indicates to a loyal subordinate that he is to quietly take care of the loose ends.

The dilemma is that I want to reader to pick up on this or at least suspect it, but I'm in a close third person perspective and I don't want that main character to pick up on it and that character is smart enough to figure it out. I'm thinking maybe something like 'if she was paying attention..." or maybe I should just never indicate what happens but allow for it in the sequence of events and figure the reader might likely never think about what might be happening.

I think, no matter how you present it, some readers will pick up on it and others won't. I'm the kind of reader who loves wondering whether little things are supposed to be clues.

I have a whole list of little things in my head that I need to remember to sprinkle in to keep my goal of nothing that's really important later coming totally out of the blue.

Got about 800 words last night, I'm getting concerned there may be too much dialogue and character interaction in chapter 6 and not enough plot advancement, that I might be burning through too many words between plot points.

Gud, the key is that the dialogue and character interaction should advance the plot. (says the woman who has pacing issues, so take what I say with a grain bucket of salt).

Just keep going-- a lot of times, after a first draft is done, you'll find places where you can convert plot moving narrative into dialogue and you'll find dialogue that is nothing more than "sittin' and talkin" scenes that don't really do a lot. (Again, says the woman with pacing issues...)

Just keep going-- a lot of times, after a first draft is done, you'll find places where you can convert plot moving narrative into dialogue and you'll find dialogue that is nothing more than "sittin' and talkin" scenes that don't really do a lot.

That's good advice, it should be clearer once I'm on my revisions.

A lot of the dialogue does have purpose, so maybe instead of saying plot advancement I should say events in the story. I have events in the story and I have changes in the characters and relationships that might need to have happened by certain events but are otherwise flexible.

I've got another set of eyes to read chapters 1 to 5. I kinda feel guilty about sending him a first draft complete with typos, punctuation errors, and run-on sentences. Not guilty enough to take the time to try to fix that stuff right now though.

I'm still trying hard not to pester my wife to read chapter 5.

Got a bit more last night even though I was also busy with other stuff. About 4000 words into chapter 6 which means I'm now over 40,000 words. The figure I've seen for a novel is 50,000, not that I'm anywhere near finished though.