Day 480: Word Count Woes Pt. 2

I know I already complained about it this week, but man I cannot seem to get a story within a word count. 1000 words is just such an awkward amount of words somehow. If you've ever run track, it reminds me of running an 800 meter race. You can't really sprint an 800 meter race, like you would a 200, but there's also no room at all to show off your pacing skills, and so it just ends up in this weird middle ground. All the good stuff I want won't quite fit, but there's also not much excuse to leave out pertinent details of spatial awareness and what characters look like. Instead I have to pear those down to one or two lines, just the most defining details that I can include. Some of it I can get away with including in dialogue, but a lot of it goes complete unsaid. I just have to hope that the scene plays out smoothly even with a lack of detail.

And that leads me to the other problem. Multiple scenes is basically impossible. I for one have a hard time generating a compelling beginning, middle, and end in only one scene. Not that any scene I write doesn't have those three things, but usually there's a greater arc going on that actually delivers the payload I'm after. Being limited to 1000 words feels like a test of how much power I can fit into just one scene without much in the way of description, scene setting, backstory, or even characterization.

In other words, great exercise. Or else, really, really annoying, depending on how you want to look at it.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley