{"id":6656,"date":"2025-01-10T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T22:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=6656"},"modified":"2025-01-08T13:02:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T02:02:44","slug":"how-to-write-a-historical-novel-in-seven-easy-steps-step-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/how-to-write-a-historical-novel-in-seven-easy-steps-step-four\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Write A Historical Novel In Seven Easy Steps – Step Four"},"content":{"rendered":"

First published on the Centre for Youth Literature website, Inside A Dog, in 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n

4. Write Lots of Words<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the case of The FitzOsbornes at War<\/em>, I had to write about 136,000 words. Luckily, I didn’t know how ridiculously long the story was going to be when I started typing, otherwise I’d have been too intimidated even to begin the book. As it was, I simply sat down at my computer every day, looked at my stack of index cards and told myself, ‘Okay. Today, I’ll try to get through two cards.’ Then, after I incorporated each bit of information from an index card into my story, I’d put a tick next to the information on the card (as you can see in yesterday’s index card photo). It was very satisfying to end a day with a couple of ticks, but that didn’t happen very often. Sometimes it would take me weeks to get through a single card. Sometimes I’d decide that a particular fascinating fact was never going to fit comfortably into my story, no matter what I did. Regardless, I plodded on. <\/p>\n

I wrote the book in its correct order, from the first chapter to the last, so I wouldn’t get confused. This also helped motivate me (‘Okay, today I have to write that boring yet necessary bit about Churchill, but as soon as that’s done, I get to write that funny story about Henry!’). Yes, writers are weird.<\/p>\n

After about a year and a half, I had a whole lot of words printed on paper:<\/p>\n

\"Manuscript<\/p>\n

Don’t even ask how many pages that is. TOO MANY. That’s why it needed to be edited.<\/p>\n

Next: Editing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First published on the Centre for Youth Literature website, Inside A Dog, in 2012. 4. Write Lots of Words In the case of The FitzOsbornes at War, I had to write about 136,000 words. Luckily, I didn’t know how ridiculously long the story was going to be when I started typing, otherwise I’d have been … Continue reading How To Write A Historical Novel In Seven Easy Steps – Step Four<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8,5,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-montmaray-journals","category-this-writing-life","category-wwii","category-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6656"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6713,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6656\/revisions\/6713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}