First Kiss(es) … ‘the end’ … just as planned

When I started writing First Kiss(es) … I had an idea, a character, a problem and an ending. Oh yes, i had the ending. The question became though … as I wrote the beginning, the middle and ‘the end’ would the real ‘the end’ include the ending I had in mind at the beginning.

(Okay, seriously … was that confusing?) 🙂

I wrote and I wrote and I wrote until I reached ‘the end’ yesterday afternoon and ‘tada’ … the end I wanted flowed right on in and through … right to the point I don’t think I could have changed anything to get to it.

It was perfection if I do say so myself (and I do).

The other element that worked out just as planned … word count. Word count is the number of words in a book. Adult novels range from 80k – 100k and some WAY higher and some less. Category romance genre novels tend to be in the 50-75k range — those are the little skinny books that Harlequin, for example, publishes.

Twilight was 130k… so you can see how ‘large’ a book gets as the word count goes up.

My goal with First Kiss(es) was 80k. I hit 80,427 words at 1st draft with the ending that I wanted.

Now in edits, that might go up … that might go down. Probably down as I cut unnecessary scenes and content, but one never knows. I won’t begin the true editing process for another month while I take a look again at another novel already in need of edits.

When you look at works you’ve written … did they come out how you expected or did the story take a turn, a fork in the road and lead you somewhere else entirely?