Plushing it up!

Okay, so remember how I always say that I have a really hard time writing description? Well, it's still 100% true. However, I think I may have found a way to deal with it.

Generally, when I write I focus so hard on what people are saying and the plot line that I don't focus on the description- it's secondary so I sort of pretend that it's not there at all and keep going. Basically, unless the description is crutial to the plot, I generally don't even worry about it when I write the chapter for the first time. Naturally, this creates the kind of lack of description that people generally see when I write.

So, when I was writing 'Mystic Wings' I was honestly surprised at how far a little bit of plot went. I'd say, 'I want to do this, this, and this in this one chapter', and the chapter would turn out to be way longer than I expected. So, when I started writing 'Mark of a Goddess' I sorta started giving fewer instructions as to what I wanted to happen in a single chapter. So now when I finish a chapter it's only about 3000 words, and frankly, that's not good enough. People like the longer chapters and I've been pumping out some bigger ones, so when I wrote chapter 14 'The Dragon vs. The Sorcerer' I finished and I looked at my word count and it was only about 3200 words and I was sitting there going 'crapity, crap, crap, CRAP!' So, I started looking at the chapter and seeing what was missing in it. I think it was pretty obvious what I was missing - a giant opportunity for fun! So, I went back and inserted the said 'fun' and when I was finished I went to look at the word count - 4200. Go ME! I was pleasantly pleased.

Anyway, the point is that without this extra stuff that I added, the chapter would have been left extraordinarily naked - which wouldn't have been a good thing in the least.

I think I've been pressing myself to get my chapters right the first time instead of offering myself the opportunity to write them several times with different concepts in mind. In my case, it's fine to type out the chapter all happy with the dialogue and the action the first time I write it, but I need to forgive myself for not always being able to focus on all aspects of the story during the initial writing process. So, I should just give myself a cookie and let myself go over the chapter as many times as I need to in order to perfect the description (since I'm so crappy at it).
Today I added an extra 1500 words to chapter 17 and that made me feel pretty pleased.