You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
The 30K mark seems to be a sticking point for many authors. How can we push past the pain?
In the spirit of procrastination, while "working" on my latest book—and not having the best day with it—I idly posted on X something along the lines of "Does everyone always hate their WIP at 30,000 words, or is it just me?" The flurry of "oh gosh yes always" and "that stage makes me want to throw my computer out of the window" type messages assured me that I was not alone.
In her blog "This Itch of Writing", author Emma Darwin noted that the 30,000 word gloom seems to happen whatever the length of your novel, whether you’re writing a 75,000 word thriller or a 140,000 book about history. She theorises: "At 30K you’ve run out of the initial glee of your idea, and you’re into the long haul, but can’t yet see the end (in a writing sense; you may or may not know what the end of the story’s going to be yet.)"
For me, this is definitely the case—as a certified "pantser", I not only don’t know the ending, but so far in my current 30,000 words the location has changed, the era of the backstory several times, a few characters have different names or ages to the ones they started with, others have appeared out of nowhere and some have simply petered out. I go through something akin to this process with every book and eventually (so far) have ended up with a workable story, so for now I have to hold tight and trust it works itself out.
Asking the same question in a couple of writers’ Facebook groups, it seems the problem is almost universal—even if you plan your plots in advance. Heleen Kist, author of Killer Bodies, was one of several who equated it to running a marathon and "hitting a wall", while other recurrent themes were "wading through treacle", "the honeymoon period of a bright, shiny new idea being over", and "you’re not even at the halfway point yet and it still feels like a lot of work to come".
Orlando Murrin, author of Knife Skills for Beginners, who has previously published several successful cookbooks, says the 30K "stumbling block" delayed his fiction writing career by at least 10 years. He added: "I started project after project with the wind in my sails, only to find that when I got a third of the way through, my confidence collapsed and it was chucked in the bin. I don’t believe I’d ever have got a novel over the line if it weren’t for three key decisions. I told myself that this was my last chance—I’d finish this book if it killed me. I hired a professional editor who mentored me and when I hit the 30K wall during my first draft, urged me on. Thirdly, I was working to a detailed outline which culminated in a thrilling finale which I was longing to write."
And what does everyone else do when they hit the 30K "wall"? Some go to the end and start working backwards, some skip ahead to a scene they really want to write, others pause writing to spend some time planning. Some simply tell themselves to trust in their original idea and plough on.
As for me, a big part of why my books have at least two timelines and several points of view is so that I can skip to writing about another world when I get stuck on where to go next with the one I’m currently inhabiting. I start a new notebook for each book and sometimes spend some time making longhand (usually barely legible) notes about what might happen next and why, or how, the characters are linked to each other and what their motivations are. And if I’m not sure what my characters need to do next, I might spend some time describing a brilliant meal they are enjoying or a fabulous place where they’re staying.
Rosie Walker, author of The Baby Monitor and a book coach, says: "The advice I give to my clients when they lose confidence in their book is often to try something new, switch point of view, write a different section, go back to the original vision you had for the novel and see where you deviated from that. But I’m terrible at taking my own advice so usually I plough on to the end so I can fix the problem in the second draft. Some distance often helps, so finishing it and coming back to it later is often the most useful to me."
Nice to know it’s not just me.