Refried

Just got home from pulling another all-nighter at work (last one for a while, I hope). Yesterday was a double-milestone on the book. I finished the Act II climax (a first pass at it, anyway) and I broke 50,000 words. I'm now over 51,000, in fact. which is funny, because three weeks ago, I was thinking I'd be lucky to stretcth the climax out to 45,000.

Now, part of that is me going back and adding some stuff in earlier in the book, but most of it comes from turning the Act II climax from a simple, brief fight scene into a complex event worthy to be called a major plot point. I haven't read it all through, so I don't know how well it works, but I've got all the pieces down now, and I'm ready (after one more little stinger scene, or maybe two) to push on to Act III.

I don't have a very complicated structure for Act III, but I figure at least 10,000 words of it will be dedicated to the final big fight, so how complicated does it need to be? Ten thousand words to establish what happened to everybody in the aftermath of Act II, ten thousand words to get them all back together, then ten thousand words to fight it all out, brief epilogue, and the book's over.

Easy.

Hah.

7 1/2 weeks to write 29,000 words. Let's see if I'm really up to the challenge.