How many hours do you put into a story?

[oneagainst]

You guys are fast. Or, I'm slow. I might do a thousand words in a day if I'm on a roll. Generally under 500. Lots of constant rereading and editing as I go, like LS66. About a month for a story, unless it's one of the ones I tinker with off and on for years.

My approach is to sketch, get the architecture in place and then go back after, ignore the issues and just don't break the flow of thought worrying about spelling mistakes. Whatever it takes to stay in the zone.

 

[Voboy]

No clue. I'm not doing this for pay, so I don't bother totaling up hours.

OFTEN, I intentionally slow down. Because I'm enjoying the story enough that I don't want to stop writing it. On other stories, chiefly historical ones, I can spend many happy hours doing research for the story; does that factor in?

Lately, just for my own curiosity, I've started tagging the date the plot occurred to me, then tracking (again, by date) when I start it and finish it. I primarily do this because I'm now increasingly writing things LONG before I submit them, and I'd like to remember when I wrote them. I'm finding that my latest 20-30k word stories have taken about 4-6 days.

 

[Codoc24]

Sometimes I'm not even sitting at my laptop, I may sitting on my backyard patio having a beer but I will think about the story and where the plot is going. Or I may have a scene that I can't get to flow like I want it, so I will toss around ideas. Then sometimes I'm sitting at my desk staring at my laptop screen and don't know how to proceed. I'm only writing short stories but I still seem to spend a lot of time on them. When I finish, I send it to my editor and then when she returns it, I have to go through her comments and make changes. So I really can't even take a guess on how long it takes. Some go faster than others. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

 

[aldolino]

Always depends on how intense you work on that story. There were long pieces, I was through in several hours and shorts that took me months.

 

[Trionyx]

Does time spent thinking about plot twists while I'm walking the dog count?

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Does time spent thinking about plot twists while I'm walking the dog count?

Yes, because that’s when I solve story problem.

Just me, the dogs, the open air and multiple fictional people fucking in my head.

 

[12oclocktales]

As long as it takes, like brain surgery. Flaubert sometimes would spend 8 hours just writing one sentence until he was sure he got it right. And his novels are several hundred pages long. Maybe clocks moved slower back then.

For me, the first draft seems to go the quickest. It's the re-writing that eats up the clock.

 

[Wonderer67]

I’ve done two stories only and working on a third. (Other than a 750 word challenge) the two are 16k and 21k words respectively. Both took me about 8-10 hrs.

But I sort of cheat on my writing time, and do voice to text as I write my stories, then go back and do lots of revision and editing.

 

[Priscilla_June]

Honestly it depends how much I am struggling. A lot of what takes me a while is I get into my own head about a story and stress/second guess myself lol

 

[dmallord]

I read the above on how MS Word tracks editing. In the MS Word Mac version I use, it only tracks the last time the document was opened and closed as 'edit time.' It does not track the previous times I opened the document and worked on it. However, it says 'nine revisions.' So at least nine times, I sat working on that one story. The last time recorded was 817 minutes. That's 13 hours plus. I remember that day. I worked myself into a pounding headache and had to practically crawl to bed to stop the throbbing. So, at least that element, for one day, seems to be accurate. One must remember to log each writing period in a table somewhere and keep a record.

Nah. Too much trouble ... write until your head hurts and then stop for the day. Maybe count the number of pills left in the bottle after the story is finished and track that instead.

 

[StrappingMan]

Two years ago when I started writing 3k word chapters I would get the outline and a rough draft in two hours. Then the editing. Then the revisions. Then adding and subtracting colorful language. The time would balloon to about 15 hours. Not all at once of course.

I've been working on a five book series for over a year now totalling 80k, 60k, 36k, 12k, and 48k. Most of that time is spent on how to weave the differing time periods and characters together in my mind. I can safely say that it has taken north of 1000 hours of the last sixteen months.

Now I'm beginning to understand how Tolkien felt.

 

[Erosfan]

Time for me varies. I usually spend many hours working things out in my mind, then I make notes. I have written a story in less than an hour, some take days.

 

[PastMaster]

my latest series is over 600k words long and i have been working on it for months. -so quite a long time

 

[MyBareTorso]

My stories tend to run a little long, 20-30k words.

I just finished my latest, and realized I put about 100 hours into it.

How many hours do you put in your typical stories?

Too many! Usually when I should be doing "important things" instead...

 

[onehitwanda]

Too many! Usually when I should be doing "important things" instead...

what could be more important than fresh words for the words god?

 

[MyBareTorso]

Boring stuff like paying the bills, doing the shopping etc... nowhere near as much fun as posting here.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

I’ve been running with 10K word chapters as an average, and I’m going to say I might spend close to 8-12 hours total on that including editing and proofing (poorly I might add, lol), which does take some time.

On my last three minute time test I clocked at 90 wpm with 98% accuracy, so it’s not really a matter of speed… it’s the ADHD that really makes things challenging.

 

[djrip]

I’ve been running with 10K word chapters as an average, and I’m going to say I might spend close to 8-12 hours total on that including editing and proofing (poorly I might add, lol), which does take some time.

On my last three minute time test I clocked at 90 wpm with 98% accuracy, so it’s not really a matter of speed… it’s the ADHD that really makes things challenging.

I would never think that writing speed had much to do with typing speed! For me at least the bottleneck is in my brain, not my fingers.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

I would never think that writing speed had much to do with typing speed! For me at least the bottleneck is in my brain, not my fingers.

I agree with you here, entirely. I think even if you type very well, when it comes to focus and finding time between life and the real world, fickle muses and whatnot—it’s another matter entirely! Reading through the replies I guess I’m nowhere near as slow as I thought I was!

I roleplay as a hobby in between my solo work, so switching gears between different settings and characters and just… general vibes can be so difficult sometimes.