Day 2
So. I'm going to write a mystery. Sounds easy enough. All I need is a plot and about 70,000 words. No sweat. Yes, I know I'm delusional, but that's an asset when it comes to plotting. I am an unashamed Type-A personality. Translate that into meaning that I will be working from an outline. Said outline will become more and more detailed as the plot develops in my head. That's why they include the outline numbering function in MS Word, right? My genre -- cozy or traditional mystery - says my word count should be between 60,000 and 80,000 words. I'm going to target 75,000 and cut from there. This equates to about 300 pages in a paperback. Ross Mahler is an author and screenwriter who has come up with a theory and a tool called the Script Beat Calculator . You type the number of pages in your script and Mahler’s Calculator will give you a guide (within a typical 3-act structure) of the page numbers by which the various “be...