I’ve been getting tired of writing Reddit responses of late. I type what I want to type in the little box, think about how users will respond, then delete it. I should be responding here. So buckle up, this is MaPAaRWQ #1: How do I write more.

The question was how the original poster can increase their stamina. They could only write for 1000-1500 words and then hit the wall. But it’s the wrong question. He’s already doing what I think is the ideal writing session, but then if you want to be prolific, have multiple sessions.

A scene is the smallest unit of story. In that one setting, they should be thinking about writing a single short story in which something changes in the plot. There could be longer scenes or shorter scenes of course, but the length of the scene should be a deliberate choice and not just where the author stopped writing.

One of the biggest problems I see in the books I critique (and to be honest, most of my problems are my biggest problems. I have a lot of biggest problems, but regardless…) is the climax of the scene arrives but instead of quitting there and going to the next scene, the author continues, filling the following pages with details about matters that are not important. Dining and sleeping and parts of the story in which nothing happens but instead of writing a few sentences bridging the time between the last scene and the new scene, the scene goes on and on.

I found when I sat down for four hours, I wrote a 4000-word scene with one high climatic moment. When I sat down for three or four sessions on a good writing day, I managed 3-4 scenes, all with their own climatic moments. There are times when that long heavy scene works for the story, but if it’s stuffed with bits that just doesn’t matter, it slows the entire pace to a crawl. Scrivener is great for this. When you get to the point you’re trying to make in the notes, you stop the scene and move on.

After the 45 minutes of writing, it’s best to get up, stretch, and do some puttering around as you think of the ramifications of how what just went down will affect the rest of the story. No matter how sure I am of what exactly I’m going to write when I’m really in the zone the story goes 10% further than I planned. And that new, spontaneous bit may change everything. It may make a throwaway line in chapter three the most important line in the book. If you don’t give the bit in your brain that puts two and two together and gets a llama time to ruminate on what just happened, the story has to work extra hard to get that spark that will keep you going in the rewrites and will grab the reader by the throat in its finished state.

Besides, getting up and stretching is something you should be doing anyways. Like everything else, there’s an app for that.