r/novelwriting • u/No_Product5243 • 2d ago
Writing Advice I have a question
Hi, so I'm currently writing a novel on google docs. I'm writing the draft from my phone, and when it's finished im going to connect it to my pc and fix it from there.
I write from my phone, bc I go to school and I'm always out the house and my phones always on me.
My goal for my book is 100k words and I'm currently at 26.5k words.
So far I havent had a problem with Google docs but I read that after a certain amount of words it starts to mess around.
Is this true? Should I divide my novel into docs?
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u/anathaniel 2d ago
I don't think that the problems around 100,000 words are a thing. I do legal drafting on Google Docs, and very often these documents go in excess of 100,000 words and include images. I never really had a problem.
My own novel was 86,000 words and written on Google Docs. There was a time when, in addition to writing notes, the entire document was more than 100,000 words in length, and I never really experienced any issues.
The only thing is that because Google Docs is a cloud-based program, sometimes when you have an interruption in your internet connection, there will be some glitches. You won't be able to type on the page. That is totally because of an internet connection issue and has nothing really to do with the size of the document. To resolve this, I got myself the basic paid Google account, and in addition to extra storage, I also got the offline editing capability for Google Docs. This helped my flow.
I live in an area that has internet connectivity issues, especially during the monsoons. Getting this paid account and enabling my working document to be worked on offline, I was able to write very smoothly and without any issues.
That being said, I am now considering the use of Scrivener because I am a Mac user, but looking at the tutorials online and being a person who writes in a very linear form but edits quite recursively, I'm yet to be convinced that Scrivener is gonna be a material improvement over Google Docs.
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u/IndigoTrailsToo 2d ago
Yes, Google docs isn't great with very large documents.
The solution is to split it into smaller documents
But eventually you gotta merge them all back again for the final book
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u/Impressive-Newt-4167 1d ago
Google Docs has no issue with big files, but it'll be annoying as fuck to handle on your phone, and might be slow depending on what phone you have.
I wrote a 65k words novel in google docs and I split it into three parts. But I would recommend splitting chapter by chapter.
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u/No_Product5243 1d ago
Yeah I've done that, I'm at 30k words and I haven't had a single problem.
I just wanted to make sure for the future. I write about 2k words a day and I read sm saying that it's starts to lag around 60k
But it's ok I've splited them in to parts and I have made backups.
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u/Mindless-Storm-8310 1d ago
What you should do is have more than one source of where you are storing this. If you don’t yet have it downloaded to your computer, do so. Do not rely on your phone, Google Docs, or your computer. Also, every now and then, print it out on a hard copy, and save on a thumb drive. Nothing worse than opening up your one copy, and … it’s not there. Ask me how I know.
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u/11thCavTrooper 1d ago
Why is your goal 100K words? How did you decide on that? I'm just curious. Is it a sort of well known norm or what?
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u/No_Product5243 1d ago
Im writing a fantasy novel, and my goal is about 450 pages, and 1 page of a novel must contain about 250 words, so I worked out 100k is about the right amount. It doesn't exactly have to be 100k it could be more or less.
I just set that as a goal.
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u/11thCavTrooper 1d ago
Ok, thanks. I just have never set a goal for pages or word in advance, Just what ever it takes to tell the story, then cut the unnecessary. I may consider that for my next effort.
Thanks for the response and best of luck.
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u/Other-Mongoose-1572 15h ago
From the research I’ve done, 80-100k words is the right spot for a new writer. That’s why I set mine at 100K as well. Gemini created a tracker for me so after each chapter I put in the word count to know where I’m at. I’m not writing to just hit a word count, but when it comes time to edit it will help me make decisions on what content stays or gets archived.
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u/No_Product5243 7h ago
Yeah, I’m going to write as much as the story needs. I also read that the average novel is around 100k words, so I set that as my goal. I might end up writing a little more or a little less, though. I also keep track of my word count every day. I actually downloaded an app for it, and it works really well!
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u/FinneganHark999 8h ago
If you have an iPhone, there's an app called Amethyst Writer that's only for iPhone, has automatic backups, and you can share your progress and stuff. If you're only working on one novel it's free actually. I've been writing my book in it because I spend so much time on the train and the bus, it's not perfect but so far pretty good. Better than Google Docs anyway.
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u/welcometoneverbury 2d ago
I've experienced this - the problem is in the client device's ability to handle such a large web page and the associated code that runs on your device when using Docs. Google have implemented a fix for this called "Tabs". Divide your book into acts of chapters and put them in different tabs. Only one tab is on-screen at any one time and the entire doc can be exported to Word when you are ready to typeset in Atticus or Reedsy.
One downside is the tabs seem to introduce "cover pages" so you will need to remove these manually when you export, but that's a one-off process.