Granulation and Page Counts

Writing is the most difficult thing you will ever love outside of a spouse. It is not made easier even when you understand it completely. It is only satisfied when you do it, when you practice, when you produce over and over again. Writing is an incomprehensible, insatiable maw of time and energy yielding sweet rewards over time. Even if you completely understand your spouse or have a comprehensive competence in writing, neither means that you will always be completely satisfied. Regardless, please forgive me for continuing to explain.

In this presentation, I take granulation to another level by detailing the levels of this outlining technique along with corresponding page targets. This provides a rule of thumb for forecasting your completion dates as well as a guideline for your daily writing targets. First, we have a several givens to get out of the way. Note the following:

1. A typewritten page, single-spaced will add up about 500 words.
2. As well, a double-spaced, typewritten page is 250 words.
3. A typical blog post for SEO is 500.
4. The average amateur writer (persons without a writing routing AND publication mandate) can write about 500 words in just over an hour.
5. A minimum chapter in a text is 10 pages with variation:
   1. Reference/Classroom: 20 pages
   2. Research: 15 pages
   3. Biography: 10 pages
   4. Novel: 10 pages
   5. Popular/Self-Help: 10 pages
6. Therefore, each chapter is roughly 5000 words, and should take the writer 10 hours to complete.

You want to get your writing outlined to the point where you are scheduling your writing by the hour. This means organizing your thoughts so that they are complete each time you write. Take into account the type of publication you are writing. It helps to conceptualize each chapter as 10 blog posts. In this conception, a blog post is a 300-500 word complete thought produced in about an hour. After conception, your next task is to get the composition planned to reflect that consistent writing structure.

I use the Law of Threes. I admit. I made it up to correspond with Beginning, Middle, End. Everything you write will always have a beginning, middle, and end. You can call it by different names, but it will always be condensable to beginning, middle, and end. Again, your task is to get the outline fleshed out enough to indicate 300-500 word or 1 hour segments. With that understood, consider the following granulation of a chapter:

1. Chapter – 10 pages/5000 words
   3. Beginning – 3.3 pages/1666 words
      1. Begin-Beginning -1 page/555 words
      2. Begin-Middle -1 page/555 words
      3. Begin-End -1 page/555 words

3. Middle– 3.3 pages/1666 words
   1. Mid-Beginning -1 page/555 words
   2. Mid-Middle -1 page/555 words
   3. Mid-End -1 page/555 words

3. End– 3.3 pages/1666 words
   1. End-Beginning -1 page/555 words
   2. End-Middle -1 page/555 words
   3. End-End -1 page/555 words

And there you have it. Three levels of outline so that you are now ready to write individual blog post-length writing exercises that will contribute to the completion of your book. Add a 100-300 word chapter introduction to the beginning and 100-300 word chapter summary to the end, and you have a fully-realized chapter draft. Add in graphics, tables, links, vocab lists, worksheets, and examples, and you have a fully-realized book chapter.