Size does matter.....

[KWPech]

Ok bypass the chuckles and childish jokes over my title. Or not...

I've heard it both ways when writing a novel. "Keep to the basics, short and sweet and get your first draft done. You can add more later if and when you need to."
Also in contrast, "Let you mind go and get what you want down. You can cut the crud out on your first revision, Chip away and mold it into your final story."

Personally I fall into that altter catagory, at least for this project I am currently on (small "Hoorah" to me. Finished the frist draft on turkey day. Urban fantacy came in around 146,000. Guess I should have signed up for nano.. HAHA!.)

I'm now organizing and rolling on my edits and taking a giant sword to the larger crap cunks that dont fit or I don't like.  It works for me and feels right to at this time.
But I was just wondering about what others do and feel in this perticular matter.

So how about it? How do you all approach your size limits or goals?

[LizW65]

I don't mean this to sound condescending or anything, but I think you just have to use as many words as it takes to tell the story.  (Don't worry too much about wordcount unless it's a NaNoWriMo project, of course.)

[Warden John Marcone]

That's one way to say it, but then it turns into "Bare bones plot and flesh it later" or "Get it down and trim it when you're done."

[Enjorous]

See I've had both problems on the same manuscript. Where I had to trim a lot of fat from one section and then add a ton of meat to another.

[Starbeam]

See I've had both problems on the same manuscript. Where I had to trim a lot of fat from one section and then add a ton of meat to another.

I noticed this with my WiP rough draft.  Partially because I realized there were places where I was missing lots of stuff and consiously worked to flesh it out more in later sections. And partially cause I was just getting it all down and didn't much care about fleshing it out when I was on a roll.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I don't mean this to sound condescending or anything, but I think you just have to use as many words as it takes to tell the story.  (Don't worry too much about wordcount unless it's a NaNoWriMo project, of course.)

It's a damn sight easier to sell novels within a certain length-span, though.