Thursday, July 2, 2026: 7:21 PM: Today, I spent time with Copilot reviewing the fundamentals of storytelling so I can move forward with my book idea. It has been a while since high school and college, so I needed a bit of a refresher. Book summaries, blog posts, and letters have been more my thing over the past 25 years, so structuring a work of partial fiction had slipped my mind.
With Copilot, I went over the basic story components, including characters, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution, and refreshed my understanding of how plot structure works. I vaguely recall plot moving from introduction to rising action, climax, falling action, and then finally resolution from those long-ago school days. I also confirmed with Copilot that the crisis point in a story is essentially the peak of the conflict.
After that, I explored practical details about manuscript length and learned that most adult fiction runs between seventy and one hundred thousand words. At about five hundred words per Word page, my manuscript would likely be one hundred twenty to two hundred pages.
I compared this with The 5AM Club, about 336 printed pages, noting that published page counts differ from Word documents because of layout and formatting. However, I’m finding that The 5AM Club is around 85,000 words, according to various sources. By comparison, that tells me I’m looking at something like at least 170 pages in Microsoft Word for what I have in mind.
Overall, the conversation helped me get grounded in both the creative and practical sides of writing a book, and I feel more prepared to continue shaping my ideas. “I’m looking forward to completing this project!”