Once this draft is done, I’ll have a little problem on my hands. Well, it’s more of a compound problem.
This multifaceted problem will call for an algorithmic solution.
First of all, obviously I’ll have to make cuts. You always have to make cuts. I don’t have a target size in mind, or on order, so I’m really just talking about trimming and efficiency enhancement, that sort of thing. But I can tell you right now that cuts won’t get this book down by more than 100 pages, 200 at the absolute outside. We’d still be dealing with a double-size book at least.
From there, there’s the question of whether to split the book or not. This was planned as the first novel in an epic (urban/post-apocalyptic) fantasy type of series with a large cast of characters and three substantial POV characters in the first volume alone. Anything that can be split (i.e. a series split into books) can be split again, and it’s certainly possible to split this up into two or perhaps three smaller books. But there are significant problems I see with this, right off the bat.
For one thing, each book in a series is expected to have a 3-act structure with goals articulated and achieved and a big climactic set piece and all the rest. I can see opportunities to upscale lesser travails and triumphs for this purpose, but even just thinking about it, it feels a little too deliberate. Not impossible, though.
I could try to do more of a serial sort of thing (“Tune in next time!”) and just end the first (and possibly second) book with everything up in the air. I think this could be said of several of the six books in the Lord of the Rings series, so there’s precedent. If I did this, it would be purely for marketing reasons, and I can already see the hateful comments about unsatisfying, incomplete stories…but at least I wouldn’t be bending the material out of shape in the process.
There’s another problem with that kind of split, though. Without getting into too terribly spoilerish details, certain key characters don’t meet until the third act, which would mean they wouldn’t meet until the third book, unless I made drastic changes or contrived some sort of device where they have spiritual contact or something. Not entirely impossible, but it does concern me.
Look at Wool, for example. The author of that work (which I quite enjoyed, by the way) had the opposite problem: several self-contained novellas which he subsequently assembled into an omnibus edition. I’ve seen this style before; for example, the Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski, or my other favorite eastern European series, the Watch books (Night Watch, Day Watch, etc.) by Sergey Lukayenko. Those books were clearly written as shorter self-contained stories that were collected into novel-length works.
To be honest, though, I kind of dislike that approach to revisited-universe storytelling. I don’t mean I dislike the stories, obviously. I like all of the above, really a lot. But as a lifelong heavy reader, I’d usually rather experience the conflict and suspense and the characters’ world stretched over the arc of a full-length novel. There’s a reason novels are as long as they are. And in addition to that one, there’s a second reason a lot of tome-length books are as long as they are. I mean, I don’t know why some of Stephen King’s books need to be as long as they are; but it’s clear why a lot of epic fantasy does. It’s simple: lots of characters, multiple POV characters in particular, especially when they have their own separate stories, result in longer books. It’s just obvious. And for better or worse, that’s what this first book of mine is.
One especially odd possibility would be to split the book along POV lines. Book 1 would be the collected POV chapters of character 1; Book 2, character 2; and Book 3 would be where they come together. I hate this idea instinctively, because I like reading series and I hate it when the author makes a major change in the POV character lineup later in the series, and that’s exactly what this would feel like. Still, it’s a possibility, and even more interesting is the possibility that in an ebook you could do BOTH - some readers could choose to read the chapters as they are arranged for the larger total work; others could read the Book of Character 1 first, then the Book of Char 2, and then the Book of Both. I may look into this choose-your-own-split option regardless of how things shake out in the final arrangement.
At the moment I’m leaning toward leaving the book as it is: long. I have a lot of the next book in mind already, and I doubt it’ll be any shorter, so already we’re looking at either 4-6 installments or two tomes. And I intend to do at least three of the larger stories, so that could be up to 9 installments if I don’t rein in the splitting. I can envision getting into it with the verve of an axe-hacking psycho killer and turning it into a sheaf of magazine-sized segments, thinly sliced and bloody.
More installments might bring certain shelf space-type benefits, though pricing becomes a complex problem and a losing proposition for everyone but Amazon. As an ebook buyer, though, I think I would find any more splitting than absolutely necessary to be pretty annoying. In fact, personally I even prefer long editions with a whole series encapsulated in one giant ebook file whenever possible. Zelazny’s The Great Book of Amber would be one of many such examples; of course, it’s usually only the older finished series that are reprinted in that sort of format.
Anyway, once the first draft is done, I’ll look at these different possibilities and see what seems right.
Your ideas are welcome, always, but even more so in this case.
No comments:
Post a Comment