It started out so innocently.
I was over at author Nicole Petrino-Salter's blog (http://hopeofglory.typepad.com/into_the_fire/2012/01/that-time-of-the-year-.html) yesterday, where she posted about The Academy Awards. Simple post on entertainment, right?
Well, as usual my brain went a different way with it. Conversations like this typically lead to favorite movies, who you think is going to win, etc.
But instead, I was thinking about the fact that I watch very few movies. I'm different than most people that way. Sure, part of the reason I watch few movies is content--most of the stuff released today has content I'm not willing to compromise myself on. But in truth, even as a kid, I never watched many movies--not even western films. And the western was by far my favorite.
So in that innocent little post about The Academy Awards, I realized I've ALWAYS been about recurring characters, rather than stand-alone novels, even before I began to write. For example:
* I've always been about series TV. Gunsmoke, Five-0, Bonanza, and a zillion other shows you can name. The same recurring characters--a chance to know them well, grow with them, have adventures with them.
* I've read lots of books in my day and some are certainly stand-alone novels. BUT--a very large percentage of the books I read growing up were all about--you guessed it, recurring characters. I devoured The Hardy Boys books (still love to read the original series occasionally); I bought nearly every original Star Trek novel from the 70's and early 80's featuring my favorite triad of Spock, Kirk and McCoy (sadly, since those days there just hasn't BEEN a plethora of good Trek novels.). Even my all time favorite novel, Zane Grey's Forlorn River, had a follow up novel based on one of the lead characters. And while epic novels are stand alone novels, they dig deeper and carry a story farther than most regular length fiction, and I'd rather read an epic any day than a short bunny-hop.
* My need for recurring characters extends to sports. As a kid growing up in Maryland, I'd watch the Orioles play. But eventually the Eddie Murrays, the Cal Ripkens etc got traded or retired, and suddenly I was watching a group of strangers on the field. Baseball was no longer interesting. In tennis, I was planted in front of my television or, occasionally going to a tennis tournament where I could watch my two favorite players, Stefan Edberg and Andre Agassi play tennis. But first Stefan Edberg retired, then Andre. Tennis was no longer interesting. And I haven't watched tennis since.
It's a built in requirement of my make-up to surround myself with recurring characters, both in fact and fiction.
I'm not sure the revelation is helpful in any way, but at least it explains why I'm always mired in a continuing storyworld and books in a series rather than hopping from one novel to the next of unrelated characters.
Perhaps it's a tip-off to me. Writing books is hard work. Writing books in a series is even harder, because you don't have to think about just the first book, but the timeline and character arc of your characters over multiple books. In short, it means extra headaches and hand-wringing. Because of that, I spend a lot of time trying to wrestle myself into the stand-alone category of novels.
But perhaps rather than trying to force myself to write the way others do because their way must certainly be better than my way, I should instead just go with the way I was programmed, write my stories, and see what happens. After all, with the digital book explosion, the short story market is making a bit of a comeback, so I always have the option to publish short stories for material I develop that may not be novel length that emerges during my process of creating storyworld.
Showing posts with label series fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label series fiction. Show all posts
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The Quote That Plagues Me
I was recently skimming through a book by David Fryxell called Write Faster, Write Better. Coming from a non-fiction background gave Mr. Fryxell a good foundation for speaking to the topic. In this book, he had a quote by author Jon Franklin, who says:
I was more than mortified by this quote, because my first thought was "Oh my gosh! He's talking about me!" Because I do have problems outlining my books. Oh, sure, I can do the beginning/middle/end stuff. But where I struggle is knowing where to begin a story, and how much plot is too much plot for one book.
Yes of course I realize I have the option of just writing whatever comes to me, than taming that 500K epic down to 100K in the re-writes. But I want, more importantly NEED to learn to work faster. Not a 3-4 books a year faster, but I don't think it is unreasonable to expect two first drafts a year from myself. The more books become entrenched in this digital age, the more important it is I prove to myself and others that I can produce product in a timely fashion. And it is very common for authors to have books in various stages--one they're writing first draft, another going through edits, research on another one, etc.
I need to keep my manuscripts in motion. But first I have to get the blasted things outlined!
I am neither seat of the pants nor detailed outliner. But in my heart I want to be a moderately detailed outliner, just because I'm a geek. But mostly I want to be efficient with my time. So time constraints put a great deal of self-pressure on me concerning how I approach my writing.
But here's my other, bigger problem with outlining. My brain automatically thinks in terms of epics. I'm talking Roots saga type stuff. I have yet to come up with a story idea that did not automatically morph into a long saga. What typically happens is I'll come up with one story idea, usually that falls somewhere in the middle of main character's life. Next thing you know I'll be scheming up stories about the precursor years or the post-years and each of those take on a life of their own. And I just can't seem to turn epic-brain off.
In this regard, I am probably one of few. I did a blog post in the past here at Arizona Inspiration, and clearly, most folks prefer a series of books to one epic length work. With rare exceptions, the time of the epic length works has come and gone.
Which brings me back to my problem. Outlining that gargantuan gob of plot in my head into individual stories, and figuring out where is the appropriate place to start each of them. For others, this may seem easy as pie. For me, not so easy.
Take my work in progress, what would be the first book in the series. I wrote the second book in the series over the course of 6 years. But then I wanted to tell the wife's story, what this WIP is about. But guess what? Another major character has evolved with plenty of story of her own, and the two main characters are out of time sequence with one another. (one main character is several years younger than the other, so their life experiences come at different times). How much of that to address in the novel? And how to lay it out in the novel? Or does it require another novel of its own?
You see the vicious cycle here? AGH!
So yes, as the writer puts it, I do wonder if I'm incapable of thinking through my own story. Largely, I think the problem is one of perfectionism. If I pour all my time, effort, and research into a project, I want it to be the best it can be. But because of perfectionism, I often leave myself floundering, unable to figure out how to move forward. I know. It must sound absolutely silly. But it's a struggle.
At this stage of my life, I've learned how to carve out time from a hectic schedule and get the words down. But get the outline down? Not so hot. And it's a problem I'm determined to smash through this year.
So if you have words of wisdom for this discombobulated writer, I'd surely appreciate it.
“In telling yourself you
can’t outline, what you’re really
saying is that you can’t think your story through.”
I was more than mortified by this quote, because my first thought was "Oh my gosh! He's talking about me!" Because I do have problems outlining my books. Oh, sure, I can do the beginning/middle/end stuff. But where I struggle is knowing where to begin a story, and how much plot is too much plot for one book.
Yes of course I realize I have the option of just writing whatever comes to me, than taming that 500K epic down to 100K in the re-writes. But I want, more importantly NEED to learn to work faster. Not a 3-4 books a year faster, but I don't think it is unreasonable to expect two first drafts a year from myself. The more books become entrenched in this digital age, the more important it is I prove to myself and others that I can produce product in a timely fashion. And it is very common for authors to have books in various stages--one they're writing first draft, another going through edits, research on another one, etc.
I need to keep my manuscripts in motion. But first I have to get the blasted things outlined!
I am neither seat of the pants nor detailed outliner. But in my heart I want to be a moderately detailed outliner, just because I'm a geek. But mostly I want to be efficient with my time. So time constraints put a great deal of self-pressure on me concerning how I approach my writing.
But here's my other, bigger problem with outlining. My brain automatically thinks in terms of epics. I'm talking Roots saga type stuff. I have yet to come up with a story idea that did not automatically morph into a long saga. What typically happens is I'll come up with one story idea, usually that falls somewhere in the middle of main character's life. Next thing you know I'll be scheming up stories about the precursor years or the post-years and each of those take on a life of their own. And I just can't seem to turn epic-brain off.
In this regard, I am probably one of few. I did a blog post in the past here at Arizona Inspiration, and clearly, most folks prefer a series of books to one epic length work. With rare exceptions, the time of the epic length works has come and gone.
Which brings me back to my problem. Outlining that gargantuan gob of plot in my head into individual stories, and figuring out where is the appropriate place to start each of them. For others, this may seem easy as pie. For me, not so easy.
Take my work in progress, what would be the first book in the series. I wrote the second book in the series over the course of 6 years. But then I wanted to tell the wife's story, what this WIP is about. But guess what? Another major character has evolved with plenty of story of her own, and the two main characters are out of time sequence with one another. (one main character is several years younger than the other, so their life experiences come at different times). How much of that to address in the novel? And how to lay it out in the novel? Or does it require another novel of its own?
You see the vicious cycle here? AGH!
So yes, as the writer puts it, I do wonder if I'm incapable of thinking through my own story. Largely, I think the problem is one of perfectionism. If I pour all my time, effort, and research into a project, I want it to be the best it can be. But because of perfectionism, I often leave myself floundering, unable to figure out how to move forward. I know. It must sound absolutely silly. But it's a struggle.
At this stage of my life, I've learned how to carve out time from a hectic schedule and get the words down. But get the outline down? Not so hot. And it's a problem I'm determined to smash through this year.
So if you have words of wisdom for this discombobulated writer, I'd surely appreciate it.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Long Novels vs. Series Books
I know I'm hopelessly outvoted on this, but I'd like to see the departure of "series fiction" and the return of the long novel, the epic, if you will.
I say this both from the standpoint of a reader and a writer. I struggle with why I can't find good historical fiction to read. I struggle with where my writing fits in, and how I'd define it. I struggle because I use terms like "epic" or "panoramic" to define the kinds of stories I like, yet those very terms are ambiguous and mean different things to different people. Just like the saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure," so too, "one man's epic is another man's small potatoes." Some people also use the term "saga" which, for whatever reason, I tend to shy away from.
All I know is that I like to read (and write) stories that are BIG in scope. Stories that really bring into play the history of the period, the prevailing thoughts of the society, the backdrop of a larger struggle. This kind of historical fiction, at least for me, has been extremely hard to find in CBA.
In fact, I've only read 2 books this year that approached that type of story. But they were written as books 1 and 2 of a series. But books in a series, in my opinion, aren't as powerful or effective as one long sweeping novel. For one thing, when people write books in a series, each novel feels "undone" somehow. You get to the end and think "what kind of an ending is that?" I can tell you exactly what kind of ending it was---strictly a marketing ploy for the publisher to reel in buyers for that next book in the series. Not one satisfactory to the story.
When books are written in a series, the "BIG" feel is leached away from it and instead gains more of a soap opera feel, ie. "stay tuned till next week for the next installment of As The World Turns."
And, by the time the next book in the series comes out, you have totally lost the rhythm, if not the actual content of the story of the previous book. Much of the work the author put into the buildup is lost in the passage of time. I know that by the time I bought the second book in the series this year, the power that the first book packed had faded with time and it was much harder for me to pick up and continue on with book two. I think I would have had a different reaction had the book been one long, sweeping novel. We writers are taught the importance of building tension in our novels. But series fiction loses tension because---well, because it's series fiction.
I mean, can you imagine if Gone With The Wind had been published as a series of books? BLECH!! The magic would have been eradicated. Ditto for Lonesome Dove.
And there is absolutely no good reason for books to be chopped up into separate titles, other than the rule of the Almighty Dollar in publishing.
That stinks.
As a reader, it makes it near impossible to find good historicals to read. As a writer it makes it hard to find my niche.
But I'm going to keep searching for my niche as a writer. And as a reader I'm going to keep scanning the historical fiction bookshelves. Maybe somewhere, somehow, a good long epic will emerge that will knock my socks off and give me hope that the epic isn't dead.
I say this both from the standpoint of a reader and a writer. I struggle with why I can't find good historical fiction to read. I struggle with where my writing fits in, and how I'd define it. I struggle because I use terms like "epic" or "panoramic" to define the kinds of stories I like, yet those very terms are ambiguous and mean different things to different people. Just like the saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure," so too, "one man's epic is another man's small potatoes." Some people also use the term "saga" which, for whatever reason, I tend to shy away from.
All I know is that I like to read (and write) stories that are BIG in scope. Stories that really bring into play the history of the period, the prevailing thoughts of the society, the backdrop of a larger struggle. This kind of historical fiction, at least for me, has been extremely hard to find in CBA.
In fact, I've only read 2 books this year that approached that type of story. But they were written as books 1 and 2 of a series. But books in a series, in my opinion, aren't as powerful or effective as one long sweeping novel. For one thing, when people write books in a series, each novel feels "undone" somehow. You get to the end and think "what kind of an ending is that?" I can tell you exactly what kind of ending it was---strictly a marketing ploy for the publisher to reel in buyers for that next book in the series. Not one satisfactory to the story.
When books are written in a series, the "BIG" feel is leached away from it and instead gains more of a soap opera feel, ie. "stay tuned till next week for the next installment of As The World Turns."
And, by the time the next book in the series comes out, you have totally lost the rhythm, if not the actual content of the story of the previous book. Much of the work the author put into the buildup is lost in the passage of time. I know that by the time I bought the second book in the series this year, the power that the first book packed had faded with time and it was much harder for me to pick up and continue on with book two. I think I would have had a different reaction had the book been one long, sweeping novel. We writers are taught the importance of building tension in our novels. But series fiction loses tension because---well, because it's series fiction.
I mean, can you imagine if Gone With The Wind had been published as a series of books? BLECH!! The magic would have been eradicated. Ditto for Lonesome Dove.
And there is absolutely no good reason for books to be chopped up into separate titles, other than the rule of the Almighty Dollar in publishing.
That stinks.
As a reader, it makes it near impossible to find good historicals to read. As a writer it makes it hard to find my niche.
But I'm going to keep searching for my niche as a writer. And as a reader I'm going to keep scanning the historical fiction bookshelves. Maybe somewhere, somehow, a good long epic will emerge that will knock my socks off and give me hope that the epic isn't dead.
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