With Much Delayed Directors Commentary On Witchfinder
I often think I came into writing by a weird route. No, I don’t mean into publications, I mean into writing itself. But perhaps we all do, because I’ve now mentored for something like ten years, and it seems like each person is highly individual.
Add to that that I THINK the fledgelings I attract are – at best – odd (there are probably other words for them, yes) and that means I often find myself flabbergasted by things in how to write manuals that inform you – rather solemnly – that “starting too early is a typical beginner mistake.”
Of course, the minute I come across something like that, I immediately acquire one or two fledgelings who do this. Which is more proof that the universe is, if not solipsistic exactly, at least a tightly plotted novel written by a Writer who is fond of the ironic detail.
But there is one thing I ONLY ever found one fledgeling who thought – in fact a very talented, but for that massive fatal flaw fledgeling – that a novel was a length, and whom I could not get to understand that a novel is a unit of action.
And now a few of you are scratching your head (I wish you’d stop. You’re leaving dandruff all over the blog. Ew) and going “But isn’t a novel a length?”
Well, yes, of course it is. And there are a lot of beginners who start writing a short story, then end up with forty thousand words which – well, this happened to me and it was the old days – means they have to figure out if it can be cut, divided into four coherent stories and/or expanded by double. (Nowadays you sell it as a short novel on Amazom for some relatively cheap price, say 3.99.
What I mean is that a novel isn’t ONLY a length. This is where I say I came into writing through an odd route – having a degree in literature because digit dyslexia forbid engineering, natural squeamishness barred me from medicine, I wasn’t larcenous enough for psychology, and law required my moving away from home, which my dad wouldn’t allow (and yes, there were other reasons, too.) – because I learned how to write novels by studying plays. In plays, being less wordy, the structure is more obvious. Oh, also Portuguese school system started pounding us with ancient Greek plays round about sixth grade and went all the way to Shakespeare in College. (And Wagner. There is a place in h*ll reserved for the German culture teacher who made us memorize Wagner librettos. Don’t go there. {Well, it’s reserved for other reasons, too, since he was a defrocked priest who was well known to take liberties with female students stupid enough to attend office hours. Oh, and also he didn’t wash. Since I was not stupid enough to attend office hours, the only trauma I retain is that the mention of Wagner brings back the smell in that classroom. Fortunately I never liked Wagner.})
In a play it becomes startlingly obvious that each act is a unit of action – there is a try fail sequence and something is solved, or isn’t – and that the play itself is a unit of action.
I made the mistake, when first coming into writing, of equating acts with chapters. This meant at the end of a chapter, I gave the impression that problem was solved and now we’d move on. Yes, I know smart playwrights don’t do that either. But still, if people are in a theater, likely they’ll stay. With a book… well.
Lately my “acts” have been morphing into “Sections” of up to six chapters, which DST had, DSR came out with, and AFGM is big on.
But I still don’t close off the action completely in the section, or I am careful to introduce the next step. (To train myself to do this, for years, I’d take the first paragraph of the next chapter and tack it at the end of the last chapter. Nine times out of ten, it works.)
Anyway, a novel is a unit of action (so is a short. Yes, the difference is size between a short and a novel. BUT it’s unit of action between a novel and glop.) It is about resolving something, be it concrete (the aliens took over the world, we must stop them) or emotional (I want to kill everyone, give me a reason not to) or artsy and pseudo-literary (we’ll stop when the reader feels like he’d rather chew off his own arm than read another pointless page.)
ANY coherent story is a unit of action, ranging from the short short at 2 thousand words to goat gagger at 200 000.
BUT if you think a novel is a length and you forget that it is a unit, then you end with glop.
To be honest, I don’t know if this is normal, or if it’s this particular writers’ issue. It is possible that it’s based on some neurological thing, because the same writer has major, major issues with the symptom that leads up to this. And that symptom, at least, is fairly common and I still battle against it periodically – though normally not to the extremes this writer does. Frankly the only writer having issues approaching this is my friend who has Aspergers (highly functional Aspergers, but all the same) so I wonder if it’s related to emotional projection and empathy.
The problem that leads to glop – at least in its extreme – is the inability to properly weight incidents in your novel/short/whatever. And no, by that I don’t mean you should tie led weights to your characters (don’t tempt me. That and a dark river, and I’d be rid of some of them forever!)
I mean that your prison rescue where major characters die shouldn’t take the same page space, and certainly should have more feeling poured into it than the incident where the character’s favorite cup gets broken. If you give them the same space, refer to them as often in subsequent pages, have an entire city mourn the loss of the cup, have your character traumatized by both incidents in equal measures, etc., you end up with glop.
Now, of course, I don’t have weighting problems to THAT extent. But I do have them. In fact, often this is what revision is all about. Either because the pantser half threw fresh incidents in (I swear sometimes writing is a collaboration with myself!) or because the character changed in the writing, I’ll often discover that, oh, I need to give more weight to the thing with the dog, because it’s a sign he’s coming out of his shell – and able to attach to dogs, but not humans yet. Or that some incident that was supposed to be funny has to be eliminated all together because it distracts from rising action.
Which is where we come to the director’s commentary for Witchfinder – you knew I remembered, right? – The only problem with the last chapter is something new I’m discovering ONLY with this novel – though I had this problem before, in a never finished novel that I call jokingly “A cast of thousands, with elephants.”: Each of the secondary pov characters is strong enough to sustain a novel
Honestly, I don’t know what to do about this, but I might borrow a page from Romance writers and truncate the secondary, tie up the principal (not literally, though trust me, I’ve thought of it too) and then spin off the secondary characters’ histories as sequels.
I won’t say I’m thrilled about his. Just what I needed, another series. But it seems to be what I have to do, unless I want to write a mega-goatgagger.
According To Hoyt 
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Write a mega goat gagger and publish it as a series? Please?
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Um… Right, it might even happen, but curiosity… in what genre do you want this?
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Oh, for Witchfinder? bah. I’ll do it as a nested series. The goatgagger is the pre-minoan fantasy. It’s there, with the other popcorn kittens, but I’m not letting it come to the fore, yet.
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I hope popcorn kittens aren’t anything like popcorn shrimp or popcorn chicken. That’s a dangerous thing to be reading when I haven’t had a chance to eat dinner yet.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDABjGGeZzM Popcorn kittens. That’s what my ideas are doing at the back of my brain.
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I’m working with a friend right now. She is taking her 600,000 word opus, and breaking it up into chunks so we can publish it (I’m doing the publishing part for her). It is a lot of work. Of course it was a lot of work to write!
Maybe your answer is to write the mega-goatgagger and then cut it into pieces later.
Wayne
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Wayne,
no, this novel isn’t in danger of it, really — though it will be longish, I think (Like current at 140k words) — BUT the pre-minoan thing is…. uh. yeah.
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I think that is what George R. R. (I wonder whether he is related to Tolkein or if his parents were fans of John R. R.) Martin did. Five books of that demmed Ice & Fire series and I still haven’t found a novel in there.
As for chapters, I swear some authors these days just start anew at random intervals – there certainly is no discernible reason for one chapter to end and another begin.
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My minoan thing was “250k words in search of a plot.” In the end I killed the character to put him out of my misery. That setting and general story will get written, but with different characters and a different arc, because — argh.
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I mentioned that I’d been working with Shirley Meier on some stuff. We’ve been looking at non-traditional ways to:
1) make the readers more excited
2) make the writer more money
One of the things we’ve talked about might work for your “Minoan Thing”. We haven’t tried it yet, mostly because we aren’t ready to. I’d be happy to talk to you in private about that idea, and some of the other oddball stuff I’ve been working on with.
But not until after Christmas. I’m still writing it up, and I want to make sure that I have everything solidly thought out.
And yes, this will be a book at some point.
Wayne
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I know someone who mourns the current rarity of mega-novels, for he reads very swiftly. (I believe he has a Fire now, and hopefully can find enough good ebooks to help his voracious appetite for reading.) I have similar issues, if I like a book. “What, no, over already?? No! Come back here! More pages! I’m not done reading yet!” (Extremely long manga/anime series? Yes, I’m there.)
…don’t truncate Gabriel? *worried look* (Well, unless he gets a very good book all to himself, subsequently.)
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If he does — he might — it will be a separate adventure.
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But what if that favourite cup actually turns out to be very very important, like the Holy Grail and now that it’s broken the anti-Christ cannot be defeated and even MORE major characters will die?
And yes, I AM a CPQ (Certified Public Quibbler) with specialization in pettifoggery, cavilry and nitpickery.
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You, sir, might be a thwarted writer. And yes, okay, in that case it’s important. Well, and there are cases when it’s important anyway. But what I meant is your favorite teacup, the one with roses on it. (Not yours PERSONALLY.)
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I wonder whether the advent of E-readers and related factors will not engender a new paradigm for story length, such as the mega-novel which is purchased (subscribed) as chapters/segments become available. Consider what might have resulted had Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress not been limited by what the publisher (and magazine serialization) set as length standards but instead follwed the model of The Old Curiosity Shop with its eagerly awaited next chapters? (More recently, remember when Rowling’s American fans were buying the books through Amazon UK to get them ahead of the US releases? Apply that to E-books.)
For undisciplined writers (and writers should be disciplined, frequently and harshly) that model might prove disastrous — how many words can you get a reader to buy before he figures out the novel ain’t goin’ nowhere?
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It’s probably necessary to observe a distinction between “series” and “xxology”. (It would be useful to have a neologism to denote the latter explicitly.)
A –ology is “one story” in the sense that it contains at least one arc that extends from the beginning of the first book to the end of the last. It almost certainly also includes changes in the experience-base(s) of the character(s) resulting in behavior changes; otherwise the arc isn’t supported.
I’m proposing that a series need not contain such an arc, and that that is the basis of the distinction. We see it most prominently in TV, where every episode stands alone and contributes weakly, if at all, to any overall story arc. That’s a necessity in TV, where many different writers, rewriters, producers, &ct. are employed in producing episodes, and none of them can depend on their work being presented at any given point in the timeline. They have to work from the overall “bible”, which was established at the beginning and changes little. However, there’s no particular reason the idea shouldn’t be adopted for books.
The very existence of fanfic confirms that that is, or could be, a valid approach to making money writing. Readers, like TV viewers, appear to enjoy revisiting the characters and story-world again and again, and many of them appear not to like changes, including character development and/or modifications to the story-world. This is not to say that no changes occur, but they’re “reset” for each episode. Romance, particularly the aptly-named series romance, also confirms that there are a substantial number of people who like to revisit the “same story” with minor variations. Truly prolific writers like Louis L’Amour appear to utilize the concept — any given L’Amour novel is very much like any other, but they’re enjoyable because the details change, not because there’s any overarching story involved.
Of course hybrids are also possible. Weak arcs — minor changes to characters and story-world that don’t strongly affect the nature of the episodes — are not only possible but appear to be inevitable, and Eddings and Donaldson demonstrate that series episodes can themselves be –ologies. That doesn’t mean the distinction isn’t useful, just that (as in all things) sharp boundaries don’t exist.
Regards,
Ric
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Um… in answer to your last question “Lost”. (Not my short story, the d*mn series.)
Now, OTOH I am NOT undisciplined, though sometimes my characters take lives of their own. And if I thought anyone would pay a subscription for that sort of thing and maybe getting short stories a month ahead of my putting them up, I’d TOTALLY set it up.
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I think Eric Flint calls them mega-novels. A single story with too many pages to be bound in a single volume. Lord of the Rings, for instance. One problem to be solved.
A series is more like LMB’s Vorkosigan novels. Each has a problem that is solved in that volume, but the characters and character development is smooth and continuous throughout the however many books it’s been, now.
DW’s HH series is in between, with the over arching war, but each volume has a, umm, major episode of the war, that is solved in that one or a few times, two volumes.
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But to address the subject of weighting scenes . . . is that, to a degree a matter of genre? In Paranormal Romance, what is more important? Is the battle royal to rescue the main Characteress more important than the failure of that cute vampire to call her back?
And the main character’s reaction to her Stepmother’s deliberate breakage of her deceased real mother’s favorite teacup with roses on it, being the reason she ran away and became a pirate, is clearly more important than a mere three ship, months long, pursuit, halfway around the world, culminating in a bloody hand-to-hand fight. Clearly her later utterly blank lack of recognition when her father attempted to reconcile with her by sending the mended cup, spotlights the MC’s enormous growth and development. GD&R
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To an extent, yeah, it depends on genre, but honestly there are limits. Of course we can all think of exceptions and special circumstances, but unless we’re going to proclaim “Killing an ant is worse than killing a man” there are limits.
It all depends not only on genre but on what you’re trying to say. If the point of you book is that “not an ant shall be stepped on” then well… but the point has to be coherent and make sense. If ALL incidents have equal weight, then what you have is “mush” not novel.
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