Splitting novels

[msagara]

dark_geisha has a thread here, and in an attempt to answer a comment, I ended up breaking the 4300 character limit. Which will of course surprise no one. So I'm answering it here.

TBH, I was thinking about your novels when I was writing up my thoughts on BANEWREAKER. About how having to cut and compress could damage a story that's meant to have an epic scale and make it seem like you're only scratching the surface, rather than sensing and seeing the layers underneath.

I haven't read the Carey, so I can't comment on it directly; I can't even say for certain that having the story split across two books is the cause for the problems you see -- I can only say that I can see how it could be.

The whole question of splitting a natural story arc is an interesting one. A friend of mine, who writes very long novels (as in, as long as mine), split one long novel, but it was written in two acts, and structured as two acts, so the split there felt completely natural, and in that case, resulted in two complete books, neither of which felt shortened or lessened or abrupt. When she was almost finished a longer book than the one she had previously split, she was asked by someone who knew us both if she had thought about splitting the book. I think I answered "No!" before she did. I was certainly louder.

Because in the first case, there was a perfectly reasonable split. In the second, given I'd read a chunk of it at that point, I knew there simply wasn't.

Writers think like writers; they have to. They think about the story, and they'll torture themselves six ways to Sunday to get at the story, to play out the resonances, to do it justice. Publishers have to think like publishers, and money and the bottom line is their domain. How they achieve this can take many forms, and it's true that if one could accurately predict just how the next bestseller was going to be made, publishers would be richer, and readers with more specialized tastes would often be poorer. The truth is, they go by instinct, but instinct can be wrong as often as it can be right. If it's almost always right, congratulations, you're Judy-Lynn del Rey.

Editors, poor sots, are caught between both ends of a very difficulty chain; they not only have to think about story, but also about bottom line, and sometimes in the balance, they have to choose one, which means they're either left with a bitterly unhappy Writer or a very unhappy boss (and did I mention that I think editorial work is the province of saints? Probably not today. But it bears repeating). When dealing in story, the vulnerabilities and insecurities are frequently Right Up There, and the words "it's a business decision" provide not even cold comfort. And the reverse -- the unspoken certainty that your job is on the line if you can't perform -- is also a pressure. And in the middle? The love of the writing. The thing that made you want to edit in the first place.

(If we all sold as well as Robert Jordan, this wouldn't be an issue, and I can think of several exceptions even as I type this generalization of a post -- but I'm speaking about the trend toward shorter novels and shorter books, and trends are always generalizations. Okay, end of that digression).

I realize, btw, that most of the people who read my LJ haven't read my books. I have no expectation that you should. I'm using them now as examples primarily because they are mine, so I can pretty much speak clearly about authorial intent when it came to their creation, and if no author is considered entirely, well, authoritative about matters of her own text, this will have to do.

The Sun Sword series is six books long, and the six comprise one over-arching story, with smaller arcs beneath it. As I've stated elsewhere, I thought it would be two books, but the addition of one plot thread & character stream changed that. I might not have said elsewhere, but will say now, that it usually takes me about 500 pages worth of book to know roughly how long that book will be. In the case of books two and three in the series, the 500 page mark also marked the point at which I realized that I wasn't actually going where I thought I was going; that the book was going to end in a different place, and at a different time; that the arc for the whole novel existed, but that I wouldn't hit the point in the series story at which I'd been aiming.

SEA, I thought I could finish the series with, and I tried this by first eliminating the chunk of the book from which the novel now derives its title. One of my favourite emails of all time regarding my work came from someone who had heard a rumour that this was going to be the last volume -- and had written to say, in all caps, DON'T DO IT!!! Sorry. It's not very often in this day and age that you have someone writing to tell you to make things longer. Digression, again.

I stalled and bogged down writing SEA for a variety of reasons, and eventually had the editor-author phone call in which I explained the difficulty. My editor said, "What are you trying to leave out?" and I told her, and she said, "That's not going to work. Why are you even trying?" And I said, "Last book?" And she said, "Just write the story. But write all of the story; if it can be cut, you can cut it later." So I put back the bits that were necessary, threw away a huge chunk of pages, and started again, secure in the knowledge that this did not, in fact, have to be the final volume.

But, you know, embarrassment is a factor. I was convinced that I could finish the Southern War in one more book. Yes. One more longish book. When I reached about 1600 or 1700 pages, I once again had to make the editor-author phone call. But this time, given that I (optimistically, as it turned out) guessed that it would be 2,000 or 2,100 pages, there wasn't really the option of having a "longish" book. I could start cutting about 600 pages (as it turned out, about 1,000 pages), or I could find a place to split the book. (Apologies, dark_geisha, and those who read the groveling intro and already know this).

RIVEN SHIELD, as published, was 1132 manuscript pages long; by page count, 283,000 words. It is exactly the type of book that I would have to split in half (again) at a different publisher, or perhaps in the current market. To those of you who've read it; can you think of how I could split it at that point? As a single volume, I know it accomplished what I wanted it to -- but half of it would have accomplished a lot less than half; it would have been one of those slowly building things that just … ends up feeling like a slowly building thing that doesn't go anywhere. The pacing of it, the multiple viewpoints, the various threads -- they don't lend themselves to a shorter length, because their existence is predicated on a larger canvas.

If I were told I could never write a book that long again, I could, in fact, write shorter books. They would almost all be single viewpoint books, however. Things unravel quickly for me if there are multiple viewpoints. This is not true of other writers, and many of those are writers whose works I've admired greatly (case in point, papersky's Tooth and Claw.)

Single viewpoints work really well for a large number of readers. There's nothing wrong with a single viewpoint book, and some of the most powerful and personal work I've read has been composed in that fashion. Just so we're clear. Some of the best kick-butt adventure is written that way as well. Imho, however (okay, imnsho) they don't work as well for giving the sense of scope and epic sweep to a much larger universe. Or rather, I can't make them work in those confines.

SUN SWORD, as published, was 1648 manuscript pages long, or 412,000 words. But that one? I couldn't break. Nor was I asked to, fwiw.

There were two places in which I could have broken the books as published; one place -- which is the current end of RIVEN SHIELD -- and the other, some 1400ish pages in, which would have been the end of the Terafin & Jewel section of SUN SWORD. I offered both; my editor pointed out (wisely) that if I chose to end RIVEN SHIELD with the House, people would naturally assume that the book that followed would resolve that thread -- and as she and I both knew that wasn't going to happen in that novel, we chose the earlier break point.

Why am I meandering like this? Because I'm trying to point out the distinct differences in conception and execution between writing a book, even if it's part of a continuing series of books, and splitting a book that already exists. In some cases, there are ways to do it; in others, without doing serious damage to the story arc, or changing the dramatic arc of events, there aren't.

I think the rationale behind having shorter books, but more of them, is that it will benefit everyone: the readers will still get the big, sprawling epics they want, the authors will still get to write them, and the publishers will make their profit margins. In my case, it would mean that The Sun Sword would have been thirteen books long. But I'm not sure -- in my case -- that people would have picked up BROKEN CROWN volume 2, because really, it's the slowest of the starts :/. I think there's a payoff at the end of things that rewards the work of comprehending the culture -- but it comes only at the end.

So what have I been doing tonight? I've been considered the BFFs that I like, and looking at their structure. There are some that might survive a split, but not many, and not in the first volume. There is an accumulating of threads that the reader does, holding them all in place until they come together to form tapestry, and if the beginnings have tension, they also introduce a lot of characters, some hints of ancient history, etc., with a pacing that wouldn't work at half the length. Length, in these cases, are in inextricable part of the form.


ETA: I'm a total idiot. I dropped two and a half paragraphs because I forgot an html cut-tag, and only noticed it now because someone asked if I could maybe turn this into an article :/.

Comments

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I do the more time-consuming thing of, if I like the series well enough, rereading the thing up to the point of the new book, then forging onward. Especially if there's been a long lag between volumes. :-)