In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A Few Things
* The Novel Wrapped
* On Skill Level and Process
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger)
A Few Things
came together to cause me to write this post today:
- the novel wrapped and I received feedback from my first reader,
- I read Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week newsletter (see Of Interest) where I found the Quote of the Day, and
- I received a rare and welcome email from a longtime friend who also happens to be a poet and fiction writer. In my response to him, I wrote what would become part of this post.
So here we go:
The Novel Wrapped
Right after I posted TNDJ yesterday, a thought hit me: Although I expected the novel to wrap with only a resolution, the characters might just as easily thrown me a curve ball. Then despite my prediction, the novel wouldn’t have wrapped.
I wasn’t concerned. If the characters had thrown me a curve and something unexpected happened as I wrote what I thought would be the final chapter, I’d have trusted them and just kept writing.
Anyway, I’m pleased to report that didn’t happen. The novel wrapped with Chapter 30 about 45 minutes after I posted TNDJ.
I’m always amazed at how well and smoothly the writing goes when I trust the characters and stay on track with them.
The final chapter flowed out in 1330 words. Best of all, it was another psychologically active chapter. The actual resolution took only the last 98 words, and those were spread over the last six paragraphs.
Gawd I love writing fiction!
On Skill Level and Process
After I read my friend’s email but before I replied, I also read Dr. Mardy’s newsletter and found this:
“Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger)
And I also just received my first reader’s input on BO-55. He started by saying it was “Another great story.” Then he said the story arc was predictable and there were (uncharacteristically, I suppose and hope) no surprises.
That struck me as odd because I was surprised several times as the story unfolded while I was writing it.
In fact, I was brought to actual tears two or three times and had to push away from the computer a few other times over things that shocked me a little. Well, they shocked me enough that I felt the need for a smoke before I could return to the story and keep writing.
So when I came across that quote by Seneca the Younger, it struck me that the quote pertains to writing fiction too, and I had a kind of epiphany:
When you write into the dark, you can’t really predict the overall excellence (or not) of the story itself (e.g., whether the events and the characters’ reactions to those events are predictable or unpredictable and to what degree) because—again, if you’re WITD—the story simply is what it is.
You can only predicate and therefore strive for and maybe predict excellence in the presentation of the story (so how the story’s told). And you can do that only by how you tell the story.
How you present the story is the only part of the process that’s left up to you, and the only part that’s subject to your skill level. In other words,
You can’t predict the details of the story as the characters live it anymore than you can predict the details of your own life as you live it. You can only present those details after the fact and to the best of your current ability.
In his email to me, (and referring to the TNDJ post on “Writing Past the End”) my friend also mentioned sitting down with his characters and discussing several matters with them, including story length.
That’s neither good nor bad, just part of his process. I’ve never had a ‘personal sit down’ with my characters over any specifics re length or anything else that I can think of.
Yet most of my BO novels seem to hit at around 35,000 to 40,000 words, with some divergences up to 60,000 and a couple below 35,000.
But I think of all of ‘my’ characters as either living in or at least having access to my creative subconscious, so they’re elbow neighbors with all the other stuff in there too, including length expectations (of which I consciously have none. I just let the story be what it wants to be).
I hasten to add, I don’t think the characters care either way or even give a second thought to how many words it will take to tell their story. Like we do in our own lives, they’re just living the story and dealing with it.
For Example…
the novels in the Crowley saga were all over the place, ranging from just over 25,000 to 70,000 words. And yes, as you might imagine, I’ve had all kinds of “professionals” (most of whom “laboriously churn out” one or two 60,000-word novels per year) tell me my novels are “too short.”
But then, the whole Crowley saga would have been one massive doorstop of a book, something a little over 1,000,000 words. So what would they have me do instead of what I did (22 novels of varying lengths)?
Would they have me divide the overall story into ten novels to meet some artificial length restriction (started by tradpubs) and make each novel a hair over 100,000 words?
And even if I did that, what possible difference would that make to the overall story? None, sir or madam. You betcha.
To Continue the Example…
within the overall BO series (2,181,181 words through BO-55) there are 9 separate sagas ranging from 2 books to 9 books plus 22 one-off novels.
But again, each saga is one long story based on and told by one POV character. For an example of one saga, Soleada Garcia’s story (7 books) begins with BO-14 and runs through BO-20 (so 292,874 words, averaging “only” 41,839 words per book).
So as I Told My Friend…
the upshot is that as much as I love running the numbers, for whatever reason I haven’t been keeping track lately even on my Annual Production spreadsheet of words per day or any of that.
Now and again when I’m through writing fiction for the day I highlight everything I wrote that day just to get a numbers-wise idea of what I’m doing. But I no longer have any idea of how many days it’s taken to write a story or anything like that.
On the other hand, during my last streak I wrote 22 novels in 44 straight weeks, so I’m certain each of the past two novels have come out in 2 weeks to a month. I just don’t think about it anymore.
So have meetings with your characters if you can and want to, and don’t if that isn’t how you do things. You just do you and don’t sweat the small stuff. And remember that other than writing down your characters’ authentic story, it’s all small stuff.
But whatever else, read and study others’ fiction, and above all Practice. That’s how you get to the point where you no longer care about how much or what you’re writing: only that you are writing.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Excellence
Cover Villain According to another friend, Tiffanie G., there are a lot of good articles about book covers at this site, and they even have a cover template generator that’s on sale right now.