I'm having a little struggle, internally, with this project. My writing professor in college, Dr. Welt, always told me that a story is as long as it needs to be. I asked her how long a novel was, and that was the answer I got. She was adamant about that. If it's a short story, then that's what it is. If it's a novel, then that's what it is. If it falls somewhere in between, then so be it. Just write what you want to write and don't write any more than that.
Here, though, I can feel myself stretching things out because of last time, when I ran out of things to say before the end of 50,000 words. I'm in the same spot this time around, or at least I'm afraid I will be. I've got the beginning of this story pretty well fleshed out, the middle is fuzzy but I definitely know what I want to happen and who the principle characters are (although my character gets locked up in an asylum by then so I'm sure he's going to meet all sorts of interesting people that I haven't thought up yet), and the end is something of a blur, where I only know the most high-level details of what will happen. Granted, I'll know more about what happens in the middle once I finish the beginning, and I'll know more about what happens in the end once I finish the middle, but my fear is that I'll need more than 30 days to figure all that out. I'm just not smart enough to keep all of the details of an entire novel in my head at one time. General plot outlines, yes. Motivations of a dozen different characters, no.
But I guess this is just an exercise in discipline and endurance. This novel doesn't need to be great. If I stretch out scenes with particularly flowering writing, who cares. The most important thing is to finish the 50k on time. After that, if I want, I can go back and edit to my heart's content. Although, admittedly, I haven't touched the story I started 2 years ago. Maybe after this one is done I can go back to that one and see what needs excising. (Probably a lot.)
Anyway, pardon my rambling. Just wrapping up for the evening. K and I had B.B. in puppy class earlier tonight, teaching her the ever-elusive "heel" command and sitting and staying with the three big D's (distance, distraction and duration). If K hadn't taken B.B. for a long visit at the dog park earlier, I don't think we would have done nearly as well as we did. They are now downstairs watching TV together while I'm up here writing. But I think I'm done for the night.
1 comments:
My wife is a great example of someone who demands extra detail in the books she reads - she loves every morsel of exposition.
I tend to write just what needs to be there, assuming that bare bones are enough. I recently had a novella edited by a friend, and at least half of the 636 comments/questions requested more detail.
We don't want to bog readers down in excessive detail, and getting just the right balance will be tricky, but a bit of stretching should do more good than ill.
Post a Comment