Now Playing: 'Serenade' by the Steve Miller Band (duh...)
'Typers' is coming out quite long...
Ridiculously long, to be precise.
There's nothing wrong with really long fiction (other than the major hit it takes in the 'ol marketability department) but typical 'epic' length fiction usually covers a sh*tload of ground as it unwinds. A whole lot has happened in 'Typers' so far, but not enough to justify the lengthiness of my prose.
My draft of the first book is quite long, but not too much, I'd argue. It needs copious copyediting and polishing, but overall the pacing is generally okay, I'd say.
I think the problem started with the second book. Now, a guiding principle I've sworn myself to is that I keep individual chapters below 10,000 words (which is quite long for a book chapter and the maximal length, some would say) and for the most part I was able to do that with TGS (embrace the acronyms!)... but for HMA... well...
Lord: one of the chapters in that book is currently a 30,000 word monster (nearly novella length, for Crissake...) and I'm not happy about that one bit. To make matters worse, the chapter before it was SUPPOSED to be part of it as well, so in reality I've got around a 40,000 word chapter there.
During the last few chapters of HMA I've routinely broken my 10,000 word rule (and I've even split MORE overly-long chapters into multi chapters...)
The gist is this: if I keep writing like this I'll most likely have four books total, not a trilogy. I know I can avoid this, though: it's all a matter of trimmin' the fat (of which my books are an analogous to a cow suffering from severe obesity on top of a glandular disorder...)
Worst case scenario is that I can't do it, and I do end up with four books (or three OVERLY LONG ones...). I've certainly got enough side-material to fill four books, but I'd rather not, and I know that my course of action is clear: trim the f***ing fat...
I should post that message as a sticky note over my desk (maybe I could adopt it as my mantra ala the Ragin' Cajun, if you will...)
*Sigh* In any event, I know what the titles of each book WOULD be if I did write a quadrilogy (and f*** you, search engines ;)
The fourth title up there IS gonna be the name of the last book, be it the third one (hopefully!) or the fourth. SOAV will be the name of a chapter, at the minimum or- if I can't find it in my heart to start trimming this sucker- the name of a whole 'nother book altogether...
Sometime soon I need to get back to the next chapter at hand: 'Legend of the Novanjo'. Important chapter, this one. Brings a lot of information around full-circle, but it's very light on the action minus a 'Raiden' crash landing at the opening (the chapter FOLLOWING this one would be violent bordering on the hellaciously graphic, though)...
...trim the fat, boy...
...*Sigh*...
Anyway, do you wanna know what a 'Novanjo' looks like?...
...yeah, something like that... (except for the wings in the background... I ripped those off my own Tears' Shower Squadron logo)...
It's gettin' mighty strange now that I'm at the point where I'm stealing stuff from MYSELF...
