Thursday, March 29, 2012

Go big or go novella?

I'm finding myself in a bit of a bind as of late with the story. Thankfully it has nothing to do with the writing. I'm still putting up my 2k/day. I just finished my bit for today and I think my biggest problem is simply bringing it all together. I have written from the perspective of 6 different people in this future-Earth I've created. Two have been fleshed out really well, two have been catching fire and two are good characters with little to do at first. So I like what I'm writing, and in their own contexts, my characters are making good sense. And I DO know how I want to connect one character with two others, but aside from that it just seems like everyone's gotta do their own thing and get out of their own battles before they can all matter to each other. It makes me wonder if it wouldn't all be easier to write if I just took a novella approach to each character.

I like this idea for a couple reasons. 1) It allows me to write unfettered from trying to connect everyone. Again, I liked this idea as a novel, but I only had started 2 characters when I had that thought. Now that the world has gotten MUCH bigger, I feel the novella approach allows me to crawl around in the dingy corners more before hitting the limelight. 2) It gives me a sense of completion and the confidence in completing projects that I'm not sure I have right now. I feel like a lot of my doubt related to this story stems from the fact that I've never really finished anything comparable. I've had ideas and I've written some novellas and short stories, but never a novel and never like this. To finish three or four novellas ranging from 20-50k words might be a boost. 3) If I really want it all to be a novel, I can find a way to blend the novellas together after I've actually taken these people places.

So yeah, I think I just convinced myself that this thing will broken up a bit more. Which is cool because I can release things a lot sooner and you guys can actually see what I'm talking about. Then the drinking will commence. I'm gonna stew on this a night or two, but I feel like as long as I keep writing it ultimately isn't going to be a huge decision. The story is what truly matters here, no matter how I present it.

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