What’s a blogger to do when her internet stops working? Why actually get some work done on her novel of course!
I took on an ambitious task recently, turning my epic fantasy trilogy into a quartet. I’d been considering it for a while. I’d noticed a disparity between the size of Storybook Perfect when compared to its two follow up novels. Storybook Perfect runs at 175,000 words, but when I look at the scenes I’ve planned for its untitled sequels neither seems like they will go much over 120,000. Usually the series starts with smaller books and the last few are the large ones. I’ve been thinking of ways to combat this problem. I don’t really want to ‘pad’ the later volumes, padding usually reads exactly like that – as filler. If you doubt me, anime fans, think of Naruto’s filler episodes. They lacked the lustre and power of the episodes that were drawn from the original manga. They weren’t terrible (though some may dispute that statement) but they weren’t up to the standard of what came before or what followed. I am NOT doing that to my books. I want my books to be shiny and strong.
So my next option was cut from Storybook Perfect. I have revised that book more times than I can count and while I could probably shave a few thousand words of somehow (god knows how, but there would be a way) it would never be the tens of thousands I’d need.
So a thought came into my head. Turn Storybook Perfect into two books. There were ideas I had to relinquish for the sake of word count that I could rewrite and of course I’d have to add a new conflict in to wrap up the new book 1, but it could be doable.
I agonised over the decision for a few months, no one wants to go back and tear through something they spent ten years already working on, but I didn’t feel there was any other way.
Scrivener is a godsend. I transferred my existing Word document into Scrivener, split it into scenes so I could flick through to add and remove at will (soooooooooo much easier than scrolling through a 294 page Word document). Now I can also move scenes that will be in book two easily as well.
The only down side is shortly after that I got a fever and a bad flu >.< but I’m back online and (almost) feeling fine so we’ll be talking again soon.
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