Big Stories vs Small Stories

February 17, 2018 - Reading time: 2 minutes

I'm getting close to finishing a project that has morphed from a novella set in the same world as Drawchilde (my 200k epic fantasy novel that is complete, but not yet out) into a fairly chunky novel all in its own right. A few years ago, I shifted my focus to shorter works, hoping to build my world and readership faster by getting a selection of slender books out into the world. This has worked and was a good move, as projects on the scale of Drawchilde are the labor of years or even decades rather than months. Towards the end of the year last year I even had plans to go shorter, and publish a series of Kindle stories that would try to emulate the pace and feel of a TV series. This was going to be set in the world of Bydaira, in a place called Serpent's Crook.

And right about the time I made that decision, I started finding it hard to get my words in. Finally I gave up, pivoted in a totally unexpected direction, and wrote a mystery novel. (Since obviously what I need most as an author is a whole new genre to experiment with.) Then I took a brief break for the holidays, and now I'm back in the world of Drawchilde, which is the work and world closest to my heart in many respects. And I'm loving it. In turning Iavan and the Deodin into full-blown novel, I'm finding I have more room to play, space to delve into characters, time to digress into backstory.

The thing about the novellas that makes them a challenge is they have to be tight, tight, tight. Every scene has to move the story with the fewest words possible. You can write them fast. But for me, at least, they require a lot more planning, cutting, and distilling. They are well worth writing. I learn from them and they're fun in their own way. But I have to be in the right frame of mind to take them on.

So at the moment I'm 85,000 words into this story that was supposed to be about 30,000 total. I might still have another 30,000 to go before all is said and done.

After that, though, shorter is going to happen sooner or later. I still have six more Bydaria novellas I need to write.