{"id":77678,"date":"2015-05-26T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/?p=77678"},"modified":"2015-11-06T13:35:06","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T18:35:06","slug":"two-tales-tell-a-better-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/?p=77678","title":{"rendered":"Two Tales Tell a Better Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"qthomasbower<\/a>
qthomasbower on flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got two books here.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 544 pages, my writing teacher and editor, Barbara Esstman,\u00a0a twice published novelist, told me my novel was too long \u2013 way too long. She even shared where she thought a natural division of the story would work.\u00a0I heard what she said, but I didn’t comprehend what she was saying.\u00a0I saw that the novel could<\/em> be divided into two books but emotionally, I wasn\u2019t buying it. I\u2019d worked too hard on this book for far too long – six years at that point – to now pull it apart and basically start over. When you\u2019ve typed \u201cThe End,\u201d the last thing you want to do is upend\u00a0your book \u2013 again.<\/p>\n

About the same time I got the news\u00a0that my novel was too long, I\u00a0started a revision workshop at the Bethesda Writers Center. Our first assignment for the 8-week class was to write a pr\u00e9cis, or summary, of our novel that could not exceed ten pages. It was this exercise that laid bare\u00a0the truth. Trying to wedge the waddling expanse that was my book into that tiny pr\u00e9cis confirmed what Barbara told me,\u00a0I was trying to tell the story of two main characters in one book that was too long, and still not long enough.<\/p>\n

I reread all\u00a022 chapters, and with additional consultation, confirmation and inspiration from my writing group, I dove into the daunting task of rewriting one novel\u00a0into two, though I still felt a nagging resistance in my gut. Would my\u00a0characters blossomed in the bifurcation? If I lose major characters would\u00a0minor characters be able to take\u00a0on\u00a0stronger roles in\u00a0the halved story arc? The plot seemed to thin out in some places and thickened in others. Some\u00a0actions and incidents gained clarity, others seemed to lose their purpose. I felt\u00a0the dramatic arc was too flat when it focused on one character and\u00a0the veracity and tension of the \u201cwhole\u201d novel had gotten lost in the gulf between the two books. I stopped writing, not sure how to proceed.<\/p>\n

Whenever I get stuck like this, I read. I chose\u00a0The Goldfinch<\/em> by Donna Tartt\u00a0 because it had\u00a0similar themes –\u00a0a tragic incident causes the protagonist world to change dramatically and,\u00a0the visual arts served as the backdrop for the story. Also, at 784 pages, I was hoping to justify\u00a0the length of my\u00a0book.<\/p>\n

The Goldfinch<\/em>, was indulgent, almost extravagant, narrative. For the most part,\u00a0Tartt gave readers a full experience with her characters, though\u00a0sometimes it was too rich. There is only so much I need or want to know about the unsupervised drinking, smoking, cursing and boredom of 13- and 14-year old boys in the Las Vegas desert.\u00a0Though as long as The Goldfinch<\/em> was, it kept the reader focused on the protagonist\u00a0and his journey. My novel\u00a0had\u00a0not achieved that.<\/p>\n

In contrasting the size and scope of the two novels,\u00a0and with\u00a0time away from my manuscript, I could now see clearly\u00a0that the advice I’d gotten to create two tales from one was not about page length –\u00a0it was about the wandering journey I was taking readers on.\u00a0I had two casts of characters with two fully formed stories. These tales are worth telling – just not\u00a0together. The goal is to\u00a0focus on the protagonist’s story and\u00a0give readers a full experience;\u00a0don’t wander off with another character’s\u00a0story when there’s one\u00a0to be told right in front of you. I realized that\u00a0several different characters could hold their own\u00a0in a sequel –\u00a0not a Harry Potter-esque series (if only),\u00a0but what I have is\u00a0a good multigenerational saga that could find an audience over several books.<\/p>\n

I now understood\u00a0that the goal is to\u00a0create a fully formed, focused story in as many pages as needed\u00a0to tell one story. So back to work, two books it is!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou\u2019ve got two books here.\u201d At 544 pages, my writing teacher and editor, Barbara Esstman,\u00a0a twice published novelist, told me my novel was too long \u2013 way too long. She even shared where she thought a natural division of the story would work.\u00a0I heard what she said, but I didn’t comprehend what she was saying.\u00a0I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-77678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debut-authors","tag-writing-craft-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77678"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78469,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77678\/revisions\/78469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}