Emmy And Me

All right.

It's time to visit the question of tradtitional novel format vs web lit format. I've mentioned many times that I set out to write a novel here. Maybe I would try to get it published, maybe I wouldn't- simply writing a novel was my goal.

Of course, I wanted people to read it and let me know if it was worth the effort, too, but mostly this was to be an exercise in creativity for me.

Well, to my surprise and great pleasure, the story of Emmy and Leah has picked up quite a few dedicated readers, a fair number of whom have cared enough to let me know what they thought was working and what wasn't.

One of the recurring criticisms was that details were omitted, and things seemed to take leaps and bounds 'off camera' every now and then. This was intentional on my part as a storyteller, and I've said as much in the previous 'not chapters'. However, the fact that I've even had to explain my reasoning indicates that my storytelling broke down a bit with those gaps.

When I was in 8th grade I looked for a copy of "Lord Of The Flies" by William Golding in the school library, but it had been checked out. However, right next to where it had been was another book with a sort of silly, anassuming name. Since the book I wanted was gone, I read the book "A Princess Bride" by William Goldman instead. Mind you, this was in the late '70s. Yes, I'm old enough to be your mom. Anyhow, the book was subtitled "The Good Parts Version". The text was in green ink for parts of the book and black for other sections. I've looked at more recent editions and it seems to be italics and standard text these days instead.

So the thing was, the author told a story about how he had been read "The Princess Bride" by his own grandfather. It was some sort of novel from the 1800s or something. Every so often, his grandpa would skip big sections and say "What with one thing or another, time passed". As a kid, he wondered what was in those passages his grandfather skipped over, and when he finally inherited the ancient book and read it for himself, he realized those sections were simply 20-page descriptions of what the Princess packed to go on her trip, or other mundane, boring stuff that didn't advance the story in any way. As a result of this revelation, the author claimed that his was simply an edited version of this much older novel, skipping the huge chunks of details that modern readers would find boring and trivial. Hence "The Good Parts Version".

So, returning to Emmy And Me, I intentionally left out bits and just focused on 'the good parts'. I felt that, as narrator, Leah was paying attention to her interactions with Emmy, and somethimes others (like Stephanie) where it has an impact on the story of Leah's time with Emmy. She doesn't feel that irrelevant facts, such as her own classes in college and the grades she got, or really, how her college volleyball career went (as examples) were worth talking about unless they had some relevance to her relationship with Emmy. Hence, "what with one thing or another, time passed."

When I go back and rewrite the whole thing I'll certainly do what I can to make this clearer, but those big jumps will still happen. Nobody wants to read a blow-by-blow description of Leah's training time with Ruben, or any more than a cursory retelling of a V ball tournament in Cleveland that her team swept. Really, these are the same as Princess Buttercup packing 47 steamer trunks for her trip abroad.

So- up until this recent arc, that had been my guiding principle. Describe in detail time spent with Emmy, less detail on time spent without Emmy but on things that affect her relationship with Emmy, and little to none on parts that have very little bearing at all to Emmy.

A recent example is the honeymoon. That was long, since it was 100% about Emmy and Leah's relationship, right? However, when I discussed Leah taking her mom to go house shoppping, it barely warranted a few sentences. Sure, the house buying was important for Leah's mom and sister, and meant something to Leah as well, but had nearly zero relevance to Leah's relationship with Emmy.

I'm going to stick to this same basic theme throughout the rest of the two-part trilogy (Maybe it has made it's way to three or four parts by now?). That's one of the foundational underpinnings of the story I set out to write.

Now, those of you who have been reading these "not chapters" and the comments should know well by now that I'd also wrestled with word count questions. I've written about how web lit encourages endless verbiage, but traditional publishing doesn't like that at all. I'd been trying to follow a more tradtional format, but then had an episode of life burn-out and took a little break to go for a long motorbike ride to clear my head.

While riding, I came to the thinking that since this here, on Royal Road, is the way this story is seeing its birth, I should embrace the web lit format and just go ahead and write All. The. Words.

And this is how a week in New York City, setting up a new pied-a-terre, took 45,000 words. In traditional publishing, a typical novel is around 100,000 words, so that week was half a paperback's worth! That said, I found it very easy to write that way. The words poured forth, since I had no real need to self-edit for content. Many, many great authors have expounded on the point that if a passage doesn't advance the plot or build the characters, it should be trashed, and in general, I agree. In fact, even when writing All. The. Words. I tried to keep to that basic guideline.

My concern, though, is that it's easy to miss the trees for the forest that way. In the NYC arc, there were a couple of plot points I meant to hit, and I did hit them. There were a few important character development elements that I planned to expound on, and I did- but did anybody notice?

Sure, now we all know about the new house and its new staff/occupants, but do we know why any of that matters?

If I had trimmed the arc to 1/4 of its final length I could probably have hit the same beats, after all. The counterargument, though, is that doing so would shine a spotlight on Checkhov's rifle hanging above the mantlepiece. So very, very many of the elements that later become important were intended to only become obvious in retrospect- and that's the way I want it. If I stripped the book way down, those beats would overwhelm the subtlety, which I really want to avoid.

So my question is this: is All. The. Words. too much? Is it just right? If I ever go to publish in any sort of traditional format I'll have to trim big-time, but maybe that's O.K. Maybe I return to the earlier parts of the story and fluff them until they are nice and long...

Thoughts?