And it seems to me, more than ever, that at *some* point the writer needs to understand the story as a whole.
Which is what makes writing a long series of the "single story, multiple volumes" sort so difficult: it's pretty much impossible to hold the entire thing in your head at once. And there's no chance to go back and change things in previous volumes to make them better suit what you want to do later. I tend more toward the organic side of writing, but I think if I ever tried to do something like this, I would have to rely on some degree of outlining, whether I wanted to or not.
I'd also like to pick up on your use of the prologue - I mostly dislike them, and see very few uses for them
I've chewed on this before, some years ago (http://www.swantower.com/essays/craft/prologues.html), and pretty much stand by what I said there. (As evidenced by the kinds of prologues I use in the Onyx Court books.) But I should add that a prologue in an ongoing series of this kind has an additional option, which is, as you say, the rapid-fire "where are they now?" update. It's not the most compelling thing in the world, but a) anybody who's reading the tenth book in your series is in it for the long haul; you don't have to convince them to keep reading and b) there's something to be said for getting it over with quickly. What doesn't work is what Jordan started doing, which is giving random scenes, often with characters we don't know and don't care about, with very little tension to make us care.
I am currently reading Kari Sperring's _Living with Ghosts_ It matches your description of little dialogue, lots of description and internalisation... with one fundamental difference - it has plenty of momentum; I don't think that dialogue and action would have saved this book.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that description and internalization were bad! But in this case it's a visible sign of the problem: this is (supposedly) an epic fantasy -- a genre of grand deeds and thrilling action -- but it's gotten bogged down in the mud of details and the characters thinking about things instead of doing them. To the point where, even when they have a conversation that might up the tension, it doesn't -- because the flow of the conversation keeps being broken by the surrounding text. I've complained about this before (http://swan-tower.livejournal.com/452568.html), but it's gotten seriously out of hand here.
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yati
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Date: 2011-07-21 05:50 pm (UTC)Which is what makes writing a long series of the "single story, multiple volumes" sort so difficult: it's pretty much impossible to hold the entire thing in your head at once. And there's no chance to go back and change things in previous volumes to make them better suit what you want to do later. I tend more toward the organic side of writing, but I think if I ever tried to do something like this, I would have to rely on some degree of outlining, whether I wanted to or not.
I'd also like to pick up on your use of the prologue - I mostly dislike them, and see very few uses for them
I've chewed on this before, some years ago (http://www.swantower.com/essays/craft/prologues.html), and pretty much stand by what I said there. (As evidenced by the kinds of prologues I use in the Onyx Court books.) But I should add that a prologue in an ongoing series of this kind has an additional option, which is, as you say, the rapid-fire "where are they now?" update. It's not the most compelling thing in the world, but a) anybody who's reading the tenth book in your series is in it for the long haul; you don't have to convince them to keep reading and b) there's something to be said for getting it over with quickly. What doesn't work is what Jordan started doing, which is giving random scenes, often with characters we don't know and don't care about, with very little tension to make us care.
I am currently reading Kari Sperring's _Living with Ghosts_ It matches your description of little dialogue, lots of description and internalisation... with one fundamental difference - it has plenty of momentum; I don't think that dialogue and action would have saved this book.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that description and internalization were bad! But in this case it's a visible sign of the problem: this is (supposedly) an epic fantasy -- a genre of grand deeds and thrilling action -- but it's gotten bogged down in the mud of details and the characters thinking about things instead of doing them. To the point where, even when they have a conversation that might up the tension, it doesn't -- because the flow of the conversation keeps being broken by the surrounding text. I've complained about this before (http://swan-tower.livejournal.com/452568.html), but it's gotten seriously out of hand here.