Just a quick update on things:
I’m going camping this weekend up Huntington Reservoir with some friends, so I won’t be around for a couple of days. It should be fun; last trip was a good chance to step back and recharge, and I definitely could use that right now.
At the same time, I’m working on Sholpan, and it’s turning out to be a lot harder than I’d initially thought. I’m writing it as a companion novella to Bringing Stella Home, where the story covers Stella’s point of view through about the first half of the novel, with a few extras for the people who read the novel first, and enough loose ends to entice people who read the novella first to pick up the full-length novel.
It’s turning out to be a difficult balancing act, however. The first draft was basically just all of Stella’s scenes up to the last three/four chapters of the novel, and that ended up being too much. For those who read the novel first, it didn’t have anything new, and for those who hadn’t read it, it revealed far too much.
So for the next draft, I decided to trim it right up to the point where Stella’s story has its first major twist. Even though that includes a minor spoiler for the novel, it gives the novella a great story arc with a good reversal.
But that leaves the question: what does the story need in order to be satisfying to those who read the novel first?
I’m not a huge fan of flashbacks, but after wrestling over the last few days with the beginning, I think it’s better to start in media res, which makes flashbacks unavoidable. I’ll try not to botch them. Also, I think I’ll give some more background information about her and Lars, as well as develop her relationship with Narju. But the last thing I want to do is pad the novella with useless filler.
I dunno; what do you think? If you read and enjoyed a novel, what sort of shorter work based on that story would you want to see? And if you started with the novella first, how much would be too much, and how much would be too little?
Oh, and in case you’re interested, I took your feedback and redesigned the cover:
Thanks! I’ll see you when I get back in a couple of days.
I love Huntington Reservoir. Hope you have fun up there. I wrote a novella prequel to my novel, too. Three actually. And it was hard to give them a good story arc. I don’t know if I succeeded or not. Good luck!
If I can ask, why so many stories all based off of Genesis: Earth? I guess I’m curious if you’re going to be writing in this universe a whole lot, if you’re just giving supplementary stories to the book, and if such supplementary stories will be written for all your future projects as well. Either way it’s cool, so good luck!
If I read and enjoy a novel, the author pretty much has license to do whatever he wants. Hence my love/hate relationship with George R.R. Martin. I’ve absolutely hated his last two books. They’re complete garbage and should have been edited to half their size. However, given that I hate them, am I going to continue on and buy “The Winds of Winter” when it comes out in ten years? Yes…yes I will.
I call this effect “Abusing Your Reader”. It’s a shame when an author does this but it’s not like they give a crap.
Anyway…my point is…write what you want. If I love the character and story, I will be picking it up :).
Yeah, Huntington Reservoir was a lot of fun. I just wish I could have stayed longer! Next time…
Just to clarify, Adam: this novella isn’t based off of Genesis Earth, it’s based off of Bringing Stella Home, which is a different series. “From the Ice Incarnate” is based off of GE, but that’s about it. I plan on expanding GE to a trilogy at some point, but for BSH and the Gaia Nova universe, I’ve got a bajillion stories and novels planned. It’s going to be a lot of fun! 🙂
As for abusing my readers, that’s exactly what I DON’T want to do. I’ve only read A Game of Thrones so far, but yeah, it’s pretty shocking to see A Dance of Dragons at #1 on Amazon with a 2.9 star rating. That’s not going to be me–at least, not if I can do anything to avoid it.