Main charcter question

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Main charcter question

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1klydezilla
Jan 4, 2015, 6:51 am

I am a new writer. I have always been an "idea" guy but my family, friends, and colleagues have all told me that I need to write a story that I came up with. I have started and only covered about a thousand words in what I expect to be a 40-45K word novel.

My question is about main characters. The story I am working on spans fifty years and, if it is well received, each of the following two novels will also cover fifty years each. My main "characters" are not really the people, but the nations. As it is now, my outline only carries people one to two chapters with very few exceptions.

Do any of you have some recommendations of any other books/authors that have done something like this? I would like to see how others have approached stories before I continue on. I want to avoid any accusations of ripping off someone's ideas.

2aulsmith
Jan 4, 2015, 9:37 am

First off 40 K is a novella not a novel. You need at least 100 K for a novel.

It is far better if you can find one character or group of characters to center on. People generally read for the characters not the nations. That said here are some books by people who got around this (please note that none of these were a first novel, these authors all had a following before they tried anything weird.)

Kim Stanley Robinson - The Martian Trilogy starting with Red Mars - he introduced a longevity technique so his characters could live through the whole trilogy.

Kim Stanley Robinson - Years of Rice and Salt has his characters reincarnated

John Brunner - Crucible of Time essentially wrote a series of linked short stories and bundled it as a novel.

Mary Stewart - Bless This House made the house the central character of a family saga.

You might also want to look at John Dos Passos's USA trilogy starting with The 42nd Parallel. He weaves together a lot of different character's stories to tell the story of an era.

3klydezilla
Jan 4, 2015, 10:59 am

Well, I am sitting here smiling because I have spent so much time trying to reduce the length of the story. My first two chapters were looking to be closer to 5-6K words by themselves and I plan 15 chapters. I was under the impression that a novel that size would be too long to hold the attention of today's readers so I have been hacking at it trying to make the thing shorter. If I stop the chopping, I'll be closer to 90-100K words.

I have read a couple of your examples and I'll look at the ones I am not familiar with. Thanks for the reply.

4LShelby
Jan 4, 2015, 12:11 pm

100K isn't a "novel of that size", it's a perfectly normal novel for the current market. Really. Maybe even a hair on the short size. 40K is currently very short even for the YA market, but not too terrible for a Juvenile.

I submitted a 75K first volume in a fantasy epic, and the chief slush reader noted that it was rather short and suggested I combine it with the second volume making it a 160K book. She thought that would be more in keeping with the "fantasy's field's current obsession with fat books".

Books were actually a lot shorter, in general, in the forties and fifties. The average length has been going up. I think it has something to do with costs. The selling price per unit needs to go up, and they think people won't want to pay that much for a skinny book.

Shorter books are becoming more common again in the ebook publishing world, where the overhead costs are much less, and the benefits of regular releases are very high. For an ebook focussed writer, there are distinct advantages to writing many shorter books (priced low) over a few long ones (priced high).

But not when you're trying to tell a big story. If you're telling a big story, of course you will need a lot of words. Don't try force your story into a specific word count, give it as much space as it needs to be good.

5LauraKCurtis
Jan 4, 2015, 6:00 pm

#4 by LShelby> That's not strictly true. There's a "sweet spot" with traditional publishers between 80k and 110k. Epic fantasy can go beyond that (up to 125k-130k) but traditional publishers aren't looking for longer books than that unless they are going to be publishing them in hardcover for a lit fic audience (think Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Over that, the cost of printing and shipping is too high.

The ebook market allows for MUCH more variation. Longer and shorter works are now prevalent.

So, klydezilla, as LShelby said, don't worry so much about length. Worry more about making the story interesting and exciting so people will want to continue reading it!

6annamorphic
Jan 4, 2015, 7:13 pm

There are novels that are in some sense about a nation but told in terms of individual characters. Usually they do not also try to span the amount of time yours does. An obvious book where the main character "is" the nation (of India) is Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. It is huge and still only covers 30 years.

7Dbilyk
Jan 19, 2015, 10:13 am

I think an idea like this would work if you centered around a family and then rolled through the generations with each subsequent novel.

aulsmith is correct by saying people read for the characters and their interactions within the plot and not the other way around. That's unless you somehow made the "nation" a living, breathing thing with a consciousness. Kind of an interesting concept. ^^

And yes, publishers tend to ask for 80-100k words from first-time novelists. I know this from the stack of rejection letters/e-mails I received telling me that my 150k word fantasy was "egregiously long". However, if you plan on self-publishing or sticking with the e-format, then by all means do whatever the hell you want.

Check that...do whatever the hell you want anyway. That is, after all, the point of writing - an escape from the rules of modernity.

8aulsmith
Jan 19, 2015, 10:37 am

That is, after all, the point of writing - an escape from the rules of modernity

For me the point of writing was to communicate something to someone else, but each to their own.

9Dbilyk
Jan 19, 2015, 2:49 pm

Well yes, you make a very salient point. I believe the cave-people would 100% agree with you.

10LShelby
Modifié : Jan 20, 2015, 1:52 pm

It would seem to me that "communication" is the right answer, except that I'm very aware that the act of writing holds value to me, even if nobody else reads what I've written.

Maybe I'm communicating with myself?

11Dbilyk
Jan 20, 2015, 9:12 am

Yes, it can be therapeutic, a release, or whatever you want it to be really. I used to write for myself exclusively, so no I wasn't trying to communicate anything to anyone.

Actually I still write for myself. It just so happens that I've begun to share what I write with the public, and if they enjoy it then that's a huge bonus.

12LShelby
Jan 20, 2015, 1:55 pm

>11 Dbilyk: "Yes, it can be therapeutic, a release, or whatever you want it to be really."

The stories in my head got better when I wrote them down: more coherent, more complex, and richer in detail.