On the Matter of Content Explosion - With Bonus Announcement!

On the Matter of Content Explosion

Now, anyone out there who has followed any of my fanfiction projects over the years may be aware that in respect of my writing, I tend to have something of a problem when it comes to estimates of length. My fanfiction projects were famous for turning into monumentally vast monsters well beyond the bounds of my original intent as chapter after chapter proved insufficient to hold the content I wrote for it and split out and split again.

Indeed, anyone who read my author interview for The Merry Band will also be aware that this phenomenon of my writing is not confined just to fanfiction, given the confessions I made there – that my novels were all originally intended as a single book, would you believe, and that I split it, first in half and then into a trilogy to accommodate fresh material that blossomed into life in the process of writing. Once I started writing, there was simply too much story for one book or even two books to hold.

Some might imply this is down to bad planning on my part. But I would like to assure you all that really isn’t the case. I always start with a plan. That’s just the nature of me. I have to make a plan, I’m just that kind of person. The problem I have is my brain. It likes to come up with new ideas. And being highly inconsiderate, it generally waits until I am well into a project in order to do so. So, I work these new ideas in and the plot expands. I write what I think will be a quick, simple few lines before a big scene starts and suddenly the characters grab it and start running and, without my ever intending it, it turns into a scene in its own right and then there’s a new idea and...

Well. There’s a reason I keep my plans in a Word document these days – annotating and re-annotating on paper just got too messy!

And the other problem is - I’m not one of life’s editors. I don’t like to lose content for the sake of losing content, everything I create is there for a purpose. If I feel it shouldn’t be there or it doesn’t work in the story, I do take it out. But if I have a good reason for it and feel it is of value, I won’t rip it out for the sake of an arbitrary conciseness. At the end of the day, I don’t like to kill off perfectly good writing and dilute my storytelling just because I’m incapable of limiting my brain to a word count. If it’s there, then it matters to me.

And why am I telling you all this, you may ask? On a trilogy that is already written and finished, surely things such as this will no longer be an issue?

Yeah. You’d think, wouldn’t you?

But… it turns out on this matter, I can transcend even myself.

The final book of my trilogy, named The Taskmaster, was always a bit of a monster. The biggest attacks of idea expansion occurred within it and it weighed at close to double the length of its predecessors in its unedited state. But it was still just about within the limits of acceptable novel length, especially for a fantasy tome, which do tend towards the epic. I’d considered splitting in two myself but just couldn’t find a place where I felt it would work – the only spot I considered suitable would have resulted in a very short last book. So I was hoping it would pass muster as a doorstop and as such, sent it to my publishers.

As a result of this, I now find myself here to make an announcement. In the finest traditions of Douglas Adams, the Plot Bandits Trilogy will now consist of… four books.

Yep. Here we are again! My doorstop was stopping the door a bit too much. My diligent editor located a better placed spot that, with some work and a bit of scene placement jiggery pokery, could serve as a break in the action and the monster has been prized apart. So newly born now is the conjoined twin of my final book, The Taskmaster, next up to follow The Merry Band - Book Three of Four…. The Narrative!