M. C. A. Hogarth ([info]haikujaguar) wrote,
@ 2008-01-28 09:48:00
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Current mood:oooh
Entry tags:jokka, marketing, new publishing paradigms, writing

The Dangers of Writing to a Market

Pathen's Regret
Pathen's Regret


Technology shapes art... but not always for the better. In short fiction, traditional paper markets are limited by the number of pages they print per issue (or per anthology); online markets are limited by their perception of what their readers are willing to read in a single sitting. Both of these venues punish the novella, a story too long for those venues and too short to make it as a novel.

The novella gutter is about 10,000 words (or 40 paperback pages) to 40,000. Some markets take over 10,000 words, but they're few and they're more likely to choose pieces by authors they can use in marketing blurbs. Many markets top out at 6,000 to 8,000 words.

The result? Many stories that belong at novella length are either trimmed so hard to fit a short story market you can't make sense of them... or padded so obviously to fit the novel market that you can tell you're reading filler.

The Empire's Embrace
The Empire's Embrace


One of my favorite Jokka stories, Stone Moon, Silk Scarves, is set in the time of an expansionist empire that keeps rigid check on its member cities, and involves a romance between one of the Claws of that Empire, Pathen Ures-emodo, and Hesa Aisira-emodo, a neuter who is violating one of its laws in as secret a way as possible. This story is currently 8,000 words...

...because I cut out all of Hesa's scenes. I started writing it with alternating first-person viewpoints, but I got two scenes into that when I realized that the story would end up too long to sell anywhere. I re-wrote it from only Pathen's viewpoint and the result is... well, horribly gutted. There are entire plot points missing. It's lame. Lame as in barely able to walk. Lame also in the urban-dictionary sense of stupid and lifeless and full-of-fail.

My Knife
My Knife


Looking back through my short story archives, I see a lot of stories that should have been novellas cut to the point of bleeding. To think that I can go back and fix all those stories so that they're the length the story demands instead of the length the market will bear... to think I could write Hesa's scenes back in so you can watch as it does the unspeakable to preserve the things it believes in, while fighting a growing admiration for the male whose foremost aim is to stop it....

There may be unexpected compensations in this new publishing paradigm. *glee*


Stardancer Home.

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[info]ellyssian
2008-01-28 02:58 pm UTC (link)
Some alterations improve a story (or song or artwork or so on), others destroy it. I always try to let the story tell itself the way it should be (this is most obvious in the wide variety of forms my poetry takes) and try to minimize other alterations.

It seems like an odd concept, but if I had my way, every movie you watched would be the director's cut because, you know, they're the director. That's their job. =)

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[info]lunarennui
2008-01-28 03:30 pm UTC (link)
That's the thing. We don't want what you've pre-packaged for sale. We want what you wrote, endit. Short? Long? Too awkward for printing? We want to read it anyway.

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[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 06:24 pm UTC (link)
*blush* :)

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[info]archangelbeth
2008-01-28 04:15 pm UTC (link)
*prods her 400K word Epik Trilugy*
I thought I was gonna write a novel. Then I thought I was gonna write a FAT novel. Then I broke the first 200Kish thing into 2, and wrote a fat third. *sigh*

I think that's why I actually kinda like drabbles. The extreme shortness of the form means I know instantly when a concept is really too big. (And it gives me a feel of what I can pack into 100 words...)

For the rest, I write what I write and it's as long as it is, and then I figure out if I can market it or not. Heh.

So. Lessee these novellas, yah? O:D

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[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 06:25 pm UTC (link)
It reminds me of how The Lord of the Rings isn't a trilogy... it's one book. But it was so big that it was hard to print in a bound edition, so they separated it into three separate volumes, which to me makes it feel totally different.

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[info]puffbird
2008-01-28 06:55 pm UTC (link)
This is one of the reasons I would really like a copy of that super-expensive, red-leather-bound omnibus edition. It has the entire thing in one cover. I'd be afraid to use it as my reading copy, though...

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[info]elusivetiger
2008-01-28 08:27 pm UTC (link)
Knowing it is my favorite book, [info]haikujaguar bought me that very one some years back.

It is indeed nice, and wears repeated readings well. ;)

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[info]archangelbeth
2008-01-29 04:55 pm UTC (link)
...Woah, yeah, you have a point. When I read it as a kid, it was a big, tattered, second-hand-bookstore omnibus edition. Thinking of it broken up is actually weirder, though I can think of the animated movie version...

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[info]artfulruin
2008-01-28 04:25 pm UTC (link)
Hurrah!

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Yay! Expansions!
[info]ysabetwordsmith
2008-01-28 05:17 pm UTC (link)
Speaking as one of your first-readers who has pointed out that problem more than once ("Where the heck did *that* come from? It looks like something is missing here.") I would LOVE to see you flesh out "Stone Moon, Silk Scarves."

I think you're onto something about cyberfunded creativity, too. When people are jonesing for *what you produce* then they're less likely to be applying other filters to it, and more likely to see workarounds. So if reading a novella online would make their head hurt, but it's *your* novella and theycantlivewithoutit, they'll probably print it out -- even if they wouldn't do that with a random novella.

There's also a possibility for niche marketing here. Readers have tastes in story lengths. If people-who-like-novellas discover that you're a source of novellas, when there are few others, then you can market to those people and gratify each other.

Right, now I have to go link this for my cyberfunded creativity tracking.

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Re: Yay! Expansions!
[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 06:29 pm UTC (link)
Well, I notice for instance that when I read online or on the Kindle, I no longer notice the length of what I'm reading, nor care whether it's a novel, short story or novella. It's a thing that gets longer or shorter based on the font size I choose, but that's only a relative measure of length. In a way, it lets me get into the story more, because I'm no longer wondering how the author's going to finish it in the amount of pages there are left.

That's why I was so fascinated to find short stories on the Amazon Kindle store. The market for odd-ball lengths might be open at last.

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[info]dulcinbradbury
2008-01-28 05:43 pm UTC (link)
Word limits CAN be good... because they can force you to closely examine a story and polish it into something really tightly written. However, other times, as you've shown here, there's a type of story that just *needs* to be a novella. As a reader, I love novellas. Stephen King would publish his novellas in four novella compilations which worked nicely for him, but, doesn't work for someone breaking into the publishing world.

I'd look forward to reading your novellas. :)

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[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 06:28 pm UTC (link)
They can be... but it didn't work that way for me. So much writing advice includes "cut, cut, cut" that a lot of my work is actually missing vital pieces, no matter how long I write it. Not only that, but I end up trimming some of the qualities out of my work that make it sound like my work: turns of phrase, poetry, some of the flourish.

I wasn't ready to hear the 'cut it' advice when I did. I needed to hear 'let the story breathe.' Only when I internalized that lesson could I write something like the Aphorisms, which really were about making every word count.

I had to know: count for what?

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[info]dulcinbradbury
2008-01-28 07:19 pm UTC (link)
::nods:: Makes a lot of sense to me. ... it seems like a lot of writing advice is advanced advice. The best advice for beginners is to just to write and keep writing.

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[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 09:09 pm UTC (link)
You are wise. That is indeed most excellent advice.

I was lucky. I started writing very seriously (with all the grave self-consciousness of a teenager) when I was in early high school. One of my friends, who was at the time in college, read every draft of things I wrote.

He never once said, "This sucks." Or, "You should fix this part." He knew that I was a teenaged girl, writing my first stories, and what I needed to hear was, "Woah, this part is cool!" and "Hey, this villain is really mean!" and "Are you going to write sequels?"

Had he told me all the ways I could "improve" I would have been stricken with my own faults, maybe to the point of not writing again. Who knows? But his approach was the exact right one.

Here's the thing, though: age doesn't matter. When you first start writing, whether you're 12 or 60, what you need is confidence, and you don't get that from studied critique. You get that from encouragement. Very few are the people who can handle criticism on a new endeavor.

I wish more people understood that.

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Thoughts
[info]ysabetwordsmith
2008-01-28 08:16 pm UTC (link)
That's one of the things that annoys the daylights out of me: shorthanded writing advice tends to be *bad advice*. If it just says "cut" but not what, then people cut things more or less at random, which is just destructive. If it just says "don't use adverbs" then the result is horribly mangled English.

First write the story that needs to be written. When you revise it, keep that core concept in mind, and remove anything that doesn't *contribute* to the story -- extraneous chatter, scenes that don't advance the plot or deepen the characterization, etc. Trust the reader to fill in ordinary details and you can concentrate on the things that are unique to this story.

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Re: Thoughts
[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 09:09 pm UTC (link)
You really need to be an editor somewhere again. -_-

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Re: Thoughts
[info]ysabetwordsmith
2008-01-28 09:29 pm UTC (link)
I'd love to be. I'm available for hire if anybody wants one. I can handle nonfiction, fiction, and/or poetry in any of my fields; or if it's not a current knowledge base but one comprehensible to me, I could pick it up on the job. I wouldn't be of use for math textbooks or hardcore science, but other than that, doesn't hurt to ask. Freelance or regular gigs are both possible.

You might also be intrigued to know that on my arm-long list of books to write someday is one that delves into the details of how to go from amateurish to professional writing style. I've actually edited enough fiction now that it's starting to highlight in my mind *specifically* what things make something sound amateurish and how to fix them. I haven't seen anything else like that on the market, and I'm sure writers would love it, so I'm collecting examples and observations. Dunno how long it will take for that to add up to a book, but the pot is on the stove. Hmm ... I ought to pick up some writer magazines and try out some of this stuff as articles.

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Re: Thoughts
[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 10:53 pm UTC (link)
Oh yes! Please do write those articles!

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[info]eseme
2008-01-28 06:55 pm UTC (link)
Whee, Jokka. I like these guys. Though I've just read your short stories, and all of those were pre-Empire and probably set back in the mists of history when they were all tribal.

Which makes me beg the question of whether these will be published in chronological order, or if you'll at least provide a timeline. I can read out of order. I just like to shelve books in order. *cough*librarian*cough*

And I am happy to read novellas. Missing bits is no fun, and padded novels are awful. I'm glad this new publishing scheme is going to work better for you!

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[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 09:10 pm UTC (link)
Ta-da! Timeline!

But yes, I will include that information as I write. I need it for myself, after all... there's no reason I can't make it available to you. :)

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[info]eseme
2008-01-28 10:50 pm UTC (link)
I like timelines.

Ah yes. We Defy Old Stars. That's the one I can't read, as I'm not really interested enough in anything else in the magazine. So I haven't bought it.

*perks*

I can see compliation books, one for each age. Maybe I can read it soon...

Edited at 2008-01-28 10:51 pm UTC

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[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 10:52 pm UTC (link)
A Jokka compilation is definitely in the works. :)

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[info]puffbird
2008-01-28 07:05 pm UTC (link)
When it comes to my favorite authors, I would read whatever they wrote, no matter the length -- if it's available. Traditional publishing severely limited what was available. I'm interested to see what cyberfunded creativity brings. :)

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[info]endlessland
2008-01-28 07:38 pm UTC (link)
Another reason why the publishing market irks me. While working on my last two novels, what stopped me for a good amount of time was the thought, But what if it isn't long enough? What if its too long? They both have about 50,000 words apiece, and I'm still too intimidated to go back and add the other 50,000 they need. Other stories, I would dream about and linger with the people, but I wouldn't touch them with a pen because I knew a short story wasn't enough and a full novel was too much.

Summary: I feel your pain. :) And I can't wait to read your novellas. I gleefully check your journal every day, hoping there's going to be something for sale. (I know you'll be doing the sponsorship-per-chapter sort of thing first, but you can't blame a girl for hoping! *grin*)

I dream of the day when cyberfunded creativity is a thing of the present, and more realized than the clunky publishing market.

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Thoughts
[info]ysabetwordsmith
2008-01-28 08:19 pm UTC (link)
I'm really enjoying the evolution, watching this concept grow as more and more people get interested in it. The buzz seems to be attracting new readers -- they come in from one of the outlying blogs, loop through mine or someone else who's linking CFC threads, and then they go tour some of the blogs where people are selling stuff.

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[info]razzek
2008-01-28 09:49 pm UTC (link)
Glee, indeed! This all sounds incredible and, in a sort of roundabout way, I've just realized how much hope your endeavors as a pioneering on-line writer have given me as someone who is still struggling to get the words out. Thank you. :)

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[info]haikujaguar
2008-01-28 10:53 pm UTC (link)
*hug* :)

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