>was passe. Fred's takes on the different feels of 55K
vs. 75K is a
>revelation to me. [For one who can't count, could you
approximate those
>lengths in terms of cheap paperback pages?]
Very roughly due to the latitude allowed by type size and
layout the
difference would be between 180 pages or less for the first
and 280 or
more for the latter.
To make the extra length tight you have to put a lot more
balls in the
air, which requires at least two plausible subplots that
organically feed
into the primary conflict. (Total personal opinion). In the
shorter
length, you can pretty much get by with a straight
who-dunnit/procedural
structure with a few red herrings and clues planted in early
scenes who's
meaning is revealed through the continued exmination of the
charcters.
Both are highly structured fiction, but the longer work
requires a lot
more in designing the natural world that the story springs
from. The
classic organization is what I call "the Elmore Leonard three
legged
plot." I don't want to beat this to death, but generally it
requires three
groups of characters, each group with complex realtionships
with the other
groups, the same being true for the characters in the groups.
Done well
you have a plot machine that can generate many plausible
stories for as
many pages as you care to write.
Predicting book length is an issue that is somewhat more
complex than it
first appears and likely incredibly boring to everyone on the
list. The
reason many publishers still prefer a manuscript that looks
like it was
produced on a typewriter (25 five lines of pica type -
courier 12 pt.) is
that they can do a rough translation of manuscript pages to
finished book
size.
This is because line count can actually be more relevant in
fiction with
dialogue than word count.
Both Ponce and the novel I'm working on now have page counts
that would
indicate a 100 k word book, but the word count feature on the
word
processor shows them closer to 75k. My contention is that a
tight 75k book
is a 100k book that was tortured with an axe and blow
torch.
Have I put everyone to sleep yet? Sorry for the long post,
but I tried to
cover the issue as succintly as possible.
>Of course we can't let KH comment too freely, without
due correction.
>You said, about three Flannery O'Connor stories," only
"Good Man" has
>anything at all to do with crime."
>Wait. You're going to tell me that stealing that poor
girl's artificial
>leg was not a crime? ("Good Country People") You may
be able to get
>that by your committee, but this is RARA-AVIS. We're a
larger committee.
I can't put my hand on my complete Flannery O'Connor and I
can't remember
the title, but I've always had a lot of awe for the story
about the young
man who passes a river baptism then later in the day drowns
in the same
river trying to escape a molester.
Fred
-- ----------------------------------------------------------- Down on Ponce by Fred Willard fwillard@mindspring.com http://fwillard.home.mindspring.com/ -----------------------------------------------------------
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