RARA-AVIS: Sallis: Converting story to novel

From: Mbdlevin@aol.com
Date: 11 Feb 2004


Jim Sallis writes:

<< Just today I sent my agent a new manuscript, WILDERNESS: TWO NOVELS,
 comprising the novel-length version of my story "Drive" from Dennis
 McMillan's anthology MEASURES OF POISON and another short novel, OTHERS OF
 MY KIND. >>

We're not so much of a writers' forum here, but I'm wondering if you could say a few things about converting "Drive" into a novel, and/or more generally about moving a story to a novel. Did you have a novel in mind from the start, and "Drive" was a test-drive version? Or did you think the story deserved novel treatment once it was finished? Were there special challenges in handling the extension? I found the story-like structure of (was it both?) "Moth" and
"Long-Legged Fly" rewarding in a number of ways. Did you have the storylines and then discover a way to interweave them? Was the interweaving part of a design at the outset? (These are broader issues that Bill Crider, James Reasoner, and others might address as well. Most readers on this list have probably encountered shorter-length versions of novels by lots of authors discussed here: C. Williams, MacDonald, etc.)

Best, Doug
(A story of mine appears shortly after yours in "Measures of Poison," but I don't have any plans to extend it (though I might return to the protagonist at some point)).

--
# Plain ASCII text only, please.  Anything else won't show up.
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Feb 2004 EST