posted
I'd've posted this in the Writers Workshops sections, except for the fact that what I'm asking about was inspired by Orson Scott Card's Folk of the Fringe, including the Authors Note section.
When I first started out as a writer (last year, I was only 15) I wanted to write stories that required as much space for development as novels. My patience and lack of typing skills has stopped me from finishing one so far.
Then IGMS came out and I decided I'd try writing a short story to send to that. (We don't have speculative fiction magazines readily available here in Perth, Australia.) I failed at finishing one as they all ended up needing at least a novella worth of space to get the story I wanted to tell out.
I recently read Folk of the Fringe, a novel by OSC split into five different parts, each of different events with different protagonists, telling the one big story of how Latter-day Saints (and a few non-Latter-day saints) rebuilt Utah into a civilation after World War 3 destroyed it, or thereabouts). OSC mentions in the athors note of how he'd also been having trouble writing short stories for the same reason as me, before the Sycamore Hill Writing Workshop he attended anyway.
So I decided to start writing novels split into different parts. I'm now 9000 words into the first part of a novel I've manage to completely outline where a girl, int he first part, runs away from an orphange to join a rebel group. In the rest of the novel she leaves that, then goes to steal some valuable information from the main planet of this part of the Universe (Called the Isolation - a place peacefully dictated, except for the occasional Rebel uprising, by the rich who have made up a religion centuries ago to keep people in line.) to get information to take back to the rebels and make herself Queen, and start a war against the Isolation religion she was raised in. (The orphanage was run by the Church).
The thing keeping me from getting writers block is that I can write each part of the novel as a short story, without that being the end of the exposition as I can continue it in the next part. (just like Folk of the Fringe) They could probably stand alone, but I wouldn't be happy with them published that way.
So my question is to OSC, and writers here in general: Would it make sense to split the finished novel into parts, or should I just keep going by chapter, knowing where each part starts and ends? With Folk of the Fringe, every part tells it with different protagonists so theres no doubt in my mind that novel needed to be split into parts. But mine is the same character doing different things on the same time line - with a little bit of time passing between each part, from age 15 at the start to 20 at the end - so I'm not so sure.
Maybe a bit too much background for such a simple question. Oh well, thanks for you time.
[ December 26, 2005, 12:09 AM: Message edited by: cheiros do ender ]
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posted
Did you ever read The House on Mango Street? It's a series of vignettes that are all about the same girl. Each stands on its own as a story, but also builds on the others and paints a complete picture of the neighborhood, the situation the girl finds herself in, and her desire to escape the life she comes from as she comes of age. And it really, really works. I think anyone interested in doing that kind of thing should read it.
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