two days left

Disabled

“A Question of Heresy”

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meterZokutou word meter
3,322 /
5,000
(66.0%)

I may have to revise my length estimate upwards, as Last is only now planning Qoress’ trip for him. Serves me right for dropping my usual estimate from 6K to 5K.

If I ever get to publish a collection or chapbook of Driftwood stories, I’m going to have to revise them. It’s an unfortunate truth of the place that I can’t write a story in Driftwood without explaining Driftwood; even once I start selling these pieces, I won’t be able to assume that my readers are familiar with the ones already published. But in a collection, I’d have to snip out all the repeated information; otherwise it would get tedious.

Time to go pick up the laundry; then I write more. Ah, the scintillating life of a writer.

0 Responses to “two days left”

  1. jimhines

    I’ve had similar thoughts with my goblin stories. There are things I have to explain with each one. Personally, I find myself getting tired of it and looking for shortcuts, but I can’t assume people will have read any of the other stories or books.

    I’m told lots of readers are interested in hearing about authors’ laundry. Are you going to do an entry about that? 🙂

  2. kallianeira

    You could always come up with a boilerplate “this is the world” paragraph/section and attach it to the front of each story, which would require less removal later…

    • Marie Brennan

      I might do that some day, once I’ve exhausted all of the elegant ways of getting the information into the story. The first time it was easy; I was introducing myself as much as the reader Driftwood. And this time, Qoress’ king passed a sacred decree essentially denying Driftwood’s existence, so the poor bastard is wandering around learning things the hard way. But eventually I might go the route you suggest.

      • ninja_turbo

        Well, I know for a fact that LeGuin does it. She had a cut-and-dry into before her story “Mountain Ways,” and that one was a tiptree nominee/winner.

        So you could totally do it. I’m finding a smaller version of the ‘wait, I have to start all over’ amusing with re-introducing Skyworld in my novel.

  3. unforth

    I think that readers, in general, accept that there will be a bit of a rehash of world details, especially in short stories. 🙂

Comments are closed.