One of the pleasures
that a writer has when there's nothing else to
do is re-reading his reviews. One that I have returned to
repeatedly until the screen is dog-eared and spaghetti-stained
is this line from a review by Karen Elkins:
"The only negative point I can find to this novel is
there has not been a sequel."
Well, the story she mentions, "Pig Jump" didn't start
out as a novel. Instead, it started out as a longish short story
about space travel. I wanted to explore a new (for me) idea,
that extremely long-distance space trips might somehow not be
perfect. After all, what can be perfect if it must be invented
by imperfect Man, then constructed imperfectly by imperfect
workers using their imperfect understanding of the inventor's
imperfect directions? Maybe even using imperfect tools.
In other words, what can go wrong? Missing the
positional destination is been less and less a worry, thanks to
Cosmic Global Positioning and all that. But what about the
temporal dimension? Could our space explorers jump to Absinthe
Centauri and return, only to find that they were now somewhat in
the future? Or, more fun, in the past? Or even more fun, way in
the past?
Well, I wrote the story. A wiser-than-me editrix
suggested that it be longer, so that the explorers could
investigate their newly found World-of-Wrong-Time more fully.
This suggestion came at a magic time when I had no idea what
else to do, so I started in as she suggested. The WoWT turned
out to be a tabula rasa. I rassed the Hell out of that tabula
and got a 260-page novelette out of that simple idea!
Another time I wrote a short story about vampires. In it
I wanted to use a bit of what I had learned in Europe about
vampires, who, over there, were not like Bela Lugosi in a tux.
The editrix demanded that I justify my departure from the
"known" vampire culture. (See, vampire fans, like Trekkies, are
pretty hard to steer off the straight and narrow.) Finally, I
satisfied her objections and she published it. Then she bullied
me (yep, Maggie is like that sometimes) to write a sequel. That
I did, somewhat warily, but as I went on I became hooked on the
blutsaugeners myself. I contrived to make the second story not
only a sequel, but a cliff-hanger. By the time I was done, I had
written thirteen chapters of that short story! And she paid
well, so much for each installment.
What do we see in this? Well, look at your favorite
story. Is it possible that you haven't sucked all the idea out
of it? Can Sherlock survive the plunge over Reichenbach Falls?
For TV we find he has. Sure, the first few episodes after his
resurrection are a bit thin, but in a few more weeks one
forgets. Can your own happily (or not) settled characters have a
few more interactions, another fling, another swing? Emigration
to another place or time?
One of the ways in which I tortured my writing class was
by asking them to each write the first part of a short story.
Never mind how it'll come out. A week or so later we discussed
each one and speculated on what should come after. It slowly
became apparent that the challenge was
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forcing the class-people to look beyond the end. What will
these people do next? Well, now, imagine that you, a stranger,
have just put down one of your own favorite stories and sat
back, wondering whether the following chapter is going to be
published next month? Must you come back for another root canal
just to pick it off the waiting-room table and read it?
I have looked at a few of the good stories in Calliope
and applied that very game - what will the next chapter be? And,
not too surprisingly, about half of those stories seem to lend
themselves to continuation.
Why did the writer stop where he did? Word count limits,
mostly. If you decide to go on to Chapters Two and Three of your
story that won a prize (or, at least a mention), now you have to
accept the fact that what you have there is a novella (or a
novel!) You're out of the short story business. Beware, however:
beyond the Three Thousand Word Reef is not another shallow, but
a bitter, black abyss. Only a long story can bridge it.
Scary? Not really. You probably have lots of loose stuff
up there in your glob of grey mush. Much of it, possibly,
occurred to you as you were writing the story. Oh, hey, could I
do this? Could we have him finally speak to the girl in the
elevator? Will the cousin with one blue eye and one brown come
back from Chicago? Is that just a lump, or is his liver falling
out? (Hey, what are the seven deadly signs?)
Then reason prevails. It's hard enough staying with the
2,500-word limit without stuffing. Already you've erased the
lump and forgotten the cousin. However, if you're human (and
there are writers who are, or try to pass) you paused at these
inflection points where the odd-eyed cousin or the suspicious
pain appeared. Should I go with that? How much do I know about
it / her? The mind kicks off its school shoes and wades in.
Then you notice that the sun is down and you're hearing
the lovely clatter of meal creation in the kitchen. Well, now,
if you're ever going to get this story to the editor on time and
in word-budget, you'd best scrape off all the cousins and excise
all the farganomas and just count the words. Short enough? Not
quite - you scrape out a few more baked-on crumbs of prolixity,
and it's done.
What has the world lost? Perhaps a classic. Jean Auel
did move us through many "sequels" in her prehistoric histories.
Harry Potter had an adventure, complete and satisfying. Then, to
his surprise, he had another. As did Frodo. And Nancy Drew. Now,
all of those could have been bound in single covers, but they
didn't spring in an instant from the writer's hand. Or head.
Dribbling your story out over several titles or shoving it all
into one tale, it still can be one story. The mechanics of
getting it between boards isn't important now. What is
important, what is vital, is that you don't stop a story just to
satisfy the 2,500-word thing. Oh, sure, you will send off that
piece to the magazine, but don't ever call a story finished
until it is.
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