Reshaping a Witch’s Mountain of Writing

When a writing project grows into a Witch’s Mountain—Bwahaha!

In keeping with the Halloween Vibe many of us all already feeling as September and autumn draw near, I present this horrifying tale we writers can face from time to time. My recent direful dilemma can’t be isolated. So, let me lay it out and see if you have experienced the same thing. If so, I would love to hear what spell or hex or magic wand you used to handle it.

My Direful Dilemma

In January, 2019, I was thinking of what to do with my free time after discontinuing my association with the last client during my ten years writing about tea and helping tea companies market their products. Hubby suggested that I return to a novel I had started in 2000. It was meant to be a romance. However, as soon as I began writing, it was like a fever had taken hold. I wrote and wrote and wrote (well, typed, actually). Now, almost five-and-a-half years later, I have a Witch Mountain amount of text (over 3 million words) divided into various chunks (aka, manuscripts). And I recently cranked out another manuscript (just under 90k) as a prequel to that mountain.

As part of all this, I have been going back and forth in my mind about the first three manuscripts (each over 200k). Do I:

• keep them separate as a trilogy (three closely related stories that could actually be one book, each having a minor arc and the whole having a major arc) or

• group them into one long book (around 700k)?

Long books are nothing new. See A Detailed List of the Longest Books in the World. A couple of these long books were originally published as series. Some are fairly old. But others are more recent, showing that social media hasn’t totally ingrained us with the desire for the “quick read.”

And my dilemma is shared by others. See this Reddit thread. Responders seem to favor longer novels for a variety of reasons, such as:

• They like delving into the story as a whole, not in parts

• They think the trilogy or series is instead a way for publishers to get more money

• They find a lot of repetition in a series, giving background on things from the previous books

• They don’t trust than an author will finish the series

Those liking shorter books give reasons such as:

• Easier to handle a smaller physical book

• Able to take a break in-between

• If they don’t like the first one, they can stop

If I keep the three as separate novels, I have to have some repetition in the second and third novels to explain events from the previous novels. Boring for readers, and tedious for me.

Btw, when looking up info on this online, I saw a good clarification between a trilogy and a series. The Poirot novels by Agatha Christie is a series—same character, no definite timeline. A trilogy is three books that are part of a whole, like a triptych in art—three paintings that can stand by themselves or as a whole.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Right now, it’s a coin toss whether I keep the three novels separate or as one long novel.

Join Team Halloween!

Got a wickedly gruesome tale to tell about your writing experience (or anything else)? Share it here and be part of the team setting that Halloween Vibe waving through the atmosphere!

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See my article: Publisher Agent Fiction Genres Defined, with downloadable PDF.

Please check out my author website. And thanks for reading.

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Thanks for reading. Please check out my first book of recently published eerie short stories (ebook, paperback, audio), and my new book of eerie Sci-Fi stories (Kindle and paperback), both from Wordwooze Publishing. (I even designed the covers.) A third book will be out in about a month: The Wiccan Tales. A real Halloween treat. I will be posting an excerpt or two plus the cover design before then.

Wind Down the Chimney and Other Eerie Tales: Ebook, paperback: Barnes & Noble, Amazon. Ebook on other platforms: Books2read. On Audible.

The Stardust Alliance and More: Ebook at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and elsewhere. Paperback at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. On Audible.