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writerkitIf there is one thing I have learned from writing Escapees or Exiles, it is how deeply I am not a novelist. I mean, this is a thing I knew about myself already, but it's brought home here.
Because EoE is an epic. It is so much an epic. I'm 40,000 words into it and we're going to get to the start of the series arc... in the next installment. (Which for once is going to pick up almost immediately where the current installment leaves off.) I have spent 40,000 words on setup, on establishing character backgrounds and relationships and setting. I'm still the kind of writer where every small detail is relevant later-- I was already thinking about what medical equipment I did and didn't want Julian to have access to on Terok Nor and the precise limits of his self-taught engineering skills when I introduced that broken dermal regenerator in the very first chapter of "Only Human"-- but the only reason I can write this is that it's not a novel.
As exemplified by the fact that I'm having trouble with "Suffer No Hurt Or Damage." It's a bit past 10,000 words now and will be the longest installment so far by the time it's done. The only other one that comes close is "Only Human," and while that is all one story, it's also kind of a separate story in each chapter. "Suffer" is cohesive. It's telling one story and everything needs to flow logically into the next thing, and I can't just wave a hand and skip over the bits I don't want to write. (Right now, it's "the next chapter is Odo Investigates," which is necessary for Odo solving the murder, but it's not the bit I'm interested in.) In the series proper, it's clear we're only getting the highlights of Julian's time on Terok Nor. I'm developing relationships, feeling out the world, giving time for the story to surprise me (I was not originally planning any of what happened in "Learning Lessons;" that came about because of "Suffer"), but it's all in discrete chunks and when the Federation shows up and Garak starts taking a more active role, no one's going to be like "hey, you didn't show enough of the book club for this relationship to be this advanced." It's sort of assumed there was more book club than we saw, and it's taken for granted at the start of each individual story that the situation is as it is.
I can do expansive worlds. Honestly, expansive worlds are of intense interest to me, and the series arc is not the one I was originally planning on writing (one major skill I am developing writing fanfiction is trust in the process--the story will look nothing like that "I have a rough arc until the end of 'Dax'" that I mentioned when I started and that's okay) but it's very clear and coherent and epic in scope. It's just that I'm writing it more episodically, which means I get to think about only a piece of it at a time, and focus mainly on the parts that interest me... and I get feedback more quickly, since people seem significantly more willing to comment on individual pieces than on chapters of longer works.
This is also why, despite having 50,000 words of the HP epic I've been alluding to for like a year now, I haven't actually posted any of it--because that is a cohesive story which means I need to be able to go back and add in foreshadowing later, so I need to write the whole thing, and that means holding the whole thing in my mind while I'm writing it, and even without my DS9 hyperfixation it's exhausting. I'll get through it at some point.
Because EoE is an epic. It is so much an epic. I'm 40,000 words into it and we're going to get to the start of the series arc... in the next installment. (Which for once is going to pick up almost immediately where the current installment leaves off.) I have spent 40,000 words on setup, on establishing character backgrounds and relationships and setting. I'm still the kind of writer where every small detail is relevant later-- I was already thinking about what medical equipment I did and didn't want Julian to have access to on Terok Nor and the precise limits of his self-taught engineering skills when I introduced that broken dermal regenerator in the very first chapter of "Only Human"-- but the only reason I can write this is that it's not a novel.
As exemplified by the fact that I'm having trouble with "Suffer No Hurt Or Damage." It's a bit past 10,000 words now and will be the longest installment so far by the time it's done. The only other one that comes close is "Only Human," and while that is all one story, it's also kind of a separate story in each chapter. "Suffer" is cohesive. It's telling one story and everything needs to flow logically into the next thing, and I can't just wave a hand and skip over the bits I don't want to write. (Right now, it's "the next chapter is Odo Investigates," which is necessary for Odo solving the murder, but it's not the bit I'm interested in.) In the series proper, it's clear we're only getting the highlights of Julian's time on Terok Nor. I'm developing relationships, feeling out the world, giving time for the story to surprise me (I was not originally planning any of what happened in "Learning Lessons;" that came about because of "Suffer"), but it's all in discrete chunks and when the Federation shows up and Garak starts taking a more active role, no one's going to be like "hey, you didn't show enough of the book club for this relationship to be this advanced." It's sort of assumed there was more book club than we saw, and it's taken for granted at the start of each individual story that the situation is as it is.
I can do expansive worlds. Honestly, expansive worlds are of intense interest to me, and the series arc is not the one I was originally planning on writing (one major skill I am developing writing fanfiction is trust in the process--the story will look nothing like that "I have a rough arc until the end of 'Dax'" that I mentioned when I started and that's okay) but it's very clear and coherent and epic in scope. It's just that I'm writing it more episodically, which means I get to think about only a piece of it at a time, and focus mainly on the parts that interest me... and I get feedback more quickly, since people seem significantly more willing to comment on individual pieces than on chapters of longer works.
This is also why, despite having 50,000 words of the HP epic I've been alluding to for like a year now, I haven't actually posted any of it--because that is a cohesive story which means I need to be able to go back and add in foreshadowing later, so I need to write the whole thing, and that means holding the whole thing in my mind while I'm writing it, and even without my DS9 hyperfixation it's exhausting. I'll get through it at some point.
