Thursday, January 11, 2018

31 Day Challenge: The Legion, Day 11: Novel v Novella


I've been teetering and tottering back and forth on whether or not I should write novels or novellas, or hell, even novelettes for a ridiculous number of reasons, and even as we speak - well, as I type - I'm not 100% sure which I'm going to go with. Both have their merits, and honestly, I'd like to think that I'm excellent at both, but LOL yeah, that won't be an accurate statement.

Part of me really wants me to be better at long-form literature. I'm a big idea woman, and most of my smaller stories tend to snowball into these epic sagas that weirdly connect with other ideas I've had, so obvs I have to have that side story folded in somehow. Then I get so pumped about the whole thing that I just plan out the series as opposed to, you know, actually writing it.

So that's why I'm going the novella route.

I love television shows for the same reason I like writing novellas: you can tackle a lot of different themes and storylines that have to be edited out of novels of movies. Of course, the pacing has to be just right, like the pacing of Orphan Black (the first season, in particular), but there is a lot of freedom in the sequential nature of that medium. The Legion was originally going to be introduced as a novel, with only a few of the major characters, kind of like Battlestar Galactica's miniseries that launched the entire four-season saga, but I ended up deciding against that. The first arc is going to be much shorter - kind of similar to Buffy the Vampire Slayer's first season, although that was because it was a midseason replacement - but it's still going to be told via novella.

There will be novels that fill in the gaps between arcs, though, although I only have one specifically planned in between the fourth and fifth arcs because there is a two-year time jump (there are reasons, I swear). I have a feeling the other novels will focus on other characters, like Larai, but I'm not really dedicated to that at the moment. Only time will tell, I suppose.


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