Lou Paduano | Urban Fantasy Novels | Sci-Fi Crime Series

Are Shorter Novels the Future?

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This is a debate I hear quite a bit. Most of which occurs in my own head but let’s pretend it also relates to the wide world of book trends. Are shorter novels the way of the future? Is it a cheat for modern day writers to get their books out there faster and with more frequency? Or does the book buying public want shorter works with their attention so divided in a media enriched world?

Check out Amazon…

Do you ever look at the page count before clicking purchase on a book? I do. I don’t know why. If the book sounds great and has terrific reviews I’m going to buy it anyway. But I like to know how long it is.

There is a trend lately for shorter novels. Instead of seeing 300 pages or more for each book published, take a closer look and you’ll see the average book on the digital stands falls much shorter. Does this invalidate the author in any way? No. Of course not. The story takes what the story takes.

However, the better question becomes — what does the reader want from their story?

Less time available to read?

My wife reads for 15 minutes every night before bed. That’s on a good day. It takes her months to read a full-length novel. When asked how her reading experience is going there is little to discuss, because the intake is hampered by the lack of time available.

I did notice, though, that when she reads on her Kindle there tended to be a shorter reading span for books. She found a series of assassin books she absolutely loved and pounded through in a matter of weeks instead of the typical months long endeavor.

Their page length? About 200 pages per book.

Is this the future of reading for the public? Maybe. And maybe it’s a good thing.

Shorter book = less investment

With as much media overflowing from every corner of the world, with streaming services cropping up daily, books have to fight for time. A shorter book, one that sounds entertaining or enthralls a potential reader might pull that person in easier than a book clocking in at 400 to 600 pages. A nice, light weekend read might be just what someone needs to unwind rather than War and Peace or Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire…

The argument doesn’t take away from longer works. Stories dictate their length, not artificial page counts decided prior to writing.

Is this the future for books? That’s the great thing about books. It takes all kinds to make a readership. Long, short, series or standalone, all have merit and all are deserving of our attention.

Right now, though, the shorter works seem to be in demand and I find that fascinating…

What do you think? Do you prefer a shorter read to entertain you for a couple hours or do you want to fall into a world for days on end?

Serialized Fiction

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Serial fiction has been a staple of the medium for centuries. Weekly installments captured a reader’s attention and kept them coming back to the newsstands for the next chapter. From Charles Dickens to Arthur Conan Doyle, some of the greatest fiction writers of all time offered their masterpieces piecemeal to the public.

Serialized fiction today…

There is a growing trend in the digital book market to split books into installments. Three parts or ten, these serial novels give the reader a small taste of the greater whole. But does it offer a satisfying read?

Benefits exist for this model. An author can surely capitalize more on one book broken down into multiple parts rather than sell only one product on the digital stands. They are able to charge less, though make more in the long run with the full narrative split between chapters.

This model also allows an author to be a perpetual publisher, constantly launching a new product to the market for their readers to lap up. Readers are constantly looking for their next book and staggering the full story in an installment model keeps them coming back. There is always another pre-order, always another chapter to offer until the story is done, keeping them locked on the series rather than stray while it takes six to ten months for another full-length novel to be produced and launched.

How to make it a better experience for readers?

That’s the key, isn’t it? Rather than make them feel obligated to get the next chapter in order to complete the story, maybe the solution is a more episodic nature.

Taking a page from television, each piece of the serial should tell a full-length story within its pages but continue driving the overarching narrative forward to draw readers to the next chapter. They don’t have to be 90,000 word chapters but enough to satisfy the casual reader as well as the devout follower.

The same pitfalls exist, however, as any series. How to make the third book to a series as easy to enter as the first? Or even the fifteenth as the first? It’s not an easy task. Maybe it isn’t even warranted any longer, now that readers are able to go back and download the first book with the click of a button instead of scrounging through old paperback bins at the flea market.

What’s coming in 2019?

Yeah, there’s a reason I’ve been thinking about this argument. Next year I’m launching a new series, one with an episodic structure and a rapid fire launch schedule. There are quite a few different directions I’ve toyed with, different tactics to use and how best to make them work within the structure of the series.

Serialized fiction, episodic story-telling, I believe is the future of the medium. What do you think?

Thanks for reading.

Writing Update – March 15, 2018

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It’s been a light month for me so far. Lots of good distractions, however, I’ve persisted in getting a small jump on next year’s big project.

Writing Update

Next year’s project turns from the novel approach to a more episodic nature. There is some of that in Greystone, threads weaving throughout the series, but for this next endeavor I’ve tried to really tighten up the narrative so that each piece provides a full story yet propels the overall arc forward to the following chapter in rapid fire delivery.

Will it work? I hope so!

To dive in, I’ve outlined the six episodes that will comprise the inaugural “season” of the series. First, I plotted them separately then began to filter in the connective tissue that ties everything together and leaves readers wanting a second season.

Tons more prep work involved before getting to the down and dirty part of writing, however, I’m enjoying exploring this new world and the possibilities it provides.

Convention Season!

That’s right! Convention season is upon us and I am taking part in my first one ever one month from today!

The Buffalo Comicon is Sunday, April 15, 2018 from 10 am until 5 pm at the Buffalo Niagara Marriott at 1240 Millersport Highway, Amherst NY 14221!

I will be there with books galore and am happy to sign your edition with my signature flair. Please tell me if sarcasm is unnecessary or if it is preferred. (I’ll do whatever I want anyway…)

The Buffalo show is the first convention I ever attended as a kid and is a great place to pick some cool books and meet some incredible folks. Very much looking forward to seeing you there!

Reading

I won’t bore you with the X-Men reading I’ve been binging on this time around. (1986 was a great year for mutant books… just saying.)

I’m hoping to finish off my winter reading list next week and will be sharing my thoughts next update!

How to Revitalize Old Content

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Not every draft is a winner. Much as we would all like them to be, sometimes it helps putting a pin in a project and shelving it for a bit for some perspective.

That being said, one should always return to the pile when it comes to time to put together a new project. Revitalizing old content isn’t only about remembering the fun of writing the work to begin with, but also about building up those editing muscles necessary to self-edit every project.

Revitalizing Old Content

It can be as simple as a tweak or a directional shift in the narrative to straighten it out. Other times it can be a complete rewrite. I’ve had the pleasure of both experiences.

The Medusa Coin was a complete rewrite. I had a draft that worked, functionally at least, but nothing sang to me. There were flaws, perspective shifts, absent character moments, and the like. About halfway through reading it prior to the edit I realized it was not up to snuff. At all.

A hard reset…

It’s not fun to do. Not fun to envision when it comes to this project you’ve slaved over for months if not years. However, it is a necessary evil in the business. So how do you start from scratch?

You don’t.

Pull out the pieces that fit. Plot beats that advance the story, character moments that propel the protagonist along their arc, whatever small speck of sanity in the chaos of your draft and put it in one pile.

Throw the rest in another. You won’t be needing them.

Read the work again. Think about what works and why. Keep the best and discard the rest.

When you’re through you have scraps of the story you originally told and hopefully some sense of the connective tissue necessary to rebuild the manuscript. Notecards are a great visual aid for this process. One color per event/sequence or one for each character tends to help loads in these situations.

Fill in the blanks. If you find separate events not meshing well with the overall map being built in your mind, rework them. Pull them apart and put them back together again. Mix up characters in situations.

For The Medusa Coin, the original draft called for Ruiz to be near death at the hands of the Charon. In the updated version it is Loren. Why? Twofold. I needed to show Soriya the consequence of her decisions. Secondly, Ruiz was hurt pretty bad and had a visit with the hospital in Signs of Portents. I definitely wanted to switch it up.

That little switch opened up small moments for the characters that didn’t exist in the previous draft. Tension builders for Loren scenes and fallout for Soriya’s arc in the novel. One that served as the foundation for a wider arc that could not have happened with the original draft.

Small tweaks. The better path.

Revitalizing old content doesn’t have to be a hard reset. It can be a small change, a shift in perspective, a switch in events and how they play out. Tossing out a draft for not working isn’t the answer – understanding the problems within the narrative and sussing them out is the key.

The project I am currently working on is one of those. The first book in the series deals with a character being sentenced for a crime committed. How those events played out is one of the items that made me shelve the project. So I pulled it out, figured out why I disliked the sequence and am currently drafting a new sequence that fits with the overall narrative as it has evolved in my head.

Will that be the end of my edits? Hell, no. There are six or seven more instances of this in the book that I’ve laid out in pretty pink and purple notecards to solve over the next few weeks.

It’s a good exercise for those fighting with structure, those that find editing to be a chore rather than another skill set to use in the writing process. (myself included…)

Never throw anything out! Everything can be used, everything has merit. Pull it out of the drawer and find it.

Thanks for reading.

Big Picture Pitfalls

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If you’ve been following along with me the last few weeks you know I am currently mired in plotting my next series of books. I absolutely love this part of the process. A clean slate with nothing to tempt you, no requirements for where the series has to land, nothing to stop you on any creative level.

Except yourself.

Big Picture Mechanics = Stalling Out

Plotting is great. Planning ahead for where a story can go (not always where it WILL go) opens doors. There are benefits to this but also a number of pitfalls.

Too many possibilities – Where do you go when you don’t have any road in front of you? Without the proper foundation, in this case, character arcs, antagonist, setting, and more, you tend to float rather than run with the ball. Too many open doors during this part of the process can lead to no answers.

Not enough rules – Rules center everything. They put your story firmly in the world where they belong so you can form somewhat important aspects like structure, genre, and more into the narrative. Without rules our stories tend to flop between realms at the whim of our creativity rather than the skill of our technique.

Focus breeds answers.

I’m not talking about gulping down six cups of coffee and then hoping for the mysteries of the universe to unfold before your eyes. That only happened once as far as I know…

No, I mean focus like a laser through the big picture right to the core of the story you want to tell. Pull out aspects you WANT to be there and weigh them against decisions that NEED to be there.

Take a week with all your notes and pull them together through the different lenses. Character based. Threat based. Theme. Genre.

Take the first step.

Don’t dawdle in the planning stage. Allowing the big picture to be the only window into your new project is a surefire way to keep it as a dream instead of a reality.

Instead, use those notes – refine that focus – and take the first step toward an actual outline. Even if it is just a single sentence for each narrative beat. There is no right or wrong here.

Don’t let fear of making the wrong choice stymie what might be your best project.

Push them aside and get to work.

Setting Goals and Sticking to Them

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A simple enough concept, right? Not so much when you have quite a few tasks piled up on the docket. Setting goals is essential to keeping pace with the business of writing. Sticking to them? Well, sometimes we all need a little help in that regard.

Scheduling

Setting goals is all about sitting down and scheduling your time. I try to make this a weekly routine. Every Sunday morning I figure out my week.

Social media calendar. Blogs to consider. E-mail newsletters to send. Drafts to edit, outline, write, publish. Wherever I am in the process. All get added to the list.

And then I set my goals.

Start small

I typically end the list with anywhere from ten to fifteen items. Some are long term. Some are as simple as clicking a button or updating a profile page.

Knocking off the small tasks is key to healthy goal setting. It scores you an early win and motivates you to keep pushing, keep working until every item is crossed off.

At least, that’s how I look at it.

Falling into traps…

Long term planning is crucial to your business, to writing in general, but it can be a detriment when trying to stick to your goals. Broad stroke thinking, higher order mapping, tends to be more about sketching out ideas for the future than actually working on something tangible.

I’m not judging at all. It needs to happen. Knowing where you MIGHT be in a year can be a great motivator. It can also overwhelm you and cause you to buckle under the pressure of something that is only a possibility and not set in stone.

I’ve been in this trap lately. With Greystone finished on my end, I’ve been looking ahead to 2019. The next series of books is much larger in scope than Portents. More characters. Conspiracies and twists around every plot. Deeper mysteries. More books, in general.

It has me locked in place. Thinking about each and every piece of this ever-growing puzzle. From conception to marketing. From drafting to publishing schedules. Each aspect demands more time leaving me precious little to focus on tangible goals.

And sticking to them.

Hit those goals.

How do you snap out of it? Start small.

For me, it was centering the new series on a single character. Who is he? Why does he matter to this story? Where does he start and end?

A small piece of a larger puzzle but one able to be solved in the now, rather than the nebulous future.

Maybe it isn’t that simple. Maybe you need to walk away for a bit. Set a different goal. A different mission for the week.

Last week I updated my Amazon Sales Pages and worked on keyword/category shifts. I’ve been telling myself to do it for months but never found the time or the motivation to accomplish the task. Now it’s done. A tangible goal achieved and I can get back to work on what I should be doing.

Getting ready for 2019 to be a kick ass year.

Set your goals and stick to them. Crossing them off the list is a pleasure unto itself and will lead you to the next great challenge.

Thanks for reading.

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