X-post from Fantastic Realms

[alanajoli]

I wrote this yesterday on fantastic_realm, but since it has to do with what I'm realizing about the new YA novel (which I'm going to start tagging under Blackstone), I thought I'd x-post here. ;)

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It's been quiet around here, and since I've just had a writing related issue come up, I thought I'd see if we could stir up some conversation.

What I thought was going to be one novel seems to have turned itself into something like three novels instead. This is not because I have the writing anywhere close to done (hardly begun is more like it), but because I realized that all of the different ideas I want to work with are just too big to fit into one story.

I'd started the whole concept wanting to work with giants in Connecticut (since we used to have them, apparently--just look at Hobbomock, our own Sleeping Giant, a lovely hiking area near Haddam). Then I wanted to work with other Quinnipiac legends, particularly the woman sachem who is said to have drowned herself in Long Island Sound to protect the Thimble Islands from invaders. And I still love those stories and think they have a place in the world I'm developing--but they also seem to need their own books. The alternate Connecticut I'm working on needs its own book just to get started--and I think it could be that the secondary characters who are less important in the first book may be the ones to be involved with those other legendary figures. As it is now, the Blackstone family of Branford is coming to the fore, along with their (soon to be developed) relationship with the famous Blackstone the Great. And those ghosts don't seem to want to share the page with the legends that went on before.

Have you ever had that experience? Has your original great idea ended up becoming a third book in a series, rather than the book that starts it all? (Or, have you ever realized that you will need more books to tell the stories you want to tell when you haven't even sold the first?)

Comments

[bccreations.livejournal.com]

The books of the Third World, the series I'm working on, was meant to be three independent books that could be taken as a larger trilogy. One book included X main characters, next book Y, next book Z.

Beginning work on X, I quickly realized I couldn't tell her entire story in one novel. It just wasn't possible. So now I have X, Y, and Z trilogies that can also be taken as part of a larger whole.


Can you expound on Sachem? Her story sounds interesting.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I definitely will tell that story at some point--I want to check to make sure I remember it correctly before I publish it online though! First bit of info for you, though: Sachem is actually a title, the name of the tribal leader, pretty commonly translated as chief. I thought it was wild that one of the sachems who dealt with the original settlers to this area was a woman.

[bccreations.livejournal.com]

That's cool. :) I live in Nashua, which was originally Dunstable. But you say, Joe, Dunstable is just south of the border in Massachusetts. I say, I know! But that's "new" Dunstable. Old Dunstable was burned to the ground by natives and all the inhabitants killed in 1704. Obviously negotiations didn't go well. :)