inverarity | AQATSA: Too much snogging!

Current Word Count: 216K words, 34 chapters.

Actually, the problem (and I had a revelation that this is one of the main reasons for the book swelling in size, and indeed for much of the bloat in my previous books) is too many subplots. I spend a lot more time on subplots involving secondary characters than Rowling did.

Consider Cho Chang, Fred and George, Dudley Dursley, and hell, Ginny freaking Weasley. Each of them got a handful of scenes throughout the books. Rowling kept a pretty tight focus on the Trio. Secondary characters only got significant page space when a subplot directly involved them, and then they were lucky to have more than a few lines of dialog.

But I love my secondary characters. Also, my core group is larger -- instead of three, I have five. And I find that when I am writing big scenes where "everyone" is present, I have a hard time shuffling all the minor characters off to oblivion with a line or two. I want to describe what happens to everyone. This is the blessing and curse of fan fiction -- I have the luxury of adding material that would be cut by an editor, and sometimes an inability to see which subplots really don't need to be there.

Anyway, snogging, yes. (Why am I saying "snogging"? Charmbridge Academy is in the Midwest, not the UK.) I just finished the Winter Ball chapter, in which the Winter Ball was really not the most important event in the chapter but nonetheless took up the most space. There are some subplots which amuse me but probably aren't really important, and some others which might be foreshadowing or might just be me screwing with the readers. :D But I'm debating whether I could cut most of the chapter and replace it with: "The Winter Ball was that night. The next day...."

(Actually, I have debates like that about most of my chapters.)

So anyway, for a slightly more interesting Wordle, let's see which secondary characters are getting the most word count:

(Click for larger version.)

There is one name obviously missing from this word cloud. I left Alexandra's name out because it would be huge and take up as much space as all the other names put together.

Also, TealTerror, email me please. (I don't have your email address.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I mentioned in one of my reviews that I thought Deathly Regiment suffered from subplot bloat. It is true that fanfic, as a medium, is much more forgiving than published novels regarding this kind of thing; the expectations are different. But even in fanfic, this can be a problem.

My personal opinion is as follows: It's fine to have a bunch of subplots as long as they don't overtake the main plot. In Deathly Regiment, the main plot gets put on hold for a lot of the first half, especially chapters 10 and 14, because you focus on subplots instead. This contributed to a lot of the book's pacing problems too (hence the title of this comment). Therefore, if you focus on advancing the main plot--even a little--in every chapter, it might not matter how many subplots you have. Especially if they're interesting.

Of course, as soon as you start ratcheting up the suspense for the climax the subplots should probably be put on hold no matter what. ;)

And the "I can summarize the chapter in one sentence" test doesn't really work, because you can always do that. Besides, the Winter Ball might help the pacing in giving the Serious Plots a little downtime. Kind of like comic relief, except with making out.

On the Wordle: Hmm. Several new, apparently minor, characters: "Tsotsie," (house-elf maybe?) "Livia," and "Hecate" (a name I've always really liked, incidentally). Looking forward to the returns of Quimley and John Manuelito. Seems like Grue is the most prominent teacher this book, and Forbearance is slightly bigger than Constance? Interesting...

-TealTerror

P.S.: I couldn't find your e-mail so I sent you a PM over ff.net instead.

I know I'm over a month behind, but I reread this post while looking for the outtake set in the Ozarks...

I just finished rereading all three AQ's back to back. AQDR definitely felt like the slowest moving of the three. It never hit the tedious point, but it was definitely slow. I think every chapter did move the plot ahead, but sometimes by an amount dispropotionate to their length. For example, the chapter about Thanksgiving at Croatoa: the scene at the blessing and Alexandra's coversations with Valeria were important, but the parts about riding the granians, preparing for the storm, and learning the parapluvia spell easily could have been cut or referenced with only a sentence or two since they neither advance the plot or teach us anything new about the world (umbrella charm could have just been mentioned on the way back from the crypt).

Also, there was a heckuva lot of people kissing people on the cheek in AQDR. It felt like once or twice a chapter someone was kissing someone else. Maybe its a cultural thing, but growing up in the mid-atlantic region we only ever kissed family, never friends (unless of course you were dating).

So this is real life...

AQATSA: Too much snogging!

On Subplots and Pacing

Re: On Subplots and Pacing