Literature Pie: What Makes a Great Story 2/3 - Execution

The sequel to the first video, now with more conciseness and a chance for you to win a signed copy of Past Sins!

Comments

[Wanderer_Of_TheDusk]

I finally took a look at your videos of your 'Literature Pie' series after a couple of weeks. I must admit, what stop me in the first place is the mentioned spoilers for 'Past Sins' in the first video, as I have yet to read the story and have no interest at the current moment. Least of all generate more ideas to my all-ready long list of story ideas.

That aside, the material that you went over is very informative and encouraging. It's good to bring subjects with examples to compare and contrast about how most fan-fics are written vs commercial works, and it does brings up a good idea of what should be a good standard for writing.

One example would be the overall chapters it takes to tell in a single story. Do is it need to be over 99 chapters with 9k+ of words to go through the plot, or can you have it divided into a series that have its own individual conflict that leads up to the overall problem? It would like having the entire Harry Potter series into one book.

Yes, it would be unrealistic and out of proportion, but imagine the reaction of a new reader if they happen to stumble upon it with such a humongous list that feels like too much of a burden to read. It becomes a turns off (not the underground meaning, mind you) for drawing in new readers during that point. At least that's how I feel when I hear about such great stories, but discovered the many length you have to go through to reach current developments.

Overall, very great video series you are putting up on your spare time, GaryOak. Keep up the good work.

[Sypher]

Great writing advice Gary, it's probably some of the best I've seen on the site.

[GaryOak]

1798504
Thanks for watching! I'm glad you found the videos helpful. On story and chapter length, function ultimately dictates all; any "objective" advice given and guidelines cited are what usually work, and are best stuck to unless you have achieved a certain level of mastery. I read one fantastic book that was something like 400 pages, and was only technically three "chapters;" it was basically broken up into acts, and that's it. It worked, because it was written by Eden Robinson, a native woman, and there were very frequent dingbats within the "chapters," which gave frequent and easy places to stop; I treated them as chapters, kind of. I mention her being native, because natives don't see storytelling in the way we do, so they will do things differently.

1800907
Thanks for such high praise!