Book 2? · 3:39am Nov 28th, 2015
I may have mentioned Feeding Problems is the only story I've ever been able to finish in my life. You might get an idea of why, if I tell you that at 191,000 words Bloom Filter has surpassed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in sheer word count, and that's not counting the 46,000 words I haven't published yet, for a current total of 236,892 words, roughly*, which tops Crime and Punishment, East of Eden, and Moby Dick.
And I have almost reached the point where I can start to hint at the main conflict.
I'm never going to finish this story, am I? 
I think being somewhere between halfway to two thirds of the way through the first book at 237,000 words is a bit too long for a single story. It's no Austraeoh, but it's probably time for me to rethink my strategy. There's a point coming up in the next... half dozen chapters I haven't written yet that might make for a good book ending, but that would end up with me expecting y'all to deal with a 300,000 word monstrosity, without even a change in the story's icon (which is terrible; you can barely make it out from the front fimfiction.net page). But, instead of ending it there, there is another point in the story, where I could dramatically draw my cape across my muzzle and declare that you'll have to read all about it in book 2 of Bloom Filter. The trouble is... it's already published.
Chapter 14 would actually be a great place to leave a stinging cliffhanger. She ends up warm and safe in her bed, but something's clearly wrong with the EoH, and there's so many mysteries and unanswered questions that are clearly going to become important sooner than later. What is Twilight Sparkle's problem? Who is the dream princess? Why is Apple Bloom a pony? FIND OUT NEXT TIME IN (god I hate that phrase). If I ended "book 1" after chapter 14, then "book 2" would be chapters 15-3...5? There's a point somewhere ahead that I could also draw things to an unsatisfying close, making you search for book 3 like you were about to find out who Daring Do's father was.
I can sort of see a theme for these "book 1" and "book 2"s. In the first one, Apple Bloom is the only pony, and it's all existentialist and introspective. In the second one, Sweetie and Scoots are dragged along for the ride, and it becomes more interactive and well... friendly.That'd put the first book at 119,429, the second at somewhere between 150 and 160K. But that'd mean deleting all the chapters 15-23 here, and putting them as chapters 1-9 of the second story (possibly with corrections/changes). I'm not sure separate stories is even a good idea though, or if I should even care about word count. I know I start getting overwhelmed by a story dragging on too long, but would a separation like that really help, or would it just lose readers?
*roughly = $ cat chapter* | perl -pe's@<div.*author.*</div>@@g; s@<title.*</title>@@g; s/<[^<]+>//g' | wc
(I'm not reading this story yet, by the way; no offense, of course, as you know I like your work... but I have rather a lot of stories with virtual bookmarks in them already. :))
Well, I don't see any problem with a single story over 300 kilowords; sometimes I even look at that sort of length as a plus ("Oh, if I like this story, I'll have a lot of it to like!"). Though I probably also ought to mention that my views on story length may be slightly skewed by the years I spent working on Project Horizons... which clocked in at somewhere near 1.7 megawords and already has 845,611 words uploaded here. So possibly I am, I am afraid, not the best person to take advice from on that matter in terms of general reader reaction.
If you do want to split, though. I don't think that there's anything fundamentally wrong with going back a bit to do it. I'd be a bit wary of making a lot of changes (beyond basic typo corrections and the like), but, if the text is the same, you're not really deleting things your readers have already read, just moving them.
I hope that my thoughts here are helpful to you.
Nah, the only time you should cut stories into different books is if you can actually read one without the other. I mean, I guess I'd have enough faith in you to start reading a story where Apple Bloom is the only pony in the Equestria Girls-verse and a bunch of weird multiverse stuff is going on, but it would feel a lot more like it was just starting in medias res than it was the beginning of a new storyline. The circumstances and conflict are fundamentally still pretty much the same, so.
Anyway, the word count is kind of an issue, as you mentioned, but it's not like splitting it up would solve anything. All the words are still there, just deceptively squirreled off to the side. If 700k words is intimidating, a seven book cycle is going to be, too. And yeah, making people move onto book 2 is a great excuse for them to finally realize you're just spending a million words running in circles and never going anywhere interesting. Don't give them the chance!
Your words are always pretty, uh, natural and flowing, anyway, so I don't think this has ever felt as dense as like F:OE or Worm or Well of Pirene or such. You manage to use a lot to say a little, is what I'm saying.
Unfortunately, I really can't give you much feedback on this... I read too much, too fast, to really care about how many words there are.
With one notable exception: I stopped reading Austraeoh about 20 chapters in because literally nothing had happened except cryptic random isolated story bitlets that might, perhaps, in another 5 million words, begin to coalesce into something vaguely resembling a coherent story. I can't work with that level of faffing around.
Rest assured that Bloom Filter is about two good orders of magnitude tighter than that.
Fallout Equestria
What do you mean you spent years working on Project Horizons? You read about 2000 words a day, I guess? At that rate it'd take you 2 years and 120 days to read 1.7 million words.
When I see 300 kilowords I think "Oh boy, this better be going somewhere incredible" or "Ugh, another big project to read. I'll get to it tomorrow..."
No offense taken. I wouldn't read an EQG fanfic if I paid me!
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I only thought to break it up because it seemed like there was a logical if not fundamental change of atmosphere between chapter 14 and 15. A moment's peace before everything fell into the blender again. If there wasn't any point that the story seemed to change significantly, obviously I'd be powerless to try to separate it into different books. My question is if the transition at chapter 14 was significant enough to break it there, not into separate stories, but separate books like the books in a trilogy for instance.
But as for "if you can actually read one without the other," I mean, obviously I'd be recapping a lot if I was starting a whole new book, but I don't think it's necessary for two books to be completely independent stories.
yeah, especially when I'm writing in dialects, and then writing in dialects with a heavy lisp. So easy to read.
Thanks.
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To be entirely honest, it wasn't the verbosity of Austraeoh that really put me off to that story, but rather the rampant, overpowering Dash worship. Like, I kept asking could you possibly describe the sheen of her feathers as the dew cascaded off of them in a slightly less than deific fashion?
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Oh, no, not working on reading it, working on it; I was on the editing team.
"No offense taken. I wouldn't read an EQG fanfic if I paid me!"
Heh. :)
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"I mean, obviously I'd be recapping a lot if I was starting a whole new book"
Ah, okay; I didn't see that as obvious. If that's the case, I'd say it would in my personal opinion probably be better (even though I've still not read the thing) to not break it up.
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Eh, I don't see recapping as necessarily bad. It can help set the scene if you do it right. I don't appreciate having to go searching through previous chapters to find out why someone is acting some way. Previous books? Forget it!
It's like the difference between "You think you can destroy the Elements of Harmony just like that? Well you're wrong! NMM screamed as a rainbow laser tornado consumed her," and "You think you can destroy the Elements of Harmony just like that? Well you're wrong! The Elements of Harmony are right here! Applejack made sure everypony stuck with me not because I wanted it, but because I needed it, so she represents the element of... etc... when I realized that you all are my friends! NMM screamed as a rainbow laser tornado consumed her."
Man, some people get editing teams.
I don't even got a spell check program.
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The recapping in itself (if it's done well, which I'm not too worried about with you) isn't the possible problem so much as the fact that it would be edited in. Though that also might not be a problem at all, of course; it's about the people who've read through that section already, really. And even if it is a problem, I imagine that it's not too very large a problem.
"Man, some people get editing teams.
I don't even got a spell check program."
Ow; sorry. What, if you don't mind my curiosity, are you using that doesn't have spellchecking?
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I had a 7th grade English teacher who used a combination of making things hard for people who don't spell, and rewarding people who do, without ever actually directly telling us to spell better. I've been a compulsive speller ever since. I think about like 80% of my brain is wholly devoted to spelling every word correctly with perfect accuracy, even the weird ones, and English has a lot of weird ones. So, I just can't get any benefit out of using a spell checker. I actually spell words wrong deliberately to try to mess with this stupid ingrained compulsion.
Not really a fitting analog to being part of a literary work with an editing team, but I couldn't think of a poetic way to say that all I have is just me, and can't figure out how to collaborate to save my life.
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"I had a 7th grade English teacher who used a combination of making things hard for people who don't spell, and rewarding people who do, without ever actually directly telling us to spell better. I've been a compulsive speller ever since. I think about like 80% of my brain is wholly devoted to spelling every word correctly with perfect accuracy, even the weird ones, and English has a lot of weird ones. So, I just can't get any benefit out of using a spell checker. I actually spell words wrong deliberately to try to mess with this stupid ingrained compulsion."
...Sorry? That does sound kind of cool, though, at least from my end. :)
"Not really a fitting analog to being part of a literary work with an editing team, but I couldn't think of a poetic way to say that all I have is just me, and can't figure out how to collaborate to save my life."
Ah, sorry. If it helps, I don't actually remember the exact circumstances by which I joined the team.
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EVERY TIME SOMEONE USES WHERE INSTEAD OF WERE I DIE A LITTLE INSIDE
What?
I think that's the diametric opposite of helping. But don't worry, I'm not looking for help. (Clearly I'm far, far beyond it.) Just complaining. What I wouldn't give to be able to un-learn stuff.
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"
"EVERY TIME SOMEONE USES WHERE INSTEAD OF WERE I DIE A LITTLE INSIDE
What?
I get that sort of thing too. :)
The commas... the poor commas... [shudders]
"I think that's the diametric opposite of helping."
...I suppose it kind of could be, yeah. Um, sorry. :)
"But don't worry, I'm not looking for help. (Clearly I'm far, far beyond it.) Just complaining. What I wouldn't give to be able to un-learn stuff."
You hypothesize that there is a casual relationship between your spelling/grammar system and the difficulty you have encountered in undertaking collaborations?
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Well, it does admittedly make me more of a rugged survivalist mentality, forging alone through the dense literary jungle, without even a spell check to guide my blade. But mostly it's just an example of mixed up priorities. I'll remember to uh... "talk" to "people" any day now, just as soon as I finish maybe just one more chapter...
Apologies in advance, as proper comma use is one thing I've managed not to learn.
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Heh, sorry. :)
Apologies accepted. You're not that bad, that I've noticed, not compared to some, and your stories I've read so far have a lot to compensate with.