Dividing your draft into parts...

[lonewolfwanderer]

Hey guys, been awhile.

Just a quick question... When writing your drafts, could it be considered a good idea to separate the story into parts and write each part like it were a book on its own?

I have separated the prequel to my WIP into parts. The prequel is going to be a trilogy and each book in that trilogy will focus on one main goal that links in with the main goal of the 2nd book.
Now, each book has been further divided into parts (or acts) with each part having its own main goal that again links in with the main goal of the subsequent parts.

What I want to know is, should I focus writing the whole story in one, or is it okay to break the story into parts, as I mentioned above, and write each part like they were a book on its own?

Obviously everyone finds their own writing style/technique but I'm just wondering if anyone has done it before and whether it will work or not...

 

[Brian G Turner]

You find whatever ways works for you - there is no right or wrong way.

 

[tinkerdan]

Hi lonewolfwanderer,

Every story can contain a plot and some themes and every plot can contain several stories which can in turn contain several plots themselves. I would caution about stretching yourself thin.

That said: A trilogy contains at least three stories that work the single plot that runs across the three books.(in theory) It's always nice to have a plot for each book that may or may not correspond with and move the main plot.

The more stories you create with subplots within the story of each book the more threads you are running out there for the reader. If you are sure you can gather all of these and give the reader a satisfactory conclusion to them in the last book then I'm not sure if it will matter how you separate out the work.

If you are using an outline for your work that will be handy for a work where you try to separate out all the stories. It will definitely help from having you run into a wall at one point where you can't move forward until you write some other story because they are interdependent and your feeble mind where you have it stored can't sort it out without something on paper.

I for one love having something, some other story in mind, that I can run off to while I let the last few chapters stew for a while. Ultimately the whole thing is a process and it's your process so whatever works best for you is probably the best answer.

I have started a piece with the first line and started another with the last line. When you finish the pieces and you are pulling it all together (usually during one of several edits) you can bring it together in whatever order you need it so it doesn't make a lot of difference how you go about it although It might prove helpful if you consistently complete the smaller stories as you go if you do decide to split the work that way. Leaving a lot of threads hanging for the final edits can become daunting.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I do it in most of my drafts though it doesn't always make the final version.

 

[Ogma]

The one note of caution (I struggle a bit with it myself) is your story can become very compartmentalised. If too many issues are solved at end of each part, the reader may disengage a bit. I would advise ending each part with a hook or a question or a threat. Something to keep the reader engaged.


Ask yourself what are the parts adding to the story for the reader. Is it helping them make order of the story? Is it denoting a shift in POV, characters, location, time, etc.?


Hope that helps.

 

[Colbey Frost]

I started something like this but never went back to it. I chopped up a 120k novel into sections, planning to re-write them one at a time, polish them, and I liked the idea, but other things took over and new books had to be written. It really does depend on the person, but you should try different ways until you find what works for you.

 

[lonewolfwanderer]

Alright thanks for the reply. Just needed confirmation on that, but ye I think I'll divide each book into parts and right them as a separate story, but linking them with the next parts. The small goals lead up to the bigger ones. At least, that's what I'm going for.

Anyways, thanks again.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

For me the thing to worry about taking this road would be continuity. Seperating a book into parts may make it harder to maintain the constancy of all the different parts of your work.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[lonewolfwanderer]

Hi,

For me the thing to worry about taking this road would be continuity. Seperating a book into parts may make it harder to maintain the constancy of all the different parts of your work.

Cheers, Greg.

Please explain...Are you talking about the loose ends? or just the linking of the parts? I have a vague idea what you are meaning, but I'm not 100% sure. What do you mean by the constancy of my work?

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Sorry Typo - continuity. Maintaining the story line and all the different little side stories, plots etc. More often for me its an issue with the more subtle things than the overall plot. For example timeline - knowing which character is where and when. Also more subtle still, adding in factors for how long it takes people to learn things - i.e. who knows what and when.

In The Lady's Man for example which is in editing at the moment, I divided my group into different subgroups, and then had them performing different quests / subquests. So what group A knew what they knew about the enemy on day x was not the same as what group B knew three weeks later. And it gets more complex again when you add in multiple ways of learning information. So group A and B basically learn nothing as they quest from the home base. The home base learns what group A and B are doing fairly quickly as they have far seers (long range telepaths I suppose.) But they know only about other cities and realms through pigeons.

Then you've got to do travel times for the different groups depending on which direction / distance they travel and by which means.

It's hard enough to plot all this out in one document, but when it gets chopped up into three or four I can only imagine it would become far worse.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[lonewolfwanderer]

Hi,

Sorry Typo - continuity. Maintaining the story line and all the different little side stories, plots etc. More often for me its an issue with the more subtle things than the overall plot. For example timeline - knowing which character is where and when. Also more subtle still, adding in factors for how long it takes people to learn things - i.e. who knows what and when.

In The Lady's Man for example which is in editing at the moment, I divided my group into different subgroups, and then had them performing different quests / subquests. So what group A knew what they knew about the enemy on day x was not the same as what group B knew three weeks later. And it gets more complex again when you add in multiple ways of learning information. So group A and B basically learn nothing as they quest from the home base. The home base learns what group A and B are doing fairly quickly as they have far seers (long range telepaths I suppose.) But they know only about other cities and realms through pigeons.

Then you've got to do travel times for the different groups depending on which direction / distance they travel and by which means.

It's hard enough to plot all this out in one document, but when it gets chopped up into three or four I can only imagine it would become far worse.

Cheers, Greg.

Ye, what i'm doing is mostly to allow for smaller goals. I'm not a long term planner, i'm more a spontaneous thinker, so having a long term goal (even in writing terms) isn't an easy thing. I find it easier to divide it into smaller goals, more short term goals, (which in my story could probably work up to smaller subplots) but essentially they all lead to the bigger picture.
At the moment, all parts of the story are all part of the main plot.

What I've done is looked at the main goal (or main plot line, as it were) and said "How could I stop this from happening?" Then the top 3 answers for that will become the the goals of the smaller parts (book 1, 2 and 3 as it's a trilogy), the solution becoming the plot line for that particular part. I do the same for the individual books, so book 1, i divide by similar means into 3 smaller parts. Each having their own goals, and thus their own plot lines, but essentially they are all still part of the main Plot.

Its not really a thing of writing many different stories and combining them into one. Its more about take the story itself, and dividing it into smaller parts so it's easier to write allowing me to feel a sense of accomplishment when i complete a part, thus keeping me motivated to write further. Otherwise, if i waited to finish the whole book, or story, i'd get demotivated too quickly, preventing me from finishing it. Purely because the goal is too far ahead for me to work with.

I hope that makes sense...

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Hey guys, been awhile.

Just a quick question... When writing your drafts, could it be considered a good idea to separate the story into parts and write each part like it were a book on its own?

This is sometimes a great way of working, but you have to be careful when you come to wrap things up at the end. A few of my novels have been triple-stranded affairs (including Hairy London) where I wrote the first two thirds of each strand separately; but then I had to take stock of everything when getting near the end. Apart from taking care at the conclusion of a novel, it's a great - and speedy - way of working.

 

[Weirdy_Beardy]

The novel I've been intending to finish for a while now has been divided into sections purely to keep myself straight with it - I wrote one part intending it to be an opening chapter, then I expanded on it to encompass a few more, but when I realised I was focussing too much on a single character I started a new document, beginning to tell the story from a different character's perspective. I liked the idea so much I've done it a few more times, telling different parts of the story from different perspectives keeps it fresh in my mind - and also forces me to react to each situation true to the character I'm writing. It probably means doing a lot more work but really, when it comes to writing, is there such a thing? I have all these different sides to the story and, when it comes time to round it off I can edit it together in a way that makes sense and yet still has a multitude of layers.

That's my two penn'orth.