I've listed a lot of reasons why I think these fat fantasy series are more likely to expand than to contract.

In many cases, yes. But with a caveat: only if it were possible for the writer to write the entire story first, and then publish it after. I do not think that writers ‘pad' their series or add extra volumes in order to drag out the story – although it may be true that some writers continue writing about a group or characters or world long after the characters or world has grown stale, simply because it still sells and therefore pays the bills; or because it's the only story they know how to tell.

To come back to that contradiction between art and commerce:

In most cases, I believe that the problem with lengthy series is the marketplace itself. Writers must eat. In order to eat they must publish and sell books. In order to do so, they must publish a long and complicated story in installments. Writing in installments complicates the writing of a complex storyline and can in fact lengthen or distort the story arc.

Let me re-state that, because as I've thought over and experienced this issue, I have come to the conclusion that this is the central point:

Having to write the volumes one at a time lengthens the story in a way that writing the whole thing in one long gasp and then going back to revise would not do.

Katharine Kerr, author of the Deverry series, pointed out what she'd learned from the example of Henry James. Like Charles Dickens, he wrote his early novels one chapter a week for magazines. He could clean up the prose before he turned in an installment, but he couldn't go back and revise a previous chapter that had already been published.

Later in his career, he was given the opportunity to go back and revise some of these completed novels, and in addition he wrote about this process –of writing in installments as opposed to writing a complete novel. He wrote about what he called "the problem of the misplaced middle." In a lot of his early work the middle of the story came too soon or too late -- that is, that the beginning of the build-up to the climax came at the wrong place in the book, leaving the ending either hurried or drawn out. Writing in installments he wasn't necessarily able to weight the various threads and sections of the story properly.

I have said before that I don't think that fat fantasy novels are long because the writers are padding them out – God knows we are not paid by the word – but that if such novels are too long then it's a matter of failure of craft. That's still true in some cases.

But I'm more inclined these days to think about what writing in installments does to the overall narrative.

A lot of what goes on in a novel that is complicated by consequences and a detailed landscape is shaping it (during revisions) into an architectural framework on which the story sits (or flows). Even if you know --where-- you're going ultimately, most of these novels develop a life of their own in the details, and those are what complicate and lengthen the whole as one writes that one installment at a time.

Because while I (for instance) can keep my eyes on the ultimate goal, I can only shape one book at a time. Therefore there comes the occasional false path that either proves to be useless in a later volume, although it looked promising to begin with, or which mutates into something unexpected later on; a secondary character in volume two proves to be crucial to solving a problem in volume four; a city glimpsed in volume one becomes the scene of the final showdown in volume eight!

"Outline!" you suggest. That would certainly solve all these problems. But outlining can kill a book as surely as it can save it.

First of all, as the old saying goes, "How can I tell what I'm going to say until I hear myself say it?" In many cases it isn't until the whole story is written that we really know exactly what should be emphasized and what should be subordinated. And furthermore, most writers I know, even those who start with a fairly detailed outline, let it go as they work because the most powerful experiences in writing are often those moments when you are gifted with a revelation that is more profound or has more emotional impact than anything you would have come up with your rational mind.

There is no easier way to destroy the soul of a novel than to force that river to stay between the old banks when it wants to break a new channel. Also, sometimes you think up an action or character in the outline that just doesn't work when you try to write it.

It's these complications and side paths that add resonance. Indeed, these side parts are often superior to one's original plan.

And it is these complications and side paths which add length – and which you might not ever have walked down if not for the spread of years over which you wrote the volumes.

Things happen in one's own life that affect what you write. Those can't be quantified or expected or planned for, especially when one is writing a work over a four to six (or greater!) year span, but they can make a work immeasurably richer – just as in some cases they can cause a work to get bogged down in side channels.

To quote Katharine Kerr on this very subject: "In the years it takes to finish the series, we change as people and as writers. With a little luck, we mature and our ideas get better and deeper."

There is a solution to this problem, of course. If we were independently wealthy, we could write the entire story over the course of some years, then revise it thoroughly, weight it properly, and publish in perfectly timed volumes nine months apart.

But we aren't, so we can't.

In a way, a series is always a work in progress. Even after it's done.

Text Copyright © 2002 Kate Elliott