A better idea

[Pezhead97]

Ok so I wrote this novel, 500 pages, it's about a band and flashes back and forth between present day and the band's history. It's WAY too long and sort of a mess. But I love my character's and I think at its core, there really is a good story there. So here's my idea.

Changing it from an adult book, to a young adult book.
Changing it from a single book to a series.

Book 1 would be how the band formed itself and life in high school.

Book 2 Would be the band's rise to fame

Book 3 Would be the main character meeting the love of his life.

Instead of being 500 pages, each book would be 200-250 pages.

Since most of the problems come from telling not showing, wouldn't it be easier to explain the orgins in the previous books?

What do you think?

 

[BarbaraSheridan]

I can be totally off base since I haven't read your story but my gut instinct on this is that your story really starts with the band's rise to fame or having gotten said fame the problems they encounter in realizing that just becasue they "finally made it" life isn't as "perfect" as they assumed it would be.

 

[Cathy C]

It's an interesting premise, but you've got a couple of potential fatal flaws here. Book 1 would be YA. Book 3 would be adult romance. Book 2 is somewhere in-between. Two of the three books might be on one shelf (and it's hard to say WHICH two), but ultimately the three books will be in different parts of the bookstore. The publisher will have a difficult time with that.

I guess my question is why not pare down the book to about 350 pages and sell it under one of the MTV book imprints? Heck, even a duology would be better than a scattered trilogy and you'd have a good audience that doesn't rely as much on age groups.

Just a thought.

 

[mirrorkisses]

The "Sloppy Firsts" series by Megan McCafferty is published in fiction, but it's written about a YA narrator in the first two books. She grows up over the course of the books (which, actually, were never even intended to be a series) and in the current one she's graduated from college.

Just because it's about teens does not mean it has to be labelled as YA. The great thing about putting it in fiction is that you will be able to reach a larger crowd: adults who would never go into the YA section and actual teens.

Just make it readable for adults. Teenagers don't have their own language. They speak the same way that us adults do.

 

[Voyager]

Without saying a word to her, I asked the 14 y.o. avid reader to read your post. Her response, and I quote:

"It's a cool idea, I like it. I would read it."

She's usually more into manga, Harry Potter, Darren Shan and oddly enough, she loves Orwell. Animal Farm, There Will Come Soft Rains and Farenheit 451, etc. She also loved Inferno and Anita and Me. Can we say ecclectic?

 

[Horseshoes]

I think Cathy's got it. Edit that book into one kick-ass tale. Laura Moriarty and Elizabeth Berg have written books with teen or pre-teen narrators, although the books were contemporary fiction shelved in the adult literature section.


Yoyager, we can say eclectic. And she sounds like a winner.

 

[JanDarby]

Not weighing in on the series concept, jsut something to consider when thinking about the premise for a book (and it might help to focus the existing manuscript too): think in terms, not of a timeline, but of conflict.

You've got:

Book 1 would be how the band formed itself and life in high school.

Book 2 Would be the band's rise to fame

Book 3 Would be the main character meeting the love of his life.

Those aren't premises, but are merely timelines (since implicit in the last one is that it's happening after the rise to fame) during which a conflict will occur. What is the conflict?

For instance, just as examples, the timelines could be kept, but they'd be reframed for conflict as:

Book 1: a nerdy kid must convince the punk band members that he can rock with the best, while high school culture and peer pressure works against him.

Book 2 A nerd-turned-punk-singer must overcome the temptations of fame.

Book 3 A world-famouse nerd-turned-punk-singer must give up casual sex with groupies to win the love of his life.

Well, those are silly, but do you see how the focus is on conflict, not mere timeline?

What's the main conflict in the existing manuscript? One sentence: protagonist wants X (goal), because Y (motivation), but Z (a person is opposing the protagonist's goal). Anything that doesn't relate, in some manner, to that sentence gets cut, and anything that happens before the protagonist sets X as his goal is backstory and gets cut.

JD

 

[Cathy C]

Both Jan and mirror have good points. I didn't consider the premise to be general fiction, but that might be a good fit. And I also agree that the underlying plot--rather than merely the age of the characters--will better determine the shelving.

 

[Pezhead97]

Wow you guys have given me a lot to think about. I guess I've been looking at these stories more of character sketches and slice of life with an overall sort of story. I would say that the story is far more character driven.

The main conflict of the first book would be Bryce poor choices (getting arrested for drugs, and sleeping with his younger brother's girlfriend)

Colin's main goal is to go to Julliard but refocuses his attention to his band.

Thanks again

 

[Scrawler]

My advice would be to edit your 500 pages to 300-350, clean up your "sort of a mess", and fix the problems of telling not showing. If "at it's core" it's a really good story, par it back to it's core. Fine tune it, edit it, revise it, tighten it.