George Lucas said that when he was working on Star Wars he realized his original story was too big to fit in one movie, so he trimmed away what he could and sifted the story down to what became Star Wars (later renamed A New Hope). The rest he put into Empire and Jedi and those other three.
Back in 1996 I wrote a well-received space-based short story. From that came The Peacemakers which I could describe as a sponge of ideas that, in present form, are strung together into what could probably sell to the masses given some publicity. However, I want to do something better.
I returned to the story a couple of years ago and reworked the outline to replace the cardboard with real flesh and bones, resulting in a vastly improved story. Yet no matter how much I changed things around I couldn’t get past some serious contrivance problems. In order for the story to unfold I had to force certain events to happen, and that sucked. I much preferred the scenes where the characters started “doing their own thing” – they pulled the story as opposed to me pushing it.
To help me deal with the issue I began doing a lot of reading and, you know what? I discovered more often than not the story simply bull-dozed to the end leaving me a bit pissed off.
Now that I’ve finished another project, I’ve returned to The Peacemakers and have looked at it carefully to figure out what’s wrong. I kept coming to the same conclusion: too many things happening with too many people too quickly and conveniently; too many notes.
The solution? Cut it down to what I really need, something manageable. Save the rest for back-story or other books. Do what George did! Well, at least as far as breaking up the story into smaller parts. While I happen to like Jar Jar Binks to some degree, I cringe every time I hear “Roger, Roger”. The last thing I want anyone to say of my work is, “you can type this shit but you cannot say it.” I don’t care how much money’s involved. Well, that’s not true – I think if I got a pile of money for what was crap I’d try harder not to produce crap, at least that’s my hope.
Last night while watching “Feast III: The Happy Ending”, I pulled up The Peacemakers outline and started making changes. In just one evening I’ve ended up with three books not just defined but well defined. About a third of the current writing will be thrown out, while the other two thirds will be moved and augmented with new writing to complete the story I want to tell. Looking forward to it.