| The Dreaming: Watch Me Rant About the 3-Book Format!! |
[Nov. 13th, 2006|10:07 am] |
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| |  anxious | ] |
The Dreaming v2: First of all, a fan told me that "The Dreaming" vol2 is officially due to go on sale on November 21st. However, some people have already read it, most chain bookstores have already got a copy on November 7th, and Amazon.com started selling on October 31st. Oops. At least the first chapter preview of book2 is still up here. Enjoy.
Here I Go: Secondly, I've been asked to write a few paragraphs about the state of OEL/global manga by Benjamin from Newsrama, which I was happy to do. I had intended to do my few paragraphs about the OGN (Original Graphic Novel) format TOKYOPOP hands out to its creators, and the issues I dealt with in writing for such a format. By "format", I mean the "a single story in 3 books" format, each book being between 150-180 pages. I then went on the net to check my email, and lo, I find a "Fool's Gold" review and another article that deals with the very topic. Christopher did mentioned what he liked about "Fool's Gold", and while I don't agree with the rest of his review, I can see where he's coming from. The same goes with the second article, by Johanna.
Both articles dealt with issues involving story structure in an on-going OGN series, and as someone drawing such a series myself, I want to talk about some of the difficulties involved, and shed some light on the subject before the mud-flinging goes into full-swing. Everything here is just my opinion and relates mostly to "The Dreaming", so I hope people can use this as food for thought. Obviously, it helps if you've read the first 2 volumes of "The Dreaming".
Structuring "The Dreaming"
"The Dreaming" was originally conceived as a single story. However, because of the 3-book format, I had to do this to it:
a) Break this SINGLE story in THREE EQUALLY-LONG PARTS
b) Make each part RELATIVELY SELF-CONTAINED
c) Make each part have its own NARRATIVE ARC (ie. build-up, climax, resolution)
d) Make ALL THREE PARTS be in chronological order
e) Make ALL THREE PARTS fit into a SINGLE OVER-ARCHING NARRATIVE
f) Bonus challenge: This is a mystery-horror series
Why does each book need to have a self-contained narrative arc, especially when readers know it's only the first of 3 books? Well, it's because even if your readers know they're getting only 1/3 of a story, they won't care. When people pick up an OGN, they unconsciously expect something self-contained, regardless of what they know about it. If a single story is NOT fed to you in one go, but in large chunks, it's a natural human instinct to want some form of closure for each chunk fed. This is especially true if there's a one-year wait in between each feeding. That's why I went out of my way to ensure that at the end of each "The Dreaming" volume, a number of loose plot threads are tied up. I also end it on a cliff-hanger, because tying up plot threads tend to make the reader think the story's over. No. That's bad. You're supposed to tie up loose plot threads AND make them want to read the next volume. In other words, the single-book format can really affect how you plan your story.
This "single-book format" is also where the most fundamental difference between Japanese manga and OEL/global manga is. Japanese manga is written in serialised format, something that requires a VASTLY different story structure to the current OEL/global manga books. If "The Dreaming" was written as a serial, it would be completely different, with different pacing, and the order of events shuffled around. When Western fans read Japanese manga, they don't care that each volume isn't self-contained, because they know the original format of the manga was in weekly 20-page bits (Though you DO get complaints that "hardly anything happens" in a single volume). The takouban form is just the collected volume of the original format, whereas the OEL/global manga is the other way around. Its original format is in single-book form. People KNOW that. But the difference is now that people expect a story that at least ties up SOME loose ends at the end.
**** Important: This next whole section is complete bullcrap. I hadn't read up on the "three-act structure" for 5 years when I wrote this, and my memory had failed me. What I wrote about the "three-act structure" is completely wrong. Please skip this entire section. ****
The Three-Act Structure
From this perspective, it's almost inevitable that "The Dreaming" is structured in a Three-Act Structure (Edit: No it ain't inevitable. What the heck?!). Does that mean that the three-act structure suits the 3-book format? Heck, no (Edit: Actually, it does it quite well). This is because the 3-book format requires each book to be of equal length, which is NOT what you're supposed to do with the three-act structure (Edit: Not true). The first act, mostly of set-ups and introduction, ought to be shorter than the other two acts, acting as a "hook" to draw the reader in (Edit: I got that part right). Over-extend the first act and your readers will start wondering when the plot is going to start (Edit: Right...). And yet, that's EXACTLY what you have to do for the 3-book format (Edit: Not true). In other words, anybody who uses the three-act structure in the 3-book format is bound to hit against a similar wall (Edit: God, no!).
To be true, nobody complained about that aspect of "The Dreaming" vol1 to my knowledge (except me), but I thought vol1 was too long, and it's a flaw that I couldn't fix as long as I used the three-act structure (Edit: vol1 is NOT too long. I finally read it back-to-back with vol2, and it's not too long at all. If it was a SINGLE self-contained volume, it would have been too long). I could have slashed 1-2 chapters off book 1, but that would require the story flow to change, meaning people reading book 2 for the first time is going to be thrown for a loop since the story structure would be slightly different to book 1 (Edit: I think I was referring to the number of chapters). Obviously, conformity across all three volumes is more important, and besides, I had to hand in at least 150 pages for a book to be complete (Edit: True).
...And let's face it. The three-act structure was never meant to be split into three parts (Edit: Depends how you do it). It's called a three-act structure because it's meant to be a SINGLE STORY (Edit: Uh?). Unfortunately, the 3-book format requires you to do just that (Edit: It does NOT!). If I had another go at "The Dreaming" vol 1, I would combine the first 3 chapters into 2 chapters, and combine chapters 5-6 into a single chapter, while shuffling events at the end of chapter 6 off to 7 (Edit: That's only if it were a one-volume story, and not an on-going story). Oh heck, if "The Dreaming" was a single story told in one go and not broken into 3 parts, I would just write the whole thing differently (Edit: Well, true).
**** Continue reading, Back to Normal ****
Momentum Problems
Am I whining about the 3-book format? Yes, I am. I'll just be open about it and say I prefer the Japanese anthology model, where you get serialised stories. Lord knows, I've been flogging the idea of an anthology for long enough. The visual language of Japanese manga was designed for long serialised stories, and that's partly where manga finds its strengths. You're able to develop story arcs over a longer period of time, and plot and character development can be done at a more leisurely pace (that's not to condone stories that can be told in 10 volumes being told in 40).
In fact, part of the reason why "The Dreaming" is only going to be 3 volumes is because I can't keep on wrapping up plot threads at the end of each book. Besides, I've already planned the whole 3 volumes, and it's got a definate ending to it. If the story is to continue after vol3 in the same manner, I can't wrap up ALL of the plot threads, so I have to keep some of them open. Which means I have to completely re-plan the story, which after book2, is too late. At the same time, I have to keep on adding new twists, and giving answers to the questions previous twists raised. How long do you think I can keep something like this going, before it becomes either too complex, or too predictable? I'm not willing to give it a try, especially not when "The Dreaming" is a mystery-horror that requires some level of suspense happening. One of the other problems of the 3-book structure I didn't mention is that any momentum you build up during the volume is destroyed when you end a volume.
You start a volume with the build-up, then you come to the climax. You then have the resolution because you need to end the volume, but when the next volume starts up, you need to start from the bottom of the bell curve again. Why can't you continue on with the climax in the previous volume, and then just start the next one in the middle of your climax, continuing it on from that? Actually, you can do that if your story is longer than 3 volumes, but thanks to "The Dreaming" being a complex mystery story, it's amazingly difficult to continue adding material to it. It's just too self-contained. If I did do it, it'll make too much of an unbalanced reading experience. All-in-all, it makes maintaining suspense quite difficult.
Conclusion
This whole essay has turned into one long complaint about the 3-book format - I said if before and I'll say it again, I just WANT to work in anthology form. That's the base reason for this whole essay - that's right, I'm just finding another excuse to whine for an OEL manga anthology. There's nothing about the 3-book format that is particularly limiting, except that if you wrote a single, self-contained story spanning over 3 books, it's pretty darn difficult to continue that same story from where you left off at the end of book3. Oh heck, it's just hard for "The Dreaming", it shouldn't be hard for anything else. If I have a REAL complaint about the 3-book format, it's that there's a one-year delay in-between each volume, which makes it incredibly hard to build interest when the initial interest wanes. Yep, that's about the only complaint. |
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