I have a story to tell, based on a true story but with fantasy added in, about a youth who topples a usurper and claims the imperial throne for himself. I've had this story in the queue for some years. It's a great story. Maybe greater than I thought.
I'm in the planning stage right now, and I am having trouble envisioning how this ends. He gets the throne, triumphs over his rival, then end. But that feels unfinished. He gains the throne *and* what? Rules in peace and harmony? The historical figure (Frederick II Hohenstaufen) certainly didn't.
There are a score of considerations specific to this story, but a more general question occurs to me. How do you decide if a story is one volume or two or five or ten? I can see it could be arbitrary. Take a group of adventurers and just decide it's going to be six books. Sure.
I'm more interested in if there are ways people figure out based on the internal dynamics of the story itself.
This is a challenge when you don't really know those dynamics in detail in the first place, of course. I can see character arc--the different volumes act as waypoints toward some culmination. But heck, we can stretch or shrink that almost at will, can't we? Similarly with plot. I could even see it with theme, or as a way to unfold a world's magic system.
Right now, it's feeling like plot. I have two major external threats--the Orc Empire, and the Five Kingdoms of the Trolls. So, first volume is that usurper, followed by trolls, then orcs. And behind the scenes, a wizard who believes magicians rather than kings should rule and is willing to bring everything down in flames to achieve that. So there's a kind of Gray Eminence working behind the scenes across the books.
I could make it one book and leave the orcs and trolls as background. I could make it two books, with the usurper as the first volume and then oh the real villain is that wizard for the second. Trolls and orcs still in the background. It maybe could even be strung out even longer.
In other words, even though I can point to story-rooted constraints that help an author decide how many volumes, the whole business still feels pretty arbitrary. And I sort of hate thinking that I'm going to architect a story not from its own internal needs but from a decision that I'm going to go four books then stop.
Thoughts?
I'm in the planning stage right now, and I am having trouble envisioning how this ends. He gets the throne, triumphs over his rival, then end. But that feels unfinished. He gains the throne *and* what? Rules in peace and harmony? The historical figure (Frederick II Hohenstaufen) certainly didn't.
There are a score of considerations specific to this story, but a more general question occurs to me. How do you decide if a story is one volume or two or five or ten? I can see it could be arbitrary. Take a group of adventurers and just decide it's going to be six books. Sure.
I'm more interested in if there are ways people figure out based on the internal dynamics of the story itself.
This is a challenge when you don't really know those dynamics in detail in the first place, of course. I can see character arc--the different volumes act as waypoints toward some culmination. But heck, we can stretch or shrink that almost at will, can't we? Similarly with plot. I could even see it with theme, or as a way to unfold a world's magic system.
Right now, it's feeling like plot. I have two major external threats--the Orc Empire, and the Five Kingdoms of the Trolls. So, first volume is that usurper, followed by trolls, then orcs. And behind the scenes, a wizard who believes magicians rather than kings should rule and is willing to bring everything down in flames to achieve that. So there's a kind of Gray Eminence working behind the scenes across the books.
I could make it one book and leave the orcs and trolls as background. I could make it two books, with the usurper as the first volume and then oh the real villain is that wizard for the second. Trolls and orcs still in the background. It maybe could even be strung out even longer.
In other words, even though I can point to story-rooted constraints that help an author decide how many volumes, the whole business still feels pretty arbitrary. And I sort of hate thinking that I'm going to architect a story not from its own internal needs but from a decision that I'm going to go four books then stop.
Thoughts?