I haven't seen Babylon 5, but I'm familiar with TV shows where there's a season arc, or even a series arc, and some episodes are building that larger arc while some are standalone episodes. I assume you mean something like that. Yeah, that's a lot like the old Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, which were all shorts except for one novel. They were published in pulp magazines back in the 30's and 40's (actually continuing up through the 70's), and really originally Fritz Lieber just wrote them as standalone stories, but decades later, when they were being reprinted in the 70's as a paperback series, he wrote up some in-between shorts to connect them all into a loose arc, as well as the origin stories for both main characters. I love that format, and would really like to do something similar. In fact I've strongly considered doing the Beastseekers that way (actually I keep teetering back and forth between that and a novel trilogy or maybe just two books).
That's exactly right. If you love the format, you should definitely do it. Can be a lot of fun, and you get to explore your universe a lot and come up with new ideas for it.
The way I've got it set up now, it's pretty tightly plotted, and certain things are set up early and not paid off until much later. That wouldn't work in a series of shorts unless they were read in order in a collected volume. Though possiby I could un-couple a few things and make it work as shorts. I mean, the orignal series were shorts, I'd like to be faithful to that if I can.
Another reason it works better in novel format—the characters in the original series had flat arcs, no growth or change. Now it's one long coming-of-age arc for the MC, with minor arcs for one or two of the other characters. As it is now, I couldn't separate it into stories that would work as shorts, they'd feel more like pieces torn out of a longer work, like individual episodes of a TV show. But I might be able to finagle it so it could work. I think the growth arc would need to become a little less the main focus, and more something almost happening in the background, or happening in definite stages. Yeah, maybe that. He learns and grows a little in each, but each story has a real beginning, middle and end. Might be do-able.
Ok no, it wouldn't work as shorts, because the story idea is complex and multilayered, it would take more than the length of one short to get it across. I'd need to re-introduce the characters and the story world in each new installment, and that would break up the flow too much. There's no coming in in the middle of things and understanding what's gone before without a lot of heavy exposition. The complexity of it makes it necessary to keep it all contained to novel format. Ok sorry, back to it being your thread again!
@Xoic There are probably ways to do it into a series format if you really wanted to. But if the novel format fits best, then that's good as well. Perhaps you could do this story in the intended novel format, and then do another story set in the same theme/setting but with another bunch of characters, and do it in a series? I'm now working on the next version of my blurb.
