A Tale of Two Versions

I confess I haven’t been as doggedly devoted to this round of editing my novel as I had been in most of 2009. Even after detaching myself for a month, there is still a saturation. But, it is winter, when five o’clock seems late at night because there is no sunlight. So I find myself revisiting the television habit I purged whilst spending nights writing last winter. I don’t care much for most television, so I’ve joined Netflix… in order to watch British television.

In the midst of my Dr. Who fascination, I discovered the actor John Simm (he plays The Master if you don’t know). Some place on my queue I had already selected State of Play because of James McAvoy, but I bumped it up to the top before polishing off the last of the 2009 Tardis adventures. It was a miniseries produced in 2003. A very well written, tightly acted political mystery. I was engrossed and ate up every one of the six hours. So much that I missed it when it was done and the tragic truth was unraveled. I wanted more of the story. Then I remembered that American producers translated the story into a feature film. So I put that on my queue.

The American film is… okay. Not bad. But not… well, not gripping enough that I want to get to the end of its two hours. I have shut it off twice now to choose to do other things to pass my evening hours. I mean, yeah, I know the twist of the denouement (although it could have changed like so many of the complexities that got truncated) so the suspense doesn’t keep me riveted. Or… it just feels… after watching the other… like a skeleton of a story. It’s got a little scariness, but it’s kind of, well, weak.

I’m not really trying to write a review here. I do REALLY encourage you to see the British version if you haven’t. Really quite clever (and even funny in some moments thanks to Bill Nighy). But that’s not my point. This whole comparison (which isn’t even a juxtaposition of American vs. British quality – because Helen Mirren is in the American version)… is about editing.

I got bent out of shape this summer when the cold hard truth hit me that my novel was too long by publishing standards. My word count is pretty lengthy and has put off a reader or two before they even got started. From everything I’ve read, they say an agent will stop reading a query if they see such a high number. So… before I even dared to query, I decided to butcher.

And I did… but not enough to really make a difference to that problem. Thought about splitting one into two or three. Tried it. Pulled out a plot. Eliminated characters… but I had woven everything so much together, I couldn’t do too much without unweaving the tapestry.

I don’t miss what’s gone. Well, I do. But it’s still something of which I am proud. It’s still long. It’s still a complex story that peels back the layers one by one. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.

Because I watched these two versions of a story. No, I wouldn’t want to sit in a movie theater for six hours to watch the BBC version. But I did have that excitement to go back to it night after night to find out what happened next. And the story was so much more interesting with four extra hours. The subplots muddied the characters making the determination between right and wrong even more complicated… and entertaining… and thought-provoking. I liked it infinitely more, even though it took more of my time to watch.

So… lesson learned, it doesn’t always pay to downsize so a story fits in a neat and tidy package. Because… then… it’s all just package. Length doesn’t equal boredom. It does equal more paper with a book… but these days… not all books are printed on paper.

I’m not going to worry about word count any more. It’s a stupid trifle. What matters is if people want to come back to those words to find out how the story unravels. Not how many fit on a page to make the journey there.