Kristen Nelson is talking about “big” ideas for single title at RTB today. Great topic and I love how she addresses it, because the difference between category and single title really does come down to stakes and scope, structure, not “voice”.

I’ve seen the “the voice is too category for single title” and my knee-jerk reaction is “garbage”. No, not to my stuff, but it’s a common thing you’ll come across in group discussions, blogs, etc. And that’s rotten, because authors come away from that thinking it’s hopeless because their voice is their voice. Not thinking that the scope, the stakes, the structure is where the problem is. In other words, it’s not you. It’s the story.

When I read On Writing by Stephen King and he talked about how every idea is collapsible, I realized that the reverse is true. You can take a story and make it bigger or smaller, by altering the scope, the stakes, the number of characters and subplots. Another great look at this can be found in Writing the Breakout Novel.

The book I’m working on now for St. Martin’s (Fallen, Aug. 08) was originally proposed as a novella. To turn it into single title, I took my core idea and built in higher stakes, gave it more scope, a bigger cast of characters. I have more space for subplots and complexity. It’s really nice to revel in the SPACE I have to work with as opposed to a novella which has to be so tight. And the characterization can only be so deep, the conflict to be resolved can’t be too great to believably resolve in the length. Etc.

I really think once you understand story structure, you can do anything. Any length, any type of story. You just have to understand how to build it and scale your story accordingly.

I think Nalini Singh is a great example of this, when you look at her Desires and then her single titles, starting with Slave to Sensation. You can see the difference in the stakes and the scope. It’s not just word count that’s different. It’s not contemporary to paranormal. It’s a bigger story in Slave to Senation. Which isn’t to say she tells less of a story in category. Her Desires are fully realized, but built to scale to fit in category. The shorter length means you can’t have as big a scope to the story. (I think short can be very satisfying, by the way. If you do it right, a short story or a novella or a novel will all be a satisfying read, each built to scale.)