Drastic shortening
28 June 2026 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI spoke to my brother (one of the only two people who have read the entire manuscript) about my struggles with Arctic Raoul. His title suggestions: "Return of the Phantom"/"Revenge of the Phantom" :-p
Proposal to shorten the length: refocus the story on Raoul rather than Christine, as opposed to trying to balance the two, and omit all appearances of Philippe (on the not unreasonable grounds that a year or so after having read the book, he couldn't remember anything about him -- as opposed to, say, Lancard, or even Kulla the cow...)
Which would certainly drastically shorten the book, since by my reckoning that would imply removing most if not all of chapters 2,3, and 4 (Plot Points 2 and 3) and chapters 26, 27 and 28, where they return to France (Plot Point 12), plus chapter 34, the finale/epilogue: 23, 000 words, thus bringing the story down close to 100,000 words in one fell swoop -- though of course there are plot points (the decision to go after Erik, for instance) included in those chapters that would need to be worked in elsewhere. I suppose that's the sort of radical change I need to be looking at. (And there is no point of asking for dispassionate advice and then dismissing it out of hand because it is unpalatable, especially when there *isn't* a palatable option; reading through those chapters, I could see very few phrases that I wouldn't regret cutting.)
But it would hurt enormously to cut the entire relationship between Raoul and his brother (I saw the developments of the non-romantic relationships as a big part of this book: Raoul/Philippe, Raoul/Lancard, Christine/Kulla, Christine/Lancard, Christine/Philippe), to drop all the Chagny family setting and those 'happy chapters' for Christine in Paris/Chagny after their reunion that were so relatively easy and pleasant to write -- and abort the original planned ending...
It *would* of course position it much more squarely as 'an adventure novel' by skipping sizeable chunks of C/R material into the bargain :-p
[Edit: I think one of the reasons why it hurts was that I was priding myself on writing a 'realistic' version of everyday family life, as opposed to the distorted fanfic view!]
Proposal to shorten the length: refocus the story on Raoul rather than Christine, as opposed to trying to balance the two, and omit all appearances of Philippe (on the not unreasonable grounds that a year or so after having read the book, he couldn't remember anything about him -- as opposed to, say, Lancard, or even Kulla the cow...)
Which would certainly drastically shorten the book, since by my reckoning that would imply removing most if not all of chapters 2,3, and 4 (Plot Points 2 and 3) and chapters 26, 27 and 28, where they return to France (Plot Point 12), plus chapter 34, the finale/epilogue: 23, 000 words, thus bringing the story down close to 100,000 words in one fell swoop -- though of course there are plot points (the decision to go after Erik, for instance) included in those chapters that would need to be worked in elsewhere. I suppose that's the sort of radical change I need to be looking at. (And there is no point of asking for dispassionate advice and then dismissing it out of hand because it is unpalatable, especially when there *isn't* a palatable option; reading through those chapters, I could see very few phrases that I wouldn't regret cutting.)
But it would hurt enormously to cut the entire relationship between Raoul and his brother (I saw the developments of the non-romantic relationships as a big part of this book: Raoul/Philippe, Raoul/Lancard, Christine/Kulla, Christine/Lancard, Christine/Philippe), to drop all the Chagny family setting and those 'happy chapters' for Christine in Paris/Chagny after their reunion that were so relatively easy and pleasant to write -- and abort the original planned ending...
It *would* of course position it much more squarely as 'an adventure novel' by skipping sizeable chunks of C/R material into the bargain :-p
[Edit: I think one of the reasons why it hurts was that I was priding myself on writing a 'realistic' version of everyday family life, as opposed to the distorted fanfic view!]