Expanded poll: long megatomes, or short novellas?

Okay, I'm coming to y'all with a different kind of post. I'm sharing a little bit of my writing process, a little of my thoughts about writing a series, and then a little speculation on what I'd like to accomplish with my future writing goals. (Not to be confused with future sales goals. That's totally different.)

So, you probably don't know it, but I'm winding down production on "season one" of the Mystical World Wars series. It's taken me four years to get this far, but in that time, I've covered the introductions of the halflings, the vampires, the werekin, the daemons, the wyrm, and the wraiths. I've also done some cameos with the elves and other fantasy races. On Earth, I've shown how vampires aren't the only blood drinking race, and I've explained the state of the three dimensions before the war on the Earth plane exploded into a free-for-all. Granted, some of what I've written, you haven't seen yet. But I'm wrapping up productions on those stories and will have them out soon.

During season one, I've worked on novels for the most part, gathering large groups of characters into books of 80K-100K words in length. But when I worked with the side characters in spinoff stories, I often wrote much shorter lengths. The spinoffs were more about one character and their view of the world, while the novels have a more broad scope covering the perspectives of many characters. (Which is why Blood Relations turned into a novel, because instead of just being about Vicky or Amber, it turned into an introduction for the whole vampire coven.)

For larger events, these crossover novels are unavoidable, and in season one, I believe there are more novels than novellas and short stories. I'm not so sure I want season two to follow the same ratio. For one thing, lots of groups in season two will be splitting up for chaotic reasons, and if I have to write a big novel, I'm going to lose track of someone for sure. As it was, in season one, I almost lost Joel's sister Leslie, and probably would have if I hadn't reread Shattered Prophesies for another typo hunt. I also almost lost track of Tamika, Schaefer's daughter. (also from Shattered Prophesies) I'd totally forgot that she'd run off with Elizabeth Collins and Chris Strauss. So when I started writing a book about Chris, I suddenly went, wait….someone is missing. And sure enough, I'd left Tamika behind. Oy.

A lot of season two will be taking place in Lissand, (but not all of it) and will follow several groups of magi as they seek training from the elves in magic. The elites will end up being abandoned by the halflings and the magi, so their story is how a well-trained military unit deals with being dropped in an alternate dimension with extremely limited resources, no allies, and no way back home. (Don't feel too bad for them. These were the bad guys of season one. Oh, and I've been reading officers' training manuals to try and build my authenticity. Don't know if that's going to pan out to anything realistic or not, but woohoo, real research, bitches.) But since that story follows a whole platoon of characters, obviously a novella won't work for them. In fact, I might have to do a trilogy for them. (I'm joking! For the love of God, don't quote me on that.)

But a lot of other stories in Lissand could be shorter novellas. This way, I get in, tell a story, and get out to make ready for another character and another story. I don't have to sort out how this character's life works as a subplot for a larger book, or try to keep track of a hundred different loose ends. Or, I do have to keep track of them for later books, but I don't have to work them all into a unified narrative.

There would still be some crossover novels, but this would be for larger events where multiple characters from the novellas gathered for one mega event. I could hint at their side stories instead of trying to tell them in the book, and if someone asks, "But where is this side story?" I can direct them to a novella instead of yet another huge megatome. In theory, I think this could make the series less intimidating for new readers. This same theory works the other way, in that if a reader sees some huge past even hinted at in a novella and wonders what it's all about, I can point them to one of the novels for an answer.

Either way, I would still need to develop a way to help new readers understand that they don't have to read the whole series, or even all the episodes for their favorite races. Sure, there's stuff they may feel left out of for not reading more, but that's true of any series where you jump in at random points. It's true of comics, TV shows, and serialized novels. You miss out on something by not reading everything, but you can get some entertainment out of just reading one story, even if it's out of order. That's what I'm aiming for, the idea that a reader could pick up any book from season two without reading anything from season one and still enjoy their time in my fantasy world. But perhaps the only way I could explain this properly is with some kind of intro for every book where I repeat the same things. Past readers would know to skip over the intros, but new readers would get some warning in advance: "this is a big series, but don't worry, you don't have to read all of it, just this one book."

Or…bleh, I don't like how that sounds. But I need something with a similar sentiment that helps ease some of that reader intimidation factor.

Moving on, Hubby and a few other beta readers have said that while they love the megatome books, too much happens in them, and there's so many characters all over the place that some folks just become faces in a crowd. It isn't that I'm not telling their stories. But with so much other stuff going on, their side story loses importance in the reader's mind, and so it's forgotten to make room for the plot points the reader feels are most important. In hubby's case, he's sometimes complained, "I wished you hadn't forgotten about ___." Then I would tell him I didn't and point out the scenes he'd forgotten. They were there, but with all the other stuff happening, it slipped his mind.

Some of that confusion in season one was unavoidable because the scopes of the stories were really large scale. I couldn't find a simpler way to tell those stories. But, going into season two, I think I can convince the muse to focus stories more around individual characters. There's likely to be a LOT of novellas covering all sorts of characters from around the MWW world. There's going to be a new set of "bad guys" from Exodus, human hunters funded by the Southern Baptists who are killing vampires, witches, and shapeshifters indiscriminately. There's going to be a new wyrm coming to Earth, a female wyrm who makes Dimitri look like a nice guy. And somewhere around the middle of season two, a black dragon will be moving to Earth with some newly undead friends and an army of animated corpses at his disposal. THEN the daemons decide to stage the full invasion from Heil.

And all of these stories have the potential to be good. But what I'm thinking is, I should do more of the stories as novellas, so those plots retain their importance instead of getting lost in the shuffle of larger books. This also allows me to devote more time to what would otherwise be bit characters.

What happened with Amber and Vicky, and then with Jenny/Marcus, can also happen with other bit characters like Brian and Pauline Collins, Lucas the vampire and the Colby triplets, Sonja and William Lebowitz, Jasmine/Chris Hooker, and Prom Orvest Dimitri. Yes, even Dimitri will get a chance to tell his story in season two. That's kinda my point with the MWW series, that no person is really a bit character. They're just not seen as relevant for some stories and become bit characters in the process of spinning that one yarn.

For Redemption Lost, Amber and Vicky are bit characters, and so is Gavin Lebowitz. In fact, reading the first book of the Campaign trilogy, you'd never know this scrawny, screechy-voiced FBI desk-jockey would one day become a hunky werebear and daemon fighter. The same is true of Amber and Vicky. Looking at their roles in Redemption Lost, you'd never guess that Amber would become a blood drinker voluntarily, or that Vicky would end up being seduced by a cop even though she's supposed to be running from the law and hiding out. You don't know these things because in that one book, Gavin, Vicky, and Amber are all bit characters, and it isn't within the scope of the book to explain everything about them.

I hope this all makes sense, because I want to turn this topic over to readers to get your take. Would you prefer having more books with shorter stories that stay focused on one character's POV? Or would you prefer less books, with all of the "lesser" perspectives being melded in as minor subplots? Which do you consider more enjoyable to read?