Extended Edition Books?

[Dustin]

There's abridged and unabridged but have you ever wanted an extended edition of your favorite books.

Publishers always have the problem of cutting too much or leaving too much when it comes to editing, because some readers just want the bones of a story while others want muscle and even a little fat on the story.

So what if there were two versions. The bare-bones version and extended with all the filler that some readers hate, with perhaps some of the stuff that would normally get cut.

I not saying they wouldn't cut anything for the extended edition, only that they'd leave extra bits that are interesting but have no plot purpose.

Or perhaps as bonus features in the ebook.

[Micah]

The Stand serves as a good example of this. I have not yet read it, it is on my short list of TBR, however I know that it does indeed have a secondary edited "extended" edition.

[Geoff]

Micah wrote: "The Stand serves as a good example of this. I have not yet read it, it is on my short list of TBR, however I know that it does indeed have a secondary edited "extended" edition."

Well, I think the 'extended' version of The Stand is the version originally written but wasn't initially published because the publishers thought it was too long for the general public.

[Warren]

I look at them as the "directors cut" of the literary world.
In some cases its worth it.
With many its just a way of selling you the same book twice.
Depends on the author

[Phil]

Just for completeness sake I would tend to want to read an authors originally intended version of a book. On the other hand, in some cases there may be a good reason the editor thought something should be cut.

I read the uncut version of Stranger in a Strange Land but it was about 25 years after I had read the shorter version so I couldn't tell you what was different. It did seem to drag a bit though.

[terpkristin]

The "extended" version of The Stand also dragged a bit. I never read the original but could see where it required editing.

[Sean]

Dustin wrote: "Publishers always have the problem of cutting too much or leaving too much when it comes to editing "

No they don't. They don't edit near enough. There are so many books, especially by established authors, that could do with being a couple hundred pages shorter -- yeah, Wheel of Time, I'm looking at you with your repetitive scenes of people sitting in bathtubs for whole chapters summarizing their situation instead of doing something about it.

People need to get over this notion that longer is better.

[Leesa]

I love long books. I love extended editions, especially if they are from Stephen King.

[Sandi]

Sean O'Hara wrote: "People need to get over this notion that longer is better"

YES!

terpkristin wrote: "The "extended" version of The Stand also dragged a bit. I never read the original but could see where it required editing."

I completely agree with this.

I think editing is an essential part of the process of creating a novel. Good editing can make a good book great. I don't think the extended version of
The Stand was great, but it could have been if it had less.

I also don't watch Director's Cuts of movies. I remember seeing "Blade Runner" in the theaters and being blown away by it, especially with the noir voic-over. I rented the DVD a few years ago when I did a re-read of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and I didn't like it anywhere near as much.

[Michele]

I love long books too, but sometimes I pull out an Ellis Peters Cadfael novel an I am amazed that she fits a murder mystery, a romance, everyday happenings in a medieval monastery and town, and realistic characters with backstories - all in a 200 page book. Thank goodness there are 21 of them, with a nice complete ending in the last one, gor when I need to immerse myself in Cadfael's world.

I haven't ever read a story in both the edited and extended form, but the few movies I've seen, they were movies I already really liked and so I enjoyed having more of the movie to watch. Aliens with the cut scenes put back in is a good example I think - Ripley is fierce either way, but knowing more about outliving her child while drifting in space adds a little something without slowing down the action too much.

EXCEPT all the stupid bad CGI stuff that idiot Lucas put into the original trilogy.

[Dustin]

Sandi wrote: "Sean O'Hara wrote: "People need to get over this notion that longer is better"

YES!..."


I think Lord of the Rings fans would disagree and I don't mean those who read it once or three times and liked it. I mean the people who drool over it. If he had stopped at Return of the King and said, you know, longer isn't better. You'd have some very sad hobbits right now.

My point was not to leave the crap not even the author wants to read. I meant that if they wrote knowing there would be an extended version, they could write scenes purely for the fans that the authors would normally consider cut material right off the bat.

[Sean]

Dustin wrote: "I think Lord of the Rings fans would disagree and I don't mean those who read it once or three times and liked it. I mean the people who drool over it. If he had stopped at Return of the King and said, you know, longer isn't better. You'd have some very sad hobbits right now."

Here's the thing, though -- if you get a single volume edition of Lord of the Rings, it's not much longer than A Storm of Swords. An entire epic series in the same space as one installment of ASOIAF. Tolkien could've made it much longer, giving us viewpoint characters in Lothlorien and Esgaroth, maybe even scenes in Hobbiton with Rosie Cotton worrying about Sam as rumors of the war creep into the Shire. But he didn't, and the story is better for it.

[Kevin]

Geoff wrote: "Micah wrote: "The Stand serves as a good example of this. I have not yet read it, it is on my short list of TBR, however I know that it does indeed have a secondary edited "extended" edition."

Wel..."

Also as King have said that it was also a finacial reason that the book was cut.

[Kevin]

terpkristin wrote: "The "extended" version of The Stand also dragged a bit. I never read the original but could see where it required editing."

That was different for the Gunslinger as King as adding more to make the book more readable to the audience as he was finishing up the last three books in the series.

[Dustin]

Sean O'Hara wrote: "Here's the thing, though -- if you get a single volume edition of Lord of the Rings, it's not much longer than A Storm of Swords. An entire epic series in the same space as one installment of ASOIAF. Tolkien could've made it much longer, giving us viewpoint characters in Lothlorien and Esgaroth,..."


And I'll argue that the pacing and that particular plot line is better for it, but the story that is Middle Earth isn't. It's the same reason why I buy both versions of the movies. Sometimes I just want the pure story and sometimes I want to see a little more of the world.

[Leesa]

I don't mind shorter novels, short stories, or novellas/novelettes, either. And, yeah, sometimes I want to read something that isn't very long. I feel more productive sometimes when I can check off as read several books in a short period of time rather than one epic.

But I will buy extended editions of authors I love, particularly Stephen King. :)

[Wastrel]

Only example I can think of that's not been mentioned is the extended cut of Feist's "Magician". Well, technically it's just a revised edition, but iirc the 'revision' includes substantially lengthening it.

[In films, I can only think of two films where I've seen and feel able to compare both versions. "Amadeus" is a better film in the cut version - I like the added scenes, and I'm certainly not going to object to seeing the female lead topless - but the added length makes the film a lot more flaccid and directionless. It's worth watching if you're a fan, but you can definitely see why they made the cuts for the general audience, it just makes it a much more solid and pacey film. With "Leon", the comparison is interesting, because the director's cut is really an entirely different film. The theatrical "Leon" is a non-stop action thriller; the extended "Leon" is a psychosexual coming-of-age character study, tinged with psychopathy and with a really disturbing, mutually-exploitative child-adult sexual tension at its heart. And the change just comes down to something like 15 minutes of footage, iirc. To be honest, I again prefer the theatrical cut because it's so fun, although I think that maybe the extended cut may be a better film - it's certainly a more interesting film.
One film I can't imagine the short versions being better with: "Once Upon A Time In America". Sure, the uncut version is so long you need an interval, but its languor, its diversions, are what make it what it is. Strip it down into an effective, fast-paced gangster film and you'd surely end up with something both confusing and soulless. Of course, the worst is what they actually did: cut massively, and then get rid of the flashback structure to show all the scenes chronologically. Some Hollywood executives shouldn't be allowed within three continents of a film.]

[Rick]

I think there's going to be much more support for this in the fantasy genre than in most of SF since there's a substantial cadre of readers in fantasy who love to simply revisit the world even when nothing much happens, ala WoT. Not all fantasy readers are like this of course, but there seems to be enough that it would work better there than in most other genres.

The way this was done for LotR is best for my tastes - don't make me slog through dozens of pages where nothing much happens or we get sideplots that merely there to flesh out the world. Tell me the story as Tolkien did in The Hobbit and then the three volumes of LotR but also give me other works that let me explore and learn about the world.


But then, I'm not one who wants to hang out in the world just to be there. I don't really care to read about what happened to the people of Rohan after the Helm's Deep battle. I just don't need some point of view character sitting around a fire musing about their life then. I don't need shifts back to Elrond and Rivendell where we see Arwen knitting the banner that's later delivered to Aragorn. Some people would love that.

[Geoff]

Kevin wrote: "Geoff wrote: "Micah wrote: "The Stand serves as a good example of this. I have not yet read it, it is on my short list of TBR, however I know that it does indeed have a secondary edited "extended" ..."

Yeah, it was physically too big (thus costing too much) to be published

[Dustin]

Now 1000 page books are not so uncommon.

[Rick]

Not only pacing Timothy, but necessity. Take my made up example above of a LotR set of chapters that move the viewpoint back to Rivendell. Given that elves meet Aragorn at Helm's Deep it's obvious that Elrond was doing things at Rivendell in preparation for war. I imagine that some interesting pages could have been written about that, about Arwen's mindset and activities, etc. Heck we know the Shire was overrun by Saruman et al for a time and could have seen that as it happened.

But none of that serves to story which Tolkien wanted to tell, it merely increases the page count. Even if it might be enjoyed by some readers, it's not necessary to the story. Knowing the story you want to tell and then telling that story is a good thing for an author I think (at least from my vantage point as a reader).

Of course, telling multiple stories is perfectly OK... but that's a different can of worms.

[Wastrel]

But that's a tautology. How can you tell what story "the author wanted to tell" except from what story they do tell? Maybe Robert Jordan really wanted to tell the story of bathing practices. Anything you feel is 'unnecessary' may be essential to how the author conceived of the book - and contrariwise, every book (certainly including LotR) contains numerous diversions that are not necessary to the central plot.
We can't judge whether those diversions are useful or not simply be asking if they're necessary to 'the story', because we have no way of knowing what 'the story' is other than by assuming that the contents of the book tell the story and the bits that aren't in the books don't.

[Unless, of course, an author comes out and tells you what they wanted to do/say. In which case, yes, you can identify parts of the book that don't serve that purpose. But otherwise you can't distinguish "doesn't serve the story" from "serves a different story from the one I wish the author were telling"]

[Rick]

Wastrel wrote: "But that's a tautology. How can you tell what story "the author wanted to tell" except from what story they do tell? Maybe Robert Jordan really wanted to tell the story of bathing practices. Anythi..."

Oh. Good point, I wasn't clear. I was trying to say that sometimes I can see authors getting sidetracked because they lose sight of the main thread of their story. LotR is about the end of the Third Age - the main threads are the destruction of the Ring and the return of the king to Gondor. It's NOT a travelogue of Middle Earth and it's not really the story of the Shire, etc. So, if Tolkien had written some of the stuff I posit above it would be fluff, not part of the story that's needed. I sometimes get the feeling that authors do this because some readers like hanging out in the world and it's usually a bad thing.

Now, of course, there might be several stories that are told across volumes. To continue with the LotR examples, there could have been a story centered on the elves of Rivendell and the conflicts in the north and another about the trials of the hobbits in the Shire. But then the chapters dealing with that should tell those stories and advance it (even if they intertwine with the other stories). They shouldn't be content that don't serve any plotline at all.

However, I very mich disagree with this:

We can't judge whether those diversions are useful or not simply be asking if they're necessary to 'the story', because we have no way of knowing what 'the story' is other than by assuming that the contents of the book tell the story and the bits that aren't in the books don't.

The story being told should be clear, at least in retrospect. It's called plotting and if the plot is non-existent or fragmented that can be simply poor storytelling. Not everything any author does is, a priori, correct. Some plot well, some don't. Some put in extraneous stuff that could be cut and not hurt the book.

[AndrewP]

Sean O'Hara wrote: "People need to get over this notion that longer is better. "

For once I am in complete agreement with Sean. I read a lot of classic noir/hardboiled crime and almost all of those can get characters, plot and twists into less than 300 pages.

I did read the extended version of American Gods and quite enjoyed that but had a feeling that some of it could have been cut down a bit.

Some movies are better in the extended edition, some not. It's a bit of a crap shoot. The only one where I would strongly urge people to see the uncut version, 'vs' the theatrical version is the German movie 'Das Boot'. The theatrical version is about 2 hours. The uncut version, originally a German TV mini series, is 294 minutes.

[Rick]

I'm not sure I'm being as clear as i can even on my second try, so here's a preemptive third try. :)

If Tolkien decided that he wanted to tell the story of how Sauron fell, ending the Third Age and ushering in the rise of men, then the existing LotR works well. However, he could have decided that he wanted to tell not just that story but the story of each of the main races at the end of the Third Age - what happened to the dwarves, the Rivendell elves, Beorn from the Hobbit, the hobbits, the men of the North, the southern races...

That's perfectly valid too and would obviously lead to much more material that isn't about Aragorn's return to Gondor and Frodo's destruction the Ring.

What I've been trying to say is that the author should decide what story or stories they want to tell and then tell those. However, don't toss in bits of one story into another without actually telling both stories. Sometimes authors do this and it's what lead to bloat. Telling several stories is also a potential problem when one story is about something like the fate of the world and another is about, oh, crop failure in a province (i.e. when you're taken from a Big Story to a small side one of little consequence).

[Will]

Please, no. A lot of books are a little too long as it is and usually relieved when they are over

[AndrewP]

In answer to Rick. I think Tolkien DID do most of those stories, but he put them all in separate books. They are all much more detailed and evolved works than if he had tried to stuff significant bits of each into LotR.