Dissertation Diaries #4: Dissertation vs Novel
The opening of a novel is famously the thing that changes the most over the course of writing a novel (and I’m not just talking about the classic instinct to fiddle with the opening pages eternally as a form of procrastination to avoid actually writing the damn thing). Many feel that you do not know the way a novel should begin until you have finished writing the rest of the story.
This makes writing the opening of a novel for a dissertation an interesting challenge.
No one told me that I had to write an extract of a novel for my dissertation. On my degree course we have been supremely lucky that our professors have been willing to see anything we want to offer up for marking and have let us had total freedom over the form that takes. For the dissertation all we need to produce is a 15k creative piece and a 3k accompanying essay (which, my dear reader, I am practicing on you with these dissertation diaries - easier to keep track of my thought process this way). I could have chosen written a short story, but short stories tend to be a form I struggle with. A lot of my ideas want to be big book ideas and I struggle to think up things that neatly fit word counts. I wrote my story Melusine with a contest in mind. The contest only allowed stories around the 2k mark. Melusine ended up being around 5k. My story The Guide, The Master and The Dwarf, complete in and of itself and within word count requirements, graded well but has been my lowest graded piece. The piece I wrote for my other fiction module, an extract from a novel I have been working on my entire life (literally), scored much higher. This of course comes with a whole host of anxieties that I could easily go on a tangent about. Did it only score high because I didn’t need to write an end? Am I able to pretend that I’m a good writer if I’m only working on a scene level? etc. etc. But that could be a whole other post. What I mean to say short stories are an unreliable form for me, but I do still wonder if it would have been a better option for the dissertation.
See, to know how to start a novel you need to know how it ends. In some ways I do. I know all the what, where’s, how’s and who’s of the final scene and how it plays off in relation to the first scene. But you also need to know what happens in between to know what to set up in the opening. This has been a struggle for me. Knowing that only the first 15k words counts for my grade makes me feel anxious when spending time planning the wider story.
How I’ve been describing my story is “Game of Thrones from the perspective of the everyman”. My protagonist is the captain of the city guard who deals with the fallout of decisions that those in power make. I’m really keen to keep all the politics off-stage and focus on the repercussions for normal people. But just because it is off-stage doesn’t mean I shouldn't know what is going on. But this means I am spending hours planning storylines and reading politics books that may never feature in the novel let alone the first 15k words. Help?!
This creates a time management issue for me. Time feels like it is rushing by and I’m having to sort out things that have questionable relevance for my dissertation. Ultimately I know that anything that serves the novel is not time wasted, as this is a project I will be continuing beyond my Masters study. This is honestly probably going to be the first book I try to get published because it is a neat little stand alone rather than my soul project which is a series of unknowable length. But the dissertation deadline is coming up and every moment needs to count.
Is something that serves the novel inherently something that will serve my dissertation? Let me know. I’m still trying to figure it out.
Second Draft Word Count: 10,771 / 15,000
Current Reading List:
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Blueprint for a Book by Jennie Nash
Sixteen Ways to Defend a City by Tom Holt
The Concise 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green
Days Until Due: 34
Something I’ve been thinking about while trying to figure this issue out:
Interesting, I always struggle to spread out my thoughts, boxing everything under 2k words. I’ve stared at short stories unable to see how they need to be longer so I can at least submit to calls that begin from 2000 words onwards. My biggest fear is that my “novel” will end up being only 30k words 🙈