There is definitely a change in pace from the earlier books to the later ones. Does this reflect a change in style over the last decade, a change in the story’s pacing, or something else? What would you say to the critics out there who think you’ve been doing this just to stretch the series out longer?
In the beginning, I was writing about a very few characters, relatively speaking, on a relatively constricted stage. They were, for the most part, people with very small experience and a very small world view. From the start I expected this to spread out to cover more people over a much wider stage, and for the characters to expand their world view. Nobody is a kid from the sticks any more! Plus which, a little time has to be spent on some side characters, and what might be considered side plots, because they are important to the development of the main plot lines, keys to why things happen in the way that they do. Writing it any other way would require what seems to me to be entirely too much deus ex machina . The things I want to happen not only have to happen, they have to happen in a way that is believable.
In each book, there was has been a widening of scope over the previous books, though I am beginning to narrow it down once again. To some extent, anyway. And, no, I am not trying to stretch it out. I have had the same difficulty with every book from the very beginning. Namely, I could not put into it the amount of the story that I wanted to. Believe me, I will finish WHEEL in as few books as I can while telling the story I want to tell. After all, this is a multi-volume novel. When you set out to run a marathon, it’s twenty-six miles and change. Getting a good time over fifteen or twenty miles doesn’t mean a thing. You have to reach the finish line, or you might as well not have started. I’d like to finish this race.
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