by Kathy Bryson
Sounds like a spicy Regency romance,
doesn’t it? Nothing so exciting.
But I am very happy
to have reached the end
of my novella series,
all 6 adventures of
Giovanni In Med School
Writing a series is nothing new. Authors regularly cranked out books in on-going installments,but with the growing popularity of self-publishing, the pressure is on to release books more frequently. When I was between jobs as an adjunct professor, I could manage a book a year. But I went to full-time work, that year stretched to two.
I started Giovanni Goes To Med School in 2016, writing a short story to entertain my coworkers. I had just finished a full-length novel, Fighting Mad, and was looking around for my next project. Since I’d just read about how some authors were writing novellas so they could post something new on Amazon every 6 months, I thought I’d try it. A hundred pages every 6 months should be easier than 300 pages in a year, right?
Well, 5 years later, I finished 6 novellas. Poor Giovanni has had to deal with zombies, witches, voodoo curses, werewolves, vampires, and hospital bureaucracy! It was a fun series to write. Novellas lend themselves to action packed stories because the pace is condensed. Comedy works well because dialogue can be short with one-line quips. In Giovanni’s case, a lot of screaming as he ran through the hospital pursued by zombies, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and co-workers!
Not only did I get to have fun torturing my hero, I got to explore ideas in many new creative ways. This series became as much the creation of the co-workers who inspired it as I worked to include them in the stories and as they suggested new challenges for poor Gio. A friend of a friend contributed illustrations, another friend created the covers, and my brother recorded the audio version. The series ended up being a chance for a lot of people to try something new, something different!
But the novellas did not end up being easier to write and certainly not faster! I have gotten much better at writing in layers. Get the first ideas down and add layers. The draft doesn’t even have to be a formal outline, but I do find a chapter list essential to keep track of plot lines and manage the pacing needed to build up to the key scenes. You don't want everyone’s action to hit during the scene and you don’t want to forget any additional character’s plot line, leaving them hanging!
Novellas are a lot like old movie serials. Even if they are a stand-alone story, they should entice the reader into the next installment. However, I find the cliff-hanger annoying, so I tried for a clear beginning, middle, and end in each novella. After a while though, I had to leave story threads hanging until the next episode because the overall story arc took more than a hundred pages to explain, then wrap up. Even a pantser is probably gonna need extensive notes to remember who did what and when.
One area that requires as much work as a full-length book includes research. Any story with any complexity means hitting up the internet or library to verify all the details. Beside looking up decomposition, I had to learn about assorted diseases and routine medical practices. And because I was writing about zombies, I especially had to learn about voodoo. It’s important when dealing with a culture outside your own to know enough not only to sound credible, but to write with respect.
There’s not much room for more than action and dialogue in a shorter format, so description is both easier and harder. Setting and character may be confined to a single sentence, so the challenge of developing characters with depth and avoiding inconsistent behavior becomes even harder. The whole thing can start to feel more like an outline than a fully fleshed story. You may not have room to explain motivation, but you still don’t want simplistic stereotype characters either. This is one area I definitely needed the whole series to address!
In the end, my average was still about a hundred pages a year, same as in my full-length works. Life has a way of interrupting the best laid plans. In the past 5 years, I’ve changed jobs twice, moved three times, and then of course, there was the pandemic. You might think you can run the vacuum and write a chapter, but it’s hard to come up with the words when you’re trying to remember if you filed a report and or turned off the stove. So for my next book, I’m planning a true stand-alone in 2 years. And now I have a body of work to stay current - several bodies in fact! 😂
From Book 1: an EPIC 2017 eBook Awards Finalist – Fiction Short Works
You don't have to be a medical student to know the dead don't walk. Anyone who's buried a pet in the backyard knows they don't even lurch.
The night-shift in the morgue was supposed to be a chance to study in peace. So Giovanni is stunned when his patient sits up and starts scolding. Now he's got to convince an unbelieving medical community to take action, so he can get back to learning about the dead – not the undead!
With Full-Color Illustrations! You think the zombie is bad? You should see the drool!
1st in a series of 6 novellas! Follow Giovanni's adventures and uncover the hidden secrets where the twisted worlds of the supernatural and medical science collide!
About Giovanni In Med School -
Giovanni dreams of becoming a doctor. But he’s finding medical school has some unexpected challenges! You think anatomy is tough? Try zombies, ghosts, werewolves, and roving voodoo curses!
That’s just the beginning of Giovanni ln Med School as he grapples with classes, labs, AND the hidden secrets where the twisted worlds of the supernatural and medical science collide. Get all 6 of Giovanni’s adventures in this spell-binding, side-splitting collection you won’t be able to put down!
Available in ebook at https://books2read.com/b/bwaory
About the Author -
Kathy Bryson is the award-winning author of tongue-in-cheek fantasy that ranges from leprechauns to zombies. She’d like to say she’s climbed tall mountains, rappelled off cliffs, and saved small children, but actually she tends to curl up and read, is a life-long advocate of Ben & Jerry’s, and caters to spoiled cats. She works regularly with student writing, so she can claim to have saved a few term papers.
