Yesterday, I finished my revisions on Fall Semester, which covers about 50-60% of the novel. In MS Word, the page count, double-spaced, came out to 325 pages. I realize this is a decent size for an entire book, and in fact, rather long for a Y.A. book.
So my brother remarks on how 600-650 pages would be really long for a first-timer, Y.A. novel. And he's not wrong. This, of course, led him to bring up the topic of editors and how the editor would, and I quote, "rape the shit out of it."
Again, he's not wrong. From the point I hit 100 pages, I knew that this book was going to be a doorstopper. I knew it. I also knew it probably wouldn't be the first book I published. None of this bothered me. I had long since braced for it.
And then my brother (whom I would like to preface this by saying is a very cool, very intelligent guy) made a suggestion that blew right past stupid and crash-landed deep within the boundaries of offensive. He asked if perhaps I might consider just splitting the book in half and publishing Fall Semester as its own novel.
Now, most people would be hard-pressed to see what's so offensive about that suggestion, and I can see why. After all, it was offered in kindness, the proposal of an alternate strategy for the purpose of helping to ensure my success. I recognize that and all the love that motivated it. That doesn't change what else was behind that suggestion, so allow me to spell it out to all the non-writers out there.
By asking if I would consider this option, my brother must first have entertained the idea that it was even possible. Now, let's take a closer look at the reasoning behind that. As any high school student should be able to tell you (though I can't guarantee this, given the current state of the American educational system), every story has a structure, in its most primal form, beginning, middle, and end. Even in non-linear storytelling, the part you see at the end, regardless of where it comes in the chronology, is at the end for a reason. It's the big reveal or that new context that suddenly puts everything into perspective. It's what the story builds up to. Hence, if you split a story in the middle, you don't get the end. You get half the story and a major case of narrative blueballs.
Right about now, someone out there will be wondering where cliffhangers fit into all this. That's a whole other conversation, and all I will say on the matter is that cliffhangers are a certain type of ending; unresolved, but still an ending. After a cliffhanger, if you're going, "Damn that was a kick-ass story and I'm dying to know what happens next," that is the correct response. If your reaction is more along the lines of, "Wait... what, what... whoa whoa whoa... that's it?" then the writer failed.
So, getting back on track here, the suggestion of splitting the story implies that ending isn't important, that the climax of the story does not stand out enough from the rest of the narrative to be of any immediate value to the reader and that he or she would be just as satisfied stopping halfway through as they would getting to the end. So, what this sentiment basically implies is that my story has no real discernible structure and has been crafted poorly. Even allowing the benefit of the doubt that, having knowledge that this book was part of a series, it was assumed that the greater story could just be broken up in smaller installments, it still ignores the fact that I chose where each installment began and ended for several specific reasons. It assumes the divisions were arbitrary. They weren't.
But there's something more insidious about all this, something I'm sure my brother wasn't even aware of on a conscious level, and that's the immediate assumption that Y.A. books are fluff, that they're not real literature; that you can half-ass it and everything will be fine.
See, there's an arrogance most people acquire pretty much the moment they graduate high school. It is the immediate distancing of one's self from one's own adolescence. In the same kind of mad dash to be taken seriously that is ironically exhibited by teenagers, post-adolescents jump straight into the same condescension and belittlement that drove them crazy for six solid years. Teenagers are immediately dismissed as stupid, foolish, obnoxious, and unable to contribute any thoughts or ideas of any kind of value. The same issues and trials that caused these people genuine emotional distress when they were kids, the traumas that shaped the adults they became, are suddenly jeered at as bullshit kid problems, little stuff, unimportant, things you can in good conscience laugh at someone for actually caring about. The fact that, as teenagers, we were privy to real adult horrors without yet having developed the coping mechanisms to deal with them is promptly forgotten. It's basically the equivalent of a professional bodybuilder dropping a 200 pound weight, watching some 98-pound newbie who just got a gym membership catch it and dislocate his shoulder, and then calling him a big baby for crying out. It doesn't matter how easily the bodybuilder could lift that weight. The pain and damage it caused the newbie is just as real.
As such, people tend to assume that any book written for teenagers or even just about them is going to be 200+ pages of kids whining about whom they want to date, how hard their homework is, and how unfair their parents are. The idea that these characters are psychologically complex and living through legitimate hardships that would traumatize a person of any age is never even considered, nor is the possibility that the book might actually be about something. It's just assumed that it's an episode of Dawson's Creek in prose. And if you think that's all a book is, then sure, it doesn't really matter how long it is, and you can break it up anywhere, because it's all just more of the same. But let me ask you this.
If you picked up a mystery novel targeted at an adult audience, and the central mystery weren't solved by the end, would you or would you not consider that book a let-down and a waste of your time? I rest my case.
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