Writer's Corner: Q&A About 'Reunion: A Story': On Writing a Novel or Sequel

(C) 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and CreateSpace (an Amazon company)

Q.: Now that the story has been on Amazon for 10 days or so and has gotten good reviews - one reader wrote, "I really enjoyed reading this story. The author's descriptive writing brought me back to high school.  Really made me think about the 'what ifs' in life." - what are your plans for Reunion? Will you expand it into a novel? Will there be a sequel? 

A.: Before I decided to go ahead and publish Reunion: A Story "as is," I considered expanding it into a longer book, perhaps a novella at the very least. After all, the story expanded outward from one short scene into a fully-fledged short story once, so why not try expanding it further. There are a lot of references in the backstory - Jim's breakup with his first girlfriend, for instance, or maybe the whole business with Jim asking Marty to sing a duet with him at the (sadly) canceled Spring Concert - that could have been explored further. Ditto the friendship between Mark and Jim, which began in fifth grade and endured into adulthood. And Jim himself is a cypher...what was his life like at home? Did he have a large - and complete - family with a father, mother, siblings, and even pets? Or was he raised, like I was, by a widowed parent with an older sibling that was more nemesis than loving relative? 

To be honest, the more I think about expanding a tightly-plotted - if perhaps imperfect - short story into a bigger, more complex book, the less the idea appeals to me. It's easy for a reader to say, "Hey, I really liked this but I want to know what happens next! Can you write another story, perhaps one that tells us what happens after Marty reads the note?" But for me, the writer, it's not quite that simple. 

First, Reunion was not a story that I wrote with an outline, list of characters, or a fully-formed history of the characters' past, present, and future other than what's on the page.  All I had as a foundation were (a) an old college creative writing course assignment that was all of three pages long and (b) my mixed feelings about the then-upcoming 15-year-reunion of my graduating class, which at the time was three months away. 

Second, writing is extremely hard work, much harder than non-writers think it is. For me it entails eight hours, and sometimes more, of sitting at my desk, looking into a computer monitor, often hoping for the "right words" to flow from my brain to my fingers and onto the screen. Sometimes - like when I write a review or create a blog post - the process is relatively easy because I know what I want to say and how to say it. 

But with fiction, I have to pluck ideas and characters out of the nether from nothing. I don't do outlines or like planning stories ahead of time. (I know that lots of writers love outlines and careful plotting. Others, like Stephen King, let stories tell themselves sans a lot of that preparation. Both approaches seem to work...but for me the no-outline method works best.)

I did make one attempt to expand Reunion into a longer work. I had a vague concept for a follow-up in which Marty reads the letter some time after commencement and realizes that she feels a deep love for Jim; she just doesn't realize it till now. I then came up with a scenario in which they meet by chance in Boston shortly after Jim graduates from Harvard, have a sweet but short tryst, then go their separate ways. 

(C) 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and Kindle Direct Publishing (an Amazon company)

It was a nifty idea - at first. But it soon became apparent that while I could write convincingly about a college professor's routine at a generic college based on what I saw and heard when I was in college, I had no idea what Harvard or even Boston are like. I couldn't "wing it" by watching TV shows shot in and around Boston, or by looking at maps and pictures of the various places where the story would be set.

Worse, I'd have to rewrite the 1998-set scenes, because in the present version of Reunion it is clear that Jim doesn't see Marty after they get their diplomas at commencement. I probably could have done it, but I was afraid that if I tugged at that one loose thread of plot, the entire narrative tapestry would be undone.  

I think that a sequel told from Marty's point of view is a no-go zone, at least from my point of view. Of all the characters in Reunion, she was the hardest to write. Partly because she's so idealized and vaguely fleshed out, but mostly because the story is told only from Jim's point of view. In a first-person narrative, you can only describe what the main character feels, sees, hears, smells, touches, and knows. You can't believably tell the reader that you know exactly what the other characters think, feel, know, etc. unless  you write a story from an omniscient narrator's perspective. You can only infer such information in "first-person voice" through descriptions of the other characters' body language, their actions, or their spoken words.  So if I was going to tell a story that includes Marty's inner thoughts and sense of self, I would not only need to write stuff from a female's point of view, but I'd also have to change the "voice" of the storyteller.    

So, no. I don't think I'll be revisiting the world of Reunion,  at least not in the near future. But it's nice to see that readers like Jim, Marty, and even Mark enough to say they want more stories about them...