Yesterday, a good friend ( who I had sent the manuscript for my future novel ) reached out to me with some feedback. He's still digging through the 50k words but as I told him I wanted to use this month ( National Novel Writing Month ) to do some editing, he tried to give me some early feedback.
This is what J. said ( translated from Dutch ):
I think it's very cool!
Awesome that you start with a 'choose your own adventure' that appears to be not a choice at all.
( Or will this return later? ) Like: F*ck you, reader. You wanted the sad version, so that's what you get.
Reading the aforementioned, it dawned on me that I had sent him a somewhat edited version of a couple of months ago, instead of the 50k words that I wrote in November 2019 )
J. also told me that he liked all the meta-levels and twists ( It might help that he has known me for half our life/ almost two decades. We studied film together in Uni ).
He then continues:
That he fools himself and appears to have a sister, is so funny.
Now I've read the first couple of pages, I start to see it more and more like a comic. The dialogue and way of writing seems to fit that ( format ) very well. Have you ever considered that?
And here we go again... what format to choose for my story?
To answer J.'s question:
Yes, I have considered going for a comic or graphic novel. I have also been thinking of making it a children's book for many, many months now. As well as a book filled with short stories. The children's book, as well as the short stories format should be interesting for adults ( who read the book to their children ), as well as for the children themselves.
A graphic novel sounds pretty awesome too but it also sounds as a lot of work.
Will this become a 5 year project after all?
What would Hypersensitivosaurus do? :<)
Let's see how much clarity this month will bring. It sure seems like I'll have a lot of thinking to do. For now the editing can wait.
TO BE CONTINUED...