> Well I for one am ecstatic that it went over
>well with you two. It *is* long -- about as
> long as
> a novelette or novella (not sure about which
> specific classification it belongs to), and it's
> longer than a lot of successful *books*.

The most often-quoted guidlines I've seen go
something like this:

1-7,499 words = short story
7,500-16,999 words = novelette
17,000-39,999 words = novella
40,000+ words = novel

This would put this story at the long end of the novella category. Of course, in the genre of this story (High Fantasy) *nobody* writes 40,000 word novels anymore. In reality, to be a stand-alone novel in the High Fantasy genre, a book needs to be at least 80,000 words long. The lower end for SF I've heard is less, around 60,000.

But, for all intents and purposes, DotA is a novella.

>
> Diane, you asked if we'd do more. Actually, we
>have. Over the course of the year that followed
> the writing of DotA (called originally called
>"The War," but titled DotA for release on the
> web), I wrote a sequel story on my own called
>"Dimensional Dyslexia." Following that, Dave
> began a third and final entry in the series,
> but that project hasn't been completed yet and
> is currently in limbo.

The third installment, creatively titled "The War III," is in what I refer to as "hyper-sleep." That means it's not officially dead (on the contrary, it actually stands a good chance of being finished) but all work on the project has stopped indefinitely. In all fairness, this is a faze that almost every task I set for myself goes through at some point in its development. It's just the way I work--I'll start a project with all the energy and enthusiasm you could ask for, work on it relentlessly for a period of time, and then suddenly and completely lose all interest in it. The trick is to try to have enough projects going at once so that when one unexpectedly goes into hyper-sleep, there is another waiting to "wake up" and be resumed. So, I end up doing about a thousand things at once and getting very little accomplished--but it seems to be the only thing that works at all for me, so I stick with it.

> At any rate, Dimensional
> Dyslexia falls far short of the humor and fun of
> "The War," and of course it lacks the most
> intriguing element of being written alternately
> by Dave and myself, each of us struggling to
> make the story move in diametrically opposed
> directions.

"The War III" suffers from all of these same shortcomings, plus at least one more. It was based heavily in the "real" world and had scenes in both my apartment and Sam's apartment. Unfortunately, Sam has moved since I started the story, and I've moved *twice*. So the story is already badly dated.

>
> Earlier this year, in an attempt to recreate
> the fun we had writing "The War," we started
> another alternating story starring Dave's
> Gestald character and my Garandel character.
> The object was not so much to fight with each
> other about which character was the most
> powerful (which is why we chose these two
> characters -- they were never intended to be
> unfailingly heroic) but to have each successive
> installment resolve plot twists introduced the
> segment before and introduce still *more* for
> the next. It was more of a writing war that
> way, to see how ridiculously complex we could
> make a story, yet still have it follow some
> weird semblance of continuity.
>
> We've done about seven or eight chapters of
> that story, and then, of all things, Dave
> stopped. It's been his turn to write for
> months, but he's had writer's block or
> something, and I know he was
> unpleasantly jarred by my last admittedly
> disturbing installment.

This may seem like another case of hyper-sleep, but it isn't. The truth is that Sam took exception to something I'd introduced in my last installment, and so sought to "remedy" it with his next installment. That, in turn, caused me no end of consternation, because not only did it seem to go against the "rules" we'd agreed on beforehand (whether or not *I'd* broken the rules first, thus opening the door for Sam to break the rules in order to set things straight, is still up for debate) it also caused me to have flashbacks to the original parody. Sam's imfamous "dream sequence" segment, in which he dismissed my *entire* previous segment as just one of Darius' dreams, always bothered me--not because it broke any rules, but because he took what I felt was my best installment in the parody to that point, turned it inside out, and made of it what I feel is *the* best installment of the entire parody. And having to admit that he'd not only written the best segment but had written that segment as a *parody* of my previous segment really pained me.

So all of this accumulated in my mind and steeled my resolve. I will *not* continue the new story until I can figure a way to set things "right" again. The problem is, Sam's last segment, regardless of how I feel about it, was so masterfully done I may never find the loophole I need.


>
> Since you guys seem to like DotA, I suggest you
> send mail to Dave and urge -- ever so
> politely, that is -- that he write the next
> installment so we can finish this story.

Well, now you don't have to bother. But perhaps I *could* be persuaded with a little cash...