Forum / Ordering a collection

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 22, 06:17pm

  Anyone care to share ideas about how to order a collection of stories?

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 22, 07:31pm

  Here is what I did with my poems collection, which I got from Billy Collins: throw them all on the floor then walk around and pick them up, randomly, and that is your order.
  I did precisely that. When it was published, people said to me: how did you put them in such good order?
  HA! thanks to Billy Collins.
  I think the same karmic approach would work for story collections.
  Drop the first page of each story on the floor then walk around picking them up at random.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 22, 07:32pm

  Karma. Billy Collins. Random selection. Where else can you get answers like these?

  I ask you.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 22, 07:33pm

  How do you determine the number of stories, the order of stories, the collection title, whether there are sections, the text font, the font for titles, and other topics?

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 22, 07:34pm

  Our msgs. crossed path in time!

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 22, 07:36pm

  Susan, what a great reply. Thanks! I may try it. I love random (chance) operations!

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 22, 09:13pm

  Ann, the rest of that is up to the individual author. You have taste and style, you will know what to do re fonts, etc.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 22, 09:47pm

  This is opening my eyes to randomly order these titles, Susan! There are three collections here, three genres.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Mar 22, 10:41pm

  i used a different method - i grouped stories around a thematic center ("the serious writer") the advantage, for me, about not just gathering them at random, was that i discovered a great deal about my writing and the invisible arc that held them together. new themes, if you wish.

  on the other hand, i really like the idea to use chance operations. i think any amount of reflection about the bigger picture that stands behind a collection will be worth it. including the possibility of changing the stories themselves to turn them into stories that like to be part of the collection rather than strangers to it.

  ann's excellent question will make me look at some collections to check if there is any discernible principle behind it.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 23, 03:11am

  A few years ago, I thought I might put a collection of short stories together, selected nine or ten, and considered this arrangement business ...

  For about a month, I read nothing but anthologies, new and old, collections by many individual writers, some literary, some in genre, but I could never discern a methodology about story arrangement unless, of course, the collection was thematic.

  I decided to go ahead and write new stories around a theme, short stories that portray some linear subtext that touches each individual story, telling a larger story by implication of the various perspectives, much like Sherwood Anderson did in "Winesburg, Ohio."

  But I suspect that random selection may be the best and most honest process for stories within a collection that bear no relation one to the other.

• 
  Matt Potter

  Mar 23, 03:58am

  Do it alphabetically but not by title, but by first line.

  Do it by word length but like a hump, so that the longest is in the middle, and the two shortest are at either end, with them getting longer towards the middle and shorter further away, etc.

  Put them in order of the ones you love: best first, worst last, BUT then take your second best and put it at the very end.

  Do it by logarithms. (??)

  Put them in the order they were written.

  Call the collection 'Geography' and work out where each story is centrally located geographically. Then start with the story set furthest and work your way southward, or vice versa, or towards the equator, or towards your home town

  Count the verbs in each and the ones with the most verbs go at the end of the collection.

  Do it alphabetically, in order of the main character's first names, or surnames.

  Do it in order of the seasons or in order of the months - like a calendar - in which they were all set.

  Send them to me at: mattpotter@live.com.au and I will do it for you, for a fee.

  These are just some suggestions.

  Again, for a small fee, I have more.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 23, 11:07am

  GREAT ideas, Matt. Thanks, James & Marcus.

• 
  Darryl Price

  Mar 23, 11:21pm

  Matt, you are cool! These are great and inventive suggestions that really get the thing going. I'd say play. If you don't remember how to play then you are already out of order.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  May 12, 11:28pm

  The genres I located are/were the following:

  Short fiction (short story -- fiction)
  Creative nonfiction -- story (could be biography or nature or reportage, etc.)
  Diary
  Dream
  Letter
  Collaboration
  Prose poetry
  Essay

  Then there is a time element. Stories written in a given year or set of years, stories in order of composition, stories in chronological order according to events in the stories, stories in order of publication.

  Following Susan's cue, I printed the first p. of each story -- it's a great way to get a quick take on the mood of each as it relates to the others in a given sequence.

  Still working -- hard at it -- nearer there.

• You must log in to reply to this thread.