# Building an Anthology



## MzSnowleopard (Jun 16, 2016)

I'm working on an anthology of my works from college. I have a title and an idea of how it's going to be arranged. My question is: how many pieces make a decent sized collection under one cover?


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## Cran (Jun 16, 2016)

I think that depends on the size of the pieces, how many words you want on each template page, and how many pages you feel meet the measure of decent.


ETA: There is no set minimum number of pieces in general terms, but an anthology is defined as a collection of works, written or musical.


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## MzSnowleopard (Jun 16, 2016)

So far the largest pieces are about 3,000 words. I have them posted here on the forum.

1. The Wrong Man ( 500 words ) 

2. True Family (955 words )

3. Patching Things Up... Kicking the Habit ( 930 words ) 

4. Choices ( 1,397 words )  

5.  The Zodiac Chronicles: Prelude Chp 1 ( 2,987 words )

6. Future's Fathers ( 1,526 words ) 

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction will not be included because it is still, to date, incomplete. 

Once I have selected the college pieces to be included, I will post them here for pier review / critique / editing / polishing / whatever - you get the idea.


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## Cran (Jun 17, 2016)

OK, that looks like about 7500 words plus Future's Fathers and others. Right now, that looks to be a very thin book of around 30 - 35 pages. How many pages would you consider to be decent for a book anthology?


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## MzSnowleopard (Jun 17, 2016)

That's one of the things I'm asking. Is there a limit- to many / to few ? I have yet to sort through and select the pieces I've written for courses at WITCC. 

Short pieces, ones that are single pages will not be included. I might share those on my website as brief samples for my writing. It's the big on, 1,000+ words that I want to include in the book. _The Wrong Man_ may be only 500 words, however, it's an exercise in creative writing to make every word work / count. The lesson was to describe a person I know had known in 500 words.


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## Terry D (Jun 17, 2016)

It takes more than you would think to get to 'book-length'. When I published my short story collection a while back I targeted about 45,000 words to make the collection comparable in length to a short novel. I ended up with eleven stories I was comfortable with including, and I tied each story together with an overarching narrative (similar to what Ray Bradbury did with The Illustrated Man). I ended up at my target of 45K words, which turned out to be 176 printed pages. I hope this helps.


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## MzSnowleopard (Jun 17, 2016)

I'm excited about this project. It's given me something to look forward too besides doom and gloom of rejection. I don't know if I'm ready for that, however, the few people I've spoken directly with-save one or two- have said they want a copy of my anthology. 

I'm hoping that this excitement will bleed over to the projects with Long Ridge (IFW), I really need to get that finished. I've been working on it far too long- so maybe, now, this will help spur things along.


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## TWErvin2 (Jun 18, 2016)

In ebook form the number of stories in a collection is less relevant, as the print/binding baseline cost isn't as much of a concern.

While there may be some adjustments due to formatting, font type and size, etc. 7500 words is pretty short...really about the length of a short story in many cases.


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## MzSnowleopard (Jun 18, 2016)

I haven't gone though the college pieces yet. There are a number of them to sort through. Some are less than one page, so they won't be included. Others are several pages long, those will be included. I need to pull them from the files. These papers are from several courses such as:

English Composition 1 and 2
Introduction to Literature
Mythology
Sociology

Also, I still have 4 lessons to complete for Long Ridge. One is a revision so that makes 3 new pieces to go.

Lesson 09- a new story - up to 3,000 words
Lesson 10- revise an earlier piece - I've chosen 'True Family' or 'Prelude' for this
Lesson 11- personal essay or memoir - 1,000 to 3,000 words
Lesson 12- I have a choice- I can revise an earlier piece or write a new story up to 3,000 words.

There will be an appendix detailing aspects of each paper. I think that this would be better than having the information tagged to each piece.


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## LeeC (Jun 18, 2016)

I can only speak from a readers perspective when it comes to short story collections. I've read collections with an overriding theme or connection of place, and some random collections. One of the things I've noticed as a positive to me is shorter collections. That is, collections that likely got whittled down from a larger pool. 

Two good examples you might take a gander at are Willem Lange's "Where Does the Wild Goose Go?" and Oliver Buckle's [known as Olly here] "A Read For The Train." Both have stood me well, passing time in the hospital, as collections I can read multiple times, enjoying them afresh each time.


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## MzSnowleopard (Jun 18, 2016)

Thanks, found them on Amazon. "Where Does the Wild Goose Go?" was easily found. With "A Read For The Train." I had to do a search by the author's name. There were too many listings for titles with train in the name.

I was given a few suggestions on alternate titles of future anthologies based on this one: The Long Ridge.

The next Ridge, Another Ridge, A New Ridge instead of saying 'book one, two, or three.

I'm thinking about this. I'll be in school for a while, I'm not even half way done with my associates degree w 24 out of 65 credits earned. I do plan on going on, at least, to my bachelors. Of course it's possible that I may churn out other short stories outside of school. Who knows, maybe I'll even try for the next level course with Long Ridge, err Institute for Writers. They have one that's geared towards focusing on a novel. It's worth 5 college credits. 

Rayne Hall suggests writing short stories sprung off of your main novel as means of promotion. I like this idea.
This is actually where my current LR project would fit in, as I'm using 2 of the characters from my YA series.


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## LeeC (Jun 18, 2016)

MzSnowleopard said:


> Rayne Hall suggests writing short stories sprung off of your main novel as means of promotion. I like this idea.
> This is actually where my current LR project would fit in, as I'm using 2 of the characters from my YA series.


It's a workable idea. I get more first contacts from the short pieces on my site.


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## MzSnowleopard (Jun 18, 2016)

That's another thing I need to do- get my websites finished. And I mean all 5 of them. LOL


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## MzSnowleopard (Jun 19, 2016)

I have made copies of all the papers, as not to disrupt the order of their original folders, placing the copies into a folder titled "Anthology". I now know that I have 36 papers, the next step is to sort through them- 'use' or 'don't use'.

It's almost hard to believe that I've written 36 papers, between Long Ridge and WITCC. I'm not even 1/4 of the way through my Associates Degree, there's still so much more to go. Perhaps my friend is right and I should consider a potential sequel, that's a long way up the road though. For now, I'm focusing on _The Long Ridge_.


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## MzSnowleopard (Jun 19, 2016)

Should I include the reviews? There assignments from WITCC were reviews: 1 book, 1 movie, 1 play. I'm wondering if I should include them. Good idea, bad idea? or should I place them on my website, instead?

Edit- 

I've gone through my papers from WIT. Out of all of them, I'm only choosing three. The others are either too short or won't work for me on this project. Of the ones I'm using, both WIT and LR combined, some fall short of the maximum word count. So, I'm going to try to squeeze a few more words into them. Still, the downside is that, even at max- I only get 20,900 words. That's rather short.


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