Question:
What's better? Comprehensiveness, or manageable length?
I'm trying to figure this out. The chapter I'm working on right now in its original incarnation was to focus on three novels. But I'm around the 50 page mark already and I've only really discussed one novel in depth and about half of the second one. If I polish both those off nicely, and then judiciously edit, I will be around the 60 page mark, which is about the limit a chapter should be. But I won't have discussed the third book, which I also really want to talk about.
So do I create a monster chapter? Cut one book? Change focus? Cut it up to create two chapters out of the material?
I'm not necessarily looking for an answer; more thinking aloud. Of course I'll have to ask my advisor, but I don't think we'll talk for another couple of weeks, so I'm trying to at least consider my options on my own.
Right now I'm thinking I could get away with cutting the third book, but it's also the one that I think is in some ways the most interesting of the three, and there's really been no scholarship on it (or even much on its author) so I think a reading of it could be that "new" part of the "contribution of new" insights/interpretations/material that a dissertation is supposed to make to the field.
However, it will also be the most challenging of the three since it's a very dense text that would require a lot of theorizing to tease apart, especially for an audience like mine, who have admitted they probably won't read all of the texts I'll be discussing in the dissertation.
I suppose another option, since I've got all this extra time now, is to cut the third book and then use it for a focused journal article dealing with some of the same ideas. But it's a marginal enough text that I don't know if it would be accepted by any journal, even Science Fiction Studies or Extrapolation. I also don't know what it would look like as a stand-alone argument. What if it needs the structure of this dissertation chapter for it to make sense?
Like I said, just thinking aloud...
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2 comments:
well, I'm answering:
If you're going to write about the third book anyway, just work it into the chapter. Maybe you cut the first book?
Also, you may find that good chunks of what you've written about each will go (saved for later, but out of dissertation.)
You might as well keep going.
I am leaning toward a strategy of "throw it all in and let my readers tell me what doesn't belong" but I also want them to read the thing!...so I still haven't decided.
And I definitely don't want to ditch the first book because I think it makes excellent points in this chapter, and connects nicely to the previous chapter.
My brain hurts.
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