Which seems like it’s always shortened to TOC, so I’ll just follow that convention for now since it’s faster to type. The TOC gives your anthology shape and form and makes it somehow more concrete even though, until it actually goes to print, the book only exists in potentia.
But it’s the next big step in the process, even before edits/rewrites/revisions/whatever you want to call them. You’ve got your story selection. How do you organize them? There are probably as more theories and methods on ordering the stories in an anthology than there are anthology editors, but the only one I can seem to find that anyone has committed to public consumption is that you put your strongest story first.
What the hell does that mean, anyway? Really. Taking my own example of Distant Worlds, I’ve got five very different stories. They’re all strong stories but in different ways. Maybe if my theme had been something far more specific than length, I might begin to have an idea how to work it out, but I’m not going to waste the processing time to even think about it, mostly because I think the idea is wrong and so do most of the people who read anthologies.
And how can I generalize that? Well, if you peruse any random anthology listing on Amazon with multiple reviews, most of those will mention a couple of “favourite” or “stand out” stories for the reviewer and most of them will be different. Have you ever read a review that about an anthology you liked and the reviewer picked as their favourite story the only one you didn’t like? “No, you fool, that story sucked! You must have liked this one better!” Sorry, was that out loud? I wonder how few readers it takes, as a function of the number of stories in the anthology, before you have every story in a given anthology as someone’s favourite.
So, what is the best way to put together the TOC?
Well, I suppose you could just make a list of all the possible combinations and pick the one you like best. Might take a while, though. With five stories for DW, there are 120 combinations. The numbers get big fast with each story you add after that.
Scratch that. I’m not sure there is a best way or a right way or even a ‘my way’. But there are things to think about: pacing, flow, juxtaposition, tension, the alphabet. Okay, maybe not the alphabet, but definitely those other things and more besides. It’s an anthology, not a novel, but you’re making the stories related by putting them in the same book, so there does need to be some sense of order, I think, some way to slide the stories together that makes sense, that’s right. Even if it’s not readily apparent to the reader, it needs to make sense to the editor. There needs to be a vision.
So what’s my vision? How do the five stories in Distant Worlds fit together? It’s not an easy decision. Give me a couple more days. I’m working on it.
Posted by dwdr 
