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General Battuta posted:200k is long for a debut fantasy novel. Your sweetspot is like 100-120k and if you're really good you can edge up from there. There are some debut fantasy novels which are long, but that doesn't stop shorter from being better in a lot of ways, including your chances of getting a deal and the amount of money they have to spend to print your book. Ah, yeah, from a first novel perspective that makes a lot of sense. I wasn't thinking about it necessarily from that angle. Speaking of, how long is yours if you don't mind my asking? If you're allowed to divulge such information, of course.
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Oct 31, 2014 15:36
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gently caress that, nobody cares about word counts. What's important is the typeface. What's your book going to be set in, Battuta? Verdana Modern? Tahoma Light? If I see a single loving serif on those pages, I will end you.
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Oct 31, 2014 15:45
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I find waiting awhile useful. During that interim, I forget what I meant to write; that permits me, when I return to the draft, to find stupid errors (for example, "loaves" where I meant to write "loves") and unclear phrases more easily. Otherwise I would probably gloss over mistakes, only seeing what I'd intended to write, and miss vague portions, understanding what I meant and failing some critical theory of mind poo poo since nobody else will know what the hell I was going for.
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Oct 31, 2014 15:50
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For 200k guy: Cut the novel in half, then work on another 100k for a trilogy. Don't try an wrap up the first 100k in any meaningful way. Just cut it in half wherever the 100k mark is.
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Oct 31, 2014 16:26
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:Ah, yeah, from a first novel perspective that makes a lot of sense. I wasn't thinking about it necessarily from that angle. Blade_of_tyshalle posted:gently caress that, nobody cares about word counts. What's important is the typeface. What's your book going to be set in, Battuta? Verdana Modern? Tahoma Light? If I see a single loving serif on those pages, I will end you. Right now it's 140k and it's entirely in Courier New  It gained 20k in edits because I got permission to do a few more scenes I wanted, and it'll lose the Courier when it actually gets typeset.Space from a work is really valuable. It helps you detect errors and weak passages like RedTonic said, and I think it's the only way to get a sense for the shape and pacing of a novel-length work - especially if you've been jumping around the manuscript pruning and shoring things up. It's just a question of whether you think you'll lose all your energy and drift off. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 16:30
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PoshAlligator posted:For 200k guy: Are you Brent Weeks? 
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Oct 31, 2014 16:35
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Haha at first I thought you meant you gained 20k after editing and was like, "That's not how it's supposed to work!" but after reading it a few times I realized what you were saying. Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 16:37
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:Haha at first I thought you meant you gained 20k after editing and was like, "That's not how it's supposed to work!" but after reading it a few times I realized what you were saying. No, that's what I meant! Now we can use this editorial feedback to improve my post 
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Oct 31, 2014 16:43
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General Battuta posted:No, that's what I meant! Now we can use this editorial feedback to improve my post Well then, nevermind! How did that happen? Did you feel inclined/did your editors ask for more backstory and whatnot? Moved this post down here from my previous to keep things chronological. At about what stage of polish would you say your manuscript was at when you first started querying it around? I ask because the last novel I wrote--which, at the time, I thought would be the first I'd attempt to get published--ended up falling into that lovely pit of death-by-editing hell. I'm hoping my next project goes better, and considering I'm actually outlining the story this time instead of going full-throttle discovery mode, I'm confident it will, but I'm still wary of falling into the same editing trap. I know it's probably hard to quantify, since "polish" is kind of an ambiguous idea that changes from writer to writer based on how they feel they're at with a specific story, so maybe it's easier to ask: when do you know you've done the best you can with a story? Edit: that's also basically an impossible question to answer so no worries if you're unable to. Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 17:01
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Thanks for the advice everyone, I really appreciate it. 
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Oct 31, 2014 17:20
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General Battuta posted:Right now it's 140k and it's entirely in Courier New I'd also heard 100k is a good target for fantasy, so it might be an idea to see if there's somewhere around the 100k mark you can split it - just to make the debut a little less daunting, if nothing else. Finally I just checked King's On Writing and he recommends 'two drafts and a polish', and leaving it for six weeks before editing. Bear in mind though that he's a professional who has nowt else to do all day and also recommends 2k words a day. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Oct 31, 2014 |
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Oct 31, 2014 17:55
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Bobby Deluxe posted:For the sake of your own sanity, change it before you start reading. GB's novel is actually legit for-real getting published, so his publisher/editor probably asked him to do it in Courier for their own purposes.
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Oct 31, 2014 18:04
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Question for all of you: How do you decide when to give up on a piece you're writing? I'm writing a short story to get the engine going again, and the further it goes, the clearer it is that there's no weight to the story and it's a string of "thing happens, nobody cares". I've been trying for the past few weeks to hammer in new ideas into it that will make it less dry and bland, but nothing's coming to light. It's occurred to me to gloss over that and just type out words to focus on other aspects like prose and dialogue, but then again, why not try to sharpen those skills on a story I actually care about? Basically, where's the tipping point between "This can be salvaged in future drafts" and "gently caress it, next idea"? re editing: After I completed NaNoWriMo in 2012, I reread it and nearly deleted the whole thing. It took me two years to be able to go back to it and finally admit that there were enough good ideas in there to merit a second draft. King's recommendation of six month is probably a bit much, and it's going to vary from person to person, but definitely give it a week minimum.
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Oct 31, 2014 18:24
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inthesto posted:Question for all of you: How do you decide when to give up on a piece you're writing? I'm writing a short story to get the engine going again, and the further it goes, the clearer it is that there's no weight to the story and it's a string of "thing happens, nobody cares". I've been trying for the past few weeks to hammer in new ideas into it that will make it less dry and bland, but nothing's coming to light. It's occurred to me to gloss over that and just type out words to focus on other aspects like prose and dialogue, but then again, why not try to sharpen those skills on a story I actually care about? Honestly, it seems like you've reached it and I think you know you have. Scrap it and move on. That's a bit odd, seeing as I just made a post not too long ago talking about how I edited a piece to death, but if you're not seeing substantial progress despite the edits you're making (and if it's becoming less and less enjoyable to the point where you loath doing it), then it's definitely time to move on. And you know what? That's okay. Not every story is meant to get published. Hell, most stories aren't meant to get published. I have the fortune of knowing a couple successful authors in real life and both of them have novels in their desk or on their hard drives that'll never see the light of day.
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Oct 31, 2014 18:30
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Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:GB's novel is actually legit for-real getting published, so his publisher/editor probably asked him to do it in Courier for their own purposes. 
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Oct 31, 2014 18:53
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I read it as Comic Sans Now that would be something!
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Oct 31, 2014 19:06
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Somehow I unbookmarked this thread over a month ago and I was thinking how weird it was that no one posts anymore. Oops. How have you guys been? I see Sithsaber got banned. I want to get plugged into the Thunderdome.
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Oct 31, 2014 20:56
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I've been planning on doing NaNo all October and hadn't really thought much about it until this morning. In the shower I think I worked out the loose structure of the whole thing and that's pretty neat, considering I had hoped to hammer it out before starting to write last month. Maybe it's easier to come up with ideas if you can let yourself just write it. Also I think everything about is really lame but I'm going to write it anyway and worry about making it good later. I think NaNo is a good drive to let myself do that as that's not how I usually operate. Blade_of_tyshalle posted:gently caress that, nobody cares about word counts. What's important is the typeface. What's your book going to be set in, Battuta? Verdana Modern? Tahoma Light? If I see a single loving serif on those pages, I will end you. What is this fascination everyone but me has with sans serif?
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Nov 1, 2014 14:22
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Look at that, it is November. That's a terrible month to have as a writing month for college students. I'm still on the outlining phase of my novel. I'm on a spreadsheet creating every scene in order and figuring out what happens. It's not very much fun but I keep stalling out on past projects by getting completely lost in the details, so I think I need it.
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Nov 1, 2014 14:35
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I'm going to do nano-lite. 1k a day, which should still leave me time to pump out a 'romance' short every other week. Hell, it's working out better than job seekers. Just.
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Nov 1, 2014 15:41
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How many pages per thousand words are books, usually? Like, NaNo has people writing 50k, how many pages is that?
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Nov 1, 2014 22:08
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Depends a bit on typeface, page size, etc., but generally speaking, about 250-300 words per page. So a Nano novel would be in the 200 page ballpark.
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Nov 1, 2014 22:20
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Liam Emsa posted:How many pages per thousand words are books, usually? My 98k novel was 318 double spaced pages (TNR, 12 pt font) so 50k would be between 150-175
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Nov 2, 2014 04:12
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So I've been feeling pretty lovely and figure that now's as good a time as any to get back into editing. How do people get their lazy bones into gear when they have no idea how to edit? I've got some really good feedback, and I know what I want to do, but I'm having difficulty figuring out how to restructure things and cut stuff out.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:31
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I'm aiming for 500 words a day minimum with no advanced prep.
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Nov 2, 2014 08:17
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I'm having a little trouble with tense while writing. Is the following sentence using past-tense correctly? "She released an audible sigh of relief as he shrugged in resignation, his weary voice and slumped posture indicating that he was tired of the conversation." It's mostly the -indicating- that makes me worry that I am messing up tense.
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Nov 2, 2014 20:00
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Looks correct to me, at least in that respect. "-ings" can be overused, and when they do it can make the tense look murky, but grammatically, and in small doses, they're fine. It is cluttered, though. For one thing, I'd remove "as" and add a period. The way it is now, "She" looks like she's supposed to be the subject, but then "he" starts to dominate the rest of the sentence. It'd work better as two.
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Nov 2, 2014 20:06
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There's nothing grammatically wrong with it. Stylistically, on the other hand, it's cluttered. You really shouldn't load your sentences up with that many clauses.
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Nov 2, 2014 20:10
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Subway Ninja posted:"She released an audible sigh of relief as he shrugged in resignation, his weary voice and slumped posture indicating that he was tired of the conversation." "released an audible" is completely pointless. "She sighed" means the exact same thing. "in resignation" is telling. And did he really shrug as she sighed, or did one thing happened before the other? People abuse "as" too much because they think it sounds nice, but it muddles meaning. "his weary voice" "slumped posture" and "indicating he was tired of the conversation" are all telling.
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Nov 2, 2014 21:05
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He shrugged, then she sighed.
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Nov 2, 2014 21:12
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Hse shrugighed.
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Nov 2, 2014 21:28
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Subway Ninja posted:She released an audible sigh of relief as he shrugged in resignation, his weary voice and slumped posture indicating that he was tired of the conversation. Maybe it's just the 4am editing talking, but I mentally replaced 'sighed' with 'grunted like Tim Taylor' and woke up my wife laughing.
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Nov 3, 2014 05:14
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Hey how do I stop not writing. I need to know asap thanks.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:05
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Stop playing video games.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:07
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magnificent7 posted:Hey how do I stop not writing. I need to know asap thanks. I'd suggest you try sitting down and writing. Or stand, whatever works for you!
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Nov 4, 2014 23:08
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Martello posted:Stop playing video games. Literally this.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:12
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Martello posted:Stop playing video games. I don't understand
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Nov 4, 2014 23:16
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I have to basically put myself into solitary confinement to break a bad jag of not writing. Like, unplug my cable router, put my phone in airplaine mode in the other room, and tell everyone not to bother me for an evening. And then when I have no other choice but to write, I still dick around for a couple hours before I bring myself to start. The good news is that once I start writing I get into a grove and its easier to keep working, and it's easier to come back to the story the next time, and the next time. But starting is hard.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:25
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Y'all need to set a daily time aside just to write and nothing else, preferably a time when you almost never have anything else going on and nothing to distract you. For me, that time is 5 AM to 6:30 AM (so right when I wake up basically). I have a coffee pot set to auto-brew at 4:40, then I get up at 4:50, grab a mug and sit my rear end down. Hours adjust a bit on the weekend based on how late I stay up or if I'm too hungover to write (which does occasionally happen, but I'm writing every day during the week so I don't beat myself up over it). Get into the habit of making that your dedicated writing time every single day and eventually you'll reach the point where you basically can't get through your day without it.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:46
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magnificent7 posted:Hey how do I stop not writing. I need to know asap thanks. When I finish writing for the day I email a backup copy to myself. Every single day of July has an email from myself with a doc file attached. So in a weird perverse way, you wind up making a game where you want to ensure that you have a new backup in your inbox at the end of each day. It's enough to make you go "...Well gently caress it I might as well do a bit."
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Nov 4, 2014 23:53
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