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Hungry posted:What do you do when you reach the end of draft number 3 and decide the entire final act was boring because you need to go back and change the fundamentals of the story yet again? you now know when thats starting to happen and can correct course faster in another book
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May 11, 2018 17:39
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Hello all, Is Duotrope still a good resource for agents to pitch fictional novel queries to? How about Agentquery.com? I have a 90k word fictional crime novel and am trying to determine the optimal way to sell this beast. Do I really have to purchase an outdated listing from Barnes & Noble or is there a more efficient internet outlet? Also, thank you so much for the advice to just keep writing. Creation is a blessing. Building a world and a story within it is the second most enjoyable part of my life. No matter how much you plot a story out there's something so enjoyable about how the characters come alive once the pen hits the page. I have a hard time with my brain hitting overdrive and I can never thank the regulars of this thread for guiding me towards a productive outlet. Brock Broner fucked around with this message at 07:12 on May 12, 2018 |
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May 12, 2018 06:29
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Brock Broner posted:Hello all, I used Querytracker.net and found it incredibly helpful. Writer's Market (the big B&N book) also has an online site that you can just pay for instead and get all you need, though I found the general info from QT's subscription much more helpful. Duotrope is good to find response times and whatnot, but I mostly used it for things like literary journals or magazines to send shorts to as opposed to full-on manuscripts. It's a pretty big site, though, so it doesn't hurt to give the trial a look and see if it fits what you need.
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May 12, 2018 08:57
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Axel Serenity posted:I used Querytracker.net and found it incredibly helpful. Writer's Market (the big B&N book) also has an online site that you can just pay for instead and get all you need, though I found the general info from QT's subscription much more helpful. Thank you, greatly appreciate the advice!
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May 14, 2018 01:21
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Does anyone know if I can use my KDP account to be an Amazon Seller as well (FBA etc?). I don't want to create yet another account if I don't have to.
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May 17, 2018 02:39
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anyone itt going to worldcon???
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May 22, 2018 06:38
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If you're on the East Coast of the US, Balticon is this weekend. We're relatively cheap (as cons go) and have a ton of writing, editing, and publishing panels and workshops, all of which I oversee as head of Literary Programming. And you can come visit me at Program Ops and we can be best friends and have tea parties and.... I might be a little sleep-deprived. Please come to Balticon, we're ever so good.
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May 22, 2018 13:04
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To glom onto the Con talk. If you're in/around Houston, Comicpalooza is this weekend. They have a pretty decent Writing track and my wife is hosting a Writers Meet-Up on Friday at 7PM at the Hilton Americas bar. We've been doing these at DragonCon for a few years and they've been an absolutely blast with all sorts showing up to hang out and chat about writing from unpublished writers still agonizing over that first manuscript to big names in genre and everything in between. We're hoping to see similar results here at our local Con.
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May 22, 2018 14:25
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Not sure if this is the sort of thing that belongs in this thread, but maybe writing it down will help me work it out. When raising the stakes, things should escalate each time, right? In my work-in-progress, someone is trying to assassinate my main character. I was thinking there would be three attempts.
What I'm not sure about is if that really fits the pattern of escalating stakes. The first and third attempts would be done by hired killers, the second probably done by the one behind the plot themself. (EDIT 2: No wait, the villain could just bring the poison in and pass the poison along to the assassin already in place - no need to personally put the poison in the glass.) (The heroine would think that all three attempts were made by the same person, though.) It seems like a violation of escalation to go from blatant attempt to disguised attempt to blatant attempt. Additionally, if the schemer has an assassin in the castle already for the third attempt, it seems risky to try and go for the kill in person for the second attempt. I suppose I could flip the order of the second and third attempts (by slightly altering the reason the party is being held), that might help. But would going blatant-blatant-disguised be a de-escalation because it's not as obvious (and because a killer in the ballroom is less personal than in her bed chamber), or an escalation because it means she would have to fear everything she ate or drank in the castle from then on? EDIT: Oh... but one of the reasons why I was having the party-poisoning attempt second was to get my heroine to realize that walls and guards wouldn't be enough, and she would have to leave the castle, which would require preparation. If the second attempt could have been stopped with better guards, that's less reason to commit to leaving. Am I overthinking this too much? Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 13:21 on May 24, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 19:54
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Presumably the reader is as in-the-dark as the character about the true nature of these events? And the third attempt acts as a revelation that ties all three together? If that's the case, I don't think that escalation really applies in this situation, because the reader wouldn't even realize that the events are connected until after the fact. In my mind, escalation is all about the heightening of stakes to the reader. So maybe there's a paranoia aspect that you could play with, where the first time she interprets it as an accident from a drunken archer, and she brushes the near-death experience off as bad luck. Then the second time, she can't stop fighting the feeling that maybe it wasn't illness, maybe it was poison. She tries to push the thought away, but now she's constantly on edge. Then when the third attempt happens it feels like a continuation of events. Then the paranoia can heighten as the story goes on, rather than a series of assassinations with similar stakes? e: Ah. On posting I see your edit. So if she already suspects that the events are related, and she's seeing that no matter where she is there's danger, then yeah that feels like heightening to me. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 20:54 on May 23, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 20:52
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feedmyleg posted:Presumably the reader is as in-the-dark as the character about the true nature of these events? And the third attempt acts as a revelation that ties all three together? If that's the case, I don't think that escalation really applies in this situation, because the reader wouldn't even realize that the events are connected until after the fact. The very first thing which happens is an arrow just missing the heroine's head. She believes she is the target, but others think it was meant for her brother instead, and it missed because the assassin was surprised by someone who barged in. (That someone is needed to be able to progress the story.) The poisoning attempt could possibly be another attempt on the brother, but the bed chamber attempt will confirm that she is the target. The way I've written the archery attack (the first one) leaves essentially no room for doubt that this was an assassination attempt on someone. An anonymous arrow assumed to be from a drunken archer won't get me to where I need to go in this case. I could possibly re-write that, but I don't have any idea how without changing the start of the story drastically. The assassination attempts are not the entire story, they serve as more of an inciting incident to get the heroine to strike out on her own, and they serve as a justification for why she would do something that dangerous.
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May 23, 2018 21:32
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The tension could escalate not in the severity of the attack but rather on how close it actually gets to killing her. Maybe attempt 1 leaves nobody harmed but establishes the threat, attempt 2 wounds somebody close to the heroine, and attempt 3 actually gets close to killing her and leaves her with a permanent wound of sorts? Something like that, as well as maybe in how much collateral damage the assassins are willing to cause. Attempt 1 is clean, attempt 2 poisons a bunch of people, attempt 3 is a bloodbath on the guards as the attackers get more desperate to succeed?
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May 23, 2018 22:20
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Deltasquid posted:The tension could escalate not in the severity of the attack but rather on how close it actually gets to killing her. Maybe attempt 1 leaves nobody harmed but establishes the threat, attempt 2 wounds somebody close to the heroine, and attempt 3 actually gets close to killing her and leaves her with a permanent wound of sorts? Something like that, as well as maybe in how much collateral damage the assassins are willing to cause. Attempt 1 is clean, attempt 2 poisons a bunch of people, attempt 3 is a bloodbath on the guards as the attackers get more desperate to succeed? At the moment, the first attack (the missed arrow) hurts no one and establishes the threat, the poisoning nearly kills her brother and leaves him in a weakened state. I've been back-and-forth on the attack in her personal chambers. (In both cases, she was asleep in her study, not her bed chamber, which is the reason she escapes.) In one version, the guard outside her door is killed, it's the light of the corridor door opening and the sound of the body being dragged in which wakes her up. I also wrote a different version where no one is killed, but she isn't believed for reasons which, now as I am trying to explain them, stretch credulity a bit too much. Only if the bed chamber attack is the second one does it matter if she isn't believed, and I'm leaning towards making it the third one. Huh, "explain your ideas to other people" helps. Now, I am leaning much more towards the dead body version. So thanks, talking it through helped at least a bit. Since the assassination attempts are the thing which happens before the adventure, I'll probably save any major wounds for the actual adventure.
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May 24, 2018 00:08
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I think the escalation is distance. The killer might not be doing everything personally, but the attacks are getting physically closer and closer. An arrow is from far away. Poison is closer, but still distant. A knife is very close.
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May 24, 2018 06:12
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Thoughts on chapter length variability? I've got a slightly larger than average number of chapters, as my book is two parallel stories that hand off every-other-chapter, so on first draft I was trying to keep each chapter to ~2500 words just to limit myself and keep anything from getting too saggy. On second draft I'm giving myself a lot more room to breathe and just write the chapter at whatever length it should be, but I'm finding that some chapters are sticking around the ~2500 mark while others require more like ~4000 words. Is that an acceptable range, or are the longer/shorter chapters going to provide too bumpy a reading experience?
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May 28, 2018 14:51
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feedmyleg posted:Thoughts on chapter length variability? I've got a slightly larger than average number of chapters, as my book is two parallel stories that hand off every-other-chapter, so on first draft I was trying to keep each chapter to ~2500 words just to limit myself and keep anything from getting too saggy. On second draft I'm giving myself a lot more room to breathe and just write the chapter at whatever length it should be, but I'm finding that some chapters are sticking around the ~2500 mark while others require more like ~4000 words. Is that an acceptable range, or are the longer/shorter chapters going to provide too bumpy a reading experience? I think that's an acceptable range, but whether the read is bumpy depends on what is written in those chapters. Personally, since it sounds like you are jumping regularly between two totally different plotlines, I would aim for longer chapters. I think short chapters are less jarring when you are not changing POV or storylines between them, though if the two "parallel stories" are something like two POVs of the same events, then shorter chapters are less bothersome.
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May 28, 2018 16:20
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Do y'all have your own discord? I've been looking for a good writing discord and most of them are . . . I'm sure you can imagine.
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May 31, 2018 17:41
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Grimalkin posted:Do y'all have your own discord? I've been looking for a good writing discord and most of them are . . . which ones have you joined?
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May 31, 2018 18:12
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Grimalkin posted:Do y'all have your own discord? I've been looking for a good writing discord and most of them are . . . There is the IRC channel for thunderdome, but I would warn you before going there that it is typical goonyness. A supportive community full of self-loathing and anger. It isn't for everybody. synirc #thunderdome There is the reddit writers block discord. It isn't much for discussion, but if you need a quick grammar question answered or evaluation of a paragraph, it's there.
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May 31, 2018 20:22
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There are a couple of irc channels, if that's your style. One is the Thunderdome channel #thunderdome but that one is generally for competitors and not general writing talk. The other channel is #thewritersSA which is admittedly not very active but has non-goons as well.
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May 31, 2018 20:45
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anime was right posted:which ones have you joined? I joined a bunch by googling (Writer's Lounge, That Writing Place, Scribes and Scribblers, Writer's Block) but I am not active in most of them. Just thought I'd check because generally speaking the goon-run discords I am in are slightly less terrible than they could be. Been trying to make more writing friends.
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May 31, 2018 21:32
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Grimalkin posted:I joined a bunch by googling (Writer's Lounge, That Writing Place, Scribes and Scribblers, Writer's Block) but I am not active in most of them. Just thought I'd check because generally speaking the goon-run discords I am in are slightly less terrible than they could be. Been trying to make more writing friends. ah, gotcha. which out of the four do you think is the least terrible? i joined writers block on a whim and the skill level could use something to be desired but there's a beta reading group hidden beneath permissions which im trying to see is worthwhile i could always make one, i guess vOv
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May 31, 2018 21:45
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https://discord.gg/r5br2wd here i made some poo poo (no ones in here so it might be scary)
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May 31, 2018 22:37
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Grimalkin posted:I joined a bunch by googling (Writer's Lounge, That Writing Place, Scribes and Scribblers, Writer's Block) but I am not active in most of them. Just thought I'd check because generally speaking the goon-run discords I am in are slightly less terrible than they could be. Been trying to make more writing friends. Oh, I'm on those last three! 
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May 31, 2018 22:50
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feedmyleg posted:Thoughts on chapter length variability? I've got a slightly larger than average number of chapters, as my book is two parallel stories that hand off every-other-chapter, so on first draft I was trying to keep each chapter to ~2500 words just to limit myself and keep anything from getting too saggy. On second draft I'm giving myself a lot more room to breathe and just write the chapter at whatever length it should be, but I'm finding that some chapters are sticking around the ~2500 mark while others require more like ~4000 words. Is that an acceptable range, or are the longer/shorter chapters going to provide too bumpy a reading experience? I try not to get to preoccupied with chapters. One of my favourite chapters in a book ever was about three sentences long. As long as the chunk of writing is vaguely related, you can lump it into a chapter, but assume your readership has an attention span and just use chapters to drive the story forward as it needs to. I'm on my second book, and I've got an entirely new pool of readers going through it right now. I sent off part one to everyone about an hour ago, so no one has gotten back to me so far. While writing my first book, my readership was, in order: my ex-husband, my dad and my best friend. My ex-husband complained about my lack of brevity, my father wanted to know if a particular character was based off him (it was) and my best friend was an actual sci-fi reader and gave some valuable input, but in general, the feedback was not as expansive as I wanted it. My current volunteers are a) a guy I went to art school with b) a cook and c) a legal assistant I went to junior high with. I'm hoping it'll expand the feedback I'm getting, but I'm also worried about letting people read it who aren't necessarily into speculative fiction or sci-fi read it if they're not familiar with the genre. So, here's my question (which may have been touched on here before, so forgive me): who do you get to read your writing? Do you avoid people you know well? Do you let anyone read your writing? Why or why not?
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Jun 6, 2018 06:01
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Does it seem awkward for a first-person narrator to describe their instinctive reactions? “I see,” I said, pursing my lips. I mean when one is irritated, they don't consciously think "I'm going to move my muscles in such a way as to tighten my lips," do they. It's subconscious. I know this may seems like a really tiny thing not worth thinking about.
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Jun 10, 2018 04:25
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that sounds more awkward because it sounds like they had intent, usually the flow of actions should be: unconscious reaction -> feeling -> thought -> speech/action; at least in response to something. I pursed my lips. "I see." sounds completely legit to me. anime was right fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jun 10, 2018 |
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Jun 10, 2018 04:33
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anime was right posted:that sounds more awkward because it sounds like they had intent, usually the flow of actions should be: I'm getting better at recognizing awkward writing. That version is better, and the advice is helpful for what to do in the future. Thank you. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Jun 10, 2018 |
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Jun 10, 2018 04:47
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If first person narrative doesn't have a bunch of left brain chatter there's probably a better narrative for it.
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Jun 10, 2018 10:38
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revolther posted:If first person narrative doesn't have a bunch of left brain chatter there's probably a better narrative for it. There is, just not in that sentence, which was the sole subject of my small question. It's important for pacing reasons to vary the length of your sentences. Sometimes, short sentences and paragraphs are good for emphasis. If every sentence in a book written in first-person needs to have attached three or four more long sentences of my characters head metaphorically huffing their own farts, the book will get bogged down before it can get anywhere. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Jun 10, 2018 |
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Jun 10, 2018 13:43
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hi maybe weird question but nowhere else to put this i have been working on a creative nonfiction piece, getting up to about 5k words, that i'm looking to get published eventually. anyone know any good markets for creative nonfiction, or any good resources for finding creative nonfiction markets? ive looked some up on google and what not, but im wondering if anyone has some good resources for finding them since i usually use submission grinder for my fiction markets, but idk if there's a similar thing for nonfiction.
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Jun 10, 2018 19:40
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flerp posted:hi maybe weird question but nowhere else to put this For CNF of that length, your best bet is probably going to be looking through literary journals. I would use something like New Pages or even just going through Submittable's discover page to find a magazine that suits your work. Just be aware that some might have a small fee, and if you're submitting to something like Glimmer Train or the Missouri Review, they are incredibly competitive and sometimes take months to respond. Don't be afraid to send it off to a few and then sit on it for a while before searching again.
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Jun 12, 2018 08:12
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Any advice on how to shop around a book? I'm a few chapters into a non-fiction book, and as it comes together, I've realised I have no idea how to be smart about finding a publisher. Do I send the completed thing out? Just a sample? How do I find the right kind of publisher?
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Jun 13, 2018 21:45
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For now, focus on finishing the book, then polishing it and re-polishing it. No one is going to buy a book from a new author which isn't finished. Done? Okay, after you finish the polishing, you'll want an agent. Look around for agents in your genre and see what standards they have for submission. Usually, you need to send a query letter first. If they like it, they'll usually request some pages, or sometimes the whole thing (this is why you need the book done first). Never go with an agent who wants money from you first; an agent makes their money by selling the book to publishers. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Jun 13, 2018 |
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Jun 13, 2018 22:06
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I think non-fiction, or at least some forms of non-fiction, is one of the few areas where they'll accept pitches. I've never written non-fiction, but know a few people who have, and they've all sent emails to publishers, outlining what they were writing and seeing if there was interest. Generally a detailed chapter list, with details of all of what you were going to address was needed. If you're writing memoir, I'm not sure if this applies. But for other stuff it could. If it's series of essays, unless you're famous or have expertise in the area, you're probably out of luck.
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Jun 14, 2018 13:29
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:For now, focus on finishing the book, then polishing it and re-polishing it. I'm working on my second draft right now. My plan is to finish it, give it a small polish pass, and then give it to some friends-and-family readers to get early feedback. Then I'm planning to make any changes based on feedback and hand it off to an editor. My question is about after that. I'm not trying to make writing a career or particularly trying to make money with novel writing. I'm much more interested in having the book reach the most number of receptive readers. My assumption is to achieve that I should self-publish and make it a $2.99 or $3.99 book that's on KU and has lots of free promotional periods. Is that the right mindset or, if it's a good book, at the end of it all, would approaching agents to get a legitimate publisher actually more likely to get it into interested parties's hands? I figure with a lot of the free/KU readers its early-abandonment or download-but-never-read rate is very high. As a followup, if I did go the agent route... how do I find potential agents? e: Hm, thought this was the self publishing thread. But I assume there's a lot of overlap.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:32
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my protagonist has come to life and he wants me to peg him with a furled umbrella, what should i do
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Jun 16, 2018 02:35
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this broken hill posted:my protagonist has come to life and he wants me to peg him with a furled umbrella, what should i do Are you a coward?
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Jun 16, 2018 02:56
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Ask yourself what would tolstoy do
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Jun 16, 2018 03:06
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This is going to sound odd, but how do I learn from a book? See, I used to design games. Mostly do it for fun now since my games sucked. But, anyway, after a while, I started to break down games in my head because I knew how they were put together. So, I'd be like able to see it like a jigsaw puzzle or maybe like an engineering thing or something. Like I got how they were putting pieces together to make it. I've been reading a lot of books while I write to learn, but I realized it might not be helping because I'm still not seeing things like that. I'm hoping to get a similar epiphany so that I can start seeing the pieces and, from there, the possible ways to put them together for my own works. Anyone got any advice on that?
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