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Djeser posted:Your writing is inherently way more interesting to you than it is to anyone else. Yeah thanks for this, and Seb too. Basically, I need to write this scene to show a clutch of characters at their height, to make an audience give a poo poo about them. Similar to the beginning of Predator, or for those into more lovely random movies, James Woods' Vampires. I've now changed it from a simple raid on nondescript fortress to launching an attack on a floating Kabuki castle powered by a hell dimension. The more I play around with it, the more random it gets. Who knows where it'll end up. EDIT: magnificent7 posted:Just go right to the next chapter. Start it with, "and after that big rear end battle..." Thanks! But I do think there is something worth exploring in it, so I'll keep cracking on it, but I hate how its slowing down my writing rate. Oh, and to the guy asking about mundane life, read a New Yorker short story maybe? I mean, great writers make anything seem immense. Shageletic fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Mar 28, 2014 |
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Mar 28, 2014 20:23
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Shageletic posted:Yeah thanks for this, and Seb too. Basically, I need to write this scene to show a clutch of characters at their height, to make an audience give a poo poo about them. Similar to the beginning of Predator, or for those into more lovely random movies, James Woods' Vampires. I've now changed it from a simple raid on nondescript fortress to launching an attack on a floating Kabuki castle powered by a hell dimension. The more I play around with it, the more random it gets. Who knows where it'll end up. If the point of this scene is to show your characters and make the audience care about them, but it's boring you, then probably you should focus on the characters. Changing the nondescript fortress to a floating Kabuki castle isn't going to make anyone care more about your characters. What are the internal conflicts for the characters? Why should the audience care about them, and how does this scene show that?
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Mar 29, 2014 01:34
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This is probably going to get me a lot of poo poo, but after sitting down with Bioshock Infinite's final DLC last night I am thinking I'm going to go back and finish this fan fiction piece I had set in the game world because it had a lot of readers at a time and it was a promising project, but also because it couldn't hurt anything as long as I treat it like something I'm going to sell, but can't. I know the general consensus on fan fiction around here and I know I have a novel I'm working on, but I've been wanting to do this for a while and I don't think I'll just be able to let it go. I'm going to wrap it up nice and neat and edit it for a final posting.
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Mar 29, 2014 01:58
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CommissarMega posted:
Well, we're in Malaysia. We have a lot of things that are weird and different from the typical Anglo-Saxon white America stuff that dominates the English fiction market out there, so draw inspiration from that. Even our news headline are far from mundane.
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Mar 29, 2014 02:27
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CB_Tube_Knight posted:This is probably going to get me a lot of poo poo, but after sitting down with Bioshock Infinite's final DLC last night I am thinking I'm going to go back and finish this fan fiction piece I had set in the game world because it had a lot of readers at a time and it was a promising project, but also because it couldn't hurt anything as long as I treat it like something I'm going to sell, but can't. Great! How can we help you with that?
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Mar 29, 2014 02:44
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Sitting Here posted:Great! How can we help you with that? He's probably -- and I'm not saying this to throw shade, CB -- but he's probably just looking for somebody to either validate him or set him straight because he's committed, but still just a little conflicted about what he's doing. Which is natural; at the risk of sounding like a snob, it's impossible for most readers with refined tastes to take fanfic seriously. And if your tastes have become more refined in the days since you've last worked on that fanfic, CB...well, it's tough. End of the day, if you're comfortable knowing that you're not going to see a dime from this, you should go for it. Finishing anything you've started is good for the soul anyway, and you're likely to learn a little more from the experience (as you would with any kind of writing). Just don't take the feedback you get from it too seriously.
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Mar 29, 2014 03:01
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Stop writing the fanfic. Go work on your novel and don't stop again. When I was slogging through my first novel, I did stuff like this constantly. Anything to avoid working on that dreaded crap novel. I convinced myself it was a good idea. I googled 'when to give up on a novel.' But I didn't. I kept at it, even when I hated it. Stop procrastinating. Work on your book. Finish it.
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Mar 29, 2014 03:04
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blue squares posted:Stop writing the fanfic. Go work on your novel and don't stop again. When I was slogging through my first novel, I did stuff like this constantly. Anything to avoid working on that dreaded crap novel. I convinced myself it was a good idea. I googled 'when to give up on a novel.' But I didn't. I kept at it, even when I hated it. Stop procrastinating. Work on your book. Finish it. Thing is that I am not dreading work on the novel and I don't see the difference between stuff like this and what people do with the contests here and the like. Not everyone is going to have the same trouble splitting their time.
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Mar 29, 2014 03:36
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CB_Tube_Knight posted:Thing is that I am not dreading work on the novel and I don't see the difference between stuff like this and what people do with the contests here and the like. Not everyone is going to have the same trouble splitting their time. So how can we the people of this fiction advice thread help you in your fan fiction endeavors, remains the question.
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Mar 29, 2014 03:53
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RE CommissarMega and writing the mundane: I know that you didn't mean anything by calling it mundane, you were just looking for a word for non-genre fiction. But in the sense of being unremarkable and average, that's not what a story should be--you should want your story to be interesting and compelling. Which means you have to work out good characters and conflicts. These are necessary in any decent piece of fiction, even genre stuff. "Mundane" fiction just makes you have to rely on your characters and conflicts more, since you can't spackle up the gaps with worldbuilding or technobabble. I've just recently been reading two pieces of fiction set in the modern world, what you might call "mundane". But one of them featured suburban English sports clubs creating a fascist micro-state based on the worship of a cable news anchor after taking shoppers hostage inside of a megamall. The other one had anarchical class warfare breaking out between the floors of an apartment building leading to racism and prejudice between the people who lived on the lower floors and the people who lived at the top. Being set in the real world and grounded in reality doesn't mean your writing has to be boring. That's the exact opposite of what it means, in fact. You should write about interesting things, and interesting things do happen in the real world. People get in danger and fall in love and do drugs and hit the town and go on vacations and conduct espionage and make art.
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Mar 29, 2014 04:22
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Djeser posted:RE CommissarMega and writing the mundane: Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant  I guess I do realize a little too much on 'spackle' as you said. I think I'll work on an everyday story on the weekend and Fiction Farm the thing, see where I need to improve. Thanks for the advice, everyone!
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Mar 29, 2014 05:25
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Sitting Here posted:So how can we the people of this fiction advice thread help you in your fan fiction endeavors, remains the question. I might post a bit of it. I kind of treat things like the person reading them doesn't know the back story. I feel like that's one of the big issues with tie in fiction and fan fiction is that there's a certain level of knowledge needed for you to even be able to pick up the thing and read it. I try and eliminate that within reason. So pretty much anyone can read the stuff and get it on some level. Oddly enough I have the opposite problem in my own writing because I forget that people can't see into my head. I end up having to go back and slip little details in here and there that weren't implied well or that read unclear (after I have someone else read over it). My main character is a Nephilim. Some people hear that and know instantly what I mean and what that entails. Others might never have picked a Bible up, so there's that to contend with and you want this stuff to be as accessible as possible to everyone. Since I grew up Catholic and had to learn a lot of Theology it can be hard for me to remember not everyone has that background.
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Mar 29, 2014 05:44
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CB_Tube_Knight posted:My main character is a Nephilim. Some people hear that and know instantly what I mean and what that entails. Others might never have picked a Bible up, so there's that to contend with and you want this stuff to be as accessible as possible to everyone. Since I grew up Catholic and had to learn a lot of Theology it can be hard for me to remember not everyone has that background. Even knowing what they are, there are different interpretations of Nephilim. Like, are they gigantic hybrids, or fallen angels like in Madeline L'Engle's Many Waters from her Wrinkle In Time world? (Which is the first thing that pops into my head.) You'll still have to do some clarification. I also don't see how there's any practical difference between writing fiction and fan fiction. People write for existing characters in existing worlds all the time -- just dressed up in more socially acceptable terms -- it's just a matter of maintaining consistency and being accessible.
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Mar 29, 2014 07:30
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Crisco Kid posted:Even knowing what they are, there are different interpretations of Nephilim. Like, are they gigantic hybrids, or fallen angels like in Madeline L'Engle's Many Waters from her Wrinkle In Time world? (Which is the first thing that pops into my head.) You'll still have to do some clarification. I might have to check out Many Waters. My Nephilim look more or less human and some of them have deformities and health problems. A select few take after their angelic parents. The world I write for is our world with everyone knowing about demons and angels. So Nephilim are well documented and known about.
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Mar 29, 2014 09:25
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Djeser posted:I've just recently been reading two pieces of fiction set in the modern world, what you might call "mundane". But one of them featured suburban English sports clubs creating a fascist micro-state based on the worship of a cable news anchor after taking shoppers hostage inside of a megamall. The other one had anarchical class warfare breaking out between the floors of an apartment building leading to racism and prejudice between the people who lived on the lower floors and the people who lived at the top. No joke J. G. Ballard is really good reading for learning how to get under the skin of the mundane world and do interesting things with it.
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Mar 29, 2014 12:14
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CommissarMega posted:Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant As a small follow-up, just wanted to make it clear that it's perfectly fine to write fantasy/scifi stuff, and if that's what you want to write, fantastic. But if you're having trouble with fundamentals, then writing non-speculative stuff can help, because it makes you focus on character and conflict. Taking the time to get the hang of that will make your fantasy/scifi writing even better.
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Mar 29, 2014 14:48
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Is this the best place to have your work critiqued? I read a couple pages but am finding mostly discussion.
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Mar 29, 2014 21:34
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You can, though if it's around 1000 words or less, you can take it to the Fiction Farm thread, here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3527097 You can also start a thread for feedback if it's a longer work.
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Mar 29, 2014 22:18
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rizuhbull posted:Is this the best place to have your work critiqued? I read a couple pages but am finding mostly discussion. Not really, though people will critique things you post here. If you have something under 1000 words, you can post it in the Fiction Farm thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3527097 If it's longer (or if you just want to...) you can post it in a new thread. If you aren't getting very many hits on it, you can always link to it here.
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Mar 29, 2014 22:18
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You might not get a ton of critiques, but they tend to be of higher quality than most of the other sites I've been on.
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Mar 29, 2014 23:02
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:If it's longer (or if you just want to...) you can post it in a new thread. If you aren't getting very many hits on it, you can always link to it here. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3619872 It's 2700-ish words. The latest version of the first chapter of my book. Want a 236-word synopsis? KATE HILL's freshman year ended, and she returned to the pink frilly bedroom in her father's condo for the summer. He doesn't understand her, and she’s tired of pretending that everything’s normal. To stay busy (and to avoid her father) Kate takes a job at the antique store on the Marietta Square, and she spends time with her lovable grandfather, Marvin. MARVIN HILL spent most of his life hiding his own secrets. He’s killed over a hundred people, burying most of them in his garden, one deadbeat at a time. But at 75, Marvin's tired and wants to stop; After all, he’s had a successful run, avoiding detection for fifty years, why not quit while he’s ahead? MARY MEIER, an old woman who spends her days taking snapshots around the town square, starting helping Marvin in 1962 with his kills, in return for the opportunity to photograph each hunt in grisly detail. She won’t let Marvin stop. She's obsessed with removing the filth from her town, and if he won't help her, she'll expose him by sending a few photos to the local news and the police. On a Monday, Kate shows up to work and there's a dead body in the alley behind the store. While cleaning up in the back, Kate finds a Polaroid photo shoved under the back door. The man in the blurry photo looks a lot like her grandfather. And the dead body in the alley? It's her grandfather's friend, Mary Meier.
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Mar 29, 2014 23:27
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Read some short stories from realistic writers like Carver, Richard Ford, or Amy Hempel if you're looking to see how that sort of thing can be done. They are masters of this kind of writing.
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Mar 30, 2014 06:31
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PoshAlligator posted:Quite often I have an idea for a premise, and then I don't touch it for ages until I just randomly stumble upon a point and story to the premise. From a while ago, but I was on an 11-day field training exercise so whatever. I don't think there's anything wrong with this approach. If you're writing secondary-world fiction you're probably writing a lot of random poo poo down, or on a timeline, or whatever. I do the same thing with both my fantasy and my near-future sci-fi. I'll come up with a cool premise, smack it on the timeline somewhere that makes sense, and go on with my life. Sometimes I get back to it immediately, sometimes it takes a long time. I had put something about "King's bodyguard depose and kill their insane king, raise a nephew in his place" on my fantasy timeline 5 or so years ago. Then there was a Thunderdome prompt about betrayal, and it just popped into my mind. So I wrote a story about it. It got good response, and now I'm working it into a longer short piece to send around for publication. Really there's no "wrong" way to write a story or come up with story ideas. poo poo will just explode into my dome when I see something on the street, or when I read a news story, or whatever. It happens all the time. Other times, I'll try to think of what a specific character would do in a situation and go from there.
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Mar 31, 2014 22:07
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Well, I just finished the first draft of my first novel. 71k words that took almost a year to write. I guess I should be excited, but it's honestly kind of worrisome knowing I'll have to go through an revise/edit a good portion of it. Plus, it's the first of a trilogy, so I already want to keep the story going into the next book before I've properly cleaned up the first one. Still, it's been a journey. I usually just lurk in this forum, but you goons have definitely given some great advice that's kept me motivated to finish this thing. Hopefully the next step will be the bookstore. 
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Apr 1, 2014 06:32
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Axel Serenity posted:Well, I just finished the first draft of my first novel. 71k words that took almost a year to write. I guess I should be excited, but it's honestly kind of worrisome knowing I'll have to go through an revise/edit a good portion of it. Plus, it's the first of a trilogy, so I already want to keep the story going into the next book before I've properly cleaned up the first one. Your next step after drafting is sim subs to a bunch of agents, unless you're planning to self publish. What kind of book is it? I recently hooked a great agent with my first fantasy novel so I have some experience with this bit if you're in the SF/F genre.
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Apr 1, 2014 07:16
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Axel Serenity posted:Well, I just finished the first draft of my first novel. 71k words that took almost a year to write. I guess I should be excited, but it's honestly kind of worrisome knowing I'll have to go through an revise/edit a good portion of it. Plus, it's the first of a trilogy, so I already want to keep the story going into the next book before I've properly cleaned up the first one. Keep going if you have the momentum to start the next book right away. It's better to let your first draft sit for a while before you edit anyway, so you come back to it with fresh perspective.
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Apr 1, 2014 08:20
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General Battuta posted:Your next step after drafting is sim subs to a bunch of agents, unless you're planning to self publish. I don't really know which way I'm going to put it out there so far. I'm thinking of self publish, but I keep going back and forth. It's a fantasy adventure novel set in our world. I'd love to see it in an actual bookstore, but it sounds like I'd make more self-publishing. I may still submit to agents for hard copy books and then let the digital do its thing in the meantime. Stuporstar posted:Keep going if you have the momentum to start the next book right away. It's better to let your first draft sit for a while before you edit anyway, so you come back to it with fresh perspective. Yeah. I may just keep at it. For the first book, I was planning to do the whole "Keep it in a drawer for a week then come back to it" thing. But, given how long it's been since I started the book, I've probably forgotten a good portion of the writing in the first half of the novel.
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Apr 1, 2014 09:33
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Don't self publish. No one will care. Especially not if you want to send it to agents, too. Real publishers will not look favorably on it being self published unless it sells millions of copies (it won't).
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Apr 1, 2014 12:21
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blue squares posted:Don't self publish. No one will care. Especially not if you want to send it to agents, too. Real publishers will not look favorably on it being self published unless it sells millions of copies (it won't). Yeah this is what I've read too. Battuta can probably be the voice of experience on this one.
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Apr 1, 2014 14:21
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General Battuta posted:Your next step after drafting is sim subs to a bunch of agents, unless you're planning to self publish. Whoah wait what? What's a sim sub? And, you're saying start the book pitch part now, instead of a round or two of revisions and beta readers? (not disputing you, just looking at 6 months of slow revisions wondering if I should/could have put my energies elsewhere.)
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Apr 1, 2014 15:19
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magnificent7 posted:Whoah wait what? What's a sim sub? And, you're saying start the book pitch part now, instead of a round or two of revisions and beta readers? Oh, no, definitely do as many rounds of revisions and beta readers as you want (that's what I meant by drafting). Sim subs means 'simultaneous submissions', something you're allowed to do with novels but generally not short stories: you can identify a list of agents who might be receptive, and submit to all of them at the same time. Be sure to read their submission guidelines super carefully and give them each exactly what they want. In particular, hone your query letter down to a slim, effective hook, because it's all most of them will ever look at. And yes, do not self-publish and expect agents to then represent you. Statistically, self-publishing isn't going to make you more money than traditional publishing, so I don't personally think there's any reason to close the traditional publishing door right away.
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Apr 1, 2014 16:29
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General Battuta posted:Oh, no, definitely do as many rounds of revisions and beta readers as you want (that's what I meant by drafting). Sim subs means 'simultaneous submissions', something you're allowed to do with novels but generally not short stories: you can identify a list of agents who might be receptive, and submit to all of them at the same time. Be sure to read their submission guidelines super carefully and give them each exactly what they want. In particular, hone your query letter down to a slim, effective hook, because it's all most of them will ever look at. Disclosure: I'm unpublished, but sitting on a stack of rejection letters. In my experience, short stories can usually be submitted to multiple jornals at the same time. There's a webstite sub-mish-mash or something that can assit. But everyone I've known requires you to withdraw other submissions as soon as you accept an offer (and you should always accept the first one.) Definitely don't self-publish. You're better than that and an agent and publisher should be seen as peer review like any other publication. I've been told that first (genre) novels should usually run ~90K words or less. Can anyone comment on this?
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Apr 1, 2014 18:14
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ZorajitZorajit posted:I've been told that first (genre) novels should usually run ~90K words or less. Can anyone comment on this? http://kaylapocalypse.tumblr.com/post/78727094580/all-new-revised-on-word-counts-and-novel-length Here's the relevant novel-length bit she lists: quote:middle grade fiction = Anywhere from 25k to 40k, with the average at 35k
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Apr 1, 2014 18:55
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Super awesome post, Whalley. It's funny to see in the thread about how to write, people recommend traditional publishing. In the self-pub thread, you get jumped on and chewed up if you so much mention to someone that they should keep traditional publishing in mind as an option. You are not allowed to discuss writing in that thread!
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Apr 1, 2014 19:35
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I can't help but feel that the vast majority of people advocating for self publishing are doing so to convince themselves it's a viable option
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Apr 1, 2014 19:38
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SOME people in that thread actually make good money doing it. The issue is that they are almost universally writing romance, which obviously has a great self-pub market. It's a weird thread; nowhere in the OP do they explain when it is good to self-pub or which genres it is most viable for. I've seen people in there talking about sci-fi short stories, and I recommended them to submit to the high-end markets and work their way down if they were rejected. I got jumped all over by people saying it was a waste of time and useless, but then when you press them about the markets they successfully self-pub in, it's ALWAYS romance novels. The thread is basically four or five successful romance self-pubbers bragging about their sales figures and making GBS threads on traditional publishing. They advise anyone, regardless of the genre they write in, to self-pub and never even consider traditional publishing. I've seen people in there say that they just write a rough draft as fast as possible, pay off a proofreader to do a pass, and then publish it right away so they can work on the next thing. It's a very marketing-oriented thread that explicitly says not to talk about actual writing at all. When you pres even harder, you usually hear stuff like, "Yeah I used to write NON-ROMANCE GENRE, but it was a dead end, and once I started self-pubbing romance I became successful, so gently caress NON-ROMANCE GENRE."
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Apr 1, 2014 19:55
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For me, it's mostly about exposure. If I do go traditional publishing, it sounds like I'm going to be doing a lot of marketing myself anyway, so I may as well reach as many eyes as I can, which won't happen under the Kindle store. I know self-publishing advocates tend to be people who have been burned by bigger presses before or like the immediate cash, but it doesn't change that the vast majority of books sold are still physical copies or otherwise from large houses. I may make less per book, but I'd be willing to trade that off to reach potentially thousands of readers instead of making a lot from a few hundred. There aren't many "classics" nowadays that started as self-published (maybe Wool). That may change over the next decade or so, but right now the books in the general public's mind are still traditional. But, it's a drawback because I do like having control over certain aspects (not relating to the writing, of course) of my book. Like, the cover for example. I have a great idea for the trilogy set and a designer lined up, but I'd probably have to throw that out the window if I went with an agent/publisher. It seems like a lot of self-published authors harp on the royalties being higher, which I do certainly like. I also like how I can edit it and have it up in less than a day instead of months and months of work and back-and-forths. It's honestly a tough decision which route I'll go. I don't want to get working on publishing this first book, not meet whatever advance I can get, and then never get the next two books published as a result. I am confident in my story and, with some editing and beta readers, in my writing. But, after spending a lot of time in the entertainment industry before going into writing, I know that the quality of writing is rarely any indicator of success, so it may be a moot point that is entirely at the whims of whatever readers feel like looking at at the time or what other books a publisher has coming down the pipe they wanna give their attention to. And it's probably not going to be the new writer with a first novel.  But, first thing's first is getting these revisions done and getting to work on the next book. I'll probably go back-and-forth between traditional and self about 200 more times before the book's at the point where it can be released. It is good to know there are advocates for traditional in here, though, since that was really my first instinct when writing. Axel Serenity fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Apr 1, 2014 |
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Apr 1, 2014 20:13
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The post with the genre information is kind of interesting. Thanks for that. I've had something of a tiny hiccup with my writing and got kind of depressed over unrelated things. I basically stopped writing for a week and finally picked it back up last night. The thing that I was tackling the last time that I asked anything was the question of what to do with the Four Horsemen. I think I'm going to try some kind of variation of the mother, maiden, crone thing--except I don't know what the make the fourth one. So I'm digging around some and hunting for that. My writing has slowed down a lot. I was doing over a K a day before and I struggled with 500 words just last night. But I think I know the direction I want to go in a little better after having a week of down time.
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Apr 1, 2014 22:16
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Can you really say you're surprised that the self publishing thread advocates self publishing? At the same time, how many traditionally published authors are raking it in here? If they are, it's probably romance too. To deny that romance is 80% of the book market is pretty hard headed. There will always be a stigma that self published authors aren't worth anything, because a publishing house didn't say they were. Of course they're a little indignant. And I didn't see anyone saying poop out a first draft and edit it once to publish. I mean, that's an extreme example, but so is editing a book 200 times. At some point you gotta let it go.
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Apr 1, 2014 22:26
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I self-published my dumb 11k word dark romance satire/parody because hey, there's no real market for that. A few people wanted to be able to buy it and a few people got to be able to buy it.
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Apr 1, 2014 22:29
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