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sebmojo gave me permission to post here about my SA-mart thread while it's still relevant. (who knows, maybe we'll get lucky) If you haven't seen my banner ad, I'm a freelance editor. I've been doing this for people on the forums for well over a decade, and I'd like to do it for you as well. I do a lot of résumés, but I also really enjoy helping people with their fiction. Check my thread, or PM me while that's still an option, or I suppose contact me directly - <ParahexavoctalSA@gmail.com>.
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Jun 25, 2020 05:35
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What's the etiquette for saying "For fans of ____" on a book blurb. Like, you blurb your book and then at the end say, for example, "Fan of ____ and ____ should enjoy this novel". Is namedropping other author's works bad form/possibly a legal issue?
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Jul 3, 2020 16:35
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Probably fine. I mean I don’t know a drat thing but it’s probably fine. Is this an audience facing blurb or something on a query letter? Cause if it’s a private letter it’s definitely fine.
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Jul 3, 2020 17:34
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If this is a query or pitch or something, absolutely fine. If this is something for SEO for a self-pub book on Amazon or something, it's probably all right. If it's on an actual physical book that's a little more questionable--usually when I see quotes like that it's pull quotes from a review like "...Hitchhiker's Guide meets Eurovision..." or something. But in that case I kind of assume the publisher will know what marketing stuff to put on the cover.
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Jul 3, 2020 18:38
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Every other YA book's Amazon page has that as the first thing you see when you open the book's page and I doubt John Green or his agent has signed off on every book that claims it's for his fans. But they don't seem to be doing it on the actual book copies.
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Jul 3, 2020 19:00
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Djeser posted:If it's on an actual physical book that's a little more questionable--usually when I see quotes like that it's pull quotes from a review like "...Hitchhiker's Guide meets Eurovision..." or something. But in that case I kind of assume the publisher will know what marketing stuff to put on the cover. It's not just the publisher which wants that. Apparently, just to query for an agent, you are required to describe your book as a comparison between two other books. To me that seems incredibly frustrating, because you obviously can't read every book out there, and so you're almost certainly going to miss a more accurate comparison.
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Jul 3, 2020 22:56
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I don't think it's required but comps are extremely helpful to both agent and author, since you will have to pitch your book in one sentence to vaguely disinterested people a hundred times.
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Jul 4, 2020 00:10
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General Battuta posted:I don't think it's required but comps are extremely helpful to both agent and author, since you will have to pitch your book in one sentence to vaguely disinterested people a hundred times. Yes, it is helpful. I just feel helpless because I know, in theory, there are books out there which are a good comp, but the odds are that I probably haven't read them, so I'll be giving a wrong comp. It's not entirely rational to feel that, but it's how I feel. But fine, I'll give it a shot... quote:It's a combination of Indiana Jones adventure and Janet Evanovich's Fox and O'Hare novels, set on a jungle island beset by Cold War-style intrigue. That... wasn't as painful or difficult as I thought. EDIT: Let me try another one. quote:With her country's territory being overrun under an endless flood of mindless clay soldiers, and assassins prowling the castle, the only way for a princess to save her freedom, her country, and her life may be a dangerous quest behind enemy lines. That's not a bad elevator pitch, but it's not a comp. I can't think of any books I have personally read that match closely to that to use as a comp. That's the problem I have. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Jul 4, 2020 |
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Jul 4, 2020 15:11
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FWIW, the comparison blurbs on the back of books often do a terrible job of describing the text. They're more about being provocative than accurate. Does anyone know if there is a word in english that is like 'filial' except instead of describing the duty of child->parent, it describes parent->child but is also not gendered? So, not paternal/maternal.
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Jul 14, 2020 03:20
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ultrachrist posted:FWIW, the comparison blurbs on the back of books often do a terrible job of describing the text. They're more about being provocative than accurate. Parental.
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Jul 14, 2020 03:56
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Or if you're looking for a more "wacky" vibe may I suggest: progenitorial
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Jul 14, 2020 09:47
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Djeser posted:Or if you're looking for a more "wacky" vibe may I suggest: progenitorial That just sounds like you’re a fan of genitalia.
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Jul 14, 2020 12:43
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'Parental' makes the most sense but it also feels like a modern term that implies a modern familial relationship and the context was a present day character theatrically telling a story about the 15th century. I think there might not actually be a word for what I am looking for and I'll try a different sentence structure.
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Jul 14, 2020 16:57
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REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:That just sounds like you’re a fan of genitalia. Or that you don't want your floors mopped by amateurs
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Jul 14, 2020 18:22
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I had this idea for a character in something I'm working on to try to cope with trauma by learning a musical instrument. The thing is I don't know how to write effectively about music without lyrics. Does anyone have any suggestions of books or stories that do that sort of thing well? Where should I look to learn how to describe music?
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Jul 17, 2020 01:16
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I've been working on a draft almost every day for what is approaching a year, now. This means I'm legitimately doing writing, doesn't it? (Oh god I apologize for this question; I try very hard to avoid contributing to the ocean of validation-seeking posts in online writing communities, but I don't really have anyone to talk about writing with/share work with in my daily life. No I am not doing Thunderdome until my draft is done.) Crowetron posted:I had this idea for a character in something I'm working on to try to cope with trauma by learning a musical instrument. The thing is I don't know how to write effectively about music without lyrics. Does anyone have any suggestions of books or stories that do that sort of thing well? Where should I look to learn how to describe music? I have had this same question before and I didn't get the answers I wanted. Most people I asked said that they hadn't read anything that really "captured" music in writing. It did sort of make sense to me that music would be a realm that's pretty closed off from writing, but I would love to prove them wrong.
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Jul 22, 2020 23:06
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Finished what I hope is my final draft on Charred. This last draft was just the most rote line editing you could do with very little fun things like additions or twisting stuff. Hopefully that means that I'm done with it though. It's as done as I can get it, if nothing else. Passed it off to the editor and others
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Jul 22, 2020 23:20
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Crowetron posted:I had this idea for a character in something I'm working on to try to cope with trauma by learning a musical instrument. The thing is I don't know how to write effectively about music without lyrics. Does anyone have any suggestions of books or stories that do that sort of thing well? Where should I look to learn how to describe music? is a wiki a book posted:I have had this same question before and I didn't get the answers I wanted. Most people I asked said that they hadn't read anything that really "captured" music in writing. It did sort of make sense to me that music would be a realm that's pretty closed off from writing, but I would love to prove them wrong. This took me a while to dig up, from Telegraph Avenue: “Michael Chabon“ posted:Cochise Jones always liked to play against your expectations of a song, to light the heart of a gloomy ballad with a Latin tempo and a sheen of vibrato, root out the hidden mournfulness, the ache of longing, in an up-tempo pop tune. Cochise’s six-minute outing on the opening track of Redbonin’ was a classic exercise in B-3 revisionism, turning a song inside out. It opened with big Gary King playing a fat, choogling base line, sounding like the funky intro to some ghetto-themed sitcom of the seventies, and then Cochise Jones came in, the first four drawbars pulled all the way out, giving the Lloyd Webber melody a treatment that was not cheery so much as jittery, playing up the anxiety inherent in the song’s title, there being so many thousand possible ways to Love Him, so little time to choose among them. Cochise’s fingers skipped and darted as if the keys of the organ were the wicks of candles and he was trying to light all of them with a single match. Then, as Idris Muhammad settled into a rolling burlesque-hall bump and grind, and King fell into step behind him, Cochise began his vandalism in earnest, snapping off bright bunches of the melody and scattering it in handfuls, packing it with extra notes in giddy runs. He was ruining the song, rifling it, mocking it with an antic edge of joy. You might have thought, some critics felt, that the meaning of the original song meant no more to Cochise Jones than a poem means to a shark that is eating the poet. But somewhere around the three-minute mark, Cochise began to build, in ragged layers, out of a few repeated notes on top of a left-hand walking blues, a solo at once dense and rudimentary, hammering at it, the organ taking on a raw, vox humana hoarseness, the tune getting bluer and harder and nastier. Inside the perfectly milked Leslie amplifier, the treble horn whirled, and the drivers fired, and you heard the song as the admission of failure it truly was, a confession of ignorance and helplessness. And then in the last measures of the song, without warning, the patented Creed Taylor strings came in, mannered and restrained but not quite tasteful. A hint of syrup, a throb of the pathetic, in the face of which the drums and bass fell silent, so that in the end it was Cochise Jones and some rented violins, half a dozen mournful studio Jewa, and then the strings fell silent, too, and it was just Mr. Jones, fading away, ending the track with the startling revelation that the song was an apology, an expression, such as only the blues could ever tender, off limitless regret. Sorry for lack of formatting. That passage had zero paragraph breaks. It’s all I got, unless I reread the entire bio of Sun Ra I got looking for attempts to describe his music.
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Jul 22, 2020 23:32
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Quasi-ironic suggestion: Pitchfork music reviews.
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Jul 23, 2020 00:38
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Crowetron posted:I had this idea for a character in something I'm working on to try to cope with trauma by learning a musical instrument. The thing is I don't know how to write effectively about music without lyrics. Does anyone have any suggestions of books or stories that do that sort of thing well? Where should I look to learn how to describe music?
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Jul 25, 2020 16:00
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I write lots of short stories, usually centered around my life in the culinary industry and growing up in the Appalachians. I mostly read non-fiction and weird genre-bending stuff like Vonnegut. I recently started playing D&D for the first time with my friends over Discord, and it really put me in the mood for Medieval fantasy. I finally dove in and read The Hobbit and LOTR books, followed by Ice and Fire and The Witcher. All of these books gave me an absolute brainworm of an idea for a fantasy story whose themes are kind of based around stories about The Eastern Front that my Russian babysitter would tell me when I was a kid. I've got an outline for roughly 200 pages, and I've stopped at about 110. I'm currently looking for some ideas from other books before I push further with the project. Can anyone recommend some good traditional Medieval fantasy novels that are a bit more 'grounded' than the ones I just mentioned? To be more specific, I don't mind if it has something like Elves, Orcs, Lizardfolk, etc., but I'm not really into the idea of 'Chosen One' plot lines or people waving their hands to make nuclear fireballs. It could even be something like good historical fiction, if that makes it easier. Bonus points if it focuses on settings inspired by more than just Western Europe and Vikings.
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Aug 2, 2020 20:35
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Abercrombie the heroes is good, or the first law trilogy. Jv jones cavern of black is vg, if grim. Italo calvino invisible cities is an idea bomb in like 100 pages. China mieville is good on ideas and images though in not a fan. Gareth hanrahans gutter prayer books are excellent.
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Aug 2, 2020 21:07
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KJ Parker is a good start. He typically writes about brilliant, but deeply morally flawed scholars of some kind who fight to extricate themselves out of vaguely hosed up predicaments, often caused by said moral flaws. Most of the stories are set in what fans call the Parkerverse, which is a fairly low magic world mostly modelled after the Byzantine Mediterranean. Academic Exercises is a good introduction to see, if you like his schtick. Goblin Emperor by Sarah Monette is a very wholesome palace drama. Guy Gavriel Kay's whole thing is taking a historical setting and writing a thick-rear end novel set in a fantasy-ied up version of it, over and over. It's usually pretty good. The first two Chalion novels by Lois Bujold are very good. (The third was a little too romance-y for me.) The Empire trilogy by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts is about a noblewoman from a small-fry clan in a pseudo-Japan, who, after her every male relative is murdered, has to lead what's left of her family to survive and, eventually, attain revenge and become powerful. Terry Pratchett's Discworld. There's, like, a lot of it. Read it one book at a time as a palate cleanser in-between other books. I'd suggest starting with Guards, Guards. China Mieville's The Scar. Very inventive worldbuilding, solid, if slightly thesaurus-y prose. Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. Very literary. His two main schticks are extremely unreliable narrators and peppering the entire texts with really subtle hints, clues and lacunas so that pretty significant revelations sometimes hinge on a single clue that might only become apparent after you've read the book at least once. I am a little dumb for this series, to be honest, but I can't deny it's pretty good. Jack Vance's Lyonesse. Vance's take on Arthurian fantasy. A late period masterwork of his. Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft. An unassuming schoolteacher gets separated from his wife when visiting the Tower of Babel and has to, well, assume, buckle swash and so forth, to try and find her. Megazver fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 21:39
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Megazver posted:KJ Parker is a good start. He typically writes about brilliant, but deeply morally flawed scholars of some kind who fight to extricate themselves out of vaguely hosed up predicaments, often caused by said moral flaws. Most of the stories are set in what fans call the Parkerverse, which is a fairly low magic world mostly modelled after the Byzantine Mediterranean. Academic Exercises is a good introduction to see, if you like his schtick. sebmojo posted:Abercrombie the heroes is good, or the first law trilogy. Jv jones cavern of black is vg, if grim. Italo calvino invisible cities is an idea bomb in like 100 pages. China mieville is good on ideas and images though in not a fan. Gareth hanrahans gutter prayer books are excellent. Mievelle's stuff has been on my list forever, as well as Discworld. Those two have been my white whales for a while, and it's about time I finally go for it. But you guys gave me a lot to look at, and I'm liking what I'm seeing, thanks. My story is kind of a mix of inspiration from South American, Eastern European, Native American, Western/Northern European, and Central Asian cultures and attitudes interacting with one another. I know it sounds like manuscript-bragging (which is one of my all-time eye-rollers), but it's been sucking up so much of my brainspace while working my 12 hour "essential" job lately. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 23:59
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Crowetron posted:I had this idea for a character in something I'm working on to try to cope with trauma by learning a musical instrument. The thing is I don't know how to write effectively about music without lyrics. Does anyone have any suggestions of books or stories that do that sort of thing well? Where should I look to learn how to describe music? it's kinda tough to get the full experience of music in the written word, I'd suggest looking up some enthusiastic yet knowledgeable folks on youtube like Rick Beato or TwoSetViolin to get the proper language. Better yet, try loving around with an instrument. A small keyboard is fun and easy to play around with, just tinkle around with the seven notes until you find something you like, its the best way to really feel the joy of making music. Anyvay, submitted pitches to some editors on twitter on my completed manuscript and gotten good vibes off it. Trying to figure out what to do next, it wasn't something like pitmad so I can't just submit a query letter to these individual editors just because they seemed to like it. What do you with a good twitter pitch. Make it the first paragraph in your query letter? Anyone ever do that?
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Aug 3, 2020 03:10
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If you want to see someone do something with a non European pantheon try Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Also the Books of Swords by Saberhagen has a nice take on gods and (surprise) magic swords.
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Aug 3, 2020 03:12
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Shageletic posted:it's kinda tough to get the full experience of music in the written word, I'd suggest looking up some enthusiastic yet knowledgeable folks on youtube like Rick Beato or TwoSetViolin to get the proper language. Better yet, try loving around with an instrument. A small keyboard is fun and easy to play around with, just tinkle around with the seven notes until you find something you like, its the best way to really feel the joy of making music. Query agents, no?
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Aug 3, 2020 04:01
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General Battuta posted:Query agents, no? By sending the twitter pitch to them? By just using a query letter? Kinda confused tbh.
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Aug 3, 2020 04:52
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Crowetron posted:I had this idea for a character in something I'm working on to try to cope with trauma by learning a musical instrument. The thing is I don't know how to write effectively about music without lyrics. Does anyone have any suggestions of books or stories that do that sort of thing well? Where should I look to learn how to describe music? I just read Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell, which is about music and honestly wasn't great and probably his weakest work, but I thought of this thread when a character says late in the book: Utopia Avenue posted:“I’ll take ‘indescribable.’ Like Charles Mingus says, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Anyway, it's super hard to pull off imo. I really can't think of fiction that's done it well. I think it's more important to communicate the emotions the music is evoking in a character rather than the music itself. If the minutiae of learning an instrument is important to the story, I'd say you almost definitely need to tinker around with learning that instrument yourself.
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Aug 8, 2020 04:44
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Hah, yeah, what kind of dance routine would have anything to do with architecture?
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Aug 8, 2020 18:02
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Crowetron posted:I had this idea for a character in something I'm working on to try to cope with trauma by learning a musical instrument. The thing is I don't know how to write effectively about music without lyrics. Does anyone have any suggestions of books or stories that do that sort of thing well? Where should I look to learn how to describe music? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinteuil_Sonata https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/search-prousts-vinteuil-sonata-violinist-maria-milstein-writers-musical-mystery "In Search of Lost Time" contains several references to the fictitious "Vinteuil Sonata", which is so vividly described that musicians have tried to reconstruct it based on the book.
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Aug 8, 2020 19:56
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Thanks for all the suggestions. I've been reading music reviews mostly but that Vinteuil Sonata is really interesting and I'm probably gonna fall down a rabbit hole reading about that.
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Aug 9, 2020 04:27
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Djeser posted:Hah, yeah, what kind of dance routine would have anything to do with architecture? Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Aug 9, 2020 |
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Aug 9, 2020 21:31
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I recently joined a website called CritiqueMatch which has been a lot more useful than the other critique sites I've used before. You can find partners and exchange chapters very quickly which leads to each person getting through each other's work in a much more timely manner than something like Critique Circle where you had to upload chapters, wait for your week to come up, and then risk getting critiques from people who hadn't read any of the previous installments. It seems like it's in beta so the platform for leaving comments is not as polished as it could be, but for the most part it works fine.
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Aug 12, 2020 04:05
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Is there a megathread or anything for people to share their writing (fiction or otherwise) with one another and get feedback? I've been writing stuff I want to share but it isn't fiction, so I figure this isn't the thread for it.
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Aug 13, 2020 21:24
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Recently I wrote a piece of flash fiction for a contest Weird Tales was running. Despite not writing a lot before, I really enjoyed it and was hoping to write more short fiction in my spare time. Ideally, I'd like to submit my work for publication somewhere. I was wondering what people's experiences have been with submitting short stories to online magazines for publication?
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Aug 17, 2020 17:18
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Star Me Kitten posted:Is there a megathread or anything for people to share their writing (fiction or otherwise) with one another and get feedback? I've been writing stuff I want to share but it isn't fiction, so I figure this isn't the thread for it. I think you'd be fine either posting it here, if it's around the 1,000 to 1,500 word mark. Otherwise you'd probably be better off starting your own thread here in CC, like folks sometimes do for getting feedback on longer works. There's also the Thunderdome goon discord, which is linked uhhhh somewhere, and they've got a channel for crits. It's mostly fiction but I don't think people would mind critiquing non-fiction either. Dr.D-O posted:Recently I wrote a piece of flash fiction for a contest Weird Tales was running. Despite not writing a lot before, I really enjoyed it and was hoping to write more short fiction in my spare time. Ideally, I'd like to submit my work for publication somewhere. Get ready to send out a lot of emails, wait a long time, and maybe get a rejection email back. To be a bit less glib, I've done it and it worked out fine, but it's definitely a lot of footwork to find places that are open, submit according to their guidelines, et cetera, and since it can legit be a lot of work to sift through a bunch of stories, it's not unexpected to have a turnaround time of a month or more. Back when I was doing it I think I mostly skipped over places that didn't take simultaneous submissions, i.e., ones that didn't want you to submit your story to other magazines while they were considering yours. I get why that's a thing, but it's a while to wait on one opportunity.
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Aug 17, 2020 19:14
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Dr.D-O posted:Recently I wrote a piece of flash fiction for a contest Weird Tales was running. Despite not writing a lot before, I really enjoyed it and was hoping to write more short fiction in my spare time. Ideally, I'd like to submit my work for publication somewhere. You will be rejected for years, gradually improve, start consistently selling, and, if you keep at it, end up placing stories in your dream markets. if you don't get tired of casting stories into the void along the way since nobody reads short fiction except short fiction writers Don't shortsell yourself. I think that if a market does not meet a certain standard of pay and prestige it's better to not sell a story than to sell it there. In SFF (this does not apply to other genres!) I'm not aware of any good magazines that take simultaneous submissions, but ymmv.
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Aug 17, 2020 19:32
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Dr.D-O posted:Recently I wrote a piece of flash fiction for a contest Weird Tales was running. Despite not writing a lot before, I really enjoyed it and was hoping to write more short fiction in my spare time. Ideally, I'd like to submit my work for publication somewhere. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3776293 If you have archives, the old short fiction publishing thread is quite good. It is too bad that the goon story spreadsheet never made it off the ground.
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Aug 17, 2020 19:57
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General Battuta posted:I'm not aware of any good magazines that take simultaneous submissions, but ymmv. The Writer's Market is a good source for all publishers and literary magazines, contests, etc. It comes out annually. It is pretty much the publishing bible.
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Aug 17, 2020 19:58
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