PoshAlligator posted:I'd say 50k is a little on the short end unless it's YA (for print). If anyone is interested an agent told me (so this is just what they'd look for) 90k-100k for general, commercial fiction. 60k-80k for literary fiction. Historical romance 90k-110k. Contemporary romance 80k-105k (though romance is pretty varied, series romance is shorter). Cozy mysteries 60k-80k. Bigger mysteries 85k-105k. Big thrillers 90k-105k. Scifi/Fantasy 90k-150k. YA 50k70k. Non fiction is all over but generally 60k-90k. Quoting from a previous page. Thanks for this, it's interesting. I agree with your final paragraph. I haven't self-pubbed yet, but I'm looking into writing shorter works, putting them up, and expanding on the genres and styles that sell well. Having a greatly reduced turnaround time between writing and getting sales patterns means you'll be able to become a far more efficient and effective author (money-wise) than anybody in the old days. You don't have the guidance and experience of the publishing industry, but you also won't suffer so much from exploitation. And there is now room for people to write what they want to write, at the levels they want to write, rather than having to hit the bar that the publishing houses set in order to take your work on board. Not everybody has to be (or wants to be) Stephen King to consider themselves successful and happy with their work. It's now possible, thanks to eBooks and the reduced overhead involved in selling your work, to make a living without also earning enough to ship physical books halfway around the world and support the small team of people who handle financing, distribution, marketing etc. A lot of people who otherwise wouldn't be authors are, although the downside is that so too are a lot of people who possibly shouldn't be. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Aug 8, 2013 |
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Aug 8, 2013 21:23
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Funk In Shoe posted:Nobody here will probably remember me, but I figured I'd swing by anyway and give a shout out about the virtues of perseverance, when it comes to actually writing substantial amounts of fiction. I did use to post here somewhat frequently, a couple of years ago (I was a big fan of the old "fiction writing" thread) but I sort of quit frequenting the forum, when I realized that the undue amounts of energy I would occasionally spend procrastinatingly posting about writing, could be probably put to better use actually, you know, writing. So I've been on a - what - 3 year hiatus from CC? Probably, something like that. Well, the long and short of it is I did manage to write my novel - literary fiction - and I did manage to get it picked up by a publisher and published in book chains and stores across the country. I'm not from the US by the way, and English is my second language, so bear with me. Quoting for posterity. I did like this post and it resonated with me, and it's something I've been realising more and more as I sit down to do the dirty work of just writing a few thousand words a day, every day, and what it means to my personal life to take that responsibility. It's important to write well, but it's more important to write, and to finish what you write. Although if I were your editor I'd cut out about 2/3 of that post. And ask you to add more descriptions of turgid, throbbing members.
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Aug 11, 2013 22:43
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It seems strange to me to want to write a story without having an overarching point or message to the story. As the above poster said, why are you writing if you don't know what it is you're writing about? You can start with a concept, a scenario, and progress from there in your world-building -- but the whole thing needs to be built around ideas. You're transmitting a concept to your audience, you're trying to broadcast some profundity that will alter people's worldview, even if it only lasts as long as it takes to read your story. You're trying to take them someplace and make them see something different for a while, something they couldn't ever experience just by living their own life. Sometimes endings change, and that's fine. But you need to base your project around ideas, around concepts. A story, no matter how well it's told, that ends without significance -- that's a slap to the face of the reader. They need to know that what they just read has meaning. It's why so many people start at the end and work their way back. e: It's very "80's business guy", very "Hollywood", but it's worth treating your story ideas like an elevator pitch -- try to reduce the 'gist' of it to a 30-second segment. Try to make it enticing, and try to impose some sense of meaning to it. Summarise the meanings of your story and the lessons learned by either the audience or the characters within your story. You may find yourself re-writing a hell of a lot of stuff that is actually meaningless as far as literature is concerned. Words on a page don't make it a story. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Sep 13, 2013 |
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Sep 13, 2013 21:36
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ravenkult posted:Sometimes you have an idea but it doesn't work out and then you're stuck? What's the idea then, what's the moral of the story -- take it to its natural conclusion.
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Sep 13, 2013 21:45
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This thread is always so hyper-aggressive with people coming out and accusing others of not understanding literature and of being the worst type of person there could ever be. It would be funnier if it didn't have that faint ring of 'cult' about it. I don't think there's anything unreasonable about saying that anything that's written should have the intent of imparting something upon the reader. I never said it had to be atlas shrugged or that it had to attempt to revolutionise somebody's world view. The actual examples I used suggested, in my mind, that you should write in a way that encourages the reader to engage with your story and the characters within, and feel (either at the time or after they've finished) that they're actually reading it for a reason. "Enjoying the story" is, of course, a reason, and the main one, but what makes people enjoy reading stories? They've got to have some reason to engage with it, and if you can't think of a reason why somebody is going to engage with your story then maybe you need to go back to what you think makes your story special or noteworthy, and follow that. Somebody reading ridiculous erotica is excited about reading the story because it offers them a chance to place themselves in the shoes of someone who gets to have amazing, otherworldly space sex with vampires and tentacled werewolves. They wouldn't get that opportunity in everyday life, nor even on special occasions, and this offers them a chance to see what that's like. It offers them a vicarious experience, something new and exciting. Once you identify that experience as the main draw of your story to these people (and presumably they're reading one-handed), you can better frame your story, its content, and its writing style. You can also get a better feel for pacing and where the natural conclusion of the story is because you have some sense of what your readers might want to get out of it. Saying "your story has to have a point for its readers" is simply reminding you that you're writing for an audience, even if it's just (as Stephen King says) a single person, and you hope the rest of the world shares some of their interests. Trying to conflate that point with some ridiculous criticism of condescending proselytism is a nonsensical and possibly deliberate misinterpretation, and I think you'd benefit by hopping off the post-post-modernism bandwagon, as if there weren't just as many schools making fun of that poo poo as well. The world's a big place and there are a lot of varied reasons for doing a lot of varied things, and of course any definite statement you say can be picked apart by pedants. But I see no problem with encouraging people who have already started writing a story and have no idea where it goes, what happens, what any of it means, to ask themselves: "Why are you writing? Why are your readers reading it?" And to work from there and focus on what you really care about in the story, the parts that made you transition from "thinking about cool poo poo" to "putting pen to paper and creating it so that other people can see it too". Jesus that's a lot of words to defend such a simple and already-established concept. e: Maybe you're all getting upset over the use of words like "ideas" and "concepts" in the original post, as if that wasn't the basis of all fiction writing. Every emotion or action or in-world thought that diverges from the utterly emotionless and mundane is an idea and a concept that you're getting across to the audience. I sure as poo poo wouldn't be interested in reading a story about how Peter went to the shops. Peter bought some things. Peter went to work. Peter ate lunch. Peter finished work and went home. Peter did some other things and went to bed. What on earth are you guys writing, if you're not using ideas and concepts that diverge from the everyday? Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Sep 14, 2013 |
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Sep 14, 2013 08:34
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Chairchucker posted:There were a lot of words here that I mostly skipped over because I have a short attention span so I'm just going to address this one sentence. I know you acknowledge it but saying "I didn't read the post" and then arguing about stuff that's not in the post you're quoting (or that is directly contrasted in the post) is a bit silly. I think if you go back and actually read what I'm saying and take it on its own basis, rather than trying to conflate it with whoever or whatever you're apparently so upset about, you'll find that I nowhere mention any of the things you're saying. It was a suggestion for a starting point for a writer who doesn't know what to write. It doesn't seem unreasonable to ask the question "Why are you writing?". I'm not casting aspersions on the quality or "worth" of what he's writing. I'm suggesting that writing comes from someone deciding that they have something they want to write. As I said before, but you'll be probably be reading this for the first time: The 'point(s)' of the piece can largely derive from what pushes you from "thinking about it" to "writing about it" -- it's something you're trying to convey to the reader. Even something as simple as "here's what it would be like to have sex with a four-dicked vampire werewolf". I still don't understand why it's such blasphemy to encourage somebody to think about what they want to write. We can't come up with your story for you. We can point out plot holes, but the story comes from you. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Sep 14, 2013 |
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Sep 14, 2013 10:39
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Chairchucker posted:PS what the hell is that? We're in a cult because we all independently think the idea that a story needs a higher purpose is dumb? You're sounding cultish because you're all jumping on a hyper-aggressive contrarian bandwagon without bothering to attempt comprehension of what I'm saying. You've misinterpreted my point, taken the stick and gone running deep into the woods where no-one can ever catch you. You yourself said that you didn't even really read my post. Does that sound like the admission of a person who is in full command of their critical thinking and approaching the discussion from an open and considerate standpoint?
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Sep 14, 2013 10:41
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Chairchucker posted:Your original point appears to be... hang on, scroll scroll scroll... "It seems strange to me to want to write a story without having an overarching point or message to the story." Let me see what else... "You're transmitting a concept to your audience, you're trying to broadcast some profundity that will alter people's worldview." Oh and also "A story, no matter how well it's told, that ends without significance -- that's a slap to the face of the reader." Actually, I agree with all of those things. I stand by them. Perhaps I should have added "at least one overarching point or message", but I clarified that in a subsequent post. I even explained how mindless erotica follows the same concept of storytelling, which I take to be the transmission of ideas, emotions, experiences etc. I can't think of any book or story I've ever read that would exist without trying to convey some idea to the audience that seeks to introduce something new, or a new way of looking at things -- or even a more enhanced emotional reaction to something we take for granted, such as the underappreciated impact of cancer, suicide, rape, or even love. And that follows all the way into fantasy and sci-fi. There can be, and there often is, more than one overarching meaning to the story, the concept the author is trying to explore and convey, but each point at which the writer decides to put pen to paper is largely in comprehension of a single theme. It's the point that, as I've said, turns idle musing into something he wishes to communicate to someone. That can happen thousands of times in a longer book, or even just once or twice in a very short story. It's the point of wanting to convey something to the reader, with the expectation that the reader will find it significant, even if it's just a simple vicarious experience of sexual fetishism. Similarly, if you end a story or book without ever having engaged the reader, and the reader puts down your story without having taken anything away from it or ever having cared about anything that goes in there, either emotionally or intellectually... then you've failed as a writer. Utterly. Like I said, I can't imagine the idea of saying "I want to write a story" and not caring what it's about or what's in it. You have something you want to write, figure out what it actually is and follow that. You're free to continue to disagree with me or what you may have understood of my point, but I probably won't reply again unless it'll actually add something new to the discussion. I'm moving house and this whole thing seems like it's just been a huge derail, and I'm not quite sure people are understanding me properly. When it devolves into cherrypicking quotes and saying "Aha your clarifications and explanations are meaningless, I've found a line from your initial post that I choose to interpret in a different way, it's your failing as a poster in not having accounted for all possible misinterpretations of your original post! And no clarifications allowed, I won't read them." -- well, then it's time to shut up and let you guys do your thing. Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Sep 14, 2013 |
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Sep 14, 2013 12:05
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I've always been a fan of "Please go to the master bedroom and look inside the chest of drawers by the window, you'll find a bundle of letters hidden under the socks, get it and bring it back to me," yelled Harry.
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Nov 1, 2015 23:02
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another thing to consider is that if your conversation is so long and the dialogue lacks characterisation or context such that it's impossible to tell who is speaking without writing ", said Harry." after every line then probably your dialogue as a whole needs revision essentially the question is "what are some neat tricks to shore up weak and muddy dialogue". start from the bottom up. the very first question you should be asking is "do i even need dialogue", not that dialogue is inherently bad but if you're not at least asking yourself that question then you're on a dangerous path magnificent7 posted:Cormac McCarthy didn't need no goddamn "said" nonsense. Neither do you. yeah fiction writing 101 just do whatever cormac mccarthy or hemmingway do, duh Sulla Faex fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Nov 2, 2015 |
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Nov 2, 2015 10:19
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glad i wasnt the only one cracking up at that post what a character
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Jan 17, 2016 23:43
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I don't know which thread to put this in but I made a dinky little word count tracker for Scrivener on Windows. I built it for my own needs and it works alright on my machine, but I figure other people might find it useful as well. It'll track positive changes to word counts per chapter, add them up, and you can look at them in a graph, for which you can filter by project, date, and time period. It's quite easy to set up. The installation instructions are basically: quote:1. Download from GitHub; extract. But there are more detailed instructions in the link. Feedback would be very welcome
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Nov 27, 2016 17:19
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change my name posted:Think of writing as being one of those North Korean soldiers who have chairs smashed over their backs every day so that they grow more bone mass. it's good to see the north korean domestic chair manufacturers lobby making such strong headway in their protectionist agenda
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Jan 8, 2017 12:19
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