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General Battuta posted:You should finish books because a) getting over the hump from 'wow what a great premise!' to 'oh god how do i story' is super hard, and b) pulling all the threads together and converging all the choices and making an end is EVEN HARDER, and you won't practice either of these things if you're drafting your first 15k over and over. In my experience, holding yourself to a wordcount is only useful when you pair it with a certain amount of narrative progress. For example, today my goal is to write 1300 words, and my goal for those 1300 is to have a specific character enter the scene and deliver a specific piece of information to the protagonist. If I write those 1300 words and I haven't even gotten the delivery character through the door, then something went wrong along the way. Sometimes it does feel good to just meander, but I usually open up side files to do that. It helps me hit a quota for the day without feeling like I'm screwing progress in a working novel.
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May 20, 2016 21:09
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change my name posted:Real talk though, if you're looking to get published at all then it's a good idea to follow at least a few agents on Twitter. They all seem to love giving out helpful advice, and one piece I've taken to heart is "if your characters spend more time talking about their adventure than having them, your book is bad". This advice doesn't work for my book, "Getting High With White People".
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May 30, 2016 01:47
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Scrivener has been a godsend for me because I can keep the manuscript drafts, query drafts, synopsis drafts, and cut material all in the same document. Also I have outlines and character details I can refer back to with a single click if I ever forget something, rather than having to hunt through some other folder or something.
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Jul 27, 2016 05:44
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Lit fic gets a bum rap because people are primarily exposed to it through mandatory reading in high school, and nobody likes anything that reminds them of high school.
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Aug 27, 2016 22:26
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I've been shopping around an adult contemporary fantasy for about four months now, and after several query revisions and 30-some rejections, the only feedback I've gotten on rejected full requests (of which there have been a couple) has been 'good characters, good writing, not what I'm looking for on my list'. I don't really know where to go from here. I've still got about a dozen queries out and I'm not ready to give up on this one yet, but I don't have any concrete feedback I can use to improve. The closest thing I've gotten to a critique was a rejection from an agent whose comment was 'I couldn't connect with the mc's problems because he's a white male' (verbatim), and that's not really something I can use. I guess I'm just venting since I have nowhere else to go with this poo poo, but it's been pretty stressful and getting good feedback is like pulling teeth. poo poo, at this point I'd even take 'Your book blows goats for the following reasons' if the reasons were stuff I could use. Getting published is hard 
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Aug 29, 2016 18:34
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Megazver posted:TBH I'd just recommend that you write a new one while you send the first one out. Most writers first sell, like, the third or fifth or even tenth novel they write. I'm on the second draft of something else now and am planning to have it ready for querying probably by the end of this year, if not sooner. I've also got outlines for the projects after that. This isn't my first novel queried either, but I've still only been at this for a couple of years so the rejection's still taking a toll. Danknificent posted:30 is a very small number. It's meaningless. It's perfectly normal and nothing to feel discouraged over. Keep going and get feedback. My issue with the 30 isn't so much the amount as it is the percentage of agents currently repping SFF. By my best estimation, I've either been rejected by or have open queries with about half the agents who rep what I'm selling and also aren't con artists. I don't mind getting a poo poo ton of rejections if I still have options available, but each rejection represents one fewer option out of a vanishingly small number of agents. HIJK posted:You could always try self publishing and get some feedback from that. Alternately, hit up a free beta reader or a friend or pay an editor to look it over? I've had the book read in full by four people in one writing group, six people in a second writing group, two colleagues, one parent (other parent is suddenly claiming to be illiterate, thanks dad), and at least two agents now. Everybody's feedback has either been 'its fine as it is' or 'its good but its not for me'. As for editors, I don't really have a thousand bucks to throw around to get someone to read it over for me. Self-publishing is a dead end for me too, because my success in self-publishing will hinge as much on my marketing accumen as it will my writing. Seeing as I'm bad at interacting with people and hated the 5+ years I spent working in marketing, it's really not the route I want to go down. Plus, I'm not ready to give up on getting this book traditionally published yet, and most of the agencies I've been querying have said they don't accept material that's already been self-published. I don't know if that's bullshit or not, but I'd rather not risk my already-slim chances. FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Aug 30, 2016 |
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Aug 30, 2016 00:04
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Danknificent posted:I know the feeling of worrying about running out of agents to submit to; my solution was always to have another book ready to go if I reached the end of the line so I could immediately begin submitting it. Sounds like you're doing something similar. It's a solid strat. It's a mistake to get hung up on any one book. Thanks for the encouagement, I really do appreciate it. I don't think my book is TOO out there that it's limiting my pool of agents; it's more that I keep running into agencies with the 'no from one is a no from all' policy. Seeing as there's only forty or so reputable agencies, that poo poo's really limiting.
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Aug 30, 2016 01:11
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Thanks for the goon-peptalk, guys. It always helps to get support from people who know what I'm going through. Thanks to the pick-me-up, I just sent out three more queries today so hopefully those will take the sting out of form rejection on the full that put me in a funk this morning.
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Aug 30, 2016 02:23
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Sailor Viy posted:I want to get my novel read by that many people. Can you expand a bit on how you did this? Were they in person writing groups or online? How many of the people who read it were SFF writers themselves? And do you think it was worth the effort, considering that apparently that feedback wasn't all that helpful to you? I went on meetup.com and typed in 'writing groups' for my area. Now, granted, I live in the Bay Area, so there's no shortage of people with spare time and big dreams. If you're trying to get together a writing group in Peotone, IL, you're probably not going to have the kind of success I did. For the one group, it's a large group focused on general writing (everything from poetry to toastmaster's speeches), and the other group is a smaller group focused specifically on people writing SFF novels. As for whether or not it's been worth it, it definitely has been. When I say the feedback I'm getting now isn't doing much for me, it's because I've spent over a year beating up the the book with those groups to get it to this point. It's only now that I've put in all their feedback that I have it to the point where everyone's saying 'yeah, it's solid the way it is'. I've done everything from dropping plot-lines to cutting perspective characters based on their feedback and I can say without a doubt that my book is better for it. Now, as to how I got other people like friends and family to read it, that's what I'm actually pretty pleased at. My last two books, I didn't get any interest from friends and family beyond the first couple of chapters. One noteworthy moment is when my husband refused to finish my last book, on the grounds that 'It's like Ready Player One - and that's not a compliment'. With that sick burn rolling around in my head, I went back and wrote something better, and he actually finished it and claims to have enjoyed it. Considering he's been more than willing to rip my poo poo apart in the past, his approval actually means something to me. More than one of my friends read the thing from front to back without prompting, too, and that's some of the coolest poo poo I've ever experienced. Those interactions more than anything else are the reason I still want to keep trying with this book. If I can get picky and/or disinterested readers to finish it without compensation or nagging, then I know I've got something.
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Aug 30, 2016 03:56
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A new, concrete example of feedback: I submitted the first chapter and query to a big writing contest a few weeks ago, and didn't get any requests for any more material. I just got the feedback from one of the judges. "Your [entry] was particularly astonishing in its creativity - I thought back on it a lot.The style feels like China Mielville -- fun, but not my personal strong point for mentoring. (It's a book I'd buy but couldn't help coach.) This is incredibly creative, and honestly I'm surprised someone else didn't pick it up. I suspect that's just because of style preferences." Feedback from another judge: "I just wanted to let you know that the good writing and characters in your entry caught my eye. You were in my maybe or yes folder, though unfortunately I didn't have time to request pages. Personal taste will certain be a factor but good writing shows." So yeah. People have read it, people have liked it, but......... I dunno. It just isn't working for anybody? FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Aug 30, 2016 |
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Aug 30, 2016 16:03
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ravenkult posted:I'll read a couple of chapters if you want to. I run a small press (make of that what you will). Sure, you got PMs? If you do, I'll just PM you a couple of chapters, since I've already got every possible permutation of partial requests ready to send at a moment's notice. crabrock posted:i dunno dude, those sound like really encouraging results, and I think now you're just playing a numbers game. Find that dude/lady who wants to go all in on it. If all else fails, shelve it, write another, and then when shopping that one around you can be like "also i have another book." i have no idea if that's attractive to agents, but if i were an agent i would think "hey somebody who wrote a book I like also has another book ALREADY DONE i may also like, what a good client!" It sure worked for Brandon Sanderson
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Aug 30, 2016 16:19
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Cool. As I'm looking at my first few chapters now readying them to send, I'm already seeing some stuff I want to change, so I think I'll actually hold off on sending for a little while. I'll keep your email in mind though!
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Aug 30, 2016 16:27
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Thranguy posted:Something I've gotten more than a few times in feedback when I try to write action is that everything ends up being too easy for my main characters. How can I fix that? Looking for tips on writing action sequences featuring active and competent characters that can make it feel like they have real, serious opposition and threat, ways to put something in between a character having a problem and them using their skills and abilities to solve it that doesn't feel like stalling for time, that kind of thing. Just remember, the best action sequences come when the antagonist is just as active, skilled, and competent as the protagonist. If you can consider how the antagonist is struggling to succeed just like the protagonist, you can raise the stakes for both of them and create tension because only one of them is able to succeed.
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Sep 8, 2016 20:29
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As a way of distracting myself while pitching every agent in my genre with a pulse, I'm fine-tuning my next manuscript. I just threw together a first draft of a query and I need people who have no frame of reference whatsoever to beat it up for me and tell me why it's poo poo. Anybody wanna take a crack at it?quote:Jane Doherty wants to quit using heroin, but getting high is her only source of happiness. Her equally-addicted boyfriend Charlie says his life is just as hard as hers, but Jane has trouble believing him until he tells her why. He’s got a stone with the power to warp reality, but he isn’t the only one. There’s a group of people with powers like his, and it’s Charlie’s job to kill them before they can kill him. I'm sure it's got typos and I know the grammar/syntax/voice all needs work, but right now I'm just trying to figure out if the thing makes sense before I rip it up line by line. Please feel free to tell me to eat poo poo in the most constructive way possible.
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Sep 9, 2016 23:23
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HIJK posted:My first thought is that sounds kinda boring and it really shouldn't be considering the sequence of events. bigperm posted:I personally would need several compelling reasons to root for a selfish heroin addict and your blurb has zero. Both good points. The first is (I hope) a function of this being a first pass, as I haven't put any effort into making the thing enticing yet - right now I'm just going for coherent. As for the second point, I can see what you mean. I dumbed down Jane's motivations for the purpose of making them easy to relay in a query, but I can see now that dumbing them down makes her a difficult character to like. I'll work on weaving in some likable characteristics, as well as her reasons for wanting power beyond just wanting a better life.
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Sep 10, 2016 00:40
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Ironic Twist posted:Why is her "brilliant plan" to assume her boyfriend's identity and not kill anybody when it's already his job to kill people, how long could you conceivably stall from doing your job as a member of the Lich Mafia Djeser posted:Additionally, what's a "target organization" and why does she have to infiltrate it and commit crimes? Both are good questions that I can better clarify in the space of query. Ironic Twist posted:Why would she go though all that stuff when she could just do more heroin These are the ones I'm struggling to answer in such a small space. His is easier to answer: after spending his entire life with the power to be/do whatever he wants, he's decided nothing in life has meaning anymore and getting high is the only experience left that still does anything for him. Her answer is more difficult. She hasn't been using for long and considers herself a 'casual user' who can absolutely quit whenever she wants, she just hasn't found a good reason to. Her thought process is if she gets something like the power her boyfriend has, she'll obviously be able to fill all the gaps in her life that led her to start using in the first place and she won't want to get high anymore. Obviously this is not how heroin actually works and she becomes more focused on using her powers to fuel her addiction, but she doesn't set out to go balls-deep into addiction from the get-go.
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Sep 10, 2016 04:18
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Can the story be preserved without the heroin addiction? Probably about as well as you can preserve Trainspotting without the heroin addiction, so you be the judge on that. Edit: after giving it some thought, it seems like I have two separate problems: 1) the protagonist is unlikable, and 2) the protagonist is a heroin addict. Right now, id say 1) is an equal failing in both the query and the manuscript. If I want people to empathize with the mc and still keep her as an addict, I need to work twice as hard to make her likable and right now she's not even likable for someone sober. Fortunately, it's my query and my manuscript, so I can actually make those changes to fix that. As for 2), it's a story about addiction. Yes, I could probably change it to something socially acceptable like alcohol, but the problem with doing something socially acceptable is that you then end up with another group of people who look at it and say 'lol alcoholism isn't a problem'. Like, for example, how everyone in gbs is an alcoholic and seems pretty goddamned good with it. Because heroin isn't socially acceptable, it's something everyone can look at and say 'this is a bad thing and her life cannot continue down this path', which is the point. At the end of the day, addiction stories shouldn't be about the drug itself, but why the person is using. If you use something like alcohol or pot - something everybody is cool with - then you run the risk of readers thinking not 'can she quit' but 'does she even need to?' FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Sep 10, 2016 |
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Sep 10, 2016 15:58
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Danknificent posted:How many people who want a story about addiction reach for the fantasy shelf? How many people who want a fantasy want a story about addiction? Do you watch Trainspotting and think to yourself "What this story needs is some saturday morning magic antics," or Stephen Universe and think "This show needs more heroin," These are all good points. On the other hand, I already don't have an agent and I definitely won't get one by not putting the book out there, so the worst case scenario is that I shop it around, it doesn't sell, and I start over again with a new book. That's my plan regardless, so it doesn't much matter if I shove this book to the side now or if I put the extra three months of work into polishing it and shopping it around. At the end of the day, I'm 29 years old; I can spare a couple months of my life to trip over myself on this and get another round of practice querying and handling rejection. I won't be any worse off for trying, and I highly doubt agents will remember passing on this project in a year when I try and shop something new. HIJK posted:I'm not sure "likable" is what you should aim for. "Sympathetic" would work better. You don't necessarily need to like a protagonist to be sympathetic to them and empathize with their struggles. You can think "wow, I feel so sorry for this person" and "geez what a piece of poo poo" at the same time. So there's nothing wrong with having a heroin addict for a protagonist, but it does mean you have to work to make the audience care about them, and in the case of query letter, assure the agent that yes, there are many disparate elements here, but that it's still an engaging read. More good points. So the way the stone/magic stuff ties into her addiction is, she got addicted to drugs after her parents died from radiation due to fallout from a recent war. When Charlie (the boyfriend) tells Jane about his powers, he says 'oh and the other people who have powers like mine are the children of the people who started the war that killed your parents, and they did it for fun and profit'. So now she's got the opportunity to get close to these people and avenge her family, but she gets to know them and figures out they're just as hosed up as she is, and she feels guilty because she can't kill them and it makes her that much more vulnerable to seeing getting high as the only means of escape. FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Sep 10, 2016 |
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Sep 10, 2016 17:36
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Megazver posted:So it's junkie fiction, urban fantasy and post-apocalyptic? Will there be spaceships as well? You do know you can use a nuclear bomb without it being the apocalypse, right? America's already done it twice before.
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Sep 10, 2016 18:03
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Megazver posted:So just urban fantasy and near future scifi, gotcha. To me, scifi implies the writer has an understanding of science, but my high school's insistence on me taking hydrology instead of bio insures I do not. Chairchucker posted:Mmm yes, the idea of there being drug use in the aftermath of a nuclear war is completely ridiculous. Some of it is, but I DID tell people to poo poo on me, so I'm thinking this is working as intended. Regardless, I'm seeing a lot of the pitfalls I need to avoid/stuff I need to clarify, so I'd call this whole thing a net win. Even if I do need to pull on my dogs mouth to make it looks like hes saying 'I love you' so I feel better...
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Sep 10, 2016 18:08
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Holy poo poo, and here I thought I'd have to get published to have people hate my work this much. This is like all the fun of a bad review with none of the drudgery that comes with having a career behind it.
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Sep 10, 2016 18:38
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Djeser posted:What is worse to the goon writer, jukies or sports? New pitch for a story: dude who competes in the drug olympics and has to take the most drugs to win. He's cool, hot, and a certified sex-haver, but the popularity courts will rip up his sex-having certification if he fails the drug-off. If he wants to succeed in continuing a life of awesome hetero-sex, he's got to do drugs in a cooler and more badass way than anyone has ever done them before. Also he's got a magic rock. EDIT In retrospect this might just be a magic Beerfest. FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Sep 10, 2016 |
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Sep 10, 2016 22:43
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change my name posted:Wasn't this just The Magicians? I seem to recall the main guy from the Magicians working very hard to remind everyone how he's not cool at all and instead extremely misunderstood and edgy, like Reaper. In fairness, most of what I recall from that book is tainted by book two being about them summoning a rapist furry.
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Sep 10, 2016 23:28
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RedTonic posted:
I don't know what a race-walker is, but in my head I'm imagining it as some kind of day-walker style vampire that can switch races at nighttime, giving them the ability to write in the 'own voices' category for multiple diverse narratives.
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Sep 11, 2016 00:08
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RedTonic posted:Trans-ethnic. I have no idea what the gently caress I just read but I think I was moved by it.
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Sep 11, 2016 00:29
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Ironic Twist posted:Thunderdome isn't a cure-all, but it helped give me an incentive to write on a regular basis and introduced me to a stable writing group that provided advice and criticism, something which I'd never had before. Already got both of those. Been writing every day for over two years now and I'm a member of two writing groups, one broad and one focused on speculative fiction. Thunderdome sounds pretty cool, but between shopping around one book, editing another, and outlining a third, I'm not exactly brimming with time to take on side projects. If anything, I've got too much on my plate. Having said that, this thread has been a very good source of advice, which is especially amazing since it's usually dead. I definitely didn't expect my query to attract this much attention, I'll say that much. Kaishai posted:I loathe drug use in all forms and my interest in Trainspotting is precisely zero, but I've read urban fantasy with a junkie protagonist who was also a bit of an rear end in a top hat and enjoyed it. Mind telling me which one? I'm not happy with one of my comp titles and it's hard to search goodreads for 'urban fantasy with addiction issues' when the addiction isn't to werewolf dick. FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Sep 11, 2016 |
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Sep 11, 2016 18:44
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HIJK posted:Are y'all ready to die for your art? This guy needs to quit stealing material. 
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Sep 17, 2016 20:37
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HIJK posted:I found my writing group on Meet Up so it's at least worth checking out. I did the same thing. Tindr is also good though, especially since you can get double the value by getting valuable feedback on sex.
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Sep 23, 2016 06:07
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The more he wrote, the more he shat, and the more he shat, the more he wrote.
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Sep 25, 2016 03:57
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neongrey posted:Yeah, that's fair. I don't like arguing with crit in general, partly because I'm the sort of person who likes to talk aloud about how I'm going to address it and that by nature already sounds argumentative; I don't like to muddle it with real argument. But there's definitely an art to figuring out what crit's useful and how you can adapt crit into something that will help your story. And I don't think there's anything wrong with clarification; I know some people here don't like it but sometimes I have been genuinely unsure what people are talking about and still had access to them, so hey. Without having read your book, it's possible what the crit person was trying (and failing) to say was that your book lacks either any redeeming characters or understandable antagonists. I'll be the first to agree with you that organized religion is hosed, but it's one thing to write an op-ed around it and another thing to structure a narrative around it. If you have a group of characters in fiction where they're all a piece of poo poo, it comes off as flat, even if it's true to reality. But again, I haven't read your book and that's all just speculation, so it's entirely likely that the person's critique was dumb and your story is fine the way it is. I only present the devil's advocate argument because I've gotten critiques in the past that I thought were bad, only to later realize they scratched the surface of an actual problem that the person critiquing didn't know how to articulate.
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Oct 18, 2016 04:30
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Well glowing birthmark is basically 'super badass and cool' fantasy trait number one, even if there aren't too many concrete examples. It's just one of those traits that an inexperienced writer would think exudes badass, like a character brooding about darkness or being able to sense some 'evil' that only they can feel.
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Oct 18, 2016 17:21
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vintagepurple posted:Hey fiction thread. I've been trawling through this thread off-and-on and am still a good 2 years behind, but I wanted to say, at the tail end of a lovely relationship I drunkenly stumbled upon this thread and somehow it convinced me to take writing, an old dream, seriously instead of writing myself off (lol). I've been doing Writing Excuses prompts, flash fiction, and trying to hit 1000 words a day. The occasional short story, trying to work myself up to being decent, and mulling book ideas once I feel I can tackle that. Somehow my love of writing and english has translated into finding my calling and now I'm poised to actually finish my degree and then either tackle a law school or medieval lit academia track later on. This is after six years of job-and-school drifting and being inspired and driven is foreign to me. So thanks thread. You'll have better luck finding work in medieval lit than you will in law. Either way, good luck and congrats on finding out what you love.
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Oct 25, 2016 15:05
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crabrock posted:can i hide behind "it's a character saying it, so it doesn't matter?" That's your answer, yes. Unless one of your characters is Dr. Manhattan or something, none of them should be capable of knowing all objective truth, which means they can spout facts they believe with certaintly even though they're wrong. Everybody on earth's done it at one time or another, so it's not like it's an unrealistic line to give a character.
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Oct 26, 2016 16:48
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Kaishai posted:Semicolons have another, rather neat purpose that isn't often mentioned. You know how you'll usually separate items in a list with a comma? "I went to Wal-Mart and bought bread, milk, cheese, and simulated emeralds," that kind of thing. Usually that works fine, but it gets messy when individual items in the list contain commas. If you tell me you invited Dan, a scientist, Margaret, a welder, and Vinny to a party, how am I supposed to know whether you invited three people or five? I just ran into this yesterday and got tripped up on the last part with 'a welder; and Vinny' because it wandered into Oxford comma territory and I didn't know what the hell the semicolon rules were there.
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Oct 26, 2016 19:19
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If the cause of your problems is Thunderdome, I'd say you should take a break from doing Thunderdome. Try writing on a different schedule and seeing if you feel differently about what you produce.
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Nov 3, 2016 23:15
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I've written short stories in present tense and really enjoyed it, but I don't think I could write a whole novel that way. I've read whole novels that way (YA spec fic does this a ton, as other people have mentioned), and while I don't particularly enjoy it, I've never once read a book and thought it was ruined by the present tense. Chances are, if I think the book was bad, I can name about a dozen reasons before tense hits the list.
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Nov 8, 2016 17:17
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anime was right posted:thanks, comrade. I started by going on QueryTracker and putting in my age bracket/genre, then went and looked at the websites and twitter accounts of the agents that popped up under the search. The agency websites show you if they have enough sales to prove legitimacy and the twitter accounts show you if the agent is a decent person or a dick. Beyond that, you can look up agents on AbsoluteWrite, Publisher's Marketplace, or Predators and Editors if you want a broader sense of what they've accomplished and what kind of success a client of theirs is likely to have. Every book sale is different, of course, but you can be pretty confident that you'll have better luck with Senior Agent Eddie Punchclock and his 200 Big Five sales than you will with Junior Agent Sally Housecoat and her 2 sales to a random small press. PS: Take all my advice with a grain of salt because I haven't managed to get an agent. I have, however, gotten at least sixty rejections, which means I at least know how to find agents. I just don't know what to do with them once I've found them. FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 19:03
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I just threw myself back into the querying pool after finishing out a writing contest where my manuscript was chosen for a free round of professional editing. The book and the query are both much stronger for the editing, but I'm still not holding my breath about getting an agent to take a gamble on my heroin-supervillain-near future-alternate history. I figure I definitely won't get an agent for it if I shelve the fucker, though, so I'm gonna keep at it while working on something else. Hooray??
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Dec 9, 2016 23:58
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:Keep marchin' on. You're definitely not alone. I know, that's the hosed up part! I'm not special at all because there's a billion people who are just as good/better than me and they're vying for the same few dozen agency contracts around. It's a pretty sobering thought - like, even if I'm not bad, it's still not enough when there's people who are better. Maybe I should take advice from the GBS relationship thread and try compersion?
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Dec 10, 2016 00:26
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Danknificent posted:It doesn't work like that. It's not good/better. Somewhere there's a fuzzy line that separates competitive, professional fiction from the rest. Once you're over that line, relative quality becomes meaningless. It's not about beating out other people, it's just your query catching the right person at the right moment in the right mood. Yeah, I've read enough horror stories about agents disappearing/publishers going under/editors eviscerating books that I've got some idea of what it's like once you get past the agent hurdle. Still, I'd rather not worry about problems I don't have (yet), at least until I've figured out how to not worry about this step.
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Dec 10, 2016 00:55
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