|
The worst thing about querying is the wait.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2021 09:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 1, 2024 02:11 |
|
|
There is something kinda funny about ostensibly writing a story using an RPG system but then you start fudging dice rolls because they're messing up the plot, though.
|
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2021 08:26
|
|
|
Multiple agents have similar sentiments as a required question in their submission forms. Insane poo poo. My response has been similar to that tweet.
|
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2021 04:11
|
|
|
This stuff sucks. Writing is tough enough without this self-inflicted meme-y angst. The best thing anyone can do is stop looking at this kind of "content."
|
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2021 09:17
|
|
Did someone say web serials?HIJK posted:How do web serials get traction? Is there a business model or do you just post and pray? Wildbow got lots of attention but he's kind of the exception I think Wildbow put in a lot of hard work and effort but he also got extremely lucky when Eliezer Yudkowsky gave him a shout out at the height of rationalist mania. Even Wildbow admits that this was a significant turning point and what ultimately allowed him to do what he does today. The other thing that allowed him to do it is that he was able to live off a Patreon of 1000-2000 a month before he launched Ward. The 'independent' web serial community was also a lot more active back during Worm's first few years. As a creative, Wildbow does very little to actually market his work or reach new fans. He's very lucky the Worm fanbase is so energised and has managed to get him where he is after an actual decade. But I mean, think of it this way: he's been working his rear end off for a decade and it appears he hit his peak with Ward, the controversial sequel to Worm. If you're not posting on RoyalRoad then, well, here's the hard truth: you don't. The web serial community is a shadow of what it was just a few years ago (although RoyalRoad is doing better than ever.) I think the goon-written Katalepsis is one of the more successful web serials If you're posting on RoyalRoad, then as others have said, you want to post every day and at different times of day. Preferably you want to post multiple updates a day. Getting on the Trending lists is paramount. There used to be a way to game the algorithm to make that very easy but I think they've caught it and fixed it. There is a model but even then you're relying on luck. It's no different from any other kind of online content creation where it follows a Pareto distribution (or, as Freddie de Boer pointed out with Patreon, a Pareto within a Pareto.) If you're asking this because you're thinking of writing a web serial... To be frank, write a web serial as a way of forcing you to write x amount of words a week. I would not recommend writing it if you are intending any kind of significant income. That way, you might as well just go down the Amazon route. Even Wildbow would probably make way more money putting his stuff on Amazon than depending on Patreon donations. When I say Amazon I do not mean Vella, their serial platform. Based on authors I know who have been using it, that thing is apparently on its last legs already and I can't imagine it lasting too much longer. Sailor Viy posted:Thanks for pointing this out, based on the Zogarth interview I got the impression that any LGBT characters would get your story downvoted into oblivion. I had a story with three LGBT protagonists and it was never a problem on RR or otherwise. However, my RR traction was not particularly great as I was writing an introspective/philosophical action thriller (topped out at #118, I think) so I probably skated by the stuff someone like Zogarth talks about. Either way, I hit #2 on TopWebFiction for a while, so, it was never much of an issue. Dream Weaver posted:I'm not saying it's easy. But otherwise even Elle Griffin, who has nailed the marketing game as much as anyone could, even she went from a pay wall for her own novel on substack, to a different model almost immediately. A month in and she changed and then wrote about it so it's fascinating. I spoke with Elle Griffin a few times and she seems like a lovely person but I feel she fell right into the trap that so many prospective writers do when they first hear about web serials. That is, and I'm including myself in this, they think something along the lines of 'Wait, people will pay this much for [any given web serial]? It shouldn't be too hard to do that!' and immediately find out that, sure, there's an audience -- but it's an extremely limited one with very narrow tastes (see also: Vella.) Her whole interview thing seemed like an interesting attempt to ingratiate with a bunch of the biggest writers in the hopes of finding an audience that way. I think she's ditched her Substack serial writers Discord and serial subreddit she set up, too, and turned to funding a web novel via crypto apparently which feels like further evidence that she didn't find whatever returns she was looking for. She had a plan, she came out swinging, and then shifted gears very quickly. There's an emerging band of people who want to post fiction on Substack but I have no idea how it's working out for them. Elle's own chapters seem to have less traction than her articles which is matched by what I know of Freddie De Boer's fiction. There was an article I read on Substack recently that was about the way you succeed at making money on the platform and it's big point was that, basically, you want to write something that people can't get from normal/traditional media. This is the same with web serials, which is why the big money makers are all basically LitRPGs. The issue I think Elle had is that there's just no significant audience for normal genre fiction and the number who'll pay for it is even less. They can just... go buy an Ebook for 4.99 and get a full story. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Jan 5, 2022 |
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2022 05:55
|
|
Megazver posted:The LitRPGs are what pulls in four to five figure Patreons, I'm afraid. That's Alexander Wales. edit: This isn't intended as snark. But Wales is a very active guy, has a consistent work ethic since like 2017, and has Worth the Candle under his belt. And he's a nice dude on top of that. I'd say that $2k is a bit less than what he should be getting given that creative history. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Jan 5, 2022 |
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2022 12:18
|
|
change my name posted:Related: My current WIP is what I hope will be the first in a fantasy series and features a queer love triangle at its heart, with the main character (a young woman) ultimately deciding to risk the position of comfort she's striving for throughout the book for another lady. I know the trend in publishing has rapidly shifted towards Own Voices in recent years and I have friends in the industry who have griped to me about how fed up they are with straight cis white dudes writing gay stories—am I going to be hosed when I query? Seconding Battuta: you're kinda hosed. My manuscript has three protagonists: asexual white male, gay white male, lesbian black female. One of these match me, two don't. Over the past few months, I've been filtered at the submission level when agents ask a question along the lines of 'If you're writing a perspective that doesn't match your identity, why is this necessary to your story?' and I've had a few email replies that basically say the same thing because I've outlined which one I am in my query letter. These may or may not be the same agents who talk up how they want to read SF/F with queer heroes and how they love representing minority voices.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2022 22:21
|
|
|
Turns out essentialism isn't just real but good business sense.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2022 22:55
|
|
|
From my lived experience, heh, Kristoff is exactly the kind of odd dude who'd say something like that.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2022 23:35
|
|
|
?
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2022 03:05
|
|
BurningBeard posted:Well then loving what? I’ve become that kind of writer that writes those kinds of books from that perspective, so now wtf’s a neophite zero-to-best-seller overnight sensation to do? This is something else I've been warned about, yeah. In my case, I wasn't sure I should list my various minority perspective things in my query, but considered it when my beta readers said they that perspective came through very strongly across the whole text. And, in my case, I think explains why I have such an interest in the genre in the first place and possibly fiction in general. quote:It seems to me that this community rebels against notions of unknowable underpinnings in craft. And I think it does so for good reason. There are plenty of unsavory peddlers of nebulous nothings whose wares are fatal to a young writer’s development. This is true, but I think the reason why people rebel against it is because it's not very helpful. There is an element of mysterious inspiration and unknowable creative processes to writing and I know from personal experience that some of my best stuff has come from lying half asleep in my bed and a sentence pops into my brain. But I think it's more important (and helpful) to emphasise the ability to just knuckle down and churn out words even when that inspiration hasn't hit you. Because sometimes really great stuff can come from that, too. And every day you spend waiting for your muse to descend from Olympus is one more day that your story remains incomplete. It stems from the same place as my curt comments on the meme posts earlier, actually. It wasn't that they were memes specifically but that they establish the act of writing as this extremely difficult arduous task and it's oh so hard, nothing is as hard as writing. To me, that kind of thing is like radiation. It might not harm you immediately, and maybe not for a while, maybe not ever, but why expose yourself? If that's the sort of atmosphere someone cultivates around writing then I don't think it's much of a surprise that writing feels so difficult or they keep finding themselves with "writer's block." I can't remember the last time I had writer's block like I used to have, and I think a lot of that comes down to how writing a web serial a few years back forced me to get used to just writing x amount of words a week. Like, writing isn't easy, either. But then it's like, hey, why make it any harder on yourself, y'know?
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2022 10:59
|
|
|
I've used Darling Axe in the past and found them to be thorough and affordable and I'd almost certainly use them again.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2022 09:50
|
|
SurreptitiousMuffin posted:oh yes this is absolutely critical, do NOT submit in comic sans, it is a great editing tool but please don't actually keep your MS in it Why couldn't you have said this three months ago!!
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2022 05:24
|
|
|
I read "filthy shades of gray" as "fifty shades of gray."
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2022 05:17
|
|
Leng posted:My turn to have a very weird question: which form of English should I use for my second kids' book? I'm Australian and write in American English. I do my utmost to remove any and all Australianisms and slang from characters who are not Australian. But I think there's something in my Australian perspective that gets people to say my manuscript has "a surreal sense of humor" which, now that I've read that essay that SurreptitiousMuffin posted, I think I'm finally understanding why Americans have that thought.
|
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2022 11:13
|
|
SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I mean, if it helps, Gideon has shaken things the gently caress up and the Yanks are actively looking for ANZ Voice right now. I cut most of it from the MS I was shopping around, then after it got picked up my US agent/editor both encouraged me to add it back in. I don't know how long that window is gonna be open, but I'm doing my damndest to make it permanent. It'd be neat if you could PM me any of these people who are looking for ANZ stuff. I'm from Australia and being Australian has only been a bit of an obstacle in my querying experience!
|
|
|
#
¿
Mar 16, 2022 10:11
|
|
|
Seemed is like tried, I think, where it feels like you'll have a better sentence if you tried (heh) to eliminate it. 'He seemed angry.' Well, why did he seem angry? 'She tried to reach the book.' Well, how did she try to reach the book? There's certain words that are there for dialogue, really, and you should try to cut down in prose. To borrow kaom's example, sometimes when I read those words in a story I don't think the narrator/character is uncertain so much that I think the author didn't know how to describe something and figured they could off-load it to the reader.
|
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2022 13:28
|
|
Junpei posted:I would like to go to every elementary/middle school English classroom and remove all posters that give a bunch of synonyms for "said" and tell you to never use it. I, too, am unable to understand that the learning activities I had in elementary school are not necessarily accurate when considering the act of writing as an adult. Come the gently caress on.
|
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2022 14:18
|
|
General Battuta posted:It just fuckin sucks. It's an awful professional environment. It is not well suited to doing things that matter like 'writing books' and 'being happy'. While I've had no experience with SFWA, my experience querying and seeing Writer Twitter with my own eyes has been illuminating as to this kind of culture and, yeah, it loving sucks. I don't really understand it and the lack of simple professionalism has been astounding.
|
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2022 03:32
|
|
|
My sf/f manuscript is 180,000~ words and the length of it has been a bit of a sticking point from some of the more detailed rejections I've received.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2022 06:17
|
|
Junpei posted:I thought it was cute and inspiring and nice and I thought some of the people here could use that energy and encouragement, do you have a problem with that? It's garbage, sorry, and if anyone is inspired by that they should punch themselves in the head until they have better epiphanies. "I had a negative comment that made me sad. I had a positive comment that made me happy." What an insight! There are no good writers? That's bullshit. That's cope. There are good writers and there are bad writers and enjoyment slash profit isn't really related to either quality which leads people to think the distinction is immaterial -- but everyone knows there are good and bad. If you're going to sit back and go, well, who cares about being a good writer, then maybe you'll just be writing slash fanfiction for the rest of your days while talking up the Perils Of Being A Writer for social media clout. Oh, your story comes from your emotions and life experiences so it can't be good or bad? Cope. The person who wrote that themselves proves that, for all their supposed quality-agnostic serenity, they'd much rather be seen as 'good' writer than a 'bad' one. Find better people to take advice and inspiration from. Find artists you respect and admire and learn from them. I've said it before, and it may have been when I stopped lurking this thread -- this crap is poison. Writing isn't cute or inspiring or nice -- it's work. You want to write something that won't get negative feedback? Keep a loving journal.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2022 06:03
|
|
Antivehicular posted:I think that post is kind of drawing a false dichotomy between "good" (skillful?) writing and writing that's emotionally affecting. Yes, a reader can enjoy and have positive emotional outcomes from writing that isn't the best in the world, but part of developing skill as a writer is in improving emotional effectiveness -- if your goal is to be sincere and heartfelt in prose, becoming stronger on your technical fundamentals isn't going to make that worse, in the same way that non-figurative visual art is improved by having a solid grasp of figurative basics. I understand that you're just trying to encourage people, but I think there's a very common fallacy of "I don't need to work on formal improvement, I just need to make readers happy." The former will help with the latter! Another key thing about emotional responses is that it can have nothing to do with what you've written and everything to do with what the reader is bringing to the text. To use an example that has stuck with me from high school film class: you may include a red car because you think red cars look cool, the audience member might have a strong reaction to the red car because they were in a car accident featuring one. A good book can stir emotions in the reader. At the same time, a reader can have strong emotional reactions because of what they're carrying with them. In that sense, I feel like one could argue that putting the emphasis on the emotional responses of the audience meaning you're doing your job as a writer is yet another way of distancing yourself from the act of creating and the art of creation. You're basically just hoping to roll the hard six when you could be loading the dice. SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I do think there's a core nugget in there that's valuable: you do not need approval to write. We sometimes act like being the Next Big Thing is the goal, but writing for your friends and family, or for your own amusement, or to blow off steam, these are all valid reasons to write. You do not need to be gunning single-mindedly for a career, that's just capitalist brainworms, art is good for its own sake. This is the other thing. You don't need approval to write. You shouldn't be worrying about writing something good or something with mass market appeal until you've actually written something. Write what you want to write and let everything else attend to itself. I don't really think there's much productive conversation to have around that sort of memetic content for some of the reasons I've said before: it's trite, it's somehow both self-aggrandizing and self-effacing, and it takes one's attention away from writing. Like, we all know it. We've all seen those writing communities which are made up of people who talk endlessly about writing but can't even churn out a single chapter of their eternal WIPs. I've said before that I consider it like a form of radiation. It might not be harmful in small doses. Hell, it might even help you! But if you stick around in it, if you don't take proper precautions, you're going to end up with your hair and teeth falling out. All that said, I think it's important to keep in mind things like audience and marketability. It's all well and good to write for yourself or to write for art's sake, but it doesn't pay the bills. Or, to be less of a cliché, I don't think any text matters unless someone reads it. And as much as we like to say to ourselves that we're fine if only a single person reads our stuff, we all know that's not really true. All things being equal, we'd rather more people read our works than less and we'd rather people think positively about them than negatively. That doesn't mean you should have audience and marketability and that more product-driven side of things at the top of your list, but I think it's an important thing to learn and understand. Really not that different to the fundamentals Antivehicular mentions. To use an example, when I was in the final rounds of editing of this manuscript, an editor pal of mine was like 'I think this is a strong story but it just isn't marketable.' I asked what something more sellable would look like and he sent me a ten-chapter-or-so synopsis where he'd outlined a more conventional, for lack of a better term, version of the story. I think he was absolutely right. I also think it wasn't the story I wanted to tell or how I wanted to tell it. I also can't excuse anything with it's my feelings. But had I known now what I knew three or so years ago, would I have done anything differently? I'm not sure. Admittedly, my responses are colored by a few things. I spent a few years thinking that I wanted to have a popular readership following until I got a better insight into what that is like and understood I'd hate it. My time in the web novel space was enough to make me realize that I don't like fans. I want people to read my stuff and maybe say they liked it (from a distance) and that's it. Which isn't functionally dissimilar to no one reading it in the first place. I also work in the manga industry and I see just product after product after product which are all fundamentally the same story that places The Market over artistic value. I wrote fanfiction too and a lot of people liked my fanfiction. I still wish I'd make the jump to trying to be a Good Writer years earlier. Thing is, I think getting a good look into that engine has been the biggest part of making me okay with being a writing hobbyist. In that sense, I suppose I'd say that learning how to gun for a writing career is probably a key fundamental -- but you really need to figure out if that's what you want. But before you do that, you need to write. But I'm also a weird robot who has never let negative feedback like that get under my skin, so, my mindset may not be that simple for some people. Every person who has reached out to me has generally enjoyed what I write or left a response that made it clear they were upset because they otherwise liked the story. The idea that one person going 'You are not a good writer' might be enough to delete everything I wrote much less stop writing for two weeks... It comes back to that previous point. People are going to be much less harsh once you're not writing fanfiction, and inoculating yourself against that is something you need to get a handle on. It's like of all the agent rejections I've had over the past year or so, some have made me grumpy -- the idpol ones, basically. Some have bugged me, such as length, if only in that hubristic way of thinking maybe I should've listened to my editor friend. But I'd say only one has brought me down, and that's an agent who sent me a nice response that basically said they loved the query letter and the premise but found my "skill was not adequate to the promise of the concept."
|
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2022 12:05
|
|
|
I get how and why agents pick things up, and I appreciate that some have sent me lovely replies, but my mind boggles a little bit when I get one praising the characters, worldbuilding, pacing, and how the plot widens from the initial premise... but can't offer representation because they don't think they're the right fit for it.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2022 00:28
|
|
SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Dude that's really good. Personalised reply + that sort of response is proof the book will move if you find the right agent. "Not the right fit" tends to mean like, "the editors I have strong relationships with aren't buying this right now but it's still good". I got exactly one reply like that and it was after the book was already out and winning awards. It was 99% silence and form letters. Outside of the Bad Fit agent, in two years and just under 40 rejections, I got one other personalised response, which said it had promise but needed more work, which is agent for "not good enough". That's true! I think I've had three personalized responses and they've usually mentioned something about the marketability of it, and there was that one I mentioned last post which was like, hey, great idea but you're not executing it well enough. I let them know that I really appreciated the pacing comment because that's what I feel I'm the least confident on. While I may not query this trilogy anymore, it's given me a shortlist of agents to potentially contact in the future.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2022 03:33
|
|
SurreptitiousMuffin posted:They're saying marketability is the issue? Things like 'Looking at my current catalogue, I'm not sure I'd be the one to sell it.' I assume that means how easy it would be for them to market it and sell it on to a potential publisher, with some consideration being to how they publisher would find it easy to sell. Which given that it's basically The Expanse meets The Boys meets Evangelion, I can see why it might be a tricky needle to thread. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Jun 30, 2022 |
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2022 07:55
|
|
|
I very nearly went with Gideon the Ninth meets Traitor Baru, actually. But, in the end, didn't think it was accurate enough -- but when agents asked for similar works, they were always at the top of the list. A lot of agents have noted and liked the Expanse/Boys/Evangelion comps but I feel the other two may have resulted in more uptake. Oh well!
|
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2022 02:52
|
|
Sitting Here posted:I've decided that when I'm done with this current novel I'm gonna edit it to feel more like serialized episodes, then chuck it up on a website somewhere and let god sort out the rest. I have the best memories of stumbling on someone's story blog as a teen and getting totally engrossed in their weird story (only to have it end abruptly when they stopped updating). The way I see it, if my novel sucks (likely) then at least it's off in its own corner of the universe, not bothering anyone. And if it's good then haha gently caress you, weird hosed up SFF industry*, you don't get to have my extremely good novel. Nuts to you. As a former web serial person, you'd probably do better just putting it on Amazon. However, I'm still semi-active in a Discord for RoyalRoad web novels that don't fit the usual LitRPG/isekai/whatever fare, so, that could be a stepping stone that isn't just putting it up on your own blog somewhere and hoping for the best. Especially because a lot of the sites for discovering cool online fiction, such as TopWebFiction, have been taken over by RR listings anyway! And to add my two cents to the publishing conversation -- yeah, I've been exploring that with this manuscript for the past twelve months or so and while it hasn't been a terrible experience, it's been enough of a window that I'm not sure I'm the right personality for it. And I mean, if I can self-pub with book cover art by Tommy Arnold, why would I do anything else?  And coming back to this because I checked my own post history... SurreptitiousMuffin posted:The vibe here? This is coming back, The Boys is one of the biggest shows around right now for a reason. Re trends, you've been out for a while but you're on the cusp of coming back in, I'd work that line. Yeah, I figured that might be a problem back when I was doing it, but The Expanse comp is absolutely meaning the novels which was the general prose and readability I was going for. I tried to be as accurate as possible, which is different to being as, I suppose, eye-catching as possible. Which is probably what plays into the comments re: marketability and such. I know some agents have mentioned the comps were interesting/caught their eye/etc. But knowing what I know now, I'd probably handle buzzwords and such better. 'A young woman's quest to avenge her father draws her toward a blood-soaked future in this queer superheroic retelling of the myth of Sekhmet. Gideon the Ninth X The Boys.' Even if the only thing I'd say it has in common with Gideon is the dynamic between protagonist and love interest, but perhaps that was a component to stress over the general multi-protagonist sci-fi thriller vibe of The Expanse. It'll be interesting to see what people think of it in a little bit! Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Jul 30, 2022 |
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2022 11:26
|
|
Your query letter reminds me of the first draft of mine, before I got some excellent feedback on it that got me some nice replies during my own querying experience, so, I'm going to basically repeat what I got. Hope it helps!quote:Dear, [NAME] Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Sep 13, 2022 |
|
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2022 10:48
|
|
wolberius posted:Thank you for your response, it seems the most professional of the ones I got so far. Are you traditionally published? Not with my manuscripts but I do have about a dozen credits as a localizer/rewriter.
|
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2022 00:56
|
|
|
I use Papyrus for my writing. It's closest to what I want -- Microsoft Word with some inbuilt analysis and readability functions and so on. But it also has some notes/research sections and detailed character sections which are nice. Scrivener was a bit too complex for me.
|
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2022 06:38
|
|
|
The core of 2022 was that I got a bunch of nice rejections from a variety of agents, with only one that felt like I'd been stabbed in the heart. A few doors feel like they're ajar there. Hoping to get the manuscript into the wild this year, once the cover art from Tommy Arnold comes in. As mentioned in this thread, I'm reasonably certain that I could get it picked up if I cut in half and split it into two novels, but a. that'll take yet more time and b. I don't want to do that. I got a reply the other day, actually, from an agent wondering if I'd cut the superhero element... which would sort of make it an airport thriller, I guess? But, no. That aside, I got a bunch of credits to my name in localization, re-writing and proofreading, too. Jane Hirshfield (and her rights holder) let me use a lovely poem as the preface to the sequel which is about 25% complete. With any luck, I'll get both of them out this year. Then, maybe, I can work on something more explicitly devoted to being 'sellable' and fitting more within SF/F genre conventions.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2023 09:35
|
|
Sitting Here posted:There isn't an official CC discord, no, but one of the biggest writing discussion space is the Thunderdome server. You don't need to do or care about Thunderdome to join! There are plenty of writing discussion spaces for novels, worldbuilding, and critiques. Really? When I joined it a few years back, I got asked to leave because I had no interest in doing Thunderdome. Maybe I'm thinking of a different one. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Feb 23, 2023 |
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2023 01:26
|
|
|
As someone who's written their own vaguely superhero-adjacent sci-fi thriller thing, I feel like I should be able to have some comments on this but... Well, I'm not sure to phrase them in manner that doesn't feel like being a jerk!
|
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2023 01:50
|
|
|
Great post, Battuta. The rise of LitRPGs and other gamelit texts feel like the latest iteration of that idea. It isn't just magic that is materialist, but the entire concept of the fictional world and the protagonist is essentially a normal person engaging with a life-like video game.
|
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2023 23:55
|
|
Leng posted:As a storyteller, I think he's always been very clear about his why: he fell in love with storytelling because it allowed him to understand what is like to be someone else and he writes to make other people feel things. He posted an essay yesterday in response to the recent Wired article which goes into his own neurodivergence and experience and lays it out. Not to diagnose the guy but, dang, if the thoughts and feelings he describes isn't really reminiscent of schizoid pd.
|
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2023 02:41
|
|
|
How the heck do you plot thrillers? I'm working on the third draft of my post-superhero sci-fi/thriller sequel, and I've found it way more interesting to lean into the thriller side of things than the sci-fi side of things as I was working on the second draft, and while I read my share of thriller and crime stuff (just finishing third book of The Last Policeman, for example) I genuinely am not sure how to reduce a detailed story outline to a snappy plot that feels sensible and plausible.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2023 11:14
|
|
Stuporstar posted:One thing I do that helps is I give my characters distinct literal voices, like their own tone and timbre, and if I can hear that voice in my head while reading it means I nailed it, whereas if I’m hearing my own internal voice when reading then I have to rephrase the sentence until it sounds like them talking instead. In his book on writing, JMS had a fun cheat for this. If you are having trouble with a voice or keeping it consistent, he says to just imagine a favourite actor playing the role/character.
|
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2023 23:18
|
|
Data Graham posted:Or internal dialogue, or foreign words/terms, etc. I can think of quite a few reasons you'd use italics. Bold and underline though, nope. I try to avoid foreign words as italicised words because of an article I read that made the good point that by italicising them you're othering the language as something alien or unusual. I've been advised multiple times to italicise them because, basically, 'how will the reader know they're foreign words?'
|
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2023 11:06
|
|
General Battuta posted:The only thing you need to sell a book is an agent who reads your first page and loves it. My understanding is that almost all the efforts built around, say, big name Youtuber subscribers converting to readers have been flops.
|
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2023 02:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 1, 2024 02:11 |
|
Beezus posted:Thank you all for the advice. It gave me lots to think (and read) about. If there's one thing I wished I'd known (or internalized) before querying, it's the importance of being able to make things seem like they're marketable or part of the zeitgeist or speaking the language of the market, etc. However you want to put it, I'd put it as emphasizing being catchy and trendy over being accurate. For example, in my final few queries, I put in a line about how my sci-fi thriller was "a queer retelling of the myth of Sekhmet" and that resulted in a few better responses. Would I call that summary accurate? Not really, because I think it brings a bit of baggage with expectations in storytelling and tone which weren't matched by the story itself, even if it is literally called In Sekhmet's Shadow and stars a queer woman. But I'd say that's a line that made agents go, oh, yes, that's hot right now. Song of Achilles, Wrath Goddess Sing, etc. sebmojo posted:For writing, there are absolutely people who think handwriting has the soul that computer documents lack. though tbf they're selling pens, sooo Well, I mean, are they wrong? I'd dare say a handwritten note or letter is always going to emphasise something over a typed memo or email.
|
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2023 10:22
|
|