Boarders writing a novel, Part 11

[Pilusmagnus]

Mon nom est patate ?

Omelette du fromage ?

[Dany's Golden Fleece]

Thought I would introduce myself on this thread.

I am currently writing my first novel, only on the 2nd chapter at the minute.

Its a low magic fantasy (although magic does happen towards the end) where five young nobles are sent to an enemy kingdom to protect one of them who is to marry the Crown Prince as part of the recent peace treaty.

There is murders, treachery, factionalism and rebellion happening around them and to prevent an invasion of an old forgotten enemy.

I have my first 3 chapters sorted in my head and the ending, other than that, I am winging it hehe.

[TrackerNeil]

Thought I would introduce myself on this thread.

I am currently writing my first novel, only on the 2nd chapter at the minute.

Its a low magic fantasy (although magic does happen towards the end) where five young nobles are sent to an enemy kingdom to protect one of them who is to marry the Crown Prince as part of the recent peace treaty.

There is murders, treachery, factionalism and rebellion happening around them and to prevent an invasion of an old forgotten enemy.

I have my first 3 chapters sorted in my head and the ending, other than that, I am winging it hehe.

Welcome. I think "winging it" is underrated. Sometimes that's the best way to hear what your characters are saying.

[Andrew Gilfellon]

Thinking on character motivation and with me, if it doesn't ring true, I cannot continue on with the book. I'm not one of these people who can write until the end and then go back and correct something. If I'm halfway through a book and realise something doesn't add up I have to start again. Sometimes it makes sense but doesn't make sense to me.

Would someone who has given up his dream of being a private investigator join a city funded project to make the city watch into more of a police force, considering the reason he gave up on that dream is because the woman he loved left him because she wanted to run her father's successful company in a different country? Especially when he's let himself go in regards to drinking and attitude.

[Pilusmagnus]

Any motivation can be a good motivation. What matters is how good you write it and how real you make it feel. I can't judge how good it is without reading the extracts that actually deal with it.

[Snikt5]

Morning all, some of you read my first novel released June last year. Since then my goal in 2014 was to release a short story set in the same world (at 50k words it was not so short), and also release The Stones of Sorrow the sequel to the work I released last year.

Well yesterday I did just that. For all those writing, if you thought you felt proudness at publishing your first book, seeing three books on your shelf is something to behold.

I'm learning with each new release but have now got the perfect contacts in regards to proofreaders and cover artists.

The process is never easy but it does become smoother.

[Ser Patrek M]

Hey everyone,

This is my first post in here. Looks like I'm in good company. I'm currently querying agents with my second novel, a YA fantasy (2 agents have asked me for a full manuscript, fingers crossed), while editing and reworking my first. Just started working on a third, just to occupy myself with something fresh. I sympathize with anyone undergoing the querying process. It's rough, for sure. Kind of mind numbing to know that something you've poured yourself into for years is pretty much in the hands of a total stranger, but them's the breaks. The biggest problem I've run into is word count. It's always that damned word count! That aside, it's nice to see how supportive everyone is on here.

[First of My Name]

Congrats Snikt :cheers:

Patrek, good luck! Do you have too many words or too few?

[Ser Patrek M]

The first novel had way, way too many. I'm going through and chopping out entire chunks, which is difficult. I like everything in there, so it's pretty painful to hit delete.

[First of My Name]

The first novel had way, way too many. I'm going through and chopping out entire chunks, which is difficult. I like everything in there, so it's pretty painful to hit delete.

I hate deleting too and find it hard to do. That wasn't for an official manuscript though, that must be even worse.

[Ebenstone]

The first novel had way, way too many. I'm going through and chopping out entire chunks, which is difficult. I like everything in there, so it's pretty painful to hit delete.

When I nabbed my first agent, my YA fantasy was at 99k. He told me to consolidate. MS went from 99k to 83k. He left the business and left me high and dry. Had an agent that asked for a rewrite to expand and the MS went back to 99k then 120k. The 120k version got me my present agent and was rewritten again to the present 131k. So I went in the opposite direction!

[EruditeFool]

Ah, so this is where we do shameless self-promotion.

Published this today.

http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Prophecy-David-Standeven-ebook/dp/B00OWA37JK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414264914&sr=8-1&keywords=the+shattered+prophecy

EDIT: Paperback now available

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shattered-Prophecy-David-Standeven/dp/1502987570/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1414686496&sr=1-1

[Jerol]

Aaaaaand it's NaNoWriMo time again!

[Weeping Sore]

I'm going to come out of the closet here and admit I'm an aspiring writer as well. Nearing the conclusion of a screenplay entitled Property. It's a story about love and infidelity in a near-future, non-dystopian setting.

It's my contention that sci-fi is not a genre, it's a setting. So the genre of my story is actually romance/ drama and the sci-fi elements would surprise the viewer, but not the characters, if that makes sense.

[Myrddin]

November. The month I always make glorious predictions of output that last a few weeks, days, or even hours.

This year, I say No! I won't do it! I won't claim to spend a month writing! :)

But seriously, good luck to everyone taking part this year! I wish my writing drive wasn't stuck in neutral.

[Derfel Cadarn]

I was going to write an historical fiction novel of a disgraced naval officer turned privateer turned fugiive pirate engaged by Britisih Intelligence to infiltrate a new and secretive pirate brotherhood in the Caribbean.

Planned 9 chapters of it, but in the end returned to my existing novel.

[TrackerNeil]

Ah, so this is where we do shameless self-promotion.

Published this today.

http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Prophecy-David-Standeven-ebook/dp/B00OWA37JK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414264914&sr=8-1&keywords=the+shattered+prophecy

EDIT: Paperback now available

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shattered-Prophecy-David-Standeven/dp/1502987570/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1414686496&sr=1-1

Hey, congrats! Lots of people -- and we all know one of those -- talk about the novel they're writing that never seems to get done, but you finished it. And never feel ashamed of self-promotion; trust me, you are the only person who will give your book the promotion it deserves.

[Andrew Gilfellon]

I think my novel is too close to the Wolf Among Us by Telltale..........Still I like a lot of things I've written.

[Myrddin]

For anyone in the query phase, here's a great video from lit agent Seth Fishman talking through query letters (as part of Pat Rothfuss' World Builders fund raiser).

Query Letter Q&A

Great info.

[Arthmail]

So, I've had a member of the board nice enough to read my first book, In Scars. It was a great deal of help and touched upon some things I've been told by other proof readers. Namely and most importantly is my problem with world building. There is a tremendous amount of it. It works for some people, I'm into it myself, but there are ways to do it better. I've also run into a creative apathy, in a way, with my fantasy writing. I have 4 books written, 3 out of a series of 5 and 1 standalone all in the same world.

So to take a break I'm writing a science fiction book. I started 2 weeks ago and I've got about 39k done. And the world building is way smoother. I'm taking my time, drawing the reader in (I don't like giving books out before completion but I have 1 proof reader that this works with.) little by little. So here's the basic premise.

I was inspired to write the book because of a video game.I didn't play Mass Effect 3, but I am well aware of the ending. Namely that the Mass Effect Relays were destroyed, but watching the end of the game (I didn't finish the second one so I just spoilered myself for the third) I was far more intrigued with what they didn't deal with. So if the Relays are all destroyed, and all of those alien fleets are trapped in earth's solar system, what then? That is the very basic premise of my book.

The Inescapable Us

Humanity fought against 11 alien species in what was called the Sovereign War. This was done via wormhole gates called the Gates of Tens, created by the long dead aliens known only as the Progenitors. The war was fairly brutal, lasting some 43 years, but hostilities were ended when the Leviathans came along. In order to survive humanity, along with the 11 species (known at the time as the Sovereign Pact), had to band together. In a last ditch effort the combined fleets, totalling some 120k ships, met in earth's solar system.

At the forefront of humanities effort were the Sentinels. (This idea, honestly, is based off of the Spartans from Halo. I am intrigued by the blurred lines of creating super soldiers and the problems that would represent both to the individual and to the group). The Sentinel Program came online 20 years before the Sovereign War, so they were there throughout, and most of the 11 species came to hate them. These soldiers were genetically altered and heavily augmented, trained from age 5 to be nothing but weapons.

The Sentinels, led by a man named Severn, managed to defeat the Leviathans. But the Gates of Tens were destroyed, leaving 90k in ships stuck in earth's solar system. At the same time a tivoran capital ship carrying a doomsday weapon they had intended to destroy humanity with was destroyed by the Leviathans. The ship went down in earth orbit, along with a few smaller ones, and most life on earth was destroyed. Storms surge across the planet, with only Great Britain surviving because they had developed a technology in the 11th hour to deal with climate change.

The survivors cobbled together the Leviathan World Ships (six in total, any two of which could have held all of the other species ships combined) and many of the remaining non-Leviathan ships into Muninn Fleet-City. It sits in earth orbit, connected to GB, now simply called the City, by a nanotube track called the Tether. There are other space stations, colony cites on Mars called the Greenfield Flats, but mostly all of these groups live in Muninn Fleet-City, which has a population of 2 billion.

The Sentinels, the 40 that survived their suicidal attack on the Leviathans, are all infected with a last minute doomsday virus of their own, a parting shot from the Leviathans. What it does is corrupt the human bodies ability to connect with aguments, problematic for most of the species involved, but devastating to the Sentinels, who are more machine than man. All of the Sentinels are cryo-frozen to try and deal with the virus, but in the end only Severn survives. But that truth isn't known for 200 years.

In light of his war time record, the human part of the new governing body doesn't want the newly unthawed Severn simply put back in storage, but the other species hate him for war time actions. He can't go into the military again, and he can't go into intelligence work, so they basically agree to make him a detective. (Its a little more nuanced than that, but that's the jist of it) Severn is teamed up with Isabella Locke out of 12-Division. They are joined as protagonists by a 15 year old girl named Skia, fresh from some of the black labs, and a driving force behind the story.

I'm really interested in the idea of systems theory, namely a study of what happens to a piece of the machine when it is pulled away from the rest of the machine. My thinking with that is a study of Severn, who was trained from youth to be a part of an elite and ruthless unit only to find he's in a new world and everything he knew on every level is dead. On top of that he is tasked with helping to police many of the races he had once spent considerable time killing, with some of those species living long enough that there are still members of those groups that remember him directly. I'm also playing around with ideas of social conditioning, operant conditioning, specism, and corporate governance. Nothing new in the realm of science fiction, to be sure, but ideas I like playing with.

I'm having a great deal of fun, and I think it will benefit the rest of my work as well, because I'm slow-burning the world building.

Anyways, rambling post is over. I've got a headache this morning so hopefully on some level something I said here makes sense.