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Boarders Writing a Novel - Thread V


Zoë Sumra

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I'm going to make a bold statement here (especially considering some of the whining I've been doing here), but I was scanning my book this morning to write a new synopsis (per an agent request for a partial) and I've come to a realization:

My book, Winter's Discord, is at least as good as any of the fantasy books (traditional or young adult) that are out there now.

Chew on that for a little while and mock accordingly.

In terms of quality alone, that has every chance of being true, in that there are a lot of novels out there that are easily of publishable quality but simply can't find an agent or publisher who thinks they've got a market. Without intending offence, as I haven't read your book, there are also a lot of books out there that aren't that good, but whose authors think they are. If agents are requesting your partials and fulls, you're in the former camp. It's that pesky problem... selling.

Kurokaze, thank you very much - will respond on the other board shortly.

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I'm going to make a bold statement here (especially considering some of the whining I've been doing here), but I was scanning my book this morning to write a new synopsis (per an agent request for a partial) and I've come to a realization:

My book, Winter's Discord, is at least as good as any of the fantasy books (traditional or young adult) that are out there now.

Chew on that for a little while and mock accordingly.

Boldness be my friend! Arm me, audacity. (Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Cymbeline)

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James Blaylock has issued his blurb, and it's pretty good:

I was drawn into the world of Baldairn Motte at once by the rich prose and the promise of high adventure, but it was the characters and the fast moving story that held me literary hostage. I hope there's a sequel!

Unfortunately, Tim Powers did not find time to read his ARC, but we are stoked with what we have.

Have any of the other boarders written with other writers? Martin has several mosaic novels out, but he's a rarity to my knowledge. I enjoy the collaborative aspects of writing, but wonder if these kind of books are seen as novelties or just under-represented.

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Congratulations on securing the blurb. I'm sure I've seen quite a few collaboration books on shop shelves? But maybe it's just that the authors I look at have tended to do that.

(Thanks to Sophie for fixing the writers' board.)

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Congratulations on securing the blurb. I'm sure I've seen quite a few collaboration books on shop shelves? But maybe it's just that the authors I look at have tended to do that.

(Thanks to Sophie for fixing the writers' board.)

Thanks Eloisa. And that's good to hear about seeing quite a few collaborations.

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Hi! New member here. Been reading the "[Month] Reading..." threads for a while, and just stumbled on this thread while perusing the forum.

I love the fantasy genre and I also love to write, whether as a sports writer (my moonlighting career) or as an aspiring creative writer.

I really, really enjoy hearing about the works you all have in progress, especially how you overcome struggles with them.

I do have a question - what are some resources you use to help you out? Obviously this forum isn't really geared toward boosting the creative juices of us writers. Do you read other forums? Are their particularly strong communities on other sites that you find helpful in your endeavors?

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

-Bham

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In the past I've been an active member of the writing forums of various online communities, which was fun. A number of people round here use Absolute Write and similar sites. I'm a member of Absolute Write, but haven't used it for its intended purpose...

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I've finally ... FINALLY!... finished the chapter plan for my novel. The initial one I did had too much happening for what was supposed to be an introduction to the supernatural elements. I tried to tone it down but that meant nothing much happened for the first couple of hundredp ages, the two characters just sort of wandered about learning dribs and drabs. So I've introduced a few more point of view characters who are more clued in.

So while the two main characters are slowly learning about the supernatural underbelly, there's a newly arrived Templar Inquisitor tortuting his way up the food chain to identify the collaborators of the vampires; a corrupt Cardinal who's in bed with the vampires and trying to get the Inquisitor killed; and a banker whose bank is in charge of the financial side of it.

I'll need to tweak it but now that I know where the story is going, I can get writing.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wow, has it been over two weeks since someone's posted about writing? I guess so.

Summer is upon us. Time when many of our schedules both free up and get busy. Less work, more other stuff. What are we thinking about this summer? How's everyone's projects going? Any noobs want to join in the discussion?

Me? I've got some plates spinning...nothing I want to comment on, I'm still in a waiting pattern.It's an exciting waiting pattern. I took a chance on something that was too good an opportunity to pass up and thankfully it doesn't look like I set fire to any bridges in doing it. If anything else, it may wind up shoring up those bridges in the long run. BEA just ended and the slew of vacationing literary folk means that things slow down considerably.

School's almost over for me and I should know where I will be next year, but for now I'm thinking about summer and what I'll be working on. Once I work that out, I will talk about it. I'm thinking June 1 is the start for me of gearing up for the summer writing season.

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I'm starting an in-person writers' workshop targeted towards beginners on the 2nd. I'm pretty excited about it - I know that these things are pretty hit-or-miss, but the signs on this one are promising, I think.

As far as actual writing, I'm chugging along at an excruciatingly slow but encouragingly steady pace.* Thanks in large part to some observations I made in reading Eloisa's novel and discussing it with her, I made some huge changes and cuts in my plans, slicing out one of my two main characters entirely, and when I put the pieces back together the outline just clicked. The key is reminding myself that this is my first novel (which is very different from first published/publishable novel) and I don't really know what I'm doing so much, so I might as well just stick with the basics. Which I thought I was doing by having only two major characters with mostly-separate plot threads, but that was dumb in retrospect.

So I'm about 6000 words into a complete rewrite, at a disappointing 500-ish words per day. But they're good words. I think. I hope.

*Oh god did I really just use rapid-fire adverbs? Kill me now.

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I have been stuck in the brainstorming stage of writing my novel for a couple of months now, when the other day I felt like I had an idea epiphany. I was at work so I walked across the store, I work at a Best Buy, to tell one of my friends who is also interested in writing about my idea. I started telling him "So what if there was this guy, who lived in this good kingdom where pretty much everything is going well. Something happens that sets things off course, and he has to try and save the kingdom. As he tries to save the kingdom he keeps making the right choices, for the right reasons but it only leads himself and the kingdom closer and closer to destruction...and oh my god I just described Star Wars Episodes 1-3...damn." We had a good laugh about it and I went back to work.

It was kind of disappointing. I legitimately felt I had come up with something that could be HUGE and original, and it took saying it out loud to realize how familiar it was. I may still work off of that premise because I think I can "make it my own". Anyways, I was just wondering if anyone else on here has had a moment like that.

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I wonder what any of the writers--particularly those with deals to traditional publishing--feel about the so-called revolution in publishing. A). Is self-publishing going to lose its stigma? It already has some significant outliers who make wads of cash via ebooks, lower pricepoints, and higher percentages. And B). Is Amazon's entry as a new kind of publisher going to change anything? Are the big 6 doomed?

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It was kind of disappointing. I legitimately felt I had come up with something that could be HUGE and original, and it took saying it out loud to realize how familiar it was. I may still work off of that premise because I think I can "make it my own". Anyways, I was just wondering if anyone else on here has had a moment like that.

All the time. Maybe 1 in 10 books I read, I think "Holy crap, that's just like in my story! Now I can't do it."

But you need to take it with proper perspective. There really aren't that many stories to tell, when you break them down into their most essential forms. Any story you tell has some predecessor - maybe one you don't even know about - that, when summarized in those kind of generic terms, sounds like exactly the same story.

The job of a storyteller is not to give the reader something unlike anything they have experienced before. Does a chef invent new ingredients, entirely new combinations and concoctions that have never been seen before? Sometimes. But mostly their lasagna is recognizable as lasagna, and it's the details that make it theirs.

And from an economic point of view, there's clearly no harm in being a 'ripoff', considering how many major fantasy bestsellers also have stories that appear to be directly lifted from more classic works, from Twilight all the way back to The Sword of Shannara.

But to avoid joining the ranks of Meyer, Brooks, Paolini, and Goodkind*, you should probably ask yourself: what is it in your story that isn't the same as Star Wars? What perspective or innovation do you add to this classic tale? If it's 'evil chickens' or 'mine isn't fantasy, it's a novel of the human spirit', you may want to abort. If not, focus on those aspects and take the tale in your own direction.

*The pay might be good for these individuals, but for each derivative success, how many similarly derivative failures lie, unpublished, spirit broken, crushed under their jackbooted advance? Planning on being one of the lucky few isn't very wise, I don't think.

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Alright, my story is still in the infancy stages, but I have the gist of it in my head. It goes something like this:

Arrios, an island nation founded three hundred years ago by the great compromise, is unlike anything before it. When the island was discovered, a great war broke out between all of the nations of the world. After twenty years of fighting, the great nations agreed to form Arrios as a new nation where all other nations have an equal stake in it.

[This was all inspired by the formation of the U.S., so that basically Arrios is the fantasy version of the U.S., where all of the people of the world are converging because it brings "freedom" and "hope"]

Meanwhile, Gonawand is a jungle island on the other side of the world, and is the only place that Bhaccus grows. Bhaccus is used as a drug that when eaten makes the user incredibly strong for a few hours. On the other hand, Bhaccus has been shown to shorten the life-span of its users. Chronic users have been known to die as early as five years after first ingesting it. As such, most nations have outlawed it, but it is still a hot black market item.

Whew. Now to the actual synopsis:

Darion, a councilman of Arrios, is sent on a mission to investigate the theocratic empire of Kassiun, who despite their own outlawing of Bhaccus, are pushing for it to be legalized on Arrios. On the way, Darion will uncover a plot that involves multiple powers vying for control of both old lands and new nations.

Thoughts?

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Summer is upon us. Time when many of our schedules both free up and get busy. Less work, more other stuff. What are we thinking about this summer? How's everyone's projects going? Any noobs want to join in the discussion?

Noob here :wideeyed:

I have been working on a graphic novel based on actual historical events with a hefty helping of the supernatural. It is based on the events in Bannack Montana during the civil war. The sheriff Henry Plummer was accused of leading a gang of road agents and hanged without evidence or a trial. The story explores the idea of what if he was innocent and there was something else killing the locals? Native American folklore figures significantly into the story.

My awesome sister (who was an art major) is working on the design in the flavor of Charlie Russel.

I am not sure if there will be any interest in it, but I am having fun researching and writing. I went to the Bannack ghost town itself last summer to get a feel for the setting, and plan to go back again this year. I have the outline, and the first chapter drafted. I thought writing it in a short-story format would be a good first step. That way I can get description and dialogue down on paper.

So yeah, thanks for listening!

Belle

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I just got a random itch and ended up turning it, in the space of about 4 hours, into a 2636-word story that is a sort of disconnected opening to my second planned novel (which is in early germ-stage).

It involved going way, way out of my comfort zone. Way out. Like so far out I don't even want to say what it includes, just because any presumption that I could deign to attempt to write such perspectives is sheer arrogance.

I guess I'll return to it in a few days and figure out if it's any good.

Belle, you're definitely looking at a ... niche market. The word 'market' might not even apply, because that implies some quantity of people who are interested in purchasing such a thing. But it sounds like a really fun project. And hey, if it's good enough, the market makes itself. Hell, I'm interested just from your enthusiasm.

Athelstane, the main thing that sticks out (other than 'US allegory: danger!') is that you've given me some detailed descriptions of the settings of Arrios and Gonawand, but nothing about Kassiun. Given the early stage you say your story is in, I'd be surprised if there's anything about Kassiun that you actually find interesting as a setting - it's just a place not Arrios and not Gonawand where you can put your plot. If it were interesting you'd have mentioned something about it. So have you considered instead tweaking your plot so that your story can be set in one of the places you've developed for it?

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Alright, my story is still in the infancy stages, but I have the gist of it in my head. It goes something like this:

Arrios, an island nation founded three hundred years ago by the great compromise, is unlike anything before it. When the island was discovered, a great war broke out between all of the nations of the world. After twenty years of fighting, the great nations agreed to form Arrios as a new nation where all other nations have an equal stake in it.

[This was all inspired by the formation of the U.S., so that basically Arrios is the fantasy version of the U.S., where all of the people of the world are converging because it brings "freedom" and "hope"]

Meanwhile, Gonawand is a jungle island on the other side of the world, and is the only place that Bhaccus grows. Bhaccus is used as a drug that when eaten makes the user incredibly strong for a few hours. On the other hand, Bhaccus has been shown to shorten the life-span of its users. Chronic users have been known to die as early as five years after first ingesting it. As such, most nations have outlawed it, but it is still a hot black market item.

Whew. Now to the actual synopsis:

Darion, a councilman of Arrios, is sent on a mission to investigate the theocratic empire of Kassiun, who despite their own outlawing of Bhaccus, are pushing for it to be legalized on Arrios. On the way, Darion will uncover a plot that involves multiple powers vying for control of both old lands and new nations.

Thoughts?

Do you know what? As long as the writing was decent, I think this concept is pretty freaking awesome. I'd most likely buy this book based off the description. Get writing!

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I'll add my voice here! I'm writing a novel. It does not as yet have a title. It is sci-fi flavoured lit and concerns an imperious woman who may or may not be 900 years old, with an amazing capacity for seduction / coercion.

She has no single name. She is the contradictory embodiment of historically wronged women wreaking vengeance upon mankind and generally tearing herself up in a perpetual cycle of lust and ruinous pain. (Joys!) It is mainly set in Chapelizod, Ireland where she is exorcising one of her 'personalities' and becoming paranoid that this is her last ordained project.

There is no structure, just the headlong pull of the central character's willpower until it is challenged.

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