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Boarders Writing a Novel: Take 8


Spockydog

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In my last year in high scholl i wrote a high fantasy short story in about 20 pages. This was now a year ago and I seem to get new ideas to expand it all the time. But it does take a lot of time to write and can get boring, but at the same time, creating your own story is one of the best and most fun things there is.

Anyway, I am writing in my native language, Swedish, and fantasy does not have a big market here. Bit I feel like I want to write it down.

It is a story about a realm in shambles, old heroes and epic swordsmen and at the middle of it a conspiracy and the waking of a legendary hero, who may not be what he seem. . At the middle of this is a 19-20 year old anti hero. So it is basically just me putting all the things I like in the story.

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I'm not worrying. :) It's about learning the pacing from inside, IMO. I've always written epic before - either epic fantasy or epic space opera.

I've always written historical romance before this low fantasy. It's not a massive shift, but it's sometimes hard to fit into new expectations. What type of epic fantasy did you write?

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I've always written historical romance before this low fantasy. It's not a massive shift, but it's sometimes hard to fit into new expectations. What type of epic fantasy did you write?

A woman from a dystopian future Earth falls through a portal into a fantasy kingdom that is "enjoying" a three-way power struggle, and unwittingly becomes important to two of the three sides (the main usurper and the religious group). I may go back to it some day if I ever get bored with space opera. :)

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I've been writing on and off for about 2 years now without having finished anything, but I started a new project shortly before Christmas and plan to get it finished (or at least have a complete draft.) by the end of the year. I've done 14657 words so far. The thing is, I'm so erratic with my writing. Sometimes I get a burst of creativity, but other times I can't write anything for days for days or weeks. How do you guys keep up the flow of writing?

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How do you guys keep up the flow of writing?

If I miss a day I generally miss a week, then often a month. So I try to write at least a hundred words every day - not necessarily the same project: if I get stuck on something I'll go off and play with something else. I'm pushing to finish a novel now but I have something frivolous open on my computer as well so that if I'm getting into difficulties with the novel, I've got something to do. Momentum is the key.

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I had one of those days yesterday where I sat down to do my 300 words and ended up finishing a scene. Then I thought, well that was good, but it's a pretty short scene. Until I did the word count and realized it's one of my longest scenes yet. Sneak attack of the writing muse!

I am on the last chapter of part 2 of my book. Trying just to focus on one chapter at a time, because I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with the change in scope that is coming in the next part.

I've been writing on and off for about 2 years now without having finished anything, but I started a new project shortly before Christmas and plan to get it finished (or at least have a complete draft.) by the end of the year. I've done 14657 words so far. The thing is, I'm so erratic with my writing. Sometimes I get a burst of creativity, but other times I can't write anything for days for days or weeks. How do you guys keep up the flow of writing?

Practice. Treating it like a chore. I mean, if writing was a chore all the time, I probably wouldn't want to do it. But sometimes I like it and sometimes I do it because I have to. It's hard for me, but I've gotten a lot better about it. I also use an Excel spreadsheet to track my progress, which keeps me honest about how much writing I've actually been doing.

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I need some opinions on word counts. Right now the first draft is at 108,000 and I think about two thirds done. I write pretty lean. There's not a whole lot of folks wandering around the world, no three page descriptions of elaborate meals or country inns. So it's not like there's padding to be removed. I planned on a three book series and have had my reservations on if there was enough material for book two. I just saw something about first novels should never be over 120K. So, is this accurate? Should I plan on working up a cliffhanger where the novel stands now, which would leave a lot of action for book 2? Or should I just plunge ahead with my original vision? I had figured that the second book would take care of itself. There's a lot of plot that probably would grow in that book once I started writing it.

But then again, given the word counts these guys deal with, I should maybe cut myself some slack:

Rothfuss: Heya Brandon.

Sanderson: Hey there, Pat. Nice talking with you again.

Rothfuss: Thanks for being willing to do this. I know you're insanely busy these days.

Okay. Let me just jump right in here with a question. How long was Way of Kings? I heard a rumor that the ARC I read was 400,000 words long. It didn't really feel like it…

Sanderson: Let me see. I will open it right now and word count it, so you have an exact number. It’s 386,470 words, though the version you read was an advance manuscript, before I did my final 10% tightening draft, which was 423,557 words.

I didn’t really want it to be that long. At that length we’re running into problems with foreign publishers having to split it and all sorts of issues with making the paperback have enough space. I didn’t set out to write a thousand-page, 400,000-word book. It’s just what the novel demanded.

Rothfuss:Wise Man's Fear ended up being 395,000 words. And that's despite the fact that I've been pruning it back at every opportunity for more than a year. I'd spend weeks trimming superfluous words and phrases, extra lines of dialogue, slightly redundant description until the book was 12,000 words shorter.

Then a month later I'd realize I needed to add a scene to bring better resolution to a plot line. Then I'd add a couple paragraphs to clarify some some character interaction. Then I'd expand an action scene to improve tension. Suddenly the book's 8,000 words longer again.

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It's still possible to sell a first novel that's over 120K - just very, very difficult. This is hard to accept for those of us who enjoy reading the latest doorstoppers, but is true. I assume it has something to do with the state of the economy: a book retails at the same price whether it's 120K or 200K, but the paper cost is significantly higher for the 200K book.

Length is something that established authors can get away with. Same for adding extra scenes. Under normal circumstances, your second draft should be significantly shorter than your first.

Agents in the UK are more likely to accept up to 150K than agents in the US. There's no harm in submitting to British agents even if you aren't British.

My advice would be to finish the first draft as a complete book with a resolution, let it sit for a fortnight (sensible approach in any event), and then take it back out and see how much it can be trimmed while keeping the plot as is. It won't be a scene by scene cut, I accept that, but you can cut a surprising amount on a sentence by sentence basis, and 99% of the time this will also make the book a smoother read. My record on this type of editing alone is around thirty-five thousand words (in a 230K novel, so still "too long", but it proves the amount of dead wood you can find sometimes). If you can say something in twelve words, why say it in twenty? At the editing stage, you're free to concentrate on having the discipline in word usage in a novel that you would in a short story. Cutting out extra words will generally look and sound better, and, over the course of a book, will add up to a big word count drop.

Disclaimer: I like editing, except when I'm a third of the way through it and realise just how much there is left.

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I'll be honest, i don't give much of a shit for how long the expected standard for these things are supposed to be. Tell your story, but realize that it is a business. If you don't wow with your big work, then you might have to consider going the indie route.

Some turn their nose up at that but the industry is changing and the old men of the past are going to be left behind.

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I am annoyed. This is likely lack-of-sleep crankiness.

I am annoyed and frustrated because I am writing in English and dealing with 1. naming conventions and 2. coding levels of politeness into the language in a secondary world, and I am bothered, because generally, if you have a civilization where a majority of people are given names they need to look up or be told the meaning of -- names that have to be traces and translated to their own owners -- it seems to be the result of mass conversion to a religion that originally sprouted in a foreign place. And my story is not big enough in scope for that sort of nonsense.

So I’m having a form of the Avatar: The Last Airbender issue where most of the names are fun Easter-Egg type things that viewers will understand, and get a chuckle out of, if they have some familiarity with East Asian languages, or if they consult the Wiki, but the one time a character’s name is actually significant, they have to give her name in English to save themselves having other characters go, “We will call this newborn that we have birthed in the desert after long travel hardships [insert classical Chinese name here], which means Hope,” which is awkward and not a conversation people usually have at such times, much. (The character line wound up being just, “We’ll call her Hope.” They caved in to translation pressure to avoid exposition pressure.)

I’ve just been reading “The Goddess Chronicle” by Natsuo Kirino, translated into English, of course (I’m not that good), in which you have lines things like “My name is Namima, which means Woman-Amid-the-Waves”-- that is to say, “My name is [short, sensible thing it is reasonable to have people shout at you from a distance when they want you to come quickly], which means [long freaking clause that is twice as long].” Also, there is the luxury here that I don’t have, that of working with a real-world language. (Plus, for all I know so far, the original story had absolutely no need to translate any of the names and had none of that exposition.)

Also I really wish I could afford to buy “The Goddess Chronicle” and take it home with me rather than reading it in bits in various bookstores.

I hope to care less about all this after I have had a nap. [/ venting]

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Word count is one of those subjects that send people into a tizzy. Usually, when you say something someone doesn't like about word counts they instantly bring up Rothfuss or Sanderson. Here's the best answer I have for that (and please don't take this the wrong way): do you, in your heart of hearts, believe that you are as or more talented than those writers? If so, then have at it...if not...then kill your darlings.

Agents, generally speaking, won't look past a query that has anything past 200k, even for epic fantasy...unless your query rocks. Remember that your query is your audition...it's the American Idol tryout stage, dog. It shows that you can write in a very brief space.

I'll relate my word count story...and keep in mind, WINTER'S DISCORD, my novel that is presently being shopped to editors by my agent, is young adult but has been shopped as both YA and traditional. When I got my first agent a few years back, WD was 99k. My agent asked me to streamline, so I did, cutting to 86k. Fast forward through some nonsense to a year or so later when a new potential agent asked for a rewrite to ADD some things to the story. Now, we're looking at 95k. Ultimately, that agent rejected the MS. Move forward to Decemeber 2011. My present agent requested that I add even more detail, which I did and now pushed the word count to 130k. When I was working on book two, I told my agent that it was shaping up to be a big book (180-200k), to which he told me to scale it back, saying that outside of one publisher, editors are shy about anything over 140/150k. So book 2 came in at about 140k.

But that's just my experience.

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It's still possible to sell a first novel that's over 120K - just very, very difficult. This is hard to accept for those of us who enjoy reading the latest doorstoppers, but is true. I assume it has something to do with the state of the economy: a book retails at the same price whether it's 120K or 200K, but the paper cost is significantly higher for the 200K book.

The other problem with longer books is that it costs more in terms of editing/proofreading/etc time, which all adds up.

That said, since I write my longer stories for audience of one, I don't care about any of it :)

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I'll be honest, i don't give much of a shit for how long the expected standard for these things are supposed to be. Tell your story, but realize that it is a business. If you don't wow with your big work, then you might have to consider going the indie route.

Word.

I read an article once, a while back, that laid out the various reasons fantasy and sci-fi books got thicker, and it wasn't because of reader demand. Everything was influenced by the way the books were sold and displayed...I don't remember the details, but I remember that much.

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OK, my course is clear. I am going to find ways to wrap up the five main POVs and do a decent epilogue. Then I'll kill darlings until it is under 120K. Thanks to all who answered.

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I have to be honest, as a reader, i don't pick up books from the shelf that are under a 130k. I want a bang for my buck, i want to feel like i'm reading a great story.

The exception was probably Gemmell, but that man was special.

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I have to be honest, as a reader, i don't pick up books from the shelf that are under a 130k. I want a bang for my buck, i want to feel like i'm reading a great story.

The exception was probably Gemmell, but that man was special.

I'm the opposite. I will only crack open a large book by an author I'm not already familiar with if it has received exceptionally good word of mouth. Otherwise, 350-400 pages is my preference.

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OK, my course is clear. I am going to find ways to wrap up the five main POVs and do a decent epilogue. Then I'll kill darlings until it is under 120K. Thanks to all who answered.

For the record:

WINTER'S DISCORD has 5 different POVs and is 130k.

SPRING'S TEMPEST has 7 and was 136k

The third book, however, is going to be a bear. Not touching it until I sign a deal with a publisher.

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I've been kicking around a few stories around in my head for years. I've combined two that had a similar premise and lifted a character I liked from a third and added him to the newly consolidated story. I fall into the same trap every time I write something and try and flesh out the backstories before I get down to business.

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I'm the opposite. I will only crack open a large book by an author I'm not already familiar with if it has received exceptionally good word of mouth. Otherwise, 350-400 pages is my preference.

I'm closer to this point of view. Unless I know the author is worth it, when I see a thick fantasy book my eyes cross. Overlong novels seem almost a normal part of the fantasy genre, although, curiously, The King's Blood was one of the few fantasy books I felt wasn't long enough.

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I fall into the same trap every time I write something and try and flesh out the backstories before I get down to business.

This at least ensures that you don't get partway through, make up a backstory detail to move the story along, and then realise that it would logically have had an impact on things that have already happened.

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