Boarders Writing a Novel, Take 6

[Jojen]

Oh I didn't mean like how do you manage to write so much physically or anything. I could produce 120k words, sure, but not on a single project. I just struggle to tell a story that's long enough to break the 80k barrier! And I finished my first novel manuscript almost 11 years ago, so I'm not sure this is something that will ever change. I'm resigned to writing slim tomes, I suppose!

I've had the same problem. Most of my stories are in the 5-10K range. I'm comfortable writing short ones. It helps keep them streamlined and focused. When I try writing longer pieces, I have trouble maintaining momentum. I worry about scenes that don't move the story ahead and are nothing more than fluff or filler. The first time I tried my hand at a novel-length story, I stalled at 25,000 words because I realized that nothing had happened yet. That was very discouraging. I haven't done any more work on it, although I have taken extensive notes for a revamp.

I think I've learned a little since then, fortunately. I wrote a slightly-longer short story (13k) that is now the first half of a longer work. I'm up to 15k so far on part 1, and I figure when it's all done I'll have maybe twice that. That's still just a novella, but I've found it helps organizing longer pieces into smaller, almost self-contained parts. Tackling it on the micro level and going scene-by-scene also helps me avoid feeling overwhelmed. Sort of a "think globally, act locally" approach.

[Arthmail]

Well, in two days, i've got 8517 words.

I think, given how quickly i wrote the Scar, and how quickly the Grey is going, i've hit upon what works really well for me. Seperate character narratives. I mean, they can lead towards the same objective, whatever that might be, but different characters doing different things doubles what i can potentially say.

Its hard to give advice to people that are having a difficult time putting out the word count, or want to try for a larger book, but i think try for a story that is a larger narrative. Think big, and it does not have to be a dark lord or anything like that to achieve this. Have different characters solving different things, but interacting together every once and awhile as they go along. For the Scar, i started to run out of room for what i had set myself up for, and so i crammed a shit ton of stuff into a very small space. On my second draft, i went at it with a more reasoned approach. On my third draft i had an even better idea of what it was i was going to say.

But filler can be a good thing. You never know what you are going to glean from filler. Maybe it is nothing, but if your mind is throwing out ideas, use them. In the Scar, i had two points that just happened. One was the arrival of a character, and the other involved finding an ancient gate. At the time that the character, a fanatical priest named Galsarric who is a Burned Man (someone who burns his skin to remove the impurities of his body), showed up, i had no fucking idea of his purpose. I mean, he litteraly wandered out of the darkness and into one of the two main plot threads. He changed twenty pages later, in terms of his look and mannerisms, so i allowed myself a quick retcon but i did not get bogged down in it. The other was an ancient gate buried beneath a city. The entire plot ending up hinging on this gate. I had an idea at the time of what was happening in the city, or going to happen, but it was not immediately apparant.

I think, and this is just a rough call, people worry too much about plot threads and getting lost in the narrative. Don't. If you never reach the end of your book it doesn't matter how carefully you planned it out. Throw words at the paper and work it out as you go along. Fix it and detail it later.

[Talleyrand]

I don't write with the intention of getting published or ever submitting it to a publisher, I do it every once in a while because I find it quite relaxing. Though I have trouble doing shorter plots and I lack the attention span to every fully do a big plot story, so as a result I have about eight files on my laptop each around 30,000 words before I got bored or gave up on them.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I think, and this is just a rough call, people worry too much about plot threads and getting lost in the narrative. Don't. If you never reach the end of your book it doesn't matter how carefully you planned it out. Throw words at the paper and work it out as you go along. Fix it and detail it later.

This is what I've been trying to do myself. I'm a better editor than I am a writer, so the temptation to go back and fix stuff is immense, but I've been resisting it so far.

[Datepalm]

I don't write with the intention of getting published or ever submitting it to a publisher, I do it every once in a while because I find it quite relaxing. Though I have trouble doing shorter plots and I lack the attention span to every fully do a big plot story, so as a result I have about eight files on my laptop each around 30,000 words before I got bored or gave up on them.

This is me, I just get bored with stuff I start. Its usually fun while it lasts though. Except when it isn't. Hm.

That said, i've gotten back to the nano project, and done a few thousand more words with a new POV.

[Verboten]

I just finished writing ten thousand words and lo, there was no shameless info dumping at all. Say what you want about not getting too caught up in the world building or history but I found writing all of it down fun and helpful and I no longer feel the need to explain every single thing introduced.

[Starkess]

I plan and plot ahead of time so I have a frame to work from. Then fiddle around with it as needed.

I am a pretty meticulous outliner, and maybe that's my problem. I rarely deviate from my outline, and I hate adding scenes that I don't feel move the narrative along, but then I end up with something that feels barebones. But adding anything on makes me feel like it's just filler, which I don't want. So then I just get frustrated! Oh well. More practice I suppose.

[Arthmail]

The hardest thing for me? Name of the characters, and the name of the book. I mean the main characters names. I'm pretty good at coming up with names on the fly, but the main character's name has to speak to me. I cannot advance at all unless i have a proper feel for the book, and that comes with the character.

I have no outline. I have a rough idea of point a, and point z. Along the way i want to hit some points, and so i do, but in the meantime i just go with it. On second draft i'll work a little harder at making the pieces fit, and by the third draft they all fit nicely. But then, i think about the book and where it is going most of the time that i have a free moment.

[A R Stukenberg]

The hardest thing for me? Name of the characters, and the name of the book. I mean the main characters names. I'm pretty good at coming up with names on the fly, but the main character's name has to speak to me. I cannot advance at all unless i have a proper feel for the book, and that comes with the character.

I have no outline. I have a rough idea of point a, and point z. Along the way i want to hit some points, and so i do, but in the meantime i just go with it. On second draft i'll work a little harder at making the pieces fit, and by the third draft they all fit nicely. But then, i think about the book and where it is going most of the time that i have a free moment.

I have the same problem with the names for main characters. Secondary characters? Easy, just takes a couple of minutes and I can figure out a name for them. But the main characters? I will and have spent an entire day just mulling over what a certain character's name should be. I'll try to settle on a name only to find that it doesn't fit the character. From this there have even been times where new characters sprouted up due to the wrong pairing.

For me, the name has to come first. The name defines the character for me, even if that name is meant to be the polar opposite of who/what that character is.

In the current piece I'm writing for a grad school submission, I literally have characters with names like Bob, Sam, Bill, etc., because I haven't the faintest idea what their names should really be. For the most part it works out; by the time I get to the end of the piece I have a better idea of who the characters are and so figuring out their names comes a bit easier....sometimes.

[Durckad]

Seeing as I'm no language-ologist, I decided to co-opt some real-world languages for more story, which means that there are shitloads of vaguely Italian-sounding names running around with a bunch of Russian-sounding names. So I bought a big book of names and I use that for inspiration: take a name, change it around a little so that it still has its ethnicity intact but it sounds a bit different. I didn't want to go with the standard, generic European fantasy names and any names that I made up always ended up sounding... sucky, so I went this route. Seems to work so far, but the real test is if any eyes roll backwards when confronted with a gaggle of fantasy Russian and Italian names.

As far as book titles, I have a working title, but it's a real shit title. I have the story in my head, but I can't seem to get a working title to fit it. It's not something I really think about, but I do find it kind of amusing at times.

I also don't do much any outlining. Nothing kills my desire to write more than the thought of doing an actual, physical outline. So, for better or worse, I do all my planning in my head.

[Ebenstone]

Names: They have to be consistent. You can't have one character named Vgoss Ken'thakh and Jimmy Brooks and have them be cousins, unless you have a really good reason of the inconsistency. I establish naming conventions early on in planning and abide by them from word one. In the "Seasons" I'm using primarily Anglo-Saxon names a la GRRM with some variety for given names. Surnames are mixed depending where they are from in the country. In "Sister" I used the Robert Jordan style: kind of sounds like ours but a little different with specific surnames based on "nationality." Surnames sort of come from world building for me.

Title: I blogged about this. I need a title or a project kind of stalls in my mind. With a title, a project feels real. Here's my blog post about titles: http://johnzeleznik.blogspot.com/2011/11/whats-in-title.html

Passed the 100 page mark on "Spring's Tempest" and I'm going back and doing a spot check with some notes from the agent. Editing on the fly is going to be a unique experience.

[Arthmail]

I've hit 21 pages on The Grey. It's flowing well. I'm averaging something like 4000 words a day.

As for names, i try to have some internal consistancy within the nations involved so that they roughly follow naming conventions, but part of the worlds history involves a fairly large catastrophy that led to a fair amount of strang immigration patterns. That was integral to the story, but its also allowed me to relax about the entire thing. I have roughly european sounding fantasy names, middle eastern, and venetian - but all roughly.

[Jon Sprunk]

I'm just about 25k words into the first novel of my new project. Feeling good about it.(We'll see what my agent says before I get too happy.)

On the current topic, names can be tough. Sometimes one just occurs to me, which is so nice, but other times I have to really hammer at it until it sounds "right." And one of the worst feelings is when an editor suggests re-naming a character. It's like, "No! You don't understand. Changing the name changes the entire character in my head."

[Datepalm]

Non-english sounding names are tricky. I'm trying for a sort of Slavic-Mittleuropean vibe in the current project, and it sometimes feels very weird, as its being written in English, with characters who are speaking 'english'. Of course, my major problem of the day was whether I could refer to a samovar as a samovar, or whether its too specifically real-world. (I've heard of people having issues with words like spartan and mesmerizing too, which I think is taking it too far.)

[Arthmail]

To be honest, more than the names it is words that i have trouble with. At least on a minimal level. For instance, i have an order of Swordmasters called the Shanarii. They're bad ass. And they use katana's, because a badass swordsman is made more badass by having a katana. My problem is, that in my world there is no established Japanese equivalent. I mean, sure, i have a vague notion of a group of people called the Shangralin. But of all of my established countries, i know the least about them save that they are the major exporters of silk. So how do i bring in the word katana when it is very exclusively a Japanese word? I suppose, now that i think about it, the rapier stands as little of a chance as being around as a flamberge.

Then there are words like en masse. French. I speak almost no French, but i'm Candadian, so my language is fairly well mixed with it. But i have no French equivalent, so do i need to keep that term out of the book, or not?

[Verboten]

I just don't insert idioms. Words are fine as long as they aren't specifically related to a historical event or some such, though admittedly english has many of those.

[Ebenstone]

To be honest, more than the names it is words that i have trouble with. At least on a minimal level. For instance, i have an order of Swordmasters called the Shanarii. They're bad ass. And they use katana's, because a badass swordsman is made more badass by having a katana. My problem is, that in my world there is no established Japanese equivalent. I mean, sure, i have a vague notion of a group of people called the Shangralin. But of all of my established countries, i know the least about them save that they are the major exporters of silk. So how do i bring in the word katana when it is very exclusively a Japanese word? I suppose, now that i think about it, the rapier stands as little of a chance as being around as a flamberge.

Then there are words like en masse. French. I speak almost no French, but i'm Candadian, so my language is fairly well mixed with it. But i have no French equivalent, so do i need to keep that term out of the book, or not?

Isn't a blademaster's sword in Wheel of Time essentially a katana? Just come up with a new name for it if you think the word doesn't work.

[Verboten]

IIRC katana was actually the original word for sword in Japanese. Over time it got associated with a particular design. So I'd advise just calling them curved swords.

[Myrddin]

So how do i bring in the word katana when it is very exclusively a Japanese word?

With lots of apostrophes. k'Tan'a :lol:

My usual rule of thumb is if a word has been in common use in the English language for hundreds of years, it's fair game. English is such a mash-up of languages, it's hard to tell where some French/Celtic/German words stop and "English" starts. Rapier is fair game. I'll agree that katana probably is not, though that doesn't mean you can't use it anyway. Jordan did a good job with equating a "heron marked blade" with what I would call a katana in my head.

But remember: It's not the word for the sword you should be focusing on, but how that sword is seen in that culture. In Japan, only samurai had swords, so to have a sword at all meant something special. Status.

[Arthmail]

I have mostly ignored the issue away because its not really important. English is such a mix of words that it really makes no sense to just up and remove one that has been a part of the language for some time. Heron marked blade is retarded, because unless you live in a very strict class society, everyone is going to be using whatever they can afford, besides which the fucking sword needs an actual name, not a descriptive sentence.

I can't bring myself to use the word katana, but i don't really want to deal with the bullshit of making up a new word and adding a description for it. A fantasy world is already inherintly full of words that do not exist, and i can only imagine that it sometimes gets tiring for the reader sorting through them all. Meh. It's not really a big concern. One of the main seconday non-POV characters is a Shanarii, but he's an exception in that he no longer uses his swords, preferring a pole arm instead.