The Marquis de Leech Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 Curses. Got another rejection on the basis that my submission wasn't formatted as per standard manuscript format. Having gone and switched the thing from Times New Roman to Courier (seriously, who the hell uses Courier font these days?), I belatedly realised that for some reason my manuscript indents hadn't saved correctly before I sent it - but by then it was too late. I've now gone and inserted a tab before every paragraph manually, and will triple-check the formatting before I sent it out again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanF Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 On ‎12‎/‎03‎/‎2016 at 3:08 AM, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said: Close, but no cigar - got a second round form rejection. Hard luck. It was a good story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Writhen Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 On ‎3‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 10:08 PM, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said: Close, but no cigar - got a second round form rejection. Maybe you dropped the object from too many possessive phrases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriele Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 2 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said: Curses. Got another rejection on the basis that my submission wasn't formatted as per standard manuscript format. Having gone and switched the thing from Times New Roman to Courier (seriously, who the hell uses Courier font these days?), I belatedly realised that for some reason my manuscript indents hadn't saved correctly before I sent it - but by then it was too late. I've now gone and inserted a tab before every paragraph manually, and will triple-check the formatting before I sent it out again. Courier? Is that font still supported on computers? I thought it had become extinct together with the dinos. Sorry to hear about the rejection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnar of Skagos Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 12 hours ago, Andrew Gilfellon said: I don't know.....Should I make my twenty nine year old character a mother? Weighing up the options and possibilities in my head. This woman has history with the father which is quite complicated, and I'm not sure if the eleven year old child is a complication too far or an added depth. a brief bit on the past is: woman was rescued from bandits by a soldier in training while her sister went missing (basically because she effectively abandoned her). Because of her skills she joined army on an invasion of another continent where the relationship deepened between the two. After the war, the man retires and the woman accompanies him to another land where through her considerable wealth, she funds his private investigator business. Things sour when the man's temper gets worse and he gets violent. (not with her but others) She leaves and because of this his business loses its funds and he ends up working as a member of the City Watch. Now the man is slightly bitter, questioning if he's a good man. The woman returned home, took her place with her father's business until that went belly up. Now she's forced to flee back to this land, seeking his help and protection, hunted by the people who may or may not be responsible for her sister's disappearance, people who invested heavily in her father's business. Now, the child part is optional, really. I think it could play into the man's "am I a good man?" questioning that's come about because of the war, but the child doesn't effect the plot much. It's optional. It could add to their backstory, a kid he's never seen, that's eleven years old, or it could feel tacked on. Not sure. Ideas?  Never add something just for the sake of it, in my opinion. If the existence of a child significantly effects your characters and the way the story unfolds, then I would say go ahead. But if you feel like it would turn out as more of an afterthought, then I would steer clear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 OK. That's all the formatting re-checked. Off to another magazine... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnar of Skagos Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 So, does anybody have any tips for travelogues in fantasy? I have one short travelling plotline in my novel, but I'm struggling to make it actually interesting. The chapter I'm working on is the second chapter set inside of a quite dark, somber forest, and I plan on having a few characters run into each other and exit the forest at the end. The problem is that I have described the forest quite in-depth during the first chapter and I basically just feel like I'm just putting in filler until it feels like an appropriate amount of time has passed until the characters bump into each other and get out of there. I absolutely hate myself for doing this, but I really am having a hard time and having trouble figuring out another way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 Just write it. Your mission is to finish the first draft - you can go back and fix the travelogue issues later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnar of Skagos Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 12 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said: Just write it. Your mission is to finish the first draft - you can go back and fix the travelogue issues later. This is the second draft, I'm just really stuck because I know it isn't good, but I am unsure how exactly to make it better. it's all quite general stuff; such as trying to figure out how often to mention landmarks while the characters are walking, and talking amongst each other. Then again, what landmarks can I even mention, seeing as they're in a forest. I don't want to write "They passed a tree, this one was bigger than the last one" over and over, haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HexMachina Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 Just based on how you are describing it here, it sounds like you can probably cut most of it out. Or maybe condense those two chapters down into one. If all you want to do is show the passage of time, there are plenty of ways to do that that a long, drawn out chapter of walking and description. A simple sentence like "The days began to blur together until Harry began to despair of ever finding a way out" (but you know, a lot better than that) shows that a lot of time is passing, and that it's pretty monotonous and dull (and therefore doesn't need describing in any detail) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnar of Skagos Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 On 3/15/2016 at 2:48 PM, HelenaExMachina said: Just based on how you are describing it here, it sounds like you can probably cut most of it out. Or maybe condense those two chapters down into one. If all you want to do is show the passage of time, there are plenty of ways to do that that a long, drawn out chapter of walking and description. A simple sentence like "The days began to blur together until Harry began to despair of ever finding a way out" (but you know, a lot better than that) shows that a lot of time is passing, and that it's pretty monotonous and dull (and therefore doesn't need describing in any detail) Thank you! I'm going to try playing around with the arrangement of my scenes and see what works best. I appreciate it. Cheers. UPDATE: Been making some good progress. And that pesky chapter is almost finished. Also, how great is the feeling when you are coming up on a section of the book that you wrote a month or two ago, under some stroke of inspiration, that you forgot about til now? I had completely forgotten that I finished the next three chapters some time ago. Now I can just plop them in, and viola. Ahh, the beauty of not writing strictly-chronologically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted March 20, 2016 Share Posted March 20, 2016 Been working on a horror story set in Turkey of all places. I've just had that glorious realisation of "this is an unreliable narrator who may or may not have been on drugs at the time X happened". Discovering stuff about your characters that you totally didn't intend is one of the biggest joys of writing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.T. Phipps Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 Ugh. My brain is suffering from just finishing TWO novels I've been chipping away at for years. The first is CTHULHU ARMAGEDDON, my post-apocalypse military sci-fi novel which can best be described as Fallout meets Cthulhu. And the second is LUCIFER'S STAR, which is my dark space opera novel. I need about a week to recover from that. The day after edits finish is a fog to me, always. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnar of Skagos Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 8 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said: Ugh. My brain is suffering from just finishing TWO novels I've been chipping away at for years. The first is CTHULHU ARMAGEDDON, my post-apocalypse military sci-fi novel which can best be described as Fallout meets Cthulhu. And the second is LUCIFER'S STAR, which is my dark space opera novel. I need about a week to recover from that. The day after edits finish is a fog to me, always. The only remedy is more writing, of course! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Writhen Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 9 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said: Ugh. My brain is suffering from just finishing TWO novels I've been chipping away at for years. The first is CTHULHU ARMAGEDDON, my post-apocalypse military sci-fi novel which can best be described as Fallout meets Cthulhu. And the second is LUCIFER'S STAR, which is my dark space opera novel. I need about a week to recover from that. The day after edits finish is a fog to me, always. Congratulations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Been going on a bit of a short-story spree. My most recent creation is a (short) short-story - a mere 1200 words - that represents my first venture into second person narration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.T. Phipps Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 Well, my books AGENT G (My Hitman/Golgo 13 EXPY series with CYBORGS) was accepted by the publisher. Also, I got the cover sketch back for THE SECRETS OF SUPERVILLAINY. That's the third book in my Supervillainy Saga. https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-0/s526x395/11204481_10205105712602044_6981603051302388922_n.jpg?oh=147e4a029fa4e396d6f833eae5310c70&oe=5786EA10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selysin Posted April 8, 2016 Share Posted April 8, 2016 If anyone has any questions about writing/publishing Inspired Quill will be hosting a Q&A on Blab tomorrow (9/4/2016) at 4:30 pm (UK time or BST if you like acronyms). Check it out here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
First of My Name Posted April 11, 2016 Share Posted April 11, 2016 Question to you guys: My story is set on a different planet but the people that live on it came there from Earth after it became uninhabitable. The reader doesn't know this at first. I'm looking for the best way to reveal this to them. One way I'm considering is mentioning Jesus when a characters visits a church, thus letting the reader know that the god the characters have been praying to is in fact 'our' god. However I'm thinking that this might not make it clear enough that these people are from Earth, because it might also look like I just copied something because it's easier (the same way that, for example, a Star Wars novel I read uses the term Celsius, and it's not a reveal but a way to simplify their measurement of temperature for the reader). In short, I want it to feel like a big reveal without hitting the reader over the head with it. What do you think is the best way to handle it? Thanks in advance. ETA: I'm also not sure mentioning Jesus is the best way to do it since I want religions to have evolved a great deal and involving him would imply that one of the biggest religions is still basically the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted April 12, 2016 Author Share Posted April 12, 2016 People from Earth would probably name some geographic features after Earth locations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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