Boarders Writing a Novel Thread 3

[Alaerien]

Cranked out a thousand words today. That's more like it, although I've pretty much failed Nanowrimo spectacularly. I'm thinking of extending my own personal Nanowrimo by a week since this past week has been fucked. Is that cheating?

Join the Nano Rebels on the Dark Side! We have cookies. :)

[Arthmail]

ASOIAF is one of the few with very little of it.

I turned to the dictionary because thats what its for, as well as to deconstruct your argument that ASOIAF has no romance. I'm just saying that it doesn't have to be the retarded kind, it can be more subtle.

As for losing half the readership, well, thats an exageration, to be sure. Depending on the story however, it can make things weird. I've been having a great deal of difficulty lately with fantasy novels, and science fiction as well i suppose though i've cut back on reading it, partly due to romance. Also, having to do with friendships. I've mentioned this in numerous posts before, but there seems to be a real weak vein of writing going on in a decent amount of fantasy when dealing with everyday human relationships. As in, there seems to be few actual connections between characters.

I started thinking about this issue after watching the Shawshank Redemption for the tenth time. The brilliance of that film is that the friendship between Andy and Red seems very real. Very genuine. It is, for all intents and purproses, one of the few openly loving relationships between two hetero men in cinema. Its two guys who have been friends for years, and are concerned for each other, and enjoy each others company.

This new thrust at hardcore fantasy, with the likes of Abercrombie, Morgan, i suppose Lynch, and others, is a conscious attempt to move away from the old notions of good and evil. But in deconstructing it i feel they have stripped the basic humanizing elements between the characters. NO ONE FUCKING GETS ALONG ANYMORE. In ASOIAF, i could probably name the people who are genuine friends because they like each other, and not merely for political reasons, on one hand. Jon and Samwell are honestly the most obvious. In the First Law, as well as Best Served Cold, there are really no friendships, save for those found between Rudd Threetrees, Dogman, and the boys. But Logen and his travelling group, not so much. Any sense of regular adult relationships between males and females, not there. Theres some fuck scenes, but thats about it. In BSC, none of them are friends, none of them do anything more than fuck. In Morgans the Steel Remains, i didn't get a real sense that these people were friends. There were certainly no real relationships based on anything more than ejaculating. Lynch, well, some might argue differently with me on this one, but i didn't feel any real connection between the characters.

This problem, at least for me, extends also into the idea of romance. As i said, i see it as being more realistic to think of something like what my parents have, or myself i suppose, as opposed to the over the top romance of Dumas, or the bullshit tween experience of Twilight. Depending on the length of the book, or series, and what is going on, the idea that there is no romance involved removes something from my ability to feel like i am joining part of a living world. People have wives, or husbands, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. I don't need to be smacked across the face with these things, but to remove them completely - as they have been seemingly removed in a few of the more popular new fantasy series - distracts me from my ability to dig in and enjoy just that little bit more.

Thats just one man's opinion, and as i said before, i'm curious about Asskickers thoughts and ideas on the entire matter.

But getting back to the dictionary...you first listed ASOIAF as having little romance, i countered with examples, which you responded were not what you were looking for. I merely listed what the words means to illustrate my point further. There is no pleasing you, perhaps, but meh...to each their own. I think there is romance in GRRMS work, just subtle and more down to earth.

[Mad Queen]

I turned to the dictionary because thats what its for, as well as to deconstruct your argument that ASOIAF has no romance.

Arthmail, imagine it's your birthday and your mother makes you meat pie, your favourite dish. She lays your food down on the table. The smell makes your mouth water. But as you eat, you realise the filling is just vegetables and chopped walnuts. You look for some meat and don't find any. You say to your mother, 'This pie is very good, but there is no meat in it. You know I love meat pie.'

She takes the dictionary from a shelf and reads, 'Meat 1 the flesh of an animal or bird as food; 2 the edible part of fruits, nuts, or eggs; 3 (the meat of) the chief part of something; 4 archaic food of any kind.' Then she adds, with a smile, 'As you can see, there is meat in your pie.'

What the dictionary says is irrelevant, though. The point is that the pie doesn't have what you want. And ASOIAF has little of what I, and maybe Asskicker, consider romantic. ASOIAF has enough romance for you and maybe Asskicker's story will, too.

I started thinking about this issue after watching the Shawshank Redemption for the tenth time. The brilliance of that film is that the friendship between Andy and Red seems very real. Very genuine. It is, for all intents and purproses, one of the few openly loving relationships between two hetero men in cinema. Its two guys who have been friends for years, and are concerned for each other, and enjoy each others company.

But there is no romance in it. Or are you going to argue that their friendship is romance as well according to some definition? Your example also proves that human interaction goes way beyond romance.

Thats just one man's opinion, and as i said before, i'm curious about Asskickers thoughts and ideas on the entire matter.

Yes, there is no need to criticise his rules if we don't know what exactly he intends to do.

[Arthmail]

I didn't critisize him, i asked questions. Key difference there.

As for Shawshank, read what i wrote. I didn't call it romance, i linked it with the problems that i am seeing in fantasy where people don't actually seem like they are friends, even when we are TOLD they are. Romance has gone that way as well, with few instances, in my opinion, of real connections between characters. I think ASOIAF has some exceptions to that.

But anyways, you're just looking to argue, and i couldn't really be bothered.

[Prince Who Was Promised]

Well, HA's 1st and 3rd rule lost me as a reader, personally. Different tastes, I guess.

[Humble Asskicker]

Fantasy can go beyond swords and sorcery and politicking for kingship. Countless non-fantasy books have managed it; I find it hard to believe that this is inescapable for fantasy.

If you write a story about a guy who goes bankrupt, and it takes place in a fantastic setting, does this seem incongruous to you? What about a single parent raising children in poverty, without any eschatological drama added in?

My notion is that these minimalist stories aren't incongruous to fantasy, they just aren't done and so a false preconception of what fantasy should be has set in. Mine won't be completely minimalistic, as the idea of the impotent man vis-à-vis the concept of deity - concept, not reality - is powerful to me, and I want to address it (and when I say impotent, I naturally mean the inability to achieve an erection, because phallic drama is the best kind of drama.)

An interesting story is an interesting story, and a well written story is a well written story, regardless of how it handles previous conventions. You don't have to play their game.

My goal is to move away from the latest GRRM-conventions and the Tolkien-bred conventions. I want to try something new.

And as has been noted already, life is too vast and rich (fantasy even more so) for it to be crippled without the presence of those tropes.

Well, HA's 1st and 3rd rule lost me as a reader, personally. Different tastes, I guess.

Maybe. I don't think we're that different.

Have you never read a story or seen a movie that didn't have violence, and that you enjoyed anyway? Or do you find that fantasy in particular must have some violence associated to it for it to be interesting?

Perhaps you are right. Like I said earlier, this is experimental and I have no hope whatsoever of it reaching a wide audience even if published.

It's that drive to write that makes me do it. I'm sure everyone here understands that feeling.

***

Anyway, I'm trying my hand at writing RPGs as well.

My first one is a very odd detective story. Odd in a Coen brothers sort of way, where the plot the character is focused on is actually pointless; rather the real story is understood from an omniscient perspective. Take this and combine it with a somewhat Dark City angle, and that's what it's like.

I'm trying to plot it tightly. 5-6 hours length at best. Fairly linear in plotting, but lots of freedom in how to approach things.

My second game is a much larger endeavor. It's a multi-generational epic that exploration on the evolution of government, and the corruptibility of ideals and people. This is not intended as a condemnation of corruption, nor an assertion of its nature. It's more a an examination of the various perspectives of corruption, and the mutability of old perspectives, and the fallibility of new perspectives.

I'm really excited about this one. It will span 15 chapters, with each chapter taking around 8-12 hours to complete.

I've already written dozens of pages of notes outlining the events of the story, the history, the people, the factions, etc. Unlike my novel, I cannot allow unknown variables in this game, due to its size and how delicately connected each chapter is to the other.

It's a lot of fun, but overwhelming to plan out.

I think it will be really cool to see people young who mature, have a family, grow old and die, and then see their progeny age as well. That sort of thing is rarely done in games, where ya gotta beat the big badda inside of a week.

[Prince Who Was Promised]

Fantasy can go beyond swords and sorcery and politicking for kingship. Countless non-fantasy books have managed it; I find it hard to believe that this is inescapable for fantasy.

[...]

Maybe. I don't think we're that different.

Have you never read a story or seen a movie that didn't have violence, and that you enjoyed anyway? Or do you find that fantasy in particular must have some violence associated to it for it to be interesting?

Perhaps you are right. Like I said earlier, this is experimental and I have no hope whatsoever of it reaching a wide audience even if published.

It's that drive to write that makes me do it. I'm sure everyone here understands that feeling.

I see. It is a good idea, but I like my fantasy to have violence in it on screen for the most part. I also like an interesting story, but I DO like on-screen conflict and violence. Maybe it's because I'm 14, so my opinion might change with age, but currently my position remains the same.

But actually, now that I think about it, I could read the type of book you're talking about. As long as it's exiting. And interesting (which yours sounds like).

[Arthmail]

but I like my fantasy to have violence in it on screen for the most part. I also like an interesting story, but I DO like on-screen conflict and violence. Maybe it's because I'm 14, so my opinion might change with age, but currently my position remains the same.

Meh. I'm 31 and i still like it. Somethings never change.

See Humble, thats what i wanted to know. It sounds interesting. Drop in and give us a taste whenever you feel like.

[Xalinor]

My latest failure in novel writing: NaNoWriMo.

I thought, "Hey, maybe I can actually finish one." The idea of quantity over quality excited me. So I began to write.

Eventually, I realized the ten or fifteen pages I had cranked out were total garbage. The plot was incredibly vague and devoid of any real point. Screw NaNoWriMo. I felt like I was doing the world of literature a great injustice by grinding out 50,000 words of crap.

For me, to come up with a good plot takes an immense amount of time and equally large doses of deep thinking. Coming up with a plot on the go isn't right.

[Vegas]

Distracted for a moment when someone said there was no friendship in Lynch's books. An argument for another thread, I guess.

Anyway.

I've been pondering the idea of getting back into writing for a couple of weeks. Started tossing a few characters around in my head; unearthing sublties and quirks I had played with years ago. Formulated a few questions I thought would be interesting to address, considered the roads they might take me down.

And then it hit me. Timer goes off, lightbulb brightens, thunder rolls through and I'm bouncing off the walls, hoping I can remember half the shit that's buzzing around my head. It's an amazing moment when you strike upon the idea you know will be brilliant, if only your silly brain can translate the scenes and stories you're watching pop off like fireworks.

Yeah, I just had one of those revelations. What an adrenaline rush.

I guess I'm writing a novel.

[Zoë Sumra]

Congratulations, Vegas; may it go as well as it can. :)

[Ealdorman Halasahr]

404,412 words. That's how long it is, my sixth draft o' the epic fantasy story I've been working on for so long. A few drafts ago (in January or February, or so), the story was around 450,000 words, so I think I've done a fair bit of editing and deleting and slaughtering of darlings.

Now, a colleague at work is going to read the damn thing, although she hasn't got more than the first eleven chapters (out of 21). The ink in my printer ran out, so I've got to buy more, obviously. Tomorrow. I'll do that tomorrow, and print out the latter half of the draft, and maybe even the 5,000 word appendix. Hm.

If she likes it? Who knows. I got her to start reading ASOIAF, which is now her favourite fantasy, I think (before that, she read something written by a certain Terryble Badkind, so I guess I've set her standards right). And my piece of written art is naturally almost, nearly, possibly - but perhaps not quite - as good as GRRM:s worst writing.

That was one of my goals, from the start, by the way. That is, writing something that's better than the worst printed and published crap ever. And since Terryble got some novels published, just maybe there's room for one more out there, amongst the publishing companies.

Of course, one disadvantage when it comes to my writing, even if it does get published (no, I haven't sent the draft or anything to anyone, yet), is the language versus the number of possible readers. I write in Swedish, whereas many of you guys and gals write in English, which is THE fantasy language for me. If I could write in English, then, wow. That would be a whole other matter, I think, a much bigger arena. If.

If. Yes, IF one could get published.

At least I have one reader at the moment, right.

[kuenjato]

404,412 words.

That's enormous. Is there a place in the narrative flow where you can split it in two? That length is going to work against you when trying to get published, at least as a new author.

I had that problem in that my second book (of a then proposed trilogy)--basic calculations indicated it would reach at least 400-450k, and that would be skimming a lot of stuff I didn't particularly want to skim. So I made it four books. Then, a year later (or two months ago) I reached 170k on book 2 and, after a long and hard internal argument, I forced myself to admit I'd be really short-changing certain key military engagements/character developments by sticking to that -- so it became five books. :bang:

This caused simultanious terror, frustration and relief. But I've gotten used to it. I'm not really adding much -- it's just my mapped-out storyline is going to require two 220k (or so) and three 300k books. Luckily, I had natural climaxes and conclusion points which made these splits fairly easy. The only issue now is that it's going to take another 3+ years to finish what was supposed to be a single 250k prequel novel...*

*...consolation comes in that these books are more interesting to me now than my 'original' series, planned some 8-9 years ago...

[Prince Who Was Promised]

Does anyone else hate when you have a good idea of what you're writing, and everything's going great...then another idea pops into your head and wants to be more important than the first?

[Xalinor]

404,412 words.

Jesus Christ. What is that, like 1,500 pages?

Does anyone else hate when you have a good idea of what you're writing, and everything's going great...then another idea pops into your head and wants to be more important than the first?

All the time. It's extremely frustrating.

[Alaerien]

Finished Nanowrimo last night and finished the novel tonight. It's an epic fantasy weighing in at just under 90k in total, counting the stuff I wrote before Nano.

I've never written this much this fast before, and I plan to capitalise on all the momentum by starting another novel. :)

[Alaerien]

Does anyone else hate when you have a good idea of what you're writing, and everything's going great...then another idea pops into your head and wants to be more important than the first?

Some friends of mine have a special term for this - SNIS, or Shiny New Idea Syndrome.

Back in the day, I used to mess around with various projects and never get anything finished, so I now have a pretty strict approach: I work on one novel at a time until that novel is finished. Everything else waits in line. This is a bit of a fiction, since I'm often working on plot development and worldbuilding and so on on the side, but I find that I need to make a big distinction between "possible future ideas" and "my work in progress that I'm committed to finishing".

[Arthmail]

404,412 words

I split my book in half because everything that i had read, and that everyone here and in other places had said, is that 200k can be tough to get published for a first time author. As it stands, cut in half, roughly, that is where i sit. It was at 335,000 words.

And i think it works better this way. Remember, if you find publishers, and they like you enough, maybe you can suggest putting the book back into one entire piece. But at such a size, it might scare them.

Then again, Erikson managed to get published, so the world is really your oyster.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

While I run through my novel again I think I'm going to try and publish some short stories I wrote years ago. The hard thing with this is finding good publications when I'm not really a magazine reader. Any ideas on how to find good ones?

Most of my short stories center on horror/dark fantasy, though I have a couple that could go to literary magazines possibly.

[Lord of Rhinos]

Gardens of the Moon was probably only 150K at most. The US hardcover is only 467 pages (including glossary and dramatis persona) and its dimensions are also noticeably smaller than the other hardcovers in the series.