Boarders Writing a Novel Thread 3

[Flying Halftrak]

That's very interesting, Eloisa. Thanks.

Out of curiosity, did your 202k novel get consistently rejected, or have you decided that it's not worth sending in as you can't cut it down any further? If it was rejected, was the word count issue specifically raised or did you get nothing but form letters?

Major props to you to be working for so long to break into the industry. 17 years...I really admire that kind of dedication.

[Zoë Sumra]

I've submitted it once (form rejection) and the word count issue wasn't mentioned, but from talking to agents and editors and reading agents' blogs online, I'm almost certainly wasting my time at 202K. Cutting it to publishable length would involve losing quarter to a third of the book, and as I can't find a way to make the plot balance sans quarter of its content, taking a hatchet down the middle of the whole thing seems more sensible. Drives my beta reader up the wall, though. Next challenge is hammering out a coherent story or two from the existing text while fighting the desire just to write something else...

And, well... stories are simply something I've always done (I decided I wanted to get published when I was three), and it just took me seventeen years of practice at writing long fiction to reach a decent standard.

[Starkess]

I'm tentatively going to wade in here...goodness knows I need some motivation, and where else if not The Board? (I really wish I could make the little trademark symbol. Seems appropriate!)

I'm about halfway through my most recent attempt at novel writing. I've written two manuscripts in the past, one SF, one fantasy, and they both sucked. The fantasy one MAY be salvageable, but I don't have the heart to slog through a re-write at the moment, so I'm putting my energy into this new project.

This project I am actually handwriting. I thought it would be more portable for me than a laptop, and I really like filling the pages of the legal pads with words. Plus I have a re-write built in when I type the damn thing up. And it's much nicer to sit on my balcony with a pad of paper than a laptop. But, all the pros aside, I don't see myself embarking on any more handwritten projects.

It's been about a week since I've written due to some RL crap, and I'm worried I'm gonna fall out of the habit when I finally got back into it (I lost all motivation to write for about 3 or 4 years), so I am definitely gonna put pen to page this afternoon!

[Zoë Sumra]

*gives Starkess a motivational round of applause* Daily writing, it is good. What's the story about?

(I handwrite all my first drafts and almost all my planning documents. It makes me think about what I'm doing in a different way from the way I treat typed work.)

[kuenjato]

I've submitted it once (form rejection) and the word count issue wasn't mentioned, but from talking to agents and editors and reading agents' blogs online, I'm almost certainly wasting my time at 202K. Cutting it to publishable length would involve losing quarter to a third of the book, and as I can't find a way to make the plot balance sans quarter of its content, taking a hatchet down the middle of the whole thing seems more sensible. Drives my beta reader up the wall, though. Next challenge is hammering out a coherent story or two from the existing text while fighting the desire just to write something else...

And, well... stories are simply something I've always done (I decided I wanted to get published when I was three), and it just took me seventeen years of practice at writing long fiction to reach a decent standard.

I don't know what the guidelines for space opera are, but this hardline stance towards wordcount seems a rather defeatist policy when considering straight fantasy. I can't think of any high-selling fantasy novels (aside from early Harry Potter, and those are really YA) that are under 150-200k...? Consumers tend to look for "fat" books in this genre, as it means an immersive experience and a detailed setting.

Again, I don't know the restrictions on space opera. Word count restrictions on, say, horror make more sense.

[Zoë Sumra]

For space opera, 100K is ideal. I can certainly get away with 110. In the USA I wouldn't get away with much more; at the moment, US agents are looking for epic fantasy topping out at about 120, let alone space opera. (American agent Colleen Lindsay on US book lengths.) UK guidelines are slightly less stringent, and 120 is unlikely to get me minus points here; but at the moment the first half/first volume/first bit of my book is just 91K, and though I'll likely have to add length in the process of giving it, you know, a plot, I doubt that it'll be an issue in the end.

Am swinging back towards frustration, though. About nine months ago I swore to myself that I would never, ever, rewrite half a book again (because the amount of time needed afterwards to make the new content fit with the old content is approximately equivalent to the amount of time needed to redraft the whole thing), and here I am again. But this time it should just be a shoring-up exercise, I hope. It's that "plot" business - the "not enough having happened" thing I mentioned the other week - the story comes to something of a peak/crashing halt at the end of "book 1", but it currently doesn't quite have the right level of pacing, peaking/crashing and resolution that "a book" needs.

[Starkess]

*gives Starkess a motivational round of applause* Daily writing, it is good. What's the story about?

(I handwrite all my first drafts and almost all my planning documents. It makes me think about what I'm doing in a different way from the way I treat typed work.)

Thanks!

It's about a land where the color of people's eyes actually makes them truly different from one another in regards to magic and such, and then those poor suckers with brown eyes are just commoners. Also there are large felines who bond with green-eyed females or blue-eyed males that are the repository of all their society's knowledge. Each feline is like a walking library, and they can communicate telepathically with their Bondmate and other felines, but no one else. There's a pantheon of goddesses, one for each eye color (blue, purple, green, yellow) and then the goddesses of good and evil.

The plot of the current story is that Mitha (the evil goddess) has imprisoned the blue and green goddesses, so the knowledge of the felines is draining rapidly away. There's also an evil red-eyed woman who takes over the country (red eyes were considered a myth, and are significant of extreme power, even more so than the extremely rare black eyes).

That's probably just about the worst description ever, but I'm having a lot of fun with the land so far, and I'm hoping to get a little into the discrimination issue (ie, even though those with brown eyes are fundamentally different and less powerful than the rare-eyeds, are they less valuable as people?).

[Ebenstone]

Word count discussions are so tricky because there are very, very few tried and true guidelines for word counts. For every "hard" number that one of us can say, each of us can think of plenty of exceptions to the rule. It's more about quality as opposed to number of words. With no offense to those on the board, especially since I haven't read most of your work, but are those REALLY the best 202k words you've written. Are there things/characters/subplots/etc that really aren't necessary. They are tough questions to ask because, despite the adage that you have to "kill your babies," we really think we are that good.

As writers we are down right ego maniacs about our work. We look at the published works on the shelf at Borders, B&N, Books-a-Million, etc and think "My story's better than that!" Sure we put on a faux modesty when we get together to talk about writing or someone asks us about our writing, but the truth is we believe in our talent. We HAVE to...but at some point there has to be that moment of humility. It's happened to me a lot and it's made me a better writer. And I'm only this much closer than I when I started. (Granted a step or two back from where I was 4-5 months ago!) If you look at it with a real critical eye, I'll bet you'll find there's a lot to cut. Even if it mean a major restructuring to "split the book" into two 100k books.

I thought for sure that the 99k I wrote was the best I could write and by really, really looking at the work over a period of time, I realized they weren't the best words and I culled over 16k. That's 16%. Is that enough? Too much? Who knows? I think that it's about right.

You bring up Colleen Lindsay and one of her mantras during "Ask Agent" sessions on Twitter is to write a good book.

I won't even get into queries/synopsis issues!

And the thing I always say to myself when I start to feel frustrated or angry about the whole process I say this: Just quit. Stop writing. Not as easy as it sounds.

Then again, I'm the guy who can't get his agent to buy his book now that he's an editor for a big publisher. So, yeah...

[Zoë Sumra]

(ie, even though those with brown eyes are fundamentally different and less powerful than the rare-eyeds, are they less valuable as people?).

Now, that is really good. It seems like you've created a nice world concept to hang it on, but I'd be very interested to see how far you can take that and how you balance it with the objective goodness of your good goddess. (Are the coloured goddesses regarded as neither good nor evil, or as a mixture?)

Ebenstone - these are all questions I've asked myself. Prior to editing the complete thing was 217K. That was after I'd already rejigged a lot of things to improve the flow of the story and cut out all scenes that thematically duplicated each other (or, at least, one of each pair of such scenes); I've since cut out all the scenes that only contributed to character progression (and shifted said progression to plot scenes) and taken out every word I could on a line level. There are no redundant characters or subplots - the closest I come to that is a subplot that comes to fruition as the main plot of book 2 (now, putatively, book 3). The only places I can see that I could cut are some scenes that go on slightly too long. This might take the complete thing to 180K but not to 100-150K. Maybe a professional editor could get it lower; but in order to interest that editor in the story I need to get it shorter to start off with. Hence one more reason why the cut seems more and more like the right thing to do.

(Incidentally I am worrying about some subplots and characters seeming redundant in the "first half book", given that they currently finish their arcs in the second half. Luckily most of them have a thematic break at all around the same time, so I should be able to pull something together, even if it's downer endings all around; and the one subplot for which I can't do this can be moved in its entirety to part 2.)

Really sorry to hear about your troubles, especially as all seemed to be going so well for you. I hope things pick up soon.

[Starkess]

Now, that is really good. It seems like you've created a nice world concept to hang it on, but I'd be very interested to see how far you can take that and how you balance it with the objective goodness of your good goddess. (Are the coloured goddesses regarded as neither good nor evil, or as a mixture?)

It's definitely something I want to explore more, and I think I'm going to try to work in in during my re-writes. I started this years ago, and my hiatus from it has obviously changed my ideas about the story and what exactly I want to do with it. But definitely I had planned from the start that the resolution involves a balance--ie they can't wipe out the "evil" goddess. And the evil queen who takes over the country ends up not being quite so evil, and retiring to a house arrest. So I guess I'm trying to kind of go for the there is no objective evil idea, but I'm not entirely positive how it's going to play out in the story.

The colored goddesses are regarded as "good" by default, but they're not. They're basically elementals.

[T.D. Newton]

Thanks!

It's about a land where the color of people's eyes actually makes them truly different from one another in regards to magic and such, and then those poor suckers with brown eyes are just commoners. Also there are large felines who bond with green-eyed females or blue-eyed males that are the repository of all their society's knowledge. Each feline is like a walking library, and they can communicate telepathically with their Bondmate and other felines, but no one else. There's a pantheon of goddesses, one for each eye color (blue, purple, green, yellow) and then the goddesses of good and evil.

The plot of the current story is that Mitha (the evil goddess) has imprisoned the blue and green goddesses, so the knowledge of the felines is draining rapidly away. There's also an evil red-eyed woman who takes over the country (red eyes were considered a myth, and are significant of extreme power, even more so than the extremely rare black eyes).

That's probably just about the worst description ever, but I'm having a lot of fun with the land so far, and I'm hoping to get a little into the discrimination issue (ie, even though those with brown eyes are fundamentally different and less powerful than the rare-eyeds, are they less valuable as people?).

I'd read it.

[Ebenstone]

Really sorry to hear about your troubles, especially as all seemed to be going so well for you. I hope things pick up soon.

Thanks, but don't worry about me. As someone told me in a comment on my blog, if one person likes it, that means someone else will...I got closer than thousands of people before me...I had an agent. And technically the novel is still under submission with a MAJOR publishing house, it's just my guy is very, very busy (and I believe that). Like I tell my wife...my writing is a hobby that might make us some money someday.

The comedy of the whole thing is that I viewed the book as a project to break away from my trunk novel "The Falling Dark," a book I thought of as my opus...yet it might be more of the cliched trunk novel than an opus.

Maybe put it aside for a while and work on a newer, shorter, tighter story. "The Falling Dark" came in at about 170k when I finished it...comparable to the books that inspired it. Looking back, it's a sprawling mess! Two years into "Winter's Discord" and now I need a break from it. Funny how it goes.

[Derfel Cadarn]

My fantasy novel, set in a fictional world with Napoleon-era technology, hasn't been touched in a while. It's sitting at roughly 200 handwritten pages, probably closer to 250. But there's litte point in continuing until I type up what I've written and re-draft it.

In the meantime I've started another novel. It takes several ideas I've had for other stories and merges them. It's set in Glasgow in 1890. The primary character is a musical (subject to change) student who's been semi-disowned by his rich merchant family for not going into something respectable such as medicine, like his father. His best friend is a laudenum-addict who runs a pharmacy. They work nocturnally as bodysnatchers, paid by a high-level medical professor to 'recover' specific bodies that he wants to show to select students. Originally they were to be generic bodysnatchers but the Anatomy Act of 1832 pretty much ended the need for bodysnatchers, so they do it to order in a time when it's rare.

I was very tempted to set it before 1832, when bodysnatching was common, but by 1890 Glasgow was a much more developed city with a lot of parks and civil amenities which I wanted to reflect in the story. The Glasgow Necropolis was also well established and 'populated' by this time. The Necropolis is basically a park/Victorian cemetery 'hosting' the tombs and graves of the wealthy merchant-class of Glasgow at the time.

One of the bodies they've unearthed disappears whilst they are re-filling in the grave, and turns out to be a vampire. The pair find themselves unwittingly caught up in a supernatural powerstruggle. It's been quite tough to find out enough information about Glasgow in that era, though I've hopefully gained enough to recreate parts of the city faithfully enough. I've written a few chapters so far, once I've hashed out the outline I hope to make steady progress on it. It's called "Resurrection Men", a nickname given to bodysnatchers.

[Alaerien]

As writers we are down right ego maniacs about our work. We look at the published works on the shelf at Borders, B&N, Books-a-Million, etc and think "My story's better than that!" Sure we put on a faux modesty when we get together to talk about writing or someone asks us about our writing, but the truth is we believe in our talent. We HAVE to...but at some point there has to be that moment of humility.

Strange - I feel exactly the opposite. I think of myself as only an average writer, and that's why I'm religious about sticking to the rules.

My philosophy is that the more rules you break, the better a writer you have to be to get away with it. If your manuscript is written with no punctuation, for example, you'd better be a breathtaking literary genius. I'm just not good enough to feel confident breaking rules.

edit: Derfel, that sounds awesome. :love:

[MattL86]

Am swinging back towards frustration, though. About nine months ago I swore to myself that I would never, ever, rewrite half a book again (because the amount of time needed afterwards to make the new content fit with the old content is approximately equivalent to the amount of time needed to redraft the whole thing), and here I am again. But this time it should just be a shoring-up exercise, I hope. It's that "plot" business - the "not enough having happened" thing I mentioned the other week - the story comes to something of a peak/crashing halt at the end of "book 1", but it currently doesn't quite have the right level of pacing, peaking/crashing and resolution that "a book" needs.

I remember Patrick Rothfuss talking about this once. Apparently, the entire climax of The Name of the Wind was added to the story in a rewrite. After chopping the book into a trilogy, the pacing to the first book just didn't work, so he wrote in a climax. Hard to imagine the book without those chapters now.

Also, to add to the word count thing, I wouldn't use The Blade Itself, Lies of Locke Lamora, or Name of the Wind as examples to follow. The Blade Itself is around 190k, but published in the UK where they are less strict on Word count it seems. Plus, the book is awesome and totally different from what's out there. Rothfuss tried to get The Name of the Wind published for over a decade before someone gave it a shot. Lies of Locke Lamora is right around the same size as The Blade Itself, but again, it's very original and fantastically written. Unless you are sure you're that good (which I'm not personally) I would stick to aiming for 120k max.

[Starkess]

Okay, no writing today...I only got a couple hours of sleep last night, so I fell asleep on the couch for a bit and now I'm way too tired to be coherent. But tomorrow I'm on duty, so I plan to write several pages at the very least! Motivation!

I have no concept of word count, and I was thinking 100k sounded really low. So I went and checked my YA fantasy manuscript (rough draft) and it's only 65k! I think my current one is going to be longer, hopefully, without being bloated. I don't think TOO short is a good thing!

I'd read it.

Yay :)

[Grendalen]

Thanks!

It's about a land where the color of people's eyes actually makes them truly different from one another in regards to magic and such, and then those poor suckers with brown eyes are just commoners. Also there are large felines who bond with green-eyed females or blue-eyed males that are the repository of all their society's knowledge. Each feline is like a walking library, and they can communicate telepathically with their Bondmate and other felines, but no one else. There's a pantheon of goddesses, one for each eye color (blue, purple, green, yellow) and then the goddesses of good and evil.

The plot of the current story is that Mitha (the evil goddess) has imprisoned the blue and green goddesses, so the knowledge of the felines is draining rapidly away. There's also an evil red-eyed woman who takes over the country (red eyes were considered a myth, and are significant of extreme power, even more so than the extremely rare black eyes).

That's probably just about the worst description ever, but I'm having a lot of fun with the land so far, and I'm hoping to get a little into the discrimination issue (ie, even though those with brown eyes are fundamentally different and less powerful than the rare-eyeds, are they less valuable as people?).

My deep brown eyes and I are offended! Ocularist! :P (I kid, I kid!)

[Alaerien]

I have no concept of word count, and I was thinking 100k sounded really low. So I went and checked my YA fantasy manuscript (rough draft) and it's only 65k! I think my current one is going to be longer, hopefully, without being bloated. I don't think TOO short is a good thing!

65k is a great length for the first draft of a YA fantasy. Plenty of room for revisions, whether adding or cutting. I'd be happy anywhere between 50k and 90k for that subgenre.

[Zoë Sumra]

Derfel, if bodysnatching was quite rare at that stage, how are you justifying your protagonists' profession? It seems quite an interesting conundrum from this angle... but the bodysnatcher pinching a vampire idea is priceless.

I remember Patrick Rothfuss talking about this once. Apparently, the entire climax of The Name of the Wind (where Qvothe kills the Draccus) was added to the story in a rewrite. After chopping the book into a trilogy, the pacing to the first book just didn't work, so he wrote in a climax. Hard to imagine the book without those chapters now.

It's good to know that other people have had that problem too, and at such a high level... and I think I may have fixed my problem, to a degree.

My book(s) have two sets of antagonists - A and B. Neither is a big threat alone, but when they combine, they manage to become powerful enough to threaten the stability of the galaxy. (Of course they do; it's space opera.)

Thing is, A and B join forces at what will be the start of my volume 2. Throughout volume 1, antagonists A don't look like antagonists; they're regular Joes and Jills trying to defend themselves and each other, and arguably are as likeable as the protagonists. At the end of book 1, they discover a major secret about themselves and decide at that stage (though not much deliberation is done) to turn into the series's major antagonists.

Therefore, in volume 1, i.e. the first half of my original book, antagonists B are the only effective antagonists (apart from a background cast of pimps, slavers and protagonists' relations). Problem was that immediately before the book they lost a fight against the protagonists, so weren't able to seem vastly threatening (not enough to serve as a complete book's only antagonists, at least), and what they were able to do wasn't very well coordinated.

So I'm going to move the fight antagonists B lose from immediately before the series starts to the end of my new volume 1, enabling the book to have a proper climax and also enabling a much broader view of antagonists B. And I'm going to do this without adding more than 25K of extra word count. Yes, I am. Wish me luck in that.

[Starkess]

My deep brown eyes and I are offended! Ocularist! :P (I kid, I kid!)

I have brown eyes too!

65k is a great length for the first draft of a YA fantasy. Plenty of room for revisions, whether adding or cutting. I'd be happy anywhere between 50k and 90k for that subgenre.

Good to know, because I've always felt it was too short. I'd rather not have to worry about making things longer, because IMO that just adds to fluffy, bad writing.

So I'm going to move the fight antagonists B lose from immediately before the series starts to the end of my new volume 1, enabling the book to have a proper climax and also enabling a much broader view of antagonists B. And I'm going to do this without adding more than 25K of extra word count. Yes, I am. Wish me luck in that.

Good luck! That sounds pretty interesting...I like that the major antagonists are totally likable in the first book. Makes for some conflicting emotions amongst readers. :)