Boarders Writing a Novel Thread 3

[Ebenstone]

I feel like you're arguing with something I never actually said. :uhoh: In fact your bolded point is pretty much what I said in the first place, which is study the market.

Know industry standards for the genre. Read recently-released and award-winning books in the genre. Maintain a list of agents to target, and follow them to see what they have to say. Know the publishers. Have an impression of what deals are going down in the genre. Follow public contests and critiques. Read Publishers Weekly. Subscribe to Publishers Lunch. Have realistic expectations.

I'm surprised that so many people seem to think industry awareness is a bad thing. The market is not an enemy, even if my genre (one of them) isn't selling, but an opportunity. I want to sell to this market, not some perfect future market in which epic fantasy is a runaway bandwagon of million-dollar deals. Industry trends are extremely relevant to my prospects of selling, and I'm not going to ignore them.

(I also want to go to a hypothetical interview for a masters in publishing armed with information. I hear they like it when people show some interest. :P)

We're just having a discussion! I was reacting to the notion that fantasy was dead for adults.

Plus, like I said...worry about markets AFTER you finish something. Focus on the writing and getting better at that. Market research is easy these days. Work on the craft first.

[Sandello]

I'm nearly finishing that inglorious offsprisg of my mind - my nice fluffy modern students-main characters became dirty, rugged, lice-ridden, people-killing makhnovists, many communists are hanged, many tsarists are shot (or the other way around) amd history is melting in a new form.

[Alaerien]

I have an interview for a publishing masters program! :D :D :D

[TheEvilKing]

Lothor, Alien, congrats. :cheers:

[Myrddin]

We're just having a discussion! I was reacting to the notion that fantasy was dead for adults.

This is what I was reacting to as well. YA is very hot right now, and if that's the market you want to attract, then the deck is definately stacked in your favor.

The stories I've written and want to write next just don't fit into that catagory, which sucks for me. :)

A guy I used to work with is a very good writer, but he insists on chasing the latest fad. He's written several very good novels, but he can't get them picked up because he's always on the wrong end of a trend.

BTW, can you share the name of your lucky friend? I like following new authors on the road to their first pub date. It's exciting, encouraging, and very informative. (This is assuming she has a blog or webite or something)

[Alaerien]

Vee Roth. :)

[malek]

Can there be a harder job than writing, even if it is for yours joy only ?

I thought it would bring me moment of calmness, and feeling of working on something I can call my own, watching it grow and develop into wath I imagined... But nooooooo ! I'm such a perfectionist, and nowhere good enough writer to justify it <_<

Whatever I imagine, on paper it looks miles away to what I imagined in my head :tantrum: Now I grew really, really frustrated by what I'm trying to create. I'm on writing 4 pages for well over a year :bs: Really hope that every single one of you is doing much better :)

[Starkess]

Got some writing done today...my goal is to finish 50 pages before I go back to work on Monday. I'm at 27.

[SerNotAppearingOnThisBoard]

Got some writing done today...my goal is to finish 50 pages before I go back to work on Monday. I'm at 27.

Good luck. About how many pages are you knocking out per day? I'm re-plotting and rewriting the sections in which my three main plotlines begin to come together for the first time, which involves engaging a secondary POV earlier than I intended and therefore entails rewriting previous sections in that POV so he doesn't come out of nowhere. Thank god this is just for fun with no deadlines at this point. :P

[Starkess]

Good luck. About how many pages are you knocking out per day? I'm re-plotting and rewriting the sections in which my three main plotlines begin to come together for the first time, which involves engaging a secondary POV earlier than I intended and therefore entails rewriting previous sections in that POV so he doesn't come out of nowhere. Thank god this is just for fun with no deadlines at this point. :P

Thanks. For the past couple days it's been 0, but 5 when I actually get down to writing. Obviously I'm hoping to up that. :) And rewriting is such a pain!!

[Ahimsa]

Lothor, Alien, congrats. :cheers:

Thanks Evil King. It comes out in 2011 so I'll update more as I find out more. Now to keep working on my current one: Romans vs. Zombies.

[Starkess]

Well, I didn't make my 50 page goal, but I DID make 40, and that's not too shabby. Plus another 4 today. Getting back on a roll! Feels good. :)

[Durckad]

Well, I didn't make my 50 page goal, but I DID make 40, and that's not too shabby. Plus another 4 today. Getting back on a roll! Feels good. :)

Congrats!

I always feel good when I get on one of those rolls and just churn a bunch of pages seemingly without effort. Unfortunately, right now, I'm on the other end of that and nothing is more disheartening than staring at a page, writing a few lines, erasing them because they suck, rinse, repeat for an hour or two. Ugh.

[Lord Mord]

Sorry if this has been addressed already, but I got to page twelve or something and finally ran out of patience. I'd like to have a couple of things explained to me, please.

1) Query Letter. What is this and why is it useful for writing? How do you do it?

2) Social Structure. People have written that when they have indulged in world-building, instead of geography they have spent considerable focus on working up the social framework, and I'm very interested to hear more about what this process is like.

[Zoë Sumra]

Sorry if this has been addressed already, but I got to page twelve or something and finally ran out of patience. I'd like to have a couple of things explained to me, please.

1) Query Letter. What is this and why is it useful for writing? How do you do it?

2) Social Structure. People have written that when they have indulged in world-building, instead of geography they have spent considerable focus on working up the social framework, and I'm very interested to hear more about what this process is like.

Well...

1) Query letter. Agents, particularly in the USA, are so overloaded with unsolicited manuscripts nowadays that they don't have time to read the synopsis and first 3 chapters like they used to, so will often reject manuscripts at the covering letter stage. Therefore the art of writing a really good query letter has grown substantially in recent years. A lot of agents' blogs and other online resources will cover how to craft a good query letter; Nathan Bransford covers a couple of examples he liked; AgentQuery has a breakdown of how to construct them well; Miss Snark's defunct blog is still a good resource.

2) Social structures. I'd guess many of the writers here have taken different approaches, so I can really only speak authoritatively on what I did, but anyway!

The approach differs in an SF versus a fantasy world because the conventions of the subgenres differ; the details will change due to other details about the precise setting involved. For instance, the "traditional faux-mediaeval" fantasy world tends to have patriarchal gender structures and a reasonably rigid social hierarchy. I'm not speaking about any aspiring author in this thread but about published authors not members of this board when I say that these aspects are sometimes tossed into a fantasy world without much thought.

I primarily write SF at the moment, which gives me a much broader palette to use in that there's a wider range of structures the readers will accept without question; my books deal with a number of intersecting societies, the social structures of which I created outward from basic facts about the societies concerned. The one I flesh out the most is dominated by very powerful magicians; the society I created for them is primarily concerned with regulating the behaviour of people with the power of whole armies who don't take particularly well to the little person with the gun telling them what to do. At the same time I've created other societies who see magic and authority very differently from the way these people do, because magic is one of the fundamental politicising forces in my world and in my story. If the fundamentals were different - based on who could mine a particular metal used in spaceship construction, for instance - the society I'd have created to regulate it all would be different.

It's personal choice on the author's part, to a very large extent. The society has to serve the story you're trying to tell - there's been a lot of discussion here about the society Bakker had created for Prince of Nothing, but it applies to anything; if you want to (re)tell the story of the spunky princess who rebels against patriarchy to become Robina Hood, you need a patriarchy for her to rebel against - but once you've created the society the story starts relying on it in turn.

I find that things build up in layers; I make one decision about one aspect of a society, and it naturally springs a hundred others. It took me quite a while to realise that the mage-society I mention above would have a very strong taboo about drugs, even alcohol, when ingested out of a strictly controlled environment, because of the immediate risks when a magician loses mental control; now, my protagonist's mother becomes tipsy after two sips of whisky she drinks at home, and the protagonist considers it perfectly acceptable to obtain her pocket money when visiting a different society by mugging drug dealers. And when over 50% of the population can see through people's clothes, clothing becomes something required for function, ritual and decoration, but not, in most cases, for modesty. (And when people from another culture wander in and start whistling at the bare boobs on display in summer, seeing immodesty where none was intended, those people tend to end up stabbed, shot or suffering the effects of various trap-spells; you don't insult magicians and not expect to get hurt, and when magicians control the society, such incidents are very rarely prosecuted.)

[Starkess]

Congrats!

I always feel good when I get on one of those rolls and just churn a bunch of pages seemingly without effort. Unfortunately, right now, I'm on the other end of that and nothing is more disheartening than staring at a page, writing a few lines, erasing them because they suck, rinse, repeat for an hour or two. Ugh.

My trick is to never erase them, just move on! That's what re-writes are for. :)

[The Evil Hat]

Today was god awful, tomorrow will be worse, and it doesn't look like that's going to let up for a few weeks at the least. The only upside, however, is that the empty novel plan I mentioned a few pages back has exploded. Today I wrote a four page (handwritten) outline for one of the two story arcs, and I'm dying to actually get to write this.

[Lord Mord]

Eloisa,

Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful reply. I am in your debt.

As to your explanation about societies, though, I am curious on one point. You mention that it's essentially up to the author, and I like that point of view, but I know that a lot of people have scolded GRRM on, especially, the Dothraki and how their society functions.

Is this merely a matter of, "there's no pleasing some people," or would you say there is a certain amount of versimilitude incumbent on the author for good work?

[Zoë Sumra]

Today was god awful, tomorrow will be worse, and it doesn't look like that's going to let up for a few weeks at the least.

:(

The only upside, however, is that the empty novel plan I mentioned a few pages back has exploded. Today I wrote a four page (handwritten) outline for one of the two story arcs, and I'm dying to actually get to write this.

Hurray! Hope that that time comes along very soon.

Eloisa,

Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful reply. I am in your debt.

You're welcome!

As to your explanation about societies, though, I am curious on one point. You mention that it's essentially up to the author, and I like that point of view, but I know that a lot of people have scolded GRRM on, especially, the Dothraki and how their society functions.

Is this merely a matter of, "there's no pleasing some people," or would you say there is a certain amount of versimilitude incumbent on the author for good work?

Weeellll, the problem with the Dothraki (and the Summer Islanders) is that the portrayal, when set alongside the more nuanced Westerosi society, approaches - I feel it crosses - the line of objectifying/exoticising people of colour. (The Dothraki even have the White social translator tagging along.) Then we're into the territory of discussing authorial right to express white-centricness through his/her work; not racism from the perspective of the fictional society, for a fictional society can be very racist/sexist/other-ist without the work or the author coming across in that way - example; GRRM usually does a very good job of portraying women within a sexist society in a non-sexist manner - but from the perspective in which the author assumes, however obliquely or however unconsciously, the book will be read.

An overly large percentage of SFF is white-centric; inexplicably so on the SF side, for while a lot of people cite mediaevalism or Euro-centricity as a reason for white-dominant fantasies, the handwaving gets harder for SF (it was pointed out after the 2009 Star Trek film that the current US Army is far more racially mixed than the futuristic Starfleet). At some point authors and, more importantly, publishing houses will start realising, like mainstream companies have realised, that this doesn't make commercial sense in a world where non-chromatic people are a numerical minority. (Note that the growth sectors in the SFF umbrella, particularly urban fantasy, aren't as white-centric as "trad" fantasy and hard SF.) For the time being, I think it's safest to say that if an author makes the particular choice to characterise societies on the basis of their inhabitants' skin colour and then exoticise or skimp on detailing societies composed solely of characters of colour, s/he'd better not throw the toys out of the pram if criticised for it.

Or think of it like this; a society is the author's choice, because the society has to fulfil the requirements of the story - so why does the story rely on chromatic characters to fill the impenetrable barbarian role?

Nevertheless - it is, still, author's choice. "Choice" doesn't mean a right not to be questioned by the readers/critics; right to be offensive is not requirement to be read without criticism, or in fact to be read at all. It's certainly not a matter of "there's no pleasing some people", because that implies that no offence is actually given; the situation, to me, is more that the author should actively think about why s/he is being criticised, and if s/he wants to combat the offence, it's hir decision to do so. (Or s/he could just not think too hard about why s/he's being criticised, but I don't have too much truck with that kind of person.)

[sargraf]

I've gotten to the point where I spend far more time world-building than writing the story itself, although I always write down whatever bits of story come to me. The world-building is enormously fun and rewarding, and I have a much clearer understanding of the context of the story the more I work on the history and so forth. Some plot points and characterization that used to make sense don't anymore, the more detailed the world becomes. It's like a puzzle that I thought I was seeing clearly, but the more I look, the more I see faint patterns in it, and I realize that's why it hasn't been coming together perfectly before. I really enjoy that part of it.

But lately, I've been feeling bogged down and impatient, and I wonder if I have a solid enough world built now that I could try to focus on writing a set page count every week or every month and let the world-building adjust itself in the writing process. I think writing a rough draft would help me better find my "voice" as a writer, as well as clarify characterization, plot, world-building, all of that.

Does anyone have any advice? Should I be patient with the world-building or devote some time to writing a rough draft?

Eloisa, I really enjoyed your posts. How and why societies develop the way they do has played an enormous role in my story, and like you say, the layers build more layers and it just goes on and on.