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Boarders Writing a Novel, Part 9


Gabriele

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I have a great one...it's called pen and paper. Spend your time and energy writing.

Yes and no. I've spent four hours over the past two days building the set at the end of Sailor in The Sims 2, because I realised it made no sense whatsoever - character A turned left to get to point X, and character B turned right at the same junction to get to point X, etc. When you're making up a continent or country's layout, or in this case a building's layout, as you're going along in your first draft, you put in the features that you need. This is perfectly acceptable until those features become contradictory. Ironing out the contradictions in whatever way you can during the second or third draft is very important - and if you're writing the kind of story where the distance between cities P and Q is critical to the plot, it is of benefit to calculate that distance before you start.

I draw maps on paper but prefer to build buildings in The Sims - my handwritten floorplans tend to turn into squiggle.

The nature of my story means that I am going to have to have a fairly large cast of characters and they all have a really long back story. Even though I have the ability to create them using somewhat of a formula, I am still finding it a bit of a drudge to sit down and think of names, descriptions and basic personality types.

This is the first time I have approached writing in this manner. In the past, I have always just written scenes and had characters appear in them as it served a purpose. What I was wondering is if anyone else does work on their characters before they start writing, and if so, what is that process like?

I tend to start writing books several months or years after the plot bunny starts nibbling at my garden. All the substantive characters turn up during that time while I'm mulling it all over, so I have a long time to work out what kind of person I want to play off another kind of person. I make up walk-ons as I go along.

He said a good one. :P Pistol Pate is entirely correct: Roget.

I also changed the development and direction of a particular character simply because I had an idea while writing a particular scene, and then went back and made the appropriate changes. I find it kinda fun - these characters are yours to do with what you will, you can change your mind all you like and just go wild. Some things work, some things don't, but I personally think that if I can't laugh at myself a bit when it goes wrong, and if it's not fun when it goes right, I need to step away from it for a while. It shouldn't be a chore, as hard a slog as it can be.

I hope you carry on having fun with it. :)

There is a major plot driving them forward, and it's a basic "kill the dragon" plot only with a phoenix, and have pirates instead of knights. I don't want to get too deep into the plot, because I am still ironing out the details.

You completely had me at "kill the phoenix". Good luck...

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That's just bizarre. The (sequel) novel I'm currently working on has a female protagonist, and she's more an academic and social snob than the classical Hot Chick (she's a sort of Sansa Stark meets Sam Tarly). She also has a very healthy sex life.

I agree that it was bizarre, but we were told this not once but twice, and once by our agent. I can't remember ever being so flabbergasted.

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I think I'm going to go with your approach. I'm 15 and a virgin so I really wouldn't know how to write seks scenes except for copying existing ones.

And I ever actually reach the 30th book, I'll die a happy man :D

I can assure you, if you reach 30 books, you won't have to worry about being a virgin, you'll be a rock star! :P

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Backtracking so I can talk about sex :-p

I usually curtain call it after the foreplay, though there's a scene in my current novel that shows the whole thing, entirely because it's relevant to Eawan's story arc. I would not usually show full sex scenes. The foreplay is much more fun anyway... or rather, the simmering sexual tension that builds up for an entire novel.

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I use MS paint for my maps. It's worked out pretty well as far as general outlines go, and regional borders. The key is to start large, and then work your way down. That way you can get into the nitty-gritty to give it a realistic edge.

Two I've done:

http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u538/frank_buck1/map_zpse9233b9c.png

http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u538/frank_buck1/map_zpse0adcc16.png

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I usually curtain call it after the foreplay, though there's a scene in my current novel that shows the whole thing, entirely because it's relevant to Eawan's story arc. I would not usually show full sex scenes. The foreplay is much more fun anyway... or rather, the simmering sexual tension that builds up for an entire novel.

When it comes to writing sex, thoughts and feelings are more important than describing the physical action anyway.

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I use MS paint for my maps. It's worked out pretty well as far as general outlines go, and regional borders. The key is to start large, and then work your way down. That way you can get into the nitty-gritty to give it a realistic edge.

Two I've done:

http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u538/frank_buck1/map_zpse9233b9c.png

http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u538/frank_buck1/map_zpse0adcc16.png

Those look cool, and very professional. I'd post my own map, but I don't know how. Can I do it if I make an account on imgur?

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I use MS paint for my maps. It's worked out pretty well as far as general outlines go, and regional borders. The key is to start large, and then work your way down. That way you can get into the nitty-gritty to give it a realistic edge.

Two I've done:

http://i1320.photobu...zpse9233b9c.png

http://i1320.photobu...zpse0adcc16.png

They're really well constructed those. Surprisingly so! Brilliant work.

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They're really well constructed those. Surprisingly so! Brilliant work.

Thank you. Unfortunately the illusion kinda fades whenever I try to start adding greater detail (trees, mountains, etc.), and I don't have or really know how to use photoshop. As far as actually including them with any work I hope to publish, I'll probably just throw in some symbols tagged with the important cities, towns, castles, and various estates that are relevant to the story.

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Thank you. Unfortunately the illusion kinda fades whenever I try to start adding greater detail (trees, mountains, etc.), and I don't have or really know how to use photoshop. As far as actually including them with any work I hope to publish, I'll probably just throw in some symbols tagged with the important cities, towns, castles, and various estates that are relevant to the story.

I am jealous of how detailed it is. I tried once, and it looked like a blob, but then I did try adding lots of trees and mountains etc. which prob wasn't the best thing to do.

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I am jealous of how detailed it is. I tried once, and it looked like a blob, but then I did try adding lots of trees and mountains etc. which prob wasn't the best thing to do.

I just add green for forest, yellow for desert, brown or gray for mountains. It works and it's still comprehensible and clean.

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I just add green for forest, yellow for desert, brown or gray for mountains. It works and it's still comprehensible and clean.

Good idea! I am not going to attempt another map for a while. When I do, I shall aim for simplicity. At the end of the day, people just want to know where things are.

At school today we had an author in to speak to the Year 8s. He was everything a stereotypical author is, right down to having a shed in his garden to do his novel writing. He spent five minutes showing the kids what his various book covers looked like for his international publications and talking about his international acclaim. He made the job of getting a book published really easy too: "Oh I just decided to become an author and so three years later I was one" style. Really made me mad! I remember such authors coming to visit my school when I was little and how none of them mentioned the difficulties either. I think if someone had sat me down and told me about the rejection to acceptance rate of unsolicited manuscripts, I might have put my creative energies elsewhere. This guy really was trying to sell 'being an author' as a profession too. And apparently you don't need to be good at English at school - all you need to do is to know how to daydream.

/rant

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Good idea! I am not going to attempt another map for a while. When I do, I shall aim for simplicity. At the end of the day, people just want to know where things are.

At school today we had an author in to speak to the Year 8s. He was everything a stereotypical author is, right down to having a shed in his garden to do his novel writing. He spent five minutes showing the kids what his various book covers looked like for his international publications and talking about his international acclaim. He made the job of getting a book published really easy too: "Oh I just decided to become an author and so three years later I was one" style. Really made me mad! I remember such authors coming to visit my school when I was little and how none of them mentioned the difficulties either. I think if someone had sat me down and told me about the rejection to acceptance rate of unsolicited manuscripts, I might have put my creative energies elsewhere. This guy really was trying to sell 'being an author' as a profession too. And apparently you don't need to be good at English at school - all you need to do is to know how to daydream.

/rant

Sounds annoying, as if you become a published author overnight.

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When it comes to writing sex, thoughts and feelings are more important than describing the physical action anyway.

This is true. I'd like to hope this is true of the scene I was speaking of.

Meant to comment on this before, but I agree with the above. It's part of why I like Guy Gavriel Kay's sex scenes (and thus have been influenced by him in this regard). He rarely describes the "action" in explicit detail, but instead gets into the character's head, where (at least in his case) all of the really important stuff is going on. There's definitely a time and place for descriptions of the physical act, but I think a lot of authors go a bit overboard in trying to be edgy by totally "going there", instead of actually worrying about how the scene works and how it impacts the characters.

ETA: And of course, as soon as you start getting explicit, you run the risk of making it totally smirk-worthy and impossible to take seriously. I think GRRM is a perfect example of this (fat pink mast, Myrish swamp, etc.). His best sex scene was the one with Arianne and the Kingsguard dude, and yet it was also notably less explicit (at least as I remember it) and instead focused on the emotions of the character, rather than dishing out over-the-top metaphors for genitalia.

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At school today we had an author in to speak to the Year 8s. He was everything a stereotypical author is, right down to having a shed in his garden to do his novel writing. He spent five minutes showing the kids what his various book covers looked like for his international publications and talking about his international acclaim. He made the job of getting a book published really easy too: "Oh I just decided to become an author and so three years later I was one" style. Really made me mad! I remember such authors coming to visit my school when I was little and how none of them mentioned the difficulties either. I think if someone had sat me down and told me about the rejection to acceptance rate of unsolicited manuscripts, I might have put my creative energies elsewhere. This guy really was trying to sell 'being an author' as a profession too. And apparently you don't need to be good at English at school - all you need to do is to know how to daydream.

That's downright infuriating. He could at least have mentioned that even many of the greats (Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, and company) had day jobs, because writing is not lucrative.

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That's downright infuriating. He could at least have mentioned that even many of the greats (Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, and company) had day jobs, because writing is not lucrative.

Yup. I feel like this is the perspective of "someone who got lucky", which is perfectly fine (and I'm perfectly willing to be proven wrong), but it certainly doesn't represent the vast majority. Personally, I think the best and really the only overarching advice for writers consists of two rules (and they're hardly original):

1. Write all the time.

2. Read all the time.

That's pretty much it. The more you write, the better you'll get. The more you read, the more knowledgeable you'll become about the medium. I also think a fantastic (and underused) exercise for young/aspiring writers is to OUTLINE. Outline an entire novel. Or a movie. Or hell, even a video game. A lot of people say that spending time not literally writing prose is a waste, and I disagree 100%. From the time I was in fifth grade (when I started "writing") to around my junior year in high school, I rarely wrote complete stories. Instead, I plotted stories. I wrote outlines for any remotely interesting idea I had, be it a summary, a synopsis, or (later) a chapter-by-chapter overview. It gave me an awareness for the way plots work, how they retain the audience's interest, how they establish pacing, build mood, atmosphere, suspense, etc., none of which can easily be gleaned from just writing prose (unless you're a prodigy, or, on the other hand, write a ridiculous amount from an early age). I honestly think an understanding of plot, and plot mechanics, is more important than the quality of your prose. A good story is a good story, whether it's a novel, a movie, or told to you around a campfire. Of course the delivery is relevant, and if you're great at the delivery then it's even better, but at the core of this art we are storytellers, and if the story isn't good, then it doesn't matter how embellished your telling of it is.

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So as I'm trying to write, I'm learning that I'm an absolute failure when it comes to descriptive language. I tried to describe my own hand just to get the gist of it and I can't even do that. Describing what people look like is going to be very, very troubling. A lot of it might be being limited in adjectives I know because of how low quality my education has been and the rest is simply not knowing what things are. Can anyone provide tips?

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