The Length Question I might finish the book today. I have about a chapter and a half to go. I know what happens in the rest of the chapter, but I'm not really sure about the last chapter/big finish. This wasn't supposed to be this big a rewrite. My agent thought it would require just a few little tweaks. But the questions she raised sparked ideas, and then those ideas led to a few little tweaks -- but then those tweaks has this massive domino effect that changed more and more until I pretty much had to throw out the last few chapters entirely. It's going to take some re-envisioning to re-do the last chapter because that ending was something I'd always pictured, and this particular project is an old partially completed project that I decided needed to be finished, so that ending's been in my head for years. I even researched that setting, but it turns out that I'll probably end up using research I did for an entirely unrelated book that I may never write for the setting for the new ending.
Then I'll have to read the whole thing straight through for proofreading and to do some minor Bill and Tedding, and I'll be done! I think at this point, I would push back on any further rewrite requests because I don't think they'd make the book better. They'd just edit the life out of it or make it my agent's book and not mine.
While I'm battling Book Brain, I'm answering some reader questions. If you have questions you'd like me to address -- about writing, publishing, me, my books, etc. -- leave them in comments. I don't promise to answer all of them, but I'll do a post if a question inspires me.
Question: I don't know about anyone else but I'm still confused about word lengths.
Some debut ya fantasy novels are 80K-90K. Some like Twilight are 120K. Some like City of Bones are 130K. Yet agents all say that the word count should be under 120K or something...it's confusing. What's a good length for a debut writer (writing in that genre)?
I don't know a lot about the young adult market, but my agent did a blog post a few months ago about that. Her view was that length is the wrong thing to ask about when it comes to middle grade or YA books. Those markets are all about the pacing, so a fast-paced book with lots of twists and turns can be really long and still hold reader interest. That applies to the adult market as well, but younger readers do have shorter attention spans, in general.
If the length comes from lots of action, lots of tension, conflict and suspense, and if the plot has a lot of surprises and reversals, then you can get away with a longer book. A lot of these longer books read very quickly. That doesn't entirely explain Twilight, as I thought that book moved very slowly and had very little going on in it, but I suppose it was loaded with emotional tension, and since I am Spock, that didn't do a lot for me. Obviously, millions of readers disagree with me there and felt that book was engrossing (since that series has outsold mine by more than a million times, and that's not dramatic hyperbole, she must have done something better than I know how to do).
You're right to be looking at debut books instead of established authors, since established authors have a lot more leeway. Would an epic tome with the length and pacing of the last few Harry Potter books have sold as a debut book? I don't know.
It is safer to aim for shorter, since shorter books are cheaper to print and tend to be more economical than longer books (though that economy of scale tends to vanish when the book is a huge bestseller and rakes in tons of profits). Shorter books require less paper, are cheaper to ship, can ship with more books in the box, take up less warehouse space and less shelf space. If your debut young adult book is more than about 80,000 words, then it had better have something really, really special about it, something that grips readers by the throats and won't let go, because a super-long length will be a hurdle to overcome and it will take an agent falling in love with it to be able to convince an editor to give it a shot, and then that editor will have to become a passionate advocate within the house.
You'll have to be really objective about your work to evaluate whether it absolutely has to be that length, if you've cut all fat and fluff, if there's tension, action, conflict or emotion on every page, and if it really is engrossing enough that the pages fly by. If it can be shorter, it probably should be. That applies to adult books, as well. These days, even the desired word count for adult novels is shrinking to the 85K word range.
In journalism school, one of my professors liked to say that a news story should be like a bikini -- big enough to cover the important parts but small enough to be interesting. I think that applies to novels, as well.
To enhance the atmosphere of an exploration scene in a game, the GM should be careful never to describe anything that the characters
couldn't notice with their normal senses. There may be secret doors, or rats under the floorboards, or giant spiders lurking in the
dark corners, but if the players aren't poking around in those areas, they shouldn't notice them.
To further improve the experience, make sure you don't describe anything the players don't specifically say they are looking for.
To illustrate:
Player: What do I see? GM: A room. Player: Is there a treasure chest? GM: You don't see any. Player: A cupboard? GM: Not that you can see. Player: Do I see a wardrobe? GM: Nope. Player: So there's nothing in here. GM: I didn't say that.
Dog Eared Books are once again doing a Virtual Signing for First Lord's Fury! Fans can pre-order signed, personalized copies of First Lord's Fury and the new paperback version of Princeps' Fury. Deadline for all orders is Sunday, November 22,...
Pub Night Tonight, round about 8 PM at Fat Daddy's Pub in Paddington Square, 81st Street and Memorial. If I'm not there, go ahead and start without me.
Plugging along Not much to put here. I'm plugging along, keeping pretty busy at work. A lot of what I'm doing right now is repetitious, which is good, because it's helping me to learn what I need to learn. I've started seeing students now, reviewing their thesis/report formats and letting them know what corrections they need to make. I'm getting pretty good at those now - I've done quite a few now, and I'm getting faster at them (which is good, because the last week or so before the end of the semester, we'll be seeing a lot of students and speed will be important). These have to be in a particular format, with the pages in a particular order, no deviation from the standard.
I'm also reviewing programs of work (basically those courses actually counting toward the student's degree), which after a while makes me go buggy, but I'll have to do these by the end of the semester anyway, and most are in pretty good shape (some need to be sent back to the departments for correction).
Since I started here, I've gone home from work every day exhausted. I've been falling asleep early. Most nights, I've been waking up still in the middle of the night, but for the most part I'm actually getting some decent sleep. I think part of this is the time change, part of this may be that with the anxiety of my job future gone, I don't have that anxiety keeping me awake, and some of it may also be related to the months of absolutely no sleep this summer catching up with me.
Because I'm taking an hour long lunch break now (which I didn't do at my last job), I'm getting some good reading done. At some point soon, I need to update my 50 book challenge, I've read quite a few since my last update.
I'm currently working on GRRM's A Game of Thrones, an 800 page BFF (Big, Fat Fantasy). It took about 200 pages, but now it's gotten interesting, and I'm into it.
Oh and the creepy neighbor is still downstairs. The dude leaves his windows open and lights on, so when walking by his apartment, you can't help but see inside (I saw him in there last night). He has no furniture in his apt - now, he has the exact same layout I do, 1300 SF, and no furniture. If he can afford that apt, he can afford some furniture. I know that in itself does not make him creepy, everything else about him makes him creepy. But since the episode a week ago Sunday, there hasn't been a peep out of him, not even any of his late night screaming. Maybe he got a come to Jesus talking to.
Veteran's Day A big, grateful salute to all the veterans of this country's armed forces. Your service is greatly appreciated.
As we celebrate Veteran's Day, it's sad and embarrassing that Oklahoma's own Senator Tom Coburn is currently playing politics with soldiers' lives by holding up a big benefits bill (S 1963, the Veterans' Caregiver and Omnibus Health Benefits Act of 2009) that would provide services for veterans, including caregiver assistance, health care benefits for vets living in rural areas, medicine for newborn children, and services that would ease veteran homelessness: http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3347
Philcon TAFF auction If things go according to schedule, there should be a TAFF auction at Windycon this weekend (I meant to send Anne some things, but plum forgot - so those will go to... a TAFF auction at Philcon.
Donated items for the Philcon TAFF auction so far include:
An Astroboy clock! An Ultraman blaring alarm clock! Romulan Bird of Prey (old style, from "Balance of Terror") with blinking lights and sounds! Fossil ammonite! WWII army helmet! A license plate that declares "May the Schwartz Be With You" (from a car dealer named Schwartz) The souped-up RoboRaptor! A Cyberman (from Dr. Who)! Misc. DVDs and VHS (!) tapes! A Lost in Space lunchbox! A Tuckerization from Lawrence M. Schoen (A Tuckerization is where the author names a character after YOU!)!
Who knows what other random things will show up in my mailbox before they get carted off to Philcon for the auction.
In addition, we're still scheduled to start the online auctions for various Tuckerizations (from Cory Doctorow, Charlie Stross, David Brin, Elizabeth Bear, Nalo Hopkinson, Julie Czerneda, and Mary Robinette Kowal, and a whole slew of other awesome writers) the day after Thanksgiving! That same day we'll start online auctions for first editions of "1984" and "Hiroshima"!
If anyone out there wants to donate anything, or any authors reading this want to donate a Tuckerization, send me an email at FWu@FrankWu.com !!!!!
Disappointing Today I had to resurrect a pair of jeans that had been set aside as too large about a year ago. Guess it's a good thing I didn't get this stuff all off to Goodwill...
“Hey, folks. My iPod knows that it's Veteran's Day. I just got, in order, the All-American Chorus doing "Blood Upon the Risers"; I got Warren Zevon doing "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner"; and, finally, Iron Maiden doing "The Longest Day", which is a song about D-Day. I like it when this kind of thing happens, it reaffirms my faith in the perversity and randomness of the universe. Hope you're all havin' a good one, I'm on my way to Stockton, drivin' through miles and miles of empty territory. Bye.”
Driving Needs I only did a little more than five hours of writing yesterday. I was hoping to do more when I got home from ballet, but I was just too tired. It was a frustrating two-steps-forward/one-step-back kind of day, as I got midway through rewriting (and it was a lot of original writing) the next chapter when I realized some of the scenes were a repetition and I could telescope events, and then rearranging some things really amped things up, so after an hour of work that came to nothing other than this realization, I had to go back and re-do the previous day's work. It's for the better. If I'm really good, I might be able to finish this draft tomorrow. Then one more good read-through, and I'm done. Too bad I have choir tonight. It's frustrating having obligations when I really want to write. I hope I can carry this enthusiasm forward.
I learn a lot about writing from watching TV. Most of the time, it's from things that are done well -- if I fall in love with characters or find certain plots particularly compelling, I can try to figure out how they work so I can apply that to my own writing. But sometimes I can learn a lot from what isn't working, and there's a current science fiction series that shall remain nameless that isn't working for me, and I think I've figured out a big reason why -- and that discovery/reminder is helping me in the book I'm currently revising.
I think one of the most important thing to know about a character is what he or she needs -- what drives that person, even aside from the story plot. There may be a story goal: beat the bad guys, rescue the maiden, find the quest object, solve the crime, escape from the bad guys, save the world, get home again, etc. But even before the story kicks in, what makes these people tick?
Answering that question will tell you a lot about the way the characters react to and approach the story goal. And the answer to the question can't be something as primal and universal as survival, since just about everyone wants to survive -- unless maybe that character has raised survival to an art form and is so driven by the need to survive unscathed that he's willing to sacrifice anything and everything to do so.
Before the Herald figure shows up to issue the challenge and send the hero off on his quest, what drives the hero in all the things he does, even in his ordinary world?
Does he need to find the answers and figure out how everything works? Does he feel inadequate and unworthy, so he needs to prove his worth over and over again on a daily basis? Does he need to be in control of every situation? Does he need to feel loved and accepted (but fears he isn't)? Does he need to feel like he's doing the right thing? Does he do everything out of duty? Does he want harmony, so that he avoids conflict? Does he need to be respected? Does he need to be right in any argument? Is he afraid of being alone? Does he want to be famous? Does he want to belong to the community? Does he want to do his own thing and be independent? Does he want to avoid as much effort as possible? Is he fascinated by the new and different? Is he clinging to the status quo of his comfort zone? Does he need to defend those he perceives as weaker? Does he need to be defended by others? Is he a thrillseeker?
You get the idea. This is just a list of plot-independent needs that came to the top of my head. Each of these needs will drive a person to respond in a different way to whatever plot events come up. If you put together a team where each person has a different need, those needs and drives would differentiate the team members from each other and would create the team dynamic as their needs either clash or reinforce each other. These drives are also going to affect the plot because the way the characters react to events will send the story in different directions.
Once you know these drives, they need to remain consistent throughout the story, unless something happens that is powerful enough to change the character's need, and that usually comes with a major transformation -- often something that comes close to a symbolic death and rebirth. Aside from that kind of transformation/rebirth, these drives/needs can never be fully met by achieving a goal because even if the character seems to have met his need, he will either want more or be afraid of losing it. Someone who wants to be famous and who achieves fame is then going to fear becoming obscure (notice some of the crazy things flash-in-the-pan celebrities do to remain in the public eye). Someone who wants control may become king of the world, but then he'll do anything to stay in power. He doesn't stop needing to be in control just because he has achieved control.
If you don't know this very basic information about your characters, you may end up with a muddle, and readers will have a hard time finding a connection with your characters. You'll really frustrate readers if the characters' needs seem to change depending on the situation -- if the guy who needs to do the right thing in one scene then goes and does something dishonorable in another scene without any particularly good reason.
You can also use these drives to create some really interesting conflict by finding situations that will pit the characters' drives against their survival -- if the only way out is to act against type. Force your control freak to put his fate in someone else's hands. Make the loner work as part of a team. Make the person who needs harmony take a stand that generates conflict. Once readers are aware, even if it's just subconsciously, of what drives these people, they'll recognize the dilemma.
Knowing these driving needs is a good way to find your way out when you get stuck. When you need to figure out what happens next, go back to the core of your characters and think about how those needs will make the characters react in that situation -- what actions would they take, and how would those actions among the various characters come into conflict with each other?
(And yes, this was how I solved my dilemma in this book.)
In honor of Veteran's Day, they spotlighted this website dedicated to women who served in the military, then got into writing!
http://www.romvets.com/
Please do check out the "Before and After" link at the top of the page to read about fascinating women who not only served their country but worked on the pen being mightier than the sword angle!
It's focus is on romance writers, so left out is one of my favs, Elizabeth Moon, who served as a Marine in Vietnam in the 60s. For some great military s/f reading, check out her books!
Sorry I've been gone so long, and sorry for (again) deleting my LJ. But, I've restored it again, and I intend to update it--firstly with a long and rambling entry about what I did this Spring, Summer and Autumn, or more accurately, what I didn't do!
Earlier this year, around April, I finished up the last of the paintings for my 2010 Calendar, and I fully intended to get right to work on lots more paintings. And then it hit me--a terrible, terrible case of burnout. For day after day, I would dutifully sit in front of my computer, and produce-- absolutely nothing. I would start new pieces, and wind up deleting them, or paint on half-done pieces and then wind up deleting what I'd done. Eventually, I realized that this was serious, and needed some serious action (or inaction). So I took the rest of the Spring off from art, and then the Summer as well, and now most of Autumn. I've been back working for a couple of weeks now, and I'm taking it very, very, veeeery slowly, since I don't want to scare away my (apparently FRAGILE and easily distracted!!) muse.
What I did accomplish while I wasn't painting was to lose weight. I've lost 29-ish pounds so far, with 14 more to go to reach my goal. I quit the diet for a couple of weeks since I just got tired of the tiny meals, but now I'm fired up again to lose the rest of the weight so I can buy new clothes, since my old clothes just hang on me. My jeans are so baggy my husband says they look like jodhpurs. And the sad thing is, that just a couple of years ago, I threw away my old jeans from when I was thinner because I thought I would 'never be that size again'. My husband is also on the diet and has lost over 50 pounds! It's pure diet the way we do it, no exercise whatsoever, and although we started out following the South Beach diet, we have since discovered, that for us anyway, it doesn't really matter WHAT we eat, it's all about portion control.
We also lost three of our stray cats we feed. Taskett, a short-haired tortiseshell, simply vanished one day several months ago, and then and Mocha, a dark brown shorthair vanished as well, and Spot, Taskett's brother, was killed by a car a few weeks ago. However, we do have a couple of new strays, a gorgeous but wild long-haired black cat with a little white spot on his chest just like Spot, (and quite probably Spot's father) that we have named Domino, and there is a tough skinny black and white shorthaired tom we named Tuxedo. And we still have Graylordling , a beautiful long-haired gray cat, and the younger half brother of my Cassira-boodles. Graylordling is taming down quite nicely.
That's it for now.
Current Mood: lost Current Music:Papparazzi by Lady Gaga
<3 Oh, dear. I was running around with my cordless drill tearing up my kitchen and banging together a reasonably sturdy makeshift counter so my Mom has something to make sandwiches on while we're gone, and completely forgot what day it is. (All right, it's a long story. Just accept that I was distracted.) So, yes, Phil and I will be at Windycon this weekend. I am really looking forward to it. Also, We now have SQUEEZY CASTLE WULFENBACH AIRSHIPS in stock!
"I Was Born Like This, I Had No Choice . . ." Last night Rohanna, Dragonet and I had the privilege of seeing a live performance by one of the greatest songwriters of the modern age, Leonard Cohen. Cohen has been touring on and off for over a year now, largely due to his manager having embezzled most of Cohen's earnings. Cohen started out touring in Europe, then covered much of North America, having gotten as close as Denver earlier this year. I had given up all hope of seeing him, assuming he had finished his tour and was resuming his retirement. When I saw the ad for his show here, I was shocked. When we got the tickets, I was even more stunned.
Last night I dropped the ladies off at the Midland, then found a parking place nearby (I had no interest in paying the $10 "event parking" charges for the Power & Light District). Walking back to the theater, I finally allowed myself to believe I was actually going to be seeing this show.
I hadn't been in the Midland since sometime in the '80s, and not since the renovation completed a year or so ago. I was pleased to find that AMC had left the beautiful art deco stylings of the 18927 building intact, and restored the venue to its prime.
At 8p sharp (just like it said on the ticket), nine-piece band came onstage. And then The Man himself, 75--year-old Leonard Cohen, came sprinting to his microphone, dressed in a sharp black suit and fedora. When the first of numerous standing ovations finished, he launched into "Dance Me to the End of Love," and the room became perfectly still. The set list was much the same as the "Live in London" cd/dvd currently available, featuring a mix of classic songs from Cohen's lengthy career. Though he is a little thinner in the higher ranges, that "gift of a golden voice" is still a powerful instrument, and was more than up to the 3.5 hour, four encore show. Early on, he told the audience "I don't know when we'll pass this way again, but for tonight, we're going to give you everything we've got," and he and the band proceeded to do just that.
Without a doubt, this was one of the best concerts I have attended. A once in a lifetime opportunity, ad a dream fulfilled.
HELLNOTES has posted a fabulous review of my horror collection, Shades of Blood and Shadow. Check it out. Shades of Blood and Shadow is intelligent horror, which doesn’t mean it sacrifices emotional punch. Angeline Hawkes knows when to go for the gut, the jugular, or the heart; she does it with restraint and timing. There is a sense of place and purpose in her writing. She strikes the right balance between the blood and the shadow.
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amused
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