Anyone else trying to write a book?

[warlord]

Just go with what you're good at JD. If dialouge is your weak point then focus less on dialouge and more on whatever comes easy for you.

 

[Tolen Mar]

So I'm not the only frustrated wannabe writer here. Not sure if that's a good thing or bad.

Just like Warlord said, there are a lot of us. It seems that a good percentage of the population WANT to write, but only a small number finish.

 

[Desdichado]

Just go with what you're good at JD. If dialouge is your weak point then focus less on dialouge and more on whatever comes easy for you.

Well, dialogue's kinda important. I'd like to be better at it, because you can't really dispense with it and have a decent product.

 

[Dog Moon]

Originally posted by Joshua Dyal
Well, dialogue's kinda important. I'd like to be better at it, because you can't really dispense with it and have a decent product.

Pfft. Just make your character a mute or something. Picture Silent Bob as the main character of a book.

 

[Fast Learner]

Your viewpoint character would need to be deaf, too.

The tall guy with the beard was moving his mouth again. Bob picked up a red fruit, for which he also had no name, and threw it at the tall guy with the beard.

See, not awkward at all!

 

[Dog Moon]

Originally posted by Fast Learner
Your viewpoint character would need to be deaf, too.

Does that mean he'd need to be blind too, or else he could read someone's lips.

"Bob had no idea what was going on. He felt someone brush up against him, but when he swung his fist, he felt only air. I frustration because he couldn't see or hear anyone because of his ailments, he reached down and grabbed something heavy. He stood tall and lobbed it forward. He had no idea what he hit, if he hit anything, and a broad grin widened upon his face. He turned and ran into some hard, flat, and large, hurting his nose. In frustration, his swung his fist. This time, he made contant, landing a solid blow against the hard substance. Unfortunately, the only effect his punch had was to make his fist hurt. His lips curled into a sad frown as he realized he needed to figure out again where his home was.

He then realized he had never left his home." Dun dun DUN!!! Find out what happens next week on "Sucks to be Blind, Deaf, and Mute."

 

[Desdichado]

Find out what happens next week on "Sucks to be Blind, Deaf, and Mute."

He learns to play pinball?

 

[takyris]

Good heavens. That's not from anything actually published, is it?

God no. Only in my satirical dreams.

So, my dialogue will now sound like it was written by Jane Austen...

I know you're kidding, but in my last read of Pride and Prejudice (for my most recently completed novel, a swashbuckling fantasy gender-reversed retelling called Courtship and Cutlery), what I saw was that while Austen tends to hit her settings in exposition, she is really really good at getting across character through dialogue while ostensibly talking about something else. There are a lot of conversations about marriage and the conventions of the time that come out just beautifully in the voices of her characters.

What most surprised me, I think, was realizing that while my high school and college teachers had waxed rhapsodical about her language and how beautiful it was, Austen's writing is so incredibly angry when you get beneath the humorous surface. She's a woman who has no other outlet in her world save writing, and she's making some pretty cutting commentary without pulling her punches.

Beyond that... when I went to a novel-editing workshop, the most surprising thing I heard was that too many novel writers learn to write from short stories. That's good to a point -- no sense making all your mistakes in a novel when you can make them on something shorter -- but it often results in people applying to novels what they learned from short story classes, and so you get novels by short-story writers that have well-crafted voice and perfect word choices and lovely sentence structure and don't waste space... but which don't have the structure to support a novel plot.

According to the teacher, who has 75 novels published, what gets a short story rejected is its voice. If it has a good voice, it's on the road to acceptance, even if the plot is barely there. What gets a novel rejected is its structure. If the structure doesn't work, it's not going to fly, no matter how pretty the voice is -- but a novel with a good structure can sell as long as the voice isn't actively painful to read.

(Note: This is not Tacky the unpublished guy saying this. This is the guy with 75 novel publications saying this.)

So while it's good to get your dialogue polished, the absolute best thing you can do for your novel is get it plotted and outlined really well, and polish that outline, so that you know what's going to happen, you spend the right time in the right places, you keep tension and suspense, and you move the whole deal along at a good clip. If you do that, you're a lot of the way there, no matter what your voice is like. Go back and fix your voice later.

None of which really helps people who don't write.

 

[Desdichado]

Oh, I totally agree. Which is why my WIP, if I don't say so myself, has a plot and structure that kicks some ass. And I've already just started putting it down, figgering that it's easier (at least for me) to revise something already existing than to worry about crafting something perfect in the first attempt.

But I do recognize that good dialogue is not my strong point, so at some point, I'd like to really improve that.

 

[DarkSoldier]

I've written a five-part fantasy epic (I hope that term can apply) that I'm hoping to get published. I submitted part 1 to WotC's Open Novel Call, but I haven't heard anything; the fact that Canadian stamps aren't valid in the US is probably a good reason why.

The hardest part is finding a publisher that will actually consider your work, because there are publishers that specialize in fields outside SF&F, and a few won't accept unagented submissions.