Anyone else trying to write a book?

[warlord]

Everyone is a struggling writer at heart Orius we're just the ones strong enough to admit it.

 

[takyris]

For the record -- the numbers I stated before are accurate, as far as I know, for new writers submitting stuff. That is to say, if your fantasy novel is 300k words, it's gonna be a tougher sell than if it were 125k. I'm not saying that your 300k-word novel isn't good enough, but statistically, most aren't, at this point in the publishing timeline. Publishers would rather split up books that are that big.

As far as cutting and trimming go -- don't do it yet. Get all the story out there, then see what doesn't work or isn't necessary. It's easier to see where the ten percent ought to be cut once the whole hundred percent is there.

And JD is right -- they do all kinds of tricks to get a book look like the size they'd like it to be. Easiest way to find out is to pick up the book in question, count the number of words on a given page, and then multiply by the number of actual text pages (ie, not counting the title page and such). If you want to be even more accurate, you can cut one page's worth of words for each chapter, since most books start the text of a chapter halfway down the page, and a chapter might end with just a bit on the page or with almost a full page of text, so rounding to halfway is about right. (Thus, in each chapter, you lose about one page's worth of words.)

 

[Dog Moon]

Originally posted by Joshua Dyal
A smallish novel, say one of the licensed Star Trek novels is probably 90,000 to 100,000 words. A larger, typical fantasy novel is probably 120,000 to 180,000 words. A Robert Jordan book worthy of having readers gouge out there eyes in frustration is probably at least twice that.

Cool, my book will make people want to gouge out their eyes in frustration, unless, of course, it's split up into multiple books.

I can just see the headline:

"Book too long makes millions poke out their eyes in frustration."

Well, okay, so maybe my book would be more like HUNDREDS although nothing would breed popularity like being in the news, whatever the reason.

 

[warlord]

Personally I don't see why puiblishers are turned off by long books. Look at Eragon one could argue it is of eye-gouging length. On top of that its the obvious bastard child of every great fanatsy book ever made and now it gets a movie! Hell at this rate we'll all get published and get movies too. Or at least a tvf or miniseries.

 

[Desdichado]

Cool, my book will make people want to gouge out their eyes in frustration, unless, of course, it's split up into multiple books.

Hey, now! You're connecting dots I didn't mean to be connected. I never said that people gouge out their eyes in frustration because of the length of Jordan's books! No, they do that because nothing happens except a bunch of whiny characters sniffing at each other and rearranging their skirts interminably...

 

[Desdichado]

Dialogue. I almost always do my setting through dialogue. I also do my characterizations through dialogue. Sometimes I do my action scenes through dialogue. In fact, in situations where I can't use dialogue, my setting becomes... bad.

That's interesting. And intriguing to me in particuar, since I think dialogue is my greatest weakness as a writer. I really struggle to make dialogue that's OK, and only when I'm extremely lucky do I get dialogue that anyone would call inspired, or even really noteworthy.

So it hadn't really occured to me to disguise little bits and pieces of info dump as dialogue between two characters; I had purposefully avoided it in fact as a fairly trite cliche of bad sci-fi. The whole, "As you know, the whatzamagoogle always works like so." "Yes, but did you realize that if you bake it at 350 for four hours, it changes chemical composition?" "Why, yes, I did!" nightmare of some of the worst stuff I read as a kid comes to mind.

But your example is fairly clever, I think; much more subtle as well. Plus it gives some more purpose to my dialogue, which will probably improve it.

Along those lines, does anyone know of any resources on how to improve dialogue specifically? As I said, it's far from my strong point as a writer, and I'll take any suggestions I can find to improve it.

 

[reveal]

That's interesting. And intriguing to me in particuar, since I think dialogue is my greatest weakness as a writer. I really struggle to make dialogue that's OK, and only when I'm extremely lucky do I get dialogue that anyone would call inspired, or even really noteworthy.

So it hadn't really occured to me to disguise little bits and pieces of info dump as dialogue between two characters; I had purposefully avoided it in fact as a fairly trite cliche of bad sci-fi. The whole, "As you know, the whatzamagoogle always works like so." "Yes, but did you realize that if you bake it at 350 for four hours, it changes chemical composition?" "Why, yes, I did!" nightmare of some of the worst stuff I read as a kid comes to mind.

But your example is fairly clever, I think; much more subtle as well. Plus it gives some more purpose to my dialogue, which will probably improve it.

Along those lines, does anyone know of any resources on how to improve dialogue specifically? As I said, it's far from my strong point as a writer, and I'll take any suggestions I can find to improve it.

If you want practice, I suggest you sign up for Fall Ceramic DM. It's a lot of fun and sign-ups are going on right now.

 

[takyris]

That's interesting. And intriguing to me in particuar, since I think dialogue is my greatest weakness as a writer. I really struggle to make dialogue that's OK, and only when I'm extremely lucky do I get dialogue that anyone would call inspired, or even really noteworthy.

On one hand, I'm lucky -- I have a pretty good ear (my wife, who does semiprofessional singing, gets frustrated that I can pick out weird musical stuff she still misses sometimes, but don't like singing as much as she does), so dialogue comes to me pretty naturally. I have, on the other hand, an utterly lousy eye, so trying to get settings into my stories is... not always pretty.

So it hadn't really occured to me to disguise little bits and pieces of info dump as dialogue between two characters; I had purposefully avoided it in fact as a fairly trite cliche of bad sci-fi. The whole, "As you know, the whatzamagoogle always works like so." "Yes, but did you realize that if you bake it at 350 for four hours, it changes chemical composition?" "Why, yes, I did!" nightmare of some of the worst stuff I read as a kid comes to mind.

My favorite example, when a friend asked me what I meant by "Bad 'As you Know' Dialogue":

Biff: I'm headed out for groceries. Back in a bit.

Chet: Be careful out there! Don't forget that we're living in a post-apocalyptic United States that's been torn apart by civil war in the aftermath of recovered alien technology, leading to a world in which the priveleged upper-class has become genetically engineered supermen who send assassin cyborgs to pick apart the last remnants of natural humanity.

Biff: Oh, yeah. That. Right. I'll remember that.

But your example is fairly clever, I think; much more subtle as well. Plus it gives some more purpose to my dialogue, which will probably improve it.

Along those lines, does anyone know of any resources on how to improve dialogue specifically? As I said, it's far from my strong point as a writer, and I'll take any suggestions I can find to improve it.

My suggestion would be to watch a wide range of movies -- specifically, movies praised for their writing. Take scenes that jump out at you not as action scenes but as scenes that set up an interesting problem or situation, and (assuming you're watching on DVD), go back through the scene and take a transcript of what is said (or just copy it from the script, if you've got a good movie script out there).

Once you've got each line, make another column next to each line, and in that column, write down what each line accomplishes -- what information it gets across, what character information it conveys, that kind of thing. In a movie you enjoyed a lot (for its dialogue), look at the flow of that information and see if you can replicate it. In a movie whose dialogue you disliked, look at the flow and remind yourself not to do that.

For example, from what I dimly recall of Titanic, almost all the dialogue served only one purpose. You could pretty much classify any line of dialogue as "character" or "plot" -- in the character dialogue, Leo is cheeky and independent, Kate is rich but adventurous, and Billy Zane is the dumbest, evilest person on the planet. In the plot dialogue, they say, with almost no character differentiation, whatever the audience needs to know.

Character:

"I believe that a man can make of himself whatever he wants to be!"
"I want to go places and do things and be anachornistically liberated!"
"That painter you like, Picasso, will never amount to anything. I don't know why you waste all that money on art. Bah! Watch as I kick a puppy!"

Plot:

"But there aren't enough lifeboats!"
"We've got to get off this ship!"
"This ship is going down!"

Bleh. Titanic got a ton of awards, but best screenplay wasn't one of them.

On the other hand, a good script will get across the character while also getting across the plot. Casablanca does a pretty good job of that. Some Kevin Smith movies do, too, but Smith leaves a lot of room for character-joke scenes that don't advance the plot at all, so unless you can do dialogue as well as he can, you'd be better served by sticking to the scenes in which someone is getting a lot of information across -- like the angels describing the reason for and nature of their exile in Dogma, or the voice of god giving the heroine her quest, also in Dogma. While you can probably tell that almost all the dialogue comes from Kevin Smith, you can also tell which lines come from the voice of god, and which ones come from Rufus, even if they're just giving information.

On TV, there's the obvious Whedon plug...

Then, possibly for exercises, I'd try practicing getting across information in a variety of different tones.

Superhero Exposition Exercise

Write the dialogue that a superhero delivers to a team of superheroes when he arrives after having just barely escaped an attack by some powerful alien artifact that destroyed a whole lot of land. Then write the same dialogue again, but in the voice of a different superhero. And then another one. (If you watch "Justice League", try doing it first as Batman, then as the Flash, then as Hawkgirl, for example. If you read the X-Men or know them pretty well, try doing it as Beast, then as Wolverine, then as Gambit.)

Weather Emotion

This is silly, but it's one that I've gotten a lot of mileage out of. Take the most boring topic in the world, the weather. Write a short conversation between two people in which they discuss nothing but the weather, but so that it is totally clear to the reader what emotional state exists between the two characters.

Example 1:

Biff: It looks pretty stormy out there. I think it might rain later this afternoon.

Chet: Whatever.

Biff: I'm just saying, you might want to dress warmly.

Chet: Right. I get it. I'll dress warmly, okay? God forbid we should get rained on.

Example 2:

Belle: Look at those clouds, so soft and gray. It looks like they're going to rain down kisses upon us.

Chet: Let it rain. I don't think we'll have any trouble staying warm tonight.

(Please do it better than I just did, for the love of God.)

 

[Desdichado]

My favorite example, when a friend asked me what I meant by "Bad 'As you Know' Dialogue":

Biff: I'm headed out for groceries. Back in a bit.

Chet: Be careful out there! Don't forget that we're living in a post-apocalyptic United States that's been torn apart by civil war in the aftermath of recovered alien technology, leading to a world in which the priveleged upper-class has become genetically engineered supermen who send assassin cyborgs to pick apart the last remnants of natural humanity.

Biff: Oh, yeah. That. Right. I'll remember that.

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

My suggestion would be to watch a wide range of movies -- specifically, movies praised for their writing. Take scenes that jump out at you not as action scenes but as scenes that set up an interesting problem or situation, and (assuming you're watching on DVD), go back through the scene and take a transcript of what is said (or just copy it from the script, if you've got a good movie script out there).

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

Sally: No, my dear sir; Biff is the most agreeable gentleman I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Indeed, I find him so amiable that I prefer his company to that of any other.

Then, possibly for exercises, I'd try practicing getting across information in a variety of different tones.

That's actually really good advice for me. My biggest problem with dialogue is that all my characters tend to speak the way I do. Since I'm a bit of an overblown, know-it-all pompous jackass, my characters come across that way too, even when I don't want them to. But those excercises are intrigueing as a way to sharpen my fairly dull dialogue skills.

 

[Tolen Mar]

I've had this idea for a while now, but whenever I started working on it, I'd get so fed up with my own writing and deficiencies that I'd toss what I'd written, quit for a while, and start anew.

This sounds like me. I need to get to work on it myself. I keep finding other things to do during my 'me' time. Like surfing these boards...

Of course the big time sink is I've gon enad gotten myself hooked on Need for Speed Underground 2. Just got me a Mustang to tune up...

Ahem. Writing. Yes. I really need to do that.