WOTC: Mistress of Pain submissons, who's trying?
- Thread starter Cevalic
- Start date
BiggusGeekus
That's Latin for "cool"
Regdar said:
In fairness, those are the people who've sumbitted stuff before and have had more practice.
I don't know if I'll do this or not. Depends on my free time.
To get an idea of word count for a book, open to a random page and count every word for ten lines. Then open to a different page and repeat. Take the total number and divide by 10 to get average number of words per line. Then count the total number of lines of text on a page in the book. Take the average number of words per line and multiply by the number of lines on a page. Then take that number and multiply by the number of pages in the book.
Most mass-market paperbacks (like WOTC) tend to be around 80,000 to 110,000. Robert Jordan's books tend to run about 250,000 words. Asking for 90,000 words is not too much, especially for the first draft and considering that with re-writes you're probably going to lose a lot of those words.
If you have never written a novel before, I have one word of advice to you. Start right now and write at least 1000 words of the story today and everyday for the next month. At the end of that time you will have 30,000 words, (or 1/3 what WOTC is asking for) and you will have a much better idea of what it means to write 90,000 words. In my own experience, the first 10,000 are easy and inspired, it's the remaining thousands that are the work.
Regdar said:
But see, neither this nor the Campaign Setting deal are contests, not in the sense that a sweepstakes in a contest. This just an open call for submissions, so yeah, it's likely that a ringer, professional, or someone "in the industry" will present a better story and sample than any one of us amateurs.
Me? I'll give it a shot. I've no illusions about my chances. In fact, the only chance I have is if they really want to introduce a storytelling style that is pretty alien to the sword&socery fantasy genre.
I've really enjoyed writing the beginnings of novels and really enjoyed writing the endings of novels. The middles have always been the unpleasant slogging parts.
Frankly, I wouldn't do too much regarding this contest until I'd won it. Write the best scene you can, write a good synopsis. Don't start it early -- all that'll happen is that you'll most likely NOT win the contest, and then you'll have a really big fanfic piece on your hard drive.
If you have the time and energy to write a novel, write your own. Don't worry about this contest unless your ten-page synopsis comes back.
Incidently, 10 pages in manuscript font is about 2500 words -- a not-long short story. Courier 12, 1" margins, double-spaced. That's manuscript format.
-Tacky
Frankly, I wouldn't do too much regarding this contest until I'd won it. Write the best scene you can, write a good synopsis. Don't start it early -- all that'll happen is that you'll most likely NOT win the contest, and then you'll have a really big fanfic piece on your hard drive.
If you have the time and energy to write a novel, write your own. Don't worry about this contest unless your ten-page synopsis comes back.
Incidently, 10 pages in manuscript font is about 2500 words -- a not-long short story. Courier 12, 1" margins, double-spaced. That's manuscript format.
-Tacky
Dareoon Dalandrove
First Post
When is the submission deadline April 1?
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
This is the best piece of advice I've seen anyone post in this thread.takyris said:
Write your own novel. What the heck. It's a huge amount of work and pain and struggle -- if you're going to do it, why not do it for yourself?
Hmmm
I say the best piece of advice is just to write. It doesn't matter on what, write every day. You can always go back and steal good ideas from one project to incorporate into another. You have to enjoy the process and build up those carpal tunnel muscles. I'm going to give it a go, I don't know much about that particular deity, but with as much time as we have, I'm sure I can do the research.
I say the best piece of advice is just to write. It doesn't matter on what, write every day. You can always go back and steal good ideas from one project to incorporate into another. You have to enjoy the process and build up those carpal tunnel muscles. I'm going to give it a go, I don't know much about that particular deity, but with as much time as we have, I'm sure I can do the research.
