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Reply Subj: It depends... Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2014 at 02:00:04 am EDT (Viewed 883 times) | |||||||
Quote: Quote: Some authors I know have a nice sideline in taking copies of their books to such places - especially the ones where they can double as a guest and get a free table. Shifting say 100 books with a profit of $3.50 a unit over a weekend isn't too shabby.Quote: I never really checked to see if any of those kinds of conventions are around here. I've only noticed trade fairs and Megacon which is comics and anime themed.I can't claim to be an expert at that kind of thing. One advantage of going with a small-press publisher is that they probably will know how the business works - and how to work it. They also sometimes "share" a table with their writers, which is a cheap way to get into some cons. A couple of writers I know carefully do cost/benefit assessments to determine whether its worth travel and accomodation to be at certain cons. Windy City seems a popular one. Quote: Quote: There's an art to longer-form stories. The techiniques vary from writer to writer. I generally power all the way through to the end then crawl over it again at least a couple of times, with a few weeks break in between.Quote: The longer I wait to go back, the more I think the older stuff is crap.  That's what I have to get over, the temptation to keep rewriting stuff forever.That's also where an external eye comes in. Some one who honestly says "This was good, except for that bit" can be invaluable to help determine what to chance and what to keep. Quote: Quote: Avoid filler at all costs.Quote: Well...what I call filler and what most people do is slightly different. This is where I'm really tough on myself. For instance, occasionally there was a chapter of World Class or a PVB story where there is "down time" and it's mostly just setup and people getting from one place to the other. I call that filler! I don't like it much, but in order to make a 60,000 word book continuous it's going to have to come into play at some point.I'd say that filler is anything that's not needed to serve the story. A space-wasting fight that doesn't do anything but take up pages is as much filler as some downtime stuff. On the other hand, if the downtime stuff establushes something we didn't know about the characters, or sets up situations that are going to be relevant later, then that's not filler. Quote: Quote: If a 60,000 word story seems too much for the story you're telling, look to four 15,000 word stories that link together. For World Class, story 1 is Keiko and Sean meeting and their first case together. Story 2 has some link to Keiko's past. Story 3 gives some emphasis on Sean's circumstances. Story 4 features the fight against the bad guy who's been behind it all from the start. Or similar. That was the book has sections, each of which is a novella in its own right, all of which lock together into a complete narrative.Quote: I went and looked back, and I already have about 20,000 words written even though I didn't post it. I feel like most of it needs re-writing, but considering it really didn't take very long to write in the first place, it shouldn't take long to re-write since I have the basic plot already. What I don't have yet is an end point, so I need one of those.It might be helpful to visualise it as a six-issue comic series that then gets collected for trade. Each episode has to have a punch and a point, each one leaving you reeling for the final haymaker. I would say: figure out what the bad guy is doing. Work out some intermediate steps that our heroes can clash with/interrupt/fail to stop. Introduce some sub-baddies to get taken down mid-plot. Work out how the bad guy's plot is personal to the heroes backgrounds or interests - what makes this personal? Look for four or five "mini-climaxes" with their own resolutions. List the secrets each character is keeping that need to come out in the course of the story, and then work out when they'll get exposed, confessed, or otherwise revealed. Plot three occasions where the reader thinks they know what's happening and then the whole thing curves and defies their expectations. Stick all this on one piece of paper, possibly with boxes and arrows. then write the story you want to write anyway, but keep the paper in the corner of your vision and work in what bits of it seem good at the time. | |||||||
