Worldbuilding on the Cheap

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As I mentionned earlier, I want to work on yet another synopsis/outline before starting on my next novel. But while both my novel and my other outlines take place in worlds close enough to the real one, that last outline is for a straight fantasy novel.

That means that before I can even get started on the outline, I need to do some worldbuilding. An idea won’t go far without context, after all.

That said, while I generally enjoy reading those complex prologues and essays on magic system… it’s probably overkill to write one just for an outline. Besides, I’m a big believer in the idea that reference materials should be easy to parse. So I kept to the essentials and produced enough content in an evening to allow me to get started on that outline.

Specifically, my document looks like this:

  1. Basic Tone: here, I described, in a couple of paragraphs, how I want the book to feel. Is it grim and gritty? Is there a central philosophical issue I want to tackle? Would the movie/series inspired by the book be dark and depressing, would it be a comedy, would it be an action fest? What would the sets look like? Ultimately, it’s my elevator pitch for the book as well as my mission statement.
  2. Cosmology: it’s a fantasy book/series. Obviously, I need some sort of weird pantheon of divinities and beings of power. For some series, this would be very important (David Eddings’s Belgariad springs to mind: the conflict between the Gods drives the plot forward.) In my case, however, it’s not the case. My deities are important in the vague metaplot I have in mind, but they’re not going to be the main drivers of the story, at least at first. Consequently, I can get away with a really generic description.
  3. Magic System: that, however, is really relevant to the story I want to write. I don’t need to go into the actual mechanics at this point (beyond the very general) but I do need to know what’s possible and what isn’t. Moreover, the magic system defines what my characters will be able to do: am I working with Aes Sedai throwing fireballs, or with Magisters who know lots about herbs?
  4. History/Backstory: I also need to know the basic political/social makeup of the world, and that means figuring out how things got that way. At this stage, I make a conscious decision not to use dates or timelines, but vague references instead. I don’t want to overcommit to an idea at this point, and besides I don’t need that level of detail yet.
  5. Geography: a.k.a. the World Map. I love world maps in fantasy novel. I like them gorgeous, detailed, and filled with hints and promises of things to come. But I have no artistic talent, and so I settle for a very basic drawing in Paint. Right now I only need to know where the countries are located.

And that’s it. Two pages of text and ten minutes of Paint-ing. Now I have more than enough to get started on an outline for a novel. I’ll probably work on a series outline too, but I suspect I’ll need to do more worldbuilding then. I’ll let you know when I get there.

And Here we Go!

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Well, my first couple of queries have been sent. That’s not a lot, but I figure it’s better to send one or two well-written query per week instead of spamming the same one to half the agents in North America.

And honestly, getting the first one ready was hard enough. Obviously, there’s the letter itself to write, but the agent in question also requested a synopsis, which turned out to be a serious pain to write. Condensing a 76,000 words novel into two interesting and fun-to-read pages, while still hitting all the important plot points, turned out be be a solid weekend’s work.

On the plus side, I can see how getting better at writing outlines and synopses will help me at writing in general. They’re awesome tools to locate plot holes and fix pacing issues. In fact, I’ve written two short outlines for future projects already, and I’m planning on writing a third one just to practice that skill a bit more before starting on my next book.

Really, I’ll do anything to keep from checking my email compulsively at this point.

Editing: Done!

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I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days.

WOOHOO!

I’ve finished my third draft/second revision/neverending torment! Don’t get me wrong: doing that additional editing pass was absolutely worth it, but boy am I glad that’s done.

I’ve also ran the spellchecker (always worth it, even if it only caught a couple of mistypes) and formatted the manuscript to industry standards. All the actual text is as final as I can make it, although I probably need to think about the title some more.

The next step is *gasp* writing queries. I’ve put some work into that particular hellish task, enough to know that it won’t be easy. The factual/business part of the query letter will be easy enough (if there’s one thing you learn working in law, it’s how to write professional-looking letters), but I really need the in-voice description of the book to work, and so far my attempts have been of the not-worth-saving-the-file variety. Sigh. A good night’s sleep and a day off is what I need I think.

Still, I’d rather spend a day crafting a letter than doing Yet Another Revision. With that in mind, off to bed I go.

An Update with some Progress

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Life has been relentless recently, but that doesn’t mean I’ve dropped the project.

In fact, I managed to get through a fairly important milestone: I’ve finished going through my list of planned verifications and corrections (what I call my search-and-destroy list.) Those were all the small, but noticeable issues I found while doing my second revision.

For example, I probably tend to probably use “probably” and other adverbs probably too often, probably. So I searched my entire manuscript for every instance of “ly”, and made sure to cut that down to a more reasonable ratio.

You’d be surprised how many small, relatively easy-to-correct issues like that cropped up. Clever constructions that I use more than once, metaphors and similes that are maybe too similar to once another… and of course, even more adverbs, probably.

You would also be surprised at how incredibly annoying fixing that can be. So getting that task out of the way is a pretty great step for me. Now I just have to:

  1. Finish my last reading-and-correct (I’m about 40% through);
  2. Run the autocorrect through my text, just in case;
  3. Touch up my presentation a bit – it’d be stupid to get rejected for purely cosmetic issues;
  4. Write and send my queries.

Can that be done in time to start a new manuscript during NaNoWriMo? We’ll see!

Radio Silence

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On the off chance that someone is reading my blog, I figure I probably should explain my current lack of posting.

It’s nothing serious, just the consequence of adjusting to a new schedule (who knew taking two three-hours-a-week postgrad classes could be that devastating to my already-overloaded weekly planning?) while juggling some time-consuming life events.

The good news is that the blog was the only thing I put on hiatus. I’ve kept at my editing and it’s progressing. I think I should be sending out queries by the end of October (just in time to get started on a new manuscript during NaNoWriMo. Yeah, doing another NaNo while sending out queries and right at the time most of my coursework will be due. That’s sure to end well…)

 

The Evolution of a Writer

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Let’s take a quick break from whining about editing and look at writing instead. Specifically, I want to suggest a fun little exercise – one that I find both very informative and a great source of motivation when I don’t feel so gung-ho about my chances to make it as an author.

Take one of your favorite authors. Ideally, you want one who has written lots of books in a similar style.

Then read and compare his latest (and/or best-written book, if one qualifies) with the first book he or she wrote. Try and spot the differences in style, the weaker sections, and so on.

It’s surprising how amateurish some very-well received books look under that lense.

When I did that exercise the first time, it was with Jim Butcher’s Cold Days and his first Dresden short story, The Restoration of Faith. Now, that’s cheating a bit, because Restoration was only published several years later as part of an omnibus (and, as Butcher himself explains in his foreword to that particular story, it really was a first-try effort that “wasn’t ready for the commercial market.”)

But even if you compare, say, Storm Front (the first published Dresden Files book) to the later novels of the series, the evolution of Jim Butcher’s skills as a writer is obvious.

The point of the exercise is to realize that:

  1. Yes, practice does make you better. You’ll see it when going from the shitty first draft to the readable second draft, and you’ll see improvement from your first published novel to your last.
  2. Even the best authors started out as “merely okay” authors. Sure, they had good stories, and a certain level of writing skills, but they were probably not as good as you recall through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia.

Work/Life/Writing Balance

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Once in a while, life gets in the way of my writing. This week was one such case: between work, the classes I’ve begun to take, and some medical checkups, there wasn’t enough free time for me to give this blog any attention.

It did give me an idea for a post, though.

Whenever I talk about my writing project with my family and friends, someone will mention that I’m lucky to have the time to do it. Which invariably makes me slightly snippy, because luck has nothing to do with it.

It’s just a matter of priorities.

It’s entirely possible to write a book while working full time, having a girlfriend, running a (possibly overambitious) D&D campaign and taking classes at the same time. (Although adding more to my plate at the moment would be problematic, I will admit.)

But that means making some sacrifices: my job is not one of those high-powered, 90-hours-a-week grind. The D&D campaign runs on a monthly, not weekly, basis. And I didn’t play whatever videogame you want to talk about.

Some weeks, it means that the book doesn’t move forward as much as I want it to, because I have to be in court and that generally means being prepared.And sometimes, it means going out with the girlfriend instead of staying home.

More prosaically, it also means that I lead a really well-organized life. I edit my book on the bus. I have a daily to-do list, and I check items off it near-compulsively. The time I waste being inefficient is, ultimately, time I could be using to write, and so I try not to waste any.

But the point is – if you want to write, you can do it. There’s probably some free minutes or hours you can reclaim from the daily routine, just by getting organized. And if getting 103% completion in the latest Madden’s Shoot Guy Auto 6  isn’t as satisfying a life goal as it once was, well, that’s just extra scribbling time.

On Screens, Hardcopy and E-readers

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I love my Kindle. As an avid reader, having access to an entire library with me when I’m on the bus, on a plane or on vacation is a godsend.

But lately, I’ve fallen in love with how it gives me a new perspective when re-reading my manuscript.

Obviously, most of my revision work has been done directly on my laptop screen. It’s where I work, there’re those handy red squiggly lines to let me know about typos, there’s a thesaurus (and Google) right in the next window over…

But at some point, you have to review your manuscript in hardcopy, if only because your eyes get too used to the text on screen. Reading your text on paper will let you spot other mistakes and, if you’re anything like me, will let you get a better sense of the timing of your novel.

Recently, I converted my manuscript to a PDF and threw it on my Kindle, figuring Yet Another Reading of the Book couldn’t hurt. I expected to find a few more mistakes and possible improvements. But let me tell you, seeing my work in the same type, size and format as everything else I’ve read in the last few years has been eye-opening.

On the plus side: the Book is really quite good. I’ve read commercially successful works in the same genre that weren’t as well written.

On the minus side: over a hundred additionnal small corrections to make already, and I’m nowhere near done with that re-reading. Well, good thing I wasn’t planning on querying this weekend.

But seriously: if you’re writing your own manuscript, get a Kindle (or another e-Reader.) It’s absolutely worth it just for the new perspective it will give you on your work.

Revising, Reviewing and Rewriting

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Since I’m currently finalizing my manuscript, I figure now is the right time to discuss all the steps I went through to get there.

First, I wrote my first draft, skipping all those nitpicky details like “planning” or “writing an outline.” Surprisingly enough, that wasn’t as bad an idea as it seems. It probably cost me some efficiency, but on the other hand getting that first draft done was probably more important than getting it right. I needed to know that I could bring the project at least that far before running out of motivation.

Once I had that first draft done, however, it was time to make it good. So I grabbed my red pen, printed out the whole manuscript, and got to work. That first revision covered everything, from fixing plot holes to improving my characterization (and, of course, correcting all those inevitable typos and grammar issues.) In the process, I added about 20,000 words to the manuscript, bringing it up to a publishable size.

I also realized how much my writing had improved in the relatively small interval between starting my prologue and completing my epilogue. So I actually ended up my first revision with even greater motivation than ever before.

While I was revising, I was also sending my completed chapters to a pair of first readers. Inevitably, they caught mistakes I missed, but their input was also valuable for additional plot doctoring and characterization editing.

Which brings me up to now. As I wait for the final comments from the second of my first readers, I’ve started Yet Another Revision. This time, I put my book onto my Kindle, just to look at it from another perspective. And… it was a good idea. I still see small stuff I want to fix, some minor issues and weaker sections. It’s a bit frustrating to see how imperfect the book is… but on the other hand, I can see how quickly I’m improving my writing skills.

And on the plus side, I think that once I’m done with that final revision, the book will absolutely be of publishable quality. So it’s not as demotivating as “third revision” might imply.

Moral of the story: don’t underestimate the need for revising your work, but also don’t underestimate the benefits of doing so. I’ve gotten so much better at writing just by reviewing my work that even if Book 1 fails to ever see the light of day, I know that my next project will get closer to that goal.

Adventures in Book Publishing

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Soon, I will be a published author.

Maybe. Hopefully.

I do have the huge advantage that my first novel is mostly done. As of today, I still need to copyedit the last few chapters (and to review it to trim those pesky phrases I tend to overuse, and to go back and make sure my dialogue is properly punctuated, and maybe to… well, you get the idea.)

But now’s a great time to start my blog documenting my foray into the wonderful world of writing. I’d have done so earlier, but I figured it should wait until I was certain I’d finish the manuscript. The Internet doesn’t actually need yet another blog about a failed writing project, after all.

So what will this blog be about?

Well, my first few posts should cover the end of my writing-and-revising process. Then, I intend to document the oh-so-absolutely-not-stressful query-sending phase, and (if things go well) the details of securing a publishing deal. At that time, I’ll also start on outlining the sequel to my first book (because of course it’s a series) and then get to work on another, unrelated project. As much as I like my Book 1, I want to be rational about this: if it doesn’t find a home, then its sequel won’t either.

At some point I’ll have to customize this blog too. A default theme just won’t cut it.

But that’s getting slightly ahead of myself. First, I need to hit the publish button on this, then get back to copyediting. Well, maybe I’ll workshop some title ideas too…