Sorry, pressure of work has meant the blog has bene neglected for a couple of days.
There’s a poser for you, is what we do, as writers, a form of artistic expression, or a scientific progression?
Do we fly freeform into the storyline with no heed paid to rules or do we progress from preposition to supposition to theorem to experimental measurement to eventual proof. Given that not all forms of science actually follow the latter, don’t discount it immediately.
In my last post I talked about a particular rule that is often applied to novel length works. “The reader should be introduced to both the protagonist and the antagonist within the first three chapters and preferably given a good idea of the cause of conflict between them.”
On the face of it – it’s not a bad rule. But could you run that rule over every successful book from the Twentieth Century and would every single one of them pass? Not even close. Let’s look at one of the most successful American novels of the last century – “To Kill a Mocking Bird” – where is the antagonist in the first three chapters? Not present – in terms of the final dénouement – although you could perhaps argue the Great Depression and prejudice were in fact the real antagonists.
Before anyone adds me to the effigy burning pile, I rate this book as one of my all time favourites, and make a point of rereading it every couple of years or so.
The fact remains; there is no clearly identified antagonist in the first section of the book. Take, arguably the book voted the best British book of the Twentieth Century – Tolkien’s epic – where does the real antagonist appear? Sure we meet the protagonists early, but not the enemy.
So there we have it, two very successful books that do not fit the rule as stated above, indeed you could even say they deliberately flout the rule. You can’t even class this as down to the author being well enough known for earlier works to be able to get away with it – Harper Lee was unpublished before Mocking Bird, and Tolkien only had academic credits.
So, unlike proven science, we break the rules, sometimes extremely successfully. OS ergo, this proves we are practitioners of an art from. Q.E.D.
Sorry, it does nothing of the sort. We have arrived at a conclusion based on insufficient evidence, to quote a cliché (again) “one swallow doth not a summer make”. There are many, many rules in fiction writing, from basic spelling rules, to grammatical rules (ed: note this writer can’t use commas to save his life) to structural rules.
Note – the two books discussed above both confirm to another age old writing rule – each story must have a beginning, middle, and an end. Admittedly Tolkien took three volumes to reach that point, but some authors take even longer, the late and prolific L Ron Hubbard once taking ten volumes, and Harry Turtledove these days rarely writes single volume anythings.
There are rules in writing, just as there are rules in science. There again there are rules in most forms of art.
Personally I believe it’s a craft rather than a science. Mind you, the jury is still out...
Monday, 13 September 2010
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Submission Fail 09th September 2010.
Sometimes, people do the submission thing right, only to fall short and fail for a far more obvious reason – a major problem with their manuscript. A very good (or should I say bad) example of this, is the case I’m going to relate to you today – and I’ve changed the numbers (slightly, only slightly) to prevent embarrassment.
The actual story concept was really exceptionally original, and certainly the synopsis was intriguing – so far that’s a pass.
The manuscript formatting was within acceptable parameters and at first glance the writing was technically (i.e. grammatically, spelling wise and word choices) within acceptable limits so that’s a pass too.
Now we come to the structure of the piece. It’s roughly 81,000 words long and it had 80 chapters. So that’s an average of only 1,000 words per chapter, and it was almost metronomic in the way each chapter was approximately the same length as each other. Sometimes, a choppy style like this suits the work, but usually this makes the piece very hard to read. The author did restrict the points of view to one per chapter – which is very good for a tyro, but changing them so frequently is disconcerting in a novel that has no pretentions as a saga where this is more acceptable. SO the first warning flag is now flying, and it’s a fairly serious one, we are now at best dealing with a possible after rewrites for structural issues.
Having flashed through the book making the general assessments noted above, it’s time to actually sit down and start reading it. Unfortunately that warning flag has lowered the enthusiasm level; still I don’t want to risk losing it by prejudicing myself. An open mind is key.
As I said, my first flash view impression of the technical abilities of the author was good, and now reading it carefully I can confirm that impression. It is well enough written. “Felicity of style” is perhaps the correct cliché – structural issues aside it’s readable.
Now we come to the killer blow, again this is a structural issue – a real serious mistake and one that converts the possible into a no.
Let me lay it out for you.
Chapter 1. – We are introduced to the main protagonist, we get to understand him, his history, his motivation for the very risky undertaking he is about to leap into. 90% Narration, 10% Dialogue, 0% action.
Chapter 2. – We are introduced to someone who will be a bit player in the drama, on his own as he gets ready to leave his flat at the start of the day. We know him, his history, and his (venal) motivation. 100% Narration. No action.
Chapter 3. – We are introduced to the next player in the drama. We get to know his motivation in aiding the protagonist, his history. 95% Narration, 5% Dialogue, 0% action.
Chapter 4.......
You get the idea. After several chapters of this, we get back to the main character and the story tries to limp off to a start. By the way, we don’t actually meet the main antagonist during this phase, which breaks the traditional rule about meeting both the protagonist and antagonist in the first three chapters. I know, some rules are meant to be broken, and can be very successfully, but not all the time.
Combine this with such a choppy structural style and tell me I shouldn’t simply reject it outright. Go on... tell me...
The actual story concept was really exceptionally original, and certainly the synopsis was intriguing – so far that’s a pass.
The manuscript formatting was within acceptable parameters and at first glance the writing was technically (i.e. grammatically, spelling wise and word choices) within acceptable limits so that’s a pass too.
Now we come to the structure of the piece. It’s roughly 81,000 words long and it had 80 chapters. So that’s an average of only 1,000 words per chapter, and it was almost metronomic in the way each chapter was approximately the same length as each other. Sometimes, a choppy style like this suits the work, but usually this makes the piece very hard to read. The author did restrict the points of view to one per chapter – which is very good for a tyro, but changing them so frequently is disconcerting in a novel that has no pretentions as a saga where this is more acceptable. SO the first warning flag is now flying, and it’s a fairly serious one, we are now at best dealing with a possible after rewrites for structural issues.
Having flashed through the book making the general assessments noted above, it’s time to actually sit down and start reading it. Unfortunately that warning flag has lowered the enthusiasm level; still I don’t want to risk losing it by prejudicing myself. An open mind is key.
As I said, my first flash view impression of the technical abilities of the author was good, and now reading it carefully I can confirm that impression. It is well enough written. “Felicity of style” is perhaps the correct cliché – structural issues aside it’s readable.
Now we come to the killer blow, again this is a structural issue – a real serious mistake and one that converts the possible into a no.
Let me lay it out for you.
Chapter 1. – We are introduced to the main protagonist, we get to understand him, his history, his motivation for the very risky undertaking he is about to leap into. 90% Narration, 10% Dialogue, 0% action.
Chapter 2. – We are introduced to someone who will be a bit player in the drama, on his own as he gets ready to leave his flat at the start of the day. We know him, his history, and his (venal) motivation. 100% Narration. No action.
Chapter 3. – We are introduced to the next player in the drama. We get to know his motivation in aiding the protagonist, his history. 95% Narration, 5% Dialogue, 0% action.
Chapter 4.......
You get the idea. After several chapters of this, we get back to the main character and the story tries to limp off to a start. By the way, we don’t actually meet the main antagonist during this phase, which breaks the traditional rule about meeting both the protagonist and antagonist in the first three chapters. I know, some rules are meant to be broken, and can be very successfully, but not all the time.
Combine this with such a choppy structural style and tell me I shouldn’t simply reject it outright. Go on... tell me...
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Grindstone Time Again 08th September 2010.
A small observation today, seeing as I’m going to be spending a good portion of the next few hours reading submissions I thought I’d mention an observation about writer behaviour that has become apparent over the last week or so.
We closed submissions at the beginning of this month in order to allow us to catch up on both the existing submissions – those that came in before the deadline, and also our work in progress (or should that be works in progress?).
Before, when we put the closure notice up on the submissions page on the web site, we left the page intact, and put the closed line at the top. Despite this, we still continued to get a steady trickle of submissions being sent in. This time, I did it differently, literally gutting the page and removing all references to submissions, the formatting and other guidelines. The page says we are CLOSED and that’s it.
I did leave the general points and links to information and sample contract in place but that is all there is on the page. Result – you guessed it – no unsolicited submissions.
So there you have it – a conclusion, drawn on insufficient evidence, writers are selective readers, and they practice selective blindness, only seeing what they want to see.
Not exactly earth-shattering is it – oops, must stop the puns about the earthquake.
We have 4 or 5 submissions sent in at the tail end of last month before I put the closed notice up, so I’m about to pull on the harness, shrug on the aqualung tanks, spit in the goggles and jump right in.
Wish me luck on this particular fishing expedition.
We closed submissions at the beginning of this month in order to allow us to catch up on both the existing submissions – those that came in before the deadline, and also our work in progress (or should that be works in progress?).
Before, when we put the closure notice up on the submissions page on the web site, we left the page intact, and put the closed line at the top. Despite this, we still continued to get a steady trickle of submissions being sent in. This time, I did it differently, literally gutting the page and removing all references to submissions, the formatting and other guidelines. The page says we are CLOSED and that’s it.
I did leave the general points and links to information and sample contract in place but that is all there is on the page. Result – you guessed it – no unsolicited submissions.
So there you have it – a conclusion, drawn on insufficient evidence, writers are selective readers, and they practice selective blindness, only seeing what they want to see.
Not exactly earth-shattering is it – oops, must stop the puns about the earthquake.
We have 4 or 5 submissions sent in at the tail end of last month before I put the closed notice up, so I’m about to pull on the harness, shrug on the aqualung tanks, spit in the goggles and jump right in.
Wish me luck on this particular fishing expedition.
Retrospective 07th September 2010.
Today has been a retrospective kind of day. I’ve spend the entire day so far ploughing through our start up and first full quarters on the new accounts system. After several hours I’ve finally balanced the figures back to the manual figures – the only difference being a couple of journals my partner needs to post. (I know the amounts but not the dates). So that’s it – the accounts are done for the period to 31st December.
Once we’ve tidied up those last couple of points we can move on to the next quarter and so on. The big advantage will be we’ve broken the back of the learning curve already, and created all the missing cost centres etc. etc. – so the next quarter will be comparatively easy.
What has really made the whole process a retrospective one isn’t the fact I’m working on historical figures, actually ancient history really, but more the things I’d kind of forgotten about.
The sheer frenetic level of activity reflected in the number of e-mails flying between the two countries, particularly during August and September. The constant passing back and forth of press releases and articles, and text for the web site as we competed with each other to get everything right.
That’s aside from the little incidental costs and invoices I’d forgotten about. They were in the old system; they simply hadn’t remained in the old memory.
So there’s no other news today, I’m simply relaxing now, done enough for the day. Not quite feet up but almost, certainly the St Clemens is going down well (for those who don’t know this non-alcoholic cocktail – it’s made from Bitter Lemon and fresh orange juice), in fact I could do with a refill – see ya!
Once we’ve tidied up those last couple of points we can move on to the next quarter and so on. The big advantage will be we’ve broken the back of the learning curve already, and created all the missing cost centres etc. etc. – so the next quarter will be comparatively easy.
What has really made the whole process a retrospective one isn’t the fact I’m working on historical figures, actually ancient history really, but more the things I’d kind of forgotten about.
The sheer frenetic level of activity reflected in the number of e-mails flying between the two countries, particularly during August and September. The constant passing back and forth of press releases and articles, and text for the web site as we competed with each other to get everything right.
That’s aside from the little incidental costs and invoices I’d forgotten about. They were in the old system; they simply hadn’t remained in the old memory.
So there’s no other news today, I’m simply relaxing now, done enough for the day. Not quite feet up but almost, certainly the St Clemens is going down well (for those who don’t know this non-alcoholic cocktail – it’s made from Bitter Lemon and fresh orange juice), in fact I could do with a refill – see ya!
Monday, 6 September 2010
Real Life Intrusion 06th September 2010.
Over the weekend real life intruded into our operations in a way that was luckily nothing more than disturbing – but it could so easily have been catastrophic. Working on the tag end of an eleven hour time difference doesn’t help.
You see, we are based in two countries, half a world apart – here in the United Kingdom and my business partner in Christchurch, New Zealand. No doubt, by now you will have heard, how, at approx 4.35 am on Saturday the city of Christchurch was rocked by a massive 7.x earth quake.
Thankfully she, and her family are all okay, just a couple of minor bits of damage to their house and two very panicked dogs and a cat that disappeared for 24hours and came back smelling of “the bowels of the earth”. There have been over 60 aftershocks, not all of them minor and there is widespread devastation and damage throughout the city, both to buildings and the vital infrastructure.
Still they came through it, they have heat, light, water and comms, there are others much worse off, although the amazing thing is the total lack of fatalities. Only two people seriously injured, other than that a plethora of bruises, and several dozen broken bones.
Thank god, for decent building codes, rigorously enforced.
Compared to other major quakes and tsunami, the damage is not so much of a much, but to the people in the middle of it, it’s more than enough.
It’s the kind of intrusion I, and more particularly, Paulette could do without!
You see, we are based in two countries, half a world apart – here in the United Kingdom and my business partner in Christchurch, New Zealand. No doubt, by now you will have heard, how, at approx 4.35 am on Saturday the city of Christchurch was rocked by a massive 7.x earth quake.
Thankfully she, and her family are all okay, just a couple of minor bits of damage to their house and two very panicked dogs and a cat that disappeared for 24hours and came back smelling of “the bowels of the earth”. There have been over 60 aftershocks, not all of them minor and there is widespread devastation and damage throughout the city, both to buildings and the vital infrastructure.
Still they came through it, they have heat, light, water and comms, there are others much worse off, although the amazing thing is the total lack of fatalities. Only two people seriously injured, other than that a plethora of bruises, and several dozen broken bones.
Thank god, for decent building codes, rigorously enforced.
Compared to other major quakes and tsunami, the damage is not so much of a much, but to the people in the middle of it, it’s more than enough.
It’s the kind of intrusion I, and more particularly, Paulette could do without!
Friday, 3 September 2010
The Dreaded Block 03rd September 2010.
We closed down the submissions page a couple of days ago, to allow us to do some catch up work on the work in progress we already have in hand. For the first time in a couple of months my e-mail inbox isn’t bulging at the seams with submissions that are in one way or another unusable or unsuitable or just downright not good enough. On top of that, with respect to yesterday’s demi-rant I’ve sent off my support e-mail but as yet had no reply, and I’m waiting on a confirmation from New Zealand on the edited Chart of Accounts for the new accounts system. Finally, the SEO work discussed last week has had the first phase down and I have to wait for a couple of weeks to see if there’s any impact before I start the next tranche.
Suddenly that massive work load has dried up leaving me, not exactly at a loose end but with some time where I could actually write!
Wow! Amazing! Writing time! That precious gold dust that is so elusive I usually don’t see any from one week to the next. Of course real life is going to intrude and claim some of it, but there’s still some left.
Only there’s a problem – my own peculiar form of writer’s block has me in its terrifyingly icy grip.
We all encounter the dreaded can’t write won’t write syndrome from time to time and we all develop strategies to deal with it and I thought it was an appropriate time to share my three pronged strategy with you. You never know it just might help.
My first strategy is to do something completely different. No, I don’t mean run down the street with my arms outstretched singing the theme song to Top Gun at the top of my voice. That would just be silly. What I mean is to tackle a form of writing I don’t like. In my case this is poetry – and for those of you who know me personally you will know – I don’t do poetry. I can’t write and won’t write poetry. It’s just me. So I sit down for ten or twenty minutes and force myself to do so. End result – going back to whichever piece of work in progress then takes my fancy is a blessed relief. Bingo – no block.
My second strategy is the photographic one. This one I used to use on a creative writing course I used to teach, and it works, even with the most recalcitrant student. Find a photograph that takes your eye and then write a couple of sentences about the photograph from each of several different points of view. It must have a foreground object, a background and preferably no people in it, certainly no family. For example if it’s a picture of a road tanker, write an accident scenario, a comedy scenario, an environmental story ... you get the picture. Sorry about the pun. Try half a dozen headings and the creative juices are flowing again and away you go. The only problem with this technique is procrastination – sometimes you just don’t allow yourself to find the photo that will work
The third strategy – oh come on now. You must have guessed this by now – what am I doing? That’s right – I’m writing. The fact I’m writing my blog means I’m writing and I don’t have writer’s block anymore.
So.... Where did I put that best-selling romance novel I’d written the first two pages of......?
Suddenly that massive work load has dried up leaving me, not exactly at a loose end but with some time where I could actually write!
Wow! Amazing! Writing time! That precious gold dust that is so elusive I usually don’t see any from one week to the next. Of course real life is going to intrude and claim some of it, but there’s still some left.
Only there’s a problem – my own peculiar form of writer’s block has me in its terrifyingly icy grip.
We all encounter the dreaded can’t write won’t write syndrome from time to time and we all develop strategies to deal with it and I thought it was an appropriate time to share my three pronged strategy with you. You never know it just might help.
My first strategy is to do something completely different. No, I don’t mean run down the street with my arms outstretched singing the theme song to Top Gun at the top of my voice. That would just be silly. What I mean is to tackle a form of writing I don’t like. In my case this is poetry – and for those of you who know me personally you will know – I don’t do poetry. I can’t write and won’t write poetry. It’s just me. So I sit down for ten or twenty minutes and force myself to do so. End result – going back to whichever piece of work in progress then takes my fancy is a blessed relief. Bingo – no block.
My second strategy is the photographic one. This one I used to use on a creative writing course I used to teach, and it works, even with the most recalcitrant student. Find a photograph that takes your eye and then write a couple of sentences about the photograph from each of several different points of view. It must have a foreground object, a background and preferably no people in it, certainly no family. For example if it’s a picture of a road tanker, write an accident scenario, a comedy scenario, an environmental story ... you get the picture. Sorry about the pun. Try half a dozen headings and the creative juices are flowing again and away you go. The only problem with this technique is procrastination – sometimes you just don’t allow yourself to find the photo that will work
The third strategy – oh come on now. You must have guessed this by now – what am I doing? That’s right – I’m writing. The fact I’m writing my blog means I’m writing and I don’t have writer’s block anymore.
So.... Where did I put that best-selling romance novel I’d written the first two pages of......?
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Down to Earth 2nd September 2010.
After the euphoria of yesterday it’s down to earth with a bump, if you will pardon the deliberate cliché.
The list of technical requirements to upload our work to Content Reserve is daunting to say the least. Let me give you a sample – and I mean a sample:
1. We have to supply metadata (that’s title, author, description etc), in a specific spreadsheet format according to their template. Only thing is they haven’t sent me the template yet – ask the support department for it.
2. The book covers have to be sent to them at a particular minimum size (which is larger than the maximum size used by every retailer we deal with direct. The problem with resizing jpegs to suit is every time you do this the image quality may degrade. Especially when you are increasing as opposed to decreasing. The size they want is in fact larger than the size they use so it’ll be resized a minimum of twice.
3. All files must follow a strict naming convention – using the ISBN numbers as the file name followed by the file type as the extension. Not a problem you’d think – except do they mean a 10 digit or a 13 digit ISBN – and do you leave the dashes in or take them out? Not clearly explained – ask the support department.
4. Epub files (Apple, Adobe Digital Editions etc) – please submit a set of between 5 and 15 files for quality check before proceeding. You are not told where to send them – you guessed it ask the support department.
5. Microsoft Reader files – you need to set certain security parameters that don’t exist in the program we use to create them. Going to have to investigate those.
6. PDF files – remove all existing security features – they’ll add the DRM to replace them.
7. Kindle files – please send files with level 4 security only (this prepares them for DRM but prevents you from opening them on your own Kindle or mobipocket reader to check them first).
I don’t have a problem with them wanting things their way, after all so does everyone else – it’s simply a rather long list and it’s going to take some considerable time to resolve all issues – especially if they decide the Epub files don’t match their quality conditions. As far as I’m aware, from the retailers who give us feedback and our own site sales we haven’t sold a single Microsoft Reader version, so I suspect point 5 will become depreciated.
Seeing we are talking upward of 90 existing books at the moment, and many more in the pipeline, several of which will be published before this process has been completed, I could very well be here till Xmas....
The list of technical requirements to upload our work to Content Reserve is daunting to say the least. Let me give you a sample – and I mean a sample:
1. We have to supply metadata (that’s title, author, description etc), in a specific spreadsheet format according to their template. Only thing is they haven’t sent me the template yet – ask the support department for it.
2. The book covers have to be sent to them at a particular minimum size (which is larger than the maximum size used by every retailer we deal with direct. The problem with resizing jpegs to suit is every time you do this the image quality may degrade. Especially when you are increasing as opposed to decreasing. The size they want is in fact larger than the size they use so it’ll be resized a minimum of twice.
3. All files must follow a strict naming convention – using the ISBN numbers as the file name followed by the file type as the extension. Not a problem you’d think – except do they mean a 10 digit or a 13 digit ISBN – and do you leave the dashes in or take them out? Not clearly explained – ask the support department.
4. Epub files (Apple, Adobe Digital Editions etc) – please submit a set of between 5 and 15 files for quality check before proceeding. You are not told where to send them – you guessed it ask the support department.
5. Microsoft Reader files – you need to set certain security parameters that don’t exist in the program we use to create them. Going to have to investigate those.
6. PDF files – remove all existing security features – they’ll add the DRM to replace them.
7. Kindle files – please send files with level 4 security only (this prepares them for DRM but prevents you from opening them on your own Kindle or mobipocket reader to check them first).
I don’t have a problem with them wanting things their way, after all so does everyone else – it’s simply a rather long list and it’s going to take some considerable time to resolve all issues – especially if they decide the Epub files don’t match their quality conditions. As far as I’m aware, from the retailers who give us feedback and our own site sales we haven’t sold a single Microsoft Reader version, so I suspect point 5 will become depreciated.
Seeing we are talking upward of 90 existing books at the moment, and many more in the pipeline, several of which will be published before this process has been completed, I could very well be here till Xmas....
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