Polishing your story...

ELMontague · Feb 22, 2009

Would there be any interest in a thread on SYW for polishing a piece? I know put of the thread for getting something down, but the work on the practice thread isn't really meant to be polished.

So in the interest of practicing our craft, is there anyone out there that would like to participate in a 'spit and polish' thread? One where your might see the same piece several times, rewritten to get it ready for submission.

Maryn · Feb 22, 2009

I would participate in such a thread, if I got my butt in gear for a change. Hey, it could happen!

After all, I've spent many a happy morning going over a single scene, rearranging phrases, rewording metaphors, rephrasing descriptions, stuff like that. I suppose that's kindly called polishing, although in my case it's probably closer to nitpicking.

Maryn, who's not been as helpful as she could be around here

ELMontague · Feb 22, 2009

Well Maryn with your help I'm sure whatever piece is worked will be brilliant. Are there any others?

archerjoe · Feb 22, 2009

How much are we talking about here? 1000 words or larger pieces?

ELMontague · Feb 22, 2009

I'm open. Since I'm talking about spit and polish for submission, the stories will likely range in size, but I suggest we go for short stories.

The idea would be something you already think is ready for submission, but want to put that extra shine on. Or, even just a paragraph if that's what needs polishing.

I view it as give and take. You post you'd be expected to answer on other pieces.

archerjoe · Feb 22, 2009

Oops, I just noticed this was posted under Erotica. I'm such a newbie! I was thinking along general terms, not a specific genre. Is that OK?

ELMontague · Feb 22, 2009

Wandering around the Erotica board your bound to get an eyeful, but I'm sure folks will give a look at your piece by genre on SYW. If you've got something titillating you'd like to polish, I'm sure there's lots of comments to be had on our board.

archerjoe · Feb 22, 2009

I was reading the list of "New Posts". I need to pay attention where I'm replynig. I do have a titillating passage in my WIP. Maybe not quite up to erotica's level but it's got nudity and an unseen witness.

ELMontague · Feb 22, 2009

Post it, you'll get responses.

Maryn · Feb 23, 2009

archerjoe, if you share that scene for polishing at SYW-Erotica (which requires its own password, BTW), you'll know it's being spit-shined by people who aren't going to be uptight about its content. That's not necessarily the case at any other SYW board.

Only yesterday I skimmed a thread where AWers debated whether to write the sex scene or fade to black in a work which is not erotica. A fair number of the replies were from people who found themselves quite uneasy at sex scenes, even those which illuminate character or propel the plot.

Maryn, wondering if ELMontague used titillating on purpose <wink>

ELMontague · Feb 23, 2009

It's titillating just to write titillating.

archerjoe · Mar 2, 2009

Can you imagine Peter O'Toole waxing poetic over the word titillating?

Based on some good private feedback I decided to post a short story called Appletini.

Brindle Chase · Mar 2, 2009

I'd be willing from time to time. Time is spare in my world... *lol* but when I have time, I'd be glad to give some feedback!!

anne_marie · Mar 2, 2009

ELMontague said:
Would there be any interest in a thread on SYW for polishing a piece? I know put of the thread for getting something down, but the work on the practice thread isn't really meant to be polished.

So in the interest of practicing our craft, is there anyone out there that would like to participate in a 'spit and polish' thread? One where your might see the same piece several times, rewritten to get it ready for submission.

I would be interested. I have several novels finished and now have the daunting task of getting them publication ready

sunandshadow · Mar 2, 2009

Unless outlines count, I have nothing shorter than 12k words.

And from the other side, I know how hard it is to crit either incomplete or long stuff.

Possibly we could do only one or two people a week and let them post longer stuff? Too bad regular users can't make folders, because the best ting might be if a story was a folder, then within the folder each chapter or scene was its own thread so they were in manageable-size chunks for critiquing. But maybe The first thread for a story could have links to all the pieces, and the thread titles could be formatted Storyname 01, Storyname 02, etc.

SFLP · Mar 3, 2009

sunandshadow said:
But maybe The first thread for a story could have links to all the pieces, and the thread titles could be formatted Storyname 01, Storyname 02, etc.

Well, ya know, there's nothing to prevent doing this in the SYW forum. Perhaps if we had some sort of convention like:

[Polishing] Storyname 01
[Polishing] Storyname 02

Then we could take that a bit further, as in:

[Critiquing] Short story Name
[Polishing] Another Short Story Name
[Critiquing] Storyname - Part 1 of 4
[Critiquing] Storyname - Part 2 of 4

So people would know what they were getting into if they wanted to comment on a story, and would know what sort of criticism the author was open to.

Though I've often wondered: This forum is reasonably public. What does that do to your sales opportunities?

J.

sunandshadow · Mar 3, 2009

SFLP said:
Though I've often wondered: This forum is reasonably public. What does that do to your sales opportunities?

J.

That's why there's a password on the whole syw forum, technically it makes it a private forum instead of a public one.

SFLP · Mar 3, 2009

sunandshadow said:
That's why there's a password on the whole syw forum, technically it makes it a private forum instead of a public one.

Do editors think that's private enough? My husband wanted to read some of what I was writing and a couple things were only in SYW. He signed up for a forum account and I started to have him send a message to Veinglory, then went "wait a minute", typed it in on his computer, and it worked fine.

That is, the password isn't attached to accounts, only to the forum.

J.

ELMontague · Mar 3, 2009

Right, but it's enough. I've actually seen two pieces that were worked on our SYW that have made it to print/cyberprint.

Maryn · Mar 4, 2009

FWIW, I'm seeing that the polishing thread is already a little cluttered. Once it's got a half-dozen pieces awaiting that final shine, some are going to get lost.

I second the suggestion (SFLP's?) that each polish get its own thread with the bracketed word "polish" in the subject line/title.

Maryn, who does intend to get out the polish rags

ELMontague · Mar 4, 2009

I agree. Let's split them up into separate threads titled Polish.

Maryn · Mar 4, 2009

When am I going to stop reading that word as referring to people from Poland, I wonder?

Maryn, idiot unable to correlate words with context

ELMontague · Mar 4, 2009

I read polish, Polish in that instant too.

SFLP · Mar 4, 2009

'k. How about [Shiny-Making] or [Refinement]

MargueriteMing · Mar 6, 2009

ELMontague said:
Would there be any interest in a thread on SYW for polishing a piece? I know put of the thread for getting something down, but the work on the practice thread isn't really meant to be polished.

So in the interest of practicing our craft, is there anyone out there that would like to participate in a 'spit and polish' thread? One where your might see the same piece several times, rewritten to get it ready for submission.

Sure, good topic, but in a general sense people talk about this in lots of other threads. The MacDonald thread has some good stuff on this.

Writing is 90% rewriting. It's true, if you're working as hard as you should be at it.

Polishing your story...

ELMontague

Maryn

I Tried

ELMontague

archerjoe

ELMontague

archerjoe

ELMontague

archerjoe

ELMontague

Maryn

I Tried

ELMontague

archerjoe

Brindle Chase

Dancing on the edge

anne_marie

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal

SFLP

Just tell me to shut up.

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal

SFLP

Just tell me to shut up.

ELMontague

Maryn

I Tried

ELMontague

Maryn

I Tried

ELMontague

SFLP

Just tell me to shut up.

MargueriteMing