Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 2

EmmersonGrant

Lawful Good
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 26, 2012
Messages
58
Reaction score
2
Location
Mexico
You gotta love the writing process. I started this novel with a character in mind: Chuck and how he discovers his abilities.
Then I started writing about the military man who worked with Chuck's grandfather and how his life during WWII was. I previously referenced this in a journal, but now I'm going to go full hog on it.

I'm currently spinning my wheels on how to write the grandfather was as a boy, travelling through the pre-WWII Europe and getting captured by the Nazis. Chuck will show up by chapter 18, maybe later.

I love that what I started writing isn't quite what I'm going to end up submitting, but dammit if it isn't taking the scenic route.

((loving the advice, Uncle Jim and folks)).
 

Silver-Midnight

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 19, 2011
Messages
4,910
Reaction score
279
Location
rising from the depths of a cup of coffee
Jim,

I know that I've come by and already asked a lot of questions. However, I am having a problem, and,once again, I need your advice. I already admit this was kind of my fault in a way but I really need help. I am currently working on a short story/novelette, and I'm debating what to do. I started this WIP because I was talking to an author, and she was trying to help me get something submitted to one of the publishers she publishes with. The word count minimum for her publisher is 10K. Right now, I'm at about 8K so, I'm almost there. But I have completely run out of plot/steam with it, which truthfully, I didn't have that much of in the first place; I really had very general ideas of what I wanted to do.

But I also feel like I've come to a good conclusion about maybe 1K back. So, I'm also debating taking off about that much, and just submitting it to another publisher.

I know that my own judgment comes a lot into play but I still wanted advice. What do you think I should I do? I mean I know that if I get rejected from the publisher I intended it for, I can still send to the other one. However, if I sent to the first publisher, I'll have to add some kind of extension. It's too late in the story add suspense or fantasy elements, in my opinion I would think. Well, at least if I want to wrap it up at the minimum 10K anyway. So, what advice do you have?
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
It's too late in the story add suspense or fantasy elements, in my opinion I would think.

Which draft are you on? If it's not-yet-finished-first, then finish the draft, do your revisions, and see how long it is. You may be surprised.

Or, in the next draft you can add a sub-plot.

But, actually, my best advice would be to make your story the best it can be (and if that means chopping off the last 1,000 words, out they go), then finding a market to match the story you wrote, rather than writing a story to this one specific market.

Maybe your next story will hit 10K.
 

MVK

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 2, 2011
Messages
79
Reaction score
7
Location
Alabama
Thanks for the answers, UJ. I'll use that when writing tonight.

Edit: BTW, I've started the Butt In Chair approach, just writing and nothing else for two hours, and it's more than doubled my words written per day. I guess I hadn't noticed how much the distractions were taking away from my productivity.
 
Last edited:

Silver-Midnight

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 19, 2011
Messages
4,910
Reaction score
279
Location
rising from the depths of a cup of coffee
Which draft are you on? If it's not-yet-finished-first, then finish the draft, do your revisions, and see how long it is. You may be surprised.

Or, in the next draft you can add a sub-plot.

But, actually, my best advice would be to make your story the best it can be (and if that means chopping off the last 1,000 words, out they go), then finding a market to match the story you wrote, rather than writing a story to this one specific market.

Maybe your next story will hit 10K.

Well, I was able to finish the first draft, and it was 10K. I'm now working on the second draft; I may just continue it without the sub-plot because I don't think it would fit. I'm not sure if it will fit for that market or not yet. Thanks for all of the help though. I am considering doing a third draft but I'm not sure yet.
 
Last edited:

FOTSGreg

Today is your last day.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 5, 2007
Messages
7,760
Reaction score
947
Location
A land where FTL travel is possible and horrible t
Website
Www.fire-on-the-suns.com
I'm actually way behind schedule on the 3 novels I wanted to finish this year, Uncle Jim. Only 1 short story behind though. The last month has been, um, taxing with the acquisition of a new job (tech writer), but I found out this afternoon that my boss used one of my first finished documents in a Power Point presentation to his boss so that makes me feel better.

I guess I need a swift kick in the seat of the pants in order to get back on schedule...
 

EmmersonGrant

Lawful Good
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 26, 2012
Messages
58
Reaction score
2
Location
Mexico
I hit a snag about 10 days ago with my WIP.

At first it was the story of a 18-20 year old discovering a power that's been in his family for generations and how he'll use it for good or ill.
I began fleshing out the story with the military guy that captured his grandfather and father and used them to make the US an even mightier super-power.

Then I started thinking most of the story in flashbacks and dream sequences would be in the way and I could write the story from the grandfather's perspective, his capture and subsequent encounter with my MC and see if he's going to help them or hinder them.

My problem began with the introduction of the power. I didn't know if it should be slowly revealed or should I put the weird stuff front and center in the first ten pages and run with it.

I was paralyzed by doubt. Should I front-load it and hope for the best? Slowly introduce it, hint it and then show it?

I wrote and deleted 4k words. I wrote and deleted 3k words. Nothing clicked.

I took a weekend off and read a couple of books I've had around forever: Life Expectancy and Firestarter. There's the weird, right there in the first 20 pages. It's screaming "come on in, the water's fine!"

Floodgates opened and washed away my doubts. I laid 5 pages today and I'm itching to do the rest.

I'll try to post something in SYW this weekend
 

bearilou

DenturePunk writer
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
6,004
Reaction score
1,233
Location
yawping barbarically over the roofs of the world
I have a confession to make.

Not wanting to rehash ye ol' to prologue or not to prologue debate, I will state for the record that while I read them, I'm not fond of them. I find a vast majority of them provide nothing more than could have been accomplished within the novel itself. Many times, they're outright dreadful.

I try to defend their place, though, even when I can't point to any one in recent reading history for me that have worked.

I found one and it will be one that I will use as an example of where it worked, and one that I will study intensely on how and why it worked not only as the prologue but as a lead-in to the novel itself.

If you haven't read The Price Of The Stars by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald, do so. That was one hell of a good build up in the prologue. For someone who doesn't think prologues work most of the time, this one did. (disclaimer: still reading, but wanted to pause to make this comment)

*hangs head* Why have I not read this before now? I'm a bad bearilou.

As always, Uncle Jim, you are a light shining brightly in the darkness.
 

bearilou

DenturePunk writer
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
6,004
Reaction score
1,233
Location
yawping barbarically over the roofs of the world
As always, Uncle Jim, you are a light shining brightly in the darkness.

Now that I've burbled shamelessly like the fangirl that I am, I have a question re: my previous comment.

Uncle Jim, in regards to the prologue to The Price Of The Stars, was that something you planned from the beginning? Or was it information you knew needed to be imparted and after writing the book, realized it worked better as a prologue?
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
That was a separate short story that we'd written in-universe. But we couldn't figure out where in the story to put it ... and there was too much of a gap in time-and-space from the end of the story to the start of the main story, so it wouldn't do as a chapter one (as I thought at the time... now, knowing what I know now, I might well have started what is now Chapter One with "Five years later...." and called it Chapter Two. Or maybe not.)

Pray note that, as it stands, the prologue is completely dispensable. Skip it and you lose nothing. Also, the main character in the prologue is the same as the main character in the rest of the book. People who do read the prologue, and get invested in that character's fortunes, don't have to shift gears, change direction, forget all about this character and suddenly start having to care about someone else entirely.

One of the big problems with prologues is that they squander reader interest. Reader interest is (if you're doing it right) growing from the first word onward. Your prologue is creating reader interest, but if, then, the reader suddenly is told, "but that is not our story," you have to get them interested all over again, and you've lost a slight bit of their trust whilst doing so.

Not a clever plan.

For those who want to play along at home, that prologue, complete, is here:

http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/POTSHEAD.htm

(I should probably put in a link to the e-book version on that page....)
 
Last edited:

allenparker

Naked Futon Guy
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 14, 2005
Messages
1,262
Reaction score
234
Age
63
Location
Virginia
Website
www.allenparker.net
One of the big problems with prologues is that they squander reader interest. Reader interest is (if you're doing it right) growing from the first word onward. Your prologue is creating reader interest, but if, then, the reader suddenly is told, "but that is not our story," you have to get them interested all over again, and you've lost a slight bit of their trust whilst doing so.

Not a clever plan.

For those who want to play along at home, that prologue, complete, is here:

http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/POTSHEAD.htm

(I should probably put in a link to the e-book version on that page....)

So, now I'm confused. Are you for prologues or against them?

I always thought that prologues gave you a way to introduce the protag and his world. It had to be necessary, but not along the same arc or curve. My best example is one where I was playing the a world before Noah and after the fall of Adam and Eve. I used a prologue to set the location and time frame and to establish the Sons of God and Daughters of Man definition.

It seemed to work. People either hated it or loved it.

I think of prologues as a tool in our arsenal. Used correctly, it is a powerful tool.
 

MVK

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 2, 2011
Messages
79
Reaction score
7
Location
Alabama
My feeling is that prologues are a double edged sword. If you are just giving backstory to the world, then they are usually not needed. They should relate directly to the story that starts in chapter 1 and provide perspective that makes the story in chapter 1 more meaningful.
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
If the prologue tempts the reader to ask, "Will this be on the test?" you're probably doing it wrong.

As to whether I'm for them or against them, I'm against doing them badly.

Much as I'm against using first-person POV badly, present tense badly, and passive voice badly.

Some of those things are harder to do well than others. The readers (bless their dear hearts) recognize bad writing and tend to avoid repeating the experience of reading bad writing. Thus readers have been trained to avoid present tense, passive voice, and prologues.
 

blacbird

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Messages
36,987
Reaction score
6,158
Location
The right earlobe of North America
The readers (bless their dear hearts) recognize bad writing and tend to avoid repeating the experience of reading bad writing.

True, and to which must be appended:

even if they aren't analyzing in search of specific reasons. The major "principles" of fiction writing got to be there because of writer-reader interactions, not because some whaley pundit decreed them to be so. Crappy superfluous info-dump prologues will cause many many many readers to voyage in search of better reads, just because they are bored.

caw
 

Fins Left

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 26, 2010
Messages
439
Reaction score
32
If the prologue tempts the reader to ask, "Will this be on the test?" you're probably doing it wrong.
[...]
Thus readers have been trained to avoid present tense, passive voice, and prologues.

My reading habits were established as a student earning an MS in night school over the course of eight years.

When I read the post up-thread about a prologue done well, I pulled it up intending to read it.

What I found was that the word "Prologue" evoked an instant 'skip' reflex the equivelent of the spanish language instruction pages of modern products. (I don't read spanish)

But, still I intended to read it. So, next I started scrolling to see how long the prologue is. By the time page 6 went by, there was no doubt in my mind that I would not be reading it. I think it was about 12 pages total and I read that last three paragraphs.

So, all of that to say... IF you decide to use a prologue, do not depend on the reader to read it as you write the rest of the book. (Or use a word other than "Prologue" to introduce it.... I suggest "Actual Winning Lotto Ticket Numbers For the Next Three Years")
 

allenparker

Naked Futon Guy
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 14, 2005
Messages
1,262
Reaction score
234
Age
63
Location
Virginia
Website
www.allenparker.net
As to whether I'm for them or against them, I'm against doing them badly.

Much as I'm against using first-person POV badly, present tense badly, and passive voice badly.

I wonder if you might, in one of your more educational moods, take a short prologue and dissect it. Either a good one or bad might do just as well. Seeing the parts of an example might help to trigger the good prologue from the bad.

thanks in advance.
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
Perfect prologues? Here are two of my favorites:

Not marching in the fields of Thrasymene,
Where Mars did mate the warlike Carthagens;
Nor sporting in the dalliance of love,
In courts of kings where state is overturn'd;
Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds,
Intends our Muse to vaunt her heavenly verse:
Only this, gentles,—we must now perform
The form of Faustus' fortunes, good or bad:
And now to patient judgments we appeal,
And speak for Faustus in his infancy.
Now is he born of parents base of stock,
In Germany, within a town call'd Rhodes:
At riper years, to Wittenberg he went,
Whereas his kinsmen chiefly brought him up.
So much he profits in divinity,
That shortly he was grac'd with doctor's name,
Excelling all, and sweetly can dispute
In th' heavenly matters of theology;
Till swoln with cunning, of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And, melting, heavens conspir'd his overthrow;
For, falling to a devilish exercise,
And glutted now with learning's golden gifts,
He surfeits upon cursed necromancy;
Nothing so sweet as magic is to him,
Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss:
And this the man that in his study sits.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Seriously, I'll look around and maybe comment on the next prologue I see in a published book.

What I found was that the word "Prologue" evoked an instant 'skip' reflex the equivalent of the Spanish language instruction pages of modern products. (I don't read Spanish)

And that is the main reason I advise against prologues: Your reaction is absolutely typical of the majority of readers.
 
Last edited:

DaveK

Registered
Joined
Feb 14, 2010
Messages
45
Reaction score
4
Location
Colorado
Website
sfwritersworkshop.org
And that is the main reason I advise against prologues: Your reaction is absolutely typical of the majority of readers.

And that is the reason I label my prologues - Chapter 1 ;) Or I use dates or locations. But seriously, I don't understand why someone would skip a section of a book because it is labeled as a prologue. To me the prologue label means that this section is out of sync with the rest of the novel in time, location, characters or voice.
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
But seriously, I don't understand why someone would skip a section of a book because it is labeled as a prologue.

Because readers are like the cats who, having once sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a cold one.[SUP]1[/SUP]

==============

1. Mark Twain reference. Into each life a little Twain must fall.

And that is the reason I label my prologues - Chapter 1 ;) Or I use dates or locations.


Thou art wise, Faustus.

Most of what I'm doing this week is reading applications for Viable Paradise.

I have two short stories that I need to finish (three if you count that one) and I'm in the midst of a non-fiction piece that'll likely run about fifty pages.

Plus, I have to do revisions on a novel. (Two novels if you count that one.)
 
Last edited:

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
From Uncle Jim's Mailbag:

Dear Uncle Jim:
I was writing my novel, but when I was half-way through I realized that it was boring, dull, pointless, and bad. At the same time I had this brilliant idea for a new novel, so I'm writing that instead. But lately it's started seeming pointless too. But I've had a great idea for a new novel so I started it this morning. What can I do to keep my enthusiasm?​
-- Constant Writer in Grapevine


Dear Constant:
Go back and finish the first novel. Even if it's dull. Even if you hate it. Only after you've reached "The End" and you've placed it in your desk drawer to marinate will you be able to go back and ... finish that second novel. Even if it's horrible.

Else, thirty years from now you'll have sixty half-novels on your hard drive and no readers.​
-- Uncle Jim




Dear Uncle Jim,
I've been putting my BIC every day like you said, but just this morning a minor character (George the tavern-keeper's buddy) who was mostly there to be a point of view and hasn't even been mentioned since chapter twelve, showed up at dawn with a bag of gold, a letter in his pocket that he won't let anyone read, and a horse pistol. He whispered, "Remember your vow" into Lady Cecelia's ear, and next thing I knew the two of them were down in the stable saddling fast horses and were out the gate before Lord Reginald even woke up.

The trouble is that none of this was in the outline. I have no idea what George is going to do next, and I'm afraid that Lord Reginald's planned wedding with Lady Cecelia won't happen on schedule. The dressmaker was supposed to arrive at the manor to fit Lady Cecelia for her gown in this chapter! Should I crumble up those pages and get back to the outline?​
-- Worried in Westchester

Dear Worried:
Crumble up the outline.​
-- Uncle Jim




Dear Uncle Jim,
I've been working on my novel for fifteen years now and I have nearly ten pages. Can you recommend a publisher for me?​
-- Serious Scribe in Schenectady

Dear Serious:
No.​
-- Uncle Jim

 
Last edited:

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
This is a prologue from a published work. Comments?

PROLOGUE

Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the MS. illuminates.



This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary man’s collected papers.



As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the “laity,” I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from presenting any precis of the learned Doctor’s reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject which he describes as “involving, not improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its intermediates.”



I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval.



She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative which she communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such conscientious particularity.
 
Last edited: