Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

Re: Kissy stuff

It's my own romantic subplots that don't seem to work. Sorry that was unclear.

In my WAIP (Work Almost In Progress), the two leads are going to start falling for each other. I know the characters and know this is going to happen to them.

But I've never been able to write one effectively. I don't see a burgeoning love relationship as being like any other kind of relationship.

Re: Kissy stuff

I think the problem with romantic subplots is the author's tendencies to be "nice" -- in my WIP, I have to go back and add more tension and conflict to the romantic subplot, because first time through, I was too easy on the characters.

If you treat the romance as a source of conflict, rather than making it harmonious, it will enrich your novel, even if it's just a subplot.

Re: subplots

Then, the whole experience takes a hard hit because the subplot was totally unnecessary. :: cough :: Troy :: cough ::

Click to expand...

That whole movie was an abomination.

Re: Kissy stuff

HConn: Ahh...that explains it. I wish I could help you on that count....

Re: subplots

I think the problem with romantic subplots is the author's tendencies to be "nice" -- in my WIP, I have to go back and add more tension and conflict to the romantic subplot, because first time through, I was too easy on the characters.

If you treat the romance as a source of conflict, rather than making it harmonious, it will enrich your novel, even if it's just a subplot.

Click to expand...

Yep. And the conflict can be not only between the pair romantically involved, but with how that involvement complicates all aspects of their lives. She hates his friends is a pretty obvious one, but the particulars of every story should suggest ways to use the romantic relationship to add tension.

Re: Kissy stuff

My romantic subplot is always full of conflict (internal and external). Nothing nice. But there are fine, romantic moments.

Re: subplots

It's my own romantic subplots that don't seem to work.

My romantic stuff (not subplots, because I've never attempted to write a novel) never work either, but I think its because of the lack of romantic subplot in my personal life.

I have a question, stop me if this has been asked before: How do you know what story to write? Do you know before you start the book? Does it just happen?

I'd like to try my hand at writing a novel (mostly to see if I can do it.). I write short stories. How transition into writing a much longer piece?

Re: Kissy stuff

Nothing nice. But there are fine, romantic moments.

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Mine's just plain nothing nice. Poor characters.

POP - The question has been asked before. Where, I can't remember, so I'll answer it anyway. To start, I usually have some image in my brain (the climax, in my WIP case) and then the story builds around there. Once you have your characters, I know how they fit together, how they're going to act, etc.. and story!

An oversimplification, of course, but really that's all there is for me.

Re: subplots

Whew, Publishorperish, that's a tall order. (I've been trying to answer this question for the last hundred odd pages here.)

A novel isn't just a Really Long Short Story.

One way to write a novel would be to just start. Write every day, and when you come to "The End" around page 300, you have a novel. Then you revise the snot out of it.

This is as good a place as any for me to put in the Fire Door Theory of Novels.

Imagine a guy sitting in a movie theatre, enjoying the show. For some reason he gets up and walks out the exit door. It slams shut behind him, and locks. He can't get back into that movie, and for him that show is over.

That's the point where your novel starts.

He wanders around looking for a new movie. He goes in, perhaps after some trouble finding a theatre, he catches some of the middle of another movie. But he isn't enjoying it. He walks out the exit, the door slams shut, he can't go back. But it's dark, cold, and raining outside. Maybe that movie wasn't that bad -- but there's no going back.

You're now in the middle of your novel.

Our hero wanders more, finds a friend who knows where there's a show he'd really like, loans him money and dry socks, and together they sit down in another really good movie just as the opening titles start.

That's the climax of your book.

Maybe that works for you, maybe it doesn't, but that's one way to look at the shape of your novel.

(Failing that, put an interesting person in an interesting place, give that person an problem, then follow him or her around until all the problems that arise are solved.)

(This is also the time for me to say, Start at the Beginning of this thread and read forward. Lots of good stuff in here.)

Re: Kissy stuff

thanks! I'll finish reading the thread and pick your brain if I come up with any unique questions. You're cool for doing this, btw.

Re: *wave*

Reading through 114 pages of posts calls for some kind of celebration, or at least some booze. Having no booze to speak of, I'll settle for a quick introduction.

My name's Elizabeth, I live in New York City. I write a zine about playing Irish fiddle in the subways, called PLATFORM. Been hard at work on a graphic novel for a little while now (that's where most of my 2 hour writing sessions go these days; at this point I just wanna be done with the mofo), but have plenty of other projects in the pipeline, including a bunch 'o short stories, a novel (which I'm working on during my lunch hour -- no kiddin'), and various/sundry projects with my comics artist boyfriend (he'll be tackling sequential art chores on the graphic novel previously mentioned).

Spent the first pass through the thread skimming and taking lots of notes. Tons of great advice here and lots to keep a girl busy. As it's plotting that intimidates me most, I've got a few nights of chess ahead of me...

---

Re: Kissy stuff

Welcome, Elizabeth!

Sometimes I wonder if I should do an index to this thread.

Other times I wonder about extracting the good parts into a single file, an e-book or summat.

Then I look at everything else I have to do and put off doing anything.

Again, welcome.

Re: Kissy stuff

Yumm...Graphic novels...

James, whatever happened to the Giant E-Book Project that everyone was supposed to be working on? Sounds like it just kinda fizzled....THAT would be one hell of a resource...

Re: Thread Archives

I've said this before in another thread which has since sunk to the bottom here, but I've cut and pasted about the first seventy pages of "meat" from this thread (UJ's posts, most of Hapi Sofi's, and a couple of others).

If anyone wants me to email them the doc, I can be reached at [email protected]

I'll try and update it in the near future, but no promises.

Borders Bookstores

People who are looking for copies of Murder by Magic can see if it's on the shelf of your local Borders bookstore by using the locator at <a href="http://www.bordersstores.com/search/search.jsp?tt=gn" target="_new">www.bordersstores.com/search/search.jsp?tt=gn</a>

(Yeah, yeah, I know, it's shameless self-promotion, but hey, I'm an author. I'm allowed.)

ISBN 0446679623

You can use that same locator to look for your favorite books, too. Your other favorite books.

Re: *wave*

Yeah, graphic novels are the bomb. Well, storytelling's the bomb, but graphic novels especially. There's interesting tricks that go into sequential storytelling that don't show up in things like novels, but there's a lot that's the same -- the structure of storytelling certainly is. I'm still getting my sea legs, as 'twere, but it's good fun and I've been lucky to have some incredible folks working in mainstream comics to learn from.

Thanks muchly for the welcome, Jim! My style of notetaking for this thread is as follows: a single text file for each subject, with the date of the post and the page before each note so's I can get back to them easily. Kept on a server that I have command line access to, from anywhere. Written in vi, 'cause I'm a nrrd like dat. Looks like I have 132 files, in text, that add up to slightly over a half a meg. It's a goodly amount.

I have to say that all the bickering about Courier really baffles me. I've always been a huge Courier fan. I use it all the time, of my own free will, for everything. Because it looks like a typewriter, damnnit!

Anyways. As I've read this thread, an axiom that my fellah came up with keeps coming to mind. He's got it taped to the drafting table. And that is:

"Your first power is in your choice as to where you put your greatest attention."

Makes sense, yeah?

Re: Kissy stuff

MURDER BY MAGIC isn't over at Amazon.com, I've noticed.

This makes me very grumpy.

Well, okay. Kind of grumpy.

So nice to see Rosemary Edghill out and about. Those Bast books of hers are among my favorites.

Re: Kissy stuff

MURDER BY MAGIC isn't over at Amazon.com, I've noticed.

Amazon is scrod again. As usual. Borders has it, Barnes & Noble has it, Powell's has it. What can I tell you?

(I don't see another dime unless the book earns out, and after that it's a pro-rated share of 50% of the royalties. Number of pages in my story divided by number of pages in the anthology times 100%, times 1/2 of the money. Short stories aren't how you get rich. You do 'em for love, or for practice, or to do something that you can't get away with in a novel.)

(I do have a funny story about that. My elder son wanted a mountain bike for his birthday (this was some years back). Well, household finances didn't look like that ... then the day before his birthday we got a check, royalties from a short story in an anthology. $800. Wow. We took that as a Sign From On High that he was supposed to get that bike, and so he did.)

(That story was "Uncle Joshua and the Grooglemen," currently reprinted in New Skies, available in both hardback and paperback. Buy one! Better still, buy a dozen! Do your Christmas Shopping Way Early!)

The next anthology with one of our stories in it is scheduled for February.

Now there was something else I was going to talk about tonight, but I've been overcome by a gloomy thought: By the time he was my age, Edgar Allan Poe had been dead for ten years -- and by then he'd invented the modern short story, the science fiction story, and the detective story.

Re: *wave*

"Your first power is in your choice as to where you put your greatest attention."

That's a really great saying.

(After that, at least with writing, it's where to direct the readers' attention.)

We did several comic books, back a few years ago (and scripted and got paid for more that never came out -- volatile business, comics).

We can see several similarities between comics and novels, though, other than the obvious one that both tell stories.

You have your dialog. That's in balloons.
You have your narration. That's in the little square boxes.
You have your description. That's in the pictures.

You have your point of view -- this is quite literal.

And in comics, as in novels, the amount of detail is related to the narrative speed. When things are going fast, look at your illustration. It's far less detailed. In the slower sections, amount of detail picks up.

By the way!

Grateful thanks, Jim, for cheering up one of my very depressed students. I sent her your words re the new novelist and the sales spiral and how to get round it. She's had good sales on her first two novels but the third has been rejected by her publisher as too different from her usual humourous chick lit style. She was crushed because her publisher is a large multi-national company and she thought they knew best. Now she is cheerfully looking for a new publisher and possibly a pen name for her new type of book

By the way I still have and use a Word Perfect set of files containing all your words of wisdom cut and pasted from this thread.

Re: By the way!

...rejected by her publisher as too different from her usual humourous chick lit style.

That's definite Pseudonym Time. I have different pen names that I use for various genres, because I don't want to confuse the readers.

I'm not the only one who does that, either.

Rowling's book a year

re JK Rowling avoiding the death spiral, Uncle J responded,

Two things: She's a break-out best seller, and she's writing a book a year.

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The Potter books have been 2-3 years apart, with more in progress.

I say it's the break-out bestseller that keeps her publishable on such a scale, and at least for now, immune to the death spiral.

I'd like to see her write a non-Potter book.

Re: comics

Comics. What's special about 'em? What makes 'em different than novels? This is one of those things that I've thought about a lot (being a fan -- though I haven't been one for very long, actually -- and spending a lot of time with comics folk will do that to you). I can dork out and talk about comics at great length, but since this is about novels 'n all, I'll keep the thread drift to a minimum.

The big difference is the obvious: they're visual, whereas novels are not. What does this mean? This means that you can use VISUAL things to tell your story. In fact, you should, if you're writing comics. One of my big pet peeves are those comics that might as well be novels, for all the visuals they've not got. If you wanna write a story where cops are sitting around the precinct, playing jokes on each other and eating doughnuts and flipping through papers, then for God's sake, man, write a police procedural, or even a television script for one. Or, put another way, twelve pages of two dudes sitting in a car flapping their gums makes for Very Bad Comics.

(Some people would argue with me on this one, but I'm pretty staunch in that opinion.)

With comics, you gotta have action that you can SEE. And it's not necessarily all about action, per se -- there are all kinds of visual fun and games you can play to make your story points. That's part of the fun of learning how to write 'em -- figuring out all that stuff. I'm constantly trying to figure out how to tell the story with more visuals and less "talking heads". It's tough!

There's also usually much stricter limits on page length and page count and things like that, which leads to a certain economy of storytelling. With a comic book, you're usually stuck with 22 pages per issue. You can't go on and on and on. Or if you're writing a graphic novel, you've got multiples of 8.

Story structure is the same. (I daresay a story is a story is a story, no matter what medium it's told in.) Some folks aren't as down with the 3-act story structure, though, and that drives me kind of nuts. You couldn't really get away with that kind of crap in most everything else. And there's something very satisfying about a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I feel cheated without it. Linear narrative ahoy!

Another big difference between the comics world and the novels world: self-publishing is not only perfectly acceptable, it's encouraged. These days (and I can't speak for Days of Yore, of course), you often gotta show that you can do work before you'll get work, and have to show that you're committed, and the way you do this in the comics community is to put something out yourself. The DIY spirit is very much alive and kicking over there. But that's a whole 'nother thing.

Comics digression over, bailing out...

Re: By the way!

I think there's a significant amount of overlap between the artforms. Movies, music, comics, novels, short stories. Everything can teach you something about the other. Movies are great for really hammering home the basic plot structure, because it's so obvious, and it's so easily digestible.

Re: Dipping my toe in

I've been lurking and reading posts here for months (and still can't catch up!!!) but I'd like to come out from hiding and join in the fray if I may.

My name is Beth, I'm an ER nurse (got a medical question for your WIP--I'm your gal) and writer living in Wisconsin. I had 3 novels published by one of the big guys in the late 90's before falling victim to something kind of like the death spiral but with some mergers, acquisitions, and broken promises thrown into the mix. I have a 4th novel that I POD/self-published just for the heck of it. There's a fifth novel that I'm giving away in serialized form in my newsletter and my current WIP is...well...a work in progress.

Mind if I join in?

Beth