Tag Archives: novel writing

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Writer’s Improvement hell – No helicopters in High Fantasy

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Another random thought while I avoid making my word count on NaNoWriMo. I’ve finished a draft of a high fantasy and I’m most of the way through a humorish urban fantasy (do I really have to put a genre label on it?). I’m having a much easier time of the urban fantasy, in part because the set-up of the adventure stays in one city. A city with cars and trains and stuff. So the events can happen all over the city and a reasonable distance outside of it over the course of a few hours. To simplify things further, the MC is actively searching out witches – providing immediate conflict with very little set up.

In a high fantasy, you might go from one city to the next, but that trip is going to take some time and require supplies, like food and gold and stuff. Not only that, getting all of the characters together in the right spot at the right time takes a bit of work. Then, to give the complexity wheel another crank, the MC is probably trying to save the kingdom or the world, or possibly the universe or a multi-verse. In any case, you’re not just going to get a phone call there and drive off to the evil emperor’s house to have an encounter where somebody just barely escapes with their life and someone else plots revenge. Nope, ‘ol MC’s gotta fight his way through the labyrinth to the goblin city then tell the goblin king “you’ve got no power over me – now give me that staff you weirdo and put some real pants on.” At that point the world will shatter and all of the plot holes will be filled in with unicorn pee and cement. See? Hard.

I will concede that you can pants your way through a good high fantasy, but there are so many moving parts that an average reader is going to spot a plot hole from a mile away. If you’re like me, then this is going to cause problems. In no way am I going to claim I’ve got an answer except to say that writing high fantasy is a hell of a lot harder than folks give credit to and writing a novel is already hard. At some point I’m going to explore this topic with a little more gusto because I need to solve it or my precious high-fantasy series will die on the vine.

Now, back to NaNoWriMo!

 

photo credit: helicopter engine via photopin (license)

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Deadlines for a not-professional writer

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One nice thing about being a not-professional writer is that I don’t have any deadlines. It’s nice because if I can’t get it done, there’s no harm done. I’m the only one impacted and frankly if I couldn’t get to it, I had other stuff that needed attention. That said, I do have a deadline of sorts for Wine Bottles and Broomsticks. I’m publishing a chapter a month on channillo.com I think that if I missed a deadline there, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. People have subscribed and presumably are reading it. From that perspective, I do have a deadline.

What’s interesting is that I’m holding myself to that deadline. Of course, one chapter a month isn’t a particularly lofty goal. Some folks out there are publishing daily and weekly. This is not something I could do. It just takes me longer and I’ve got few hours in the day in which to write. In fact, I got up at 4:30am just to slap this silly post together. That said, after nearly missing the second deadline I set for myself, I decided I really had to work ahead. Now, I’m a few months ahead of schedule and working as much as I can to actually have all of the chapters of this book done, but the pressure is off and I’m stuck somewhere in the middle of chatper 6. I know exactly where I want it to to and chapter 7 too, I even have the end sketched out.

So what if you’re stuck Dave, you’re months ahead of the game, why don’t you let it cook if you need to?

Because I want to get this project done. I still need to get back to the War of Shadows re-write and also start working on another project I’ve got rolling around in my brain which I think I’d like to do Nanowrimo this year. Not only that, the Wine Bottles and Broomsticks project is really a hell of a lot of fun and I’ve already got a pretty good sketch for a second book, and dammit if I don’t want to get to that too.

Anyhoo, this rambly ramble is about considering the possiblity of upping the stakes for Wine Bottles. I’m debating putting the pressure on and releasing ever 2 weeks instead of monthly. Now that it’s winter and I’ve finished the new duck house and various other outdoor projects I’ll actually have half a sunday or so to sit down and work on it. I know that when I actually have time to focus I can knock out about a chapter a week. This gives me one week for writing and one week for revisions/rewriting. As a not making money from writing and having a good time with writing but aiming at being a full-time this is my actual job sort of writer, it’s a pretty aggressive schedule. However, if nothing else it’ll motivate me to finish. 

I still haven’t made the actual decision to go to evey 2 weeks, I think I want to get through chapters 6 and 7 before I make that call. Anyhow, that’s my update – I’m writing, I’m making progress, and I’m actually having a good time with it. With that, I’ll leave it. I’m out of time, the day job beckons!

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Writer’s improvement hell – Tools #2 (The word processor)

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A couple few blogs ago I complained about operating systems and computers. The conclusion being that there is no one solution. Anything you pick to work on is going to give you a headache of one sort or another. Apparently, word processors are the same. At face values anything will work, and indeed as far as simply using your word processor as a tool to get your story down, that is totally true. However, once you’re done writing your story, you get to a point where it has to be shared. That, it would seem, is where the problems start. Of course, if you’re like me and work in a thoroughly multi-computer / platform environment, things get dicey.

So what are some of the options?

MS Word is generally regarded as the gold standard of word processing, it does a lot and it does do it pretty well. It’s highly portable, has a lot of features, and if you’ve spent any time working in an office, odds on, you’re already familiar with it. What’s my problem with it then? First off, it’s expensive, in the neighborhood of $100 by itself, and if you go with Office 365, you’ll be paying that every year. I seriously doubt I’ll ever sell $100 worth of book to even make that worthwhile. The second problem for me is that there is no Ubuntu Linux version of Word (yes I could use a windows emulator like Wine, but it’s a pain). Mac does have a version, but it’s not as reliable as the Windows version. In short, cost and portability make this a tough one for me.

Although I’ve never used it, Word Perfect is still an option. However, coming it at over $200 for a license, cost is most definitely an issue. Again, this one isn’t available on Ubuntu, but it is available for Mac. Might as well go with Word, just for cost alone.

Scrivener is another good option, it’s relatively inexpensive, in the neighborhood of $50. As far as word processing goes it’s bare bones, but it hits the high-points for the needs of very many writers. There are some other major bonuses here, it allows compilation of your novel into a format appropriate for distribution. It also provides excellent document management and organizational tools that allow for notes to be tacked on all over the thing. For drafting or even final construction, this really an excellent option. There is an Ubuntu version, but it’s missing a few essential pieces, the key being spell-checker. The real problem, however, is that you have to be extremely good with scrivener to make it work for others. I recently distributed copies of my manuscript to folks for a beta read, and every single one of them had one problem or another – the point here being, you CAN get all the bugs out of scrivener when you compile, but it’s not as easy as just pressing a button.

If you have a Mac, you’ve got Pages. As far as word processors go, it’s not awesome. It doesn’t suck, but it’s not as feature loaded like Word. The other problem is the very limited scope of document support. It only handles a few document formats. Again, if you’re dealing with multiple platforms (or sharing your work for any reason), this really becomes unworkable.

In the realm of free, you have Google Docs, which you can store on Google Drive. I’ve only used it a bit, but it gets good reviews. While this set of tools supports multiple document formats, you’re stuck managing all of your documents out on the web. There are major benefits here with respect to multi-platform systems, but it does shut down portability a bit. You’ve really got to have Wi-Fi access. Other issues I have here involve to trying to construct a 100,000 word document and then transferring that into a format which could be used to construct a book. I cant say anything with particular authority, but but I suspect this would pose something of a challenge.

Also in the realm of free are OpenOffice and LibreOffice. I’m going to lump these because they both use the .odt format, and generally have the same set of features. These are flexible, support a number of document formats, and can be used in Windows, Mac, and Linux. There are some oddities with formatting and available fonts, but I think most of this might be limited to LibreOffice, in all they’re fairly minor considering the product is overall pretty good and also free. I think the main problem remains that conversion and portability seem to be problematic.

I don’t know that I can say I know what the point of that rant was. I’d say any one of these options works as well as any, again if you can get it MS Word is probably the best tool, especially if you’re working on a single platform. Barring that, how do you choose? – I have no idea. I use LibreOffice as my primary word processor because that’s what Ubuntu comes with. It works fine and it’s free – no complaints. However, now that I’ve discovered Scrivener and started working with it, I’m moving all of my projects over there. This is largely because of the other tools it has relating to making notes and various compile options. Once I figure it out, I expect my problems with portability and conversion should be resolved.

The truth is though that anything really will work, so it’s all up to preferences. Just like computer, anything you choose will have it’s own special problems.

Now that I’m done ranting about word processors, are there any remaining problems? Yes. Stay tuned.

photo credit: IMG_0561 via photopin (license)