Ask garamet

[garamet]

I realize I've been a Bad Moderator and a Bad Mommy by being absent from the pre-new-server Writing forum for months and months. With the advent of the new server, I'm going to try to do better.

Instead of nattering on and on about the general process of finding an agent and getting published, however, this time I'd like to just be accessible for any questions you might have that I can answer.

Now, here's the proviso: What I know is based on my own experience over a quarter of a century in the business, and what I've learned from other midlist writers over those same years, with an occasional bit of data from outside sources (the Authors Guild, etc.).

If I don't know the answer, I'll tell you I don't know. If I do have an answer to your question, understand that it's an answer from my POV, and another writer might easily have an entirely different take on the subject.

(Also, as my title says, I'm a novelist. That's what I write, that's what I've sold. I know next to nothing about the scriptwriting business and, while I've written short stories, I've never succeeded in selling one. So those questions I can't answer, but both actormike and reno floyd are good sources for scriptwriting questions.)

Lastly, please don't ask me to read every post in every thread in this forum. (Oh, I know, you don't expect me to do that, but could I please, please, please read your story? :D) I can't, really. At least not until I win the lottery and can retire from my Day Jobs.

That said, ask away! :banana:

[NAHTMMM]

What are some killer mistakes that a lot of writers make in trying to sell their first *ahem* novel?

That is, what's a sure way to get a rejection slip from the publisher?

[Baba]

What did you like about the ds9 episode "In the Pale Moonlight"

[garamet]

What are some killer mistakes that a lot of writers make in trying to sell their first *ahem* novel?

That is, what's a sure way to get a rejection slip from the publisher?

The first few things that come to mind are:

1. Trying to pitch a manuscript "over the transom" (that is, without having an agent), even after the publishing company specifically says it will not accept "unsolicited manuscripts."

(Easiest way to avoid this is to subscribe to Writer's Market and find out exactly what the publisher you're aiming for is looking for. IOW, do your homework.)

2. Having a book published by a vanity press and bragging about it. A vanity press (which is different from a print-on-demand publisher, for which I'd need a separate explanation) is one of those guys like Vantage Press that advertise in the back of magazines "Publish Your Book in Only 30 Days!" You pay them to print x-number of copies of your book, which they dump on you, unedited, un-proofread, and expect you to sell. Nothing screams AMATEUR like going with a vanity press.

So if you've made that mistake, don't ever, ever tell a NY book editor that you have.

3. Know what the publishing company is looking for. Don't try to send a s/f novel to someone who only publishes romances, for example.

4. Don't send the entire manuscript. First send a query letter. Then if you get a positive response from an editor, send three chapters and an outline. Yes, it's a good idea to have the entire manuscript written the first time around, but three chapters and an outline are all an editor's going to read from a newbie, if that.

5. Don't pester the editor once s/he's got your manuscript. Used to be as a professional courtesy you'd get a response in under six weeks. Nowadays, if they get back to you in under six months, it's a miracle. But repeated phone calls/emails are going to make them even crankier than they already are. So while it's smart to include a self-addressed postcard with the ms. so the editorial assistant can send it back to you saying "yes, we've received your ms." or, barring that, ONE call or email to verify receipt is kosher, calling every week is going to end up with your manuscript flung back in your face.

6. Unless an editor accepts electronic submissions, send your manuscript as an UNbound document, printed on white paper (don't get silly), double-spaced, 1" margins all around, and preferably in a Courier (NOT freakin' Times New Roman) font. If you send something in a Barnum font on sky-blue paper, spiral bound, it's gonna end up in the trash. And even if you're sending an electronic submission: MSWord, double-spaced, Courier 11- or 12-pitch. You're aiming for 250 words per page.

Again, bottom line, do your homework. Writer's Market (www.writersmarket.com) tells you which publishers are looking for what. It tells you how to write a query letter. Also, please, please spell-check anything before you send it out and, when in doubt, pay someone to proofread your stuff beforehand. (Hint: I can recommend someone! :D)

[garamet]

What did you like about the ds9 episode "In the Pale Moonlight"

How did you know it's one of my favorite DS9 episodes? :D

In fact, it's one of my all-time favorite STAR TREK episodes.

In fact, I'd say it transcends the medium and is a brilliant piece of drama all around.

Why? Because it sends a message: These are the expediencies of war. These are the things good men have to do in order to survive in bad situations. It left the viewer with the sense that Sisko would have to come to terms with the consequences of what he'd done for a very long time.

It stretched the characters, it stretched the actors. It worked off the strengths of characters and actors (Brooks is the rare actor who can act straight into the camera), and the synergy between Brooks and Robinson (not to mention the wonderful actor whose name escapes me who played Vreenak) was marvelous to behold.

It also highlighted the profound difference in mindset between human and Cardassian. Something contemporary Earth leaders should study when trying to Americanize peoples who don't want to be Americanized. (Sorry, had to inject a little bit of politics in there. ;))

Kick-ass scripting. (I understand Ron Moore did an uncredited rewrite. IMO, Ron Moore is one of the best things to happen to Star Trek, and I'm sorry B&B exiled him. Whether he did in fact work on this or not, Michael Taylor is Jeri Taylor's son and, nepotism aside, it's clear the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.)

And Romulans. What's not to like about Romulans?

In fact, I can't think of anything I didn't like about the episode. Space opera at its finest. Makes you think about it long after you've watched it, which is what good drama is all about.

:cool:

[Baba]

This episode seems to be everyone's favorite trek episode.

[Borgs]

To garamet.

My dad (as a kind of hobby) is writing a novel, which is basically a dramtised account of his experiences at university. He's taking creative writing classes... and though I wish him well, what chance do you think he's got of ever selling copies based on that premise?

[garamet]

To garamet.

My dad (as a kind of hobby) is writing a novel, which is basically a dramtised account of his experiences at university. He's taking creative writing classes... and though I wish him well, what chance do you think he's got of ever selling copies based on that premise?

In the U.S., not a snowball's chance. UK publishers are, I think, a bit more open to intimate real-life based novels that don't have to include dinousaurs, demons or double-agents. In that case, it would depend on how appealing his characters are (can readers relate to them either by saying "Yes, that could be me" or "God, I'm so glad that's not me"?), and how good a stylist he is. Then again, I've never read a British novelist who wasn't simply brilliant with words, so let's assume he'd have that brought out by the writing course.

I also don't know what the "rules" are in the UK in terms of whether one needs an agent or can hawk the goods oneself. I imagine there must be an equivalent to Writer's Market that could tell you.

In any event, I wish him well, hope he's enjoying the process, and hope you'll keep me apprised of how he's doing. :)

[Baba]

Is the president and attorney general homophobic?

[garamet]

Is the president and attorney general homophobic?

Are they? (Sorry, that's the proofreader talking.) They certainly give the appearance of being homophobic, at least in terms of policy-making.

If you asked Bush, he'd probably say "some of my best friends are gay." If you asked Ashcroft, he'd probably say "I do not now know, nor have I ever met, a gay person."

This is consistent with their religious upbringing, though I suspect Bush's Mommy also told him he must always be kind to those poor unfortunate queer people. Ashcroft's Mommy probably beat him black and blue after she caught him jerking off when he was 14 and he's been a repressed cross-dresser who steals women's panties off clotheslines ever since. :dry:

At least, if I were writing a novel in which there were two characters who resembled Georgie and John, that's how I would portray them.

(Seriously, though, when Ashcroft dies, we'll discover that he does have an entire closet full of size XXL women's clothes and a whole array of blushers and lipsticks customized for his skin tones.) :busheep:

[SugaKoated]

Hey, I live in Canada and I recently wrote a children's book for one of my art classes which I"m very proud of.

Do you have any advice for how I can try to get it published? Are there different rules for if you want to publish a children's book? Do I still need an agent?

Also, how do you make sure that the publisher doesn't steal your idea?

[Diacanu]

*Opens mouth to give some delibarately bad advice for comic effect, but thinks better of it, and sits back down*

[garamet]

^*pats Diacanu on the head*

Good puppy!

Hey, I live in Canada and I recently wrote a children's book for one of my art classes which I"m very proud of.

Do you have any advice for how I can try to get it published? Are there different rules for if you want to publish a children's book? Do I still need an agent?

Also, how do you make sure that the publisher doesn't steal your idea?

An idea cannot be stolen. There isn't a concept any of us can think of that hasn't been done countless times since the first caveman began those paintings in Lascaux.

What I think you're asking is whether or not a publisher would steal your characters and their situations (and, in the case of a children's book, your illustrations) and publish your book under someone else's name.

They wouldn't. It wouldn't make any sense. As soon as you became aware of the existence of the book, you'd file a lawsuit. The author's royalty is 10% or less of the price of the book. The publishing company makes multiple times more money than you do; it's not worth it to them to co-opt your material and risk a lot of adverse publicity.

Having said that, the best advice I can give you vis-a-vis selling a children's book is the same as for any other kind of fiction...go to Writer's Market.

Children's book publishing is a specialized field. Not every major publisher has a children's book line, and those that do have very specific guidelines for acceptance. Writer's Market can help you there.

Go for it!

[garamet]

^Which reminds me...

Another mistake many new writers make is to either actually copyright their manuscript before sending it out, or at least put one of those little copyright marks (you know the one I mean; it's a "c" with a circle around it; can't seem to duplicate it here) next to the title to make it look as if they have copyrighted it.

Don't do that. It's another thing that screams "Amateur Hour!"

If a publisher buys your manuscript, they will apply for the copyright for you. The copyright will be in your name (unless you're writing a tie-in work, like the Star Trek novels, in which case the copyright belongs to the franchise, in this case Paramount), but it's the publisher's job to take care of that.

[The Saint]

So, if there's one answer-for-all-seasons here, ladies and gentlemen -- and dearest moderator -- what would it be?

[Baba]

Who is Enterpriser and Executor?

[garamet]

^(A) a sad and lonely man who could benefit from dropping the pose and interacting with others on a more human level (B) no idea, but my money's on Cassandra.

So, if there's one answer-for-all-seasons here, ladies and gentlemen -- and dearest moderator -- what would it be?

"What's inside the box is more important than the wrapping outside"?

IOW, your writing is what is or isn't going to get an editor's attention, so it's best not to distract or annoy them (most of them are simple folk) by not following the standards for submission they've established over the decades.

Breaking in to writing is tricky, because there are no set rules. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer when you grow up, you know you have to go to med school or law school, pass the boards or the bar, etc.

There's no specific degree program for being a writer. There's no employment agency or entry level position that will guarantee you publication. But, regardless of what you want to write, there are guidelines to follow if you want to be taken seriously.

And those guidelines are found in various places, but in my observation Writer's Market gives you the bestest and the mostest.

[Diacanu]

*Coughs blood into a hankerchief*

Surely garamet will arrive in time with our TB medicine. :cry:

[garamet]

^Go somewhere where it's below freezing and sleep outside every night. Wrap yourself up thoroughly so you don't get frostbite, but make sure your lungs are getting plenty of really cold air for 6-12 weeks. It was the only thing that worked in the 19th century and, given the growing number of resistant strains in the 21st, may be the only recourse sometime in the future.

True story: I had a great aunt who for reasons no one remembers was in England just before WWI. She was 17 at the time. My guess is she'd gone over there from Newfoundland, where she was born, looking for work, probably as a domestic, though why she couldn't have just gone down to the States is beyond me. But you'd have to know that side of my family for this story to make sense.

Anyway, poor little Mary, in the first bloom of youth, was stricken with TB at the age of 17 and sent home to die just as the war was starting. Being a poor Irish girl, of course, she traveled in steerage, no doubt infecting half the other poor folk on the ship. But...

The ship she was on was British registry, and it was torpedoed and sunk by a German vessel. My Great-aunt Mary and the other survivors spent two nights in open lifeboats before they were rescued.

By the time she got home to Newfoundland, her TB was completely gone.

She lived another 70 years.

True story.

[The Saint]

Archer came back from the future and gave her the cure. The captain of that ship (who was Rikimikimakitakian, and don't bother asking why you've never heard of them BEFORE now) was quite pleased. Sorry. Carry on.

[garamet]

^If you say so... :rolleyes:

[Baba]

I have a question who should head Trek Whedon or Berman?

[Diacanu]

I should head Trek.
I'd make it a cross between Galaxy Quest and an even dirtier Tripping The Rift.
You'd love it.

[garamet]

Think I'll duck that one. Never know when and where TPTB are lurking. And I like my job. :D

[Lanzman]

I have a question.

Did you (garamet, obviously) read any of the entries in the "liberty" contest last year? And if so, what did you think?

[Diacanu]

Yeah, what he asked.

Also, who'd win between Wolfgang Puck and Chen Kenichi?

[Quas]

Can I ask something about one of your books?

I just read Probe and I was wondering why you had someone say Beethoven is "the one Earth composer Vulcans seem to find the most simpatico." That seemed like an odd choice to me, since Beethoven's music is so emotional.

[garamet]

Lanzman, no, sorry. I was really crunched at the time, and figured if I couldn't read all of them, it wouldn't be fair to just read some. (Howsomever, I do remember that you won.) :D

Diacanu, I'd have to vote for Puck. His butternut squash soup is to die for.

Astaroth, while it's true that Beethoven sounds emotional, structurally his music is very logical. I thought it was fitting that Vulcans, who really are very emotional under that facade (or they wouldn't have to work so hard at repressing their emotions), would find him fascinating.

BTW, have you read Music of the Spheres?

[Quas]

Astaroth, while it's true that Beethoven sounds emotional, structurally his music is very logical. I thought it was fitting that Vulcans, who really are very emotional under that facade (or they wouldn't have to work so hard at repressing their emotions), would find him fascinating.

Thanks! Makes perfect sense. :techman:

BTW, have you read Music of the Spheres?

Do you mean this (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0387944745/ref=pd_sim_books_1/103-6125471-2888659?v=glance&s=books)? I might have to look into it. I have a special interest in Pythagoras.

[garamet]

Do you mean this (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0387944745/ref=pd_sim_books_1/103-6125471-2888659?v=glance&s=books)? I might have to look into it. I have a special interest in Pythagoras.

Nope, I meant the one that's available on this page (http://www.margaretwanderbonanno.com/bio.htm). It's the original version of Probe.

[Quas]

:IMHO!:

Wow, my first thought was that it was another of your books but I couldn't find anything on amazon. Now I see why. :( I had no idea. I just found the book in a thrift store and since it had your name on it I snatched it right up.

Thanks for the info.

[garamet]

^I posted that whole rant here a while back, before the changes. My goal is to let every Star Trek fan know...one reader at a time.

[Dolphin]

What if you wrote a book along the lines of Notes from Underground or Memoirs of a Madman?

Like, a book with no plot per se, just the musings of a seriously misanthropic character and the various situations he finds himself in.

Basically, what are the chances of an off-beat book with odd structure getting published? Which publishers would like something like that. It seems if your stuff does not fit into a certain identifiable genre, it will go nowhere. How do you get weird stuff read?

[James Tiberius Kirk]

^I posted that whole rant here a while back, before the changes. My goal is to let every Star Trek fan know...one reader at a time.

IIRC, you also let anyone wo was interested know that as well at TBBS.

[garamet]

What if you wrote a book along the lines of Notes from Underground or Memoirs of a Madman?

Like, a book with no plot per se, just the musings of a seriously misanthropic character and the various situations he finds himself in.

Basically, what are the chances of an off-beat book with odd structure getting published? Which publishers would like something like that. It seems if your stuff does not fit into a certain identifiable genre, it will go nowhere. How do you get weird stuff read?

In mainstream publishing, the odds are slim to none. As you've observed, today's editors want cookie-cutter stuff so they don't have to actually read it. They're a bunch of spoiled children who've picked up Hollywood's bad habits. "Give me the TV Guide version," they'll sigh on the rare occasion you're actually allowed into their offices. "Tell it to me in one sentence or less."

Unless, of course, you happen to be a Star Fucker. If you're sleeping with someone who's important on the New York Scene and you go to all the right parties, then your work will be scooped up and oohed and aahed over.

Your best bet - check into the online publishers. (iUniverse is one I know is reputable. You'll have to judge the others on your own.) And be prepared to do your own marketing, because no publisher does a lick of marketing for anyone other than the Names these days.

Good luck! :techman:

[garamet]

^I posted that whole rant here a while back, before the changes. My goal is to let every Star Trek fan know...one reader at a time.

IIRC, you also let anyone wo was interested know that as well at TBBS.

Yep, but I sort of told it in snippets over there. At the time I was negotiating with the Pocket folks to get back into the franchise, so I didn't want to give the impression I was still angry. I wasn't. What goes around comes around, and here I am. :D

[odp]

Why is baba asking stupid questions involving everything but writing?:diacanu:

[Diacanu]

Okay, you outlined the process of getting an agent, then getting the advance to write a book.

What if you write the book first?

Or, what if you get the advance, but write too slow and get only a third of the way through, or write a crappy book?
Do you gotta give the money back?
And what if you spent it all?
Are you in as deep doo doo as I suspect?
And how deep is the doo doo?
IRS troubles? Jail?
What are we looking at here?

[Dolphin]

What if you wrote a book along the lines of Notes from Underground or Memoirs of a Madman?

Like, a book with no plot per se, just the musings of a seriously misanthropic character and the various situations he finds himself in.

Basically, what are the chances of an off-beat book with odd structure getting published? Which publishers would like something like that. It seems if your stuff does not fit into a certain identifiable genre, it will go nowhere. How do you get weird stuff read?

In mainstream publishing, the odds are slim to none. As you've observed, today's editors want cookie-cutter stuff so they don't have to actually read it. They're a bunch of spoiled children who've picked up Hollywood's bad habits. "Give me the TV Guide version," they'll sigh on the rare occasion you're actually allowed into their offices. "Tell it to me in one sentence or less."

Unless, of course, you happen to be a Star Fucker. If you're sleeping with someone who's important on the New York Scene and you go to all the right parties, then your work will be scooped up and oohed and aahed over.

Your best bet - check into the online publishers. (iUniverse is one I know is reputable. You'll have to judge the others on your own.) And be prepared to do your own marketing, because no publisher does a lick of marketing for anyone other than the Names these days.

Good luck! :techman:


Thank you very much. I am going to check out iUniverse right now.

The Star Fucker thing is quite depressing. What worth can be found in the writing of someone who is able to socialize and meet people? :p


One other thing. What if I copyright my book, but make no mention of it anywhere in the actual book. Is that allowed. I know what you are saying about ideas, I tend to agree, but shouldn't you protect yourself somehow?

By the way, I am very envious of you! ;)

[garamet]

Why is baba asking stupid questions involving everything but writing?:diacanu:

I don't think they're stupid. Disingenuous, maybe, but not stupid. Maybe they're his way of bumping the thread so people will notice you. Guess we should ask Baba.

[garamet]

Okay, you outlined the process of getting an agent, then getting the advance to write a book.

What if you write the book first?

That's actually a good idea for your first sale. Because if you sell the book on the outline and the first three chapters, your editor's going to ask you "What else have you got?" Then you can hand him an outline and three chapters for your next book and get a head start on that, because you've already written the first one.

A lot of people don't want to take that chance, because their attitude is "But what if I don't sell the first one?" To which my answer is: If you didn't have fun writing the first one, you're only in it for the money, and there are much easier ways to make money.

Or, what if you get the advance, but write too slow and get only a third of the way through, or write a crappy book?

Another good reason to write the entire book before you submit that three-and-and-outline sample.

Do you gotta give the money back?

If you go over deadline, you might be able to wheedle an extension, but if you get into the habit of going over deadline, editors will start avoiding you. In the old days, if you wrote a crappy book, an editor would work with you to make it better (you know, actually edit the book). These days they're more apt to throw it back at you with what's known as a "kill fee," which can be all or part of the rest of the contract money. But they'll also blackball you - i.e. never accept another submission from you, and badmouth you to other editors. So, again, another reason to write the whole book first. Because if you know it's crappy, there's no point in wasting everybody's time. But if you're not on a deadline and you haven't gotten paid, you can rewrite it until it's no longer crappy, and everyone benefits.

And what if you spent it all?
Are you in as deep doo doo as I suspect?
And how deep is the doo doo?
IRS troubles? Jail?
What are we looking at here?

I'm not personally aware of an instance of a writer having to give money back. I've known of a fairly big name writer who got himself into a jam a few years ago and delivered a really bad manuscript, which his editor pushed through anyway, just because this writer has a following and there are people who will buy his stuff just on the basis of his name.

Well, the book did worse than anyone expected, and didn't come close to earning the big fat advance, and the editor was about to cut this guy adrift. But he had alimony problems and substance abuse problems and blah-blah-blah, so he cut a deal with the editor to take a teeny-tiny advance on his next book and not see any royalties until it had earned enough to make up the money lost on the previous book.

The subsequent book sold very well (a month at Betty Ford probably helped), and he's back on track.

But speaking of the IRS: When you're paid by a publishing company, you're paid as an independent contractor. I.e., no taxes or SSI are taken out for you. You're responsible for paying taxes quarterly, the way you would with any freelance or self-employment income, including a nasty little thing called self-employment tax, with is double what you'd have taken out in FICA if this were a paycheck.

So where you can really get yourself into a jam, if you don't watch yourself, is in not paying enough estimated taxes and getting reamed on April 15th.

[garamet]

Thank you very much. I am going to check out iUniverse right now.

The Star Fucker thing is quite depressing. What worth can be found in the writing of someone who is able to socialize and meet people? :p

Alternatively, you could change your name to Neil Gaiman and do very well for yourself. ;)

One other thing. What if I copyright my book, but make no mention of it anywhere in the actual book. Is that allowed. I know what you are saying about ideas, I tend to agree, but shouldn't you protect yourself somehow?

If you sell a book to a major publisher, part of the process will be that they will copyright the book for you. They'll pay the fees, do the paperwork, etc., but the copyright will be in your name.

Your contract with the publisher, however, gives them the exclusive right to publish your work for a certain period of time. You couldn't sell the same book to another publisher, or self-publish it, for example, during that time. If, however, the publisher lets the book go out of print (which they do with ever-increasing rapidity these days), then you can request what is known as reversion of rights, which means you can republish the book with someone else, or on your own (for example, as an ebook or print-on-demand).

Applying for the copyright on your own just complicates all that. It will at least raise eyebrows among the editorial staff ("Doesn't this guy know how we do things here?").

There's always a little twinge of fear about someone stealing your story but, believe me, it very rarely happens. Publishers get mountains of submissions every month; they don't have time to misappropriate writers' material. They also know they can get sued, so it really isn't worth it to them.

In short, unless you intend to exclusively self-publish, don't copyright your own material.

By the way, I am very envious of you! ;)

There is something gratifying about having slipped through the narrow end of the funnel and gotten published. May it happen to you as well. :D

[Jean Prouvaire]

To what extent do you pre-plan your books? Do you have a carefully constructed outline, work with a vague roadmap or endpoint in mind, or is it mostly spontaneous discovery? Does it vary with the type of book you're writing?

[Bailey]

/me waits to see if Garamet is still responding to this thread.

[Jean Prouvaire]

^ Me too :)

[Paladin]

Okay, let me know what you think. My novel begins like this:

"It was a dark and stormy night on the Holodeck."

;)

[Jean Prouvaire]

Bump

[garamet]

OMG! I'm sorry, folks. Haven't been in here in weeks, and assumed this thread had dropped off into oblivion a long time ago.

Darth, under the theory that there are no original ideas, I dare you to take that beginning and make something of it. :D

Jean Prouvaire, first of all - welcome back! Where the heck ya been?

To answer your question, I wrote my first two novels (the one that didn't sell, and the one that did) off the cuff. Which is to say I just sat down and wrote, and when I got to the end, I stopped.

Two reasons why I don't do that anymore.

One is that both of those novels were unusually structured.

The first one was really eight individual stories about eight different characters, strung together and interconnected by those eight characters' interaction with a ninth character. *I* thought it worked, but 14 editors in NYC and two in Westchester thought it didn't. (There may have been more, but those 16 were the only ones who sent rejection letters.) And less than a year later, there was an ABC Movie of the Week whose plot was so close to mine it was alarming. Go figure.

The second novel ultimately had the classic novel structure - beginning in exposition and character development, leading through a series of flashbacks and pivotal events to a defining climax, then a denouement, the End. Only I didn't write it that way. I started in the middle and wrote to the end, then went back and filled in the beginning - only to have a bitch of a time making the two halves of the middle intermesh.

Couldn't have done that if I'd had an outline. Would have had to start at the beginning, and the beginning-to-middle was a lot harder to write than the middle-to-the-end.

So, Reason #1 - weird writing style.

Reason #2: once you sell a novel and you want to sell another one, you have to deal with an editor. An editor needs three chapters and an outline before s/he will offer to buy your book.

So if you're going to write the outline for the editor (often the most difficult part of the whole process), and the editor's going to buy your book based on that outline, you sort of have to stick to that outline, or - depending on his/her level of maturity - your editor's going to be upset when you hand in the final ms.

Most editors are flexible. If your narrative suddenly takes a wild offshoot that's not in the outline, they'll understand - as long as you ultimately end up where you said you woud. Others, unfortunately, need to have everything spelled out for them.

But the chapters and outline are what sells. Unless you're a masochist, you don't want to write the entire novel and then try to sell it. Even if you did, you'd still have to pull an outline out of it, because no editor's going to read your entire ms. unless and until s/he's bought it.

Once - exactly once - many, many years ago, I sold a novel on a two-page outline. Didn't even need a three-chapter sample. Of course, it helped that this editor sat me down and said "I'd like you to write a novel about..." and that was what I did. My characters didn't even have names until after the contract arrived.

Ah, those were the days...

[Diacanu]

Um yeah, the outline.
How detailed has that gotta be?

Like, the description that you'd read on the back of the book, or a bit more rambly, like the mind wandering I write in my notes?

Or somewhere in between?

(...well, it'd pretty much have to be less rambly than my notes, I literally write down every single "Ahah! Then that means..", and "Yes, I've got it, this part goes over here, and then that's how they meet!". Am I typing this?? Oh damn.)

[phantomofthenet]

Should you write what you're best at, or write what inspires you?

You guys know my comic stuff, but what really is my grand obsession is a trilogy I'm working on...but because comedy and politics comes so easy and the trilogy...well, doesn't...should I give up on the latter and concentrate on the former?

[Diacanu]

Torrent is a story I wish someone else wrote for me, and it's been a friggin bitch.

But I can write a billion of these dumbass posts on this freakin board.

I'd say go for what you're best at.

[Jean Prouvaire]

Haven't been in here in weeks, and assumed this thread had dropped off into oblivion a long time ago.
The wonders of the Sticky and Unashamed Bump! :banana:

Jean Prouvaire, first of all - welcome back! Where the heck ya been?
Thank you :) 1. Living life in its ups and downs. 2. Crawling under a rock to contemplate my navel. 3. Work. 3a. Paying off my home (huzzah!). 4. Taking a break from the sometimes-all-too-aggravating atmosphere of The Red Room. 5. Abandoning attempts at creativity due to lack of discipline and talent and in doing so running away from modship responsibilities. (And in the vein of that last, going overseas for a week in 10 hours. :D)

One is that both of those novels were unusually structured.
That's interesting. I would have thought that an unusual structure was all the more incentive to outline first.

The first one was really eight individual stories about eight different characters, strung together and interconnected by those eight characters' interaction with a ninth character. *I* thought it worked, but 14 editors in NYC and two in Westchester thought it didn't.
Hmm... so the reason for the rejection was the unusual structure? If so, that's disappointing as the format sounds more than workable to me (and those ABC telemovie producers obviously agreeed).

I mean, the structure sounds positively cool... especially if (as I assume) the result is actually unified in terms of plot and/or theme and the linked character not just a device. For example, I can see this structure working if it becomes clear that the "main character" is actually that ninth character all the others interact with. (But heck, even if there was no unifying theme, if the stories stood alone well enough as short stories, just market the damn thing as a collection!)

Maybe I'm just more open to innovative structures than most - possibly because I love the theatre which seems to thrive on such devices. In the play La Ronde (for those who don't know) for instance a series of two characters meet in a "pass the baton" structure. Ie, scene 1 - Fred and Sally meet; scene 2 - Sally and Joe; scene 3 - Joe and Dolores etc. (La Ronde has recently been adapted as The Blue Moon and the musical Hello Again.) The play and musical Merrily We Roll Along travels backwards in time from the "end" of the story to the beginning to achieve a retrospective poignancy which wouldn't work if the temporal flow was in the normal direction. Interesting structures are cool and can help achieve results more mundane forms can't.

So I don't consider the "inter-connected short story" format to be inherently flawed. Still, your story reminds me a bit of something that Orson Scott Card (now there's a rant straining to be unleashed) said about his first novel Hot Sleep: That at the time he didn't know how to write a novel and that as a result the book was actually a series of interlinked novellas. Re-reading it, I have to agree but, ironically, I much prefer Hot Sleep to The Worthing Chronicle, which was his attempt to pull the whole story into a more cohesive, mature, "proper novel" form.

The second novel ultimately had the classic novel structure - beginning in exposition and character development, leading through a series of flashbacks and pivotal events to a defining climax, then a denouement, the End. Only I didn't write it that way. I started in the middle and wrote to the end, then went back and filled in the beginning - only to have a bitch of a time making the two halves of the middle intermesh.

I mis-read that at first; I thought you meant that the finished novel flashed back at the middle of the book to the beginning... (ie page 1 = day 50 of the plot; page 100 = day 100 and the end of the plot; page 101 = day 1 of the plot; page 200 = day 49 of the plot and end of the book). That would also be an interesting device; one where (similarly to the "moving backward in time" structure above) what we find out in the second half of the book (but first half of the story) forces the reader to revise the meaning of what they learned in the first half of the book (but the second half of the story).

But now I know what you really meant. My follow-up question then is - why did you start in the middle of the story? Did you know that you would have to go back to the beginning of the plot when you started writing? Or did you think that the (eventual) middle was the best place to start, based on that screen writing principle of "start the story as late as possible and finish it as soon as possible". Did you have to go back to flesh out character and incidents so that the events in the (eventual) second half made sense? Or did you do it to bump word count cause 150 page novels don't sell? ;)

Most editors are flexible. If your narrative suddenly takes a wild offshoot that's not in the outline, they'll understand - as long as you ultimately end up where you said you would.
That's interesting. I would have thought that the editor wouldn't care what happens in the finished manuscript as long as the writing was good (and the book sellable). Ie, would they really say "I'm sorry you need to rewrite this because you were going to end with Harry becoming the tragic hero of the empire and here he is a farming turnips in the mountains with his girlfriend Jolene" even if the novel is a ripsnorter anyway?

But the chapters and outline are what sells.
Sounds like the treatment/pitch in the film world...

My characters didn't even have names until after the contract arrived.
Love openings for more follow-ups. Names. How do you come with them? Do you change your mind a lot? Do names in novels (and short stories) have to be "cleared" like they do for screenplays?

[garamet]

Lotsa great questions, guys, and I'll get back to 'em sometime today. Work, alas, beckons first...

[garamet]

Um yeah, the outline.
How detailed has that gotta be?

Like, the description that you'd read on the back of the book, or a bit more rambly, like the mind wandering I write in my notes?

Or somewhere in between?

(...well, it'd pretty much have to be less rambly than my notes, I literally write down every single "Ahah! Then that means..", and "Yes, I've got it, this part goes over here, and then that's how they meet!". Am I typing this?? Oh damn.)

Not that detailed, no. But say somewhere around 4,000-10,000 words, depending on how big you want the novel to be and how much detail the editor wants.

Or think of it as one paragraph in the outline = one chapter in the manuscript.

[garamet]

Should you write what you're best at, or write what inspires you?

You guys know my comic stuff, but what really is my grand obsession is a trilogy I'm working on...but because comedy and politics comes so easy and the trilogy...well, doesn't...should I give up on the latter and concentrate on the former?

Depends on your goal. Do you want to write something down and dirty solely to try to sell it? Or do you want to write something that nurtures your soul? Or do you want to make yourself crazy and do both?

You know you're going to have to write the trilogy, because it won't let you sleep if you don't. But writing the comic stuff in between keeps the brain sharp and makes that blank screen less daunting every time you face it.

[garamet]

Since JP's post is very detailed, and since he's traveling right now, I'll answer his next time...

[Dan Leach]

Not that detailed, no. But say somewhere around 4,000-10,000 words, depending on how big you want the novel to be and how much detail the editor wants.

Or think of it as one paragraph in the outline = one chapter in the manuscript.

Tolkien started page 1 of the lord of the rings with no clear idea of what was going to happen in the book. Dunno why i mentioned that, it just always amazes me :)

[Baba]

Garamet which trek actress would you be most willing to kiss?

[Diacanu]

Tolkien started page 1 of the lord of the rings with no clear idea of what was going to happen in the book. Dunno why i mentioned that, it just always amazes me :)
Yeah, that's right.

Did they give him a pass on the outline, or did he bring it in finished, and wrote the outline after?

Cuz that's bugging me, I'm more of a make it up as I go person.

[Baba]

Diacanu9 makes his persona as he goes along. He was a little tbaoish at first and he has moved on.

[Diacanu]

*Shrug* I've grown, you haven't.

[Dan Leach]

Tolkien started page 1 of the lord of the rings with no clear idea of what was going to happen in the book. Dunno why i mentioned that, it just always amazes me :)
Yeah, that's right.

Did they give him a pass on the outline, or did he bring it in finished, and wrote the outline after?

Cuz that's bugging me, I'm more of a make it up as I go person.

I dont think he ever really did a proper outline. He just wrote it (over about 17 years) submitted it and was lucky that allen & unwin was his publisher. Most publishers of the time would have told him to edit a lot of FOTR (especially the council of elrond) but unwin really liked what tolkien wrote. He (tolkien)edited some small bits but the book is pretty close to what tolkien first sent to unwin (as far as i know) He started just writing a short sequel to the hobbit, but as he went along he added more and more of the world he'd started to create in the trenches in ww1 - arda and thats how it got so big and complicated

[phantomofthenet]

Tolkien started page 1 of the lord of the rings with no clear idea of what was going to happen in the book. Dunno why i mentioned that, it just always amazes me :)
Yeah, that's right.

Did they give him a pass on the outline, or did he bring it in finished, and wrote the outline after?

Cuz that's bugging me, I'm more of a make it up as I go person.

Me, I'd write the thing first, then do the outline later.

If I knew what was going to happen, there'd be no point in me writing the thing...I'd be bored.

[garamet]

IMO, Tolkein couldn't be published today...at least not in the U.S., at least not without cutting LOTR up into little pieces and submitting them one at a time. Unless he changed his name to Terry Pratchett. Then he could sign a seven-book deal without having the slightest clue what happened after page 1 of Book 1.

Some writers have more juju than others. I'm not quite sure how that works. Been trying to figure it out for nearly 30 years.

As for writing the whole book first, then pulling an outline out of it - that's not a bad idea for your first sale, for several reasons. One, you've got no deadline, hence all the time in the world to write the thing (17 years, though...). Two, if you pitch it with three chapters and an outline, the editor's going to get itchy and want to see the rest of it. So if you stall for 3-6 months and then hand in this work of genius that you've obviously been writing 24/7 since you signed the deal (and not scratching out word-by-word for the previous three years), your editor will be awestruck and want to keep you.

Third, if you really love to write, you'll have so much fun finishing the thing that you won't mind that it's sucking up your weekends, your S.O. isn't speaking to you, and you might not see a dime from it. ;)

P.S. Baba, I've hugged several Trek actresses, even air-kissed a few. But not on the mouth. Sorry to disappoint you.

[Diacanu]

Okay, brand names and such.

Products, businesses, periodicals etc.

Can I get away with using real names under fair use, or should I hedge my bets by fictionalizing everything?

Stephen King seems to get away with using real cereals and K-Mart all he wants.

Or, is he just rich enough to pay everyone off?

I mean, I'll fictionalize if I have to.
It's just that it gets tedious after awhile, and slows down my natural instinctive flow to have to say the guy took a sip of his Shmolgers Shminstant Shmoffee, and read his Smortland Shmess Shmerald. :diacanu:

Well, not that cheesy, but you get the point.

[Baba]

IMO, Tolkein couldn't be published today...at least not in the U.S., at least not without cutting LOTR up into little pieces and submitting them one at a time. Unless he changed his name to Terry Pratchett. Then he could sign a seven-book deal without having the slightest clue what happened after page 1 of Book 1.

Some writers have more juju than others. I'm not quite sure how that works. Been trying to figure it out for nearly 30 years.

As for writing the whole book first, then pulling an outline out of it - that's not a bad idea for your first sale, for several reasons. One, you've got no deadline, hence all the time in the world to write the thing (17 years, though...). Two, if you pitch it with three chapters and an outline, the editor's going to get itchy and want to see the rest of it. So if you stall for 3-6 months and then hand in this work of genius that you've obviously been writing 24/7 since you signed the deal (and not scratching out word-by-word for the previous three years), your editor will be awestruck and want to keep you.

Third, if you really love to write, you'll have so much fun finishing the thing that you won't mind that it's sucking up your weekends, your S.O. isn't speaking to you, and you might not see a dime from it. ;)

P.S. Baba, I've hugged several Trek actresses, even air-kissed a few. But not on the mouth. Sorry to disappoint you.
:( :( :(

[garamet]

One is that both of those novels were unusually structured.
That's interesting. I would have thought that an unusual structure was all the more incentive to outline first.

Very possibly. But not having gone to the right schools nor ever been invited to a writers' retreat, I didn't know that there were Rules. I just wrote. *shrugs*

The first one was really eight individual stories about eight different characters, strung together and interconnected by those eight characters' interaction with a ninth character. *I* thought it worked, but 14 editors in NYC and two in Westchester thought it didn't.
Hmm... so the reason for the rejection was the unusual structure? If so, that's disappointing as the format sounds more than workable to me (and those ABC telemovie producers obviously agreeed).

I mean, the structure sounds positively cool... especially if (as I assume) the result is actually unified in terms of plot and/or theme and the linked character not just a device. For example, I can see this structure working if it becomes clear that the "main character" is actually that ninth character all the others interact with. (But heck, even if there was no unifying theme, if the stories stood alone well enough as short stories, just market the damn thing as a collection!)

The outer structure was a LaMaze childbirth class, and the ninth character was the nurse who conducted the class. The eight stories contained in the frame were about each of the eight women in the class and what their lives were like leading up to the pregnancy. The end of each individual story was when each woman gave birth, and the frame ended with the nurse contemplating her now-empty classroom and anticipating the next class.

ABC-TV did a couple of MOWs called "Having Babies." Same frame concept, different individual stories. No way to make a connection with my unsold ms. Just coincidence, a common idea on the ether at the time. Dammit...

Maybe I'm just more open to innovative structures than most - possibly because I love the theatre which seems to thrive on such devices. In the play La Ronde (for those who don't know) for instance a series of two characters meet in a "pass the baton" structure. Ie, scene 1 - Fred and Sally meet; scene 2 - Sally and Joe; scene 3 - Joe and Dolores etc. (La Ronde has recently been adapted as The Blue Moon and the musical Hello Again.) The play and musical Merrily We Roll Along travels backwards in time from the "end" of the story to the beginning to achieve a retrospective poignancy which wouldn't work if the temporal flow was in the normal direction. Interesting structures are cool and can help achieve results more mundane forms can't.

So I don't consider the "inter-connected short story" format to be inherently flawed. Still, your story reminds me a bit of something that Orson Scott Card (now there's a rant straining to be unleashed) said about his first novel Hot Sleep: That at the time he didn't know how to write a novel and that as a result the book was actually a series of interlinked novellas. Re-reading it, I have to agree but, ironically, I much prefer Hot Sleep to The Worthing Chronicle, which was his attempt to pull the whole story into a more cohesive, mature, "proper novel" form.

You can be my editor anytime. :D

The second novel ultimately had the classic novel structure - beginning in exposition and character development, leading through a series of flashbacks and pivotal events to a defining climax, then a denouement, the End. Only I didn't write it that way. I started in the middle and wrote to the end, then went back and filled in the beginning - only to have a bitch of a time making the two halves of the middle intermesh.

I mis-read that at first; I thought you meant that the finished novel flashed back at the middle of the book to the beginning... (ie page 1 = day 50 of the plot; page 100 = day 100 and the end of the plot; page 101 = day 1 of the plot; page 200 = day 49 of the plot and end of the book). That would also be an interesting device; one where (similarly to the "moving backward in time" structure above) what we find out in the second half of the book (but first half of the story) forces the reader to revise the meaning of what they learned in the first half of the book (but the second half of the story).

But now I know what you really meant. My follow-up question then is - why did you start in the middle of the story? Did you know that you would have to go back to the beginning of the plot when you started writing? Or did you think that the (eventual) middle was the best place to start, based on that screen writing principle of "start the story as late as possible and finish it as soon as possible". Did you have to go back to flesh out character and incidents so that the events in the (eventual) second half made sense? Or did you do it to bump word count cause 150 page novels don't sell? ;)

The story I wanted to write was about a medieval scholar in her 60s who suffers a stroke and is unable to read afterwards. The college where she has tenure uses this to oust her, and a group of loyal students and alumni try to get her reinstated.

My thinking was that the tenor of the times (this was mid-1970s, and women were "allowed," very briefly, to write serious fiction in the Final Payments, The Women's Room, Fear of Flying vein, a brief window of opportunity that was slammed and locked in the Eighties and, to my knowledge, has only opened for certain subgroups of women since, and I ain't one of 'em) - or any time, really - was that "youth sells," and so an older character would not be a good selling point.

So I pulled out one of the alumni - a young single mother struggling to find herself after divorce - and made her the "main" character but, frankly, she bored me. So I put off writing her part of the story until after I'd established the professor and her plotline.

Most editors are flexible. If your narrative suddenly takes a wild offshoot that's not in the outline, they'll understand - as long as you ultimately end up where you said you would.
That's interesting. I would have thought that the editor wouldn't care what happens in the finished manuscript as long as the writing was good (and the book sellable). Ie, would they really say "I'm sorry you need to rewrite this because you were going to end with Harry becoming the tragic hero of the empire and here he is a farming turnips in the mountains with his girlfriend Jolene" even if the novel is a ripsnorter anyway?

It's rare, but I've bumped up against editors like that, all of them, interestingly, male. Female editors tend to be all/nothing. They'll dismiss you in the outline phase with "Um, no" and not bother to tell you why. Male editors will okay your outline, then bitch about little things after you've written the book. You'd think it would be the other way around, but it isn't, at least in the sample of editors I've worked with.

However, at least 51% of book editors are responsible adults, so one just hopes to keep running into them.

But the chapters and outline are what sells.
Sounds like the treatment/pitch in the film world...

Very much like. An outline gives a soupcon of character development ("Lingri the Inept is one of the last of her kind, driven back to her island world by the genocidal war. Alone in a windowless room, she writes of her life's experiences..."), and the rest is pretty much "and then this happens, and then that happens..."

My characters didn't even have names until after the contract arrived.
Love openings for more follow-ups. Names. How do you come with them? Do you change your mind a lot? Do names in novels (and short stories) have to be "cleared" like they do for screenplays?

My ideas come to me by way of the characters, so they pretty much suggest their own names. (I know that's vague, but it's the best I can do to describe it - if a character name is wrong, I'll just feel it.)

I've not been aware that name searches have been done for any characters of mine, and I'm guessing they aren't, as a general rule, in the book biz, because I've never been asked to change a name.

I do know there's a fine line between using a Real Life person in one's fiction and creating a character who might resemble a Real Life person, but that's a separate topic. ;)

[Jean Prouvaire]

Very possibly. But not having gone to the right schools nor ever been invited to a writers' retreat, I didn't know that there were Rules. I just wrote. *shrugs*
So you are entirely self-taught? No writing classes at college? No subscriptions to Writer's Digest? No "How to write the Great American Novel" books?

Where did you get your sense of the craft from? Purely via observation and analysis? Gut feel? Conversation and feedback?

On that track, what value - if any - do you feel that formal teaching aids have to the aspiring writer?

You can be my editor anytime. :D
Hehe. Well, those who can, do. And those who can't, edit. :diacanu:

My thinking was that the tenor of the times (this was mid-1970s, and women were "allowed," very briefly, to write serious fiction in the Final Payments, The Women's Room, Fear of Flying vein, a brief window of opportunity that was slammed and locked in the Eighties and, to my knowledge, has only opened for certain subgroups of women since, and I ain't one of 'em) - or any time, really - was that "youth sells," and so an older character would not be a good selling point.

So I pulled out one of the alumni - a young single mother struggling to find herself after divorce - and made her the "main" character but, frankly, she bored me. So I put off writing her part of the story until after I'd established the professor and her plotline.
Do you feel that writing to accommodate trends of the times is a compromise, or a contraint that can inspire creativity? Do you feel there is a need to balance artistic integrity and commercial necessity?

However, at least 51% of book editors are responsible adults, so one just hopes to keep running into them.
Can you recognise those 51% by their clothes, physical posturing or vocal inflections? ;) More seriously, what are the attributes of a good editor?

Another question: You write novels. Do you have any interest in/have you ever attempted writing other forms of fiction? Short stories, radio, TV, film, theatre, poetry, song lyrics etc?

[Jean Prouvaire]

Can I get away with using real names under fair use, or should I hedge my bets by fictionalizing everything?
If you're lucky you can even get paid to use real names. :D I can't recall the name of the book or author offhand but product placement has entered the realm of the novel. About a year or two ago a jewelry company (??) paid a well-known writer to include (favourable) references to their product in her latest book. Given that this is common in film and video games it was inevitable it would happen in publishing as well.

[garamet]

Okay, brand names and such.

Products, businesses, periodicals etc.

Can I get away with using real names under fair use, or should I hedge my bets by fictionalizing everything?

Stephen King seems to get away with using real cereals and K-Mart all he wants.

Or, is he just rich enough to pay everyone off?

I mean, I'll fictionalize if I have to.
It's just that it gets tedious after awhile, and slows down my natural instinctive flow to have to say the guy took a sip of his Shmolgers Shminstant Shmoffee, and read his Smortland Shmess Shmerald. :diacanu:

Well, not that cheesy, but you get the point.

What Jean Prouvaire said. Just dropping product names into your work is not a problem. If you did something really derogatory, like have your main character spend 20 pages dissing Starbuck's or Kleenex or something, might be. Can't say for sure, 'cause I've never tried it.

Product references can give your work texture, set it in a time and place, and that's good. A few pointers, though. Make sure you spell things correctly. (I just proofed something for someone who didn't know it was "Ben & Jerry's" and not "Ben and Jerry's," and who misspelled Hannibal Lecter.)

Also, if you're writing a period piece, make sure the product was extant in the time period you're writing. If you've set something in the Fifties, f'rinstance, you wouldn't want to create an anachronism by mentioning, say, Diet Coke. ;)

Now, mentioning RL people's names is a whole 'nother subject.

[garamet]

So you are entirely self-taught? No writing classes at college? No subscriptions to Writer's Digest? No "How to write the Great American Novel" books?

Yeah, I took your basic Creative Writing 101 course in undergrad. Can't say that I really took anything away from it except the realization that most of my classmates couldn't write for spit. And I may have read a copy or two of Writer's Digest, because I remember seeing the ads for Writer's Market in the back. Once I ordered my first copy of Writer's Market, I just set about finding an agent for the stuff I was already writing.

Where did you get your sense of the craft from? Purely via observation and analysis? Gut feel? Conversation and feedback?

I grew up in a household where the watchword was "Shut the hell up! Nobody cares what you have to say!" Kept a diary from the age of 12 - it was the only place I could finish a thought uninterrupted. And I learned to listen really, really well. Like Gillian Taylor "I have a photographic memory. I see words."

I also tested at a 12th-grade reading level in the third grade, and had teachers who were wise enough to give me supplemental material. And probably the kindest thing my mother ever did for me was sign a permission slip at the local library to let me use the adult section from the time I got my first library card.

I was also fortunate enough to have an 11th-grade English teacher who literally turned my life around. She took me aside after she'd read one of my compositions and said "Whatever else you do with your life, you must always, always write."

Under her guidance, I soaked in everything that was worth reading, and continued to do so via an English degree from a small liberal arts college. And while I can't balance a checkbook and have no idea what "x" has to do with math, my mind is a compost heap of eclectic information.

When someone else's writing grabs me, I try to figure out why. My heroes are writers like Dickens, Faulkner and, more contemporarily, Le Carre and his American counterpart, Martin Cruz Smith. Oh, and once in a while I'll go slumming in Kellerman or Hillerman country. And - surprise - I read very little s/f. Because once I get into the groove of why another writer's work does it for me, I have to be careful to avoid imitation.

On that track, what value - if any - do you feel that formal teaching aids have to the aspiring writer?

Not a clue. Never had the opportunity. And, unfortunately, too many of the people I know who have done the writers' conference/group thing end up neurotic and self-referential.

I have a friend who's written one short story. Every so often she'll have a public reading and ask for feedback. Then she'll go home and rewrite the story after her "friends" have picked it apart. Rinse, repeat.

She'll probably never publish that short story. And she'll probably never start another one. That's an extreme example, but groupthink is dangerous. Too many wannabe writers get their jollies tearing other people's work apart.

And you also have to ask yourself why someone is teaching writing instead of...well...writing.

But this could all be sour grapes on my part. :dry:

Do you feel that writing to accommodate trends of the times is a compromise, or a contraint that can inspire creativity? Do you feel there is a need to balance artistic integrity and commercial necessity?

If you want to sell to the NY-based book business, you have to offer them something they want. Gone are the days when an editor will be so captivated by the writing that they'll pay you to produce something of Lit'rary Merit for its own sake. If you have the luxury of self-publishing, of course, you can write to please yourself.

Can you recognise those 51% by their clothes, physical posturing or vocal inflections?

Actually, it's the bored "La-la-la, I'm not listening to you" expression on their faces that usually gives them away. Or the fact that they sit on your manuscript for months and never return your agent's calls.

More seriously, what are the attributes of a good editor?

A good editor is interesting in editing, not in bullying the writer into writing what the editor would write if s/he had the talent. A good editor actually reads the manuscript before dumping it on the copy editor and the proofreader. A good editor can see where the weak spots are and either tweak them hirself or tell the writer what the objective eye can see that the writer, who's too close to the material, can't.

A really good editor buys lunch, plies you with the beverage of your choice and says "So, what would you like to write next?" :D

Another question: You write novels. Do you have any interest in/have you ever attempted writing other forms of fiction? Short stories, radio, TV, film, theatre, poetry, song lyrics etc?

I tinkered with theater in college, not well. Have written a handful of short stories that have garnered lots of rejection letters, but never sold one.

(Once sent a story to a s/f mag whose editor sent me a rejection letter that, I swear, was longer than the story.)

As for media, I've seen too many friends break their hearts pitching stuff that never sold, and I find the formats too confining. (What the hell is a three-minute scene, anyway?). Besides, given that 80% of WGA membership is white males under age 38, I've already got two strikes against me. And TV/film scripting is another kind of groupthink. I've never mastered the art of Writing by Committee.

So, like Popeye, I yam what I yam. That used to be enough to pay the bills, but not in today's market. So I may as well do it for the joy of it, and never surrender my white plume. ;)

[Jean Prouvaire]

When someone else's writing grabs me, I try to figure out why. My heroes are writers like Dickens, Faulkner and, more contemporarily, Le Carre and his American counterpart, Martin Cruz Smith. Oh, and once in a while I'll go slumming in Kellerman or Hillerman country.
Can you give some examples of how certain writers have influenced your technique? For instance, you cite Le Carre as providing the "template" for Catalyst of Sorrows. I haven't read any of his works (or even seen any film/TV adaptations of his works AFAICR) so am curious - what was the template in question? The way the narrative technique dips and out of scenes perhaps? Something else entirely? What about other writers and other works of yours?

And - surprise - I read very little s/f.
This seems to be reasonably common. Do you - as some other writers seem to - end up reading a lot more non-fiction (perhaps for research or inspiration) than fiction?

On that matter, how do you approach research? Read up well before starting the novel to immerse yourself in the world? Research tactically to answer specific questions as they occur? Do you use expert friends or contacts? Books and magazines? Or do you just google everything cause, if it's on the internet then it must be true?

A really good editor buys lunch, plies you with the beverage of your choice and says "So, what would you like to write next?" :D
I'm guessing John Grisham and Terry Pratchett have really good editors then? ;)

Besides, given that 80% of WGA membership is white males under age 38, I've already got two strikes against me.
What, you're not white? http://www.hereinreality.com/funnystuff/otherstuff/brownnose.jpg

Couple of other questions...

Have you ever had a work of yours optioned for another medium? If so, what was that experience like?

Are you the sort of writer to whom the actual act of putting words on paper (or screen these days) comes easily? Or do you sweat over every word? I don't necessarily mean how much rewriting do you do (I assume that most professional writers do a lot) but rather, regardless on whether you're on draft 1 or draft 10, are you more like Oscar Wilde (who apocryphally spent an afternoon on a comma) or Harlan Ellison (who wrote an entire story on the fly and in public)?

[garamet]

I'm going to answer this one in installments:


Can you give some examples of how certain writers have influenced your technique? For instance, you cite Le Carre as providing the "template" for Catalyst of Sorrows. I haven't read any of his works (or even seen any film/TV adaptations of his works AFAICR) so am curious - what was the template in question? The way the narrative technique dips and out of scenes perhaps? Something else entirely? What about other writers and other works of yours?

Leonard Nimoy once said Star Trek is all about character. That whether the week's episode is something dramatic like "Balance of Terror" or something cute and silly like "The Trouble with Tribbles," what really makes it work is the interaction between the characters.

I was drawn to Star Trek, not because of the s/f trappings, but because of the characters, and the way they were revealed to us through dialogue and a serendipitous mix of good chemistry between the actors, and some savvy direction.

Simple example, early first season, I believe it's "The Corbomite Maneuver." I forget the exact line, but Kirk asks Spock a rhetorical question, and Spock replies "Has it occurred to you that there is a certain...inefficiency...in constantly questioning me on matters you've already made up your mind about?"

CU on Kirk. The expression on his face is a little sheepish and says "Busted!"

What this little exchange tells us is that: (1) Kirk is an Alpha male who makes quick gut decisions, but wants to have backup from the intellectual side, (2) Spock prefers to be the power behind the throne and appreciates the fact that Kirk respects his opinions, (3) both men have been through this scenario a dozen times before, each knows what the other will do, and each has a deep professional respect for the other, based on trust and an evolving friendship.

That thread follows through to the moment in TWOK when Spock nerve-pinches McCoy and steps into that radiation-flooded chamber. That action makes sense because of who the character is.

This is the same reason I love le Carre's writing. Action springs from character. His most memorable character is an MI6 agent named George Smiley, played by Alec Guinness in the two BBC series based on the novels Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and Smiley's People.

Now, there a zillion spy novels out there, and there's the James Bond myth. 97% of those spy novels are formulaic, predictable, and the characters are cardboard - meat puppets spouting dialogue to push the action along, with the occasional explosion, gunfight, poisoning, etc. to try to make things interesting.

Bond was unusual in his era because he had something resembling a personality. But he was as credible, really, as Superman. Take away the women and the car and the gadgets and the account at Harrod's, and what do you have? Another cardboard character. Glib, clever dialogue, on an adolescent male level but, to borrow a favorite line of le Carre's, "Who is he when he's at home?"

Le Carre's Smiley is a credible spy, because he can do something Bond cannot - blend into the woodwork and do the actual work of spying, which is to listen, to overhear, to observe without being observed.

Smiley has a private life as well - a disastrous one. A career civil servant with a good enough education, he married above himself, to a woman (played by the inimitable Sian Phillips) of money and privilege who simply cannot keep her knickers on. Why she married this owlish little academic is anyone's guess, but she'll screw anyone from some diplomat she meets at a cocktail party to the gardener, and her peccadillos eat at Smiley's soul.

On the other side is his lifelong nemesis, the KGB agent known only as Karla (played, if you can imagine, by a bearded - and UNSPEAKING - Patrick Stewart. Best work I've ever seen him do, because for once he couldn't coast on the voice, but had to do some actual acting). The two are locked in a deadly ideological yin/yang that spans decades and costs countless lives on both sides, each determined to cancel the other out, even if it means his own destruction.

Powerful forces, focused in the person of a chubby little old man in thick glasses who would be more at home in a library than on the front lines of the Cold War. Guinness was perfect in the role. But even before the TV version, there were the novels, replete with fascinating characters who revealed themselves through carefully crafted dialogue.

That was the template for Catalyst of Sorrows. Write a spy novel/medical thriller disguised as a Trek novel, utilizing the Trek characters while introducing, in this case, just one original character, avoiding the pitfalls of "your characters are overshadowing the Trek characters" which was where the trouble began with PROBE, and do what le Carre also does, which is:

Show both sides equally. IRL, there are no Good Guys and Bad Guys. Both sides - whether it's the Soviets vs. the West, or Romulans vs. the Federation - are comprised of individuals who are venal, corrupt, self-serving, as well as idealistic, self-sacrificing, and motivated by forces laid into them when they were very young which make them see the world from a certain POV.

In short, the best fiction teaches us that we're all in this together, and we'd make things easier for ourselves and the future if we'd stop name-calling and pull together. The best fiction teaches us that most people bumble through life without ever learning this, and that's what makes for drama. But if someone can finish a book of mine - as I have with le Carre's - and say "Hey, I learned something," then I have succeeded, not only in getting paid for what I do and providing a few hours' entertainment for a few people, but in planting a seed of a beginning of something that might make the world a less harrowing place.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle it ain't yet, but I'm working on it.

[garamet]

This seems to be reasonably common. Do you - as some other writers seem to - end up reading a lot more non-fiction (perhaps for research or inspiration) than fiction?

On that matter, how do you approach research? Read up well before starting the novel to immerse yourself in the world? Research tactically to answer specific questions as they occur? Do you use expert friends or contacts? Books and magazines? Or do you just google everything cause, if it's on the internet then it must be true?

I'm a very lazy - and very lucky - researcher. Pre-Internet, whenever I was looking for material on a particular subject, I'd just walk into the library and the books I needed seemed to jump off the shelves at me. Can't tell you how many times I was literally walking past the Books-to-Return cart and there on the top shelf would be just the thing.

And very often the research itself will determine the direction of the writing. For example, Preternatural Too: Gyre involves time travel. I chose two eras I knew a fair amount about - World War II, European Theatre, and the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine. And just because I was curious about the era, I threw in the pre-Christian Celts, circa 50 B.C.

Now, I went to Catholic schools and suffered through three years of Latin, starting with Caesar's wars in Gaul, so I sorta kinda knew that the sonofabitch had slaughtered about a million of my people and, as a reward, he got to be emperor. What I didn't know was that one of the biggest battles of his campaign took place following the seige of a Celtic stronghold of some 40,000 inhabitants in what is now the South of France, known as Avaricum.

AFAIK, the ruins of Avaricum have not been found, but the city seems to have been near the city of Bourges. Which just happens to be where Eleanor of Aquitaine was married to her first husband, Louis VII of France.

So not only did I have a bang-up 2,000-year-old battle scene in which to involve a 20th century character, but I had a tie-in to the 12th-century scenes as well.

There have been any number of like coincidences, enough to make me wonder if they really are coincidences or if the whole thing's already been written on the Collective Consciousness. Which I'll get to in the next installment. :dancer:

And, of course, nowadays one doesn't even have to shlep to the library...it's all at one's fingertips. Just this past week I learned some fascinating things about a snake's sense of smell that will come in very handy in the Pike novel.

And that's all I'm going to say about that until it's in the bookstores. :D

[garamet]

Okay, lessee if I can wrap this up...

Have you ever had a work of yours optioned for another medium? If so, what was that experience like?

Novel of mine called Risks was produced by St. Martin's Press several years before the movie Working Girl was released. I mention this only because the themes were similar - how corporate life treats the ambitious woman - only instead of the gutsy little secretary winning the corner office AND Harrison Ford, my character ends up nearly losing her kids, her house and her career until she realizes she doesn't want the career, chucks it and goes into the antiques business, and lives happily ever after.

Anyhoo, several years after my novel had gone out of print, I got a call from my agent saying one of the cable networks wanted to option it. (It's been a while; I don't even remember which one - the paperwork's in a box in a closet somewhere.)

The option was for 18 months, the option amount was a low four figures of found money, and at the end of the 18 months the option was not renewed. On my agent's advice, I simply spend the money and put the idea that this was ever going to be a made-for-TV movie out of my mind, because hundreds of thousands of properties are optioned every year, and a fraction of a percentage of them are ever produced.

So, the money was nice, and that's all she wrote.

Are you the sort of writer to whom the actual act of putting words on paper (or screen these days) comes easily? Or do you sweat over every word? I don't necessarily mean how much rewriting do you do (I assume that most professional writers do a lot) but rather, regardless on whether you're on draft 1 or draft 10, are you more like Oscar Wilde (who apocryphally spent an afternoon on a comma) or Harlan Ellison (who wrote an entire story on the fly and in public)?

Yes.

There are days when I'd be better off cleaning the oven or going down to the beach for all the progress I make in attacking that blank page. There are other days when the process is a roller-coaster, and all I can do is hang on and try to get the words down before they fly past. There are scenes that practically write themselves, and scenes that have to be turned inside out and sideways and pounded with a whiffle bat to get them to lie down.

That's why it's always been my impression that the stuff is Out There already, and I'm just grabbing onto it as it flows past. Which is why the stray thought that tickles my ear at 4 a.m. has to be responded to, because if I don't write it down right then, it won't be there when the sun comes up.

And it's why there's a scene on page 129 of the Pike manuscript that I've tweaked a dozen times, and I still don't like it. So when I get to page 400+, I'll have to go back and poke it with a stick one more time to make it cooperate. Just another line of dialogue, something.

This is all completely subjective, of course. Anyone else would look at the scene and say "It's fine. Makes perfect sense. Leave it alone." But I'm the final arbiter of whether or not that's true.

Okay, I think that's everything. Who's next? :D

[Lanzman]

Okay Garamet, I'm just dying to know . . .

You've referenced a "vampire lady" who finished/re-wrote one of your Trek books and detailed what a bad experience that was fairly extensively. What I want to know is, was the "vampire lady" Laurell Hamilton?

[garamet]

Nope, not Laurell Hamilton. And I don't want to say much more than that in a public forum.

[Aurora]

One thing I had a little discussion with friends lately: they are all huge Harry Potter fans (I'm not), and somehow we also came to the topic of BRIDGET JONES. Now that's 2 very successful books made into movies, Potter 10 times or so more.

The question we couldn't answer even with a little 'net research: if you have a hugely successful book like the Potter series that's made into hugely successful movies - what brings in more money? The millions of books or the movie rights (not any percentage of the movie profits!)

My guess is the movie rights. Am I right?

[Baba]

The merchandising rights to a garamet book would be worth more then the movie. Think george lucas.

[Baba]

what do you think of leo streuss?

[garamet]

^Not familiar with him.

One thing I had a little discussion with friends lately: they are all huge Harry Potter fans (I'm not), and somehow we also came to the topic of BRIDGET JONES. Now that's 2 very successful books made into movies, Potter 10 times or so more.

The question we couldn't answer even with a little 'net research: if you have a hugely successful book like the Potter series that's made into hugely successful movies - what brings in more money? The millions of books or the movie rights (not any percentage of the movie profits!)

My guess is the movie rights. Am I right?

Hard for me to say, because except for one instance where one of my books was optioned for 18 months but not renewed, I have no experience with the book-to-movie business. However, here's what I do know:

With rare exception (Stephen King once lobbied for, and got, a much better deal), book royalties for original fiction in the U.S. at least are paid out as follows:

10% of the cover price for the first 150,000 copies sold (after the advance has been earned out)

15% of the cover price thereafter.

So if you figure how many copies of a book at what cover price you'd have to sell to make how many thousands of dollars, that's your algorithm.

(Genre fiction - s/f, fantasy, etc., I'm not sure about romance or mysteries - pays less, usually a 6-8% royalty on the first 150,000 copies, 10% thereafter, although my agent was able to get me 10% for my original s/f. And genre tie-in fiction - i.e. Star Trek - pays even less.)

So, f'rinstance, if your book is produced in hardcover at a $25 sale price, you as the author earn $2.50. A $6.99 softcover earns the author $.699 a copy, unless it's genre, in which case it's more like $.4194 to $.5592. And, yes, publishing companies have phalanxes of accountants who do nothing all day but crunch these numbers. The rest gets split along some diabolically clever equation between the publisher and the bookstore.

Now, if your novel is optioned for movie rights - and actually bought, because for every novel bought, thousands are optioned but never go to contract and, of those bought, only a certain portion are actually produced as films - things get even more complicated.

Is it "story by" Cassandra, with someone else writing the screenplay? Is it "based on a novel by" Cassandra, with someone else writing the screenplay? Is it - o rarity, unless you're Michael Crichton - "screenplay by Cassandra, based on her novel of the same name"? Each of these pays you more money, starting at six figures, moving up into seven figures.

(We won't discuss creative control/creative license, the clauses which, if you are lucky, get put into your contract so that, at best, you get to loiter on the set and watch your movie being shot or, at worst, if what turns up on the screen bears NO resemblance to what you wrote, you can pitch a hissy and have your name removed from the project.)

Just empirically, I'd say the real money is at the movie end, even for a J.K. Rowling, because no matter how many books she sells (and, in fact, because of the number of books she sells), one multi-million movie deal - with royalties from licensed products - Harry Potter action figures, Harry Potter bedsheets and Underoos, Harry Potter Happy Meals - will make a helluva lot more money.

Me, I'd settle for one book-to-movie deal. Always thought it would be especially funny if Leonard Nimoy happened upon a copy of Preternatural, since one of the sub-plots involves a character very much like Leonard Nimoy directing a movie based on a novel called Preternatural.

Ah, well, a girl can dream... :blush:

[garamet]

^I should add to this that the film rights to a novel are very seldom in the million-dollar range. A best-seller like The English Patient might be, and writers whose books are frequently optioned for film (I'm thinking Larry McMurtry) can demand that much, but an obscure novel that someone decides would make a good film is often offered much less. Since novelists aren't covered by the Writers Guild, it depends on what the studio thinks it can get away with.

[Baba]

Do you think that George Lucas' hostility toward various guild's is justified. Such as wanting to maintain total control of his films. Remember Garamet Lucas started out as a independent film director So I see things through their point of view. Lucas didn't like the way the guilds wanted Opening Credits and they did the stupid thing of fining him over that incident.

[garamet]

Can't say I've followed Lucas' career in any great detail, but I'm always a little wary of control freaks.

[actormike]

Question time!

When writing a novel that you've been assigned by a publisher, is the editor the first person you show it to when it's ready to be seen? I ask because I've never written anything that wasn't on spec, and with that stuff (such as the full length play I'm finishing the first draft of right now), when it's ready to be seen I have a few other trusted friends I show it to first. With something that isn't being written on spec, is that an option?

[Baba]

Garamet have you ever thought on writing for a RPG game?

[garamet]

Not really. I'm not very good at playing them, and I have no idea what the demographic (i.e. teen and 20-something fanboys) would find interesting.

Truth to tell, all I've ever really wanted was to be a successful novelist. Back in the day when publishers actually offered decent advances, and ran ads in the Times and Locus announcing their books, and sent their marketing people around to bookstores to actually place books, I managed to do exactly that.

These days it's a bit more challenging. The publisher dotes on a handful of Big Names, and the rest of us are expected to do everything for ourselves. Which begs the question of why we need a mainstream publisher. A lot of veteran writers are self-publishing or forming cooperatives to market each other's work. That's the future.

[Storm]

Back to basics.

garamet, how would you outline a novel you're writing?

What I mean is, how extensive is it?

For example, Catalyst of Sorrows. Since it's already published, could you post what your original outline looked like, assuming it violates no trade secrets or personal ethics or anything?

I want to get a handle on how well I should structure the story I'm working on.

[Dan Leach]

Back to basics.

garamet, how would you outline a novel you're writing?

What I mean is, how extensive is it?

For example, Catalyst of Sorrows. Since it's already published, could you post what your original outline looked like, assuming it violates no trade secrets or personal ethics or anything?

I want to get a handle on how well I should structure the story I'm working on.

This discussion came up a while ago in here, while reading about it i found this
http://www.massucci.com/Articles/Outlines/outlines.html
might be of some use

[Storm]

Thanks Dan :techman: Will use.

Love to hear garamet's POV, still, simply because I know her book and I could see it more in practice.

But good stuff, D.

[Jean Prouvaire]

You've mentioned self-publishing a couple of times which is interesting. As a multiple published author you don't think there's still the stigma attached to "vanity publishing" that was around a few years ago?

[garamet]

Back to basics.

garamet, how would you outline a novel you're writing?

What I mean is, how extensive is it?

For example, Catalyst of Sorrows. Since it's already published, could you post what your original outline looked like, assuming it violates no trade secrets or personal ethics or anything?

I want to get a handle on how well I should structure the story I'm working on.

I'm not sure if I saved the outline. I tend to destroy all the evidence once the ms.'s finished. Also, since it's not my copyright, it may not be entirely kosher for me to post it online. However, I might be able to distill a paragraph or two just to give you an idea. Gimme a day or two to see if I've got it on a disk somewhere.

As I recall, it wasn't that long, maybe 6-7 pages, single-spaced (most writers, I gather, double-space their outlines; I tend to like to do mine in nice discrete paragraphs), probably around 2,500 words. Which actually is rather short, because...

The Star Trek universe is already a given. That shorthands a lot of things - like not having to describe the original characters or the ships or established aliens, not having to explain warp drive or the Prime Directive or transporters, etc.

With an original story, you'd need more detail, because you've got to set a prospective agent/editor down in your world and put hir inside your protagonist's head.

After you've established time, place and personnel in a paragraph or three, a basic parameter for outlining the plot would be one paragraph of outline = one chapter of book. So if as an unpublished writer you write the novel first, you'd distill each chapter down into a single paragraph of outline. Then when you've sold a book and you're ready to pitch your next, you figure out how to describe in a paragraph what you intend to expand into 10-25 pages of manuscript.

Obviously if the word count of your outline runs to more than, say 10,000 words, you're probably saying too much. Unless, of course, you're writing something the size of Shogun. Which would be a tough sell for a first novel.

[garamet]

You've mentioned self-publishing a couple of times which is interesting. As a multiple published author you don't think there's still the stigma attached to "vanity publishing" that was around a few years ago?

It seems to me that the lines are blurring. Those Vantage Press ads that have run in the backs of magazines for decades still represent a sleazy backwater of publishing, and the rule used to be "If a publisher ask you for money, steer away from them."

However, the Internet is making it possible for publishing itself to be decentralized, and NYC is no longer the center of the universe as far as getting a book published in the States. This makes it possible for smaller presses to flourish in other cities, for agents to work in their own communities and, ultimately, I believe it will lead to a freeing up of the industry.

There'll be some fits and starts along the way and, the more I think of it, this is really a big enough topic for a separate thread. But there's something else I want to dig up - a study done for the Authors Guild a few years ago - that relates to the history of the publishing industry in the U.S. and which I think would be very helpful to the discussion.

Maybe I'll start that thread after the holiday weekend.

[Jean Prouvaire]

^ Cool. Blogging - a form of "vanity" publishing - of course has become a journalistic phenomenom and is rapidly gaining in respectability and import. It'd be interesting to see if a similar trend exists in other publishing genres.

[Baba]

Garamet what do you think Frank Herbert's contributions to the industry are. He was originally pretty much turned down by everyone when it came to the first dune book.

[garamet]

^Given the size of the thing, I imagine most editors were too lazy to read it.

Most writers' early careers are spent sending stuff out, amassing rejection slips, sending more stuff out. Herbert is one of the luckier ones in that he not only was able to sell a series of Dune books, but got screen rights as well.

Don't ask me where he stands as an icon of the genre, though. Think I've mentioned I don't read a lot of s/f.

[Baba]

Would you spend time amoung nomadic tribes to do research for a book?

[Diacanu]

Why were so many of the great writers on acid and or smack?

And howcome when my aspiring writer ex-friend got into the acid, he was still a pretentious pose-ridden amatuer?

Was it cuz he left out the smack?

Is it the smack, or does it HAVE to be the acid/smack combo?


There, I out-dummed your question, Baba. :nyer:

[Diacanu]

Oh, and how many chapters on whaling should I toss into a book to class it up?

Just the one, or has it gone up with inflation?

[garamet]

Would you spend time amoung nomadic tribes to do research for a book?

Only if I got a very large advance, the tribe spoke English, and I could bring my sunblock and a big floppy hat.

[garamet]

Why were so many of the great writers on acid and or smack?

And howcome when my aspiring writer ex-friend got into the acid, he was still a pretentious pose-ridden amatuer?

Was it cuz he left out the smack?

Is it the smack, or does it HAVE to be the acid/smack combo?


There, I out-dummed your question, Baba. :nyer:

Since I don't do either (and I only enjoy a little alcohol when I'm *not* writing), I couldn't say for sure. Though I do think a lot of writers who rely on controlled substances do so not to improve the flow of words, but to shut off the voices in their heads.

There are times when the characters will not sit quietly on the page, but prefer to dance around the room when you're trying to sleep. Surely you've experienced that phenomenon?

As for the whales...gosh. Maybe that explains my lack of six-figure success. Except for Music of the Spheres, I never used whales.

How many chapters does Crichton devote to whales? Because what worked in Melville's time may no longer be pertinent in ours. Maybe velociraptors have replaced whales. Ever think of that?

[Storm]

garamet - THANKS!

[podgers]

Garamet as a writer and resident in the literary world, have you ever read the best book ever Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, published in 1996?

[Baba]

Garamet what do you think of Robert Jordan when it comes to him writing cultures and female characters? Also, you see his point on using pseudonames for different books?

[Raoul the Red Shirt]

Garamet-

What are you reading these days for fun? What books would you recommend to aspiring novelists? If someone wanted to write a Trek novel with no previous experience, what would you recommend? (Beyond getting an agent)?

[tafkats]

Here's one, sparked by a recent rereading ...

In the book-within-a-book from Strangers from the Sky, what is the significance of the second half of the name Garamet Jen-Saunor?

[garamet]

Garamet as a writer and resident in the literary world, have you ever read the best book ever Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, published in 1996?

Believe it or not, Infinite Jest is on my to-read list. Haven't gotten around to it yet. Being a proofreader, I have to spend so much time wading through turgid stuff for pay that I get less time to read what I like.

[garamet]

Garamet what do you think of Robert Jordan when it comes to him writing cultures and female characters? Also, you see his point on using pseudonames for different books?

Baba, you've got to stop assuming I've read everything you've read. I wouldn't expect you to have read the same things I have, y'know.

Maybe you could start by telling me what *you* think of Jordan's characters and cultures.

As for writing under pseudonyms, why does he do that? Is it at the suggestion of his editor, who doesn't want the market flooded with a lot of books under the same name, or is it him trying out different voices? Give me something to go on here.

[garamet]

Garamet-

What are you reading these days for fun? What books would you recommend to aspiring novelists? If someone wanted to write a Trek novel with no previous experience, what would you recommend? (Beyond getting an agent)?

Let me answer those backwards. The easiest (which is not to say easy) way to break into professional Trek writing these days is the Strange New Worlds contest Pocket hosts every year. You don't need an agent to submit a short story and, if your story is chosen for one of the annual anthologies, it's your toe in the door to submit outlines for novels. The specifics are somewhere on the Simon & Schuster (http://www.simonsays.com) site.

The best advice anyone can give an aspiring novelist is to NOT read a lot of work in the genre they're aspiring to. I.e., if you want to write s/f, don't read a lot of s/f because it narrows your perspective and you may start mimicking other writers, which is not what you want to do - you want to find your own voice.

(Also, reading what's already "out there" can be very discouraging. You can easily come to the conclusion that it's all been done before and nobody wants to hear what you have to say, which can nip a writing career in the bud.)

Other than that, I'd say read EVERYTHING. Some of my best ideas have come from National Geographic. If you have favorite genres, try to read outside of them - if you're a mystery buff, try an Edwardian romance (yeah, I know - yuck! - but you might find a character or an idea you can use in a different setting). Read the Giants (no, not Robbins and Susann, but Dickens and Faulkner and those guys).

Also, think about what makes your favorite movies work for you and try to structure the plot of a novel the same way. One of my non-Trek novels is built around the same concept of a puzzle story as my favorite film, The Stunt Man. I've got a subplot in another that's a shameless ripoff of Crimson Tide. Keep in mind that there are no original ideas - only your unique execution of an idea.

As for what I'm reading for pleasure, there are certain authors I reread periodically just because they do it so well. Right now I'm rereading Red Square, the third novel in the Gorky Park trilogy by Martin Cruz Smith, my favorite American novelist. The true test of a novel is that you can read it multiple times and still enjoy it.

Good questions, Raoul - thank you!

[garamet]

Here's one, sparked by a recent rereading ...

In the book-within-a-book from Strangers from the Sky, what is the significance of the second half of the name Garamet Jen-Saunor?

Ah, you've discovered my Secret Identity. :lol: The name Jen-Saunor was a combination of three syllables from three friends' last names - Jennings, Saunders and Nordurft. Also, Garamet had been married to a Vulcan named Saunor and had a half-Vulcan son, so the implication of the "Jen" was sort of like John M. Ford's construct of Klingon names in The Final Reflection (e.g. Klaad zintai K'Tarra).

[Lanzman]

Garamet, describe how you work when writing. Do you hide away in a special room, door locked to keep out distraction? Do you have music playing? Television? A kittycat curled in your lap?

Or do you sit amidst chaos, laptop balanced precariously on your knees as you bang away at the keyboard?

[Diacanu]

I've tried it all.

Nothing works. :(

[Baba]

Is sleeping with a publisher a good option?

[garamet]

^Dunno. Never tried it.

Garamet, describe how you work when writing. Do you hide away in a special room, door locked to keep out distraction? Do you have music playing? Television? A kittycat curled in your lap?

Or do you sit amidst chaos, laptop balanced precariously on your knees as you bang away at the keyboard?

All of the above, in reverse order.

When my kids were small, my writing time began as soon as they were in bed. The house was fairly small, and my then-husband would usually have the TV on in the living room, so I'd write first (in long-hand) either at the kitchen table or, after a while, at a desk I set up in the basement. Typed intermediate and final drafts on an old Smith-Corona manual.

When we moved to a bigger house, there was a sun porch that I furnished as an office. By then I'd graduated to an electric typewriter. Then my writing time was whenever the kids were in school. Which meant I rarely got much work done on weekends or during the summer. I sought little pockets of quiet in and around the neighbors' lawn mowers, ringing doorbells, and yelling at somebody else's kid to quit tearing the siding off the garage. :rolleyes:

Somewhere in there I had the Secretarial Job from Hell - 3.5 years in a windowless room typing correspondence for the senior VP of a reinsurance corporation. But, hey, there was a nice new Selectric at my elbow, and free access to the copy machine when everyone else went out to lunch. Had to stop writing every few minutes to answer the freakin' phone, but my output in those years was fantastic.

As the Recession of '82 became an ugly memory and I'd made the transition from mainstream to s/f, I was able to quit that job, so back to the home office. For a while there was a Siamese cat on my lap, but she grumbled so much whenever I shifted in the chair that I persuaded her to go elsewhere. Later there was a mini-dachshund who would curl up with a contented sigh and not move for an hour (unless the mailman happened by, in which case she went into Rottweiler mode). If she did wake up, though, she'd give me one of those cute doxy looks and hit the space bar with her nose accidentally on purpose.

Okay, kids grew up and went to college, several moves later and, while working on Saturn's Child with Nichelle Nichols, I finally abandoned the first-drafts-in-longhand because I just didn't have time. By now I had a lovely little office with a window and some plants. Apartment-dwelling now, no-pets clauses. Also bought my first computer in '99. Compaq, desktop, gets the job done.

Writing Music of the Spheres was the first time I used background music - Beethoven's Seventh, over and over and over again. I can't read music, but I swear I could conduct that symphony by ear.

Several other mss. have allowed for music - always classical - but most prefer silence. These days the kids are off on their own and my "pets" are bonsai, and the change of venue from East Coast to West Coast makes for a whole different ambience. I also don't need to set aside a specific time to write, so sometimes I'll start first thing in the morning, other times I'll get the Day Job out of the way first and write late at night, still other times I'll take breaks around the Day Jobs and write in between.

The writing's done on a laptop these days, usually sitting on the livingroom couch with my feet up on the coffee table. Laptop goes with me when I travel, though I usually just end up playing Tetris in airports and such.

In sum, I've kind of gone from chaos to quiet. I think I like quiet better.

[Baba]

garamet anser my question

[garamet]

garamet anser my question

I did. Read the first line of my reply to Lanzman, just above where I quoted him.

And there's a "w" in "answer."

[Baba]

Garamet would you be willing to write a plot and script for a module with jeriko?

[Diacanu]

*Stifles laugh with hand, and makes a bunch of spittle-y sounds*

Oh Jesus! :lol:

[garamet]

Okay, I must have missed those last two. *sigh* Baba, why don't you PM -Jeriko and ask him that question and get back to me with his answer? That is, if you can still write past the ringing in your ears.

[Jean Prouvaire]

In other media we've seen an erosion in the role of the writer. In film and television the writer is essentially a "hired gun" to be replaced at the producers' and director's whim. There might be as many as a dozen writers assigne to a movie before it makes it onto the screen. In comics (especially Marvel) it is the editor who can be largely responsible for the creative vision, dictating plot and character arcs. Even in media-tie in fiction we're seeing "based on a concept by <editor name>" appearing more often on the covers of books.

Would you say that the editor is becoming a more powerful creative controlling force in fiction writing generally? If so, how do you feel about this?

[garamet]

^If anything, I'd say the opposite is true, at least anecdotally.

I've worked with - and in the majority of cases I use that expression loosely - a total of 14 editors at six houses over the course of 25 years. They've ranged from interested hands-on editors whose suggestions made for a stronger product, to airheads and dipshits who gave no indication they had even read the manuscript.

With one exception (Greg Cox, who used to be at Tor, but is now a full-time writer, and who single-handedly saved the Preternatural trilogy when his boss - one of the aforementioned dipshits - bobbled it), the good editors happened in the early years.

The editor on my last non-Trek book told my agent (he'd stopped speaking to me about two years earlier) point-blank that he hadn't read the manuscript he'd bought and paid for. "I just handed it off to the proofreader. I didn't have time." Direct quote.

One might ask what he was doing with his time. He "works" at home. Pulls down top salary for his line of work. Wife works, no kids, they've got household help, so it's not as if he's fixing school lunches or building a deck. Short of walking the dog and stopping by the 7-Eleven to pick up more Amstel Light...I dunno.

Where the book business differs from film is that film has always been understood to be a collaborative medium. And script writers have a Writers Guild to kick ass for them and make sure they are paid exactly what the contact calls for, regardless of when they're taken off the project. Most veteran writers take the money and run. Creative control doesn't interest them. There are legions of script writers who exist solely on residuals for works that are optioned and never produced.

The novelist has no union. (Oh, there's an Authors Guild. For $90 a year you get a membership card, a quarterly newsletter and, for an additional $6 a month, web hosting, and if a bunch of members file a class action suit - as some did for e-publishing rights a few years ago - they're in your corner. But they have no real clout the way WGA does.) What the novelist does have - except when writing media tie-in novels - is ownership of copyright.

So there are clauses in the contract that say an editor can suggest rewrites, and rewrites of rewrites (third rewrites are not cost effective or time efficient for anyone, and at that point the editor, like a cat watching a spider, has usually lost interest and curled up for a nap), but the editor makes changes himself at his peril.

It's my manuscript. Worst thing the editor can do is dump it back on me with a kill-fee (which is usually equivalent to the second half of the advance) and say "Sorry, not publishing this."

Neither the editor nor the writer wants that (the writer might take the money and run, but selling the next book, after this editor has bad-mouthed the writer up and down Park Avenue South, ain't gonna be easy). So either they try to reach an accord, or the writer just holds out until the editor curls up for that nap, and the book goes to press.

[faisent]

How important is an agent to a new writer, or more specifically a writer in my position? Here's the situation - a fairly good friend of mine was at a wedding I attended last night, and it turns out that she now is an editor for Harper-Collins in NYC (fairly new at it, I think she's two years in). Basically she told me that after all of the conversations we've had about literature (we once worked at a bookstore together where we co-ran the creative writing group) she'd be willing to look over anything I wanted to send her, and if it was decent enough in her eyes she'd send it over to Eos.

Now, I certainly don't want to put her in a bad position by handing her a crap manuscript, but this has taken quite a bit of anxiety out of the writing process (in fact I am actually incised to get home and do some writing tonight for once). I want to get it done and to her by this time next year.

So, should I bother trying to get an agent once its finished, or is a good industry friend enough?

Would a publisher actually prefer a new author to have an agent even if the book was recommended by another editor? (She doesn't work for Eos, just the same parent company).

Are such "Hey my friend wrote this, you should read it" events common? I would almost (almost!) rather finish it and find my own agent than put her into a position where she might make a rookie-editor mistake.

Thanks

Of course, I'll probably post snippets here in the upcoming months, though I already have a few unbiased readers whom I trust once it is actually complete.

[garamet]

How important is an agent to a new writer, or more specifically a writer in my position? Here's the situation - a fairly good friend of mine was at a wedding I attended last night, and it turns out that she now is an editor for Harper-Collins in NYC (fairly new at it, I think she's two years in). Basically she told me that after all of the conversations we've had about literature (we once worked at a bookstore together where we co-ran the creative writing group) she'd be willing to look over anything I wanted to send her, and if it was decent enough in her eyes she'd send it over to Eos.

Now, I certainly don't want to put her in a bad position by handing her a crap manuscript, but this has taken quite a bit of anxiety out of the writing process (in fact I am actually incised to get home and do some writing tonight for once). I want to get it done and to her by this time next year.

So, should I bother trying to get an agent once its finished, or is a good industry friend enough?

Would a publisher actually prefer a new author to have an agent even if the book was recommended by another editor? (She doesn't work for Eos, just the same parent company).

Are such "Hey my friend wrote this, you should read it" events common? I would almost (almost!) rather finish it and find my own agent than put her into a position where she might make a rookie-editor mistake.

Thanks

Of course, I'll probably post snippets here in the upcoming months, though I already have a few unbiased readers whom I trust once it is actually complete.

If you'll pardon my French, holy shit! :soma: I wonder if you have any idea how lucky you are...

No, these "Hey, my friend wrote this..." moments are not common, unless you're, say, a celebrity's child or Tom Clancy's chauffeur. HarperCollins is one of the biggest and most prestigious publishers in Gotham City. You've just been bumped to the head of the line and given a golden opportunity, but you need to approach it carefully.

How quickly can you put together three chapters and an outline? Yes, I know, that's the magic formula, but it will work here, too, for two reasons:

(A) Whoever your editor-friend passes your ms. on to is only going to want three chapters and an outline at first, and

(B) You want to move on this before your friend gets caught up in other things and forgets she expressed an interest.

Also, go to Writer's Market and check out HarperCollins' policy on "unsolicited manuscripts" - i.e. mss. that don't arrive through an agent's office. My guess is that the company as a whole demands a writer have an agent, but there may be certain divisions of the company, such as Eos, where unagented mss. are sometimes allowed in.

Whether you will eventually need an agent or not, here's what you do IMMEDIATELY:

Polish your first three chapters. Put together an outline of between 2,500-5,000 words. Follow standard ms. format:

One-inch margins all around
Double-spaced text
Courier 11 or 12 font
Header consisting of your LAST NAME/Title of Book
Page numbers at upper right
Print on plain white bond paper
DO NOT BIND IT, PUT IT IN A FANCY FOLDER OR OTHERWISE TINKER WITH IT. Find two pieces of 8.5 x 11 cardboard and a couple of sturdy rubber bands, and put it between those. Unless, of course, your friend will accept an electronic submission, in which case do all of the above except the printing and rubber bands part.

(Forgive the rant. I just did a ms. critique for a local guy. Told him three times not to bind the ms. For whatever reason, he didn't want to email it to me, had to deliver it in person - printed on three-hole paper with those goddamn little two-pronged brass thingies holding it together. Nobody listens... :bang: )

Anyhoo, if at all possible, get those three chapters to your friend ASAP. She'll tell you what to do next. If she likes it, if she passes it on to an editor at Eos, if that editor likes it, they may very well set you up with an agent after the fact.

But don't wait until you've finished the book. Get it to her NOW. And please let us know what happens. :D

[faisent]

Damn I guess this means I have to buckle down and work. :D

I figure I can get the first three chapters and an outline polished enough by the end of February, provided I cut a bit of fluff out of my life (you know, the wife and kids ;) ). Entire parts of the book are polished in my head I suppose the challenge is getting it onto that big expanse of pure white (has always been my problem - discipline).

Anyway, yes I'll keep you updated if you're curious - and while I don't think time is of the essence, I will take your advice and assume that it is.

[garamet]

faisent, another reason I'm emphasizing speed is because the book biz has for too long been emulating the, erm, "business model" of the rest of the entertainment industry - i.e., "reorganization" is the name of the game.

I can't speak for HarperCollins - they may be more stable than most - but I've watched other publishers downsize, fire entire divisions because the new senior editor doesn't like someone, even file for bankruptcy with the head honcho absconding for Vegas with his writers' royalties in his back pocket.

There's a running gag among writers who've worked for Tor, for example, with regard to editorial assistants. These are the kids right out of school who are paid around 15K to do the scut work, and they melt away on an average of ever six weeks. I've had conversations that go something like:

ME: Hi, may I speak with Seth, please? He was supposed to send me the pass pages last week and I haven't gotten them yet.

THIS WEEK'S EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Seth? Oh, you mean Seth. Um, he's not here anymore. My name's JoBeth. Maybe I can help you.

ME: Gee, Seth was nice. How long has he been gone?

JoBeth: Since last Friday. Kurt replaced him for Monday and Tuesday, but he went back to Borders. I've been here since Wednesday. What's today - Thursday? So I'll be here till tomorrow. Then I'm going back to Rhode Island to help my aunt in her knitting shop. It pays better. But let me see if I can find your galleys before I leave. If I can't, you talk to Jenna. She'll be replacing me on Monday.

Now, EAs are cannon fodder. Editors last a little longer...usually. I once signed with an editor who'd been in the job for a month and was fired two weeks after my advance cleared. You can imagine what happened to that manuscript...

Your editor friend has actually been in her job for two years; that's a good sign. But she may be moved around at a moment's notice. Or her contact at Eos could move up, down, or sideways, and whoever replaces that person might be a stickler for following the rules.

So it's best to strike while the iron is hot, or some sort of cliche.

[faisent]

Ah thank you for the explanation. I'm dedicating Thursdays - Saturdays to get this done, plus whatever time I can scrape together the rest of the week. Of course, I have to work my consulting gig this Sat and Friday was friends night...

*sigh*

The upside is if I don't get this done and at least submitted I'll be kicking myself the rest of my life. :D

[garamet]

What? You expected to be a writer AND have a life? :lol:

[NAHTMMM]

garamet, what does an unpublished writer send to an editor if, instead of having a story that she can turn into a outline, she wants to write poetry?

[garamet]

^I'd recommend going to www.writersmarket.com (or heading for the library to find the hardcover in the reference section) and checking out the many small magazines that publish poetry.

It's labor intensive, but if you can send your work out to these periodicals and sell a few, you build up a track record. After you've sold 12-20 of them, you might be able to interest a small press in publishing a collection of your work. Or you might be able to move up a notch and sell the occasional individual poem to something like the New Yorker.

I probably don't have to tell you that nobody earns a living writing poetry. In Shakespeare's time, poets had wealthy patrons to keep them afloat. The Romantic poets by and large came from wealthy families, and Emily Dickinson's father left her enough to live like a church mouse. The successful poets of the 20th century supplemented their incomes by teaching, lecturing, etc.

But if getting your work published is the goal, the literary and so-called "little" magazines are where you start. You don't need an agent, just the ability to write a good query letter (and if you can write poetry, writing a query letter should be easy ;) ).

If your poem is accepted, you'll very often be paid only in copies of the magazine to give to friends, but it's a start. It means people get to read your work, and you build a reputation, so that when you send another poem to the same magazine, they'll be more eager to accept it. Or if you send it to Magazine B, the fact that you've already been published in Magazine A carries more weight.

Good poetry moves people. It makes them think. It makes them see life differently. The commercial market may not value poetry (unless it's in the form of rock lyrics), but that doesn't lessen its intrinsic value.

Go for it!

[Zenow]

ah, money and writing... don't you just wish we lived in the 'good old days' of patrons? Of course I have a romantic view of that time, but who cares, let me dream! I'd gladly spit out a story or two celebrating my patron's wonderful personality if that would get me some cash to write...

Today's only chance of being able to write in peace is winning an award, I guess. I just heard about the yearly nominees for the Dutch Libris award (prose, not poetry), with the winner to be announced on May 2nd. It's a cheque for EUR 50,000. Considering my current income, that could keep me alive and writing for 5 years (honest). If only!

[garamet]

^Agreed 100% about patrons. In the good old days, a writer/artist/composer acquired a patron and their worries were over. J.S. Bach supported - what was it? - two dozen children solely on his output for his patron.

Since the 19th century, book publishers have pretended to fill the role of patrons, but each writer is only one of a stable of writers, and one's bankability is only as good as the last manuscript, which is only as good as the publisher chooses to make it vis-a-vis publicity, marketing, etc.

Zenow, would you be eligible to apply for the Dutch Libris award for this coming year? What are the criteria?

I've only ever tried for an award once. Took me several weeks and I-don't-know-how-much postage to gather everything and send it. Waited six months to get essentially the same response I get from book editors "Thank you for your submission, but it does not suit our needs at the present time."

IOW, you're not an academic, we can't put your writing into a little box with a label on it, so fuck you very much.

Meh. At least they returned the books I sent them. And no coffee stains on them, either. Which is more than I can say for most editors...

[Zenow]

Oops, didn't check this thread for a long time..
I've never really checked out the criteria for the awards we have here (not a published author yet, though I write daily and intend to start sending in work.. maybe next year). The Libris award is modelled after the Booker Prize. We have several other awards as well, including awards for debutants.
And then there is the Dutch Foundation for Literature:
The Fonds voor de Letteren (Dutch Foundation for Literature) aims at stimulating the quality and availability of Dutch and Frisian literature, as well as literature translated into Dutch and Frisian. The Foundation offers literary authors and translators the financial scope to work on a professional basis, by providing work and travel grants, and additional fees to writers and translators of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, children's books and drama. Only writers and translators whose work meets the required standards of productivity and - most important - quality, are eligible for a grant. Approximately 200 authors per year and 100 translators of literature into Dutch or Frisian receive such a grant. Source (http://www.fondsvoordeletteren.nl/english_summary.php3)

For now, I'll have to find a parttime job very soon & try not to let that drain my energy too much. In the past the daily grind of regular jobs dragged me into a state of apathy on several occasions.. can't let that happen now, as I'm working on.. something.

[garamet]

^Oh, I know the feeling. Some jobs are so boring they motivate you to write just to take your mind off them. Others, though, are not only boring but so physically and mentally draining you've got nothing left when you sit down to write.

The pursuit of grants is almost a full-time job in itself. I hope you can find the time to do this and - of course - I hope you'll be successful.

Please let us know what happens. :)

[garamet]

BTW, a note for Storm and anyone else who might be interested: I've been informed that the Pike novel won't be released until Summer of '06, rather than January. Pocket's gotten a dictate from TPTB to cut back to only 12 Trek novels a year, so they're having to process everything that's already in the pipeline before they can produce any new stuff, and that's moved the schedule around.

*hands Storm a tissue* I know you're upset, but how do you think I feel? :(

[phantomofthenet]

^Oh, I know the feeling. Some jobs are so boring they motivate you to write just to take your mind off them. Others, though, are not only boring but so physically and mentally draining you've got nothing left when you sit down to write.

The pursuit of grants is almost a full-time job in itself. I hope you can find the time to do this and - of course - I hope you'll be successful.

Please let us know what happens. :)

Ideally, it'd be nice to find a job that's boring and quiet enough to let you write. :)

[Diacanu]

Um...okay, here goes.

Some people here have told me to try to publish Heck Backlash.

As laughably insane as that seems, I dunno, maybe if I let the thing collect some rejection slips, it might at least feel like I did something.

Where would I send something like that, a magazine or something?

What about the the profanity, can I get away with that in a mag?

If you don't know all this stuff, I don't wanna bug ya or nothin.

Just..y'know...if you don't know, maybe you'd know where I can look or somethin.

Jeez, this sounds as awkward as my answering machine messages.

Well, um, the end.

Beep.

[garamet]

^Gimme a quick word count on the whole thing and maybe I can advise you from there. (What I'm saying is, if it's too long for a magazine submission, then you'd have to try for a different venue.)

[Diacanu]

Quick word count she says, nothin's quick on this 'puter....

*Clackity clackity clack*

5 minutes later....

7062 words.

[garamet]

^Hm, yeah. That's small enough for a magazine. Not to sound like I'm repeating myself, but get thee to Writers Market (http://www.writersmarket.com) and make a list of mags that are looking for your kind of thing.

You can either (A) blitz it out to as many as say "multiple submissions accepted" or (B) pick the top three that say "no multiple submissions," send it to the one you think will be the best fit, and wait until they let you know whether they're interested or not.

If they're not, then you move to the next on your list, and so on.

And let us know if you get a nibble!

[tafkats]

You've answered a few questions about dealing with editors from a writer's point of view. This one's from the other side.

My girlfriend wants to work in the publishing industry as a book editor. How does one get into that kind of job? What kind of skills are needed -- do you primarily just need a solid working knowledge of spelling and grammar, or is there more to it? What kind of training do you need to land a job at a publishing company? What are the entry-level jobs like? What kind of career paths do book editors usually follow? How hard is it to get that kind of work?

[garamet]

^Okay, this is just me observing who ends up at the top of the pyramid in the NY houses. Publishing is gradually moving out of Midtown Manhattan into other cities and other states, so that aggressive NY culture may not necessarily emigrate with it. However...

The editors I've worked with (except at the Pocket Star Trek line; there seems to be a lot of back-and-forth between there and the comic/graphic novel houses, so a post-grad degree in Geek is usually an edge. That or simply Knowing Somebody) tend to have started as eager young kids from somewhere other than NY, usually with at least a B.A. in English from a Good School and a masochistic desire to work for less money than they'd get bagging groceries back home in Portland.

They start as editorial assistants (important, especially for women and gay male aspirants: Don't learn to type too fast. Being able to type more than 20 words a minute will shunt you onto the receptionist/secretary track. There's no way to get from there to editing), usually at a pay scale around 18-20K (this in a city where a studio apartment can go for $2,000 a month; roommates are de rigeur) and bounce from one house to another for reasons I've never understood, because it's been rare to speak to the same editorial assistant more than once; they leave to go elsewhere that quickly.

Skills? As aforementioned, a B.A. in English, preferably without any of those annoying double majors like education, a very eclectic reading experience (one needs to be able to cite Vonnegut and Voltaire with equal equanimity), flawless spelling, grammar, punctuation skills, and a first-hand experience in how to change the toner cartridge on the copier.

Unlimited patience for wading through the "slush pile," because odds are you're the first line of defense when the mss. arrive from the agents and SOMEBODY has to pre-read the frakking things, and it sure isn't going to be a I'm-leaving-early-to-take-my-kid-to-soccer senior editor.

Excellent phone skills for dealing with cranky authors and crankier senior editors, and an eidetic memory for who in the office takes what in their latte grande (order anything other than soy milk for the associate editor who's lactose intolerant, and you may as well start cleaning out your desk).

For every 100 editorial assistants who enter the market, maybe 10 get noticed by a senior editor on the alternate Thursdays that he happens to be in the office and asked "How'd you like to edit Latest Overblown Manuscript by Famous but Marginally Literate Writer?" This is the Rubicon. A successful edit (i.e. one that reads exactly the way the senior editor would have edited it, if he hadn't been away at the ABA that weekend) earns you your wings. You are now an Assistant Editor.

So, skills and opportunity will get you that far. To go from Assistant Editor to Associate Editor to Senior Editor, you have to be either a trained killer or damn lucky. (Damn lucky includes everyone above you on the ladder suffering cardiac arrest so that you're the only one available to take the job.) If you're not willing to lie, cheat, steal, blackmail, and step on people's necks, you don't get to be Senior Editor.

And even if you do, there's no guarantee your house won't be sold or merged and the New People will decide they want to bring in Their People, in which case you may have time to empty your desk before the locks are changed.

I'm exaggerating, just a little, but it seems to work that way from where I'm standing. Not much different from most corporate cultures, I guess, except for the greater percentage of people at the top who telecommute. Which means that it's really the editorial assistants who are doing most of the work, but then that's not so different, is it?

Seriously, I'd advise your girlfriend to get a subscription to Publisher's Weekly. Not only does it have job listings, but it's also a good way to learn Who's on First, who's on the auction block, who's been promoted, Who's Who.

My thinking is, also, since legit publishing companies are springing up in major cities outside NY, those might be the places to target for job searches first.

Hope that's not too cynical, and maybe a little bit helpful. ;)

[phantomofthenet]

Hey Garamet, perhaps you can settle an argument going on here locally...

If I posted excerpts from my book here, would that classify the book as "previously published" when it comes time to sell the thing?

[garamet]

^Not AFAIK. "Previously published," as I understand it, means you got paid for it - i.e. you sold an excerpt to a magazine before it was published in book form.

[phantomofthenet]

^Not AFAIK. "Previously published," as I understand it, means you got paid for it - i.e. you sold an excerpt to a magazine before it was published in book form.


Does that include entire short stories?

[garamet]

^Hmm. I'd imagine once you've "given it away," it will be difficult to sell it. A magazine editor isn't going to see any profit in publishing a story that's already available on the 'net. Ditto the editor of an anthology you might send your story to.

If your story were part of a collection of strictly your stories (and I don't know if that's done much anymore), having a single story available online as a kind of teaser might be a good thing, but I'm not sure.

Maybe best to just put a few pages out there rather than the whole thing.

[Diacanu]

Well, there goes Heck Backlash then. :garamet:

Why dincha say so at the time?

[garamet]

Question time!

When writing a novel that you've been assigned by a publisher, is the editor the first person you show it to when it's ready to be seen? I ask because I've never written anything that wasn't on spec, and with that stuff (such as the full length play I'm finishing the first draft of right now), when it's ready to be seen I have a few other trusted friends I show it to first. With something that isn't being written on spec, is that an option?

Gawd, this is embarrassing! actormike, I didn't notice this post until now (what - more than five months later?) -!

Between hitting the "read next unread" and fielding baba questions...I'm sorry. :(

So, to finally answer it - professionally, the first person to see any of my stuff is my agent, because he's the one who passes it on to the editor. Occasionally, when there's a tight deadline, I'll send the ms. to my agent and the editor simultaneously.

On the personal level, yeah, there are a couple of people I will give copies before my editor's read it, just as a token of friendship, not because I'm looking for feedback.

What I have never done (seems like an exercise in masochism, not to mention potentially legally dangerous) is participate in a writing seminar or one of those group-therapy things where people sit around reading their stuff so that others can tear it apart.

Hope that answers your question...five months later...sheesh....

[Spider]

What advice would you give to a newbie approaching a short-story writing competition?

[TheDarkCanuck]

garamet, I'm shocked that you're a real live author! If I am not mistaken you wrote at least one TOS novel and I happen to have two copies of it on my bookshelf "Strangers from the Sky" I must have read if 5 times.

Thanks for the good read :) Did you publish any other trek novels? ever consider writing an ENt novel? I'm finding those books to be lacking pretty badly.

[Baba]

If you were a lesbian which two woman would you want to have a threeway with.l

[polarslam]

If you were a lesbian which two woman would you want to have a threeway with.l

:soma:

BANANANA ANSERW!

[garamet]

What advice would you give to a newbie approaching a short-story writing competition?

Sorry for neglecting this so long. I check the forum every day, but for some reason didn't see that there were two new posts that needed answering (and two that didn't).

With the proviso that I've never managed to sell a short story, I'd say see if you can get access to previous winners of the same contest, if any. You may be able to pick up a common theme, or a particular style of writing or subject matter that the contest owners are fond of.

If it's a new contest, or you can't read previous winners, or if you have read them and there's no recurring theme, try to find out as much as you can about whoever's offering the prize money.

Is it some sort of academic or lit'rary society? Is it corporate sponsored? Answers to that question would give you a hook vis-a-vis the mindset and what would make them happy.

Because as J.S. Bach could tell you, when you make your patron happy, you never run out of groceries for the 14 kids... ;)

[garamet]

garamet, I'm shocked that you're a real live author!

It shocks me too sometimes, frankly. :D

If I am not mistaken you wrote at least one TOS novel and I happen to have two copies of it on my bookshelf "Strangers from the Sky" I must have read if 5 times.

Thanks for the good read :) Did you publish any other trek novels? ever consider writing an ENt novel? I'm finding those books to be lacking pretty badly.

Dwellers in the Crucible, Catalyst of Sorrows, and an upcoming novel about Christopher Pike.

Who writes what for which "flavor" of Trek is at the editors' discretion. If you're unhappy with the ENT novels, you should let them know. ;)

[MiniBorg]

This has probably been asked before but:

What else do you do to bring money in? Or are you able to purely write for your income? If so, how long did it take you to get to there?

[garamet]

This has probably been asked before but:

What else do you do to bring money in? Or are you able to purely write for your income? If so, how long did it take you to get to there?

Given that the median income for midlist writers has remained around 7.5K a year for the past 30 years, the majority view their writing income as a secondary or supplemental income in addition to their Day Jobs. S/f writers in particular tend to be academics, or have careers in the sciences or IT or something along that line.

My career's been a little different, in that early on I was marketed as a mainstream writer, and actually made a full-time living from 1979-1982.

Then two things happened: the Recession of '82, and the decision by the parent company that owned my publisher to kill its publishing interests. That threw about a dozen of us out of our professional home, to join the 500 or so midlist writers abandoned by other houses during the biggest restructuring in the history of the industry in response to the recession.

Over the next several years I wrote several mss. on spec, but no one was buying. Worked as an executive secretary until '87, when the combination of my first Trek sale and two other deals made it possible for me to quit and go back to writing and earning full time for the next 11 years.

(As an aside, there are a couple of morons on this board who don't seem to grasp the fact that when the median income for one's profession is $7,500 a year, one's ability to make multiple times that in a given year is a success, not a failure. But there's no talking to morons.)

From the late '80s into the 90s, various factors in the book business resulted in the payout of smaller and smaller advances (except for the Big Six, but what was siphoned away from us was added to them), so we were all doing just as much work, but at an ever-shrinking pay scale.

So in '98 I segued into medical transcription, with writing as a second income.

Over the past two+ years, I've made another lateral move into proofreading and editing, so I now have three sources of income: proofing/editing, occasional transcription, and the writing income.

What's nice is that I can do all of this from my home office, make my own hours, and not have to commute, maintain a business wardrobe, or put up with office politics.

What's not so nice is that it's all freelance income (with the concomitant double hit on Social Security, and no employer to pay into health insurance, pension, etc.), and those hours are sometimes seven days a week.

If I had it to do over again, I might have retrained or even gotten a master's to continue my teaching career back in my late twenties/early thirties, but those first four years of Really Nice Income suckered me into thinking it would always be that way.

But if 500 midlist writers fell off the charts in '82 and never returned, I consider myself Writer #501. I'm like a Timex watch - takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. :D

[Diacanu]

If given the chance, would you do a BSG book?
Or, are you strictly Trek?
If so, why?

[garamet]

If given the chance, would you do a BSG book?

In a heartbeat.

[Diacanu]

Cool. :techman:

Okay, now, the Pike book.

Turkey? Ham? Pastrami?
If it's turkey, make it the good breast stuff with the grain still in it, not that watery extruded stuff.
;)

[garamet]

Cool. :techman:

Okay, now, the Pike book.

Turkey? Ham? Pastrami?
If it's turkey, make it the good breast stuff with the grain still in it, not that watery extruded stuff.
;)

Y'know, you've hit on one of the crucial aspects of the story and, I have to tell you, it required a great deal of soul searching. The goal was to consider my target audience.

Looking at it from an age demographic, most under-30s can eat just about anything. But what of the 30-80-somethings whose doctors were concerned for their coronary health? Should I eliminate the pastrami, since I tend to draw a more mature audience segment (apparently the PlayStation Generation expects linear narrative; flashbacks upset them)?

From a cultural perspective, should I reject the concept of ham, in order to avoid offending the non-traif eaters in my target demographic? After all, these books are translated and distributed worldwide.

But not everyone likes turkey, not even jazzed up with baby Swiss and Dijon on a good sourdough baguette.

What to do?

But then I reminded myself: You're writing Star Trek. Star Trek is about many things, not least of which are strong characterizations, and an inbuilt technology that spares you having to explain "Well, boys and girls, this ship can go faster than the speed of light because..."

Think food replicators. Then work backwards to the technology we have today. Suddenly, it all became clear to me. (See, kiddies, this is the value of flashbacks.)

Why not all three? Turkey, turkey ham, turkey pastrami. Problem solved. Something for everyone, mindful of their cardiac health and cultural preferences. No one's offended, there's something on the buffet table for everyone. Pick your favorite, or pile on all three, and don't forget the bread-and-butter pickles.

Oh, and rest assured, D, none of that extruded stuff on my watch. Only the best goes into my books. :D

[the real brannon braga]

What do you think of my writing, Garamet?

[garamet]

"Writing"?

[the real brannon braga]

Yes, if you had to choose a better writer me or moore?

[Ares]

What are the titles of the books that you wrote?

[Lanzman]

Yes, if you had to choose a better writer me or moore?

A box of oatmeal is a better writer than you are, Trek-killer.

[garamet]

Yes, if you had to choose a better writer me or moore?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[the real brannon braga]

What's so funny?

[garamet]

Start a separate thread for this, please.

[NAHTMMM]

My brother is interested in becoming a "copy editor" for a book publisher or possibly for a periodical.


-- What sort of degree(s) would you recommend he pursue?

-- What would publishers be looking for in a potential copy editor?

-- Are there likely to be many opportunities for him in the field?

-- How would he go about getting an opportunity?

-- Any particular websites or publications for him to look at?

-- Any other advice?


Thanks!

[garamet]

^At least a B.A. in English is a must. After that, it's the old "can't get the job without the experience/can't get the experience without a job" dilemma.

If your brother's willing to move to NYC and start at entry level as an editorial assistant for about 15-18K a year (how to make rent in NYC on that little is the real challenge), that used to be the way to start.

However, these days there are online editing/proofreading houses that might - might - consider testing someone with entry-level skills. Scribendi.com is one I can think of; a Google search should pull up a few more.

Web design/IT skills are also a plus. He might want to rack up some volunteer experience designing friends' websites, playing webmaster, etc. Knowing how to edit online, as well as being able to find his way around the Track Changes function in Word, is a plus.

writersweekly.com is a free subscription service that has job listings. And there's always Craig's List.

A subscription to Publishers Weekly is pricy, but that might give him the lay of the land. He might also want to just cold-contact various magazines, particularly corporate-related mags, because MBAs can't spell worth a damn.

Good luck to him! :techman:

[Marso]

Here's a question:

How do you fight the depression when you're feeling the itch to start writing again, then you finish reading a series of books that are so freakin' good you know you'll never come within a million miles of being that good on your best possible day?

[garamet]

Here's a question:

How do you fight the depression when you're feeling the itch to start writing again, then you finish reading a series of books that are so freakin' good you know you'll never come within a million miles of being that good on your best possible day?

I actually admire writers who are better than I.

For instance, I was more than pleased to see The Constant Gardener nominated for an Oscar, even though it didn't win.

Of course I'm still puzzling over how Larry McMurtry, who's a really bad novelist, was able to derive a really good screenplay from the work of Annie Proulx, a really good novelist. Strange alchemy there.

It's the crapmeisters who get the big bucks for writing the same book over and over again that piss me off. But then I have to remind myself that it's not their fault; they're just being used by the bean-counters, and all those millions won't make them feel any better about themselves, and all the money in the world can't compensate for mediocrity.

Or something like that....

[Marso]

New question:

When you submit a manuscript to your publisher, what format do you send it in these days? Paper copy? Word doc? PDF? Or does it ultimately matter what WP program you use?

[garamet]

^Most editors these days prefer a Word document. A few old-fashioned types still prefer hardcopy. Best bet is to check the submission guidelines on the publisher's site and/or shoot an email off to 'em and ask.

If they wanted a printed copy, don't forget to enclose a SASE.

Format is uniform in any event - double-spaced, one-inch margins all around, a header with your LAST NAME/Title at the left margin, page numbers in the upper right corner.

As for fonts, Courier used to be the standard, but nowadays Times New Roman seems to be preferred. Again, it never hurts to ask. ;)

[Marso]

Do you typically submit an entire novel as one gigantic Word file, or is it broken down into chapters and such?

[garamet]

One big file.

[Marso]

Check

[Nautica]

garamet,

Who are some of your favorite authors? And what do you think of Dan Simmons' (my personal fave) work?

[garamet]

^Despite his prolific output, I confess I haven't read Simmons. As a rule I don't read horror or fantasy, and actually read very little s/f. Don't want to end up imitating other writers' styles, or finding out all the good storylines are taken. ;)

Besides, I bumbled into writing s/f via Trek because the mainstream fiction market was closed to people like me in the early Eighties. My s/f reads like mainstream, which makes me difficult to niche, and that gives editors fits.

So my reading's kind of eclectic. I'll usually bop into the library and grab anything that appeals to me. If I really like a book, I'll buy it. Rarely buy something first and then find out I hate it.

Some long-time favorites are:

Martin Cruz Smith
John le Carré

Both of whom are typed as writers of "thrillers," but who give their characters as much depth as a mainstream writer would.

As for mystery writers:

Jonathan Kellerman (although he seems to have lost his fast ball)
Lawrence Block
Tony Hillerman

Also because they put more effort into character than your average mystery writer.

Thomas Keneally. Actually Schindler's List is one of his less successful works, IMO, as compared to, say To Asmara.

James Lee Burke. Atmosphere and character.

Alice Walker, Toni Morrison. Because while I know what it's like to be a woman of their generation, I occasionally need a perspective not my own. Strong, driven characters.

Guess you're noticing a theme here?

The classics - Dickens, Faulkner, Charlotte Bronte (less hysterical than her sisters). Surprisingly, I'm not a big fan of Jane Austen, which I realize makes me an anomaly on the distaff side, but major screen productions aside, she's really just writing soaps.

Um, after that, just about anybody who writes strong characters, sets them down in either places I know really well (like Block's NYC) or places I've never been (like Hillerman's Four Corners), and tells me a convincing story.

[Techman]

How so you feel about Lois McMaster Bujold?

[garamet]

^Haven't read her. See what I mean? I know *of* her, I understand she's gotten lots of awards, but I'd rather read the next Kellerman. But that's just me.

[Techman]

^Haven't read her. See what I mean? I know *of* her, I understand she's gotten lots of awards, but I'd rather read the next Kellerman. But that's just me.
Awards she earned, IMO...just as your "Strangers from the Sky" should have.

But that's just me. :D

[garamet]

^Thanks. :D

You've got me intrigued. I may have to read something of hers now...

[Techman]

^Thanks. :D

You've got me intrigued. I may have to read something of hers now...
Start with "Shards of Honor"

You won't be able to put it down...least I couldn't.

The Miles Vorkosigan series is excellent. :techman:

[Lanzman]

Garamet, can you look back thru your published works and pick out specific lines that you're particularly proud of? In other words, are there sentences that you wrote and then said to yourself "Dang, nailed the hell out of that one!"?

[garamet]

^Wow, can't believe that's been sitting here for a week and I missed it.

Great question! Gimme a while to dig up a few. :)

[garamet]

^Okay, two instances that I can think of, one in which I worked really hard to craft a few good sentences, another where a random set of circumstances resulted in probably the clunkiest sentence I've ever written being, in its own way, immortalized.

Example #1, from Preternatural Too: Gyre:

The setting is a bomb shelter in Berlin, late April 1945. One of the characters is a time traveler who ends up saving a child from being buried alive, with the usual ramifications for time travelers who do impulsive things in eras where they don't belong:

Karen does not remember moving, but she seems to have literally flown across the cellar, and the child is in her arms. She wraps herself about her, slamming her own elbows and knees as they hit the floor but protecting the little one, sheltering her with her body as howevermany pounds of wood and plaster and brick and decades, even centuries, of ancient debris pound her into the floor. Shriek and groan of floorboards splintering, a seeming endless crashing, as if the whole building would come down on them, an all too common eventuality in this time and place.

Karen finds herself, strangely detached, listening to each sound, feeling each new layer fall with a kind of bemused curiosity to see how long it will continue. Aside from making sure she isn’t crushing the child, she simply waits it out. Is she going to die here, after all she’s been through? It’s just too silly.

The little girl is screaming now, wailing a mix of terror and anguish (“Mama, Mama—!”), struggling in Karen/Margarethe’s arms as at last what’s left of the building settles itself in some manner of egalitarian compromise between the forces of gravity and those of irony and, after a final weary groan and a final shower of choking dust, decides not to fall on them after all. There is a kind of eerie silence.


:shrug:

[Lanzman]

This -

as at last what’s left of the building settles itself in some manner of egalitarian compromise between the forces of gravity and those of irony and, after a final weary groan and a final shower of choking dust, decides not to fall on them after all.

- is bloody genius. :techman:

[garamet]

^ :blush:

Okay, now the clunky one.

It's 1978, I'm putting the finishing touches on my first novel, A Certain Slant of Light. Mainstream novel about a professor who suffers a stroke and the young single mother who becomes part of the movement to reinstate her when her college tries to oust her.

Toward the end, the young woman is enrolled in law school, and she's painting her son's bedroom and thinking about the future. The line I wanted her to end her reverie with was "It is only possible to live happily ever after one day at a time."

Except that at the time there was that Bonnie Franklin sitcom called "One Day at a Time," and I didn't want readers to automatically think of that when they read the line.

So I turned it inside out and upside down and fretted over it more than I had the approximately 100,000 words around it, and finally came up with "It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis."

Even as I wrote it, I thought Clunk! Gawd, that's badly worded. But it's one sentence in a whole novel, who's gonna notice?

Turns out someone somewhere was compiling a collection of what they considered pithy one-liners to sprinkle through a special edition of the Yellow Pages which they called the Silver Pages - listings of special interest to seniors.

They somehow picked that line out of my novel and ran with it. I think they may even have spelled my name correctly when they credited it.

Needless to say, no one in charge of the Silver Pages contacted me, asked my permission, let me know they were lifting that sentence, much less offered me any kind of compensation.

That line has since been "borrowed" by several other sources - calendars, quote books/sites, etc., etc. At least once a year I'll get a fan letter from someone wanting to know if I'm the person who wrote it.

And every time I read it, I still hear it go Clunk!

Whattaya gonna do?

[Lanzman]

Tell 'em Storm wrote it? :soholy:

[garamet]

^ :diablo:

[JUSTLEE]

So why write science-fiction and Star Trek? Do you find it harder to write for any other genres? What are the specific challenges for writing in the genres you chose?

I have read Strangers From The Sky and did enjoy it as well as Probe.

[Marso]

Mentioning Probe here could be interpreted as trolling. :lol:

Tread carefully. :nono:

Then again, if you don't know the story, you don't know. Read back through the thread- it's probably in there somewhere.

[garamet]

So why write science-fiction and Star Trek? Do you find it harder to write for any other genres? What are the specific challenges for writing in the genres you chose?

I have read Strangers From The Sky and did enjoy it as well as Probe.

Actually I started my career as a mainstream writer, sort of in the Ann Tyler vein. Then along came the Recession of '82, and every major publisher regrouped, downsized, cut inventories and jettisoned some of its writers. My particular publisher got yanked entirely by its parent company, leaving a dozen writers stranded, and no one else was interested in taking us on.

So my agent asked me what I could write in terms of genre fiction. I said "Well, I know Star Trek." He groaned. At the time, Pocket was only publishing six Trek novels a year. But I wrote one on spec anyway; it was turned down. Then I wrote another and it got picked up, as Dwellers in the Crucible...two years and three changes of editor later.

Thanks for asking. :)

[Marso]

And mention Probe no more!!

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b34/JMarso/thelook.jpg

[JUSTLEE]

What kind of a contract did you recieve for your first book? Have they changed over the years? Are the contracts from each single book or did you have to write a number of books per contract?

[garamet]

What kind of a contract did you recieve for your first book? Have they changed over the years? Are the contracts from each single book or did you have to write a number of books per contract?

Well, bear in mind that I signed my first contract in 1978, and for a mainstream - i.e. not s/f or other genre - novel.

Back in the day, publishers had "right of first refusal." Which meant if they bought your first book, they got dibs on seeing the outline and chapters for the next one.

AFAIK, that's not done any more.

Originally, it was meant to protect the writer, who at least had the security of having a "home," i.e. knowing the publisher would most likely be interested in more than one book.

Where it backfired was with unscrupulous publishers who would sit on the outline for a second book for months or even years. In that time, the writer was constrained from showing the outline - or any other outline in the same field (because the original publisher could argue that it was a "second book") to anyone else. That could really fuck up a career.

Multi-book contracts *used* to be common in s/f. Unless you're Terry Pratchett, they're not so common any more. Unfortunately the publishers I was with wouldn't sign three-book contracts, but insisted on making me do a dog and pony show for each of the sequels in my two trilogies.

According to an agent friend I spoke to recently, science fiction is currently "listing like the Titanic" because of short-sighted decisions, busted contracts with writers who couldn't deliver, and stupid marketing tricks.

Too bad, so sad...

[JUSTLEE]

Did you have to establish yourself as an author before you wrote your Trek novels, or were you able to write your Trek novels before you wrote your own?

[garamet]

Did you have to establish yourself as an author before you wrote your Trek novels, or were you able to write your Trek novels before you wrote your own?

Some of that's probably upthread somewhere, but I sold three "mainstream" novels between 1978-1981, then along came the Recession of '82. Many publishers jettisoned many, many writers. I had the "good fortune" to be with a publisher whose parent company just outright killed it.

So nobody was buying what I was writing. Sat down with my agent and tried to think of what else I could write. At the time, Pocket was publishing six novels a year, but I knew the genre, so I gave it a shot.

Took two years to get anyone at Pocket to even read my stuff, but eventually they bought something. Then I segued into non-Trek s/f from there.

Usually it's the other way around. You establish yourself as a s/f writer first, then the Pocket editors will consider you. But because I had the three mainstream novels behind me, and a willingness to wait through two years, three editors, two "sorry, not for us" manuscripts, and various snafus while refusing to go away, they finally bit.

Somewhere on the Simon & Schuster site is a list of rules for submitting Trek mss., if you're interested. ;)

[Marso]

G, what would you say your average time for banging out a manuscript is?

[garamet]

G, what would you say your average time for banging out a manuscript is?

I'm extremely slow. Anywhere from 750-1,000 words is a big day. Then I usually go back the next day and pick at those words before hacking out the next batch. Then I'll get a few scenes or even an entire chapter done, and go back and reread to make sure I remember where I am and can keep the forward momentum.

When the entire manuscript is completed, I'll try to let it "breathe" for at least a couple of weeks before going back in, rereading it in one fell swoop, and making final changes.

Also, I don't always get to write every day. RL has an annoying tendency to get in the way. And sometimes the words just aren't there, and I can stare at the blank page all day and make myself crazy, or just go out and do yard work. After doing this for 30+ years I've learned to just do the yard work. At least I've accomplished something, and usually the words come back the next day.

So, counting research, and the fact that I no longer write first drafts in longhand, start to finish for a novel is about a year.

Which ties in nicely with my editors' deadlines.

And that's only for my own stuff. When I'm ghosting, the author of record has usually done anywhere from 15-50% of the work already, so I can work faster.

Love to be able to pound 'em out faster, but it just doesn't seem to work that way. Writing's a lot like sculpture. Some of us can throw a lump of clay on the table and whack out a finished product in no time. Some of us have to keep chipping at that hunk of rock until we can see what's hidden inside it.

Not a one of my novels hasn't surprised me in some way. It's almost as if the stuff's been lying in wait for me going "Duh! What took you so long?"

;)

[JUSTLEE]

So what would be your terms for screenplay adaption and movie rights?

[Marso]

Garamet, do you happen to know who has the literary rights to Buck Rogers? Or how one might go about finding out such a thing?

[Lanzman]

Garamet, since writing Burning Dreams, do you feel differently about Pike? Is he more or less than what he was to you before you wrote it?

[garamet]

So what would be your terms for screenplay adaption and movie rights?

Usually the studio makes an offer through the author's agent, and then they haggle. I've had a novel optioned, but that's as far as it went. Studios frequently gobble up far more novel rights than they ever intend to use, just so no one else can touch that particular work while they make up their minds.

In my case, the option ran out after 18 months and was not renewed. The money was nice, but it would have been a lot nicer if the project had gone further. :shrug:

[garamet]

Garamet, do you happen to know who has the literary rights to Buck Rogers? Or how one might go about finding out such a thing?

No idea, but let me poke around and see what I can come up with. ;)

[garamet]

Garamet, since writing Burning Dreams, do you feel differently about Pike? Is he more or less than what he was to you before you wrote it?

Great question. :D

When Marco Palmieri approached me to do the book, I pretty much had the same attitude toward Pike that I think a lot of TOS fans have, which was: Interesting character, interesting performance, but nothing like the chemistry that Kirk had, and even if the studio had picked up the show with Pike as the captain, it probably would have fizzled after one season.

But as I watched "The Cage" and "Menagerie" over and over and over again, I realized how much of this character's story was below the surface, and I started digging.

There was also something heady about taking a character that GR had created more or less by the seat of his pants and probably never gave a second thought to once he had Kirk, and whom other writers had used effectively in several novels and comics, but always in the action-adventure mold, and being able to really get inside his head and ask "What makes this man what he is?"

Marco and I knocked some ideas around. What was really interesting to me was what I saw as Pike's drive for perfection (still blaming himself for the events on Rigel VII, for example), as well as his distancing himself from his crew (unlike Kirk, who goes way beyond the bounds of any RL CO, which is part of his charm, as well as a weak point).

I was looking for some sort of childhood trauma that would set Pike on this life path of feeling he was never quite good enough, no matter how hard he tried.

Marco suggested something along the lines of Mosquito Coast, and together we spun out the events of Pike's childhood and his mother's death from there.

Then, as you know, I borrowed generously from Crimson Tide for his early career. :?:

His relationship with Charlie, his relationship with Siddhe, and the sense that Vina haunted him down the years until he could be reunited with her sort of came out of the ether, as the best ideas always do.

Inspiration aside, though, I managed to bollix up a timeline at one point and almost lost the scene in Paris where Pike meets Vina's mother, but some quick editorial magic on Keith DeCandido's part saved that. :whew:

So I came away with a deep respect for the character, the performance, and the place Pike has in the history of Trek that I might never have had otherwise.

Which makes the piece I'm currently working on a bit of a challenge, but since it hasn't been announced yet, I'll have to leave y'all hanging there. :diablo:

[Lanzman]

Good answer, bad teaser!

[Dead Peon]

Garamet, I'm sure this is a silly question, and will be written awkward, so let me get it out of the way: how do you start your novels? I haven't had a problem like this before, but now that I REALLY want to write a story which I have a pretty good outline for and a ton of other details locked in my head, I can't get that first sentence written.

I know my own problem is that I'm over-thinking it too much and not slipping into my "groove" as I call it, but I can't seem to just get that first sentence out and let the floodgates open.

Any advice other than an Albertian "shut up and start and it'll eventually happen."? :D

[garamet]

^I can't remember whether it was Red Smith or Mickey Spillane who said something along the line of "Writing is easy. Just open a vein and start bleeding." :D

Better yet, I think, is the advice from Russell Baker, long-time columnist for the NYTimes, who said the blank page was the most daunting thing in the universe. He said: Conquer that first page, and you win. Throw something on it, anything - your name, "Mary had a little lamb", "Call me Ishmael," your best friend's phone number.

Then you win. You've beaten the blank page, and you can put anything else you want on it.

For me, the first 100 pages are the hardest. That's why I just finished a 40-page story in three months. Kept overwriting and cutting back, overwriting and cutting back. Would have been easier to write a 400-page ms., but the folks who pay me wanted a story for an anthology, and I was happy to be included.

I guess it comes down to *don't be afraid of the words*. You're in charge (although sometimes at two in the morning when it won't let you sleep, it doesn't feel that way).

Especially when you're working for yourself, and not under a deadline and committed to an outline that someone else has approved (and paid you for), you can say anything you want on that page. No one's looking over your shoulder. Honest.

Just write. Remember fingerpaints when you were a kid? Give yourself that freedom. Don't be afraid to color outside the lines, even splatter on the walls, because you're writing for yourself first and foremost. You can always mop up the spills later.

And do not, NOT try to edit your first effort right after you finish it, because you'll pick it to death. Let that first clump of paragraphs or pages breathe at least overnight before you reread them. By then you'll know what sucks and what stays. And in pruning out the Sucks and tidying up the Stays, you'll find the momentum for the next paragraph and the next and the next.

Go for it! :techman:

[Jeff Cooper Disciple]

If I may without stealing your thunder . . .

I'm a screenwriter, not a novelist, so the way I write is somewhat different. I normally take some 3x5 notecards and write a few key scenes, normally plot points on them along with whatever other information I need for a particular scene (like if I need the characters to fight a monster, I might describe the monster a little if it makes a idfference). I write an opening scene, the finishing scene, and then I put the cards in order. I'll have maybe 5-10 scenes already done that way, and then I just need to fill in the gaps. I have to make Scene A flow into Scene B. I fill in a few more notecards, one per scene, to fill in the story. Three minutes per scene card and between 30 and 40 cards to get me on the way. The nice thing about using the cards is I can rearrange them as needed or even discard them completely.

Next, I take the cards and flesh them out in a treatment or outline. Each card will get a paragraph or two and depending on how detailed I want my outline or treatment to be, I might throw in some important dialog. Some producers like short treatments (4-5 pages) while others want incredibly detailed 60 pages outlines.

From there, it's just putting words on the page, which for me is the easy, yet the time consuming part. Now, I have to think how I thing the movie would show up on a screne, so I have to think about specific camera angles, I have to think about budgets, I have to think about locations and so on, so in that way it is a bit constricting. If I push myself I can get a first draft done in a week.

I cheat a little bit because I use FinalDraft 7.0 (http://www.finaldraft.com/) to format as I go and I use a book called The Hollywood Standard (http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Standard-Complete-Authoritative-Script/dp/1932907017/ref=sr_1_13/102-1428259-1639342?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183671985&sr=8-13) that has all the rules for formatting that the software will get wrong (MSWord does this too, espeically with passive voice. I write, not the software).

Now, I'm of the opinion that screenwriting is just a different form of writing and takes just as much skill and dedication as either poetry or prose.

[missmanners]

He said: Conquer that first page, and you win. Throw something on it, anything - your name, "Mary had a little lamb", "Call me Ishmael," your best friend's phone number.

Then you win. You've beaten the blank page, and you can put anything else you want on it.


One of my Profs always suggested we describe something around us as the first paragraph and expect to edit it out later. Like seeing a coin on the edge of a table or a bird hopping in the grass or uneven mini blinds. Of course he also suggested we write the last page first if we were really stuck, that sometimes knowing how we wanted something to end helped us know how it should start. Yeah right.... I love to write, but it's a LOT of work and I guess I don't love to write that much!

Do you ever get 40 pages into a book and realize it's so dull or poorly written or both that you have no idea whats going on? Do you (would you) set it aside and pick up something else? My personal motto lately has been that life is too short for cheap chocolate and boring books.

:diacanu:
mm

[garamet]

If I may without stealing your thunder . . .

Not at all. The more feedback from experienced writers here, the better. ;)

I'm a screenwriter, not a novelist, so the way I write is somewhat different. I normally take some 3x5 notecards and write a few key scenes, normally plot points on them along with whatever other information I need for a particular scene (like if I need the characters to fight a monster, I might describe the monster a little if it makes a idfference). I write an opening scene, the finishing scene, and then I put the cards in order. I'll have maybe 5-10 scenes already done that way, and then I just need to fill in the gaps. I have to make Scene A flow into Scene B. I fill in a few more notecards, one per scene, to fill in the story. Three minutes per scene card and between 30 and 40 cards to get me on the way. The nice thing about using the cards is I can rearrange them as needed or even discard them completely.

Next, I take the cards and flesh them out in a treatment or outline. Each card will get a paragraph or two and depending on how detailed I want my outline or treatment to be, I might throw in some important dialog. Some producers like short treatments (4-5 pages) while others want incredibly detailed 60 pages outlines.

From there, it's just putting words on the page, which for me is the easy, yet the time consuming part. Now, I have to think how I thing the movie would show up on a screne, so I have to think about specific camera angles, I have to think about budgets, I have to think about locations and so on, so in that way it is a bit constricting. If I push myself I can get a first draft done in a week.

Whew - you're so *organized* -! But I'd guess you'd have to be, because of the constraints of the script format. I wouldn't recognize a three-minute scene if I fell over one. Not that I haven't read scripts and, intellectually, understood what a three-minute scene is - but write one? My style isn't nearly as disciplined.

For me the most difficult thing is hacking out an outline to pitch to an editor. How the hell do I know where I'll be by page 311? Novel format allows for a lot of sprawl, and I'll sometimes be anticipating a Great Big Scene and manage to say what I need to say in a couple of paragraphs, or the other way around.

So, different strokes. And for screenwriters, yours is very sound advice. :techman:

I cheat a little bit because I use FinalDraft 7.0 (http://www.finaldraft.com/) to format as I go and I use a book called The Hollywood Standard (http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Standard-Complete-Authoritative-Script/dp/1932907017/ref=sr_1_13/102-1428259-1639342?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183671985&sr=8-13) that has all the rules for formatting that the software will get wrong (MSWord does this too, espeically with passive voice. I write, not the software).

Kind of essential to use Final Draft these days, though, isn't it? I don't think any producer under age 30 (and so damn many of them *are* under age 30) knows how to open a Word doc.

Wasn't aware of the Hollywood Standard book, though (nor that Final Draft made errors). Good information. :D

Now, I'm of the opinion that screenwriting is just a different form of writing and takes just as much skill and dedication as either poetry or prose.

Absolutely, and they're all equally legit. It's a matter of finding what you're good at.

What's difficult is trying to explain to the layman why you don't "just" switch media anytime you feel like it. :shrug:

[garamet]

One of my Profs always suggested we describe something around us as the first paragraph and expect to edit it out later. Like seeing a coin on the edge of a table or a bird hopping in the grass or uneven mini blinds. Of course he also suggested we write the last page first if we were really stuck, that sometimes knowing how we wanted something to end helped us know how it should start. Yeah right.... I love to write, but it's a LOT of work and I guess I don't love to write that much!

Two more excellent suggestions! And if you want to write, you will (the three examples you give above may seem very Zen, but I bet you could pull a lot more out of them if you wanted to). But if it's not fun, don't do it.

Few things drive me crazier than listening to other writers bitch about how *hard* they work.

Sorry, honey. Driving a truck or working on an assembly line is *hard work*. What you do may challenge your skills and your self-discipline, but if all it is for you is *work*, then do us all a favor and go prune the roses or some damn thing. :rant:

It's gotta be fun first and foremost, because the time invested vs. the monetary expectation is not what it's about.

Do you ever get 40 pages into a book and realize it's so dull or poorly written or both that you have no idea whats going on? Do you (would you) set it aside and pick up something else? My personal motto lately has been that life is too short for cheap chocolate and boring books.

:diacanu:
mm

All the g-damn time. :bash:

Once you write, you lose patience with other writers very quickly. I'll seldom even last 40 pages. Can't draw me in in 10-20 pages? Buh-bye.

The other thing that drives me bonkers is typos and errors. The more pricey books get, it seems, the less likely they are to be properly copy editing or even proofed.

If there's one error on the page, I'll find it, and it immediately breaks the mood. A dozen or more errors in a book, and I'm reading to hunt the editor down and do him serious bodily harm... :garamet:

[missmanners]

Few things drive me crazier than listening to other writers bitch about how *hard* they work.

Sorry, honey. Driving a truck or working on an assembly line is *hard work*. What you do may challenge your skills and your self-discipline, but if all it is for you is *work*, then do us all a favor and go prune the roses or some damn thing. :rant:

It's gotta be fun first and foremost, because the time invested vs. the monetary expectation is not what it's about.


Maybe saying I'm lazy and lack the discipline would be a better choice of words than "hard work". And that I realized no matter what I write, there is a little too much of me showing up that I'd rather others didn't see.

All the g-damn time. :bash:

Once you write, you lose patience with other writers very quickly. I'll seldom even last 40 pages. Can't draw me in in 10-20 pages? Buh-bye.

The other thing that drives me bonkers is typos and errors. The more pricey books get, it seems, the less likely they are to be properly copy editing or even proofed.

If there's one error on the page, I'll find it, and it immediately breaks the mood. A dozen or more errors in a book, and I'm reading to hunt the editor down and do him serious bodily harm... :garamet:

I wonder if WP spell checkers are spoiling everyone? No one really needs to learn how to spell anymore.

:diacanu:
mm

[garamet]

Maybe saying I'm lazy and lack the discipline would be a better choice of words than "hard work". And that I realized no matter what I write, there is a little too much of me showing up that I'd rather others didn't see.



:lol: I think it was D.H. Lawrence who said every writer's first three novels are autobiographical.

[Jeff Cooper Disciple]

If I may without stealing your thunder . . .

Not at all. The more feedback from experienced writers here, the better. ;)

I'm a screenwriter, not a novelist, so the way I write is somewhat different. I normally take some 3x5 notecards and write a few key scenes, normally plot points on them along with whatever other information I need for a particular scene (like if I need the characters to fight a monster, I might describe the monster a little if it makes a idfference). I write an opening scene, the finishing scene, and then I put the cards in order. I'll have maybe 5-10 scenes already done that way, and then I just need to fill in the gaps. I have to make Scene A flow into Scene B. I fill in a few more notecards, one per scene, to fill in the story. Three minutes per scene card and between 30 and 40 cards to get me on the way. The nice thing about using the cards is I can rearrange them as needed or even discard them completely.

Next, I take the cards and flesh them out in a treatment or outline. Each card will get a paragraph or two and depending on how detailed I want my outline or treatment to be, I might throw in some important dialog. Some producers like short treatments (4-5 pages) while others want incredibly detailed 60 pages outlines.

From there, it's just putting words on the page, which for me is the easy, yet the time consuming part. Now, I have to think how I thing the movie would show up on a screne, so I have to think about specific camera angles, I have to think about budgets, I have to think about locations and so on, so in that way it is a bit constricting. If I push myself I can get a first draft done in a week.

Whew - you're so *organized* -! But I'd guess you'd have to be, because of the constraints of the script format. I wouldn't recognize a three-minute scene if I fell over one. Not that I haven't read scripts and, intellectually, understood what a three-minute scene is - but write one? My style isn't nearly as disciplined.

For me the most difficult thing is hacking out an outline to pitch to an editor. How the hell do I know where I'll be by page 311? Novel format allows for a lot of sprawl, and I'll sometimes be anticipating a Great Big Scene and manage to say what I need to say in a couple of paragraphs, or the other way around.

I've often imagined how wonderful it must be to have hundreds of pages to tell a story, even when some page or word count issues are involved. I have maybe 90-120 pages to do the same thing and include all the directions and dialog, camera angles, whatnot to do it in. It's probably a grass is greener over the fence thing, but I do feel very constrained at times trying to tells a good story and rapidly running out of space to do it in.

When I was in one of my screenwriting classes in college, one assignment was to turn a novel into a screenplay. I chose Herman Wouk's Don't Stop the Carnival, which is a fairly short novel of around 300 pages. About a day into the project I found I was tearing my hair out trying to fit everyhting in and when I knew I couldn't I was tearing my hair out trying to decide which plotlines to ditch, which characters to combine or eliminate outright, which dialog I had to change and what to keep. What I ended up with had only a passing resemblance to the original book.

So, different strokes. And for screenwriters, yours is very sound advice. :techman:

I cheat a little bit because I use FinalDraft 7.0 (http://www.finaldraft.com/) to format as I go and I use a book called The Hollywood Standard (http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Standard-Complete-Authoritative-Script/dp/1932907017/ref=sr_1_13/102-1428259-1639342?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183671985&sr=8-13) that has all the rules for formatting that the software will get wrong (MSWord does this too, espeically with passive voice. I write, not the software).

Kind of essential to use Final Draft these days, though, isn't it? I don't think any producer under age 30 (and so damn many of them *are* under age 30) knows how to open a Word doc.

Wasn't aware of the Hollywood Standard book, though (nor that Final Draft made errors). Good information. :D

The thing is, FinalDraft doesn't make big mistakes, and if I didn't know exactly what I was doing, I wouldn't even notice them. Stuff like putting (con't) after a character discription broken up by an action. But if I'm asking someone to like my screenplay enough to spend several million dollars to produce it, it needs to be right and look professional. Believe me, producers will notice formatting mistakes. When I'm William Golding, I can submit a half formatted screenplay and get away with it. LUckily for me, I learned my craft in the days of Word 3.0 when I had to do all the formatting by hand and my professors would tear it apart looking for minor mistakes in margins and the like.

The software makes it so easy to do, but it still makes minor mistakes, not unlike MSWord does with some grammar tenses and sentence fragments and alternate spellings. Not enough that it would make a huge difference, but enough that you need to keep on top of it and trust yourself instead of the software.

Now, I'm of the opinion that screenwriting is just a different form of writing and takes just as much skill and dedication as either poetry or prose.

Absolutely, and they're all equally legit. It's a matter of finding what you're good at.

What's difficult is trying to explain to the layman why you don't "just" switch media anytime you feel like it. :shrug:

Exactly. I had someone who read a screenplay of mine ask me why I don't just write a novel. Well, I can't. They aren't the same beasts any more than painting a house is akin to paining a watercolor. Same basic tools and principles, but totally different methods and skill sets.

[Nautica]

All the g-damn time. :bash:

Once you write, you lose patience with other writers very quickly. I'll seldom even last 40 pages. Can't draw me in in 10-20 pages? Buh-bye.
I'm guessing that you don't read much Tom Clancy then...? Notoriously slow-starting novels!

[garamet]

All the g-damn time. :bash:

Once you write, you lose patience with other writers very quickly. I'll seldom even last 40 pages. Can't draw me in in 10-20 pages? Buh-bye.
I'm guessing that you don't read much Tom Clancy then...? Notoriously slow-starting novels!

I don't mind slow-starting, if it's well written. To me, Clancy is the Hemingway of his generation. And, as Faulkner said of Hemingway, "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to a dictionary."

Clancy's a good, pedestrian writer. Not to my taste. Of course, he's not a functional illiterate like Grisham, but I digress...

[garamet]

Exactly. I had someone who read a screenplay of mine ask me why I don't just write a novel. Well, I can't. They aren't the same beasts any more than painting a house is akin to painting a watercolor. Same basic tools and principles, but totally different methods and skill sets.

And my problem's just the reverse. I need 100 pages or so to build character and momentum and then open the throttle for the next 200-300.

And, yeah, I get that "Well, if it's so hard to sell a novel why dontcha just write scripts?"

Yeahright.

[Gagh]

garamet:

Please give some background as to why the eternally angry KIRK1ADM dislikes you so much, that he spills sorely hackneyed bile onto various BBS every once in a while.

[garamet]

garamet:

Please give some background as to why the eternally angry KIRK1ADM dislikes you so much, that he spills sorely hackneyed bile onto various BBS every once in a while.

Probably a better topic for the RR, although the "eternally angry" part is all you really need to know.

To keep this a Workshop topic, I'll refer you to Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. ;)

[Lanzman]

For me, the first 100 pages are the hardest. That's why I just finished a 40-page story in three months. Kept overwriting and cutting back, overwriting and cutting back. Would have been easier to write a 400-page ms., but the folks who pay me wanted a story for an anthology, and I was happy to be included.

Whoa, there. Hold on. What anthology? Coming out when? Is this what you "teased" about a few weeks back?

[garamet]

^Gotta wait till it's officially announced. ;)

[Lanzman]

:mad:

:bang:

[Paladin]

garamet:

Please give some background as to why the eternally angry KIRK1ADM dislikes you so much, that he spills sorely hackneyed bile onto various BBS every once in a while.
:nono:

[Grammour Boy]

One of my Profs always suggested we describe something around us as the first paragraph and expect to edit it out later. Like seeing a coin on the edge of a table or a bird hopping in the grass or uneven mini blinds. Of course he also suggested we write the last page first if we were really stuck, that sometimes knowing how we wanted something to end helped us know how it should start. Yeah right.... I love to write, but it's a LOT of work and I guess I don't love to write that much!

Do you ever get 40 pages into a book and realize it's so dull or poorly written or both that you have no idea whats going on? Do you (would you) set it aside and pick up something else? My personal motto lately has been that life is too short for cheap chocolate and boring books.

:diacanu:
mm
I have never written a whole book before. I would like to try it someday.

[Gagh]

garamet:

Please give some background as to why the eternally angry KIRK1ADM dislikes you so much, that he spills sorely hackneyed bile onto various BBS every once in a while.
:nono:

I post as I please, so you can cut out the smarmy smileys, and have a neg for your troubles "boss".

[Paladin]

I post as I please
You'll post in accord with the rules. I'll consider any of your future neg-reps on my moderating comments to be a rejection on your part of my friendly advice and, therefore, an invitation to a formal warning.

[Gagh]

I post as I please
You'll post in accord with the rules. I'll consider any of your future neg-reps on my moderating comments to be a rejection on your part of my friendly advice and, therefore, an invitation to a formal warning.

And the next time you PM me a threat, I'll respond in kind - end of story.

[Paladin]

I post as I please
You'll post in accord with the rules. I'll consider any of your future neg-reps on my moderating comments to be a rejection on your part of my friendly advice and, therefore, an invitation to a formal warning.
And the next time you PM me a threat, I'll respond in kind - end of story.
If you feel you have been threatened, you should immediately take the matter up with the management. If a threat was PM'd to you, it should be very easy to prove. However, I doubt what you received from me will qualify, especially when it is compared to post #228.

Contact me via PM for any further discussion or open a new thread in the Help Desk. This thread is not the place for it.

[Faceman]

I post as I please
You'll post in accord with the rules. I'll consider any of your future neg-reps on my moderating comments to be a rejection on your part of my friendly advice and, therefore, an invitation to a formal warning.

You'll warn him for neg repping you? You'll warn him for disagreeing with you? Are you serious?

[garamet]

^Take it outside. :garamet:

[Jeff Cooper Disciple]

[quote=Wilbury;1298911]I cheat a little bit because I use FinalDraft 7.0 (http://www.finaldraft.com/) to format as I go and I use a book called The Hollywood Standard (http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Standard-Complete-Authoritative-Script/dp/1932907017/ref=sr_1_13/102-1428259-1639342?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183671985&sr=8-13) that has all the rules for formatting that the software will get wrong (MSWord does this too, espeically with passive voice. I write, not the software).

Kind of essential to use Final Draft these days, though, isn't it? I don't think any producer under age 30 (and so damn many of them *are* under age 30) knows how to open a Word doc.

Wasn't aware of the Hollywood Standard book, though (nor that Final Draft made errors). Good information. :D

I was rereading this thread and wanted to address this since missed it the first time I replyed to this post for some read. :unsure:

Anyways, the basic ways to submit a screenplay are :
1) Hardcopy. Print out a copy of your screenplay and put it in the mail. This is expensive, but traditional and there is something cool about reading paper instead of looking at a screen.

2) PDF. Save your work as a PDF and email it.

3) Screenwriting program format. FinalDraft is the industry standard and you can save your file in the format and email it out that way. I understand that other popular programs are also accepted, but have no experience with them.

I actually will do a combination of the three. I'll send a hardcopy version with the same file in PDF on a CD in the same package. I don't regularly send by email unless requested to do so.

I don't send anything in any other formats like MSWord or WordPerfect or anything like that. I'm sure I could, but I've never needed to.

As far as getting the screenwriting software, I dropped the money on FinalDraft, which is in my opinion the best of the lot, but it isn't the only fish in the sea. Some programs (like Movie Magic an ScriptWare) are designed as screenwriting sftware, while others work within MSWord. Some are free and some are shareware and some cost money. If you know what you're doing, you can write macros for MSWord to do the same things the screenwriting software does to a point. One of the nice things FinalDraft will do is save my files as PDFs, track version changes, allow me to do all the behind the scenes stuff like production cards, and will read it back to me with a bad computerized voice.

As far as getting noticed, good luck. You can try to sell a spec script directly to a producer, but as an unknown without knowing anyone in the business, it isn't going to happen realistically. Stories about people like the guy who wrote The Usual Suspects managing to do that are the exception that makes the rule. But, try anyways. You might just get lucky.

If you have a good enough screenplay, enter a competition or two. Prizes include not just money but the chance to meet producers and the like. You can try to find an agent, but without already having sold one, no agent will talk to you. It's a kind of a catch-22 situation. You can't get an agent without selling a screenplay, but you can't sell a screenplay without having an agent.

Get yourself a copy of the Hollywood Creative Directory which is a listing of pretty much every producer and production company out there. Send query letters. Smaller production companies might be interested. http://shop.hcdonline.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc It's expensive, but necessary if you aren't known. I still use it since I'm not a household name for independant projects.

Know who you're selling to and what you're selling. Don't write a screenplay that would cost $150,000,000 to produce and expect to sell it to a production company that makes little more than art films. Action films and comedies sell. Art house films and period pieces don't sell. Dramas are hard to sell, but they do eventually if you have a good one. Have an idea about budgets and know that no matter who buys it the budget will be a deciding factor. You might have the best screenplay ever written but if it would take $150,000,000 to make, forget it. Cheaper is better.

Don't follow trends. If buddy cop films are hot right now, don't even think about writing a buddy cop film. There are already a bunch in various stages of production and when they quit being popular, those projects die quickly. This doesn't mean don't try to sell something you have, but it does mean don't follow the bandwagon.

Write the movie you would want to see. This isn't work for you yet, so write from your heart. Write what you're passionate about, even if it's crap to the rest of the world. This doesn't mean you're going to have an easier time breaking into the industry, but it does mean you won't be bored writing.

Once you've sold it, it's gone. Don't get emotionally attached to it because it will change once it's in a producer's hands. It's like selling a used car: once you have the money, what they do with it is no longer something you can control. It hurts to see a project you've worked long and hard on fucked up because a director thinks he knows a better way to tell your story, but unless you have final script approval in your contract, and good luck getting that, there's nothing you can do. You won't be invited to the set because the expectation is you'll yell when you see what the director and producer have done to your work. You might write a screenplay, sell it, and then the producers will have it rewritten and the end result will be nothing like what you sold.

There will be some very nasty critcism of your work and many of the producers are abusive. Even when they want something rewritten, they might not tell you exactly what they didn't like. Do the best you can dealing with this situation, but losing your temper won't help. I'll never work for a certain big name producer because I lost my temper.

Get used to the idea that you'll write a lot that nobody will want. I've written 20+ full length screenplays that I haven't been able to sell. I've written some that have that I thought were inferior to what didn't. It happens. In the meantime, you have to eat so write on the side until you can afford to write full time.

I've written several independent films, done some rewrites on projects, and a few other projects, and just got my break working on a TV show. I have my WGA card, but I also write non-guild work on the side. This is very dangerous and can result in being kicked out of the guild. If you do this, be careful. I write pornographic films because they are quick and easy to write.

EDIT: Wow. I wanted to address one little point and ended up with the longest post on my stay here.

[garamet]

^Excellent, excellent post. IMO, it should be split off into its own thread, maybe even pinned as "Ask Wilbury" or "Ask the Screenwriters," since we've got several here.

* garamet heads for the Help Desk...

[JUSTLEE]

How long does it take you write a full novel? Does the length of time change from each novel? Do you have a specific schedule that you use when writing or do you just write on the fly as it were? What's the fastest amount of time that you written a book in?

[garamet]

How long does it take you write a full novel? Does the length of time change from each novel? Do you have a specific schedule that you use when writing or do you just write on the fly as it were? What's the fastest amount of time that you written a book in?

As I've probably said before, I'm a very slow writer. Standard novel deadlines are a year, and it takes me that year to write a full-length (100,000-125,000-word) novel.

Wrote some YA novels under a pseudonym (six authors in the series, but the publisher wanted us all writing under one made-up name) once. They averaged 30,000 words and took about 3-4 months each (some required more research than others).

The shorter the format, the more difficult it is for me. Took me two months to write a 10,000 short story, because I kept overwriting and having to cut back.

I did knock out a novel from someone else's screenplay in under six months, but that was a little different.

I started writing when my kids were infants, so my writing schedule was "whenever they finally go to bed." Nowadays it's "whenever I have the time."

Some writers can only work on a set schedule. I actually find that defeating.

[NAHTMMM]

Wrote some YA novels under a pseudonym (six authors in the series, but the publisher wanted us all writing under one made-up name) once. They averaged 30,000 words and took about 3-4 months each (some required more research than others).

Does that happen very often, do you know?

[garamet]

Wrote some YA novels under a pseudonym (six authors in the series, but the publisher wanted us all writing under one made-up name) once. They averaged 30,000 words and took about 3-4 months each (some required more research than others).

Does that happen very often, do you know?

Historically, as I understand it, some Young Adult series are created by one or two writers writing under a pseudonym and remain the sole property of that writer or writers, whereas others are the result of a sort of group-mind of several writers, each of whom would only earn royalties from the individual books they wrote.

This was my one and only venture into the arena, and it was pretty much of a disaster.

The series was called The Young Astronauts. It was conceived by the late columnist Jack Anderson, who hired a writer to develop the concept of a group of teenagers colonizing Mars.

Now, never mind that the basic premise was flawed. You can't send growing kids on a six-month zero-gee flight to settle on a planet with less than Earth gravity unless you want to turn them into cripples.

Never mind that the "research materials" we were given to work with consisted solely of an article someone had cut out of an issue of Scientific American.

There were, IIRC, five or six writers involved, and we maintained a correspondence (some of us sans Internet access) and helped each other with research and continuity.

This was meant to be an open-ended series that Anderson, as founder of the Young Astronauts Council, promised he would flak to the YA clubs and at every public appearance he made, and use his celebrity status to guarantee placement in every bookstore chain in the country, as well as at the Smithsonian and various NASA venues.

By the time the first mss. were delivered, Mr. Anderson had gotten bored and moved on to other things.

The series ended at nine books, with only the first six ever actually reaching publication (I wrote #4 and #6, though we all used the pseudonym "Rick North"), and nary a one of us ever saw a dime beyond the advance.

Not that that's unusual, but it's usually the publisher that drops the ball, not some Big Ego who motivates the publisher toward huge outlays of revenue and then says "Fuck you all, I need a nap."

That doesn't even begin to tell the story of the poor shlub who ghosted Anderson's novel Millennium...

[NAHTMMM]

Now, never mind that the basic premise was flawed. You can't send growing kids on a six-month zero-gee flight to settle on a planet with less than Earth gravity unless you want to turn them into cripples.
Not to mention handing over such responsibility to a bunch of teenagers . . . but I guess you write for your audience.

Never mind that the "research materials" we were given to work with consisted solely of an article someone had cut out of an issue of Scientific American.
Now that's just wrong. :lol:

[JUSTLEE]

How often do you rewrite your original manuscripts? Do you rewrite the who manuscript or just portions of it?

[garamet]

^I rewrite constantly. That's why it takes me so long. I'll rough out 3-10 pages, print 'em, scratch all over 'em, rewrite, rinse, repeat.

Sometimes there'll be one word in the middle of the page that bothers me. It has to go. Even back in the day of typewriters, carbon paper and white-out. Of course, then I used to write first drafts in long-hand, too.

Some passages run smoothly for a couple of pages with no changes. Others need hacking at again and again. And if I have time before my deadline, I'll let the entire ms. "breathe" for a couple of weeks to a month, reread it all in one sitting, scribble in the changes and give it one more pass through the wringer.

Wish I could be more facile, but I seem to have the writer's equivalent of perfect pitch. If it doesn't sound right, I literally wince when I read it, and it has to be tuned.

[Lanzman]

I've always heard that it's best to go all the way thru your story before doing any rewrites. Don't obsess over each paragraph or you'll never get finished.

Obviously you still get finished. Hmmm . . .

[garamet]

^Yeah, but that's why I'm so slow.

However, sometimes my plots get so convoluted I can't remember where I am unless I keep rereading. And when I reread, I tinker.

Not the most efficient way, but eventually I get 'er done.

[tafkats]

It's more or less off-topic for the forum, but why "Tony Hillerman's bag lady"? (I love Hillerman, but if it's a reference to something in one of his books, it's either a book I haven't read or a character I've forgotten.)

[garamet]

^It's from a quote of his in the "Writers on Writing" thread. ;)

It also steals the thunder from the little boy trolls.

[Lanzman]

It's been some time now since Burning Dreams came out. How's the sales look on that?

[garamet]

It's been some time now since Burning Dreams came out. How's the sales look on that?

It's gone into a second printing, so that's good news. :)

[Ramen]

How long are ya gonna be gone? :walz:

[Lanzman]

None of that. :nono:

Thread closed until Garamet returns. If she does. :calli:

[Lanzman]

Thread re-opened.