Camp NaNoWriMo (July 2018)

[Valka D'Ur]

I don't participate in this writing event but would it be possible to get my (very incomplete and equally rough) manuscript reviewed at CFC by somebody?

Sure, no problem.

How long is it?

 

[caketastydelish]

you never got back to me, but I suppose it doesn't matter. New problem:

I've reached a point where I'm beginning to realize I'm pretty good at coming with an idea for a story and writing it down (first rough draft territory) but terrible at polishing or embellishing it past first rough draft stage. Any ideas on polishing a first rough draft? Or writing a second draft that is an improvement over the first?

 

[Synobun]

Read through it and use the comments system in your word processor of choice to make notes on weak sections, things that need clarification, etc. You can also use a colour highlighting system to rank passages from weak to solid to [remove].

You might need to do that twice.

Then rewrite based on your draft and the notes. Specifically rewrite. From there you'll have a much better idea of what needs doing.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

you never got back to me, but I suppose it doesn't matter. New problem:

I've reached a point where I'm beginning to realize I'm pretty good at coming with an idea for a story and writing it down (first rough draft territory) but terrible at polishing or embellishing it past first rough draft stage. Any ideas on polishing a first rough draft? Or writing a second draft that is an improvement over the first?

My apologies. I got really sidetracked, writing-wise.

All of my NaNoWriMo material is still basically first-draft, including the one I actually did finish (Caverns of the Snow Witch). I did some polishing as I went along, but not a major amount. NaNoWriMo isn't about the final draft anyway. It's intended to encourage people to get that first draft going, and polish it later (they do encourage people to work on that in the off-months between official NaNo events).

One of my first internet friends was already a writer of articles and he created a webcomic called Fuzzy Knights. He was ambitious to become a novelist, and really determined to make a professional sale. So what he did was gather a group of people to help him do that. There were three or four of us who did that - reading draft after draft, offering comments and suggestions not only of the story, but also of the various cover letters and correspondence with potential agents.

My part in all this was grammar, punctuation, spelling, format... the technical stuff. He was living in London at the time, so when we had our email discussions over semi-colons and where to put the quotation marks and commas in dialogue, it was his lunch break and 3 am for me.

We did use the method Synsensa describes, and our group made it through six drafts of the novel (I still have a copy and still enjoy it).

In the end, it's not the first one the agent wanted to promote, but it was the one that was the learning experience for all of us.

 

[caketastydelish]

Read through it and use the comments system in your word processor of choice to make notes on weak sections, things that need clarification, etc. You can also use a colour highlighting system to rank passages from weak to solid to [remove].

You might need to do that twice.

Then rewrite based on your draft and the notes. Specifically rewrite. From there you'll have a much better idea of what needs doing.

by "rewrite" you mean ditch the original rough draft entirely and just start over?

 

[Synobun]

by "rewrite" you mean ditch the original rough draft entirely and just start over?

Not ditch. If your first draft is clean and structurally sound, large swathes of your rewrite will be a word-for-word match. You'll write from scratch, though.

The reason for this is that editing inside the draft can create more problems than it solves. You can make a change to a chapter and then find out down the road that this change contradicts another part of the story or just outright doesn't make sense.

Depending on how you write, your first draft is essentially the detailed version of your outline. Your rewrite will cut out the filler and add the spices. One author I worked with did seven rewrites before they finally sent it to an editor.

I "work" as an editor. Quotation marks because my literary experience is less than a dozen books. With the manuscripts I've worked with from the beginning, some of the first drafts began as 120k words and ended up at 80k after a rewrite. A lot can get cut, and you'll find that some segments don't need to be nearly as long once you've figured out why some plot points are drawn out or otherwise beating around the bush.

 

[Synobun]

Also, what goes unsaid: The more you write your story, the better you know it. Every rewrite lets you phrase things a little better than the last time. Again, depending on your first draft and how you write, that can differ. You'll get diminishing returns after a certain point.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Also, what goes unsaid: The more you write your story, the better you know it. Every rewrite lets you phrase things a little better than the last time. Again, depending on your first draft and how you write, that can differ. You'll get diminishing returns after a certain point.

This is true, but you have to temper that with keeping in mind that while you are beginning to know your story really well, the audience is not inside your head and won't necessarily read between the same lines you do.

For example, my aforementioned Caverns of the Snow Witch is a prose fanfic adaptation of a Fighting Fantasy gamebook which uses a system that's far simpler than Dungeons & Dragons - but that doesn't mean the world of Titan and its three main continents of Allansia, the Old World, and Khul aren't complex places with plenty of scope for stories. People who first get into FF and expect a D&D kind of story will be disappointed because while the basic theme is the same - fantasy RPG - how it's presented is quite different.

Even veteran FF players would need a bit of background when reading my stories because I don't follow the "official" FF chronology. For story purposes I've mixed things up quite a bit, created a slew of new characters and various towns and villages, and honestly don't care if one of the official characters turns up centuries out of time or some of the "established" events are out of order. Some of the gamebooks did turn out to be connected, and if I end up using the same set of characters to connect them, so be it. I can't assume other FF readers will know this, so some background is required.

Some things do have to be explained (ideally within the story, not as an "info dump" or an "as you know, blah-blah-blah" kind of exposition), so keep in mind that you'll need to find ways and places to do that.

Of course I'm looking at this from a SF/F point of view, or any other genre that doesn't take place in the "here and now" of modern society where there are a lot of things that don't need extra explanations because the reading public is already familiar with it.

 

[caketastydelish]

Also, what goes unsaid: The more you write your story, the better you know it. Every rewrite lets you phrase things a little better than the last time. Again, depending on your first draft and how you write, that can differ. You'll get diminishing returns after a certain point.

I want the novel to be maybe 80,000 words and I have about 14k so far

Rewrite some of what I have so far, or stick with the first rough draft until I’ve hit the 80,000 mark ?

 

[Synobun]

Oh, you've just started?

Yeah. Just stick with it. Don't bother editing at all until you're finished. Only start over if you're deeply unhappy with what you have (e.g. you don't like the plot) or you're switching narrative styles (like perspective or tense).

 

[caketastydelish]

I’m trouble with a fine line or happy medium between two things.

One criticism I had (and this person extremely harsh) was that a lot of it simply wasn’t believable.

My argument was 1) the premise of the entire story is an Italian American with a criminal background who has a Roman ancestor whom he comes to terms with near the end.

That being said, if this is the kind of book where the reader has to make that stretch of the imagination in the first place, then it’s not going to attract readers who want something “believable”.

My second point is that tons of wildly popular books are not even remotely believable (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

This is a pulp book with history and a lot of shock value comedy. The shock value comedy includes things that would never happen in real life, and are definitely not “believable”. The question is would I improve it by not even trying to be funny and make it more realistic, or stick with what I’m doing?

 

[Synobun]

What kind of book do you want to write? That's really the first consideration you need to square. If you want to write a book that isn't believable, then the criticism that it isn't believable should go through one ear and out the other.

 

[caketastydelish]

Ultimately I just want something entertaining that will captivate the reader regardless of whether it’s believable or not.

Should I ignore the criticism entirely and say that she was just not the target audience ?

 

[Synobun]

Depends on whether or not the criticism is applicable to what you're trying to accomplish. You could criticize a romance novel set in slice-of-life Wisconsin because it doesn't have enough mentions of corruption in Nigerian journalism but such a criticism can be safely discarded without concern.

 

[caketastydelish]

Considering not only do you have experience in the field but you clearly know what you’re talking about:

Mind looking at it yourself? I have it on google docs and can send it to you when I get home and have access to my computer.

 

[Synobun]

Sure. 14k should be a quick and easy read. It will probably be Sunday or Monday when I get back to you though.

 

[caketastydelish]

Thanks I’ll give you a pm

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Should I ignore the criticism entirely and say that she was just not the target audience?

Pretty much, yeah. Not everyone is going to like everything. I'm into fantasy, but not all kinds of fantasy. Zombies, for instance, are totally out. And while I'm not into Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel, I love The Crow: Stairway to Heaven and the Highlander series (along with the spinoff Highlander: The Raven). I'd actually started a crossover fanfic in which Amanda meets Eric Draven. I should see if I've still got the notes around somewhere and finish that - all the while keeping in mind that if/when it does get finished and edited to my satisfaction and posted somewhere, my target audience is going to be Crow and Highlander fans and people who aren't into those shows might not like it.

It doesn't mean the story itself is bad (though it might have other problems that need fixing). It just means you are dealing with a reader who's not into that kind of story.