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What book is everyone writing right now?

Got a mystery going to beta readers soon. This is a departure from my usual genres, so we'll see how it goes over.
 
Frozenwolf150 said:
I still just don't have the motivation to write. Everything I've tried has turned out looking like crap. I have a collection of short stories written for a class last year and I haven't even bothered searching for publications that might print them. I'm not interested and I don't see the point. This is to say nothing of the novel that I've postponed indefinitely after scrapping the original draft.

I don't even know why I'm posting this here right now. Right now it feels like there's nobody who shares my interests, or could relate to my situation. I'll put this out there regardless: It's YA urban fantasy, with themes of coping with loss, finding oneself, and science vs. supernatural. Yes, I do have a pitch for the book, but given that it's unwritten, I don't know if I should share it.
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Are you familiar with the Seven Point Story? It is the, for lack of a better word, formula for most fiction. Doing the seven point outline will help give your story form. It's
1. Hook draw reader in, or man bites dog quality, makes you want to read more
2. Plot twist 1 changes the main character's direction
3. Pinch 1 forces main character action
4. Mid point main character stops being acted upon and starts being taking action.
5. Plot twist 2 moves the story along.
6. Pinch 2 forces character action
7. Resolution, character clutches victory from jaws of defeat (and the teeth on those jaws had better be razor sharp.
 
Thanks for the responses.

I have written crappy drafts. The first one meandered and was three times the normal length of a novel. The second one was full of hatchet marks where I tried desperately to trim it down. The third one was so far removed from my original vision that it collapsed when I made any attempts to fix it further, and I had to scrap the whole thing.

I guess my greatest anxiety is that I don't want to go through all that again and find out it was for naught. The only good news is that I haven't forgotten about it completely, and have been coming up with new character ideas, themes, and story concepts I find interesting. So far, that's the only thing that's kept this alive.
 
Frozenwolf150 said:
Thanks for the responses.

I have written crappy drafts. The first one meandered and was three times the normal length of a novel. The second one was full of hatchet marks where I tried desperately to trim it down. The third one was so far removed from my original vision that it collapsed when I made any attempts to fix it further, and I had to scrap the whole thing.

I guess my greatest anxiety is that I don't want to go through all that again and find out it was for naught. The only good news is that I haven't forgotten about it completely, and have been coming up with new character ideas, themes, and story concepts I find interesting. So far, that's the only thing that's kept this alive.
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If it makes you feel any better I've been working on my book for sixteen years, have rewritten it completely six times, and there's still days I think it's awful and consider just abandoning it.

There is a saying in the film industry that films aren't finished; they're abandoned. I think it's equally true of novels. You'll never, ever be satisfied with it. But what I've learned over the years is that it is almost certainly better than you think it is.
 
gumboot said:
If it makes you feel any better I've been working on my book for sixteen years, have rewritten it completely six times, and there's still days I think it's awful and consider just abandoning it.

There is a saying in the film industry that films aren't finished; they're abandoned. I think it's equally true of novels. You'll never, ever be satisfied with it. But what I've learned over the years is that it is almost certainly better than you think it is.
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Agreed. This book of mine that's going to beta - I wrote it 15 years ago. It's gone through a ton of revision since then, and I'm not sure it will ever be good enough to be published (which is what I'll find out from beta). But it's good practice when I don't have anything else to work on at the moment.
 
Frozenwolf150 said:
Thanks for the responses.

I have written crappy drafts. The first one meandered and was three times the normal length of a novel. The second one was full of hatchet marks where I tried desperately to trim it down. The third one was so far removed from my original vision that it collapsed when I made any attempts to fix it further, and I had to scrap the whole thing.

I guess my greatest anxiety is that I don't want to go through all that again and find out it was for naught. The only good news is that I haven't forgotten about it completely, and have been coming up with new character ideas, themes, and story concepts I find interesting. So far, that's the only thing that's kept this alive.
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Use the Seven point story as an outline and your draft won't meander. Meandering is a common problem for stories that don't have an outline. Try an Excel spreadsheet for your outline and the subplots. It will help keep you focused.
 
Tomtomkent said:
So how easy is this kindle direct publishing for a leyman to use?
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Very. However, there are a few things you need to do. Be sure to read, and follow, their formatting guide. Also, I'd suggest downloading the free Smashwords formatting guide, ignoring the parts about Smashwords (unless you are going to be using them) and looking at their suggestions for causing Word to do what you want it to do in Kindle and other ebook formats. Embed fonts, etc. Keep things simple, learn how to create a clickable table of contents, eliminate headers and footers, and you've pretty much got it.

Creating your own paperback is considerably more time-consuming, but still very doable. I was dissatisfied with my publisher's formatting, so began exploring this stuff myself and found out I could do it - much- better. Make sure you check EVERY page before okaying it and get a proof copy.

And it goes without saying, but I'll say it - have someone proof & edit your manuscript first.
 
Craig4 said:
Use the Seven point story as an outline and your draft won't meander. Meandering is a common problem for stories that don't have an outline. Try an Excel spreadsheet for your outline and the subplots. It will help keep you focused.
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It was outlined, almost obsessively, down to the last detail. So I thought I knew what I was doing. It only meandered in retrospect, and I use that term because it's the only way I can explain the excessive length of the first draft. I kind of got carried away, and yet I don't know if that's a good or a bad sign. The passion to write this thing is no longer there, because I know now what can go wrong.

I suppose it would help to set goals for myself. Joyce is a huge inspiration and one of my more significant influences, so my first goal would be to finish my current reading of Ulysses. Yes, this is for a children's story.
 
Frozenwolf150 said:
It was outlined, almost obsessively, down to the last detail. So I thought I knew what I was doing. It only meandered in retrospect, and I use that term because it's the only way I can explain the excessive length of the first draft. I kind of got carried away, and yet I don't know if that's a good or a bad sign. The passion to write this thing is no longer there, because I know now what can go wrong.

I suppose it would help to set goals for myself. Joyce is a huge inspiration and one of my more significant influences, so my first goal would be to finish my current reading of Ulysses. Yes, this is for a children's story.
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Then the other common problem is that you have stuff in the outline that doesn't serve the story. Read the first two Harry Potter books (I'm serious). Note at the end how there's nothing there that doesn't add to the resolution. Go back and look for things in your drafts that don't add to your resolution.
 
To tell you the truth, I wanted them to be in the same spirit as HP, as those were among my original inspiration, although a ton of would-be authors have said the same thing. I had modeled them after the HP books in terms of story structure and even some of the themes. However, I can't keep trying to "write the next Harry Potter" as my story needs an identity of its own, and every other YA author is trying to do the same thing regardless. I'll keep that in mind though.
 
You need a simple premise, and then work from there. One of the novels I'm working on involves a situation where a cat brings home an injured woodland faerie, and the residents of the house have to deal with having a somewhat dangerous, decidedly intelligent mythical creature dropped in the middle of their lives. It started from the simple musing about what would I do if I woke up and discovered one of my cats had left me a faerie as a present on my pillow.

Hilarity and action ensues.

Beanbag
 
I've read a couple books lately that suffered from I've-got-tons-of-great-ideas-let's-throw-them-all-in-one-book syndrome. Just think, if you can roll out the ideas into two or more separate books, you'll have...two or more books nearly written!
 
Beanbag said:
You need a simple premise, and then work from there. One of the novels I'm working on involves a situation where a cat brings home an injured woodland faerie, and the residents of the house have to deal with having a somewhat dangerous, decidedly intelligent mythical creature dropped in the middle of their lives. It started from the simple musing about what would I do if I woke up and discovered one of my cats had left me a faerie as a present on my pillow.

Hilarity and action ensues.

Beanbag
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I love this premise. Will it be a book or a screenplay?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I love this premise. Will it be a book or a screenplay?
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It started out as a treatment FOR a screenplay. An agent told me a production house was looking for something family-oriented. When they read the treatment, they declined, saying they were looking for something a little more in the slasher/horror vein.

I'm NOT joking: a family-oriented slasher/horror film.

Anyhow, as I was working on the treatment, I realized I had LOTS more material than I could fit into 90-120 pages. Plus, there was the limitation in screenplays where you can only SAY or SHOW something -- you can't get into the character's heads like you can a novel (sorry, voice-overs tend to be a sign of fundamental flaws in your screenplay). It works out really well to use the faerie's thoughts to make comments on the human condition. Plus the single-mom next-door neighbor has a ten-year-old daughter (man, that's a LOT of hyphens in the first part of this sentence) who has probably the most "adult" reactions to the situation, mainly expressed through her internal dialog as she watches what's happening.

This could run on for quite a few novels. The rough idea for the second novel is that when you've got one mythical creature around, it tends to attract others: some nice, some not so nice. Gnomes, for instance, are sort of the trailer trash or that slightly-wacked-out-uncle of the mythical kingdom. They spend all their time eating ants, getting intoxicated on the formic acid, and suddenly you have all these naked trolls lolling around the yard and eating all your bars of cocoanut soap, hiccuping soap bubbles.

Then there's that mysterious thing living in a burrow down by the pond. No one's actually SEEN it, but if you fall asleep while fishing on the bank, you'll wake up to find it has swiped your cold pint of buttermilk and left an earthenware jug of the most ambrosial liquer in trade.

As I said, this can go on for quite a while.

Beanbag
 
To be honest, it's more than just simple writer's block. My depression has gotten in the way. What once served as inspiration, allowing me to delve into the darkest regions of the human psyche and bring them into the light, is now my biggest obstacle. Writing used to be therapeutic for me, now it's a painful ordeal. Half of the poems I write nowadays are about my frustrations in writing.
 
My son came in as a runner up in a flash poetry contest. They don't have the winners posted yet but they sent him an email.

Sherman Alexie: FallsApart Poetry Contest #1

They only took the first 50 entries and he said he had to type like mad to get his entry in.

The rules included:
1. The competing poets must use these 5 words in their poems: robust, apple, hate, skyscraper, and lavender.
2. The poem must be ten lines or less.
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The email they sent him said he was a runner up within the top 5 so he says that's one winner and 4 people tied for second place. :p

I'm not familiar with Sherman Alexie, but he's a moderately well known poet and author.

My son is always surprising me with his knowledge of writing. The other day we were discussing Octavia Butler's "Kindred" which I was almost finished reading. I mentioned I was having a bit of trouble accepting that the protagonist would have had kindred feelings for the antagonist (she's a black woman married to a white man in 1976 and is repeatedly pulled back in time to the Antebellum South into the life of a slave.) That's when my son surprised me with a discussion of an author using the tactic to keep the difference between all good and all bad sharp and prominent. He suggested Butler wanted both characters to be distinct moral opposites.

I do hope he'll agree to be a beta reader for my books. He has excellent literary insight.
 
Frozenwolf150 said:
To be honest, it's more than just simple writer's block. My depression has gotten in the way.
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I can appreciate this. I've found it really, really hard to get much writing done this year, as I stress and get depressed about the state of the industry.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I'm not familiar with Sherman Alexie, but he's a moderately well known poet and author.
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He's a First Nations poet, author, and filmmaker from the Pacific Northwest. The movie Smoke Signals is one I highly recommend watching, and is adapted from his short story collection "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven".
 
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