Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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Vanessa99

Re: a few suggestions?

What works for me that might work for you:

*Background Music: I find that whatever music is in the background gives a feeling to my writing. So if your writing a horror scene play scary music. Trying to get a homey feeling go country or whatever portrays the mood you are trying to create in your writing.

*Don't edit until your finished. You may change certain parts or delete them entirely making the editing of those parts pointless.

*The ideal chapter: For me personally the ideal chapter is around 12-15 pages. For others it may be different. I usually like to stop reading after I've finished whatever chapter I was on. But I don't always want to read another thirty pages.

*Don't make each scene a chapter. Divide scenes by using two spaces and three asteriks centered between the two spaces. Or some other method.

*It really helps to plan. If you don't know where the story is going its really hard to create symbolism and foreshadowing.

*Write the major scenes first- those will be the bones of your writing. Then write the things that happen inbetween to tie it all together.

*I agree the radio should be off.

*Don't use subtitles in your writing. I've seen this done in a book. Where someone writes what a foreign person is saying in the spanish or some other language and then write translation: the words in english underneath. It's distracting.

*Avoid giving characters similar sounding names. Eg. Tim and Tom. Anna and Andrea. Margery and Margeret. It's easy to confuse them.

*Perfect Characters can be very boring.
 

LiamJackson

Re: a few suggestions?

In support of Venessa's comment on music:

Never underestimate the power of music's influence on writing. I'm sure there are some that'll disagree, but I've a feeling that far more will support the statement. Most of the course-ware material that I write can be considered dry, hard-science, but music can definitely influence my presentation of the material.

I can see more of a distinct impact on my fiction writing, when listening to certain music.

Just my 2 bits.
 

AnneStJohn

Re: a few suggestions?

For me, the radio and TV are always off, but my CD player is always on when I write. I also enjoy writing music into my stories- a song is on the radio during a discussion between two characters, a song can be heard in the distance during some activity, something like that. Music is too much a part of the process for me to leave it out. I have a 6-disc CD changer and I know how long I've been writing when I hear the same CD again.
Anne
 

Dancre

Re: a few suggestions?

I can't have any music or tv. but i do use my fan to drown out any outside noise.
kim
 

Mario Milosevic

courier

Donald Maass is a literary agent. In his book The Career Novelist he is very explicit on the subject of courier. He says any writer who expects to be taken seriously and professionally should absolutely use courier on every manuscript submission. Big time publishers want and expect it. If you don't use it, you run the risk of being taken as an amateur, which is the kiss of death to any submission.

For my own part, I have copy-edited manuscripts in courier and manuscripts in non-mono-spaced fonts. Hands down the easiest ones to work with were the ones in courier. You can see every letter and every punctuation mark much more clearly. Also, typesetting from courier is much easier on the eyes than typesetting from times or some other font. These are important considerations for when the manuscript goes into production. Times may be easier to read (although that is debatable), but courier is much easier to SEE, which are two very different things.
 

sugarmuffin

Where is Uncle Jim?

Come towards the light!

Come towards the liiiiiiiight.........!!!!!!!!!
 

qatz

Re: Who is Uncle Jim?

i usedda know a guy named uncle jim ... he wuz a friend a swift eddie labanza and earl "vengeance" correlli ... i tink dey took im out in da Valentines Day Massacree, 2004 ... wit zuchini sticks ... it wuz awful ... dat de one you mean?
 

Feezle the weezle

Ok so......

Hey Jim,
Love the board - great info.

Here's my question:

So i've finished my first attempt at a novel. NOW WHAT!?
How do I effectively get it out there?
I thought about self publishing... or what about an agent?
What are the best odds for someone like me?
perhaps a little road map for us newbies...


Thanks Jimbo.
 

Tamara Siler Jones

New Arrival

Hello Uncle Jim!

It's a pleasure to meet you and I've enjoyed the thread so far. I just wanted to say that I recently sold my first novel and your advice and tips are spot-on and absolutely correct. Understanding the rules and truths of publishing helped me get an agent and helped my book sell. You're giving everyone an invaluable insight into this crazy business.

Thank you!

Tamara Siler Jones
Ghosts in the Snow
Bantam Dell - Nov. 2004
 

James D Macdonald

The Mid-Book

Congrats, Tamara!

(Where I've been the last couple of ... days? Yesterday morning I was a guest instructor at the US Coast Guard Academy in the morning, and at two classes at UConn in the afternoon. Before that, I'd spent the weekend in Boston (fans! editors! expense-account dinners! alcohol!) doing professional things.)

Okay, brags and boasts aside....

Shall we talk briefly about the Mid-Book?

That's the dreadful, long, trudgingly weary part of the novel that comes between the opening and the climax.

You have to have this part of the book for several reasons. First, you want to have your novel be novel-length, right? The mid-book keeps the covers from getting too close together. Second, the climax of a novel is bigger and more complex (and operates on more levels) than the climax of a short story. Setting up a climax like that takes time and verbiage. The mid-book is where it happens. Third, the experience of a novel involves getting to know the characters. Your readers can't do that without spending time with those characters.

Still, the mid-book is hard to write, at least for me. The joyful exhilaration of the opening is gone. The slam-bang heady excitement of the climax is yet to come. Here in the mid-book the climax seems far away; all that the mid-book promises is a day of writing, followed by another day, then another... stretching out to the end of time. Crossing an endless plain under the hot sun could hardly be more tedious.

If you're going to give up on your novel now is the time when you'll do it. Joy has leached from the world, all is dust and ashes, the words that formerly had come running gladly to do your command now sit about sullenly pretending you aren't there.

The freedom of the opening is gone. Those choices you made in the first half-dozen chapters are now handcuffs restricting your possible courses of action. You don't see how you're ever going to get to a conclusion, let alone a satisfactory conclusion.

I've used the chessgame analogy before, and I'm going to use it again. The mid-book is the mid-game. You're setting up the checkmate, but it's still anyone's game, and a more confusing time for the player (that's you, author) would be hard to imagine.

Someone else said that a basic plot goes like this:

1) Get the hero up a tree
2) Throw rocks at him
3) Get him out of the tree.

We're at the rock-throwing stage.

Well, this is good to know. If you can't think of anything else, do something nasty to your hero.

How to get out of this quagmire for good? Remember this: A novel isn't just a short story with more words. A novel has layers and levels of meaning, and the mid-book is where they go.

Now you do the variations on your theme. You do counterpoints. You do mirror-images. If your theme is Honor, now you show Disgrace.

Who does these things? Your minor characters! Each with his own story-arc, each with his own climax, all the while you're building toward your main story's main climax.

I wish I could draw you a picture, show the interlacing arcs of story, each moving the plot forward, each developing theme, each revealing character, all coming to minor (yet ever increasing and more-rewarding) conclusions. Perhaps I'll try, later on.

It is a thing of beauty. (Or will be, after revision.)

<hr>

Uh Oh ... a Pitfall.

How many of you have programmed in BASIC? You remember the <a href="http://www.oopic.com/do.htm" target="_new">Do Loop</a>?

90 LET X=1
100 DO WHILE X<=10
110 LPRINT "STUFF HAPPENS!"
120 X=X+1
130 LOOP

Do not make the middle of your book a Literary Do Loop. That just fills pages with prose without getting anything accomplished. Recall that your goal is to write The Very Best Book You Can. That is, Way Better Than Anything Else Now Being Written. (Aim high, guys.) Wheel spinning will only gain you readers who throw your book against the wall.

The mid-book will still be horror compounded to get across, but, day by day, you'll get through it, until one morning your hero will make a bold stroke, everything that your subconscious put in place will aid him, and you'll realize that you're in the Climax. Hurrah!

That, O my friends, is the mid-book.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Ok so......

So i've finished my first attempt at a novel. NOW WHAT!?

Revise the heck out of it.

Or, by "finished" do you mean "I already read it out loud. I already put it in my desk drawer for three months, then re-read it with my red pencil in hand. I've already sent it out to my beta-readers, and took their suggestions to heart. I already reprinted it using a different typeface and margins, so I could read it with a fresh eye. Now what?"

Now... send it out 'til Hell won't have it.

Go to your local bookstore. Find books on the shelf that are similar to yours. Note down their publishers. Write to those publishers to get their guidelines. Follow those guidelines to the letter.

At the same time, make a list of the agents who you would most like to represent you. ("Because he advertised in Writer's Digest is not a reason why you want someone to represent you!)

Proceed on a two-front approach. Try to get an agent, and try to get published, simultaneously.

Yes, it's easier to get an agent if you've sold a book, but it isn't impossible. Yes, it's easier to sell a book if you've got an agent, but it isn't impossible.

Be aware that you're playing in the big leagues now. No one is going to cut you any slack because you're a first-timer. The readers in the bookstores certainly won't. But ... if you've got a fair handle on English Prose, and if you have a strong story that you tell convincingly, you will be published. Maybe not at the first, or the second, or the third place you send the book ... but it'll happen.

And ... maybe not this book.

As soon as you drop the manuscript into the mail, as it goes off to its first publisher and its first prospective agent ... go back home, put your butt in your chair, and Start Your Next Novel.
 

Feezle the weezle

Re: Ok so......

Thank you so much for responding,

I haven't had any beta-readers yet. I suppose that should be my next step.

The problem I keep having is that every time I read it over I find things to change. I'm afraid that I'll never be satisfied, but that's something I can get over. I understand that perfection is unattainable.

I haven't put it aside for three months either because I am so excited that I have reached 'the end' that I can't stop polishing it.

Should I spend a lot of time trying to find representation or is trying to sell it myself the best idea?

I am definitely going to use all your tips. I think I can speak for all us amateurs when I say thank you so much for taking your time to help us.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Ok so......

Manuscripts are never so much finished as escaped. If you're still in the daily polish routine ... if you're making substantial changes, and they're improvements ... it isn't time to lay it by, not just yet.

If you're taking out a comma in the morning and putting it back in the afternoon, it's time to go to your beta readers.

Do try reading it aloud, and do try reading it reformatted.

Starting your next book now wouldn't be a bad idea. Writing one while revising the last is one way that keeps my batteries fresh. It might work for you.
 

HConn

Re: The Mid-Book

(Aim high, guys.)

Site link removed per request of other site's Webmaster


Maybe I'm a little weird, but I like the middle. That's the cheese, bacon, beef, lettuce and so on between the buns. I really get a chance to kick the protagonist around and make him cling to his flaws.

It's the endings that give me the heebies.

edited to fix a tyop.
 
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Wintersweet

Endings

I'm with you, HConn. I'm worried that Mr. MacD and most of the writers I know already have the end in mind when the start. I never do. And I never finish--or at least, I haven't since the horrid book I wrote in junior high.

Can I learn to find my endings as I go, or must they spring full-grown into my mind before I start?
 

HConn

Beginnings

The first column looks great. Looking forward to more. :)

Winter, I usually know the ending before I start because I do my best to outline thoroughly, but it usually changes by the time I get there.

It's the entire idea of writing the climax of the book--the most exciting part--that gets to me. I usually think there's something more interesting/scary/exciting/heart-wrenching in the middle.
 

jeffspock

Re: Endings

Jim (and everyone else),

Here is why I am confused about writing something without knowing the ending--because I can't see how it is possible.

From what I understand about dramatic structure, a story (regardless of length) is built as a series of conflicts with rising tension that explode in a climax. All of the characters and forces that you set in motion during the previous scenes are supposed to be there for this great collision.

So if you don't know how that is going to end, how can you start writing? How can you know what foreshadowing to employ (or not), or who the important characters are (or not), or between which two character you want to build tension, or in what direction the story is going?

I just got spanked like a naughty puppy for not doing this; an editor of Interzone wrote to me:

"...the story romps along, all concrete illustration of points being made, until the final two paragraphs where everything suddenly becomes lifeless. The last line is the flattest thing in the story."

My experience of not having a coherent ending was the writer's equivalent of getting paddled and having my nose rubbed in it.

But if you don't know where the story is going as you write it, how can you possibly pull it together well in the end? Maybe with raw talent you can wing-and-prayer it, but for me this seems (re: above example) to be a non-starter.

Comments? Verbal abuse? RPG's (Ridicule-Propelled Gripes)?

Thanks,

Jeff
[link=http://www.jeffspock.com newwindow]www.jeffspock.com[/link]
 

Lori Basiewicz

Re: Endings

In the rough draft, I do not know all the details. I've been surprised already by a couple of things that have come up in my badly written novel. Later, when I'm rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting), I will add all the foreshadowing, etc. to turn the badly written novel into something salable.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: The Mid-Book

Here's an article about aiming high.

Yes.

I've heard of the cover letter that came with one piece of slush: "I think you'll find the enclosed manuscript a cut above the kind of crap you usually publish."

This impressed the editors no end.
 

qatz

Re: Endings

Kudos on the first column, Jim. Thanks for your further thoughts. I was especially intrigued with this:

"I wish I could draw you a picture, show the interlacing arcs of story, each moving the plot forward, each developing theme, each revealing character, all coming to minor (yet ever increasing and more-rewarding) conclusions. Perhaps I'll try, later on."

I have been working on this theme as well with the discussion of the GUT outline in my website, and some off-line notes. I hope to publish a PDR article or something soon with this as one of the main foci. When I do I'd like to give people a link to it here in the unlikely event that my various conjectures add to the progress of the discussion. Should be in a week or so. Maybe you can use me for a bad example!
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Endings

Jeff ...

I have a climax in mind when I start. (The climax is usually in the form of a startling visual.)

More than once I've reached a different climax. Heck, there's one climax I've been using for years, but never getting to it.

So.

What you do with your story: Find the right climax for it. How the heck do I do that, I can hear you ask.

One way: Hold your story in your mind as you're drifting off to sleep tonight. Tomorrow morning, write a whole new ending for your story.

(How long a story is this?)

If your last line is the weakest one in the story, cut it. If the last page is weak, cut it. Maybe you've overshot your conclusion?

Put the story aside. Read it again in a few months.

Ask your beta readers for their opinions.

Write a new story, then come back to this one.

Place this story aside, then rewrite it from memory.

Many are the things you can do to fix this story.

The best fix might be: Consider the writing of it as experience. Write a new story, this time with a strong climax. The climax is where you reward the reader for believing your tissue of lies.
 

pdr

mid book

Thanks for the sound advice, James. I've printed it off and pinned it up by the keyboard. I haven't met any well published writer who has a way to get through chs. 5-15 without the writer's 3Ds: determination, disicpline and dedication. (I did hope you had a way round though!)
 
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