Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 2

FOTSGreg

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I use Word at the day job and Pages on my iPad (and convert to doc format when I email stuff to myself).

I tried yWrite and didn't care for the fact that it lost about a dozen chapters of a major WIP somehow (fortunately, I had a doc backup).

Word and Pages do everything I need. At the day job I need to use text boxes and convert to pdf files extensively and I've never had any problems with either program. Of course, I've been using Word for a long, long time now so I know my way around it pretty well. In addition, I need to have the doc files for uploading to Smashwords and Amazon.

yWrite's just a bit too quirky for my taste (not to mention that loss problem I experienced several years ago).
 

Silver-Midnight

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I think writing in a word processor works well. Remember, not long ago everyone had to use paper and typewriters. :)

When I am writing in Word I simply separate different sequences/scenes/chapters by skipping three blank lines then I give the next passage a quick temp title in all caps, and put it in bold/underlined. The heading may be CAR CRASH, PARAMEDICS ARRIVE. The next one could be SHE ARRIVES AT E.R. This way I can scan through the file later to find a specific place in a hurry.

But this is the way *I* do it, and since I began by doing screenplays sluglines are a habit for me. Maybe someone more sophisticated can offer a better way? :)

That sounds like a good idea. I'm trying to name my scenes now, even in yWrter and Scrivener. That way I can find them easier. I don't know if I should do three blank lines or a scene break though. It might be easier for me to do a scene break. Just for the simply fact that I'll know that it's a scene. The naming of the scene will come in handy with that I guess though. Although, for me, that would probably be like what you said, a quicker way to find a certain scene. Either or both methods work. I just wanted to ask before I tried something.

And yes, it is true. It use to be that the typewriter was main thing.

Truthfully, that's kind of why I want to get practice writing "the same way" in different programs, just in case I can't use yWriter or Scrivener (for whatever reason).

I use * * * for scene breaks because then it's easy to use the 'find' dialog to skim through scenes.

Any non-word sequence of characters would work just as well.

(It's also handy for 'import and split' in several different programs and for the scene list sidebar in FocusWriter :))

Oh okay. Thank you. It's "* * *" the standard symbol for a scene break? I can't remember which it was. I mean I tend to use different ones honestly. I know "* * *" is one, but I think "# # #" is one as well.
 

Silver-Midnight

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I use Word at the day job and Pages on my iPad (and convert to doc format when I email stuff to myself).

I tried yWrite and didn't care for the fact that it lost about a dozen chapters of a major WIP somehow (fortunately, I had a doc backup).

Word and Pages do everything I need. At the day job I need to use text boxes and convert to pdf files extensively and I've never had any problems with either program. Of course, I've been using Word for a long, long time now so I know my way around it pretty well. In addition, I need to have the doc files for uploading to Smashwords and Amazon.

yWrite's just a bit too quirky for my taste (not to mention that loss problem I experienced several years ago).

Oh wow. I use Word. I've used that for years actually. (All of my computers were Microsoft.). I haven't done Pages; isn't that a Mac program? I also use OpenOffice/LibreOffice sometimes too. So, I don't think I know how to use everything in those programs but I do know enough to work my way around the program I think.

And oh wow, that's terrible about your project. Good thing you had a back up though. That could have been terrible.
 

James D. Macdonald

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The centered hash mark, standing alone on a line, is the standard mark for a scene break.

But three centered asterisks, or anything else, as long as it doesn't confuse the readers, works just fine. This is like the double-spacing after periods question: No one really cares.
 

TheRob1

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I once sent a ms out to a beta reader without any scene break indicators. The beta's first piece of feedback was to put them in.
 

FOTSGreg

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Last night (well, more likely early this morning) I woke from a dream with the details of a strange device embedded in my frontal lobes - one of those rare circumstances where you actually remember a dream into your early waking moments and it actually has a bearing on something you're writing.

I scribbled the details quickly in my bedside notebook (left my digital recorder in my car last night) and remembered more details when I woke later on. Turns out the device is far in advance of anything the characters in my WIP have evr seen before and might even be extraterrestrial, but it still is, for all intents and purposes, a device they're very familiar with (a Claymore mine).

While this is obviously a clue they're actually not where they started, it's a stumbling block and a piece of an enormous jigsaw puzzle not only for the characters, but for the writer as well.

I went into this piece thinking I knew everything about the world, but I'm getting these bits and pieces that don't make sense now, but still seem to fit in the overall world structure and story puzzle/plot.

My subconscious sometimes needs to take a few days off I think...

:0

BTW: It's also a scary piece of technology that just "might" be possible today - and that's got me just a little nervous...
 

Mr Flibble

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James D. Macdonald

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Last night, thanks to iTunes and my younger daughter, I finally saw Les Misérables (Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway).

And I found myself singing along:

If I'd
A brain
Or any sense at all
I'd take
A ship
And sail to Montreal....


I don't think I got into the proper spirit of the thing.

That would have made for a very different (and probably a lot shorter) movie.
 

allenparker

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I read the article and something finally hit me. They say they have 50k authors in their stable. Is that presently 50K or an aggregate number of all authors, past, present and released?

It really doesn't help the lawsuit, but it would be interesting to know how many authors are presently in their stable.

Edited to add:

I made a quick search of Amazon.com for a headcount of the books they have out. By searching PublishAmerica as the publisher, you get a count of 44,819. Assuming that some authors have multiple books, this means less than 50,000, doesn't it?
 
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Scribhneoir

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I made a quick search of Amazon.com for a headcount of the books they have out. By searching PublishAmerica as the publisher, you get a count of 44,819. Assuming that some authors have multiple books, this means less than 50,000, doesn't it?

I think for a time they simply added 10,000 happy authors to their proclaimed total every year regardless of reality.
 

Terie

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I'm just wondering....as a non-drinker, you understand...if you put The Anticipated Bastard in a very tall glass, does it become The Long-Anticipated Bastard?

(Can you tell someone is really looking forward to October?)
 

James D. Macdonald

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From Uncle Jim's Mailbag:
I don't mean to bother you with my dumb questions, but why is copyrighting your writing bad? I'm constantly told to copyright my screenplays by industry pros, why are novels different?
-- Lost in LA​
Dear Lost

There are lots of reasons for this, starting with the fact that it isn't traditional in the land of Book. In films, as I understand it, ideas are more important because so many hands are involved in the finished piece; other writers, producers, directors, the composers, the special-effects team, the actors ... it's a big pot with a lot of ingredients and a lot of people stirring it. With stories and novels -- one-man band. The author does it all.

What does putting a copyright on your pages get you? It costs at least $35. So you write ten stories, and copyright them all. One of them sells (and one out of ten selling is not bad in the world of short stories), and that story earns you $350 (a not unreasonable amount for a short). Congratulations! You've earned nothing.

Or, the copyright on the work tells the editor how long a manuscript has been bouncing around the slushpiles of New York. I recall seeing one such, in the early 'ninties, with a copyright date in the mid-'sixties. This did not fill my heart with anticipation that this was an overlooked masterpiece.

Suppose the book is accepted, and goes out onto the bookshelves with a copyright date on it five years ago (rather than this year). Readers will assume this is an old book, perhaps a reprint.

Suppose you re-write your book, perhaps with editorial input. Change all the character names and move the setting to Cambodia. Huge hassle.

Copyrighting the book in your name is part of the publisher's routine workflow. Having a book already copyrighted puts a kink into that hose; rather than saving them a step it means the book requires special handling.

Okay, that's legitimate publishers.

The scammers and such -- what are they going to do with your book? Sell it? If they knew how to sell a book they wouldn't need to be scammers in the first place.

Sell it in India or China? Get real. The books that get pirated are already-published best sellers.

If, by some weird chance (perhaps a wannabe agent reads all the Internet rumors and decides that's how he's going to get rich) some agent does start stealing manuscripts and publishing them under a pseudonym, the odds that you won't find out are astronomically slim. The only way you wouldn't find out is if the book didn't sell a single copy. The word would get out, because writing about stuff is what writers do. Your records, made in the normal course of writing, would be sufficient to prove your case.

How about publishers?

The scum-sucking vanity presses don't make their money from selling books to the general public. They make their money from huge up-front fees or by selling copies of the book back to the author. Where is one of those publishers going to find someone who will love your book so much that that person will send the publisher a couple of thousand dollars? There's only one guy on the planet who loves your book that much, and that's you.

Here's the truth: Agents and editors don't make their money off one book. They make their money off of careers.

Suppose that some unscrupulous person had gotten Stephen King's first novel, Carrie, given the idea to some other writer, and said, "There you go, sport. Write me a book!"

First thing that would happen: Some other publisher would have bought the original Carrie and gotten it to market before the knockoff was written.

Next thing that would happen: The two books would be so different that no one would have known they came from the same idea. Telekinetic teenagers? It's been done.

Third and most important thing: That unscrupulous agent and/or editor would never have even seen 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, Night Shift, The Stand, etc. etc. etc. The gravy train would have pulled out of the station without them on board.

Also: Writers who are capable of writing publishable manuscripts already have so many ideas that they don't need yours.

Why should publishers steal stories? They can get all the stories they want, from world-famous authors, by offering five cents a word.

Here's where genuine plagiarism comes from: The works that are stolen aren't unedited slush, they're previously published books available in bookstores everywhere (and all of those have copyright notices paid for by the publishers). The only times I can think of where unpublished material was plagiarized was in cases of collaborations gone horribly wrong, when one partner was unsure of what the other had agreed to.

Yes, there have been high-profile cases of famous authors being accused of stealing material from ... let's call them minor writers. Stephen King was accused of plagiarizing a book published by PublishAmerica. Read all about it here. Others include J. K. Rowling. Twice. And Stephenie Meyer. You hear about these things. But what you (the collective-you of the new-author zeitgeist) may not recall is that all of those suits were found to be baseless.

So: Don't waste your time and money on copyrighting your unpublished manuscripts. Don't waste stomach lining on worrying about someone stealing your unpublished manuscript.
 

James D. Macdonald

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Dear Uncle Jim,

Is there any reason why I couldn't publish Atlanta Sunsets: The Musical on Lulu?

Best wishes,
C.bronco

I can't think of any reason why not, but why would you want to? Purely as a learning experience in how to set up and format a Lulu book?

If you have any intention of ever publishing anything ever again under the same name, having this out there won't help you.

But other than that -- it doesn't infringe on Atlanta Nights that I can see.
 

Nick12

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If you're really fascinated (and want to put off writing), try this article: http://www.sff.net/people/alicia/arthist.htm

Three and a half years late (alas, I began with UJ Vol. 1 in 2010, then went on... hiatus) but worth the bump for those that really do want to put off writing and might be fascinated by POV.

I really enjoyed this. Eventually I'll join the rest of you in being current with Vol. 2. Cheers.