Novel Workshop #1
Wow! I can't believe how much I have written already. I just finished outlining the first of three sections in my book, and I'm over 8500 words. Good thing I bought three 24oz coffees this morning instead of the usual two!
Author
LeapYear - When a publisher picks up an author's first novel it is standard to offer them a 3-book contract. If the 3-book contract is fulfilled satisfactorily the publisher may then offer another multi-book contract to the author. Many series that are longer than 3 books either have a standalone first trilogy, or are written by experienced authors who the publishers are sure will sell. I believe the reason for the number 3 is that by the third book the author has enough name recognition for the publisher to truly judge their popularity or the popularity if the series, and decide whether writing any more is a good gamble for the publishing house.
Cyansoft - Good work so far! And you must have a stronger stomach than me, I would be shaking and sick to my stomach after that much coffee lol.
Cyansoft - Good work so far! And you must have a stronger stomach than me, I would be shaking and sick to my stomach after that much coffee lol.
I just finished my first draft of the outline. I would still like to write a summary for each chapter because my outline is too tedious to read. I think I over did it a little; my outline is 1/4 the size of the actual book. I have nearly 26,000 words and 62 typewritten pages. I'll probably have to host it as a PDF on a file sharing site as it is too big to post.
Author
62 pages... o.O yeah a summary would be good lol. I am working on writing up the second lesson and the first thing I want people to do is to strip their outline down to the bare bones, 1-3 pages, and I'm using the Clan of the Cave Bear for my example because it has a nice simple plot focused on a single main character.
Quote:Original post by sunandshadowA desired page count range would have been nice to have for this assignment as well. I'm half-way done and have 10 pages (in Word); I imagine 22 by the end. I hope I can find time to finish it by Friday. :P
62 pages... o.O yeah a summary would be good lol. I am working on writing up the second lesson and the first thing I want people to do is to strip their outline down to the bare bones, 1-3 pages, and I'm using the Clan of the Cave Bear for my example because it has a nice simple plot focused on a single main character.
Cyansoft, where you gettin' the time to write 26,000 words? That's half a novel there (a shorter one, anyway; 100,000 is standard, about?). Makin' the rest of us look bad. ;)
Author
Well see, to me it doesn't matter what the page count is for the first assignment because it should include whatever details the person making the outline feels would be helpful to use as a reference for designing their novel. For the second assignment the idea is to bare things down to the essential plot points so that we can make our desired alterations to that underlying structure then build back up from there. Basically we're reverse engineering novels here.
I'm sorry but I'm going to duck out, I'm not ready to write a novel yet.
I'm going to try to do something bad(as in not very good) instead.
I'm going to try to do something bad(as in not very good) instead.
Author
Oops forgot to answer this: 70k words is about standard for a novel, although it depends on the genre - science fiction and fantasy tend to be longer.
So cyansoft is done, omega is mostly done, and is anyone else going to finish this exercise? It would be really a shame if we missed the 3-person minimum by only one person. Me, I finished the clan of the cave bear outline but haven't written up the rest of the lesson yet.
So cyansoft is done, omega is mostly done, and is anyone else going to finish this exercise? It would be really a shame if we missed the 3-person minimum by only one person. Me, I finished the clan of the cave bear outline but haven't written up the rest of the lesson yet.
Author
Meh. Well, it's Friday and this was done, so I posted it. Absolutely anyone with a story idea can do this second exercise (the part related to your own story idea, not the part about simplifying your example outline) so if the response continues to be underwhelming there will be no justification for it.
BTW please continue to post any responses to the first assignment here, I want to see them.
[Edited by - sunandshadow on August 16, 2007 11:25:41 PM]
BTW please continue to post any responses to the first assignment here, I want to see them.
[Edited by - sunandshadow on August 16, 2007 11:25:41 PM]
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