So, you just wrote your first science fiction novel. Your friend read it and told you that you were the next Ray Bradbury or Gene Roddenberry. Your fertile mind fantasizes your name up there on a Borders’ wall poster right next to images of Isaac Azimov and Jules Verne. Before going off the deep end and equating yourself with Hemingway and Steinbeck, give your ego a stiff reality check.
Few of us mortals are literary Mozarts that can plop down in front of a computer screen and author a perfect manuscript the first time around.. Let’s get one thing straight right now. You wrote a manuscript and not a book. After an author takes the time and care to read, edit and rewrite the manuscript at least five times, the work has finally evolved into a publishable book’ manuscript.
Literary agents have represented my books. Truthfully, I never learned too much from literary agents except that they will show a strong interest in you and your work only if publishers and film producers do. If the power brokers in the literary world think your work is marketable, then you are a viable commodity. If you have no track record in the publishing industry, then forget all about your friend’s praise and about your inflated ego. You’re going to have to accept criticism from your agency’s editors, compromise ideas and plots in your artistic masterpiece, rewrite paragraphs, sentences and pages to conform to editorial evaluations, admit making errors, learn from these “mistakes” and avoid them when constructing future “manuscripts.”
The Essay on Xerox: Book-in-Time
Break-even AnalysisThe break-even point for a Book-In-Time process cannot be measured in terms of time. Assuming the book can be manufactured to make a certain margin, there would be no need to sell a certain amount of books. The only cost that you could analyze using break-even would be the cost of the equipment needed to print on demand. Assuming that a book company can sell a typical 300 page ...
Although I never learned too much from my literary agents, I absorbed plenty from editors I had worked with. It took me three years to finally master what the editors considered the “mechanics of the writing craft.” I reluctantly learned that good writing involves much more than the demonstration of grammar, spelling and punctuation skills. I picked up a hundred or so suggestions from my “literary editors,” and I will share some of them now.
To facilitate good transitions and chapter’ integrity, don’t begin sentences and/or paragraphs with pronouns (when writing in the third person).
Stay away from “lazy sentence patterns” such as starting out with “There are” or “There is.” And above all else, if you plan to be original and creative, stay away from using stereotypical’ cliches and hackneyed idioms.
A good sci-fi’ novel or any other genre’ novel should first be a “love story” at its core’ construction with the genre’ decoration adroitly wrapped around that core. For example, H.G. Wells’ classic breakthrough novel’ The Time Machine is at its core a love story between the Time Traveler and Weena, and secondly, it is an adventure story about the conflicts between the Eloi and the Morlocks. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the success of the novel has as much to do with the struggle in the main character’ Guy Montag’s personal love’ relationship with his dysfunctional drugo’ wife as it does with the tyrannical government controlled by the powerful fire department that Montag works for. Montag is searching for love as much as he is in quest of truth and justice. So, if you think that sci-fi’ is simply about alien invasions, green-headed monsters, laser attacks and wars between planets with lots of action scenes, you are dooming your manuscript to both mediocrity and to commercial failure. Your main character must have love or/and must be searching for it.
The main character cannot be a villain or an evil person. Perhaps he could start out that way, but he must change for the better as the story progresses, and the quicker, the better. He or she must be a protagonist that the reader can sympathize with and care about. The reader has to identify with the main character’s noble conscience and his (or her) empathy for others. Reader’ allegiance is the author’s greatest weapon. Yes, you can have bad guys in your novel, but they have to be the antagonists and not the heroes. And the bad guys should hang around until almost the end, and if they do hang around until then, they ought to relinquish some of their devious traits and be influenced by the good guy’s superior personality’ strengths. The main character must have “character.”
The Essay on Main Story Idea For 'In The Rubbish Tin' By Apirana Taylor
‘In The Rubbish Tin’ is a harsh short story about a cruel reality, by Apirana Taylor. The story is set out in an episode form, that switches in between three different characters points at the same time in the story. The main character of the story focus, is Phillipa, a young girl who has been left at home all by herself on her birthday by her father Rolf and her mother Ruth. Phillipa spends her ...
The protagonist (good guy’ main character) ought to be present and active in every chapter, and the antagonist must appear or at least be mentioned in every chapter.
Each character in your novel should have a separate and unique personality. No two characters should seem alike to your readers. In my satirical novel Ron Coyote, Man of La Mangia, Ron Coyote is the idealist, the dreamer out to change the immoral world and his companion Pancho Sanza is practical, naughty, and hedonistic. The two engage in many amusing conversations, and their polarities in interests and values facilitate and support the humorous theme of the adult-oriented novel.
No easy formulas’ are in existence that can guarantee success to an author. One must find his (or her) writing style and voice through years of experimenting, rejection, frustration and failure before fame and fortune become realistic products of your labor. But most importantly, accept criticism from knowledgeable editors, admit you’ve made mistakes and learn something from them.
Writing a novel is not a task; it is a labor of love that is an ongoing project. If writing seems tedious and too much like work, you’d be better off writing letters or newspaper’ ads than attempting to professionally author a book. Novel writing is like a sickness that you love to do. It is mental madness that must be completed, and while in progress, your book is the most important thing in your life that exists on a higher plane than even food and oxygen.
Characters alone do not make a good story. Plots and subplots by themselves do not make a good novel. Novel writing is akin to the double helix DNA’ model. Characters on one strand and plots and subplots on a second strand wrap around each other in an upward spiral, forming a symbiotic relationship. Together their chemistry should unite in a synergy that builds and expands and reinforces itself from chapter one until the final chapter’s last sentence. Good characters need good plots and subplots, and good plots and subplots need good characters. One factor cannot sustain a strong novel without the aid of the other. It all sounds quite simple, doesn’t it?
The Essay on Creative Writing Short Story: That Guy And His Chickens
A long long time ago, about when the dinosaurs were alive, there was a big fat ugly round red bird that flew furiously into a wall, and turned into a bigger dumber super retard. The super dumb retarded bird plummeted from the sky, like boulders sink in the big blue beautiful sea. It rolled furiously down a rocky bumpy rough jagged mountain and fell shamelessly into a big pitch black hole in the ...
Okay, your sci-fi’ novel now has terrific characters, both protagonists and antagonists, and an extraordinary plot and well-synchronized subplots moving upward in a well’ organized pyramid structure. Congratulations! You now have seventy percent of the elusive good novel’ writing’ mystery solved. But remember that the fiction book’ industry itself is also a giant pyramid, and only the top three percent of the “damned’ hard-working” authors at the apex of the writing matrix make the big bucks. To enter into their eminent 3% domain you have to be better than the 97% of “wanna’ be’s” in the base of overcrowded writer’s pyramid. This is where diligence in pursuing excellence must be honored and implemented.
Setting is another crucial element of novel writing that novice’ writers take for granted. My editors at the literary agency kept reminding me, “Everything that is said, all dialogue, must have a definite time and place where the characters are exchanging conversation. You can’t state something like ‘Tom Smith once told Bob Jones that Jones was incompetent’.” When did Tom say that? What year and date was it? Where were Tom and Bob when the comment was made? It is the author’s responsibility to extend the courtesy of time and place’ setting to the reader in everything that is alluded to in both real time and in “flashbacks,” and do yourself a a mighty big favor by leaving “foreshadowing” to the motion picture industry.
Another must in good novel development is balance between dialogue and narrative. If you insert too much dialogue, you’ve written a script for a movie or a screenplay; too much description and your sci-fi’ narrative then reads like a non-fiction book.
The Essay on Writing Is Good
College writing courses give students a good chance to learn that writing can be an enjoyable experience. Previous schooling has left me, and maybe others, with an unfair negative opinion towards writing. College has given writing a second chance for me, leaving behind the earlier days of forced idea writing, by allowing self made thesis and introducing personal feedback into the writing process. ...
Mingled into the delicate mix of dialogue and narrative are such significant elements as theme, suspense, drama, author’s writing’ style, writing voice, tone, conflict, setting, action, adventure, plots, subplots, grammar skills, creativity and character’ definition. If the author can weave all of these intangibles into a viable series of chapters of seventy-five to one hundred fifty thousand’ words, then he (or she) has advanced from being a writer of manuscripts and stories to a novel’ author.
Above all else, the concept of “show and tell” is not limited to elementary schools. It is also vital to authors of novels. The author objectively “tells” the story but the characters conversations and actions “show” the story. Show is better than tell. And a good novelist knows the difference between active and passive voice and prefers the former to the latter.
Generally, stories come across as more believable when written in the first person. The author’s big problem then becomes how not to overtax the reader with the repetition of the pronoun, I. Most novels are written in the third person but I have written two in the first with the main character recalling the story as “a testament” of what had truly occurred. Good fiction must always read as if it were good non-fiction.
Presenting a novel in the third person (speaking about the characters) gives the author a choice. The narrator (author) telling the story can objectively advance the tale as the “detached presenter” revealing events either in chronological order or arranging episodes accompanied by flashbacks and/or foreshadowing. Flashbacks are more desirable (remember to include setting) because they promote “show,” where “foreshadowing tends to orchestrate “tell” and leans one in the direction of “author interference.”
This next part is rather tricky. The third person method of writing could also utilize the “omniscient narrator’” technique. The storyteller knows all about the characters, even some things the characters don’t know about themselves. You can’t be both the “objective narrator” and the “omniscient narrator.” You have to choose one or the other and stick with that approach throughout the novel. The “omniscient narrator” method points the author in the direction of “author interference,” which is literary quicksand that must be avoided at all costs.
The Essay on Character Analysis of the Narrator in “Haircut”
In Ring Lardner's classic short story “Haircut,” the narrator is an ingenuous country barber named Whitey. Whitey tells the story of Jim Kendall, whom the reader soon discovers used to be a well-liked regular at the local barbershop, but who is now deceased. Throughout the story Whitey extols Kendall as a “card” and “character,” “kind of rough, but a good fella at heart.” However, the reader ...
“Author interference” is something that all good writers can recognize and sidestep. Stay the hell out of the story you are telling. Allow one of the characters to possess your attitudes and opinions if you feel they must be expressed, but by all means, don’t editorialize. You are writing a novel and not an essay or an opinion’ column for the local newspaper. And by all means, don’t be preachy in your narrative that appears in between character’ dialogue, and if one of your characters has your attitudes and opinions, make sure that he or she is not too preachy, too!
Give some credit to your readers. They have minds of their own, and they are hypothesizing, evaluating and deducting conclusions as your story progresses. You don’t have to tell them everything and every little detail. Leave some things open for their imaginations to ponder. Don’t over-describe and “overwrite,” although this suggestion is easy to give but hard to employ. Your reader will respect you and your story if you reasonably stay within these guidelines.
Finally, this is the hardest part of all. Once you have finished writing your masterpiece, do not run to the post office and send it off to a publisher. Remove yourself (your emotions and your heart) from your work for at least one month. Distance yourself from your marvelous product. Harness your wonderful enthusiasm about your great contribution to literature. Writing is an art, and that’s where the “talent” part is exhibited. Patience and prudence are part of being “talented.”
At last you are en route. You are now seriously involved in making writing a “science.” And only when there is a true marriage between art and science that your work is ready for public presentation (if you want to distinguish yourself from the 97% of the writers that are crabs in a bushel, crawling over each other trying to get out of their mediocre enclosure).
Put your manuscript on your closet’ shelf. After a full month, take it down and read it from stem to stern. Now you are better able to evaluate your work, your errors, and your departures from good novel’ writing methods that should stick out like ugly thorns throughout your work. You can now be more objective in doing your final revision, which should be a “new vision” of your work as you steer it toward perfection and bring your ship into port. After that is accomplished, it is finally time’ to launch your masterpiece into the literary universe.
The Essay on Great Expectations Review Pip Story Character
Basically, the novel 'Great Expectations,' by Charles Dickens was a novel about a young boy, Pip, and his experiences growing up. Pip was a poor young boy, and was taken advantage of by an escaped convict. This relationship to the convict plays out on many levels, and, eventually works to his advantage. Also in this story are many other pertinent characters, such as Estrella, adopted and bred by a ...
Jay Dubya: Author of 25 Books
John Wiessner