How I write a novel (3)

Posted on by March 14, 2021
Reply

So there I am, on the bus, discovering the route as I journey. Sometimes it all goes far too slowly to please me; at other times I race along at over 3,000 words a day. [I think the most I’ve ever written in a single day was 5,000 words]. Sometimes it feels as if I am out on the road pushing the bus; at other times the speed of the journey is exhilarating.

And then I am there, at the end. Wow. Break out a bottle of wine and celebrate!

That point can come in as little as five or six months, depending on how much my other job intrudes. But it’s only the first time I’ve driven the route, and boy, did I make some mistakes along the way. I deviated when I shouldn’t have; I failed to take some side routes that I should have explored. Some of the passengers were too quiet; others too chatty; some I forgot about and went sailing past while they waited at the bus stop. [In Gilfeather, I remember, I forgot about the dog for half the book and didn’t realise, until I reread, that he’d inexplicably vanished halfway through the book!]

As we progressed, I had attended to some of these problems, and even backtracked to solve them, but mostly I was far too anxious to reach my destination.

Now, however, I have to go over the route and again and again. How many times? Hard to say. there are parts where my driving was perfect first time around. There are other bits that get rehashed countless times – twenty? thirty? – who knows. I just do it till I get it right.

Many authors – especially new ones – tend to overwrite [i.e. say too much/repeat/over-explain] and it is at this stage that they re-route the bus, slashing out the unnecessary deviations and repetitive bits. And yes, I do that too. Overall, though, I was too anxious to reach the terminus and I always tend to underwrite. The first major rewrite often results in another 5,000 to 10,000 words being added!

Finally though, I have a story that looks good.

Is that the end it? Not by a longshot. I haven’t even looked at the fine tuning, the polishing.

More about that another day.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Friday, 23 June 2006 (3 Comments).

How I write a Novel (4)

Posted on by March 14, 2021
Reply

So there I am, with a finished version of the story that makes me reasonably happy. Remember, parts of this book have already been rewritten several times. So, what’s next?

Next comes the meticulous sentence by sentence rewrite. The first bit is the easiest : the spellcheck. Making sure I haven’t misspelled proper names as well as ordinary words.
The rest is so much harder because the spellcheck can’t tell you that you’ve written “there” when you mean “they’re” – and I do that silly sort of stuff a lot because I tend to “hear” words rather than see them as I write. In addition I’m a lousy copy editor and tend to read what I think is there and not what really is.

At this stage, the grammar function can be helpful too – it can point out some mistakes, as long as you don’t take too much notice of the things it doesn’t do too well.

So how do I find all the rough edges that spellcheck can’t show me? Well, I run a “find” [under edit on the toolbar] of some things that I know need checking. For example, I look for “really” and “very” and “seemed” and all those other words that I know I use far too much. Expressions too: “made an effort” was a favourite of mine for a while. And in one book I had over a 100 instances of “of course”, most of which needed turfing out – of course! It’s all too easy to have one’s characters sighing all the time, or shrugging – find out what your favourites are, and replace most of them. Look for cliches and think of better ways of saying the same thing.

Once all that is done, I click on that funny little backwards “P” thingy on the standard toolbar – the one that shows up all formatting. It puts a dot between every word. With that function on, I then re-read the whole MS. I find all those little dots force me to slow down and read every single word. And oh, the mistakes I find with that. I blush, correct them, and move on. This is the stage when I find a lot of overuse of words [e.g. using “discovered” four times on one page], as well as typos, missing words, etc. After that, I run another spell check.

Is my MS ready to send off to the publisher or agent yet? Absolutely not. But it is ready for beta readers. More about these wonderful people next time.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Thursday, 6 July 2006 (7 Comments).

How I Write a Novel (5): Beta Readers

Posted on by March 14, 2021
Reply

I had my first two novels published without even being aware that there were such people as beta readers. Oh, one or two family members had read the books, or versions of them – but my family members are far too kind to be beta readers (or far too wise).

The only real feedback I had was from my agent and editors. I am wiser now: I know there are wonderful people out there who actually like reading books in progress and providing the feedback that helps you to make it a better book.

This was especially valuable when I was writing “The Shadow of Tyr” recently (to be published in January). For a time, the book just would not go right. And I couldn’t work out what was wrong. A couple of my beta readers came along and put their finger on the problems – to the extent that when I finally showed the MS to my editor and agent, they both asked, Huh? So what was the problem? And my copyeditor said the book was “truly magic”!

So here’s to my beta readers – you rock.

Here are a number of things that a writer must remember about this process:

  • As an author, you MUST divorce yourself from your work – a crit of your book that says, “Hey this is crap. I found it boring and repetitive,” is not a description of you. You have asked for critical feedback; when you get it, swallow your pride and accept it. Don’t ever then sit down and write back a long justification of your work and why your beta reader is wrong. If you do, you’ve just lost yourself a beta reader and made yourself look ridiculous.
  • Choose your beta readers carefully. I am told there are some destructive people (usually unpublished and embittered) out there who like nothing better than to tear other people down. I haven’t actually suffered from this myself, but I have heard of other authors who have. You need someone who can tell you what it was that was wrong, and why – (but not necessarily how to fix it – that is your job, although they may be able to help you, especially if they are fellow writers). Any beta reader who attacks you, not your work, needs to be discarded immediately.
  • Choose beta readers who are familiar with the genre and who read widely. That way, they lnow what they are talking about. They know bad when they see it.
  • Here’s what should happen. Your beta reader says: I thought Chapter 12 dragged. There was too much telling, not enough action. Too much boring dialogue. By the end, I was yawning. Now you, as author, know that there is a lot of valuable info in Chap 12 that the reader must be told – it’s now up to you to work out how to make it more palatable. A really superb beta reader might make a suggestion: Why don’t you pep this up by having Tom there, asking silly questions and Alice losing her temper… but don’t expect a beta reader to give you the solution. All they should do is tell you what doesn’t work for them and why.
  • Should you always take notice of the advice? Not necessarily. Beta readers can be wrong. They can even say contradictory things. But generally, if you have chosen them wisely, it pays to think very, very carefully about what they say. If two of them say the same thing, then you know you should really sit up and take notice!
  • Different beta readers are good at different things. That’s why it’s great to have a few of them. Some are plot hole finders. Others go after lousy grammar. Others home in on continuity mistakes. Some just look at the bigger picture. Bless them all.
  • So where do you find a beta reader? I am exceedingly lucky that one of my book group who lives a couple of streets away is also a sff fan and an editor – she is invaluable. She is a treasure. But she is also a working girl, and it is cheeky to ask someone who does this sort of thing for a living to do it for free! So we have an understanding – she does it to the degree that it is still fun for her. The moment she is pressed for time or it starts to be a chore, she’s gotta stop and say, Sorry. Not this time. And that’s always the way it should be, even with someone who is not in the industry.

My other beta readers, I found through the internet. I belong to a message board over at Voyager Australia, and I met authors and readers there who volunteered. Some of them are fellow authors – and they are wonderful. They are also enormously busy people, and it can be an imposition to ask them to do something as time-consuming as this. One is a bookseller. One a copyeditor. One a writer and editor, with her own unpublished books on the burner. One of them I still have never met.

And they all rock. I am eternally grateful to everyone of them. And I have done beta reading for many of them, in turn.

  • If you are an unpublished writer and want a published writer to beta read for you, you should probably forget it. Unless they are a good friend, it is unlikely to happen. Most authors don’t have time, and are especially reluctant to help people they don’t know for fear of later being accused of pinching their ideas.

DSCN195611.0

And this pix has nothing to do with beta readers. It’s just a water monitor that lives around our apartment block – and it is 5′ long – a metre and a half. Click on it for a good look.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Wednesday, 12 July 2006 (7 Comments).

How I Write a Novel (6): the editor’s edit

Posted on by March 14, 2021
Reply

Every publisher has their own way of doing things, so don’t take this as necessarily the norm. This is just the way it’s done at my main publisher, with my particular editor and copy editor.

When I have decided (hopefully before the delivery deadline!) that I have finished the book to my satisfaction, I send it off to my editor at the publishing house. After what seems to be a long silence (she’s definitely overworked!) of four weeks or so, she gets back to me. And usually she wants some changes. Fortunately, none have ever been too drastic and on one memorable occasion there were none requested at all. It’s usually along the lines of, ‘Is that X scene really right where it is? I think it would be better moved to the end of the book.’ Or, ‘I find the account of Y’s journey to Altan as a child rather like a hiccup in the story – couldn’t you include it just by having him refer to it once he is grown? Or as a flashback later on perhaps?’ Or, ‘I think it needs a prologue to give more back story.’ Sometimes we talk on the phone about these changes.

There are usually 3 or 4 such suggestions. In the meantime, I have been going through the book yet again, correcting small mistakes. Once I have the editor’s input, I rewrite on the basis of her suggestions, which doesn’t usually take me more than another two weeks. And I send it back.

A couple of things for writers who have got to this stage to think about:

  • An editor is not always right. BUT this is their job and they are pretty good at it, believe me. When my editor tells me that something didn’t work for her, I sit up pretty straight and take notice. And I rework the section. I don’t think there has ever been a time when I didn’t make the change, and there has been only one time when I wished I hadn’t done a particular alteration.
  • However, I am the writer. It is my book. So I do what I think is right for the book. Sometimes I say to myself – ‘Geez, why didn’t I see that myself?’ and the changes just tumble off the end of my fingers into the MS. Sometimes I have to think about it some more. Sometimes I take the advice to the letter, because I know it is right; more usually I see the problem immediately but I can see a better solution than the one suggested – if indeed an actual solution was suggested. An editor’s strength is in seeing the problem; the writer’s job is to see how to correct it.
  • If you think your work is perfect and doesn’t need an editor’s input, then you ought to be self-publishing.
  • If you are an unpublished writer and are still submitting to agents/publishers, then your work has to be far more polished than mine is by the time my editor first gets to see it. That’s unjust, I know, but it’s the way things work, at least when I am operating to a deadline.

Let me explain that last. An unpublished writer’s work has to shine above all the others that land on an agent/editor’s desk. You have to impress. The agent/editor doesn’t know you or your work from the ravings of megalomaniac when she/he first turns the title page.

My editor, however, already knows the standard of my work; she knows I am professional; she knows she can rely on me to make changes, to deliver a good story (usually) on time. She knows that the odd silly mistake/repetition/not so polished paragraph is going to be weeded out – either by me or by the copy editor – before the book is printed. With your book, though, she needs to know that you do indeed know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’. She needs to be impressed by the polish of your work.

With mine, she is (I hope) impressed by me being able to get a good MS onto her desk in six months. I didn’t have the luxury of time that an unpublished writer – who has no deadline – has. And we still have time – editor, copy editor and author – to bring this work to a final polished state. It is in fact better for us to have editorial input before the author has laboured over the final sheen, rather than to ask the author to do that final buffing up twice. It saves time.

So, after working on the alterations suggested by the editor, I send the book back to the publisher, the alterations are accepted (well, I’ve never had mine rejected, but I suppose it could happen) and so on to the copy editor.

And it looks as if I still haven’t got around to what happens at the copy edit! Next time.

Oh, and what was the alteration I regretted making? It was with my first published book, Havenstar. The editor thought I needed to tie the ending up neatly. I had – I thought – left enough hints along the way to show what was going to happen after the climax was done. The editor didn’t agree, and asked me to write an extra chapter to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. So I did.
But I wasn’t comfortable with it – it smelled a bit cutesy to me. I was, however, too new and untried and unsure of myself to protest. And perhaps too inexperienced to work out a way to please both of us.

The very first fanmail I got was from a lovely reader who had loved every inch of the book – until the last chapter. She was so maddened by it, that she dashed off an email.
Why did you do that? she asked. It wasn’t necessary and it was just too neat!

She was right, the editor was wrong and I should have stuck with my instincts.

The author answers [8]

Posted on by March 14, 2021
Reply

DSCN4075

Patty had a second question: Is there ever a chance you’ll like your second and third books better than the first? It seems to me there is such exhilaration at finishing the first, it has to stay your favourite for a long time 😉

With me at least, it is a little hard to answer this because of the muddle of my books.

I finished my first book aged twelve, so I really can’t remember how I felt! I wrote a few others that I never tried to market after that. And then I finally got serious.

I wrote The Aware and had it accepted by an agent (who is still my agent), who then started showing it around in UK and USA. So the exhilaration of that was fantastic. But then it became more like a roller coaster ride, with lots of sinking feelings in between the highs as editors refused after initial nibbling…
The Aware at this stage was being offered as the first book in a series, rather than Book 1 of a trilogy.

I wrote The Heart of the Mirage in the meantime. Why? Because it seemed to be a bit silly to do another book in the Isles of Glory world if I couldn’t get the first published. Once again Heart of the Mirage was offered as a first book in a series in UK and USA. Again, a roller coaster ride. It came very, very, very close several times, but something always went wrong.

Meanwhile I was off writing Havenstar. It was taken up almost immediately as a launch book for a new imprint in the UK. The day I heard that was just two days after my mother died. So as you can imagine, my feelings were really mixed. I couldn’t help wondering why it hadn’t happened just a few days earlier so I could have told her. Then just as sales were taking off into the stratosphere, the imprint failed. So my emotions about my first published book became even more mixed…

I wrote another book which my agent didn’t like and has never been offered anywhere. In the end I pilfered it heavily for another book, so it never will be published.

Then I started writing Drouthlord. I never finished it because in the meantime The Aware was sold and I had to sit down and write Gilfeather and The Tainted as books 2 & 3.

Heart of the Mirage was then sold, and I had to write The Shadow of Tyr and Song of the Shiver Barrens.

Now I am back working on Drouthlord. In the end, it all became so muddled that I don’t think I have a soft spot for any book based on the particular thrill I got out of it…

Now my focus and passion is always fixed on the one I am writing. It becomes my favourite by default. I’d be interested to know, though, what other authors feel about their own works.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Sunday, 8 July 2007 (4 Comments).

Wanting to be published: is it a trap?

Posted on by March 14, 2021
Reply

There’s a great discussion on this topic going on over at Karen Miller’s blog.

Here is part of what I wrote in the comments section:

I must admit I have never read fanfic and have no desire to do so. Nor do I have a desire to write it. In fact, I don’t “get” it. One of the great joys in writing for me has always been world building. To use someone else’s world – or even worse their characters – would take away 90% of the joy!

Sure, I wanted to be published, but that was never the obsession. And if I’d reached the end of my life unpublished, I would never have thought my life wasted. I wrote because I had to – that was the obsession – writing was and is an inseparable part of life. It has been since I was eight years old, or even younger. Does someone who reads a book, or goes sailing every weekend, or horse-riding, or swimming at the beach, or to the opera, waste their life? Of course not!

And that perhaps is the best advice I can give to a “wannabe” who is not sure whether they have what it takes to be a “got-there”! If you aren’t loving the journey, if you ARE going to give up on the creative process after constant rejection, then you are probably in the wrong business and, yes, wasting your life. If the creation is what counts, then publication is just the icing on a cake that is already tasty. If creation is what counts and brings you joy, then you have a fufilled life no matter what happens.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that publication is what writing is ALL about. It’s not.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Wednesday, 21 March 2007 (5 Comments).

How I Write a Novel (7): building a sense of place

Posted on by March 14, 2021
Reply

This should actually be called “world building when you don’t have a clue” although I’m not talking about general world creation [a la god], but something perhaps of more of value to all writers – what do you do when you want to include something in your novel that you don’t know too much about?

I was prompted to think about this because someone asked me about ships. He saw that I had written The Isles of Glory and wanted to know where I got the info on sailing ships that I put into the 3 books.

I’m not a sailor. I used to paddle a homemade canoe on the Canning River as a kid. I loved all the Swallows and Amazon books and read every one multiple times – which did teach me words like “sheet” and “tack” and “cleat” and all that nautical stuff. Not enough to make me able to write a book that included trips on 18th or 19th century sailing ships!

[Word of caution, though: learning facts from fiction books can be hazardous…who’s to say that the writer knew what he or she was talking about?]

I once took a day trip sailing on a schooner to a couple of islands, and once spent a few days sailing with friends from Phuket to Ko Surin and Ko Semilan, none of which qualifies me as a sailor either.

So…how did I do it.

Well. firstly I made darn sure [I think] that I didn’t make mistakes. If I mentioned a particular type of ship [schooner, brigantine etc], I made sure my description of the ship had the right number of masts, steering system, and so on. Not good to put a tiller into a ship that steers by means of a wheel! All this can be checked from internet sites. The moment you make a mistake, you lose your knowledgable reader. And unfortunately it will be what he remembers most about your book.

[Caution 2 : anything taken from the internet is not necessarily correct. Double and triple check everything.]

Secondly, I don’t try to be too smart and include a whole bunch of stuff I don’t know too much about. Rather I take the small details and make them true and visual – those are the things that give the atmosphere, the feel of being there. And it helps if you remember interesting bits and pieces from your own experience. For example, we have a chest-of-drawers in my family that came out from England with my ancestors. When you have a 6 month journey ahead of you, living out of a chest, what sort of a chest do you want? One that opens with a lid? Nope. You can’t put things on top of it then. One that actually has drawers is much better – with nice inset brass handles that you won’t bruise yourself on when the ship heaves…

Here are some examples from the three books of the Isles of Glory – from large to small vessels and with different first person narrators…

The ship came in under sail and bumped against the dock as gently as a rowboat on a jetty. A typical piece of Keeper seamanship; there was very little the Keepers did badly. Just a look at the vessel was enough to know that they were special: the woodwork gleamed, the sails were unpatched, the ropes were neatly coiled, the brass shone, there were rat-barriers on the hawsers. A greater contrast to the shabby, foetid slaver tied up beside them couldn’t have been imagined.

We had drifted further out to sea and were in among the fisher fleet. Their lanterns gleamed only dimly now as the sky lightened. The golden paths across the water had gone. I could hear the sound of voices and laughter coming to us from the fishermen as they hauled up lines, pulled in nets. I lay back, to look up at the mast just visible in the pre-dawn light. A bird was sitting on the crosstree, a creature too small to be one of the usual seabirds. I eyed it uneasily; it looked like that pet of Flame’s. I wondered how long it had been perched there. It cocked its head to one side and I suddenly felt very naked. I pulled the blanket up over my body. ‘Scram,’ I said. ‘Go tell her I’m all right.’

It was a close call, but we made it, slipping out on the tide with just minutes to spare. We would never have managed it if the whole of Rattespie had not taken it as a challenge. This was the first local ship to set sail for weeks; it meant money in the townsfolk’s coffers and they weren’t about to waste the opportunity. Chandlers bustled, farmers appeared out of nowhere with fresh produce, sailors signed up, longshoremen came looking for work loading the ship, shipwrights recaulked part of the deck where timbers had dried out and shrunk.

As I pen this in my cabin aboard the R.V. Seadrift, I find myself wondering: is this really I, Anyara isi Teron, here on board a ship bound for the Isles of Glory? Freckled, prosaic, undistinguished Anyara, embarking on an adventure most men could only dream about – it’s not possible, surely! And yet I, an unmarried woman, find myself untrammelled by family, with the shores of Kells rapidly dwindling on the horizon and empty ocean ahead…adventure indeed.
From where I sit, if I glance over to the wall under the porthole, I see my two sea chests, now stacked on top of each other to make a chest-of-drawers with polished brass handles; all I have to do is open that top drawer and the documents are there for the reading. And yet I hesitate to hurry through the papers. I have months ahead of me, and I must ration my reading. Perhaps this evening I will dip into the first of the papers. Just a few.

______________________

A few words, that’s all it takes to convey the size of a ship, or a cabin; the uncertainty of sailing into the unknown; the work involved in getting a ship ready for a long sea voyage. A writer doesn’t need to know everything to say enough.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Tuesday, 25 July 2006 (3 Comments).

How to write a fantasy trilogy synopsis…I think

Posted on by March 14, 2021
1

Ok, I have spent four days on this darn synopsis, (actually for a quartet rather than a trilogy). Which is ridiculous. I can write 5,000 words on a good day, and it has taken me four days to write a summary of just over 2500 words? I am now trimming it down…aargh. This has got to be harder than writing 25,000 words.

Here’s a few hints for any other poor sod who has to do this.

Firstly, if you are writing a synopsis, you have probably already got the interest of an agent/publisher. So you don’t have to worry too much about a startling grab-me hook. You have to do two things instead: make the whole story sound interesting and show the publisher/agent that you know where you are going with it. (Your ability to write good English is a given, right?)

Secondly, do NOT think that you are going to hold back the ending because “I want the editor to be knocked endwise by the twist when s/he reads the book”. A synopsis is just that: it tells the person reading it the story, in summary, and that includes the ending.

Thirdly, the problem peculiar to fantasy is that none of the fantastical bits are going to make too much sense in summary. “But the Redduner left his zigger cage on the pede…” may be a crucial incident in the tale, but it is going to mean absolutely nothing to anyone out of context. Worse, it all sounds a bit stupid. So how to get around this? In the actual book there’s a slow unfolding of how the magic works and what it does; in a synopsis you have to explain very briefly, and NOT show.

So what I do is start the synopsis with a few paragraphs under a subtitle of “The World” or “The Land” or something similar, where I describe briefly what makes this world unique and how its magic works. I end this section with a bit on the trilogy’s themes (nothing too heavy handed though. I’m a storyteller first.) And I hope to make this section really interesting because I suspect it will do more to sell the books than the truncated version of the story that follows – although that will now make sense, at least.

Fourthly, I deal with each book separately. I turf out all the minor characters and try to sketch in the bare outlines of the story, enough to be coherent, not enough to muddle. You can’t do much to show your skill with characterization, but I feel it pays to put a bit in about a couple of the most important characters. Here’s how I describe the villain of the piece: …a cold-eyed pede rider named Shanim, known for his unquestioning loyalty to Devin and his indifference to suffering, either his own or anyone else’s.

Anyway, I can tell you one good thing that came out of this exercise. I know exactly how Book 4 is going to end now. I always knew what I wanted to achieve by the end – that is, I knew the state of the world and the position of the characters at the end of the quartet – but I couldn’t quite get a handle on the climactic ending that was going to get me there, [what Russell Kirkpatrick calls “a typical Larke climax” of cataclysmic instability a la “Gilfeather”, “The Tainted”, “Havenstar” and “Song of the Shiver Barrens”].

Now I have it, and it’s a beaut.

I hate writing synopsis, but they sure do help to get your thinking straight. I am on top of the world tonight – hey, this quartet is gonna be good.

DSCN9911

Sebatik Island, Sabah

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Sunday, 11 March 2007 (13 Comments).

More on how long a book should be…

Posted on by March 14, 2021
Reply

Patty made a comment yesterday that prompted this post…thanks, Patty.

Let me start by saying that there is something that does remain a mystery to me, and that’s how authors – some of them, anyway – seem to know exactly how long a book is going to be before they even start if. They plan it meticulously, plan what they are going to say and what the characters will do chapter by chapter, and lo and behold, then they finish it looks just as they thought it was going to. I am much more haphazard. I know the ending, but I have no idea how many words it will take me to get there.

When I say that the present book will be 180,000, I mean that’s the aim. But we will see. I don’t want to sacrifice story coherence, and I certainly don’t want to pad, in order to reach that magical number. In fact, it isn’t magical at all…it’s just an estimation of how many words it will take to get this particular story written.

So how long should a book be, really, word-wise?

First of all, it depends on the genre.
Fantasy tends to be longer than Science fiction.
Historical fiction probably comes next in length, although sometimes it’s up there with the fantasies…

Far behind, comes mainstream and Young Adult and other genres. Many – perhaps even most – of these are under 100,000 words. Why?

Basically, it’s because with fantasy in particular, and to a lesser degree with historical and science fiction novels, the writer has to expend a large number of words telling the reader about the world. In a present day novel, you can say: Mary drove her dog to the vet’s because it needed its shots, and in twelve words you have told the reader that we are talking about a woman who has access to a car and has a pet that she cares about. If the writer says, Illusa-zerise laid a hand on Korden’s arm. ‘He is your Mirager, Magori,’ you have no idea of what is going on unless the world has been well-portrayed during the course of the story. (That’s a sentence from Heart of the Mirage, by the way.) You don’t even know if the people mentioned are male or female.

However, anything over 180,000 starts to get a bit unwieldy and presents publishers with a bigger cost. Unless they are very, very sure that you are a rising star in the publishing firmament, they are likely to tell you to cut down the verbiage. If you have already proved your self with your large sales figures they will smile happily because they know the reading public is going to be delighted to see a lengthy book from their favourite author.

Here are the approximate lengths of some of my books:
Havenstar (standalone and the first published book): 156,000
The Aware (first book in Isles of Glory trilogy) : 126,000
Gilfeather (second book) :146,000
The Heart of the Mirage (first book in Mirage Makers trilogy): 143,000
Song of the Shiver Barrens: 163,000 (Third book)

I can’t remember the others, but I think they were in the 140-150,000 range. As you can see, I don’t have a set number!

So what is the right length for an unpublished author?
The answer is:
1) Take a look at the length of the genre/type of book you are aiming to write, especially those written as first books.
2) Don’t skimp and don’t pad.
3) When you come to the end, if you think it is too skimpy, then consider rewriting scenes or characters at greater depth.
4) if you think it is too long, go through with your red pen. Look at unwieldy passages – can you say it more simply? Look at repetitions – especially of the kind where you show the action and then have characters discussing it, or worse, you the author pontificating on it.

Here’s what agent Kristin on her entry for July 2nd had to say over at Pub Rants:

Some writers have an annoying habit of restating (via a thought their main character has) what has already been made apparent by the scene or the dialogue.

It’s amazing how much you can tighten up your writing and improve your book, simply by cutting down on the unnecessary.

So what is the right length?
Answer: There is none. What counts is how good your story is, and how good your writing.

But for someone trying to break into the field, I’d be cautious about doing something too far outside the norm lengthwise.

Originally posted in Glenda’s blog on Wednesday, 29 August 2007 (3 Comments).

As others see us…

Posted on by March 14, 2021
Reply

Sometimes I get some intimation of what people think about writers – and it’s not quite what one may expect.

Here’s a question from a poster on a Message Board about sff:

is everyone a potentual writer?

Is it jus me or r there many would-be writers out there, it occuered to me that many people could think up a good story and be a good enouth writer to get it published but many do not have the connexions needed am I right.

And here is part of my somewhat acerbic reply:

I am an Australian, but I have lived most of my adult life (since I was 24) in Malaysia, which has no sff publishers, or fan clubs, or spec fic writing classes. I never went to a sff con. I never met another fiction writer, editor, publisher, I hardly ever met someone who read sff! I wasn’t on the internet and exchanged no emails, nor read webpages by any of those people. In fact, I was a real innocent abroad. I never even attended a course on how to write.

All I did was read and write and hone my skills. ALOT. The book that got me an agent was about number seven or eight, I think. ONE MILLION WRITTEN WORDS LATER. At least. (I started at 13, after all)

And finally I sent off my work. I had no idea how to write a query letter or what one should say when one submitted work. But I do know how to be polite, and I had enough common sense to know what is relevant and what is not. And I READ ALOT of the kind of books I was writing – fantasy.

I got a copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, ran my finger down the pages of agents, came to the first one that said they took fantasy, and wrote a letter.

I don’t have the letter in front of me, but it said something along the lines of: “I enclose the first 3 chapters of a fantasy novel entitled X, of Y number of words. If you are interested in reading the remainder with a view to representing me, the book is already complete and I would be delighted to send the whole MS. I have only had non-fiction articles published prior to this. ” (I did not send samples of these articles, or say what they were or where they were published. They were irrelevant.)

I sent it off and waited. And in due course the agent read the whole MS and took me on.

Contacts? Connections? What contacts? What connections? I had none!

Do you tell your doctor – “well, anyone can be a doctor, can’t they? We just don’t all have the contacts to get into Medical School.” Have I got news for you. The ability to stick a bandaid on a cut does not mean you have the potential to be a doctor. The ability to write a few words on paper doesn’t give you the potential to be a published novelist.

Maybe I am being silly, but if someone were to say to my face – “Well, you are only published because you had connections! Anyone at all can do what you do.” – I would feel insulted and be very very rude to such a person. How dare they say – or even think – that the years and years of work I put into learning my trade, into writing and reading and learning, before I was finally published, didn’t count for anything? That ‘anyone’ can do this? That all you need to get published are ‘connections’.

——————-
Was I a bit hard on the poor fellow? As I say, it is extraordinary how many people think writing is easy, and there is some kind of conspiracy that keeps all but those “in the know” from being published.