Four Books

Wow. I mean wow.

After I did the blog about productivity and stuff, I started to think about the projects that I have on the go.

I have my ‘When the Lights Go Out’, ‘Culture Shock’, ‘Space Courier’, and ‘Felix the Swift Part One’.

But that is nothing that I haven’t  blogged about before. I have been talking about them since I have started this blog.

Here is the wow. Before a day ago, I had three of those books in some part of editing. Some needing more edits than others. One in particular might not get published.

After I started think about my projects and the discussion on the Dead Robots Society Podcast about publishing series of books as the way to make money. Also about how there is a trend for shorter length work. Which I am not against writing.

I came to a conclusion. My Felix the Swift book. Originally started as a single novel with bits and pieces being told as flashbacks. I then decided that the flashbacks were too strong to be flashbacks and needed to be a full part of the story. The length of the book went from approx. 90k  to 180k. I then split it into two novels.

As of this writing I have 77k written in book one, while 30k written in book two. I expect another 15k min to be in part one and that is me keeping the plot of the rest of the part down to the bare minimum. I have an end scene for a book. It is really cool.

However. To write the rest of the book the way that I want to do I expect that I will need to  add 5ok at least onto the 77k that I currently have. So what do I do with the added words? My aim is to have 90k books max. Solution. Pull the novels back to 80k and add a third book.

Boom. Felix the Swift is now a Trilogy.

All I need to do is to get the currently projected 15k up past my 50k that I want to do and get it to 80k. An extra 30k. I have plans on how to do that. Other characters that I can make POV. Twists to put into it to get the characters from where they are at the end of book one to my dramatic end scene that was end scene book one, but is now end scene book two.

I am excited.

It means that out of the four projects on the go at the moment, all four of them have a book in editing. First drafts are done.

That means I am in editing. This is utterly awesome.

The next question is, should I publish these books sooner or wait until I have all of the books planned complete?

I am not sure. But that is a question for another day and another blog.

If anyone reading this has a suggestion on what I should do, please comment.

Cheers.

Nathan Pedde

Outline vs Discovery Writing: The Battle Continues

It is time to enter the battle. The epic battle between Outliners and Discovery Writers.

Both sides are frothing at the mouth and ready to fight it out. Ink will fly. Paper will ripe.

Okay that metaphor died on arrival.

My thoughts on Outliners and Discovery writers. Notice that I called it Discovery Writing and not Pantsers. I find that the term Pantsers doesn’t do the writing method justice. I think that it is a little bit of a low blow in the epic fight.

Well. It makes you think that you have no idea what you are doing. That you are just winging it and have no idea what you are doing. That your inability to want to create an outline means that you are somehow incompetent in writing.

The discovery writers, however, don’t like to feel confined in an outline. They don’t want to miss the spontaniousness that comes with discovery writing.

What does this mean for me and my opinion in this issue? I see the good in both sides of the argument.

Outliners like to plan there stories. They go into the griddy details on what needs to happen and when. They look into the little pieces of info that a discovery writer may miss until the 2nd or 3rd draft. The are better at writing more complicated stories that involve multiple viewpoints or time frames.

Discovery Writers enjoy a certain spice in the stories that they write. A well written discovery written story feels more natural and tends to flow better. Discovery written books tend to have less view point characters or time frames.

They both have issues and the issues with the methods need to be mentioned too.

Outlined stories can be stale and the characters may have a motivational problems. It is usually when the story makes a left when the outline goes right. Or that the outline says that a character must do something that the written story doesn’t allow for.

The problems with discovery written books is simple. Plot holes. As the author doesn’t have a plan on what is happening, there can be un-foreshadowed scenes, and plot holes through out the story. Discovery written stories tend to need more revisions that there counterpart.

So what do I do?

It depends on the story. I do both.

I will leave a pause for the reader to freak out at the political statement.

Done?

Good.

I write both. as it depends on the story. I have written some where I have done complete outlines to them. I have written others where I Discovery Wrote it. I have done some where I have gotten part way through a Discovery Written book to discover that I had gotten lost and I need to outline my way out of the mess that I was in.

What was better? It depends.

The Outlined one was a collaboration with my 6 yr old and we did an outline as it is his story that I am writing. He just have the grammar of a six year old.

The Discovery written one was a NaNoWriMo challenge that I didn’t have enough time to get an outline done, but I had a fairly good idea on where I was going. The one that I needed to outline my way out of it was that I was writing a book, then I decided that the backstory was just as entertaining as the story and needed to be part of the story.

My conclusion. Don’t worry about how you write the book. Just write it. Decide how you want to write it and get those words on a page. getting word count every day is much more important than worrying about how you are writing it.

Until next time.

Nathan Pedde

Ramblings: New writers, help, and old writers

So I am apart of a couple Facebook writing groups and I have been apart of other groups in the past. From what I have seen there are two types of group out there. The ones that help out new writers and those that don’t. This generally goes along for other creative things like photography and drawing etc.

I am not sure what the differences are between the different groups as a lot of time they have the same members in the groups. But the good groups give real help to those that need help. The bad ones troll the newbies and make them feel bad for not knowing things that only time, experience and burning through a shit ton of words will get the author.

I think that helping new writers is all well and good, but is it something that an experienced author should worry about? Is it something that I should worry about? Is it something that I should spend my time on those Facebook groups helping noobs with there questions?

There is arguments that can be made against helping out new writers. The argument goes that the amount of money to be made is finite and by encouraging new writers, you are taking the potential amount from your piece of that and making that smaller. More writers equal less money. So if you are going to try to do that for a living, then why would you spend the time helping someone out that can take money from your pocket?

Years ago I used to work in the film industry in Vancouver before I got a family and got a job that paid the bills better. (That is a story for a later date.) Anyways, in that industry the film crew is very departmentalized. The sound guys are separate from the lighting guys. The grips are separate from the set decorators. Some departments, like sound, do not like training up new people.

They argue that they don’t want more people stealing there work. And I understand there point of view. I was in the lighting department, well a permittee. And during one of the mad rushes of insane amount of work, they brought in members from affiliated unions to help fill the positions. It kept me from getting my hours needed to become a full member. The way I understand it is if they didn’t bring in those other members, I could have gotten my hours needed. I would have gotten work. By making it harder for new workers to get in, they protect the workers that they have. It kinda makes sense. Kinda.

Does that make any sense in the writing context? The answer is no. There isn’t a finite number of units sold each month. The number fluctuates wildly and a single consumer is going to buy multiple books from a wide ranging authors. And ebooks are so cheap in comparison to traditional books. Today the consumer is able to buy 3 or 4 ebooks per traditional book bought just 10 years before. He is more likely to splurge on another book because of the price.

So now that I have shot down the argument of finite book sales, is there a reason that you should help new authors?

The answer is simple. As you develop as an author, you get tunnel vision. If you look at some of the main stream, household name authors, they can get to the point where they are able to publish anything. Doesn’t matter what it is about or how good it is. There name alone will sell it like hot cakes. They can get away with stuff that most indies cannot. (I am sure you know the authors that I am talking about.)

As an author who has been writing for a decade, I know that I still have a lot to learn. Hell, I am not even published yet. Helping out new authors is a step on that learning process. Teaching noobs, even if it is only by blog posts and Facebook replies, can help you from getting tunnel vision. They get you to think outside of the box and look at your craft in different ways. Those ways can help you learn in more ways than you know.

As a final point, my 6 year old is interested in everything space, and science. I like looking at space, but it wasn’t and isn’t as big of interest as it is to my son. He loves it so much that he is asking questions about everything. He knows what a bloody black hole is. I had to look it up to get the non-movie version of it. He is like a sponge.

To help him learn, as a good parent, it is up to me to make sure that if his able to ask the question, than I need to be able to give him a sufficient answer for his intelligence level. (Some things will confuse him. He is 6 after all.) But in order to do that, sometimes (more than I care to admit to him yet) I have to spend some time on Wikipedia to learn it first so I can teach him.

That is what teaching new people does to the older ones. It helps the older ones learn more as they teach them. And I think that it is a good thing. I think that all authors, no matter what the experience level is at should be willing to help others as they ask for it. It is also of my opinion that those troll writing groups should be shut down from lack of members.