Here’s Don D’Ammassa, yet another one of these reading forces of nature (about 1 book per day), on Servant of a Dark God.
This first fantasy novel gets kudos from the outset because the setting was sufficiently different from the usual to make me perk up after only a couple of chapters…This series shows a good deal of promise mixing workmanlike writing with some genuinely interesting ideas. More
One of the things I love about writing is that there’s always something new to learn. There’s always new content and, therefore, lots of cool research, but there’s also a lot to learn about the craft. I have no illusion that because I now have a contract I’ve suddenly arrived as a master craftsman. This art is just too big.
So you can imagine my delight when I saw that David Morrell is going to be giving a day-long workshop in my own backyard (out West, 5-8 hours is still in your backyard). I’ve signed up for Morrell’s workshop on June 6, 2008.
He’s the guy who wrote Rambo and started Thrillers Inc. He was also a professor for many years.
More on the Conference
http://www.murderinthegrove.com/index.htm
More on Morrell.
http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/shots21/intvus_21/dmorrell1.html
http://www.davidmorrell.net/
http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/oct02/morrell.htm
This was interesting.
David : I have a Ph.D. in American literature and taught academic courses: the American Novel of the 19th Century, the American Novel of the 20th Century, American Realism, Hemingway and Faulkner, Hawthorne and Melville, that sort of thing. The University of Iowa has the famous Writers Workshop, but I had nothing to do with it. In fact, they hated the sort of books I wrote and hated even more that I earned money as a novelist. That was the official line. But in secret, students snuck to my office and asked me technical questions about craft or asked me to read contracts they’d been offered (to see if the contracts were reasonable). Sometimes they showed me their manuscripts. The most productive association of that sort was with Jon Jackson who later published a series of police novels about Detroit. My most gifted student was T. C. Boyle. He writes humorous literary novels and short stories that critics love. His latest is DROP CITY. I taught him nothing about writing – he was a genius. But he did ask me to direct an individual reading course that he needed in order to graduate. We had a lot of interesting discussions, and I’m thrilled by his distinguished career.
Interestingly enough, T.C. Boyle was one of the writers that made life bearable for me while I was getting my BA in English. His novels, well, I never finished one of them. But his short work sings. Heck, his long work sings, but there’s not enough plot for my tastes.
Here’s the third episode I recorded with the Writing Excuses guys.
In the first podcast we talked about putting and not putting ourselves in our writing and making characters who don’t all sound like the author. In the second, we talked about how to not repeat yourself as an author. In this one, I shared some basics about generating emotion in readers and dealing with negative emotions writers face when they encounter rejection, compare their career with others, hit writer’s block, or hear someone didn’t like their story.
As usual, the guys had some great insights. Check it out: Emotion in Fiction.
Because of so many reader requests, I think it’s time to explain.
Alas, I must report that she ran off with a no-good tramp. I’m sure she’s realized her error. Either way, I’ve formed a posse. We’re hunting her down.
That’s the true story. For those that want the boring press release that obscures the facts, you may read what follows.
The first draft of Curse of a Dark God was delivered to the editor in August of 2009, two months before Servant of a Dark God was released. That draft had some issues with a few of the story lines. These issues crept (they did not run or slouch) into the text because the author, stressed about an aggressive deadline, decided to adopt the fix-it-when-you-finish-just-get-er-done-you’ve-got-a-freaking-deadline methodology of writing.
But a book of 230,000 words is a big old momma. And if something in a beginning chapter is off, it wankers a whole heck of a lot of story that follows, much like a line of dominoes. But it’s not just one story line. This book had multiple interconnected story lines. So issues in one line rippled out into others. What this meant was that the changes that needed to be made weren’t wee things that could be dealt with in a few weeks. When the dust settled, it was clear the book required a substantial rewrite, even though the draft contained gobs of cool story.
So much for that fix-it-later experiment. You can be sure the author won’t be using that on large books again.
So the author wrote another draft of 245,000 words and delivered it in August of 2010. The story rocked. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication on size (and there’s no use in having a drama about what was said and who was at fault and why fairies are always tiny hot chicks; despite our best efforts, life is full of bumps; the best thing to do is learn from them and move forward). The book actually needed to be in the 170,000 – 180,000 word range. Same as Servant of a Dark God.
In a 10% edit, you’re tightening a story, cutting out the fluff. In an edit designed to reduce the book by 30% or more, you’re cutting off arms and legs and removing things like livers. The story can’t survive such cuts unless the thing was obese to begin with and just needed to go on a diet. Unfortunately, Curse of a Dark God draft 3 was fairly lean, given the amount of story it contained. It was NOT a candidate for Biggest Loser.
The upshot is this third draft is going to be another major rewrite. Which means, given publishing lead times, that it’s going to take a number of months to get it on the shelves.
(fricken, ricken, grumble, frag a friggen nack)
Because I’m just starting on the outline, we don’t have a delivery date yet. As soon as we do, I’ll post it.
I apologize to all of you expectantly looking forward to the next book. When I started this series, I promised myself that I would not leave my readers hanging. I was determined that my books would come out in a timely fashion. And I have been working like a devil to do just that, but sometimes things happen. What I can promise you is that this draft will go quickly. Furthermore, I already have book 3 outlined. It should go quickly as well.
I know some of you are asking why? Why, the word limit? Aren’t there are plenty of monster books out there?
There are. In fact, about half of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books are roughly the length of draft 3. Publishers do sell fat books. However, the bigger the book, the harder it is to make it profitable.
First, bigger books cost more. There’s the cost of the additional paper and editing, but there’s also the extra money to ship and store.
Second, you can’t put as many copies out in the stores. You can’t because they take up more of the space that might be allotted to an individual book. So instead of being able to have stores stock four or five copies of a 120k novel, they can only stock two or three of a big old momma in that same space.
Third, bigger books cost you, dear reader, more money. Sure, the publisher might eat some of the additional costs, but some of those costs will be passed onto you.
So because of the increase in cost, the publisher needs to sell more copies; however, the limit on display space and the higher price make it harder to sell those additional copies and actually may lead to selling fewer copies.
Do you see the bind?
This doesn’t mean big books can’t be profitable. It just means that it’s not as easy. It’s a bigger risk. Part of me would want the publisher to take that risk. But the other part of me knows that slow and steady usually wins the race. Neither I nor the publisher want to gamble the long-term viability of the Dark God series. Now, if Tor was doing this all in paperback, this might not be such a big issue. But we’ve got the sweet hardback/paperback deal. And business projections have to be done in that world.
So the short of it is that we’ve run into some business limitations, and it’s going to take me a bit more time to deliver.
I wish I could announce a date at this time, but I can’t. I’ll finish up the outline for this draft and run that by the publisher around Christmas. Then it’s back to work. I promise that what you’ll get will be my best. And that’s what you want, anyway, even if it takes a bit longer to get it into your hands.
Well, I’m less than 300 words from my original estimate of 140,000 words. The problem is that estimates are notoriously unreliable. Especially when most of the invention comes during the draft phase. It appears I have 20-30k more words. So I’m back down in the 80% finished range. But here’s my goal for completing. I hope to deliver it at somewhere around 170,000 words, maximum.
BTW, let me tell you this story is exciting me–the giant dogmen of Toth that breed monstrous dogs called maulers, a tall insect like creature called ungar that are stealing souls for their magic, wurm fields, battles, mysteries, traitors, our first meeting of the woodikin and Harnock (the one bred by Lumen to be a superior warrior), a wonderful sleth called Eresh who was completely unplanned and completely delightful, plus some incredibly delicious character situations.
Oh, baby. This one is shaping up with all sorts of delights. Of course, if I don’t execute, readers will just see it as a mess. So it’s back to work.
After a cancerous death, I appeared on Writing Excuses this week to groan and hold forth with the guys on writing second novels and second books in a series.
During the podcast I talked about my practice of debriefing after every writing project. A reader just asked what that was, and so I thought I’d explain it here.
The debrief is a simple thing. I learned it back when I worked as a business consultant. It always provides great insights. Sometimes it provides massive insights. The principle is to pull back and look at the big picture every once in a while. So here’s what I do. When I finish a project, I sit down and simply list out what I struggled with, what went well, and anything I learned. I list out things I’d do again that worked particularly well and things I’d do differently. This might be about craft or process. Sometimes I might take some time to reflect on the nature of story and read a favorite book about the craft or perform a story analysis on another movie or book. Then I write up my insights in a form that I can read later and know what the heck I’m talking about. This can take a few hours or a few days. This last debrief after draft 3 of CURSE coincided with my preparation for a day-long workshop I had agreed to give on story, and so the insights came thick and fast. I recommend the practice highly.
Raveler is now up on Audible! The other two books are getting excellent reviews so far for both the story and performance by Alex Wyndham. So happy to have these up in audio. Many readers have been asking for audio versions for years.
