Where: Salt Lake City at CONduit
Date: Saturday, May 24, 2008
Time: 2 PM – 4 PM
I had tons of great feedback from the last workshop. It seemed to be helpful to quite a few people. There are a number of other good workshops for writers going on before and after mine that you’ll want to look into as well.
For more information go to the CONduit website.
Sometimes, despite our best efforts, mistakes make their ways into the text. Omissions are common. For example, a missing “the” or “of” can be hard to see; your magical mind just fills these tiny words in.
Some omissions are hilarious. I was editing Raveler a few days ago and ran across a howler that made me laugh and laugh.
In one scene Shim is angry about the Bone Faces. When he sees their ships, I meant to have him exclaim with some indignation that they were “Coming to plunder under our noses while we’re tied up here.”
What I wrote was “Coming to plunder our noses while we’re tied up here,” which is a different type of threat altogether.
And then there are the aaarg! omissions. Like leaving the names of awesome folks who provided valuable input out of your acknowledgements. (Head smack!)
Yes, I’m guilty of such an idiocy.
I’m very recently guilty. Like, today guilty.
The good thing about indie publishing is that I can make changes and upload them immediately. I have already fixed the ebooks. The big paperbacks will be fixed on Monday. But these folks deserve better. To make amends, I’m going to spotlight them here, right now, for all posterity.
For excellent feedback on the full manuscript, I want to thank Stephen and Liesl Nelson.
A few years ago, I posted on this website, asking if anyone would be willing to read and report their response to a beginning I wanted to test. These folks stepped up and responded in grand fashion, helping me make the beginning better.
Adam Teachout
Alexis Cooper
Cameron Wilson
David West
Eric Allen
Hyrum Grissom
Justin Fisher
Krista Hoeppner Leahy
Laurel Amberdine
Lindsey Tolis
Mark Holt
Martin Cahill
Melanie Goldmund
Merrill Nielson
Nick Dianatkhah
Ray Solomon
Wes Amodt
All of you rock. And may the Bone Faces never come to plunder your noses.
Check out Tor’s 2009 fall catalog. Lots of great titles coming up including one of particular interest.
Folks, I have moved into making the line edits, which means we are on the home stretch. The manuscript is 888 pages long. I expect it to take 40-50 hours to make all the edits I marked. However, you have to remember that has to be worked in around my day job. Then we do the copy edit. I expect my portion of that will take another 40 hours. And then I take a day off work to create the book in the POD and ebook formats and publish. We are oh so close!
My copy editor just delivered the marked up manuscript. I will be making the edits over the next few days. Once those are made, it’s time to publish.
Ah, but publish just one book?
Nope. It looks like this is going to be two:
Each book would be about 120k words. Novels can range from around 30-50k words like many middle grade novels (or most of the books written by Louis L’Amour) to the 50-70k length of a lot of romance novels to the 70-100k words of many thrillers to the 300-400k epic behemoths that George R.R. Martin and Sanderson have recently written. I think most adult novels are around 100k. I think most fantasies are in the 80-130k area, although many epics can be in the 200’s. The bottom line is that both volumes will be chock full of story.
This is all part of a strategy to tell the same long, big story as originally planned, but do it in quicker chunks so that the series can become viable financially more quickly, but also so readers aren’t waiting so long between books. I have tormented those who enjoyed book 1 and wanted more far too long. I want to remedy that in the future, and more frequent installments will allow me to do this. Getting these two volumes out will help set the expectation, I think.
So a release of CURSE in July seems more than feasible. Then we’ll release RAVELER early August. Why August? Because we need to commission a new cover illustration. The soonest the artist can have it done would be August. Stay tuned. I can’t wait to see what art Victor comes up with next.
And if you want to get in on the new release sale for both, please sign up for the notification in the left sidebar.
Happiness.
It’s here. I finally figured out how to:
The course that’s open for applications is called Create Story Ideas That Beg to Be Written. It’s purpose is to transform you into a story idea machine.
And you can be there in six weeks. Before the end of the year.
I will be working with only a small set of people. I can’t accommodate more and give you the one-on-one feedback you need. And so you need to apply to get in.
The deadline for applications is midnight, October 27th. So contact me now to get the application instructions.
A cracking good story idea requires five critical elements. Until you have all five, you’ll struggle to plot. You’ll write a few scenes and run out of gas. You’ll feel like the story just isn’t going anywhere. And that’s because it isn’t. It can’t. A story isn’t a story without all five elements.
However, once you develop these five things, your story will suddenly roar to life. There are a few other elements that are important as well, but these five things form the core of the story setup.
In this course you’re not going to merely learn about all of those story elements. You’re going to go deep and learn what can only be learned by actually doing the work and developing story idea after story idea with personal one-on-one feedback from someone who knows what they’re doing.
When you finish, you won’t just know story theory. You will be a story idea machine. And you will be that because you have put in the work. The right work.
Again, this is not a course full of lectures and videos. This is a course where you’re going to work. And develop the insights and skills that only come from doing the work.
You’re actually going to:
It’s going to:
You are going to learn how to develop killer story ideas on purpose instead of on accident. Which means you’ll be able to do again and again. Reliably. Like clockwork.
Here are the details.
The focus of the class is not on learning about story, although you will do that. The majority of your time will be spent on developing stories.
You can’t become a carpenter by watching videos and reading books about it. You have to get out on the work site, cut wood, and pound nails. You have to make the mistakes all beginning carpenters make, get feedback, and improve. The same goes for writing. And you’re going to work in this class. You develop 21 story setups. In fact, you develop more because the 21 are just the ones you turn into me. And with each one your skills, insights, and abilities grow.
In the beginning, your setups will be bare bones. By the end, they’ll be fully developed setups that beg to be written. Setups you can use to immediately write the first draft of your novel, whether that’s in outline or chapter form.
Here’s what you do each week.
Week 1. November 2-7
Week 2. November 9-14
Week 3. November 16-21
Week 4. November 30-December 5
Week 5. December 7-12
Week 6. December 14-19
As you can see, in this class you develop story idea after story idea after story idea. I didn’t detail it above, but each week you will also be lifting the hood on your favorite stories and actually seeing how they work. Story after story after story. In this class, you are marinated in the work of developing characters, THOMs, goals, obstacles, settings, casts, and more. And because of that, each week will not only bring an explosion of insights, but new skills and abilities.
Every week you get two private, one-on-one, live sessions with me where you get encouragement and feedback on what you’ve developed. And then we’ll work as a group, applying the principles and brainstorming even MORE ideas for each other’s stories.
At first you might feel a bit shy and worried about your ideas and abilities. But you’ll soon get over that. By the end of the course you’ll be one of those people that can generate terrific ideas easily. And you’ll be able to do that because you will have put in the work to become a different writer.
The normal cost of the course is $899. But because this is the first time I’ll be running through it, and we’re likely to run into a few kinks that need to be worked out, I’ve dropped the price to $599. I personally guarantee my course. You’ll be totally oh-my-gosh-I’m-so-happy-I-took-that-class satisfied, or I’ll give you your money back. No questions asked.
Now’s your chance to stop spinning your wheels. I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d had something like this when I’d started:
When you finish, you will be a story idea machine.
You won’t know plotting. That’s a different course and set of skills. You won’t know how to write chapters. But you’ll know how to create the engine that powers all the rest of that. You’ll know how to create the core that makes awesome plots and chapters possible.
If you want to take this course, click the button below and contact me. I will tell you exactly how to apply.
I’m not going to be able to accept everyone who wants to take the class. I have a very strict limit on the number of students I can work with. So you need to get your application in before the deadline of midnight, October 27th.
Don’t wait!
Here’s the second 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 this one, we talked about how to not repeat ourselves in ways that make the reader feel like they’re getting the same old same old.
As usual, the guys had some great insights. Check it out: How to Not Repeat Yourself.
