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Writing Longer Tales
By  Nikki Foster
When I thought about writing this, I
took down a lot of notes. I wasn't sure which order I wanted the
article to be in. That's the way I always approach writing: What am I
doing? In what order? Why? There are many other approaches. So
I'll cover the ones I know and work from there. Let's start from the
beginning, though. After all, we're talking about novel or novella
writing here. This is a lot of work.
Some Guidelines
For one, we are only talking about a
novel once it has surpassed forty thousand words. But this is a short
novel, a children's novel. Most wouldn't say until forty-five or
fifty thousand, but I'm being generous. An average paperback might be
between fifty and seventy. Above seventy, and you've got a nice juicy
work of art going on, and it's probably best that you write fantasy,
because most books in the genre double as blunt weapons in case of a
burglary anyway. If you're wondering, I stole that joke from Guy
Gavriel Kay when I saw him doing a poetry reading for Beyond
This Dark House. I have none of my own humor, but the sentiment
is true.
However, SFWA Nebula does
note that, "To sell a novel under 60,000 words to a genre publisher
requires a novel that is extraordinary." They later note that you're
better off writing a sixty to ninety thousand word novel if that's
what it's going to be. As for novelettes, they can be between
seventy-five hundred and seventeen thousand five hundred. Above that
and below the novel you have the novella.
Evaluating the Idea
So, what's your story about? First off,
does it need to be a novel? I wrote what would be about a 250 page
paperback novel last year. Looking back at it, I realize that it
probably should've been a short story. The idea was very simple, but
making it long enough for a novel meant creating a complex world with
rules and people that I didn't care about writing. If you sit back
and say, "Do I really have to finish this?" (like I did)
there's something wrong. Sometimes an idea is great, but what you
really needed was a neat, tidy little short story without many
secondary characters and no time to worry about the rules of the
world. Making a story a novel generally means that there are many
characters affected in the world, not just your main character. If
you don't care about those other people and can't make yourself care,
maybe you shouldn't be trying for a novel-length story. You're going
to want to be able to develop all the characters of your world, not
just some of them. Of course, you can always take that too far and
say, "Well what about the guy who serves my characters drinks in scene
three? What's his angle?" He shouldn't have an angle. People
like that are simply background fodder, hardly even people at all.
Don't worry about it.
So if by now
you've decided that your story should be a novel, great, read on.
Because the thing is that you need a world to put those people in.
This is latching on to a later point somewhat, but sometimes authors
work better plotting out a world and its general functions and rules
before thinking about the story taking place there. That's fine. Any
way you feel good about writing is fine. I'll offer up some different
angles to take later so you can try them out. Maybe if something
feels stale, a different angle will help. If you're still stuck, and
maybe it's just writer's block, then try my article, Breaking
Your Mental Blockers, for a jump-start.
Next: Who are you writing for? If
yourself, that's great. Your friends? Even better. If it's to get
published, good luck. But why? If it's strictly for money, again,
more good luck, because it probably won't take you very far. I hope
the reason you're writing is because you have and idea that just seems
so cool, you can't stand not writing it down. Or because you have so
many stories in your head, you'll explode if you don't get them all
out. Those are the best reasons, the ones that will keep you writing
for hours and even through out the night, and loving every second of
it because you see this magical weaving coming out the other end- all
of your own creation.
The only other
question you should ask yourself is what are you writing?
There is a story about a man who heard that the hottest topics in
literature were gangsters, paramedics and dogs. So he wrote a story
about paramedic dogs who took out gangs. This is the kind of thing
that you want to avoid. The market is already going to be flooded
with stories about vampires the second that publishers say, "We love
this vampire stuff." Stick true to the stories that you are
interested in writing about. Kelly Armstrong loved her werewolf
stories, but she thought they would never sell, so she tried to finish
murder mysteries and put them out instead. Kelly is currently the
author of a healthy chain of werewolf novels since the publication of
her first book, Bitten. Don't take your first love for granted;
it's probably where your talent lies. Passion is not a force that is
easily overlooked, even on paper.
Techniques for Writing a Long One
I'm going to suggest a few styles of
pinning down a novel here. If you can't figure out a way for you to
write efficiently, try them all. But don't be stuck on something that
doesn't really work for you just because it seems like the best way to
go about things. If you're entirely stuck no matter what, make up
your own system as you go along.
Trial and error will teach you volumes
about your own personal style. I wasted a year on trial and error
writing my first novel, and then another four months on a novella. I
wouldn't take them back for the world. I had the good luck to have a
generous Writer's Craft teacher who actually read over my entire
novella and gave me some great tips. Can you find someone similar?
These learning periods are invaluable even if you can't. And if you
think you've come across someone who can help you, ask them. If
someone offhandedly suggests looking over your work one day, hound
them. I don't believe that anyone can write well without the input of
other people. We writers just can't see beyond the end of our own
noses sometimes. That isn't a occupational bash, but a fact. Who
wants to see the mistakes? Who remembers that Johnny
was six years old in chapter five and four in chapter three? It seems
irrelevant, and only one out of six people might notice, but you do
need to know to stay successful. Being a professional means being
accurate.
As promised, here are some
techniques to getting that novel or novella beyond the first ten
pages:
Write, and see where it goes. Now, this technique is not
necessarily going to get you beyond ten pages. But I know many
authors who write this way and just let the story happen. They trust
their characters to work things out without them actually knowing
about it. One woman I know who has several ebooks published writes
this way, and she's completed sixty thousand word pieces in two weeks.
How? I don't know, I don't function that way. It's the trust of your
pen on the paper or fingers on the keyboard to guide you in the right
direction.
On the other hand, you
could end up like certain other writers I know, calling up their
friends in a panic: "Johnny just jumped through the portal and then
didn't come out the other side! Where'd I loose Johnny??" This is a
distinct disadvantage to this technique because you never know where
the story's going. It turns out something did happen to
Johnny, but somehow it was supposed to. I believe a lot of these
coincidences are your subconscious mind working overtime on the
advanced storylines that you haven't gotten to. There is always the
distinct possibility, though, that Johnny doesn't show up again and
now you have a big, wagging plot hole. Planning from this deep into
an unplanned story is very, very difficult.
Start ten pages, and then plan it out. This is probably the
easiest thing for the new author to do. The ten pages give you an
idea of the direction and the tone of the story, but if you plan it
out after that, there's no chance of loosing it to an abysmal plot
hole. That can be discouraging to loose, even after ten pages. And
new authors certainly don't need to be discouraged. Getting up
every day and realizing that you need to work on the story if it's
going anywhere is discouraging enough at first.
This planning does not have to be
extensive. But map out your plot line. Give most of the characters
names, even the ones that double as canon fodder. Have a good mental
idea of the kind of rooms/places that your characters occupy. As
well, decide on a climate. Read over your story one time and see if
it could be set anywhere from the boreal forest to the arctic tundra.
That needs to be fixed.
Let ideas fester until they ferment into wonderful things. This
is for the little more advanced writer. Not as much planning needs to
be done in the long run because things have already been boiling up
top for a long time. If you ever have a good idea or concept but
don't know what to do with it, file it away for future reference. My
second novel combined two ideas that had been running around in my
head: a captive harem princess and a set of daggers that were magical.
You figure out how it came together ;)
Planning in this game is usually the
specifics. The larger picture has already been thought about for so
long that it's like a second nature to write about. Do be careful of
plot inconsistencies, though. That can be hard to keep track of
because this type of writing can tend to evolve quickly without the
writer realizing every detail.
Build a world, and then build a story. In How to Write
Sci-Fi and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card, he talks in detail about
how the world of Hart's Hope was created long before the story ever
came into existence. You may be the kind of person who loves to do
what Card did- plot out every little detail as far as the atmospheric
pressure and planet density. Of course, you don't have to go into
that much detail, but having a solid world to base your story
in helps a great deal. This writer will often be much more interested
in medieval fact than fiction, so be careful not to overload your
reader with information. Just because you know it doesn't mean they
have to- or even should.
Some things
to consider when making a world that you plan to set a story into: is
there magic? Will the people who have it be loved or hated or does it
matter? How much influence do the gods have, and are they real? How
does the political system work? If there are changes in it from our
every day expectations, you should outline that for the reader before
going any further. This may require some historical backlash, so try
to centralize the duller stuff between action so that the reader
doesn't drop off completely. Are there slaves in your world?
Distinction between castes? Different races? Different tongues?
Keep in mind that in medieval times, most empires or kingdoms didn't
even have a single tongue. Schooling was too unpopular and the
distances compared to the modes of transportation too wide spread.
(On a side note, make sure not everyone in your story is literate
unless they're all nobility. Reading was not common. Hence
the town criers.) What about transportation? That became a problem
for me when I realized that I had people riding around on horses in a
province that was nearly a desert. Wouldn't have worked out well. So
now my people walked a good deal of the time or hitched a ride on an
elephant. Look up your climate zone, and see what animals are around
to tote your people.
In a later
section, I'll cover a little more stuff on world building, as well as
some links.
Plot out the story, the names, the gods, the parental backgrounds,
occupations and character sketches for each and every single
person. Alright, maybe I'm going a little overboard here, but this
is how I write. When I start a new story, it usually takes me about a
week and a folder with four new files on background, synopsis and
timeline as well as the body of the story before I start writing. It
is a lot of work writing this way, but I like it a) because I'm a very
qualitative person and b) it allows me to clear my head of excess
thoughts because all the details are already down on paper.
Everything is easily referenced. I know the names of every god and
how they came to be from who. The characters are all noted with their
full names, with small sketches- consisting of point form notes about
their past, habits and personal reflections in no particular order-
for the main characters.
For further
organization and detail, I plot out every scene in the order I want
them to be in within the body of the novel itself. That way, as soon
as I sit down to type, I just pick up whatever place in the novel that
I want to without having to figure out what comes next. That's
already done. For convenience, I usually mark unfinished scenes or
scenes-to-be-written with two *'s, or use another uncommonly found
character. That way, using the Find command, you can figure out where
your unfinished work is as well as keep track of how much more you
have to do. I find this is very encouraging because day by day I can
watch myself knocking down the number of stars there are in the
story.
Pivotal Story Elements
Starting out, as in any story, your
characters must have a good reason for what they're doing. This does
not necessarily mean that you have to tell the reader what they're
doing at first. Their reasoning can be left as yet another mysterious
question if their actions are extraordinary enough. Either way is
good, depending on your situation. Things characters do not need
include physical descriptions (I like to leave most of it up to the
reader, giving a few defining details about facial/hair/build
instead.) and thought-provoking dialogue. Most people do not speak
in a very flagrant, philosophical manner without any contractions
whatsoever. Read your dialogue aloud; make sure it could be mistaken
for something you might say someday, short of some archaic or
futuristic language, depending on your genre. When trying to show
emotion, don't over blow it with exclamation marks.
Make check points somewhere in the
editing of your story for beginning, middle and end points. In your
beginning you need to generally do a lot of explaining for fantasy or
sci-fi writing. Trolls, gnomes and lasers are pretty generic and
well-understood, but if you plan on including some dryads, you may
want to educate, just in case not everyone has heard of them. In the
middle of your novel you should have two things going: a good deal of
questions that build up suspense and character interaction that makes
your people more angry/sympathetic/irritating/etc. The middle of the
novel will have to do most of the work on the relationships that are
founded in the very beginning. Also keep in mind that connecting your
middle and end points is a climax. Your middle must have enough build
up that it won't surprise the reader with suddenness but not so much
that your climax is anticlimactic.
Finally, we have the ending. Here,
we tie up loose ends (or not) and let the reader find out what happens
in the ever-after portion (or not). One thing is certain, though: you
have to give the reader enough down time after the climax to feel
satisfied. Your ending should always be the shortest section of your
novel or novella, but to say, "Then his sword was thrust through the
heart of the dragon and it fell dead. They were happy and went home.
The end." is too abrupt to satisfy the reader. Even if you don't
plan on telling them every detail about the rest of Johnny's life,
there has to be some reconciliation about what has just happened and
it should have been a major marker on your character's lives.
World Building
Now, any way you hack it, this is an
essential part of a novel, seeing as most folks around here are
writing fantasy or sci-fi. If you're completely new to this process,
try out
these links.
There are some really scientific ones in
there, but, let's face it, unless you enjoy doing this, it's never
going to matter what the diameter of your world's planet is nor how
fast it spins. Mind you, if you'd like to change days from 24 hr days
to 16 hr days, then you might want to think about this stuff. Draw
maps or at least mentally have an idea of how the city/town/village
your characters are centralized in is spaced out. Keep in mind that
most cities, even the bigger ones, didn't expand very well. There
were next to no straight streets because no one planned for the
buildings that went in. They just popped up whenever someone wanted
one.
If you're looking at pulling a
Tolkien, this link is a
great starting point. As well, if you're having trouble with names,
this is
also an amazing site- don't forget to mix and match! That's half the
fun.
Now, you do have to consider
that world building is not just a global matter. It makes a huge
difference in the feeling of your novel when your characters live in,
say, adobe huts as compared to sprawling chateaus that would make a
mason proud. And in the same area, you can't mix the two styles. The
poor will be using wood and hunks of rock if their wealthy
counterparts have houses made of brick. Societies emulate each
other's style, creating a repetition of a theme. This is what makes
the society distinctive.
There are
other, smaller parts of the world to consider. If your characters
spend a lot of time on a certain boat, or in a certain room, you must
have a mental picture of what that room is like. Most taverns are
very similar: bar, a few tables, big roaring fireplace, and they're
all going to smell of ale and food and various other less pleasant
odors. But, being that they're so similar, this makes it more
important that the writer keeps their imaginary bar stable. For
instance, if you write, "He walked from the bar towards the fireplace
on the far wall." You cannot later say, "He looked up from his place
at the fire to find the bar's patrons staring down on top of him."
Unless the patrons themselves move or your character is imagining
things, it confuses the reader about the dynamics of the room.
One last thought on world building: the
time period in which your characters live must be considered. Unless
we're talking about a very late period, chances are your characters
won't have guns. If it is later, they can have muskets and
single-shot pistols, that kind of thing. However, unless you make a
point of noting that one society is more advanced than the other, it
is a boo-boo to write about a war in which two countries face off at
each other, one armed with lances and the other with semi automatics.
An exaggeration (I hope!) but you get the gist.
There are very real periods in
time when these kind of overlaps did occur. Take, for instance, the
European pioneers taking over North America from the natives. The
natives were complete foreigners to concepts beyond spearing and
trapping, whereas the Europeans could offer them gunpowder. If you
are going to have that kind of difference, keep in mind that it may be
necessary to expand on the history of both societies to show how that
difference came to be. Or, perhaps, it is part of your mystery to be
unveiled in a later part of the novel. Either way, it needs
explaining.
Good Habits to Acquire
So, by now I've covered what a novel is,
ways of writing a novel, some things that must be included in your
novel, and finally some world building tips. These are all dandy and
fine, but they may not turn you into the next Charles de Lint or
Ursula K. LeGuin (me, I'd settle for Guy Kay, but what can you do?).
I'm not promising that this next section will either, but there are a
few things that I've noticed that will make you more successful in
your own work if nothing else.
Write every day. You've heard this a million times. But it's a
good habit. It makes sitting down and working much easier. I
went on such a spree the other day that I finished about five thousand
words in a novel, went to work and then came back and wrote about
three pages in this article. It felt amazing to accomplish so much,
and it only reaffirmed my belief that I'm stuck as a writer, body and
soul. Not that I mind J
Keep reading. I've noticed that a lot of the crowd around
Elfwood is about as young as is allowed to people in their
late-twenties. This, my friend, is your prime age for primping that
vocabulary. You've already got a good grip on the basics of English,
and now it's time to expand. Reading will not only evolve your ideas
about what a novel can encompass and how (Try Jay McInerney's short
novel Bright Lights, Big City for a taste of fiction writing in
the second person.), but also your concept of vocabulary. If
you are trying to work yourself out as a writer, chances are you
already have a decent vocabulary for your age, and you're going to
soak up new words like a sponge. For instance, have you ever been
typing along and then tried to throw in a word in a sentence that just
sounded right? You had to go back and double check the meaning
to make sure that you weren't making things up, but it was an
expansion on your vocabulary anyway. These things don't just happen
out of the blue unless you speak to a lot of higher-minded individuals
on a regular basis. It'll come, usually, from your reading.
Do research. You are never going to hurt yourself more until
the day when you decide that you're going to write about the pine
trees that grow in the tundra that your characters are traipsing
through. There is nothing in any tundra that is going to grow
(naturally; maybe your story calls for unnatural growth) over a foot
high, if that much. We're talking about a forest of lichens here.
Writer Kelly Armstrong, author of Bitten and the subsequent
novels, told us at a workshop that she made a lot of "amateur
mistakes" in writing the first drafts of Bitten. Among her top
five? Having her werewolves jet-set from Paris to London and back
again. She'd never been to Paris or London, had no idea what
they were like. She just thought it sounded more mysterious that
way.
Research is usually not going
to take you all that long, and it doesn't have to be intense.
Everyone makes mistakes, and some are not going to be noticed,
especially when it's something that the general populous has no idea
about. Fiction
Factor's Tina Morgan who also happens to be a horse fanatic once
pointed out mistakes in one of Robert Jordan's novels when he wrote
about storing equipment on a horse. So it happens. Even in the big
time, but obviously neither Jordan nor his editor knew any better, so
the book was sent out to print. Mind you, you're not going to
generate many new fans this way.
Don't restrict your style or structure of writing. The worst
thing you can do to your creativity is restrict yourself to writing
the novel in the order that its going to be read. Start at the
beginning, middle or end if you need to. There is no "right" way of
writing and there is no way that will make you better. The one thing
that will make you worse, though, is stifling yourself from the
beginning by putting on restrictions that you think is the right way.
Personally, I don't even use chapter breaks in my novels for fear of
making myself feel like that section had to end there. The
chapters don't go in until the first draft is finished.
Keep yourself interested in the story. This is going to be the
best way of ensuring that you're still interested when it comes time
to sit down and type. How? World build if you haven't already.
Sketch out pictures for various scenes in the novel. Plan cover art
for the book itself (fun, even if it's not going anywhere). Write out
a cover letter for it; even if you don't plan on sending this one out,
the next one might be a possible prospect, and this'll be good
practice. Plus it never hurts to daydream about the
possibilities.
Talk to other people
about your story. I find this is my best motivation. If you have
someone who will listen, tell them about what you're writing. It's
exciting to think about your story evolving right before your eyes,
and imagining where it's going to go. Go home and count the words and
pages done. Figure out how much you have left and make a realistic
goal for tomorrow and then the next day.
Keep all your old writing. Even if you thought you hated it
when you first read it, maybe it wasn't so bad. There's a chance that
in between all those juvenile catch-phrases and cliché description,
there was something really good. A sentence, a phrase that will make
you feel like Ernest Hemmingway himself. It can probably be reworded
and applied later in some other project if you keep it in mind. On
the other hand, don't keep everything you write that sounds wonderful
either. Some of it may just not be useful, no matter how elegant your
prose is.
Keep notes; don't depend on your memory. Especially when you
first start thinking. I find that my muse loves to keep me awake.
I'm lying in bed and suddenly she starts dropping nuggets into my
brain and going, "This is such fantastic stuff!" And I usually agree.
But then if I didn't write it down, come morning it would be gone.
Keep a pen on you always. Scribble on napkins, on hands and on
wrappers if you have to. Sometimes all it takes is a few simple words
to start an entire plethora of plot ideas coming in for your next ten
pages. But always write it down. Most people's memories are too akin
to sieves to risk doing otherwise.
Don't stop with one novel. Or novella. It's wonderful that
you've completed one. It's an accomplishment that most people will
never come close to. So feel very proud of yourself. Here's the
problem: If that first one doesn't get you off the ground, if you
haven't already started a second one, you've got nothing to fall back
on. And the one day that you write an agent or editor and they say,
"Well, we don't need this, but send more!" you suddenly have nothing
to send. Writing should be a passion, not a hobby or a career. It
can become either one, but it should be a passion first and
foremost. The second that first draft is done and you put it away for
a bit to space yourself before editing, start writing the next one.
If you've gotten into the habit of writing every day, you won't be
able to stop yourself. I found this out quickly after my novel
Denying Precedence finished and I was left stagnant until I
realized The Sleeping Eye was just waiting to be written. It's
an addiction alright, but at least it's an intelligent one.
Energize your brain. And water it. Author/playwright Jane Bow
suggests drinking water constantly to keep your brain in proper
working order. And also energize it. Keep your pathways open to new
ideas. Try getting up and touching right knee to left elbow, and then
vice versa. Bow believes that you're connecting the two sides of the
brain that way to work better with each other. Besides that, you're
definitely doing a great thing getting up and moving away from the
keyboard at any time. Exercise = endorphins; happy hormones that
energize your body's functionality.
Check up on them, because they're not always going to check up on
you. Keep a record of your work and where it's sent out. I didn't
even know I'd had an article published in a local paper until I met up
with the editor by chance and he told me. I asked him, "Were you
going to email me back about it?" He said, "No. You either would
have seen it or you wouldn't have." Well, true, if I'd lived in the
town where it had been printed and received the paper. Another
writer I know submitted a piece to the Toronto Star (No small
publication, you'll know if you live in Ontario or related regions.).
Now, they did let her know that they might publish the
piece. Unfortunately, they pushed it ahead to release it on time for
Mother's Day. The contract was snail mailed to her and wasn't
received until a month later, so when others told her about the print
with her name on it, it came as somewhat a surprise.
Which just goes to show you that even if
the place you are submitting your work is a professional, legitimate
business, it may not always be on top of its work. So you have to be
on top of yours. Make sure to call back in about three weeks to find
out what's going on with your piece. Keep yourself updated, because
no one else (unless you have a good agent, and even then it might be a
good idea to do some of your own legwork) is going to.
Get yourself an ideal reader. If you've read Stephen King's
On Writing then you already know what I'm talking about. Orson
Card talks about a similar concept in How to Write Sci-Fi and
Fantasy (which I think is a wonderful resource if you haven't
figured that out yet). What you need as a writer is someone who will
sit down and read through your work with enough attention to detail
that it will be helpful to you. However, this personal also needs
some measure of objectivity. Your mom and dad are probably not the
right people, as much as they will praise you. Even though I was
hoping for something else from them, they still reacted with a, "That
was wonderful!" And when I said, "You don't think that Antiago [my
main character in Denying Precedence] was unbelievable?" "An
Ant... -" They give up trying to pronounce the name at this point-
"Noo! He was wonderful!" This is the kind of attention to detail
that is critical in a good critique. Your local writers group or
online writing group may be able to help, but it is unlikely that any
of those perfect strangers on the list will be willing to give the
whole sixty thousand words of your story the attention that it
deserves.
So who do you go to then?
Well, you can try sibilings. They were always more objective than
your parents, always ready with some jibe about your clothes or hair,
so they'll probably still be able to look at your work now and say,
"That just doesn't seem right." They may not be as attentive as you
need them, though. Usually, if you've got a long, honest relation
with them, your mate or your best friend is going to be your best bet.
They know best what's really important to you, and that by reading the
novel, you're trusting them with a lot of needed input. Attach a pen
to the side of the manuscript if you need to so they remember to take
notes on things that are good, don't make sense or just seem weird.
Book Recommendations
There are several books that I would recommend on writing. First and foremost, considering my genre: How To Write Sci-Fi and Fiction by Orson Scott Card.
As well as: Escape Into the Open by Elizabeth Berg. A lovely writer.
Last but not least, I highly recommend Joan Bolker's book, The Writer's Home Companion which is actually an anthology of advice from different people.
*whistles* Alright, I had more to talk about in that section than I thought I would. Either way, I think there is at least one nugget per person if you've come to read, and I hope you find yours. If nothing else then write, write, write like mad! It's important that you come to obsess over your craft, especially if you ever think that you're going to try and derive a source of income from it. So get out there and go nuts.
 |
| |  | How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card Card
This book provides invaluable advice for every science fiction and fantasy writer interested in constructing stories about people, worlds and events that stretch the boundaries of the possible...and the magical. They'll learn: * what is and isn't science fiction and fantasy, and where their story fits in the mix * how to build, populate, and dramatize a credible, inviting world readers will want to explore * how to use the MICE quotient--milieu, idea, character and event--to structure a successful story * where the markets are, how to reach them and get published There's no better source of information for writers working in these genres. This book will help them effectively produce exciting stories that are both fascinating and market-ready. |
| |  | World Building - Science Fiction Writing by Stephen Gilett
This book is designed to give science fiction writers the solid grounding they need in real science to make their fictions read like fact. World Building is a blueprint in words, calculations, tables and diagrams to help writers transport readers from one world to another. |
| |  | Alchemy with Words: The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy
By Darin Park abd Tom Dullemond. Written by new and established voices of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Alchemy With Words offers something for writers at all levels. Its sage advice will help you avoid many amateur mistakes. Explore World Building, Religions, Food, Fighting & Weaponry and much more, to craft an exceptional story. |
| |  | Aliens and Alien Societies (Science Fiction Writing Series)
Whether you're a writer or a reader of science fiction, this how-to guide provides thought-provoking analyses of the ways in which aliens and alien societies can be portrayed convincingly. It's almost as fascinating as the many classic SF texts it analyses. |  |
FARP Article Guestbook
| Date | Name | Comment | | | 12 Dec 2004 |  Queen Lia | Not only this one, but ur other tutorial was great too  , i think this FARP section is so a-mazing 'cause it doesn't matter if you're a pro or a teddy bear you can learn something. I could never finish one single novel, i had the characters (lots of them), the ideas, the plots, the scenes, all ready to pop out of my mind. But i'd eventually get to point where i'd think everything was garbage and make it all go away. But now i'm proud to say i'm half way done and it doesn't stink! Thanx! | |
| 15 Jan 2005 | Dallas | This was very insightful! I actually felt compelled to rewrite a few things within my current works after reading this article, it definitely provided some motivation. The point you made about writing down important ideas instead of relying solely on memory was information I found very useful.
Thanks again. | |
| 7 Feb 2005 | Silverdrake | I'm amazed. I am truly and utterly shocked, and delighted. THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE OUT THERE LIKE ME!!! HOORAY! I am NOT the only one who's had a wonderful idea then had it burn out on me after two pages!! THERE IS HOPE!! Thank you so much!! | |
| 11 Aug 2007 | Daniella R. Postavsky | I have a story that's been sitting in my head for the past month and I think I'm finally going to start doing something about it and find out what it's about. | |
| 22 Nov 2007 | Anonymous person | I loved this article! some of the things i was stuck with were things you just talked about. i am 15 and I've started on my first, hopefully, novel. I've written many short stories(as i have a role-playing web-site with my friends), but I've never started, or even thought about starting anything of this magnitude. I've been having trouble finding names for my main characters, so for the moment they're represented by a star or an empty underlined portion on my computer and to tell you the truth, this is really getting on my nerves, so I'm about to go name hunting.
so anyway, i read both of you articles and they were so helpful. Thanks <3 | |
| 6 Mar 2008 |  Vampirate411 | does anyone know where I can find a good article on how to write an excellent first chapter for a novel? | |
| 29 Mar 2008 | Anon. | OMG! Thank u so much for this article nd all da links! I’ve been dying to write a story (or stories) about the things that I love (ie: dragons) but i was never sure how to begin going about it. This is definitely something to tag and refer to! Where’s my pencil... | |
| 28 Aug 2008 | Scathach | I’ve got one novel that I’m about 10,000 words into, but every time I sat down to write more the ideas fizzled out. Now I’ve read this I think I may actually manage to keep that particular cauldron bubbling! Thanks! | |
| 9 Sep 2008 |  Rasmus Dragon Kvist | Thank you so much,this helped me a lot,i’ve just started my story,i had very much use of this text in my chapter; The discovery of humans.translated from Upptäckten av människorna.Thank you once again!
//Rasse | |
| 25 Sep 2008 |  Carlin Ring | i really enjoyed this. my teacher is thinking about using it to teach how to write! i hope this is ok.  | |
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