Actual words.
The outline is as conflated as it’s likely to get for now, or until more inspiration strikes.
It’s time to start writing the story.
I’ll make a ‘safety’ copy of the actual conflated outline, and put it away.
I’ll start with chapter 1 and actually consume a copy of the outline as I go, so word count and page count will come and go as I lay down new words and erase bits of the conflated outline as I go. It’s a curious process, but it’s a lot better than facing pure white space.
CJ, I hope you will forgive me a question or two; I am fascinated by the process of writing, and all the more so with one of my favorite writers (ah, you’ll have to forgive me some gushing, as well…) And I fear these questions have been asked before here, or are answered somewhere in the parts of The Writing Life I have not yet read. Nonetheless:
Do you maintain any other documents alongside the original outline and the metamorphosizing manuscript, e.g. notes, character descriptions, research documents, timelines, maps, etc? (metamorphing? metamorphosing? My references disagree…)
The longest stories I’ve attempted so far have been around 20,000 words, and the outlines have been minimal, but I find I need to keep at least a general purpose notes file, and usually a folder of references material nicked off of Wikipedia and the like. I feel like I am pushing the limits of what I can keep in my head at once, though, and that some additional organization might be useful. On the flip side, I fear that I will end up happily mucking about with maps and genealogies and never get on with the, you know, writing.
Do you have ideas or passages pop up out of sequence, e.g. a great idea for that climactic battle over the last cookie in while you’re working on the baking sequence in the first chapter? If so, do you drop that sequence into place in your evolving outline/manuscript, or do you set it aside in a separate file until it is time to deal with it?
And… do you come up with names for all the characters in the outline stage. or use placeholders for some or all of them? I’ll often stub something out with temporary names, but I find it almost impossible to really get anywhere until I’ve found the final right (write?) names for everyone, down to the last progress-swelling background character.
The progress bar is a great idea, by the way! Though, i have to confess that there’s something about the way the widget and book titles combine into the phrase “Progress Intruder” that makes me snarf my tea every time I load the site up. Dunno, maybe I just need more sleep…
😆
I’m likely to think of a name the first time I create the character, then forget how to spell it, and sometimes just forget it. Rather than lose the creative rush, I just type X into the spot and global all the X’s later. I can be more specific than that, but don’t need to be: X is enough to snag the ‘search’.
I have a small hardback notebook that I use for details: I write new names into that. Eventually when I have to fix things, I go searching for X (case sensitive search) and plug in the right names.
I append notes to the outline and make safety copies of the whole thing as time passes; and I don’t keep all my eggs in the same basket/computer. My story ‘eats up’ outline; and notes get ‘selected’ and ‘moved’ into likely places for them to be, or re-moved and dumped back into the to-dos of that book. I adopted this method because of conventions and family emergencies: family disruptions arrive without warning and can carry an emotional charge that can make you forget where you were; so a pre-written summary of the story (many people hang up on that word ‘outline’, as if it involved a’s, b’s, and c’s with subheaders) is a lifesaver.
A hand-drawn map or two is a good idea. Make sure your mountains don’t wander or that the door to the living room does not some strange day lead to the hall.
But never become obsessed with notes. You can over-do on those, as you say. I have seen sad cases of people with 20 lb notebooks with color illos and meticulous costume design and maps, and generational charts, and adjunct tomes of the world’s history—and nothing but a few abortive paragraphs of the story. One of them even had a complete and beautiful model city made out of balsa and cardboard, that took up an entire tabletop.
Of course—they had all the fun of building it, sort of like model railroads. But if writing was the burning ambition, that didn’t get done.
On the progress bar, it lists a final, known limit of “209 pages, single spaced.” Is that the space amount that you know equates (with your font type and size) to the publisher’s number of paper quires/length they have given you, or what? I find myself having no idea, in my (yes, dilly-dallying) novel writing of what a page of Times size 12 font, single-spaced, equals in “real” published format and so have no idea what my novel length is compared to the recent ones I read (given that novel length seems to have increased a fair amount since the 70s).
That’s a guess. The real thing is word count. One of the Foreigner novels is about 120,000 words. Everything depends on font, etc. If you have an average computer screen what you’re reading on this page is about 12 pitch.
In the old days, we’d pick three ‘average’ pages, re how much dialogue v text, etc, and physically count the words, divide by 3, and get the ‘average words per page.’ Then number of pages in the book times that figure gives you the rough count. And it’s pretty accurate.
In the early days of spellcheckers, nobody told writers that 1-2 letter words weren’t counted when it gave you a word count. Big help, eh? People turned in stories only to be told they had to massively cut to fit.
Modern spellcheckers are smarter and count little words too.
The reason I picked 209 pages is that it sort of works and to make the bar graph work, I had to have some sort of end point.
Novel length has increased markedly. In the 70’s, 80,000 words (Gate of Ivrel) was the ideal size. Now selling an 80,000 worder isn’t that easy. 100,000-150,000 is your target. But stay to the middle of that range.
The reason is because they have to balance between the customer feeling they got a fair size for the price and the ability of stores to get enough copies on the shelf (thank goodness wire racks have gone the way of the dinosaurs: they held 5 80,000 worders or 3 fat ones)–and the freight charges for moving it. Most everything goes hardbound first, which really looks skimpy on an 80,000 worder. But 150,000 is getting hefty, and runs up transportation costs and decreases shelf space for a ‘genre’ book. If you were Stephen King, they’d shove some books over to make room, but Maisy Smith’s first novel “My Summer Vacation”, won’t get that kind of consideration. Shoot for the middle of any stat you’re given: safer that way.
I have a problem with the name of the book – It must be about Mospheria because the Atavi would never be in to Rude.
Jonathan
Lol! I’m not wedded to the name, either: Betsy Wollheim thought up the last one. Maybe an inspiration will strike.
Ducking, because I’m sure some bad Foreigner titles will now follow.
Sassenach, but you have to be a Celt to appreciate the joke.
Thanks very much, CJ, for that explanation on word count, size of book and what roughly to aim for. I’m afraid that my old, paper writing days still haunts me. I know word count is the way to go (although not what word # to aim for) but I mentally judge size by the number of pages.
CJ, many thanks for the generous reply, and for the notes on lengths as well! I’m off to Clarion this summer, so I am focused (with some aggravation I might add) on short short short. But come autumn, I am hoping to finally start in on something longer than my somewhat rambling novellas…
I have my copy of Deceiver clutched in my hands even as I type – well, figuratively speaking, at least. It’s beside me. hee hee. I am torn, so torn – I have to get up at 4 AM and go to work. I could, of course, simply stay up all night reading. My boss might notice if I fall face first into the morning meeting, though. You think? Or I could hold off (with difficulty) and start it on the bus ride home – might finish before midnight if I start then. Driving home from the bus lot is only ten minutes…
It’s just that I want to read it through UNINTERRUPTED, the first time.
CJ, in case you didn’t know, you are perhaps the ONLY author who has ever induced me to read a book, close it, turn back and read it all over again from the beginning, without a break.
And then of course after that I want the NEXT book – say, the next weekend? How are you coming along with that? I could stretch that out a bit, by starting all over again at the VERY beginning, and reading the whole set – maybe another week or so?
😆 I’m writing as fast as I can!
Amazon sent me an email yesterday saying they were shipping Deceiver, but it hasn’t arrived yet! WWWWAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!
CJ, you’ve got to get the telepathy thing perfected so we can have our Cherryh-fix…
Ok ok no spoilers – but – maybe a tantalizing hint, so stay out if desired –
This is a turn it over and read it again book. and then go back to the beginning of everything (do you have any IDEA how many percolating notions I have NOW about Tabini and his aishid? Now that I have more of an idea of what to look for?) and read from book one.
Maybe you have another few weeks to get that next one finished, CJ. BTW I very much enjoy the look at ‘the usual characters’ from that other POV – which is maturing VERY nicely, by the way!
Oh, and I still have a problem with somebody finishing his seventh year and becoming eight. When I finished MY seventh year, I became seven. So there.
Technically I think he’s to finish the eight year, to become nine? 😉
But I’m with you, very few (other) authors force me to first read for story, then start all over and read for detail. Now, this could have something to do with a foreknowledge this is rewarding business, because you just KNOW you will find out more on reread; get the hidden hints, or the overall political agenda, or… and that’s just not the Foreigner books, btw.
He’s eight NOW, and will become nine – HOWEVER, I’ll be boring and restate: when I finished my eighth year, I became – eight.
when I finished my NINTH year, I became nine.
This relationship has not changed. I just completed my fifty-eighth year, and became 58 – yesterday.
This has been bugging me for years. Are atevi BORN one year old, like the Chinese?
They count like the Romans, evidently—counting the one they’re standing on, as well as the ones behind. So a newborn Roman is in his first year.
That would make the poor kid 7, coming up on finishing his eighth year and turning ‘9’ (but 8 counted like we would do). I have three kids. He acts 14, if that matters.
Clearly he’s awfully mature for his age – unnaturally so (if human). At 7, they still believe in the tooth fairy. At 9 they are beginning to have doubts and by 10 they are ALMOST sure she doesn’t exist. Of course, by 13 they know everything and that hardly changes until they hit about 19 or 20, if you are lucky, otherwise, that know-it-all state can last another few years.
There was a typo somewhere in those first few pages, but I’ve lost track of it.
Toby’s kids must be late teens by now. Any sign that the language skills run in the family?
You do realize that in the back of my mind, these people all exist in ‘the real world’ independent of us all, and you are merely relating to us, the story of their existence, right?
However you count the years I have a hard time agreeing about human kids (innately) still believing in the tooth fairy by 7 😉
My son is 6, and if anyone try tell him about Santa or angels or fairies he will think you’re an idiot (no, kids are not fine on protocol, lol). Most kids I know are the same.
They still play and fantasise, they just happen to have a healthy concept of what’s real and what’s not.
Also, human kids in bad situations mature fast. The “keep the kid in you” attitude that let kids be kids, to play and learn in peace, is a relatively isolated occurrence, both historically and in the present day.
I wrote my first novel at 10. 300 pages. With illos. At 7, I learned to cook, learned to iron, was aware of potential kidnap threats (we had two kid-stalkers in the neighborhood when I was 6,) rode (with 2 cousins) on one horse off into the Back 40 for hours, managed to break my arm, had shot a rifle (with supervision),and had gotten over the Easter Bunny.
I lived in a pretty safe town but a neighborhood with some problems, so you kind of had to be aware of them. I had my escape routes through the alleys and knew every hole in every fence along the way. I was a pretty street-wise kid and unapproachable by any stranger: we just assumed they were up to no good. We were, in retrospect, probably the element other parents were worried about.
Copyfit is not quite an exact science, but there are old ways of estimating involving the height and width and average letter- and word-fit calculating estimates. I rarely have used those, because so much can affect it. That method is derived from an estimate whereby they count the number of characters of about 1/2, 1, 1-1/2, and 2 sizes wide for a given width column, do that for several lines, average it, and use that as the estimate. There are supposed to be sources where a designer / copyfitter can look up a more accurate figure, but well….
Of more help, perhaps, if you’re trying to figure how many words will fit into either a typescript draft or the typeset novel, are the following factoids. If you use a monospaced (typewriter) font, like Courier, then 12 point type is the old “pica” 10-pitch, 10 char per horizontal inch, size; it was called “pica” because 12 points = 1 pica, and the characters were 6/10 wide, thus 10 char fit in 6 picas = 1 inch. Then 10 point Courier (any monospace font) is the old “elite” 12 pitch = 12 char per inch horizontally. Picas and points were also used for the linespacing / leading: 6 lines per vertical inch, 1 pica per line. With a really fancy old typewriter, you could bump vertically by half-lines, for super- and subscripts. Those measurements do hold up with computer fonts, by the way.
Times Roman is still one of the most common Western-language book fonts. It was designed for newspapers (London Times, thus the name), which makes it set smaller, more characters per inch, than a lot of other serif fonts. Beware of that, since other common fonts for setting books (novels, paperbacks, hardbacks, anything) tend to be a little larger, fewer char per inch.
Most books and newspapers and magazines, most “body copy,” is set at 10, 11, or 12 point, on anywhere from 10 to 14 point “leading” (linespacing, essentially). Your word processor and page layout program are usually set for a default of either “solid leading” (same as the point size) or 120% leading, 10 pt. type on 12 pt. leading, where again, 12 point = 1 pica. Note that 12 pt. on 14.4 leading is 120%.
Newspaper columns are typically about 14 picas, with 1 pica between columns for space, for 15 picas (2.5 inches) total. That’s called 10 (pt.) on 14 x (column width). Note 10 on 12, 10/12 is also used for pt. size and leading, but context shows which is intended. There are industry standards for newspaper column fits and ads. But magazines and books are different.
I’ve seen different measurements used for paperbacks, or I could give something more cogent for those. However, if you are with a publishing house, their editor or design staff should be able to give you specs for font size, leading, and column width, if you want to estimate it yourself. — But they will need (require, demand) Courier 12 point double-spaced typescript draft from an author, for their editorial and typesetting staff. So the estimating is just for your own estimating and curiosity. (Estimating for your estimating? Ben, that’s circular. Editor, edit thyself. LOL.)
One last bit: Typically, they design paperbacks to be cheap and squeeze in as much as is readable into as few pages as they can get by with. Hardbound books are still designed as a little more luxurious, with looser leading and wider margins, more comfortable for reading. But that has changed to economize too.
Me? I used to do “desktop publishing” in the early days (1980’s and 1990’s), which is why I know a little about such things. (Other ppl did the actual publishing; I did typesetting and design and some graphics, as well as writing, editing, proofing… umpteen hats.) (Yes, I was a professional proofreader as one of those hats.)
When in doubt, ask the staff at the printer’s or service bureau or the big, giant publishing house, or consult a designer, if you need design work or advice on doing it yourself. 🙂
I do editing, but mostly for grammar, spelling, continuity and ‘sense’ for technical/scientific articles. Never had cause to worry about font/spacing/page numeration or even length, to any great degree!
But if you tell me your hero is blond on page 3 and he’s suddenly black haired on page 334, watch out!
typo: produdced for produced, on page 4, the Daw edition
Bren started out brown haired in book one, BTW. I am charitable, and assume it was extremely LIGHT brown, and he has lightened up a bit with age.
Lol—it has lightened. Sun exposure. 😉 And Whelan exposure.
@agricola, lack of maturity in childhood is a modern innovation; children of frontiersman, farmers, and noble houses in centuries past (hell, even as recently as the 19th century!) learned responsibility and/or sophistication early, as a survival necessity. That’s why us enlightened modern types suffer by comparison 😉