151

(2 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Book-cover artists have greater reign of imagination for Fantasy than for Serious novels which have those "serious," even disenchanted, covers like:

http://tinyurl.com/z5vv828  The Misremembered Man by Christina McKenna

but I recommend the book while not judging by its cover. Women authors so often get men right rather than the other way around.

Archebooks Publishing
TRADITIONAL BOOK PUBLICATION
 
Traditional Full Publication
Production & Distribution
 
Fiction Only
 
Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Science Fiction, Fantasy,
Horror, Women's Fiction, Contemporary, Historical
  
No Children's Books
No Photography
No Poetry

http://archebooks.com/authors.htm
Manuscript Length:  Minimum 50,000 words, Maximum 150,000 words
       Manuscript Format:  One inch margins, double-spaced.
       File Format:  Microsoft Word files only as an email attachment, no Hardcopy.

153

(4 replies, posted in Writing Tips & Site Help)

Norm d'Plume wrote:

I've received feedback that -ing verbs should be avoided whenever possible. Here's an example:

Alexander raced from behind the desk to come to Joseph’s aid, but Cain elbowed Joseph’s father in the face, driving him to the ground, dazed and bleeding.

In the above, the word 'driving' can be replaced with 'which drove.' One word replaced by two.

Is this a common rule of thumb to follow?

future TNBW prize winner -
Alexander started, racing behind the desk, coming to Joseph’s aid, with Cain elbowing Joseph’s father in the face, driving him to the ground, being dazed and bleeding.

There an illogic to the grammar of your sentence which forces four characters together in an unclear way: A races to help J but C elbows J'sf.    You obviously must have J and J'sf in the action of the previous sentence doing something untoward Cain.

154

(28 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Nicholas Andrews wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
Nicholas Andrews wrote:

BookBub .

Has any author or publisher done even an anecdotal cost-v-benefit in paying for a site that could just be a scam of a sort?

Yes. BookBub is well-known for being the best return on investment for a self-publisher for the past few years. No one else really comes close. There's tons of anecdotal testimony from authors who made back their money on the day the ad ran and profited in the following days and weeks from sales of their other books.

Thank you. That is good to know. Now, if they'd only have a friendlier greeting than Give Us Your Email Address...

rhiannon wrote:

In Christianity, there is the belief all people are irredemably evil.  This is the doctrine of original sin.


I disagree, and we have to leave it there. "Sin" does not equal "evil." Sin is more a description of behaviors. If there is no redemption (in much disputed fashion, or other), there is no Christianity.

To the topic: Christian-culture in literature is about "sinners," rarely about evil. Scrooge and Grinch are sinners in their acts respecting Christmas, but they are not evil. That is the confusion the OP suffers, perhaps of the same confusion he might have of a man who works industriously, pays all taxes required of him and  obeys the law scrupulously and yet will go home and abusively scolds his his wife who may have not presented his dinner on time.

Of the fictional character Victor Frankenstein or the fictional character Mark Zuckerberg in Social Network who is the sinner and who is an archetype of evil? It's the one who found redemption who is the sinner and not the computer whiz.

Kdot wrote:

Not sure I follow. He doesn't seem to hate the Whovillians - only their devotion to Christmas. Or am I misreading the original intent?

in the same way Scrooge is not evil but perhaps misguided by his certain obsession.  Christianity is about redeemable "bad" people who can be turned to good that unfortunately discounts and rarely recognizes that there are people who are irredeemably evil -- even leaving open the possibility that Christ could have been turned by Satan in Gethsemane -- particularly in the context of mental disease in which evil over good is not chosen. One does not pray or plead a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic to goodness, nor is there any permanent turn to goodness of the drug addict who can start up again far more easily than he can quit. However, Christianity is closer to the truth for drug addicts than secular therapists who only weakly mention the harm and destruction caused to others by addiction and indeed other non-biologic obsessions. How does a secular therapist (psychologist) help OCD? It is rather a sort of aversion therapy and not an appeal to empathy and pointing out suffering of others caused by one's actions (evil).

157

(28 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Ann Everett wrote:

Second, sometimes BookBub will change the genre of your book to fit what they need. I submitted one of my books as a mystery, but they wrote to say they'd prefer to run it as ChickLit...which was fine with me. Mystery would have cost around $300. ChickLit cost me $70! ChickLit fit because it had three women characters who took center stage for at least half the book.

On the other hand, I as reader can be seduced to read a mystery even if it may have other genre aspects, but I will never be interested in ChickLit and therefore won't be notified of a book that is a mystery but has ChickLit aspects.

158

(28 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Nicholas Andrews wrote:
jack the knife wrote:

They also don't say how much it will cost until the book is selected, claiming that they're constantly adjusting their prices based on book sales and market conditions.

They do adjust their prices, but that's what any business does. Their pricing chart is right here:

https://www.bookbub.com/partners/pricing

A sort of poll of what is popular by subscribers according to perceived interest -- with the top three being crime/mystery and literary fiction surprisingly in the middle and not surprisingly politics and current events at the bottom.

159

(28 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Nicholas Andrews wrote:

BookBub .

Annoying unpassable popup screen that begs  your email address without any disclaimer to its purpose not to sell it to spammers. It is basically, I can only suppose because I can't have a look-around, a means of advertising that one must pay by loss of privacy to see -- Brilliant, as if Ford MoCo asked TV viewers if they would like to see their ads. Has any author or publisher done even an anecdotal cost-v-benefit in paying for a site that could just be a scam of a sort?

160

(1 replies, posted in Writing Tips & Site Help)

Norm d'Plume wrote:

She returned her attention to the general. “I want answers by morning."

This is similar to the last one, although I'm used to seeing the dialogue associated with the subject of the sentence.

By my standard of unaffixed dialogue, the quotation clearly belongs to "she" unless the quoted section is in italics with no quotation marks when it might belong to the general even though I would not write it that way unless some prior pattern had been set.  You could specify the origin to the general:
She returned her attention to the general who said (optional adverb)"I want answers by morning."

Norm d'Plume wrote:

Actually mine should say: Joseph studied Andrew as he was led away. Better yet: As they led Andrew away, Joseph studied him.

The origin of minor ambiguity lies in the sloppy (and passive) nature of he was led away when the subject (he/Andrew) is also the object of another action (led away) apart from the main subject {Joseph} and active verb (watched).  Your last version is good with two active verbs and no pronoun ambiguity but also formal and academia-ish.

Kdot wrote:

"John watched the thief skulk away with his gold watch"

That is an example of something different. Still left-to-right but the object of the active verb is the thief skulking away.

John watched {thief skulk away with his watch}

In line with the OP example:  John watched {his watch being taken by the thief.} The antecedent to "his" is clearly "John", not the thief.

Norm d'Plume wrote:

Joseph watched Andrew as he was led away.

In the above sentence, it's Andrew who is being led away. Is it clear that the pronoun is associated with Andrew, or does it refer to the subject of the sentence? I've seen it done both ways.

Thanks
Dirk

as a rule, the antecedent is the one closest to  the pronoun.  English very left-to-right word ordered.

Even better reference for Deep POV
https://annlaurelkopchik.com/category/deep-pov/

So what the heck is Deep POV? It’s a form of limited third person POV where the narrator takes on the voice of the character and where the reader is deeply immersed in the characters thoughts and feelings. The reader is riding so close to the character, they might be in his or her skin.

Deep POV does not mean that the character bounces between third person limited and first person italicized thought. It does not mean that every single thought and emotion must be voiced. And Deep POV is not achieved by simply replacing “I”  and “my” in a first person narration with “he/she” and “his/hers.”

So the next question is why can’t you just write a first person scene and replace all the pronouns? First person is, after all, a very immersive POV…

Because a first person narrator/character knows that they’re telling a story to the reader. When you’re deep in limited third person, that character/narrator is unaware they are telling a story. The reader is reading the unfiltered thoughts, emotions, and feelings of that character.

I know I am writing off into the weeds regarding your specific question, but POV is actually a more complicated topic than anyone on TNBW wishes to address. It is not a way to eliminate dialog tags, for example. That is just a byproduct of the process. Googling the topic of Deep POV gives far more wrong advice than good. One good from Autocrit is here:

https://www.autocrit.com/editing/librar … t-of-view/

and you will see by every good example that action and moving the plot along is not compatible with Deep POV if chosen for the duration of the story. I am supposing that is why we see it here on TNBW in the atrocious:

Jill hit Jack with her ice-cream cone. But I like chocolate!

This is not Deep POV.

So, is  this the finished edit (containing two, instead of four, Joseph's mother) by eliminating an unnecessary reference to Alicia?

Miss Rosary appeared in the doorway and addressed Joseph's mother. “May I be of assistance, Your Majesty?”
“Rosary, get in here! Keep out of the way.”
As she cleared the room’s entrance, Joseph’s mother spoke into the air. “Moses, secure the doorway!” She nodded. “Then may God be with all of you." She hesitated, then spoke into the air again. “All right, Moses, close it up.”

The fix is to drop a Joseph's mother dialogue tag at the risk of reader confusion on whether it is indeed she who responds on the next line in the context that she is  the only human being in the room and that Moses another AI would not say that. And to drop Alicia from specific benediction, if you intended that.

My original suggestion was not a re-write into Deep POV but only to have given Joseph's mother another appellation by Joseph himself rather than having to be stuck with Joseph's mother in sections that are supposed to be in 3rd limited Joseph. A limited sort of Deep POV, in which Joseph has given his mother a unique moniker, can have been a temporary shift into Deep POV but does have the drawback that readers who skim or have poor memory will be lost.

Norm d'Plume wrote:

Thanks, Ann. Your examples are great. I'll play with it some more to see how best to apply them.

Charles, I think you're referring to deep POV. I looked at writing the story that way, but wasn't comfortable with it. I found it too limiting, perhaps because I'm not familiar with it.

For one, I don't see Ann's solution as a solution; she is just writing around  the problem within a particular scene, and real Deep POV, not just so many italicized thoughts here and there, corrects the severe limitations of 3rd limited, and especially multiple 3rd limited you attempt, because the reader is genuinely believing the alternative to Joseph's mother  which is in reality merely omniscient 3rd posing as limited 3rd, is actually coming from Joseph's POV.

Norm d'Plume wrote:

Thanks, Ann.

Below is a representative sample. FYI, Rosary is a robot maid, but is considered a "she" rather than an "it" by Joseph. Moses is the palace AI system. This is all from Joseph's POV.

Miss Rosary appeared in the doorway and addressed Joseph's mother. “May I be of assistance, Your Majesty?”
Joseph’s mother waved impatiently and said, “Rosary, get in here! Keep out of the way.”
Rosary did as instructed. As she cleared the room’s entrance, Joseph’s mother spoke into the air. “Moses, secure the doorway!”

As you can see that's a lot of "Joseph's mother", sometimes 2-3 per paragraph where there are three females about, so using she or her doesn't always work. The scene moves so fast, there is no real way for Joseph to transition from his mother to regent and back. I tried to use the words "Joseph's mother" and regent to serve as the transitions themselves, but I can't get it consistent.


Too repetitive?

Your mistake was to have ever consistently called Joseph's mother Joseph's mother in Joseph's POV. I never would have in thought referred to my mother as Charles' mother.  That is absurd.  If you had already established with reader that Joseph thinks of his mother in thought in some appellation(s) as "Mom" or "Mary" or "Divine Lady who gave birth to me" shortened to "Lady" or "that bitch who spawned me" shortened to "that bitch" or "Bitch" or anything which he would uniquely call her, you would have another option than "she/her."

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(5 replies, posted in Writing Tips & Site Help)

Norm d'Plume wrote:

I've run into another round of capitalization issues that I need help with. I've been capitalizing the term Imperial throughout my book. I've been treating Imperium/Imperial as comparable to Canada/Candian. Pretty much no other resource I've checked capitalizes imperial, except as part of a proper noun (e.g., Imperial Rome). I've now run into a situation where Imperial should definitely be lowercase, so I'm abandoning capitalization of the word, which raises the following cases:

1. A small imperial fleet is approaching. (Lowercase.)
2. The entire Imperial Fleet is approaching. (Proper noun.)
3. The Imperial Perimiter is off limits. (Proper noun.)
4. The Imperial Colloseum collapsed. (Proper noun.)

5. The Imperials are attacking. (???)

6. The imperial admiral is approaching. (Lowercase.)
7. It was Imperial Admiral Gaius Lupus who attacked. (I'm treating Imperial as a formal part of his title, hence caps.)

8. The imperial palace was attacked. (??? Not sure exactly if "imperial palace" should be caps. It strikes me as odd that Imperial Perimeter would be capitalized, but not imperial palace.)

9. The imperial family was attacked. (??? Same question as imperial palace.)

10. His chest was emblazoned with the imperial emblem. (??? Same question. Wikipedia refers to Britain's coat of arms as either the Royal coat of arms or the Royal Arms. Other sources write it as Britain's Coat of Arms.)

11. The Imperial Classiarii attacked. (??? Classiarii is Latin for marines. Not sure if Imperial should be capitalized here or not. I assume it comes down to whether imperial and Classiarii form a proper noun. If I do capitalize it, doesn't that suggest that imperial family, imperial palace, and imperial emblem also be caps? If I take that to a ridiculous extreme, I'll end up with things like Imperial Farts. Where does the use of proper nouns begin and end?)

Okay - 1,6,7,8,9,11

questionably okay - 2,3,4  "Fleet" and "Perimeter" are not proper nouns in themselves but "Colosseum," a particular amphitheater in Rome built by Vespasian, is. 'coliseum' (lower case, with an "i", only one "s") is sometimes used as another word for "amphitheater" that is not the Roman Colosseum. You have a misspelling that is neither.

stumped - 5,10.  I would reword 5 to avoid the problem. 10, go with 'Royal Arms' analogy.

170

(73 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

njc wrote:

I don't know Howey so I can't say.  Most of my reading has been light.

Howey is "light."  His Wool is a perfect model for today. Start with an excellent Bradbury-derivative short story and squeeze as much you can  from it with little effort to add value in plot, theme, characters by KDP publishing, clever marketing through internet buzz, transitioning to traditional publishing, and finally movie deal in which the formula for a main character supplies womyn's fantasy and men's T&A quest. His new series project: It wasn't easy for Molly Fyde being the only girl in Flight Academy, but getting expelled was even worse. Abandoned by her family when she was young and now tossed from the only home she's ever known, her future looks bleak.  $$$

171

(73 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Charles_F_Bell wrote:
njc wrote:

The death of the novel is not imminent, and will depend, I think, on whether the failure of our education system accelerates.  Perhaps also the publishing industry will play a part, as it already has.  If the 'gatekeepers' regain control and dictate that we only read what they deem fit, it could go badly, especially if the gatekeepers grow further and further from the reading audience.

The ideal would be as one might have seen it in the mid-2oth century with a reasonable mix of high- and low-brow and  the rise of genre fiction but always balanced with what was labelled literary fiction in the '60's but has died out in some rush to homogenize literary culture into certain acceptable political-social values marking a move backwards since the mid 20th century.

Could an unknown-author Robert Heinlein be published today?  And you might answer 'certainly through the self-publishing route' but compare the sci-fi self-publishing Wunderkind one-note Hugh Howey -- is Howey any comparison to Heinlein?

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(73 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

njc wrote:

The death of the novel is not imminent, and will depend, I think, on whether the failure of our education system accelerates.  Perhaps also the publishing industry will play a part, as it already has.  If the 'gatekeepers' regain control and dictate that we only read what they deem fit, it could go badly, especially if the gatekeepers grow further and further from the reading audience.  But if the self-publishing routes remain vital and people like Sad Puppies succeed (go to the source to find out about SP, don't rely on the media) then cheap ficion may again thrive.  And good fiction has thrived when cheap fiction has thrived.

From what I can tell, the non-traditional publishing path is encouraging pulp-fiction quality as if on steroids.  Indeed there has been a genuine market for low-brow story-telling (and I don't have a problem with that) -- that had little to do with "characterization" beyond stereotypes, and forget about thematic content. Movies also have taken up pulp fiction market. "Cheap fiction may again thrive" is what I mean by the death of the novel even if there continues to be stories presented in the written word. The ideal would be as one might have seen it in the mid-2oth century with a reasonable mix of high- and low-brow and  the rise of genre fiction but always balanced with what was labelled literary fiction in the '60's but has died out in some rush to homogenize literary culture into certain acceptable political-social values marking a move backwards since the mid 20th century.

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(73 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

njc wrote:

I hope the novwllisf doesn't use 1000 in lieu of the 30 swcond screen shot.  A 140 minute movie would correspond to.1120 pages!

The media are different, but the customer's relationship to the story is mostly the same.

Can't a novelist put the visual of Danny DeVito in the role of the action hero instead of Tom Cruise: short, dark-haired, round-shouldered, italianate, and if the relation to the story is the same, why can't DeVito play Jack Reacher in a movie just the same as Cruise because Lee Child's Reacher looked as much as Devito as Cruise (not at all)?  The novel has narration, and that is its strength, and the movie has the visuals, but narration has power to do much more than visual description. I think the novel will die out, maybe it has already, because of a false equivalency drawn between them. It'd be like trying to make music be like speaking rhyme delivered over a beat going on in the background.

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(73 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

njc wrote:

I hope the existence if this novel novella is a gedankenexperiment.  To create such a thing would be a labor upon one's own sanity.

I think a proper gedankenexperiment strengths mental discipline rather than weakens it. And what I mean most by until it is read to the last word is the realization that the story is a fantasy in the absolute sense and not in the literary-genre sense: imagination unrestricted by reality in that the main premise is an absolute impossibility whereas the "world-building" of fantasy-genre stories is based on possibility given thus and so, not-unbelievable, alteration of reality.

175

(73 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

vern wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
vern wrote:

Anyone who thinks a sane person is going to read a 34,000 word (or thereabouts) novella with no merit until the very last word is obviously very proud of that last word. I suspect you should put that mindboggling word, whatever it is, a bit closer to the beginning. Take care. Vern

I have already said that you have no quality of mind to read it, and that is one purpose for the prologue -- to weed out the feeble-minded.

You obviously missed the part about thinking "a sane person" is going to read such a thing; those are the ones you weed out.

No, I am weeding out people like you. Engage yourself in Catch-22 of whether you are sane or not, but you have no keen mind, sane or not.