Lessons learned: writing really long fiction • Hacker News Board

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#41

Post by V-2 » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

> Burnout is a very real thing in most creative industries, and if you work for a duration of years to decades on a single project you will experience periods of deep existential nausea and dread at the mere thought of even looking at the thing you just spent the last five years of your life on.

It immediately reminded me of this great (and short) sketch by The Onion :) https://youtu.be/qXD9HnrNrvk

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#42

Post by mattmanser » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #40

I'm actually starting to kinda dislike long series in sci-fi and fantasy, because the time commitment to finish them is just so high. I still have one more book to read in the Wheel of Time series, and after that I'm really reluctant to start another long fantasy series anytime soon. But it seems like every fantasy novel I pick up off the shelf says "Book x of the $FOO series..." Uuuggh. I'd like to plead with fantas…

There's plenty of both. Also, it's fairly common to get trilogies, e.g. Brandon Sanderson, Ann Leckie, Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss, Robin Hobb, etc.

With quite a lot of them they have larger worlds, but you can read the first book and enjoy it stand alone, the trilogy, or one of the other trilogies out of order within the larger world. You usually just miss minor appearances of known characters, or nods to earlier events.

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#43

Post by dalbasal » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

I'm slightly surprised that non-sequential series (eg Pratchett's discworld) are not more common. The 3rd book in a sequential series can't become the most read one, but it can in a nonsequential one. It also lessens pressure to make all the books thematically build up to a single literary work with a climactic payoff to all earlier plots. When things do add up, and chekhov's proverbial gun finally goes off in a nonsequential sequal, it's an easter egg.

If the second book in your trilogy sucked, it sinks the 3rd.

That doesn't mean I don't like reading series, but they do seem stressful for the author.

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#44

Post by ahaferburg » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

jonathanstrange wrote: post #17

akuji1993 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, have you ever thought about writing your stuff in Markdown? I've made pretty good experiences with it regarding converting to epub, mobi and pdf. I'm not sure of norm page formatting though, so that might be a good reason to use LaTex instead.

I'm writing with Papyrus Autor [1], which is pretty expensive proprietary software that, at least for the German language, has many advantages over other writing programs available. Especially the Duden spell-checking integration is much better than in any other software. IMHO, it's worth the money for that alone. If it weren't for this software, I'd definitely use Markdown and Emacs. [1] https://www.papyrus.de/

I'm curious. If you're using a special software for authors, why is it necessary to convert to LaTeX manually? Isn't this software capable of exporting to formats for publishing? I would imagine not a lot of authors bother with LaTeX.

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#45

Post by kbenson » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #34

restalis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a market strategy: write off-shots of your long novels as teasers. Make them tasty (as their primary reason is to give the readers a taste for the main piece), make them as close in style as possible to the main work, although you may focus on different aspects in each of them, and lastly - make them convergent (towards something that "happens" to be missing). Let's say shorter stories around some independent…

I'm not a writer, but I don't get why first-time writers - as in, first time they're trying to get their works published, not that they've only now tried to write a book - try to do too much as their first project. I think they should really force themselves to start with short stories first; focus on finishing a story. That avoids a sunk cost, avoids people beating themselves up for what they believe is their life's…

I've always heard that writing a good short story is actually quite a bit harder than a novel, since you have to be fairly ruthless about what you include and leave out to have enough room for the essential components. A novel's plot can meander for a while, and it still might be good or okay. A short story's plot that meanders either isn't short anymore or doesn't go anywhere in the space it has.

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#46

Post by jerf » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #40

I'm actually starting to kinda dislike long series in sci-fi and fantasy, because the time commitment to finish them is just so high. I still have one more book to read in the Wheel of Time series, and after that I'm really reluctant to start another long fantasy series anytime soon. But it seems like every fantasy novel I pick up off the shelf says "Book x of the $FOO series..." Uuuggh. I'd like to plead with fantas…

I don't think it's the authors doing it. It's the publishers. cstross alludes to that in his post as well.

It occurs to me that a modern publishing deal for a new author isn't entirely unlike the VC deals we talk about here on HN. Yeah, the publishers might sign you for 2 books in a trilogy, but you just promised to be a unicorn in the process. The startup world is probably more friendly to serial entrepreneurs than the publishing world is to those authors, though; I haven't seen many discussions of this but I bet you basically get one chance at that deal before they move on to the next author.

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#47

Post by restalis » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #34

restalis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a market strategy: write off-shots of your long novels as teasers. Make them tasty (as their primary reason is to give the readers a taste for the main piece), make them as close in style as possible to the main work, although you may focus on different aspects in each of them, and lastly - make them convergent (towards something that "happens" to be missing). Let's say shorter stories around some independent…

I'm not a writer, but I don't get why first-time writers - as in, first time they're trying to get their works published, not that they've only now tried to write a book - try to do too much as their first project. I think they should really force themselves to start with short stories first; focus on finishing a story. That avoids a sunk cost, avoids people beating themselves up for what they believe is their life's…

That's because (at least in my case) starting something out of creative desire and finishing a project are stimulating different parts of the brain. First is that mind itch associated to problem solving, the second is the satisfaction of managing to walk the necessary path and do what had to be done. Those don't necessarily come together. What the average artists do is to follow their passion. Trying to "augment" that way into a more pragmatic one may lead to a loss of motivation. I've come to the conclusion that the best strategy is to tap into whatever gives me energy and let myself do as much as can be done "for free", then take that result and enter "the soldier mode" for the last part, which requires discipline. Ultimately, it boils down to considering the personal strengths and limitations when devising plans of actions, and pushing too many constraints for a first project may result in failure on exactly that planning.

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#48

Post by jeffreyrogers » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #34

restalis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a market strategy: write off-shots of your long novels as teasers. Make them tasty (as their primary reason is to give the readers a taste for the main piece), make them as close in style as possible to the main work, although you may focus on different aspects in each of them, and lastly - make them convergent (towards something that "happens" to be missing). Let's say shorter stories around some independent…

I'm not a writer, but I don't get why first-time writers - as in, first time they're trying to get their works published, not that they've only now tried to write a book - try to do too much as their first project. I think they should really force themselves to start with short stories first; focus on finishing a story. That avoids a sunk cost, avoids people beating themselves up for what they believe is their life's…

Isn't that how most writers who go through MFA programs do it? (I realize that's not a representative sample of most first-time writers). I find most short stories pretty dull, but enjoy novels. So I can understand why someone would want to start with a longer length work.

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#49

Post by kaybe » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:33 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #43

I'm slightly surprised that non-sequential series (eg Pratchett's discworld) are not more common. The 3rd book in a sequential series can't become the most read one, but it can in a nonsequential one. It also lessens pressure to make all the books thematically build up to a single literary work with a climactic payoff to all earlier plots. When things do add up, and chekhov's proverbial gun finally goes off in a nons…

I'm also slightly annoyed at sequential series. It means that when I find one of the books in the library or second-hand bookstore it's basically useless, even when it is the first one and especially when it is out of print. I might never find the others unless I made it a life quest. I don't care that much, usually, and essentially just stopped bothering.

Re: Lessons learned: writing really long fiction

#50

Post by gpderetta » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #29

jonathanstrange wrote: post #3

I'm writing German science fiction novels as a hobby that are around 700-800 norm pages each and learned the hard way that at least in the German publishing market there are virtually no program places for science fiction, very few agencies accept manuscripts in that genre at all, and publishers rarely accept novels larger than 400 norm pages from a first-time writer. I'm currently sitting on 8 manuscripts - two of t…

Hyperion, probably my favorite sci-fi, was deemed too long as a single book, so it was pretty much cut in half and sold as two books.

Do you have a source? It seems very hard to believe as thee first and second book are very, very different (I find the first book excellent, but the second only sufficient).