JNC Writing Support Group
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@jazzyjeoff said in JNC Writing Support Group:
Three days out, and I already miss talking about contest goings-ons (and it’s not like I really stopped-ha!). I did start the second book in my series, if only barely. It is much harder than I thought. I’ve rewritten the introductory chapter four times, and it still reads a little ugly. I've stopped trying to clean it up and begun to move on (I think). I hope to have made some real progress before they announce the first round results—it might take a little of the sting out of not moving up if I feel like I am making progress on something new.
Curiously it is the other way round for me. I've started working a sequel to one of the novels and it is flowing much easier than the first volume.
I think part of the reason is that I am writing it separately rather than at the same time as another novel and there is no bleed between them.
I do intend to write a sequel to my other submission but I wanted to keep them separate this time.
I'm not saying it is clean and doesn't need a huge amount of editing - just that story and voice are flowing more naturally and the world feels much more comfortable this time round.
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@admin said in JNC Writing Support Group:
@Alfaerin Yeah, sharing the title and summary is fine, and privately sharing to other people or getting advice from others is also perfectly okay.
Thanks. I admit I hesitated after getting the email from the organisers.
I had two submissions and I think the synopsis was the hardest part for each. The first I took a more holistic approach while the second one was a more traditional, Linear A follows B follows C approach.
Rather than make an uber post I'll the split them into two.
The first one is called A User's Guide to Death.
**After being killed in a senseless robbery gone wrong, Edward Beat becomes a ghost and decides to write his automortography, transcribed from a series of ouija board videos found on OohTube.
As his life was too boring, he concentrates on what happens after he dies so he can help accountants, management consultants and other species of the living dead accept reality and move into the light.
While he was alive, Edward kept a diary which contained personal information about several people from around the town where he lived. The diary is passed to Edward’s best friend, Mike, who tells Jenny (the girl Edward has always loved from afar – and up-close sometimes) that the diary could have caused Edward to be murdered – even if he had no idea how important his notes were.
They begin to investigate Edward’s death with the help Mike’s sister, Nat, and Vinnie, the bumbling waiter from the Café Delicto where Edward was killed.
The prime suspects are local Mayor (and owner of the Delicto) Russell Goldair, his secretary, Abby Williams, and a dodgy thug known as Mr White. Russell has been selling dodgy software to the local government which is about to flood their computers with viruses which only his company can fix, before he sails into the sunset of an island with no extradition treaty.
As our heroes attempt to prevent disaster, and solve the truth behind Edward’s death, they discover things they never knew about themselves - and each other – by falling in love, falling out of love, getting threatened with extreme violence, and generally proving why this kind of thing should be left to the experts.
In the background, super undercover investigator, the Moralist, is also looking into Russell's shady past.
Unable to make his presence felt, Edward joins forces with a local witch (Abby’s mum) whose supernatural powers allow him to communicate with the normal world and her much-feared black cat – the evil Fluffykins.
After a string of kidnappings, spiritual possessions, and high school reunions, the story comes together in an explosive finale featuring our gallant heroes, a locked room and a massive bomb, the detonation of which they somehow manage to avoid.
In the end, the villains are captured (except Mr White who escapes into retirement), Mike and Jenny get their happy ending, and Edward prepares for the next phase of his afterlife adventures.**
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Here's the second one. It was also the much longer work coming in at almost 83,000 words to ensure I got to an ending. I know where I would split if they wanted to do it as a part A and part B (which would have been my preferred way to publishing but would also be hugely presumptuous on my part. I wanted to make sure readers don't get disappointed by ending on a cliffhanger with no resolution.
This one is called Stairway to Heathen and may feature bad puns :)
*Someone is trying to bring about the apocalypse, derailing God's Divine Plan and triggering the end of everything. On Earth for some well-deserved stress leave after millennia of judging human souls (and accidentally reading God’s Divine Plan), the Archangel Jerahmeel (Jerry) – now a private detective – enlists the help of journalist, Lilly Eden, to track down a serial killer who might be part of the plan to destroy the world.
Meanwhile Tom, Jerry’s accountant and former chief incubus for the Asia Pacific, thinks his life is going to be endless days of booze, babes and dodgy internet sites. Heaven, however, has other ideas. Unaware of the divine schemes for him, Tom teams up with an apparently bored suburban housewife (Ali) who is really a scientist on the run from demon assassins - and the mother of the new currently kidnapped Messiah (Joshua) .
Trying to find out who is hunting for Ali and her son, Tom descends into a Dantesque Hell with the recently retired Devil (Lucy), who is now a five-foot-five brunette and living with an eight-foot-lizard demon who helps out local charities. After a major battle on the frozen shores at the heart of Hell, Lucy is stabbed in the back with her own pitchfork and a new Satan (Iblis) claims the throne of Hell.
Back on the surface, demons attack and kidnap Ali’s already kidnapped son (Joshua), hoping to use his divine blood to cause the apocalypse. Tom, Jerry and Lilly’s investigations lead to a radical apocalyptic religious cult led by Reverend Hebron who is in league with Iblis.
Tom is captured and taken to the cult’s headquarters. Hebron and Iblis have been murdering children to use their skins to create new bodies for a group of fallen angels, banished by Heaven and imprisoned under the ocean. These fallen angels will form the core of a new demon army ready to do Iblis’ bidding.
Hebron thinks he is freeing the world of the influence of God, setting humanity free from divine manipulation, but Iblis betrays and kills him. Iblis’s sacrifice of Joshua is interrupted but he still succeeds in summoning the Throne of Ages – a sacred treasure which gives whoever claims invulnerability to the powers of the other side. Joshua rejects the Throne, saying he is just a child and all he wants to do is play computer games, allowing Iblis to usher in a thousand years of Hell.
Iblis kills most of Tom’s allies, giving Tom and Jerry the time to summon Lucy. The two Satans fight during which Lucy kills Iblis and claims the Throne. However, when she sees her lover’s murdered corpse, her grief causes her to renounce the Throne, averting the apocalypse. Abandoning her life as Satan, she resumes her retired existence on Earth.
Joshua reluctantly accepts the mantle of the Messiah and resurrects everyone (including Iblis), restoring the order of things. This is Joshua’s first miracle and, while the apocalypse has been averted for now, the Earth is entering in the final chapters of God’s Divine Plan.*
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@QuixoticHorizon said in JNC Writing Support Group:
@admin said in JNC Writing Support Group:
@Alfaerin Yeah, sharing the title and summary is fine, and privately sharing to other people or getting advice from others is also perfectly okay.
Glad to hear that! I'd really wanted to share but assumed I shouldn't.
Mine is called Rudder with the subtitle I Will Follow. It is fantasy but not isekai.
"I will follow - that is the vow a young boy makes when his sister is kidnapped by slave traders. Taking on the name "Rudder" from how she called him, he sets out alone into the wilderness determined to track down and rescue her no matter how long it takes. The story of a young boy as he becomes a man, striving forward with boundless determination to meet his goal: saving his sister."
His sister calls him 'Rudder' because she can't say 'brother' properly.
I wanted to show an adventure story where the stakes are personal without being world-changing. There's no demon king, no magic, just an orphan who wants to find his sister no matter how long it takes him. A lot of isekai LNs treat slavery really casually and that has always irritated me, so I wanted to turn those tropes on their head too.
Those are two ideas that I really like—characters that can be heroic without essentially being super heroes (especially young kids) and dealing with the moral blind spots or plot-holes that are routinely ignored in LNs—of course, there are reasons why writers don’t worry about those things—they have the potential to bog a story down and you have to trust yourself to keep it interesting, and you have to trust your reader to stick with something that may initially feel both low-key and unfamiliar.
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Has anyone successfully published a novel elsewhere? Amazon/Webnovel etc.
I've had some success with another book on Webnovel. Although it's different from traditional publishing, it's more geared towards daily uploads in order to make money.
I only uploaded 9 chapters last month thanks to writing my LN for this competition and my income took a 60% dive.
Ideally, the goal would be to publish traditionally, meaning once a volume is completed it gets released, rather than chapters at a time. But I have no idea where to go to do it, nor if it would be successfull.
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@LeeroyCGNA Hi there. I haven’t had a novel published but have had several short stories accepted into anthologies.
The best way is to keep any eye out for competitions and/or open submission calls from publishers or agents.
It can be a long road but a rewarding one.
I’ve stayed away from places like web novel because of the volume and regularity under which I’d have to publish but it is great to hear you are able to make some income out of it.
Good luck with it all.
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@jazzyjeoff said in JNC Writing Support Group:
...and you have to trust your reader to stick with something that may initially feel both low-key and unfamiliar.
That was a big concern of mine too. Something inexplicable has happened to my protag, so at what point does someone take him aside and explain it? The longer I left it, the more scope there was to introduce him and demonstrate his strength of character and his deductive skills, but also the more likely it felt that someone reading it (and especially someone judging it) would just go "whatever" and move on to the next novel.
If it was a published novel then it would be down to percentages of readers who would be interested enough to stick with it until the plot opened up more fully, but here there would be just one judge with over 40 other books to look at.
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@Angelus said in JNC Writing Support Group:
That was a big concern of mine too. Something inexplicable has happened to my protag, so at what point does someone take him aside and explain it? The longer I left it, the more scope there was to introduce him and demonstrate his strength of character and his deductive skills, but also the more likely it felt that someone reading it (and especially someone judging it) would just go "whatever" and move on to the next novel.
The best tactic for a situation like this would be to create a sense of mystery by dropping some hints that something's not quite right. This will give the reader something to think about, and they may even start speculating as to what's going on. Wanting to know the solution and/or see if their guess was right should keep readers invested until the reveal happens.
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@Parity I go on this long rant about liking third person limited, but... I think I'll be writing my next story in first person, solely because it lets the protagonist go unnamed and ungendered.
In the very least, I'll be going mixed perspective. Third person limited when following other people's perspective, first when following the MC. I think it works pretty well in "My Magical Career at Court".
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Although the novel for the contest was my first original work, I have written quite a bit of Tearmoon Empire fanfic stuff—and while not exactly polished—I think a lot of it was very charming and was my inspiration for doing the contest.
The funny thing is (to me at least) is there is not even a tiny bit of the Tearmoon stuff I could recycle for this. I mean, on the surface the works seem at least a little bit related—and it’s not like I am against taking shortcuts (I am pretty lazy at my core), but the characters are so distinct—I mean both my Tearmoon characters and my new characters feel real to me. So having words from my version of Anne, Mia or Gain, being spoken by a different character just feels weird! -
@jazzyjeoff It's not lazy--you'd be surprised at how many books out there actually started as fanfiction. Fifty Shades of Grey is probably the most (im)famous example, but it's hardly the only one. Despite what George R. R. Martin thinks, writing fanfiction is great practice for learning to write. It's also very common for authors to take varying degrees of inspiration from existing characters. Just take a look at the "Expy" page on TV Tropes :) Another really common technique is to take just one major aspect from a character or person, then design a whole new character around them.
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@jazzyjeoff said in JNC Writing Support Group:
Although the novel for the contest was my first original work, I have written quite a bit of Tearmoon Empire fanfic stuff—and while not exactly polished—I think a lot of it was very charming and was my inspiration for doing the contest.
The funny thing is (to me at least) is there is not even a tiny bit of the Tearmoon stuff I could recycle for this. I mean, on the surface the works seem at least a little bit related—and it’s not like I am against taking shortcuts (I am pretty lazy at my core), but the characters are so distinct—I mean both my Tearmoon characters and my new characters feel real to me. So having words from my version of Anne, Mia or Gain, being spoken by a different character just feels weird!It’s isn’t lazy and makes perfect sense. My very first published work was in a charity fanzine.
But I haven’t done the “file the serial numbers off” thing because, as you say, it just feels wrong for the character.
Most of my characters have the own voice and copying them from an another media property does not really work in a novel (although I do like playing in other people’s world where I can be true to their world).
By the way - where can we find your Tearmoon stuff? I only found the series when the anime came out and have mainlined the first 11 volumes and am in the market for more :)
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@Damon-Cavalchini Royal Road has “The Tearmoon Princess in the Kingdom of Remno” —is 37 chapters (I actually tried illustrating that one, but thought they might be distracting, so I threw them all in one chapter at the end). Also I have 4 chapter short story “Tearmoon Empire, Before Mia” which hasn’t been as popular—but I thought it was cute (Mia’s parents story).
I’ve started posting an incomplete volume on Archive of our own—(I get more views on Royal Road, but folks on Archive of our Own are more likely to comment). I stopped it when I started this contest—but the most recent arc from the official series is playing hell with the continuity, so I am not sure if I will finish it, especially if I don’t get feedback on it. I have other things that I haven’t published.
Actually, I first started writing Tearmoon as a sort of gag series between volumes in the J-Novel forums. I had Chloe and Tiona hosting a game show where folks on the forums would post their mini-fanfics and then different Tearmoon characters would rif on their stories as judges. It was pure silliness, but that is probably when the characters began to talk to me and I felt like I could write a full volume (eventually the mods got mad at us and put us in a separate topic in the forums. probably the right thing to do—but it was so much fun while it lasted). -
Thanks. I’ll go looking for these. Fun is always a great place to start writing from.
I haven’t actually looked at places like Royal Road before so there is a danger I am about to go down a very long rabbit hole :)
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@Damon-Cavalchini said in JNC Writing Support Group:
Thanks. I’ll go looking for these. Fun is always a great place to start writing from.
I haven’t actually looked at places like Royal Road before so there is a danger I am about to go down a very long rabbit hole :)
@jazzyjeoff’s Tearmoon fics were such a treat in between volumes that I suggested that they enter the writing contest. I’m so glad they did cause it means means I have the opportunity to read a full length story from them😊
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Well, i have started the second book of my series, my opening is workable. Aside from that, I have maybe 100 pieces of a two-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle with 20-50 pieces from other random puzzles thrown in just for laughs.
I really want to feel like I have made some progress by the time they announce the first round results, or I am afraid that I will fall into a total funk when I don’t advance. (I have to keep saying “when I don’t advance” since I know that not advancing is the most probable outcome—but my emotions are not tracking with my brain).
Anyway, how is everyone else’s stuff going?
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@jazzyjeoff Nothing concrete. I started two documents, one for short stories which will include bits I wanted to write but ran out of time for in my entry. I have four or five titles for the short stories written down but not any actual content.
The other is just called 'Scraps'. It's more of a digital notepad/reference sheet with ideas I didn't want to forget: character names, words I'd like to use (shrewd, quavered, etc.), and things like that.
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@jazzyjeoff I'm still writing another work that is contracted elsewhere. Not sure if I should continue where my first volume finished for this competition just yet. I need to finish persona 3 reload first and then I'll have some extra time lol.
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@jazzyjeoff said in JNC Writing Support Group:
Anyway, how is everyone else’s stuff going?
I finished my contest submission in a bit of a whirlwind and while I have clear ideas on how to improve it I'm holding off on revisiting it till March.
To some degree I feel my biggest issue was that I ran out of time to do cross-manuscript revision, some of my characters have different tones in different chapters because I was still figuring them out over the months I wrote things, and I fear that sticks out, for example. I also feel like there are big opportunities to smooth out the beginning of the book, I might have gone a bit heavy with exposition as I didn't know how much I'd need to convey about the setting and err'd on the side of saying too much.
Letting it settle and fall out of my mind is an important step before revisiting it, I think. I also want to productionize various python scripts I wrote during the contest, really just clean things up.
I also came up with an idea for a second series I'd like to write for the next contest. At the moment it's a 10/10 series title and a few scattered ideas but I need to put more work to find some story beats that will resonate and hook people in.
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@jazzyjeoff Don't forget, JNC has said it's very likely they'll hold another contest next year. Even if you don't advance this time, you can always rework the story with feedback and submit it again next year :)
As for my writing progress, I finished two short stories for volume one, and started my volume two, which is sitting around 12k words at the moment. Palworld and Granblue Fantasy Relink have been eating into my writing time in a major way, ahaha.
