[CONTEST OVER] JNC Original Light Novel Contest
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@kingpendragon Well, due to actual plot-related reasons, there's only the one country (that anyone knows about. The planet is inconceivably massive, so there's other countries, they're just a few hundred lightyears away). The plot would be contained within a ~10,000 mile wide area. The main effects the planetary scale has on the story is line of sight (get on a big mountain and you can see the whole country with enough magic), as well as providing limitless wilderness for anyone that might have reason to hide. If you're strong enough to survive, that is.
But, far enough into the future, those statements could very well happen.
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I’ve tried doing abnormal astronomy a few times, but I’ve never had much success. The big one is that if you have the length of a year being different from an Earth year, many readers will forget or outright ignore it, however often you remind them. I had one world with longer years, and the number of complaints it generated about people acting too mature/having inappropriate relationships/etc was silly. I’ve sworn never to do that again.
In another story, I tried to sidestep that problem by doing away with years entirely, but that just resulted in me forgetting instead. >.> The number of times I caught myself writing dialogue for in-world characters that mentioned years was silly.
A galactic sized planet has the advantage that it’s so alien that you kinda have to remember it, because the effects pervade everything. That’s exactly what I’d recommend; if you’re going to modify astronomy, don’t just make small tweaks. Do something ridiculous. Or just have a better memory for your own world building than I do. That would work too. :)
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@cathfach Units are a thing I've thought about. In the end, I decided to just use Earth units for things so that I don't have to be concerned about people (including me) forgetting what time of day 5 PM is. The sun's weird enough as it is since I can't say it's rising or setting. And if a guy runs through a 100 mile forest in 3 hours, I want the reader to know he's going at a superhuman speed. With absolutely no common frame of reference between our worlds (another thing branding as an isekai can do), fantasy units would be impossible to parse.
I figure it's easiest to change nothing and say the story was localized for our convenience.
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@Parity I am sort of in the same boat. I adore “Tearmoon Empire” because it manages to portray tragic events convincingly, while still being a comedic and uplifting story—and I think I’ve been able to somewhat successfully emulate that in my “Tearmoon” fanfics—but the tone of my current story is much darker and I am afraid that I might lose my audience before I get to the warmer parts (and while there is some humor in the story, it is scarce, and often dark)
On the plus side, I think I should have something to submit—even if it is at a very svelte 40K words (almost). It doesn’t help that my supposed proofreader flaked out on me, so I hope that what I submit is readable.
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Finally found someone to proofread my story—they’ve already started!
I am way more excited than I should be. I don’t even think I will ask what they think of the story—I am afraid of the answer. But it just makes me so happy that I get some sort of a response from someone that has actually read what I wrote—even if that response is just a grammar corrections.
It is so pathetic, I know—but a happy sort of pathetic!edit: just noticed I had at least one grammar error in my sentence about grammar corrections—I think I will let that one stay.
So, she found a ton of errors—no surprise—but she said that she liked the story—maybe she was just being nice —but I’ll take it! -
I've written 6,000 words in the past 7 days so I'm pretty pleased with that, but it's not taken me that much closer to completion. Because I write from the outside in, and then I opened up a sort of "second front" by writing another unconnected section when I was trying to get unstuck a while back, I now have two gaps to fill. One of them will be fine, but the other one is kind of the crux of the whole thing and I can't see it being anything other than really boring because it's about a guy trying to work stuff out from books. Anyway, having got this far I shall soldier on.
@jazzyjeoff I have 2 people reading drafts of my story, but all they ever say is that they like it. I know it can't really be that good so I need them to tell me what's wrong with it in time for me to fix it!
After reading something captivating, book lovers simply need to talk about it with someone.
—Tearmoon Empire -
@Angelus said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
the other one is kind of the crux of the whole thing and I can't see it being anything other than really boring because it's about a guy trying to work stuff out from books.
Oh I love those kind of stories. Regis pulling the correct answer from books and while Mia pulls well, a (wrong) answer from the book, are fascinating to read.
It's even weirder when the book itself is wrong, but it all works out anyways.
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@Angelus said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
I now have two gaps to fill.
Actually, make that one gap now. Filling the "working stuff out from books" gap was easier than I thought, I just put my Dan Brown hat on and it was done :) The other gap which I used to think was the easier one is actually turning out to be much more difficult, but at least I've still got 2 weeks and a bit to sort it.
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@Angelus Two weeks! Yikes! This is getting real!
I am glad that you fixed one of two—good luck on two of two!
Instead of finishing the incomplete chapters, I ended up adding a transitional chapter that I did not intend on writing. I am actually really happy with it—it breaks up the tension, gives the main characters a bit more depth —and is cute as hell —so much fun to write!
So, still have a bit of work left to do on the last two chapters—but the meat is there—just need to fill in the spaces and make it pretty—I think I can do it—just can’t get sidetracked again.(So happy with person that proofread it—I am so error-prone—it would have taken me years to fix everything without her help.)
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BTW, what are folks doing about a synopsis? I was trying to get mine under 1000 words—but I also sort of wanted to write a two sentence intro blurb that would get the feel of the book. Is that too much?
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@jazzyjeoff, this is what was said before about synposes:
@admin said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
we will leave that decision up to you!
Whatever you think will appeal to the judges more.Which is pretty vague, but from what I can gather on various "how to submit a novel to a publisher" articles on the web, 500 words seems about right.
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Diving more into silly questions (which is actually a good sign, because it means I feel better about the serious stuff). Do you include a list of chapters? I would think it would make it easier for a reader to keep track of where they are when they take a break from a story. But I don’t know how these things usually work.
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@jazzyjeoff That's really up to you.
I've read books that have chapters listed and books that don't. It really comes down to the author's taste... -
@jazzyjeoff, if they allowed ePub submissions it wouldn't matter because it would have a table of contents built in.
Anyway, I'm at 60,000 words now and on the home straight. OK, so I had to summon an averted diabolus ex nihilo ending to do it, but at least that stopped things just fizzling out.
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@Angelus
@Lily-Garden
I read the first chapter aloud to someone—and they thought it was too wordy. Taking a second look—it did feel a little draggy—and sort of felt too different from the rest of the book—like I was trying too hard to be the sort of writer I am not—so bye-bye original introduction! The new intro is easier to read—which I guess is what a light novel should be.Now at 43,574 words (those of us that can’t break the 50K mark count every word, including chapter titles and “the end”!)
So I have a new intro and filled in most of the missing parts, so have a complete story now, not that I have read it on anything that is not my phone.
@Angelus I did not even think about the epub format—I will figure out how to convert from google docs into that—thanks!
I have still have a couple of weeks for polishing and I know that it needs a lot. But I like my story and love my characters!
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@jazzyjeoff said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
@Angelus I did not even think about the epub format—I will figure out how to convert from google docs into that—thanks!
I've never used Google docs, I guess it must be able to convert to Word or Acrobat format at least. I think it's a shame you can't actually submit a novel for the competition in ePub though, I mean, that's what they'll need to convert it to anyway if it gets past the second stage.
[EDIT] Well, I thought my novel was more or less complete apart from some tidying up at the end, so I started on a full re-read from the beginning but the plot holes are not so much crawling as leaping out of the woodwork! Good job I still have 2 weeks to fix them!
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@Angelus I would have been happy allowing epub as a format, but making an actually properly encoded epub is not something your normal amature author can do (maybe someone who is pretty experienced at self-publishing, sure...).
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@admin said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
@Angelus I would have been happy allowing epub as a format, but making an actually properly encoded epub is not something your normal amature author can do (maybe someone who is pretty experienced at self-publishing, sure...).
I guess so. It took me 3,000+ lines of C# to turn the hot mess that LibreOffice Writer produces as its ePub export into something that processes fonts/indents/spacing/lists/footnotes/endnotes/paragraphs/sections/images/cover pages/etc. correctly, doesn't contain a single spurious tag and validates with epubcheck.
[EDIT] Did I say not a single spurious tag? I ran my novel through it and then looked at the output in Sigil and found two pairs of spurious tags! Fixed now with just one more line of code.
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Well, I've written 40k words in the last 2 weeks, so I might actually finish this in time. Probably have another 20k before I get to the point where I envisioned the end to part 1. Dunno how well it reads; I've never written anything before, and the quality of my descriptions are rather inconsistent. Also due to introducing the party members one at a time, the 4th party member doesn't show up until like the last quarter of the book (Though in the context of a full series, that pacing probably isn't bad. It's hard to say, but the full plotline probably reaches 200k words).
Still, there are a lot of parts that I think turned out well. In particular I think I conveyed the idea that each member of the party contributes meaningfully to fights, the main PoV character is strong but doesn't outshine his allies, battles don't end in a climactic beam struggle or a new overpowered technique that makes you wonder whether or not there was a point to all the fighting before it (the finishing blows wouldn't have worked at the start), and the power couple doesn't have any harem bullshit going on.
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Does anyone know how scrupulously they will be checking grammatical errors? I feel as if I have an okay story but I'm running out of time for grammatical revisions. What I'm turning in definitely wont be perfect but I'm hoping that it will at least make it past the second round. Feedback from the judges is what I am at the very least aiming for. I just hope that a few missing commas here and there won't ruin everything....
