[CONTEST OVER] JNC Original Light Novel Contest
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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.
After reading something captivating, book lovers simply need to talk about it with someone.
—Tearmoon Empire -
@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.
After reading something captivating, book lovers simply need to talk about it with someone.
—Tearmoon Empire -
@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....
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Well, after spending a few days playing whack-a-plothole, I'm going to say it's good enough. There are still some holes there if you think about it and some inconsistencies, but I mean, the real world is like that too sometimes!
So, total word count (in round figures) is 63,000 for the story plus another 6,000 for the "fanbook" content at the end. Of the story itself, about 70% is currently at 3rd draft, 20% is 2nd draft and the final 10% is 1st. My plan is to get it all up to 3rd draft over the next few days, but then take a break while I catch up on my anime (and sumo!) backlog. That then gives me the best part of a week to polish the whole thing up and fix anything my two readers have noticed plus a day or so for the synopsis.
What genre is it? I'm not really sure myself any more. It turned into a sort of body-swapping historical mystery fantasy adventure romance spy (Edit - forgot steampunk!) story with both tragic and comedic elements and some ecchi thrown in for spice (and also some number theory). If I ever do get around to writing the other 3 or 4 volumes I have in mind, there will definitely be an ongoing villainess and quite possibly pirates in the second volume too. The other volumes may also give me an opportunity to fill in the odd plot hole left over from the first one.
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Well, I am hoping that my proofreader will take a second pass at mine—if not, I am pretty close to done. Not because it’s perfect, but because this is the best I can do without input. The little bit of input that I have gotten has been extraordinarily helpful and has resulted in pretty significant changes (improvements, I hope) in the story. Which is both hopeful and disconcerting—positive changes are great, but they were really obvious problems with the story that I could not see from the inside that others were able to see with just as casual look. It makes me worry that there is a lot of other obvious stuff that I am just not seeing.
I think I may start on book 2 as soon as I turn this one in. I also could work on my own book cover and maybe restart some fanfics that got paused when this contest was announced.
I am so happy I did this contest, I am not sure that I would have ever completed an original work had @Lily-Garden not told me about it —it may have been just a passing thought for you—but I am really grateful for thinking about me when you saw the announcement! -
@jazzyjeoff Well I really liked that Tearmoon fanfic you wrote while the series had a long break between volumes, so I really wanted to see what you would create with the space of a full novel
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“Why do you call the character a villainess. She’s a villain, just call her a villain.”
“It’s a light novel, that’s just what th—“
“You aren’t Japanese or Korean. There isn’t a need for gender to be attached to those things. It’s like calling people actresses… blah, blah, blah!”Snarky teenagers are the absolute worst!
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@Rav-H-54sjuyv I can't say how they'll be judging, but I can offer reassurance that no writing, no matter how famous or how many eyes check it beforehand, will be free of errors. If they disqualified every story for a missing comma, they'd have no entries whatsoever. :)
I've discovered worse errors than misplaced commas in both of my submissions since submitting them. Nothing quite like hitting send and then casually flipping to a random page to spot a particularly egregious mistake.
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@cathfach, I would agree - it's a story competition, not a grammar competition. Still, it might be good to get confirmation from @admin.
Anyway, after some emergency plot hole fixing last night, my story is at third draft now, so I'm going to (at least try to) take the weekend off and come back to it on Monday with fresh eyes.
