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I want to write a series of sci-fi novels..
zkt
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have an idea for a sci-fi series that is the embodiment of everything I grew up with (movies, star trek, video games, anime, music, etc.) and was wondering what is the best way to make my idea more than an idea? If I were to just open MS Word and start typing my fingers off how could I get my works out for everyone to read? If publishing on an internet site how could I protect my work? If I were to seek out a publisher what do I need to know?
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http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=8933
You can't get a publisher if you don't have anything for them to publish, and the internet is generally not the best place to publish things you want protected so I recommend against it if protection is truly a concern. If you really want people to read the story online and you are worried about protection, you could post excerpts from the story.
Let's Plays of Japanese Games
Cool, this is what I pretty much wanted to know. When I was younger I used to write a lot of short fantasy/sci fi stories. I never got into writing poetically as I have always preferred fictional storytelling.
Read lots. Read everything you can get your hands on. And when you're not reading, think about what you've read. When a book has excited you, or made you sad, or scared, or kept you turning the pages, ask yourself what it was doing to evoke those emotions from you.
Get honest feedback from people who know what they're talking about. It might feel good to impress your mom, but she probably doesn't edit fiction for a nationwide publisher. A teacher might be a good person to start with. Think about taking a creative writing class or a summer workshop. Informal writers' workshops can be good but be sure they're not just ego-boosting jerkoff sessions - you shouldn't be there to tell each other how great you are, but to help each other improve.
Keep writing and writing and writing. When you're not writing, read. When you're not reading, write. If you absolutely must have a job, a school career, or a social life, be sure not to let them become excuses not to write. Squeeze all the time you can out of your day.
If you keep it up, eventually you will have a portfolio of three or five or ten really good, polished, professional-quality short stories. When that happens, the next step is to do some research into the market you want to break into. Research magazine editors, literary agents, and publishers. Figure out who you need to break in with; sending a sci-fi story to an agent who sells to Harpers or Redbook is not going to get you anywhere. There are a whole lot of specialized books, websites, and other resources about selling fiction, and they'll have a lot of specialized advice above and beyond what I'm putting down here.
When you know who you need to get in touch with (or hopefully four or five different people you can try with), start sending out your work. With luck, someone will buy something! With a little less luck, they won't buy it but might ask you to pitch something else to them - an idea for a different story, or a novel, or something. With a little less luck than that, they won't buy it but will tell you to keep sending them stories, in hopes that maybe something else you have will be more up their alley. With a little less luck than that, they won't buy it but will give you some useful feedback as to why (and if they do, take everything they say to heart!). In the worst and most common case, you will never hear back from them, ever. Which is why you want a nice thick portfolio of work, so you can keep sending new stuff every so often in the hope that something somewhere will crack.
In the meantime, put yourself in a position for happy accidents to occur. Visit conventions and participate in forums related to your area of interest. Do some networking. I have several friends who broke into professional comic book writing because they hung out on the right forums and made friends with the right people (and, of course, because their work was good on top of that - you can know everyone in the world but if your work sucks it sucks). If it wouldn't be an obstacle, consider blogging about your progress. That's how Scott Lynch was discovered. The idea is not to count on these lucky breaks, but to be in a place where they can benefit you if they actually do happen.
And the rest of the time, keep writing.
The common thread appears to be studying literature/writing at university, writing for local street press or independant publications, teaching writing/literature at university, then having shit published. Also helps to enter writing competitions back by publishers (especially if you're still in highschool just out of it).
Good luck! (I abandoned my sci-fi novel attempts and directed all my ideas into my art instead. :P)
While you are doing that, read a lot. Everything. Even if you have no interest in it. Set yourself a book budget (two a week minimum) and buy/borrow at least that many and read them cover to cover. You'll learn a lot. You'll learn what you want to do, what you don't want to do, what's bad and what's good, and you can turn that into a useful lesson. You'll gain maybe one or two insights in two thousand pages of reading but you might not have learned that lesson otherwise. No one book is going to turn you into a good writer.
Write more. Keep writing.
Professional advice (from writers) never hurts but should be taken with reservations. On Writing by Stephen King is popular and not bad (but not the gospel of writing). Dan Simmons series on Writing Well is pretty awesome. Again he's not right about everything (nobody is) but he's a prolific writer of long, complex books that cover a broad range of fiction so he's clearly doing something right.
You're still writing a lot and reading so much people make fun of you for it, right?
Once you've read enough and written enough and finally come up with something that approaches being complete, get crits. The Writer's Block here is good for that (though as with all communities writers, it has its own biases and idosyncracies). Workshops are hit or miss. I had a couple really good workshop classes in college and one totally useless one, which I understand is an above-average success rate.
Strunk & White is handy. Memorize it, master it, and once mastered you can disregard anything it says at any time for any reason. But you have to play by the rules before you can break them.
If your family will read your stuff let them (but expect entirely too much praise) and if your friends will let them too (but still don't expect much). Total strangers and professional editors are the best people to get crits from because they aren't afraid to be mean. And you'll need to hear some awful things about your writing before you get any better. I know I did. I learned more from a single rejection than I had the entire previous year submitting four stories to two different workshops and a host of friends, because it told me what wasn't working and exactly why.
Sit down and try to write a complete SF short story. Go through the process of putting it into manuscript form, and then proofread and revise it.
Submit to one of the approved SFWA short fiction venues. Start with Analog or Asimov's and work your way down. This will give you a pretty good overview of the writing/rejection cycle. If you are still game, get to work on your larger project and send it out to some literary agents.
The thing to remember in any creative endeavor is that great ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is dedication and execution.
This.
Good writers are created in the same way that good artists are... they write lots and lots of stuff, and eventually someone decides that something they've written is good.
DeviantArt is the same sort of thing except for artists. People who's hobby is sitting down and drawing stuff. Cosplay.com is the same for people who's hobby is sitting down and sewing stuff.
The common theme here being that these are all people who go to work, do what they do, come home, and write/draw/sew and/or otherwise create things because they enjoy creating.
Anyone who sets out with the life goal of "I want to write a novel" is pretty much not going to achieve that goal because there is literally nothing stopping a person from writing one; writing materials are not scarce and computers are readily available. A person who was going to be successful would have already written it (in part or in full) and is trying to get it printed. Which is actually pretty easy; pulp presses will buy just about anything on the off chance that it will be a hit (case in point, Eragon).