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Archives for October 2014

Pros And Cons Of Reading Your Writing Out Loud (or Why I Was Talking To Myself, Honest)

October 22, 2014 by Nick Bryan

Reading Aloud - The Dream

From eleven o’clock yesterday morning until seven in the evening, I sat at my desk alone, reading out the first sixty percent of my current nearly-finished work in progress. (The second book of the Hobson & Choi series, since you asked.)

For a couple of years now, the read-out-loud has been the final step of any work before I show it to other people. I vocalise the entire text to an empty house. If you don’t do this, I’m not going to tell you it’s essential (because different strokes for different folks and I would never tell you how to stroke yourself), but if you’ve never even tried it, here’s how it works for me.

The Actual Process, Actually

There are no major secrets in my process. It goes like this:

  • Sit at desk with manuscript open.
  • Read out a scene, making changes whenever I hit such problems as:
    • That phrasing sounds clunky.
    • I’ve used that word twice in a short space of time.
    • I’ve written “actually” eight times in this sentence, because I always bloody do.
  • Keep going until I become distracted or need to pee/eat/other.
  • Continue afterwards.

As well as obvious issues that crop up within a scene or paragraph, reading it out makes me more likely to spot issues over a wider space of time. For example, earlier today, I noticed I’d described a character’s clothes using the exact same three words, three scenes apart. These things happen, obviously, but feels good when I catch them.

Maybe I take in the details more when I force the words out of my mouth, rather than maybe lapsing into scan mode when merely eye-reading. Anyway, I genuinely think it goes a long way towards making the final work natural and readable and if you haven’t tried it, it’s worth a go at least once.

Fully Soundproof Balls Of Steel

No-one is perfect, of course. Here are some downsides or issues I have encountered while using this amazing wonder-method to change my life.

As I’ve said before, most impressively on this video-blog, I struggle to get work done in my house. To write with efficiency or volume, I generally sit in local cafes, living the hipster-writer-ponce dream. Unfortunately, unless you have gleaming balls of steel, reading your writing (especially a full-length novel) out to yourself in public is hard to pull off.

Every time I spend a whole day reading out, I look back and see an hour or two I could’ve spent working, rather than procrastinating in various ways. In future, I might try only reading for half the day and going out for the other bit, so I can feel some degree of Full Productivity. At least, until I can persuade my local cafe to install a fully-soundproofed Writer Cubicle for me to work in.

The other related issue: by the time you’ve edited your book a few times and decided on a final polish via the reading-out method, you might be close to sick of it. Forcing the entire text out between your teeth will probably not help, and only make the afore-mentioned procrastination problem worse.

Again, breaking it down into smaller sessions may help, or slotting in some other writing task between drafts to get some distance from it. Failing that, I promise myself some reward at the end (usually from the Food or TV genres) and ram myself through the task mercilessly.

But despite these minor pitfalls, I still think reading out your work is a worthwhile endeavour to consider. If you suddenly want to hear me reading out some work after this post, you can still get all 33 chapters of the Hobson & Choi Podcast on iTunes. Enjoy, and if you have any reading-out tips to share, that is what the comments are for.

Filed Under: Writing About Writing Tagged With: amwriting, lifeblogging, writeblog, writing about writing

Hobson & Choi – Updates & End-dates

October 17, 2014 by Nick Bryan

Hobson & Choi, my ongoing webseries about two mismatched detectives and their weird adventures in a horribly corrupt modern London, has experienced a strong few months. We’ve done well on Jukepop Serials, the first collected book edition has come out and also put in a strong showing. So since we had a big positive announcement today, it seemed a good time to do a general H&C post, talk about stuff, make some declarations.

Hopefully it’s all ultimately going to be good news. But be warned: your emotions may vary. Let’s start with the really obvious flag-waving upbeat section.

VICTORY PARADE

So, not only have we been #1 in the monthly Jukepop Serials charts for the last couple of rounds – which would be pretty excellent in itself – but we recently crossed a pretty big boundary: Hobson & Choi now has the most votes of any serial in the history of the site.

Look, here’s a screen grab of that fact, taken on the evening of Oct 16th.

To be honest, that’s basically our biggest single achievement on that site – it’s amazing that the many and varied readers of Jukepop have embraced the story, and thanks to everyone and anyone who voted, commented, reviewed or recommended us anywhere and other such things. Hooray.

We also won the biannual prize, finally announced today, for getting the most votes in the six months between April and September. This win was helped by big boosts from the book launch and releasing twice-weekly chapters for ten weeks. All of which means we win $500, which is almost all going into promo/expenses for the H&C novels. Brilliant stuff, thanks again.

And now, to conclude this victory lap, here’s a short video by fellow JP author, recent successful Kickstarter organiser and friend-of-the-serial Virginia McClain.

Crossing The Finish Line

Here’s another announcement I’ve been sitting on: the Hobson & Choi webserial is finishing with the upcoming gala-sized H&C #100. That should be with you in late November, unless I injure myself.

It’s not the end of the Hobson & Choi story, that will continue in book form, but it is the end of Angelina Choi’s two-week work experience, the wrapping up of a few major subplots and, I’ve decided, a reasonable place to draw a line.

Basically, I’m doing this to focus on the book editions. That was always the plan, and since I’m approaching a clear breakpoint and am on a high in terms of Jukepop achievements (see above), this seems the right time to burn out rather than fade away.

The serialised nature of the original chapters is only causing more work when editing them into book form, not to mention I might sell more copies of later books if I stop giving all the material away for free (even if in a less polished form).

So this is it. Six chapters to go, four of which I’ve already written, and then we’re all done with the serial. Leaving us only with…

Hobson & Choi: The Glorious Book Editions

Since I’ve just announced I’m ditching the webserial for them, let’s have an update on the H&C novels. Book Two came back from the editor a couple of weeks ago, and I am hoping to enact the changes by the end of this month, just in time to consider whether I want to do NaNoWriMo after all.

The cover is also coming soonish, but to make sure I have enough time to deal with the actual technical self-publishing stuff, get the print and ebook editions out at the same time, plan some promotion and avoid competing with Santa, the actual publication date will most likely be in January.

Book Three to follow, probably in late spring/early summer, and then we’re into all-new book-only material.

Phew. So yeah, it’s a pretty busy time in the H&C section of my schedule. I also have a fantasy novel which I’m nursing through various latter-stage drafts, so I’m keeping occupied.

If you want to encourage me in my dreams, feel free to buy The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf (aka H&C Case One) from one of the many buy links on this page. If you’ve purchased your copy already, why not leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads? Or subscribe to the mailing list and get a free all-new H&C short story?

If you’ve done all that, you’re probably alright. Thanks for reading. Time for a nap, I think. Feel free to leave any heartfelt eulogies for the Hobson & Choi webserial in the comments, I’ll probably write my own once the end comes.

Filed Under: Writing About Writing Tagged With: hobson & choi, Hobson And Choi, Jukepop Serials, news, writeblog, writing about writing

Draft Four The Win? – The Novel Continues

October 3, 2014 by Nick Bryan

Draft Four The Win? - The Novel Continues

I’ve just finished draft four of the fantasy novel I’ve been writing for around 18 months. This is obviously an achievement – not a top-rated one worthy of a party, but a clear rung up the ladder.

So what does finishing a fourth draft actually mean? How many more am I planning? Do I even know?

Well.

Four The Hard Way

It’s been four months since I finished the third draft, which is longer than I like to leave things when it’s just me dealing with myself. But between these two particular passes, I sent the book out to beta readers, who have been steadily telling me their feelings ever since.

The good news: they all helpfully agreed with each other on the broad strokes, making it fairly easy to come up with an action plan.

The bad news: it was a reasonably substantial action plan, some of these problems need big-time tackling and I had to go in for close and extensive surgery for my fourth draft. I’ve written a couple of new chapters, various bits and pieces inserted throughout.

Weirdly, in fact, after getting shorter throughout the earlier drafts, the novel has now ballooned to its most epic length yet. I don’t know whether I now need to go in and cut more. I do kinda agree with the two betas who said certain parts needed expanding.

In fact, here’s the numbers:

  • First draft: 99,165 words.
  • Second draft: 94,923 words. (4,242 words shorter.)
  • Third draft: 90,605 words. (4,318 words shorter.)
  • Fourth draft: 104,107 words (13,502 words longer) (Whoops)

As someone who’s been there since the beginning, this novel is starting to seem like some weird Frankensteinesque experiment. An expanding one.

But nonetheless, I’ve finished now and my creation lives. So what now?

Fivetitude

Fifth draft, I suppose? Which involves smoothing all those changes down, making sure everything’s consistent, perhaps punching up the language and involving a second wave of beta readers?

Hopefully this will be the last lot of betas. I suspect once you’ve taken it through twice, you probably start to run out of people to experiment on?

I think I’m circling around the notion of finishing, basically. I’m pretty happy with the changes, although still mildly annoyed with how long it’s ended up taking, thanks to some slightly weak planning at the start.

And on the double-plus side, I don’t have to decide whether to go straight into the next draft, as my editor sent his thoughts through on Hobson & Choi Book Two, so I’m doing those next!

Problem solved. Blog about that project soon enough, I imagine. In fact, there are a few H&C bits I need to post about.

Filed Under: Writing About Writing Tagged With: amwriting, writeblog, writing about writing

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