Nick Bryan

amwriting

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

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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.

Draft Four The Win? – The Novel Continues

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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.

Novels By Numbers – How I Killed My Precise Book Structure

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My novel – the urban fantasy one I am currently editing after intensive beta reading – has a very strict structure. Three parts (because I love the three act structure), each containing seven chapters (because… I’m not actually sure). I laid it out like that when I started, and have stuck to it ever since.

In my last edit, a few conclusive plot developments got pushed off the end of the final chapter – Chapter Twenty-One, obviously – and I put them in an epilogue. Because this preserves my precious structure.

I’ve continued this game of sevens all the way to the fourth draft, and frankly I think I deserve a medal. Or at least a giant seven-shaped cake. You can probably find one in shops under Birthday Cakes For Seven Year Olds.

Still, all good things are determined to come to an end, and I don’t think I can sustain this shape any longer. I’ve planned out my new final third and am adding some major new sections to the book, important new bits, cool stuff, all thanks to good suggestions from my excellent beta people. But I don’t think I can do it within the seven/seven/seven framework – not without writing chapters that are also ten/twelve thousand word novellas, at least.

So, with a heavy heart and a grim smile, maybe ever a cinematic single tear, I am waving goodbye to the sevens. I will miss them, but anything that makes the book better is probably worth it. And I still have sevens in the first and second third.

And, ditching the faux-eulogy tone for a second, let’s be honest: if an editor, agent, publisher or similar entity says I need to add extra chapters to the book anywhere, further messing up the sevens, I’ll definitely do it as long as I agree it’ll improve the story. Hardly seems practical to get over-attached to these things. Not as if the chapter-counts are story relevant, it just worked out that way.

And it least it gave me something to work within while I got the book written. Let’s not be ungrateful.I’m glad I wrote this blog post, it was therapeutic.

Dealing With Beta Readers – An Early Report

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It’s been a few months since I last looked at my full-length fantasy novel about Faustian deals – I put it aside for a spell, both to let beta readers have a crack at it and to focus on getting the Hobson & Choi book launch in order.

But the first H&C book is all fired into the atmosphere, the Book Two work now with other people, and most of my beta readers reported, so time to start in that direction again. Yesterday afternoon, for the first time in a while, I opened up the novel Scrivener file, looked at various beta reader notes and thought about it.

So, how does it feel returning to a novel post-beta? Have I got any advice for other writers in similar situations? Let’s find out!

Time For Staggered Hatred

Everyone tells you a piece of writing will only be improved by leaving it for a while and coming back. I put this book aside for about a month (Christmas, basically) between first and second drafts, and now an epic gap of three months (almost exactly) between finishing the third draft and re-opening just now.

The good news: I do not hate it. I’d grown weary of this piece back in May, whereas now I’m ready to tear back into the words. Though does that just mean I hate it in a different way? Discuss.

Either way, hard to go wrong with taking a break, even though it’s massively counter-intuitive with the desire to get work out there right the fuck now and inflict your genius upon the world. (I recommend multiple projects as a way of controlling this urge.)

Feedback And The Fleshy Cord

And I also have beta feedback this time, so that makes even more difference than just ignoring the book for  a few months.

Both leaving time and getting feedback are ways to weaken the crusty mental umbilical between yourself and your writing. You probably can’t sever that completely, but you can take a few hacks, break it down to stringy tendrils.

Sometimes adding the feedback of non-you folk will be disappointing. I’ll hold my pasty-white hands up and admit I thought the book was a bit more Ready To Rock than it turned out to be. At first, this got me down a bit. Not a crushing lot, but a noticeable bit.

Unfortunately, as every other writing blogger/tutor/street preacher has already told you, receiving feedback is a vital part of the whole process and if you can’t do it, you’ll probably (metaphorically) die.

Still, there is a plus side: you know how you spend half your life trying to hear/read other people’s ideas without stealing them? You will often now receive other people’s thoughts specifically about your book which you can plagiarise to your heart’s content. It’s so freeing, I’m not sure I need to learn to fly anymore.

Not to mention, although it’s nice to get praise, the experience of having other humans engaging with your book and taking it seriously is pretty great regardless. So focus on that and plough on.

Planning With The Uni-Brain

The one slight problem with beta readers (assuming you have more than one, and that’s a good idea if possible) is that they tend to have different views on your work. Until the blessed day we’re all replaced by robots thinking with the same networked Uni-Brain, you need to parse your beta-reader feedback and decide which way to go.

Whereas when your betas all suggest the same thing, it’s probably a glaring problem, likely also something a hypothetical future publisher/agent will notice. Best address those points, or at least have your reason/excuse ready.

In short, I spent two hours yesterday afternoon staring at the feedback and trying to come up with a unified plan of improvement. Much as I desperately want to just hack my way in, I gotta do the planning, and I may even do a bit more before I write/edit a single word. Partly because, if I’m being honest (sigh), it was partly lack of planning which caused many of the problems in the first place.

Seriously, when it comes to the next utterly new book, I’m going to make such detailed advance notes, it will turn the writing process itself into a completely joyless exercise in joining the dots. This I solemnly vow.

But I think that’s it for now. You’ve got to admire the amount of words I just got out of sitting in a cafe and thinking for a bit. Join me at some point in the future for news on how the editing actually went!

Work After Work – A Work Update Working 2014 Over With Work

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Authorbot plunges into the books

Due to the combined impact of my book coming out, my first ever trip to a convention and the heat and humidity fucking with my motivation, I have not done one of these ramble-about-my-process blog posts for a while.

I miss them, I have a few minutes spare, I’ve recently changed my writing routine a little and solidified my future plans, so let’s talk about that. Why would you work after work? Is it because you like work, or at least need to work on your work? What is work? What is my work? How is your work?

Work After Work After Work After…

Some days of the week, I go into my regular office day-job. Not all of them, it’s only part time, but some. On the days I did this, I wasn’t getting much fiction writing done in the evenings. The odd blog post but no proper work.

Well, as the possible projects stack up and I do extra days in the office for various reasons, the lost productivity from all those days began to annoy me. So I have adopted the strategy of forcing myself to bash out at least some writing (usually about a thousand words) upon my return from the office. Sit right down and do it, none of this eating/relaxing shit.

This has made me feel a bit better about my productivity levels, but thanks to the presence of the internet and other distractions, it takes a while, leading to not getting to eat until about 10PM.

I’m hoping that won’t happen every time, but on the other hand, the word counts are going away much faster, which is very much what I’m after. So if you see me and I look a bit more tired, that is why.

Hobson & Choi Book After Hobson & Choi Book After…

The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf - aka MY BOOK BUY IT

Currently, I’m writing the bonus story for the second H&C book, whilst finalising the text for the main story of that same volume at other times. In short, the second book is taking shape with alarming speed, helped by the fact I finished writing the first draft in about May.

It may even be out by the end of the year – I will admit, that is the dream, but considering I haven’t got a cover or sent it off to an editor yet, that might prove ambitious. If it does come out, it will be November, probably. If we fall back past Nov, might roll into 2015, as I probably cannot compete with Santa.

To be honest, though, my name is Nick so I’m used to being compared unfavourably with bloody Father Christmas.

Beta After Alpha After Omega After…

Meanwhile, in the stockpile of things I might get to work on some time, I’ve now had feedback from most of the kind associates who were beta reading that novel about the devil I finished drafting a few months back.

The results were not quite the unanimous love and acclaim I’d probably hoped for, but there was a lot of good stuff in there. To be honest, just the feeling of having the story engaged with excited me a lot. People seemed to follow it and the suggestions were mostly ways to beef up the ideas and characters already there, rather than polite but firm suggestions that I chuck everything away, burn it, then amputate my hands.

So, if/when I get H&C Book 2 put away, I shall plunge back into that book. Kinda excited by that. Again, the hope is to enact the edits by the end of the year, but I begin to think I should settle for just having made any decent start.

In short, the rest of 2014 is spoken for. It might as well be Christmas, except it had better not be, because I haven’t done half of what I need to do. Bloody hell.

If you want to make me feel better in the face of my striving, feel free to buy my book, or leave a review somewhere if you’ve already read it. All helps. If you’ve done all that (thanks!), you can get an entirely new H&C story by subscribing to the mailing list.

Receiving my first set of edits – A Psychological Journey

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So, the ongoing plunge towards Hobson & Choi self-publication continues. I sent my manuscript of Book One off to an editor, because if my trip to London Book Fair taught me one thing, it’s that you gotta let someone else loose on it.
After all, I’m competing with an array of authors who have editors, I’m bothering to get a decent cover done, so I might as well make sure the insides are up to scratch.

With that goal in mind, I got my book back from the editor about a week ago, and have just blasted through the whole lot of edits once, making changes accordingly. It’s a strange experience, getting edited for the first time, and even after chatting to other people beforehand, it’s still… interesting.

Denial

A lot of writers say that when they first get professional feedback on their work from a professional editor or agent (or perhaps other professionals such as doctors, lawyers and accountants), they hear the bad parts and their first response is to admit: “Yes… yes, I knew all along, I was just hoping I was wrong.”

Are they telling the truth, or do they want to sound like they know what they’re doing?

I don’t know about others, but I can tell you that I totally knew everything all along, and the feedback from my editor served only to echo my own genius back at me.

Ahem.

Acceptance

To be honest, as edits go, I probably had a fairly easy ride. Lots of good feedback about my actual story, characters, pace, etc, but quite a lot of language stuff. To be precise: I sometimes over-narrate, which is something I’m aware of, but apparently need to chop more thoroughly.

Long story short, a fair chunk of over-elaborate narration to be cut, got a few new additions to compensate. The main problem, to be honest, is that a lot of fun observations or witty jokes tend to be buried in internal narration, and in removing that to avoid over-telling things, I also lose some good turns of phrase.

All comes back to that whole Killing Your Darlings thing again, doesn’t it? I love these words, and some can be salvaged with a move to dialogue, but many will simply need to die.

Bargaining

I struggled with it for a bit, to be honest. Even wondered whether me and the editor were well matched – all the time aware that I was probably just being precious. Part of me feels that the very close third person narrative, including inner thoughts and fun character theorising, is a big part of the style, and by chopping it back, I lose a bit of the fun.

On the other hand… it does read better now. A lot smoother. I’ve saved a decent percentage of the jokes I really liked, and the ones that are still in narration are a lot less buried in blocks of text. We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.

So, long story short, Hobson & Choi Book One is getting alarmingly close to happening now – hopefully late July or early August. I may even get my new title and cover up here on the blog in the nearish future, and won’t that be fun?