Celebrating Word Counts

 There's a lot more to writing than just putting words on a page, although you might not know it by the way some writers talk. Me, for instance.

I hit 34,000 words on my rough draft of Hoosier Hysterical 2: Subtitle Goes Here. (Still working on that subtitle.) Well worth celebrating, but there's a problem: It's just not funny enough. Oh, it has humor, but the original Hoosier Hysterical: How the West Became the Midwest Without Moving at All had a lot of humor. Some people might not recognize it, but that subtitle was supposed to be humorous.

We did stumble across amusing places, now and then.

 

But last time I covered the history of Indiana, and this time I decided to dive into the people who've come and gone, and left their mark on the Hoosier state. Some of those stories are amazing, inspiring, and too often, sad. Once I started following them, I dove down that author's rabbit whole and ended up with whole chapters about one person.

 There's James Dean's breakneck career--okay, bad way to put it, considering how he died. There were black people and women who made it big one way or another, even though at the time their "kind" weren't expected to make anything at all. There were inventors and entertainers who came to a sad end.

It was fascinating stuff, but in some cases the best I could do, for instance, was make fun of Sarah Breedlove's name. It's a cheap shot, but I'm a cheap writer. However, Sarah Breedlove was the first person in her family not to be born into slavery, then had a hard early life, then her hair started falling out. As *ahem* I say, "It's just like a country song, except her dog didn't die and there's no pickup truck".

Although ... how do I know she didn't have a dog that died?

A stop on the Underground Railroad. Cool, not funny.

 

Anyway, C.J. Walker of Indianapolis ended up employing thousands of people to make and sell her hair care products, became the wealthiest black woman in America, and had a freaking Barbie doll modeled after her.

That's not funny. That's awesome.

So, I'm going to work on that. I have a feeling a lot of the already-written words will have to go away, or maybe I'll use them in blogs. Or maybe I'll write a companion book: "Hoosier Not-Hysterical: Really Cool People, and How They Got There".

At least I have my subtitle. 

 

We passed through Rural, Indiana in rural Indiana. That's good for a smile.

 

You can count the words in our books by following these links; but why bother counting?

 

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Remember: It’s not the words so much as how they’re arranged.

 

Crunching Letters to Synopsis Satisfaction

 I'm continually surprised that editors and agents in the publishing industry expect novelists to write short stuff, like query letters, outlines, and synopsis ... synopsis's ... synopsi? Just a sec.

(Huh. It's synopses. Who knew?)

Asking a novelist to write short is like asking a politician to spend less money; asking the Wicked Witch to be less cackle, um, cackle-y; asking me to skip dessert. My novel manuscripts tend to be short, but that doesn't make me freak out any less when I have to reduce it to a 1,000 word synopsis. My latest manuscript is 82,000 words: It's like taking a full size pickup truck and reducing it to Matchbox size with your bare hands.

Hey, I have this one! Wouldn't want to build the real thing from scratch.

Now imagine someone trying to write a synopsis for one of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books, which are so big they're registered as lethal weapons. Seriously, even putting it on your Kindle adds two pounds. When I tried to read the newest one on the couch, I broke my hip. And the couch. Of course, no one would ask him to write a synopsis. In fact, he probably has an assistant that does nothing but write synopses ... seses ....

In theory the best way to write a synopsis is to write one paragraph for each chapter, then trim where necessary, as if it isn't going to be necessary. I tried other tactics. For instance, removing every "the"; putting into the synopsis only the third and fifteenth word of every page; and hiring George R.R. Martin's synopsis writer. None worked. (You wouldn't believe what that guy charges.)

So I looked the manuscript over again. While Martin's books are high fantasy, my newest story is apparently low fantasy, and yes, I'm aware of the possible jokes. That means it's set in our real world, but magical elements intrude into it; the best known example would probably by the Harry Potter series.

How low can you go? Well, you could have an entire school full of kids who could turn their parents into warthogs, for instance.

 

My story, The Source Emerald, is about a young FBI agent on her first assignment, who tries to track down possible gem smugglers in upstate New York. Magic ... intrudes.

All I had to do is boil down her personality, the plot, the stakes, and the major supporting characters into 800-1000 words, or less than two pages. Or shorter, depending on who you ask. Oh, and in your own unique voice ... with plot twists ... and the ending ... I'm going to go lay down, now.

Okay, I'm back. Almost all authors hate writing a synopsis, and those who like it almost always turn out to be heavily addicted to something and/or certifiably insane. I don't have the exact statistics on that. All I know is that on my first whack at it, I spent half a page describing why my main character, Lilly, absolutely doesn't believe the little girl she encounters is Dorothy Gale, made famous in the Oz books. I had to reduce that to, like, four words.

"Dorothy is brunette, and a teenager, and not a princess, and it was all a dream, anyway. Stop pulling my leg--I've seen the movie."

In the final version the whole thing boiled down to: "Lilly doubts Dorothy's story."

It took me three days to come up with that sentence.

In reality I got the whole synopsis done in "just" a few days, not counting my nightmares of being chased by an editor with a sharp red pen. My first version was about 3,500 words, which really wasn't too shabby. My second was around 1,500--I was slashing words like a horror movie villain.

And then--finally--920 beautiful, short, on-point words. That's it. If you want a shorter synopsis from me, I'll just cut from the bottom and you'll never know the ending, pal! (Or lady, since most of the agents and editors I've queried have been female.)

But I did it. I'm relieved, and proud, and surprised, but mostly relieved.

Now I have to write a query letter.

Hm ... or maybe I should tackle a short story. What do you think?

Find all our books here:

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https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
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Edit, People ... Or Suffer My Fate

 Let me tell you all a story of improper editing, and how I left a path of scorched earth behind me that no army could hope to replicate.

The worst part is: It's all my fault. Try as I might, I can't blame anyone else, an idea that sets people (especially politicians and mid-level management) quaking in fear.

But you can learn from my fate, if you're a writer. Or even if you're not.

While a literary agent isn't an absolute requirement to be traditionally published, they can open doors and otherwise be a great help to an author's career. What agents want in their submission packages varies, as I've mentioned before. Generally they ask for a query letter, an author bio, the opening pages of your book (anywhere from five pages to several chapters), and a synopsis.

Writers hate the synopsis. You have to boil your (in this case) 82,000 word novel down into just a couple of pages, which should reveal all your major characters, plot, setting, and ending. That's all. How hard could it be?

For most writers, it's pretty hard.

I suppose Beowulf wonders why I keep taking photos of him while I'm writing. It's because he DISTRACTS ME.

Okay, so I had an outline for We Love Trouble, but it was too long to serve as a typical synopsis. After months of writing, revising, editing, and polishing the manuscript, I had to carve that outline down even more. I was exhausted. But the job wasn't over, so I by-gosh carved out that synopsis, finishing when it was so late even the dog was asleep.

The next day, confident I had everything ready, I started submitting.

Now, most literary agents accept simultaneous submissions. That is to say, they don't mind if you submit to more than one at a time. Most publishers have a problem with that: They want to be the only publisher that can see your manuscript for several months before they send you a form rejection letter. That becomes an incredibly stressful waiting game for writers.

Just the same, a good author-agent relationship is vital, so I carefully select which agents I'm going to query. The synopsis stays the same, of course. Imagine writing a new synopsis every time! Since I do the extra research, over the course of two weeks I only submitted to fourteen agents. They were ones I thought would make for a good fit.

Then I went on to other things: Writing, editing, submitting short stories, occasionally sleeping. Replies began to trickle in, all but one of them form rejections. It appeared that my careful targeting impressed no one.

A couple of months later I got time to send more submissions. I skimmed over my materials, just to make sure I didn't want to change anything. That's when I discovered I had whittled my outline down to a synopsis ...

But I didn't check that synopsis for errors.

"Oh, that? It's the dumpster fire that used to be my writing career. Move along."

I sent it on rife with typos, misplaced words, and ... well, no spelling errors, but otherwise it was a trian wrack. Just like that, my two weeks of submitting was cleared away like a tornado sucking up a trailer park. If those agents remember me at all, it will be with the kind of dislike people reserve for drivers who cut them off in traffic. No one's perfect, but this wasn't one error: This was as if FDR started off his famous Pearl Harbor speech by getting the date wrong.

"December 6th, 1942 ... a date that will ... no, wait ...."

Since corrected, of course, but that doesn't get those agents back on my possibilities list. E-mail addresses can be whitelisted to allow them through--mine has been blacklisted. I can only hope they aren't swapping stories about me at agent conventions.

Learn from my fate. Edit. Polish. But for crying out loud, if you have to revise, go back and polish again. Some people will tell you too much time can be spent on editing, but I'm living proof that the opposite is also true.

Ah, well ... I'm sure I'll laugh about this someday.

No. No, I won't.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

How to Write a Novel in 500 Words

As part of submitting to agents and publishers, an author often has to write a brief synopsis of their novel. It's no big deal: Just boil your 80,000 word work of art into a 500 word ...

Okay, it is a big deal.

The actual length of a synopsis depends on who's asking, which is why I usually do three: a long one that's basically an outline, a medium length one of 2-3 pages, and a short one of 500-1,000 words. None are easy, if you're a long form writer.

These days, most agents and publishers ask for a page or less. You leave out subplots and a lot of the drama--it's can be a little dry, unlike most of your writing output, with just the facts and a brief look at your characters.

My finished rough draft was 4,085 words, in 12 pages.

The second draft is 2,985 words.

So. I have a bit of work to do.

After that I have to write a blurb, something you'd find on the back cover of a book, and it has to be good, interesting, and descriptive, and even shorter. Add to that a cover letter for your submission, which will be sent along with the first, oh, three pages of the manuscript, or five pages, or five chapters, or twenty pages, or whatever they ask for, and there's your submission package. Much of that you have to do even as a self-published author, for promotion purposes.

Writers stress hard over submission packages. But with the odds against them, and most never making enough sales to do it full time, you can hardly blame them.

Off to edit, then. Or submit, or research agents, or ... now that I think on it, it's February. Maybe I'll just have some fun and start on another story. I'll worry about outlining the new one when the days are longer.

This is why writers get a reputation for drinking.

(Let's see who reads to the end of this: After a rough couple of hours, I got it down to 839 words! Still over two pages, but what the heck. I know what you're thinking: "Now, Mark, wasn't that easy?"

No. No, it was not.)

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

How to finish your final draft, or: Just keep going, dummy

 The final draft of The Source Emerald is done!

Wait, let me start over:

The "final draft" of The Source Emerald is done! (Assuming that will continue to be the title.)

There, more accurate. The Source Emerald is about a young FBI agent who is assigned to track down possible gem smugglers, only to discover two of her suspects claim to be foreigners--specifically, from the Land of Oz, which they insist is a real place. And if they don't find the mysterious gems everyone seems to be after, it might be the end of both their worlds.

I suppose it can be considered urban fantasy--I wasn't thinking in terms of genre when I wrote it. You might remember that my word count changed from draft to draft, starting at 67,515, peaking at 70,294 with the second draft, then dropping to 69,028. Now, after polishing and going through the whole thing line by line to check for voice and errors, I'm left with 69,370 words. I added some here and there for clarity, but also cut a lot out of one of the later chapters.

So, from the first word typed on November 1st to the "final" version, it took me just under three months to finish an almost 70,000 word novel. Yay, me! (I did do some outlining and research in October.)

Now Emily gets it.

Emily was holding my granddaughter hostage until I finished my draft!! Hey, I don't make stuff up.

 

My wife/editor/IT department/cover artist doesn't take any crap from me. The manuscript will come back full of red words, with numerous notes in the margins. She'll tell me what does and doesn't make sense, what word choice is wrong, where I'm being long winded, and what food is best for me. Well, that last one isn't directly connected.

Then I'll go through the whole thing all over again, because writing is editing. When it's finally, completely, for sure done, I'll put it in a file and go over to reread We Love Trouble, the book I went through all this with last year. When The Source Emerald has sufficiently cooled, I'll try to read it for entertainment, like a regular reader, and we'll see.

This is the writing process. The process is boring to everyone but the writer, and sometimes even to them. But it's the best way I know to get a good product.

Also, I can't write without the dog keeping a close eye on me. I think he's spying for Emily.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"