
Lessons learned: writing really long fiction - wellokthen
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/03/lessons-learned-writing-really.html
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jonathanstrange
I'm writing German science fiction novels as a hobby that are around 700-800
norm pages each and learned the hard way that at least in the German
publishing market there are virtually no program places for science fiction,
very few agencies accept manuscripts in that genre at all, and publishers
rarely accept novels larger than 400 norm pages from a first-time writer.

I'm currently sitting on 8 manuscripts - two of them are actually 1400 norm
pages each. I'm writing on my ninth novel now and will one day give away all
of them for free. The problem is that correcting and finalizing them into book
form (e.g. typsetting in LaTeX) takes too much of my spare time.

I'm just writing this as a friendly advise. At least for smaller markets like
the German one, do not ever expect to be able to make any substantial amounts
of money from your writing hobby. The trend is against it, and it's much
cheaper and less risky for publishers to get a successful US writer translated
than to accept a new local one. People are also reading way more English
originals than they used to. Besides, agencies are looking for urban fiction,
"novels for young women", gift books, etc. (Before you ask, agencies have
attested me that the quality of my writing is fine, but what they say and what
they think are two things and this may also play a major role.)

Of course, it's still my favourite hobby. Once you start you cannot stop. I
don't think that any particular lessons can be learned, because everybody
writes in a different way and under different circumstances. The bottomline is
that it's not hard to write a lot. ;)

~~~
restalis
Here's a market strategy: write off-shots of your long novels as teasers. Make
them tasty (as their primary reason is to give the readers a taste for the
main piece), make them as close in style as possible to the main work,
although you may focus on different aspects in each of them, and lastly - make
them convergent (towards something that "happens" to be missing). Let's say
shorter stories around some independent characters which at some point get in
contact with one main work character somewhere at the end of the novel. Make
that interaction stand out and the main work character larger than life in
some way. The shorter novels should be easier to push onto market, maybe even
independently, and should provide the necessary ground for rolling out the
main work. Heck, that should be THE publishers' advice for first-time writers
out there.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I'm not a writer, but I don't get why first-time writers - as in, first time
they're trying to get their works published, not that they've only now tried
to write a book - try to do too much as their first project.

I think they should really force themselves to start with short stories first;
focus on finishing a story. That avoids a sunk cost, avoids people beating
themselves up for what they believe is their life's work getting rejected by
publishers (for e.g. being too long), etc.

Same with software development; it's easy to write big chunks of code, it's
hard to get that to production.

~~~
kbenson
I've always heard that writing a good short story is actually quite a bit
harder than a novel, since you have to be fairly ruthless about what you
include and leave out to have enough room for the essential components. A
novel's plot can meander for a while, and it still might be good or okay. A
short story's plot that meanders either isn't short anymore or doesn't go
anywhere in the space it has.

------
dalbasal
I'm slightly surprised that non-sequential series (eg Pratchett's discworld)
are not more common. The 3rd book in a sequential series can't become the most
read one, but it can in a nonsequential one. It also lessens pressure to make
all the books thematically build up to a single literary work with a climactic
payoff to all earlier plots. When things do add up, and chekhov's proverbial
gun finally goes off in a nonsequential sequal, it's an easter egg.

If the second book in your trilogy sucked, it sinks the 3rd.

That doesn't mean I don't like reading series, but they do seem stressful for
the author.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Same, as one badly constructed book (or season of a TV series) can ruin the
whole lot if they're all sequential.

It's become so much of a trope that it's become a pet hate. I actively avoid
buying any that is "first of..." now, no matter how famous you are. The few
times I break this rule, I generally regret it. Most trilogies are just a
book, heavily padded. So I simply won't buy unless all are written, and well
reviewed. Then, do I buy all or none.

There are _just a tiny few_ that deserve it. Archer's Clifton Chronicles,
Follett's Century Trilogy, Stross' own Merchant Princes (1-6 anyway, skip the
new ones) were all marvellous and fully deserved a series. Yet most are
unworthy. Song of Ice and Fire - great idea, so much padding and so little
direction. Good book, awful series. I forget where I gave up. Cornwell's The
Saxon Stories was mostly great, but I preferred the battle by battle
progression of Sharpe without having to achieve perfect continuity or care
much what order I read them.

Much prefer the random peeks into a universe approach of Sharpe, Discworld, or
Follett with the Kingsbridge series where there's hundreds of years between
the books. Or Adam's HHGTTG leaping all over the galaxy with continuity that
can leave Marvin in a car park for a millennium. Even Charles Stross reads far
better if simply ignoring Laundry Files as series. Lots of unconnected
episodes and forget the underlying destination or continuity. It's the only
way I can carry on when there's been two books that _really_ didn't work.
Well, more one book and one ending that failed hard.

Atrocity Archives and the other Bob books were some of the most entertaining,
delightfully observed comedy fiction I've read. Nightmare Stacks didn't really
join up, but was a rollicking good tale, and some interesting new characters.

Labyrinth Index on the other hand, was disjointed and unfinishable (The only
book from Charles, one of my favourite authors, I can't finish). It should
have been a book of Alex, Bob or Cassie. Anyone but Mhari, who might have
worked here if given a red shirt to die spectacularly in chapter 2. She's not
even anything like the Mhari as created in previous books.

The only way I can react to that is simply ignore as series, tuning out
continuity, or stop buying.

~~~
gwbas1c
I loved the Star Wars prequels...

That being said, I very rarely get into series unless I'm familiar with the
author / director.

I've just gotten tired of slogging through to the end when a book / movie / TV
show series should have ended a long time ago.

------
mindcrime
I'm actually starting to kinda dislike long series in sci-fi and fantasy,
because the time commitment to finish them is just so high. I still have one
more book to read in the _Wheel of Time_ series, and after that I'm really
reluctant to start another long fantasy series anytime soon. But it seems like
every fantasy novel I pick up off the shelf says "Book x of the $FOO
series..." Uuuggh. I'd like to plead with fantasy and sci-fi authors to write
more standalone novels that are very explicitly meant to _not_ be part of a
series.

~~~
jerf
I don't think it's the authors doing it. It's the publishers. cstross alludes
to that in his post as well.

It occurs to me that a modern publishing deal for a new author isn't entirely
unlike the VC deals we talk about here on HN. Yeah, the publishers might sign
you for 2 books in a trilogy, but you just promised to be a unicorn in the
process. The startup world is probably more friendly to serial entrepreneurs
than the publishing world is to those authors, though; I haven't seen many
discussions of this but I bet you basically get one chance at that deal before
they move on to the next author.

~~~
mindcrime
_It 's the publishers._

That's a fair point, and I should have phrased it that way in my post. Too
late to edit now, but I agree, it's not all on the authors.

------
V-2
_> Burnout is a very real thing in most creative industries, and if you work
for a duration of years to decades on a single project you will experience
periods of deep existential nausea and dread at the mere thought of even
looking at the thing you just spent the last five years of your life on._

It immediately reminded me of this great (and short) sketch by The Onion :)
[https://youtu.be/qXD9HnrNrvk](https://youtu.be/qXD9HnrNrvk)

------
deanalevitt
Oddly enough, I believe there are a number of lessons that crossover between
tech and writing. Having written a novel, and built companies, they both
require similar skills in terms of planning, patience, MVP (first draft),
rushing to market, incremental improvement, shipping regularly etc.

~~~
buf
Can you talk about rushing to market in terms of writing a book? Wouldn't a
well defined marketing campaign serve better?

~~~
SolaceQuantum
IME it is important to actually complete a work in order to begin the editing,
beta-reading, etc. process. Very rarely will one come across a writer who does
not need to spend significant amounts of time polishing their piece- often
more time to polish than the writing time. It is often more efficient to
minimize time writing and maximise time editing. Marketing in fiction is often
in the form of novel-swaps, blog-reviews, and book signings- in other words
you need at least one piece published or in-the-publishing-process in order to
hype your work.

------
QuamStiver
I will note that basic Buddhism and the Gnosticism appear to agree.

The first noble truth of Buddhism can either be rendered as "suffering is
inevitable," or "life is unsatisfactory." In my limited understanding of
Gnosticism, The other three truths are that suffering is caused by a
misunderstanding of our essential nature, that liberation from this suffering
is possible, and that there's a path anyone can follow to attain this
liberation.

In Gnosticism (per Wikipedia) that all matter is evil, and the non-material,
spirit-realm is good. There is an unknowable God, who gave rise to many lesser
spirit beings called Aeons. The creator of the (material) universe is not the
supreme god, but an inferior spirit (the Demiurge). Gnosticism does not deal
with "sin," only ignorance. To achieve salvation, one needs gnosis
(knowledge).

Look kinda similar, do they not? While there's no evidence that Buddhist
thought directly created Gnosticism, Buddhism had been around for a few
centuries by the time Gnostic Christianity appeared, and even though there
weren't many Buddhists in the Roman empire, there were Buddhists in
Afghanistan by around the time of Alexander, and some of the monks were known
to be Greek. I'd also point out that Mani (creator of Manichaeism) cited both
Jesus and Buddha as inspirations. Anyway, long story short, these ideas were
percolating throughout the civilized world in later classical times, so I'm
not surprised that some Christians tried to incorporate them in their
practices. Same thing happens today, for instance with the "Jubus" (Jewish
Buddhists).

~~~
scroot
There is a pretty good book by Karen Armstrong called "The Great
Transformation" that looks at why all of this seemed to happen around the same
time across different cultures and religions.

------
ilamont
I really enjoyed reading this. I like Stross' nonfiction work and wasn't aware
that he wrote sci-fi, which I will now have to check out.

A couple things to add, as a writer and publisher:

* There are all kinds of tools to help writers get going. I have twice used NaNoWriMo ([https://www.nanowrimo.org](https://www.nanowrimo.org)) to force myself to get fiction and nonfiction ideas from outline to rough draft. I also found the writing program Scrivener ([https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview](https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview)) to be very good for organizing fiction chapters, characters, spinoff short stories, etc.

* Short science fiction is unsurprisingly far easier to write but difficult to find a market for. The remaining publications and anthologies are swamped with quality submissions, and no one goes to Amazon to buy short stories. Some people publish to Wattpad or their own blogs, but there's a chicken/egg problem to contend with and Wattpad requires constant effort to curate an audience.

* The Kindle store, especially Kindle Unlimited, has tons of scifi series, many from new authors. Unfortunately, I've found some of them to be lacking in depth and character development. I'm not sure if that's because they aren't properly edited, or they are "writing to market," i.e. giving people what they want (lots of series with keywords stuffed into the title, like "hard science fiction" or "space opera"). This is a matter of personal taste; I see that many of the same series have hundreds or even thousands of positive reviews which seem sincere.

~~~
dghf
> I like Stross' nonfiction work and wasn't aware that he wrote sci-fi

I'm the reverse: I only know his sci-fi, and wasn't aware he wrote nonfiction.
What would you recommend?

~~~
arethuza
According to the bibliography on wikipedia the only non-fiction I can see is
"The Web Architect's Handbook" \- from 1996

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross_bibliography#No...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross_bibliography#Non-
fiction)

------
montenegrohugo
Quoting:

> In some cases the decline is much steeper—30-40% from episode to episode: I
> speak from experience. This isn't just theoretical: it's why there won't be
> a third book in the series beginning with "Saturn's Children" and "Neptune's
> Brood": they sold okay in the USA, but then I changed US publisher—and the
> British sales took a 40% dive between book 1 and book 2, so I couldn't fall
> back on the UK market.

>

> A series where the sales figures of book n are the same as book n-1, n-2 ..
> 1 are flat is worth persisting with, because it's bucking the market trend
> and not stagnating. And a series where the sales figures actually grow from
> book to book is a prize beyond compare.

I don't quite agree with this. Of course there will be a falloff between
entries in a series, but that does not mean that writing an additional book is
a wasted effort. The potential sales of n+1 book get added to all the books
coming before n, with corresponding % loss of readership between books. So,
one should also add the increase in sales in all the books coming before the
new release.

~~~
mannykannot
I am not sure I follow you here - are you saying that when a book is added to
a series, it tends to generate new readers for its predecessors? I would guess
that, unless the new book significantly enhances the awareness or prestige of
the series, it would have little effect on the sales of earlier episodes.
Otherwise, regardless of how good it is in its own right, I doubt it is likely
to attract readers who have not already read its predecessors.

~~~
sethammons
It might be of little effect, but I specifically target series. A set of nine
will beat out a pair for me. I'm hooked on Brandon Sanderson partly due to the
interlinking between his different series.

~~~
montenegrohugo
Exactly. Especially in SF and Fantasy, series present a much more attractive
target. You know the author has put in some love & effort into the books, and
you know that the effort YOU put into learning the world and your emotional
investment into the characters won't be wasted.

You might of course still drop it after the 2nd or 3rd (or even during the
1st) book due to various reasons (you didn't like it, found something better,
were busy, family emergency etc..), but the nth+1 book still influenced in
that first sale.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Paper book retail has complicated shelving and buying rules which make it a
winner's game.

A tiny percentage of the most popular writers gets reprints, new editions, and
shelf space. For new writers, the process is more like a sales audition.

And it's a very short audition. If a new title doesn't show serious sales
momentum within a few weeks, most copies will be returned, and the odds of a
follow-up title from that author go down rapidly.

Virtually all of the n-ologies you see in the bigger stores are already best
sellers, and the publishers and the store buyers have both said "Give us more
of the same" because previous sales were strong enough.

Some markets - like romance, and sometimes fantasy - have more complicated
rules. Store buyers typically buy a consignment from a publisher, and authors
can sometimes find themselves sneaking into a consignment without being
anyone's first choice.

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petey283
As an avid sci-fi reader this is providing so many answers to my recurring
frustrations whenever books series don't get a sequel. I don't think I truly
understood that there were important business and human capital constraints.

------
e12e
Aww, the perils of letting the market steer compensation for authors. I really
enjoyed Neptune's Brood - sorry to se the series cut short by such
trivialities as sales numbers.

Completely understandable, obviously.

Very interesting article, thank you for sharing.

------
vectorEQ
really interesting to me. i don't write, but it shares a lot of commonalities
if i read this with other large / long term projects one can do (which i think
a lot of IT people / programmers can relate to). thanks for sharing this
interesting piece!

