Aspiring Author.

So i've been writing a Medical Science Fiction Trilogy for a while now and i've recently done something i always had insane amounts of trouble with in the past. Writing the book summary which would be on the back of the books. Recently though, i sat down and refused to stop until i got it right.

The following is a photo of the summaries and a couple excerpts. Comments welcomed.

"I knew Wade was losing touch. He couldn't remember how we got to where we were. He could only look forward and rationalize things with epidemiology, quantum physics and back-alley psychology. He was, for all intensive purposes, compromised. As i looked at his plan to physically develop a second planet Earth, the gravity of the situation hit me and i knew that Wade was succumbing to retrogression. He was sinking deeper into insanity-- there was no other way to explain such madness."

"I wondered how he could have planned such a herculean enterprise with Marcum. He was from the new dimension. He wasn't the Marcum Bailey we struggled along side in our home universe. That was when i started to question, 'How long had Wade been visiting this sibling dimension?' He needed me to materialize the neutrinos in order for us to reach this place, i wondered how he could have gotten there beforehand. I never felt comfortable when mystery surrounded Wade-- it never pointed to virtue. Things were getting confusing with sinister undertones. I expected the worst. . . or so i thought."

"The expression on my face must have been alarming to Wade. He took the folder from my hand and tried to defend his conviction, 'William, you don't need to look so distressed. In both universes, Stephen Hawking warned to abandon Earth or face extinction. We're not in the midst of a celestial extinction here, mankind is ushering it's own extinction. Surely you can understand why i can't accept that.' Without as much as looking at him i replied, 'How many years have you been trying to save the people? And here you are in an office inside the monument of that intention, devising a way to abandon the people. You're not the man i'd looked up to all these years.'''

"Marcum stood up in front of me, got in my face and stared into my eyes without compromise or intimidation, 'Listen kid, we don't need your blessing. 'Those people' are in charge of saving themselves now-- they'll have the option to come with us. Not a bad deal, i'd say. If you think for a second that some nameless orphan is going to stop the salvation of the human race you can think again.' He was challenging me. The disciplined part of me knew to hold myself together, but the arcane side of me wanted to shred him like tissue paper. Wade interrupted my anger, 'That's enough Marcum. Marcum nodded as he broke his eye contact from me and lowered back into his seat. Wade finished, 'We've made our decision, William. You'll need to make yours. We start soon.'''

I also illustrate via photoshop.

The expression is "for all intents and purposes" not "for all intensive purposes."

Keep at it. Persistence is a necessary trait for a writer.

Ya know, I often make that same mistake with that expression.

1988RedT2 wrote: The expression is "for all intents and purposes" not "for all intensive purposes."

That made me cringe, too.

Honestly, there's something kind of "amateurish" about it. Something about the language not being engaging enough. I dunno. I don't mean to insult.

BTW--what format are you writing in? I'm working on something, but I'm doing it in Word and I'm assuming that's not the right way to do a book.

I gave up on my book log ago, kudos to you for sticking to it.

supposevly, people get catch phrasing like that wrong alot

Sounds like it has some merit...could also maybe make a good graphic novel!

Sorry about the saying-- i guess i've never really read it or had it explained. Just learned from hearing. I'm writing in Word. I've taken classes and Word is vastly used in them.

EdenPrime wrote: I'm writing in Word. I've taken classes and Word is vastly used in them.

that's fine. the publisher will convert it to whatever they use for prepress. And it ain't word. if digital, it'll be converted to epub, pdf, etc.

gamby wrote: BTW--what format are you writing in? I'm working on something, but I'm doing it in Word and I'm assuming that's not the right way to do a book.

Depends what your needs are. If you don't need massive indexing, biblio, toc, math equations, diagrams, etc., and under 20 pages double spaced. word of old is fine. I have not tried the later variants of word, as clicking on crap while trying to write drives me batty. So I try to use style sheets, and format at the end, cursing the bazillion menus needed to format.

There are two major schools of thought. What you see is what you get. or markup. Most of the time folks choose the former. So Quark Express and stuff like that get heavily used for layout. And the copy is delivered as a relatively flat file to the layout person. there's a lot of back and forth with "I just moved it a millimeter again, does it look good?"

If you want to roll your own, you can try LyX, based on TeX/LaTeX. Or if you're a bigger glutton for punishment, you can try troff and variants. The computer & software do all of the computation for layout, indexing, toc, etc. and the resulting file is ready for prepress or conversion to pdf.

Back on topic.

Keep at it. revise, revise, revise. Joined a writer's group? Get some peer input. My friend got a lot of good feedback and learning from the Clarion Writers' Workshop many years ago.

There's a great essay on, among other things, why an editor rejects books, on Teresa Neilsen Hayden's page. She's a science fiction editor with Tor; keep in mind that if you send her a query letter, other mistakes she didn't enumerate are thinking Neilsen Hayden is hyphenated, or that Tor is an acronym and spelling it in all caps. One of the reasons is pretty similar to the "All intensive purposes" malapropism:

Author is on bad terms with the Muse of Language. Parts of speech are not what they should be. Confusion-of-motion problems inadvertently generate hideous images. Words are supplanted by their similar-sounding cousins: towed the line, deep-seeded, dire straights, nearly penultimate, incentiary, reeking havoc, hare’s breath escape, plaintiff melody, viscous/vicious, causal/casual, clamoured to her feet, a shutter went through her body, his body went ridged, empirical storm troopers, ex-patriot Englishmen, et cetera.

You've got to purge those kinds of mistakes from your manuscript and query letter. There's a couple others in there, such as "becomes to succumb to" instead of "begins to succumb to." Go over your grammar with a fine toothed comb. That will go a long way - a lot of the other submissions will have errors similar to yours. The editor, who's probably flooded with these, is likely to save time by sending the ones with errors instant rejection letters and saving the ones that don't for a closer look.

One last thing - view the summary in a query letter as a commercial for your book. Except you are actually supposed to spoil the ending there - the editor wants to know if the ending sucks or not. :) Also, you're best making the first book of a trilogy stand on its own - you've got an easier time getting a one book contract as an unknown author. MUCH easier.

gamby wrote: BTW--what format are you writing in? I'm working on something, but I'm doing it in Word and I'm assuming that's not the right way to do a book.

The book Jerry and I wrote, we typed up in OpenOffice and submitted it in DOC files. Standard manuscript formatting is double spaced, 12 point Courier or other monospaced font. This is obviously something that doesn't look like a book - a lot of editors find it easier to look through something like this and add notes. Lots of editors are old school and like to print out the manuscript and use a pencil. (And yes, our book has lots of pictures and sidebars, and a few math equations too. Word files are still fine. We tried to keep the number of equations to a minimum.)

The publisher will handle the details like typesetting and placing the illustrations. Your job is to write the thing, not typeset and format it. (Unless you're self publishing it, of course, in which case you'll be handling the whole shebang. If you want to be commercially published, the publisher has staff to handle all that.) Some books are illustrated by the author, but this is pretty rare for adult fiction.

There is a reason I consider myself a "writer" and not an "author". I couldn't do a book. Magazine articles and blog posts? sure, all damn day long. Books? I don't have the patience.

Anything with "Rise of the Obelisk" in it I am going to read.

Thanks a lot for the input guys. I do have to work on some things.

To be honest, those excerpts i put up were quick paragraphs i thought up and used as Facebook Statuses. They haven't even been put on my actual writing file. I always put out a facebook status version first-- hence "becoming to succumb," MadScientistMatt. But they did a fine enough job of describing my writing style and "attitude" if you will.

Pinchvalve, i'm glad you like the word choice. I've found that i'm pretty good at naming stuff. The company names and names of characters actually sound pretty good (i've even been told that in my classes) White Rook Pharmaceutical Company, Abacus Pharmaceutical Company, Rise of the Obelisk, Dawn of the Accolade, Marcum Bailey, Videl Zygmunt, Felix Miles, William Barnard Hendriks, Alexander Theodore Gray, Liam Keese, Tower of Babel, Warren Van Wolfe, ect.

EdenPrime wrote: ne enough job of describing my writing style and "attitude" if you will. Pinchvalve, i'm glad you like the word choice. I've found that i'm pretty good at naming stuff. The company names and names of characters actually sound pretty good (i've even been told that in my classes) White Rook Pharmaceutical Company, Abacus Pharmaceutical Company, Rise of the Obelisk, Dawn of the Accolade, Marcum Bailey, Videl Zygmunt, Felix Miles, William Barnard Hendriks, Alexander Theodore Gray, Liam Keese, Tower of Babel, Warren Van Wolfe, ect.

...and that's a true sign of your talent/creativity. That stuff is certainly good.

Thanks for the answers to my questions, BTW (to all who answered)

1988RedT2 wrote: The expression is "for all intents and purposes" not "for all intensive purposes." Keep at it. Persistence is a necessary trait for a writer.

Look man, for all intensive purposes this story is a diamond dozen cause it's a doggy dog world out there.

Keep working on it; it needs more polish

I can see some potential here. Just wanted to offer a couple tips I've picked up here and there about how to get a contract and advance. Sorry if I came off as a bit critical; I had thought this was something you had gotten to the closest you had it to ready to send in.

MadScientistMatt wrote: I can see some potential here. Just wanted to offer a couple tips I've picked up here and there about how to get a contract and advance. Sorry if I came off as a bit critical; I had thought this was something you had gotten to the closest you had it to ready to send in.

Oh no, it's not there yet. I'm actually in the middle of book two right now and haven't even started book three yet. And book one is about 1/5th the way finalized.

Like I said earlier, it's probably best if you can turn book 1 into a stand-alone book (with a set up for a sequel). Then get that one finished and sold, and once it's a huge success, query the publisher for the second and third books.

MadScientistMatt wrote: Like I said earlier, it's probably best if you can turn book 1 into a stand-alone book (with a set up for a sequel). Then get that one finished and sold, and once it's a huge success, query the publisher for the second and third books.

Thank you, for not saying "IF it's a huge success." And for your insight.