Tag: author

Time To Plan a New Book

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Writing5 Comments

There seems to be a pattern emerging.

When I was about a third of the way through the draft of ASCENSION POINT, I started to find myself daydreaming about ideas for new stories. Some were vague and insubstantial, and didn’t come to much; for a couple I jotted down the basic, high-level premise to come back to later; and one really caught my imagination and quickly turned into the outline for the book I’m writing now, ROGUE.

Now that I’m about five chapters into the draft of ROGUE, the same thing’s happened again. It’s as if, with the WIP’s outline in place* and the story and character arcs plotted, my ‘big picture’ creative juices need something to do. So they wander off and think up new things.

Which is why I got out of bed at 4am last night to write down–before I forgot them–the notes which now make up  the broad-strokes outline of what will end up being my third book. Tentative title: BODIES IN MOTION.

The story’s actually not entirely new: it’s a fleshing out of one of those basic, high-level premises I dreamed up last year. Now there’s some meat on the skeletal plot bones, and I’m really excited to start writing it!

But… Oh yeah.

I just need to write the other 55,000 words of ROGUE first.

(* Work in progress, for anyone unfamiliar with the acronym :))

Ascension Point, Meet Proofreader

On By Dan HarrisIn Writing8 Comments

Exciting news! I’ve just this afternoon completed the edit process with Misti, and ASCENSION POINT will shortly be winging its way into the inbox of a lucky proofreader at RedAdept.

Who will doubtless tell me that we got all of the ellipses wrong, and they should be em-dashes, and then we’ll have to have a grammar fight. I can’t wait.

What does this mean? It means, in theory, that I’m a mere week away from being ready to publish.

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: DEFCON 2.

Final Back Blurb for ASCENSION POINT

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Writing7 Comments

I’ve finalised the back blurb for ASCENSION POINT. This will adorn the back cover of the paperback version, and double as the book description for the eBook on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, etc. So without further ado…

Titan. A genetically engineered warrior for whom going home means a death sentence…

Commonwealth. A powerful politician chasing a legend from her family’s past…

Seryn. A young girl seeking adventure and hiding more power than even she knows…

Collective. A synthetically augmented scientist whose singular nature makes him an exile…

Representatives from each of humanity’s four feuding factions, each offered the chance to see the legendary Book of Ascension—an ancient artefact that might hold the key to immortality. The four form an uneasy alliance before discovering they have been misled: Before they can see the Book, they must find a mythical deity, protect the galaxy from an ancient evil—and save humanity’s future.

I’ll have another post in a day or two, as I’m nearing the end of the editing process. EXCITING TIMES.

Writer In Stunning ‘Writing New Material’ Shock

On By Dan HarrisIn WritingLeave a comment

Just a quick one.

Somewhat amazingly, I’ve actually written over 2,000 new words of my second book, ROGUE, in the last two days. I can’t remember exactly the last time I wrote anything entirely new, but it was probably in June, what with the focus on editing ASCENSION POINT and, you know, getting married and stuff.

It was also pleasing for me to notice how I could immediately apply Misti’s feedback from her edit of ASCENSION POINT to the new scenes in ROGUE. This should mean my first draft is much higher quality than it would otherwise have been, and the editing process at the end will be even smoother.

Super Monday Morale Boost: Activate

On By Dan HarrisIn Writing3 Comments

Got a wonderful bit of feedback from Misti this morning. When I fired off my edited MS to her on Saturday night, I mentioned how baffled I was that she hadn’t given me any notes on the storyline, or characterisation–you know, the broader strokes of the novel. I was a bit worried that I’d accidentally bought the wrong editing service, and got just copyediting instead of developmental/structural/content editing.

Instead, I received this gem in Misti’s reply, which has absolutely made my day.

“As for the content question, you might remember me commenting on your outlining during your phone call, and asking about your reading habits. I didn’t notice any issues with the storyline, and the only character issues I noticed were the speech patterns. You’re quite right that so few content issues is unusual for first books.”

Me, shortly after

Ascension Point Edit Update: Editing is Super-Satisfying

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment

I’m ten chapters of twenty-three through Misti’s edit of ASCENSION POINT, and loving it. Every comment and suggestion makes sentences, scenes, chapters just so much… tighter. The story is getting leaner and meaner by the minute.

Less:

More:

(Caveat: Book is not as funny as Jonah Hill.)

I’m super-excited about getting the edits finished this week, and I’ve got plenty of time on my hands to do it as lovely wife is in New York for a conference. Once I’m done, it’s back to Misti for an edit of my changes, then back to me, back to her, etc. until THE CHANGES ARE NO MORE. And then, oh boy.

Publishing time.

Pro Editors: They Tell You Things You Didn’t Know

On By Dan HarrisIn Writing8 Comments

‘Dictionary counts “then” as a subordinating conjunction itself, so it can be used without “and” to form a dependent clause.’

This is one of the 619 (!) comments which the lovely Misti from RedAdept gave me on ASCENSION POINT. Over the course of our hour-and-forty-five-minute chat yesterday–now that’s value for money!–I got the most concentrated lesson in grammar that I’ve ever had, as well as a ton of other excellent feedback. Phenomenal.

I’m still processing everything, but here are some snippets:

  • I really like using dashes. Like, all the time. Even when I should be using ellipses, or colons, or periods.
  • I’m far too busy and important to spell words consistently. See: light-year, lightyear, light year.
  • I’m generally good at POV! Yay for me! But not so good at maintaining a single POV in scenes with several of my POV characters: it sometimes gets a bit muddled.
  • Authorial intrusion FTW. Or: I’m not always great at keeping the narrative sections of a scene in keeping with the POV character’s voice. A key lesson.
  • Scene transitions need some work. Too often it takes a few paragraphs before it becomes clear to the reader where the story is, and who the POV character is. Or as Misti put it, “Who? What? Where?” 🙂
  • Dashes vs. ellipses. Phrases vs. clauses. Independent clauses vs. dependent clauses. Commas with modifiers. Commas with conjunctions. Phew!
  • Unnecessary verbiage, e.g. ‘Emitting a yowl.’ Yowl is already a verb, Dan. Tut tut.
  • Pacing needs some work. More shorter sentences in dramatic sections to build tension, keep the longer ones for more mellow stretches to diffuse it.
  • And last, my personal favourite. I’ll let Misti’s example show this one: “His eyes followed them.”
    • Interpretation #1: He watched them, following them with his gaze.
    • Interpretation #2: His eyeballs popped out of his skull and trailed after them while he did something else.

Ahem… Yeah, the first one.

As I skimmed the edited doc I was pleased to see fewer and fewer comments in later chapters. No surprise, the first chapter, or 4% of the book, has 15% of the comments! Good to get confirmation from a professional that my writing really did improve as the book progressed.

I’ll probably post some more editing bits and pieces in the coming week or two as I beaver away at the changes. Having addressed the 92 comments in chapter one, I can already tell that enlisting a professional editor was absolutely money well spent.

But we already knew that, didn’t we?

Book Two: Embiggened

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment

Some of you may recall a post from a few months back where I talked about my second book, ROGUE, and how it was starting to come along nicely–but was going to be too short. At the time I was planning to just keep writing the bloody thing, and let the story tell me where it could best be expanded, or the characters deepened. You know, writerly stuff like I imagine Stephen King does.

That’s not one of my strong suits, as it turns out.

It’s not like I’ve sat down to write very often in the last ten weeks or so–what with getting married and all–but when I have, I’ve found it almost impossible to crack on with drafting when I know the outline’s not finished. I can’t do it. I find myself just staring at the wall, wondering where I could slot in another chapter, or an extra subplot.

Well, happy day, I finally worked it out. And, like all the best ideas, it was completely obvious in hindsight. Just one additional chapter at the end of act two, a few build-up scenes inserted into previous chapters to point the way, and lo and behold we have a new secondary character and a plot tweak that cranks up the tension for Possible Ending Flashpoint #1.

Boom. Suddenly I have a twenty chapter novel which should roll in at about 75K words, and be a much more satisfying read.

Phew. Now I can write it!

Did I Mention My Mailing List?

On By Dan HarrisIn WritingLeave a comment

I don’t think I did. How remiss of me!

If any of you lovely folks would like me to pop you an email the very second that ASCENSION POINT* is available to buy, you can sign up here: http://eepurl.com/msrZn

I solemnly swear never to abuse your trust by emailing you links to ‘hilarious’ cat videos. (Though those are available on request.)

That was all. Carry on!

* and all future books, of course!

Edit Is Go Go Go… Next Week

On By Dan HarrisIn Writing6 Comments

On Friday I got the sample edit of ASCENSION POINT from the folks at RedAdept. My new editor, the delightfully-named Misti, did an edit of just the first four pages of the novel–and I was delighted to see her come back with 29 suggested changes! This is exactly the kind of thoroughness I’m looking for, especially for the first few chapters of the book. (Which are still significantly weaker than the later ones, despite my best efforts to bring them up to par.)

I like Misti’s editing style, and the quoted price was fine, so all systems are go. Misti’s going  to start on the full edit early next week, and should finish roughly two weeks later. At which point I spend ten minutes marveling at how many red marks there are, then set about hammering it into shape/cutting away the fat/insert editing metaphor here.

There’ll be a few passes back and forth as we whittle down the changes, then it’ll be time for a proofread by another editor to catch all the little flaws we missed. ‘This colon should be a semicolon‘, etc.

And then? PUBLISHING TIME.