Mettermrck PMd to ask me some questions regarding writing and publishing. I asked if we could move it to the forums, and he graciously agreed. Hopefully my meandering information will prove useful, and will generate some response and additional questions. I'll handle this like a Q & A session.
Be warned, a lot of this is based on my own experience. Results may vary.
Q)
I'm wondering if you have any suggestions on what I could do to develop my skills.
- Keep writing.
- Work on developing your own 'voice'--your own style.
- Work on developing detailed and descriptive characters and have them interact realistically.
- Be descriptive by setting the scene using the senses: what do you see, what do you hear, what do you smell, taste and touch?
- Use a thesaurus. A thesaurus is a writer's best friend.
- Use character sheets. Develop a life history for each character. You may not use half the information, but it's there, and you'll find it comes in handy if you want to justify a character's actions, or reactions.
- Practice writing believable dialogue. Writing good dialogue is harder than you think.
- Read. That may sound dumb, but you can pick up lots of hints and ideas from established writers.
- If possible, take a course. I used the Longridge Writers Group and they paired me up with a professional writer.
- Join a critique group. If you have friends who like to write, great. However, don’t be afraid to try and form one on-line with people you know. There are several established ones on the net already, too.
Critters, for example.
Q.
I would like to put my Roman AAR together as a book someday, piecing it together when I'm done. What would be a good approach? Trying to find some sympathetic literary agent? Finding a magazine to serialize it in?
This is tricky. Paradox claims to have ‘exclusive rights’ to any material posted here. That’s not quite true. At best they may have non-exclusive rights, meaning you can take your material and go home if you want.
However, at best you will be able to sell anything posted here (assuming you rework it for submission) as a reprint. Not all publications accept reprints. Especially reprints from new authors. Changing a few words and adding a few paragraphs won’t alter its status, either. Your best bet would be to expand it into a novel. A few stories have won awards as shorts and novels; so using that tactic is not out of the question.
A word of caution. If you post a story on your own personal website for the world to see, and then try to sell it, it will be considered a reprint. By putting it on the net you have for all intents and purposes ‘published it’.
You may be able to locate a kind soul who will be willing to serialize it for you. Usually there’s no money involved, though.
Some publishers, like Baen Books, don’t require an agent. Most do. I wouldn’t worry about an agent until you have a polished novel ready to go. In fact, an editor gave me some interesting advice, which I think I mentioned elsewhere. Some publishers today are looking for trilogies. Some prefer to see a completed manuscript and a synopsis for at least two more books. That explains a lot, actually, based on what I see in the book store these days
Q.
Did you have ever have to copyright your writing on your own or is that handled whenever you get it published somewhere?
The days of adding a copyright symbol to your work is in the past. So long as the source material resides on your hard drive, disk, or as a hard copy, you own the copyright. The only way you can give it up is to sell it and sign a contract guaranteeing payment or some other deal, like contributor copies. Even then, depending on the type of contract, the rights may revert to you after a set amount of time. And then it becames a reprint, and you can try to sell it again.
Hope that helps.