Posts Tagged ‘editing’

The Edits Are Done! Yahoo!

Posted: October 15, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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To get why I posted this picture, read below.

Ladies and gentlemen, get out of your chairs, and start dancing in front of your computer or while holding whatever portable electronic device you are reading this post on! I’ve finished the edits on Reborn City! I thought the editing would take a couple of months, but instead it took a couple of weeks. I wonder if my idols in the world of writing literature have it this easy with their novels when they do the final edits.

So, RC‘s at 24 chapters, with each chapter averaging about four edits total. The longest chapter is the first one, with thirty-four pages, and well over 10,000 w0rds. The epilogue is definitely the shortest, with less than a page and barely two-hundred words, if even that. All told, the entire novel, in 8 1/2″ x 11″ pages, with a 12-point font and double-spaced, is 313 pages (whistle-whistle!). The word count, which requires no calculating of page sizes or anything, is 90,850. To which I say, holy crap.

Well, now I plan to go take a nap, because it’s close to midnight right now. Tomorrow I’ll send this baby off to a friend (his email address is conveniently in the emails I got when he commented on previous posts; expect an email saying “rami ungar reborn city” in the subject line), then go to class. At some point I’ll work on editing and writing some short stories, and when November rolls around get to work on Snake for National Novel Writing Month, or as we writers like to call it, NaNoWriMo.

And what happens after I get Reborn City back from my friend? Well, I’ll do the edits he suggests, and then I’ll get to work on doing everything else that needs to be done so that you all can read Reborn City.

You know, I’ve seen this process of self-publishing Reborn City sort of like a train, and every time I get to a new milestone in the process, I’ve reached a new station. When do I get to the final stop? I’m not sure; I’m certainly ahead of schedule, but who knows how long that’ll last?

Anyway, I hope for some more good news soon. That way I can share it with you as soon as possible.

To all, a good night (or if you just turned on your computer and you’re reading this with your morning coffee, good morning. Some weather today, huh?). Sweet dreams, and happy blogging to you.

Chapters Rise, Chapters Fall

Posted: October 15, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Or to be more precise, the number of chapters fall and the number of chapters fall.

I wrote a couple posts back that I’d decided to change the way the main characters of Reborn City met up with the big bad guys, so that meant tacking on another chapter. I wasn’t sure if the number of chapters would rise again or if it would drop. Wouldn’t you know it? I ended up deleting a chapter that was unnecessary with the new course of the story (which I’m glad I went with; the story’s much better this way). So I’m back to twenty-four chapters, including a nice little epilogue.

And speaking of which, I’m in the middle of editing chapter twenty-one. I’m in the home stretch, and much sooner than I expected. Who knows, if my friend who’s agreed to look over RC after it’s done (you know who you are) gets through it quickly, I might be able to get the e-book out…December or January. Either way it works out wonderfully, because RC takes place in mid-summer. When we’re freezing our butts off in the middle of winter, it’ll be nice to sit back with our e-reader and read about a gang war with a conspiracy behind it in the middle of July, right?

Hope to have more soon. Wish me luck as I do the final edits.

A Nice Change to Reborn City

Posted: October 13, 2012 in ideas, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Yesterday before the Sabbath came in and I became cut off from all electronic devices (including anything I use to edit my stories), I had a great idea on how to edit Reborn City‘s final act. I realize that the original scenario was a little unrealistic, a little in need of suspension of belief. Or maybe a lot in need.

So this new scenario will be much better. I’m not sure if it’ll increase or cut the number of chapters I have, but that doesn’t matter, when it comes to producing a quality story, right?

I’m excited to see what this produces, so I’l write you again when I have something to write. In the meantime–on to the editing and rewriting!

Reborn City: Halfway on the Edits

Posted: October 11, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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I just finished editing chapter twelve of Reborn City, officially putting me halfway through the editing process before I hand it off to someone to look at. Most of the chapters have already had three or four drafts, but as I look over each and every chapter, I see pieces that could be polished a little, where the phrasing is a little awkward or where something doesn’t make sense. It’s been something fixing these over, but I’ve been able to make some improvements and I’m seeing the story I started in high school slowly becoming better and better.

Speaking of which, Reborn City was written from my sophomore year to my senior year of high school (I took long breaks as necessary for school work, short story projects, a summer in Israel, and sometimes when I was just too exhausted to write and just wanted to enjoy someone else’s work for a change). I can still see some of my writing style from when I was in high school in the words I wrote then, and it’s pretty different from my current voice. I guess you can attribute that to the fact that I’ve gotten some life experience, so of course my voice changed a bit.

But anyway, I’m happy with the progress I’ve made. I’m still not sure when Reborn City will be available for download as an e-book yet,  but I hope it’ll be by mid-March by next year, if I can get these edits done quickly and I can get my publishing press set up without too much trouble.

I’ll let you guys know when chapters 13-23 and the epilogue are edited. Stay tuned for more!

Critiquing In My Creative Writing Class

Posted: October 10, 2012 in Living and Life, short story, Writing
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“God, I love what you’ve written. I do have some thoughts though…first off, can we maybe have less commandments? Twenty-seven’s a little much to remember and recite!”

For the first half of my creative writing class this semester, we’ve been going over some of the fundamentals of writing fiction, including plot, dialogue, and characters, among other things. We’ve also been told to each write a shorty story between 8 and 20 pages, or 2,000 and 5,000 words, and while I certainly had trouble writing my story, mostly because it’s literary, I’ve been enjoying reading and critiquing the stories of my classmates.

We’ve actually only read 4 stories so far, but they’ve all been interesting in their own way. There was a story about the rivalry between two princes, a vignette about a day in the life of a soldier, a crime story, and even one involving a virtual reality game. And later today we’re recieving a new story, so I’m wondering what that’s going to be about.

After we read the story, we have to type up a critique in the form of a letter and hand it in to both our teacher and the writer of the story in question. We also give our impressions orally to the writer during class, allowing them to absorb some more feedback before they start editing their story. Although I like getting critiqued myself (because I want to know what problems my stories have and what I can do to fix them), it’s another story entirely to critique someone else’s work (pun intended). I like the feeling of helping someone improve a story they wrote, especially if the story is good. And it’s different from when I look over my own work, because I’m not looking at my classmates’ work with a biased eye.

I’ll be turning in my own story for critiquing in early November, a few days before my science-fiction short story “Ripple” is set to hit the web. Between now and then, I’ll go over my story and do a few edits before I turn it in, because I like to give my short stories an edit or two before I turn them in for critiquing by anyone. But for now, I’ll just sit back, get my homework done, and critique other people’s work.

What about you? Have you ever been critiqued or critiqued someone else’s work? How does it feel when you do?

Publishable Shorts vs. Learning Shorts

Posted: October 8, 2012 in Reflections, Uncategorized, Writing
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Last night I was thinking of some of the short stories I’ve written over the years that I never got around to giving a second edit. I wondered why I’d never gotten to editing them. And then it hit me: those stories, good or bad, were meant to be teaching stories. To be more exact, they were stories that were meant to teach me something new about writing. I was writing these short stories as learning experiences and hadn’t realized it up until this point, but now that I do, it makes sense why I wrote them in the first place.

I remember this one story I wrote late in my senior year of high school, that was meant to be like a probing psychological examination of two men traveling through space. Of course I failed miserably, but I learned a couple of things writing it, including that you need a lot more than two dudes talking about their feelings in a space ship to make a good story. Back in late winter-early spring, I wrote a short story about a guy who found a letter and then started eating fiction books (not sure if that one can’t be published, but it’s still very weird). I think that one was a lesson on magical realism and showing versus telling and how to draw out a story.

And remember the succubus and doll stories from this summer? Yeah, those were on why you shouldn’t go overboard on the plots of stories and forget the character development, because let’s face it, those stories were so focused on the plot the stories worked against themselves.

So now what am I going to do when it comes to writing short stories? Well, I think I won’t expect every story I write has to be published. Instead, I’ll see where a story can take me and if it can be published, that’s great. I’ll also try new methods of coming up with short stories, some of which I picked up from other people who’ve used these methods to come up with short stories. I’ll let you know if they come of anything, but before I do any of that, I need to finish editing Reborn City.

Until next time (which might be sooner than we both think).

The Snake Outline Reborn

Posted: October 4, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Creepy, right? It looks like it might come off the drawing.

Did anyone else see the joke in that title? Anyone? Bueller?

Alright, you guys are more concerned about what this latest post is about. I’ll tell you: I finished redoing the outline of Snake, with new scenes and even a few new characters. I may have increased the parts of the story to eight (including the prologue and epilogue), but the chapter count is down to a little over a hundred, and let me tell you, I like this new version!

For one thing, everything’s much more exciting now. For one thing, the climax of the story is much more exciting, bringing the Snake, his allies, the mafia family the Snake is hunting, and the police and FBI together in one big fight! And at the end, the Snake confronts the boss of the mafia family he’s been up against this whole time! It’s like The Dark Knight meets the end of Daredevil in some respects, at least in my opinion, but I still think it’ll be exciting to read and visualize in your head.

I also did some work on the characters, their actions and their motivations, and believe me, it was worth it. In the first outline, some of the things the characters did might’ve made you go, “huh? What the heck just happened? Why’d they do that? I wouldn’t do that if I were in that situation.” So I tried to make things more believable. I realize that I need to place less emphasis on plot and more on what drives the characters, so I’l have to work on that from now on.

So now that the new outline is done, what next? Well as much as it pains me, I will be taking a break from writing Snake to finally get to work on publishing Reborn City. It’s something I’m looking forward to, and when you guys read it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Just be patient on the sequel, because I’ll have to finish Snake first and I don’t like doing two projects at once that way.

All for now, stick around for updates on both Snake, Reborn City, and anything else I feel like posting about (including a review of Daniel Craig on SNL, which will probably be my last SNL review for a little while). Post on you later!

Snake: Onto The Outline Edits

Posted: October 2, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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I love this image, it is so unique and reminds me of an Algerian love knot.

Well as you know, I’ve been wanting to do some change-ups to my serial killer novel Snake, including changing a big part of the outline. So I went over what I’d already written, edited the heck out of the chapters to make them a better read, and just now I finished chapter 34, which is the last chapter of Part II of the novel. I did plenty of cutting, taking out an entire chunk of the opening of the novel (among other things), adding some important details and bits of action that I forgot to add to certain scenes, and even changing one of the characters and his motivations in order to make more sense not only to the reader, but to myself as well.

The strange thing though, is that while I took out a lot of unecessary stuff so that some chapters got much shorter in terms of pages and word counts, others got much longer. Remember how in one post I listed all the pages and words from the Prologue all the way to the end of Part II as 138 pages and 25,346 words? After the edits, it came out to 148 pages and 37,082 words. Talk about an increase, right?

So while I’ve done that, I still have some more to do. I’m going to edit the outline to make the story more exciting, and then I’m going to get to work getting my other novel, Reborn City, out to the public in a timely manner. So you know with all this, a job, and college, I’m a very busy boy. But hey, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Look out for my next post on Snake, I’ll be giving a few clues as to what’s changed with the story and then I’ll get to work on Reborn City. Later.

The Biggest News I’ve Ever Written About On This Blog

Posted: September 30, 2012 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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The Jewish New Year recently came to pass. And with new years in any culture, we wish to make changes for the coming year so that hopefully, this year will be a good one. Well, I’ve decided to make a change.

As you well know, I’ve been trying the traditional publishing route for some time now (write and publish a bunch of short stories; write a novel; get an agent who can refer you to the best publishers; company publishes your novel). This process has been the norm for several years, but it does have its flaws: for instance, the big publishing companies are ruled by the need to make money, so they only publish work that they feel could be profitable, which can lead to numerous rejections for authors whose work doesn’t meet one criteria or another. Not only that, but the companies themselves have a lot of control over the author’s work, having the author edit it fifty different ways so that it can be more commercial or more profitable or whatever. All so that the author can reach the highest number of people possible.

But, self-publishing is on the rise, and people who have been reading Rami Ungar the Writer for some time are probably aware that I’ve been toying with the idea of self-publishing. Self-publishing allows an author to have more control over his or her work, recieve more profits from sales, and not be obligated by big corporate contracts. The pitfalls include that most self-publishers don’t make a lot of money off of self-publishing, and when they do it’s usually because a traditional publisher has made some sort of deal for their novel (this is what happened with Fifty Shades of Grey). Self-published authors also have to do most of their own advertising, and with the power of the Internet, anyone can upload anything, even if the work looks like a kindergartener wrote it.

But still, self-publishing is becoming more and more popular with every single day among writers, and now it’s got a new adherent. That’s right: I, Rami Ungar, have decided to self-publish, and since one of my classes has given me more confidence with computers, I’ll be doing it without the help of a service, instead compiling the whole thing myself and putting out my work as e-books (at least until I have the money and knowledge to do my own paperback).

My first self-published work will be my science fiction novel Reborn City, which I hope to have out next year at some point. I plan to take one more look at it for editing purposes, have someone else look at it afterwards (probably someone really into science fiction) and then, based on that person’s suggestions, edit again. After that I’ll set up my own independent press, one that’ll be dedicated to horror, thriller, science fiction, and fantasy, and which will allow me to have the most control over my work. It’ll be like how Akon has his own label, Kon Live and Konvict Muzik, but uses big labels like Universal to distribute his work (in my case, the Universal will be Amazon and B&N and Smashwords and such). I won’t say what I’ll name my press, but I do have a name for it, which I’ll reveal to you after I get the necessary legal paperwork out of the way to set it up. That, and a website and possibly a Facebook profile (yes, I’m considering using Facebook to get my work out there, please don’t make a big deal out of it).

I will then get a cover made for Reborn City, format the whole darn thing for an e-book, get RC copyrighted (and ISBN-ed; I’m not sure if one of those are necessary exactly but it’d be good to check), and on a release date that I will choose once I’ve formatted RC into an e-book, I will let the whole world read my work for a mere $2.99 per download.

I hope all of you will show me your support in this endeavor, and possibly consider reading RC when it comes out and letting your friends know about it. If you have any tips on how to do all this, please let me know, as your feedback is always helpful to me.

I’ll let you know when my new press is up-and-running, and when Reborn City will be released. Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re as excited as I am!

Getting Back Into Snake

Posted: September 24, 2012 in ideas, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Remember when I said that after I finished that short story for class, I would jump right back into the exploits of my mafia-hunting serial killer the Snake? Well, it took me a day or so to get around to the first chapter (I had classes and homework, I wanted a chance to sit down and read a couple graphic novels, and then there was that errand downtown I had to run today, but why am I boring you with that?). I took a look at the opening I’d written and I was like, “You know, this sounded so cool when I first wrote it, but now it just seems kind of…extaneous and unnecessary.” So I cut out and rewrote the opening…and a bunch of other stuff. It was like I was taking the gristle off a slab of meat.

No, wait. It was like I was taking the fat out of fresh milk. Not as elegant a metaphor, but it’s a bit more original, and I give you all permission to use it after I’ve just used it.

So now on to the rest of the chapters, all thirty-three of them. I plan on doing some more backstory on some of the more major characters, plus making the Snake much more empaphetic, because honestly, when we finally meet him face-to-face (sort of; he wears a mask) in chapters three and four, he’s more sinister and scary, and not at all the kind of guy you want to root for. I also want to include the media’s portrayal of the Snake, make him like some sort of symbol for what the police could be doing with a nearly untouchable organized crime family, because if there’s one thing that can rile law enforcement up, it’s when journalists poke at police work (no offense meant for journalists who actually cover police stories and criticize them for whatever they may or may not have done).

All this in addition to the usual stuff that comes with editing. After that I’ll get into the outline and see what I can fix up. Maybe I’ll include some brushes with death and a new ending where the Snake not only faces off with the mafia family he’s sworn to destroy, but with the police officer and FBI profiler who’ve sworn to bring him in. There will be blood, betrayal, some literally deadly fights, love, character growth, and possibly an explosion or two.

I’ll also add in chapters where we see the underworld social order changing, because when you have a serial killer who’s killing your group’s members and getting away with it, you know others, both mafia and possibly otherwise, will try it too.

We’ll see what we get, but from the description I’ve just given, and the outline I’ve already written, it’s looking like a whole new novel. Hopefully it’ll be a better one too.

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