posted
Hi. I basically know the answer to this topic, but you guys are always so insightful, i want to hear your thought anyways. So I'm writing a novel, fiction (fantasy of course) and it seems like there are only short periods of conflict followed by long periods without. I know that it's conflict that drives the story, but I also know that forcing anything out of your story is a bad idea. So, I'm sure when I revise it I can tweak things hear and there, after everything has been written, but really, what are your thoughts on that. Thanks.
posted
Well, I don't think you need to have frequent fistfights to show conflict. If the characters have a disagreement, profound or otherwise, it should show by how (and what) they speak to each other and how they behave in each other's presence.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Don't force conflict but you can emphasis minor conflicts to make them interesting.
Use minor conflicts to demonstrate flaws of character that the protagonist must overcome in major conflict.
Shorten the story. Maybe you don't really have a novel. If you really need it to be a novel add more subplots that need to feed into the main plot. Create obstacles that secondary characters must overcome, with or without the help of the MC, (prefer with) before they can commit to helping the MC.
Character development does not need to be boring. You can have chapters of development leading to the conflicts. Not only do you develop characters, you develop the setting and its importance in the plot. You build the tension, increasing the value of the resolution.
Things to avoid...
Avoid stand alone sub plots. All sub plots must contribute to the major plot. Don't just add in a mini-mystery to solve along the way to add pages. But do allude early on to a secondary character's potential problem with a minor villain, then later have the problem impede the secondary character to the point that they cannot aid in the MC's conflict unless the minor problem is resolved. Resolve the problem using some tactic that will not work against the major conflict. Ideally they are sufficiently different that the main character learns something useful but cannot use exactly the same tactics.
posted
conflict can be nothing more than puzzling out a dilema...
If your story has NOTHING that creates tension, then it's not going to hold the reader's interest. Nor that of a publisher.
You probably have more conflict in the story than you realize. Try to identify the characters' motives for what they do. If you can figure out their motives, you will see the conflict, even if it's just proving to a skeptical nay-sayer that they CAN succeed.
posted
Damn you guys are fast. Also great. Good points everyone. No, it's definately a novel. I'm not done writing it yet, and I'm at 50,000 words (the right way, not the Word Proc. way) and Im right at about the halfway point. THough I'm sure when I go back to edit it, I will find plenty of sentences to cut out. but thanks Posts: 147 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
That looks similar to what I've seen. Essentially you put the document in a font like Courier, 12pt, so that each line is about 10 words on average. Then (# of lines in your story as told by, for example, M.S.Word) * 10 = wordcount. This is regardless of how many actual words there are, because what really matters is how many physical pages your story takes up, so 10 short lines of dialogue = 10 long lines of a paragraph. Posts: 280 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Back in the bad-old-days when I had to count up word length myself, I picked three full pages at random (excluding first and last pages), counted every word on the page, divided by three, and multiplied by the number of pages in the MS (counting the first and last pages as a half page each, to make it neat).
Others recommended figuring by counting every word on a number of lines, then counting lines on those pages (in those days, it didn't always come out neatly), dividing and multiplying accordingly. I was never satisfied with the results, lines varying so much within my manuscripts itself...
With word processing and count-at-a-click available, I usually round out below the figure I get for the final count, having reservations about what's being or not being counted...
posted
For me, there tends to be parts fo the story that I will try to avoid writing. I catch myself and those turn out to be the best parts of the story. Check your story and look for places that you avoided being mean to your characters. You can never leave then in a good situation, there must always be some nagging problem until the last page.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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If you go to a lot of publisher pages or writer information pages, it tells you that doing the word count by MS word doesn't give you an accurate number, because it doesnt count EVERY space. The web sites I saw pretty much explain it as when you are having a conversation with to characters, and the dialouge looks like
"Hi." he said. She didn't reply to him. its only rougly 7 or so words... but all the empty space between the two lines.. it still takes up space in a book, and space costs money. So they have you do some crazy equations... just look it up on google under "Calculating word count" or something to that effect, and you will see pages that give you many different 'formulas,' but it's all roughly the same idea. "This is what publishers want" they say. And a good thing about it: Doing it this way gives you about a 7,000 word boost (if you're struggling with that.)
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