The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: littlefallsmets on November 25, 2013, 09:46:46 pm
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So, yeah, the first draft is 53,300 words... a bit scant for a novel... and the title right now is "A Yeti in The Thirty Mile Zone".
Wombles, just tell me when you have some time, I'd love your feedback.
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I can probably do it this weekend, or possibly some time sooner when it sounds better than doing my own work, so go ahead and email it any time.
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So, yeah, the first draft is 53,300 words... a bit scant for a novel... and the title right now is "A Yeti in The Thirty Mile Zone".
About the title, is the thirty mile zone a common expression outside of show business circles (I had to Google it)? I was interested in this book idea mainly because it's about an URBAN bigfoot. I'm not sure you want to play inside baseball with the title if you don't want it to be lumped in with all the other books on the subject.
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"sasquatch & vine"
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But now I know what TMZ means?
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Yeah, I really like that phrase and I don't know why.
Lately I am on the LA train in a major way. California knows how to party.
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yeah that was fun to read about, but mostly because now I can imagine Ash is not actually setting up a new home on his ranch. He's building a studio ranch.
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It's not inside baseball because it's explained in the first chapter and...
Uhm, okay.
Part of why the sasquatch is able to pass is because there's a double meaning to it.
Yes, it is in reality the Thirty Mile Zone, the area in which you don't have to pay union workers a per diem because it's assumed they live a reasonable commute from set.
But in the reality of the story, there is also the Curse Of The Thirty Mile Zone that actually inspired it.
Upon realizing the Spanish would not be repelled and the land was lost, a First Nations holy man cast a curse upon a thirty-mile radius in Southern California that causes people to see what they want to see if they are in that zone and not strong against magic, dooming them and damning them to chase imaginary dreams while there.
The Curse of The Thirty Mile Zone serves a triple-purpose for me fictively, one as the way to explain why people would keep accepting a bigfoot as a "guy in a bigfoot suit" for that long... two, as a reference to the celebrity gossip culture in which the story is marinated and... three, as a metaphor for Hollywood and the people thereupon curses to see what they want to see not how things actually are.
So... I mean, if a publisher wanted to change it and they want to give me piles of money, they can change it.
For now, I am happy underlining one of the central metaphors of the piece.
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It's not inside baseball because it's explained in the first chapter and...
The title needs to help entice people to read the first chapter, though.
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If I saw that title I would say "whoa, what is that" and read the back flap where it said "The thirty mile zone: the thirty miles of Hollywood centering on blahblahfamous Blvd. The home of the sasquatch living among us" and then I would buy the book.
Thirty Mile Zone sounds like some kind of cool sci-fi thing. That is a great sci-fi ish book title.
I'm no professional, though. Don't take advice from the guy who is 5 words into his personal statement essay for grad school.
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My back-up titles are generally along the lines of "Hollywood Sasquatch" "A Yeti in Los Angeles" etc that give off more of a "quirky lit-fic" vibe than a sci-fi vibe.
As Dan says, I am enamored as hell with how sci-fi "The Thirty Mile Zone" sounds as a turn of phrase.
I grew up reading weird literary-fiction/sci-fi hybrids with heady titles like "The Stars My Destination" "Sirens of Titan" "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and so forth, I do like that kind of sweeping-weirdness hook. I think "The Once And Future King" is basically the greatest title ever written. I love the hook of "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", sort of the original literary-fiction in the guise of sci-fi hybrid title, I suppose I was going for that a bit.
I would be happy to change the title upon publication if suggested by a publisher or editor, I'm no unrealistic diva, I worked in film, I know that things are as much a craft as they are an art, I know that media is half-business and half-expression, I will happily be able to cope.
If someone told me "Mike, we think just naming it after a Warren Zevon song makes it most marketable" I would be like "whatever title that's true to some element of the story is fine by me if you think it will get it out to the largest audience and the money you're paying me is green".
The e-novella I put out, for example, had the working title "Fanfare For The Common Man".
My publisher said "That doesn't sound sci-fi at all" so we spitballed things until "The Undone Man" came out and sounded like a title Phil Dick or Harlan Ellison would use so we went with it.
I'm not married to titles. "A Sasquatch in The TMZ" would probably be smashing but then that teevee show would sue us probably.
He tells me the story of his life in L.A. in the Dennys on Sunset and Gower, behind that tacky Denny's green-roof facade, if they think "Desperados Under The Eaves" would sell without sounding too much like a Western (even though it is exactly a Western in a literal sense, it is a meditation on the soul of Southern California) then sure, I would go with that.
This is my spazzy rambly way of saying "Don't worry, wombles, I know that it is just the working title that makes my heart sing, I am not ideological about it".
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nothing sounds like or unlike a sci-fi title.
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I'm warming up to the title.
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How do you imagine this playing out? Wombat is the voice of experience here.
More than too many of my friends wrote books while they were bored or pregnant. They're pushing it the same way you are and at best are making a hundred bucks.
IMHO you're book isn't too short. The worst of my friends' books was a sci fi novel about a computer that gained intelligence and it felt longer than atlas shrugged because it spent forever explaining things.
Don't spend forever explaining things.
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Yeah, well, Wombat is also to some extent the voice of a previous generation, so take her with a grain of salt. But your friends' experience sounds like exactly the problem with the fact that it's so easy to self-publish. Although the system seems to be getting more dysfunctional by the minute, the advantage to the writer of having gatekeepers like agents and editors is that stuff like "spend forever explaining things" is beaten out of a book before the world sees it.
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I'm gonna "publish" my Lovecraft pastiche on Facebook on weekly installments. By now I'm completely out of the idea of ever getting anything published, so at least I might watch some ripples in the (almost non-existent) Brazilian Lovecraft fan community.
I was also considering... translating it to English, maybe test the international waters? Only that, just thinking about the amount of work makes my eyes water already...
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If people that I trust say they think it is worth trying to get traditionally published, I will try that. I know a few people who've managed to find traditional publishing opportunities and maybe they can help me, I dunno.
I would very goddamned much love to have someone pay me a little money and have it put out on actual goddamned paper without ME paying for it.
If trusted people like wombat and some other friends from other spheres in my life tell me it is unsalable, I'll probably throw it up on Amazon and make a couple hundred bucks, yes.
But I don't know. I believe in the idea and I have friends whose opinions I trust.
I am keeping my options open, that's the end game.
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Here's the mistake I think a lot of people make. There are different reasons things are unsaleable. Some of those are stupid reasons, like that agents and editors are sheep who follow fashions and it's a book that doesn't fit the current fashion. And some of those are good reasons, like it's a good idea but it needs to go through five more drafts before it's executed in a way that other people are going to want to read.
When you've written something that is unsaleable for the former reason, self-publishing makes sense to me. But most of the self-published books I have read seem to fall into the second category.
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I just want to double check, the Yeti is not Axl Rose, right?
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No sir. The Yeti is the last surviving sasqautch who has moved to L.A. to be less lonely, at least being able to talk to something even if it's just humans, hiding in plain sight in the guise as a busker who dresses as The Bigfoot on Hollywood Boulevard and sells pictures of himself with tourists to them. Which is a real thing in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, there are people who dress as celebrities and movie characters and do just that.
Except he is exactly what he says he is and almost no one believes him. Because in Hollywood, it's just assumed you're pretending.
I think I do namecheck Axl Rose once or twice as a quintessentially Los Angeles kind of weirdo somewhere in the manuscript but no.
Only very peripherally.
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and his halloween costume is chewbacca (that's my favorite part)
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The Yeti is the last surviving sasqautch who has moved to L.A. to be less lonely, at least being able to talk to something even if it's just humans, hiding in plain sight in the guise as a busker who dresses as The Bigfoot on Hollywood Boulevard and sells pictures of himself with tourists to them. Which is a real thing in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, there are people who dress as celebrities and movie characters and do just that.
I saw a show (http://youtu.be/mPceD3CrQeg) about that.
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I actually mention the real historical incident where Superman breaks up a mugging.
And, yes, absolutely, Frank Yetti dresses as Chewbacca for Halloween and science-fiction premieres.
He does a pretty good Chewbacca growl but not as spot-on as you'd assume from a bigfoot.
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Split so I don't have to waste any more time trying to figure out what the hell thread we were talking about this in.
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Nice! Sorry to have taken over so much of that thread...
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I like the title.
To join in though, If I was trying to sell it to a publisher type I bet I'd want to pitch it as an American Gods style Gaiman-esque piece of magic realism that the kids today like so much. Which would probably require a vaguer or at least shorter title. Maybe just 'The Thirty Mile Zone' though I'm sure that's been used before.
Edit: Oooh this whole thing where Mets is just telling us about his stuff and asking one person specifically for advice and we all piled on reminded me of this (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=08012005).
Edit edit: Of course the best title is 'LFM and the Yeti'
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Oh yeah, everyone tells me "American Gods" should be a part of the pitch were I to pitch it to an agent.
"Cat's Cradle" meets "Magnolia" is kinda my short-hand. I... don't know if that would actually sell anyone, though.
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Edit: Oooh this whole thing where Mets is just telling us about his stuff and asking one person specifically for advice and we all piled on reminded me of this (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=08012005).
We're all invested in this thing waiting for a pay off that never seems to come. Who does he think he is asking just one of us for a comment?
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It's like sex, A-CAP. You can't start throwing it around at everyone until you're sure you're great at it.
Until then, you stick to just those you know will be firm but gentle.
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I've been doing sex for over 30 years and I still ain't worth a shit at it, but I ain't gonna let that hold me back.
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Though I've only got extensive notes back from wombles and one of my high school best friends, I'm pretty happy that I've gotten some really encouraging but constructive things from them... but yeah, that's why I haven't asked more of you alls' opinions on it yet, this was a draft written... 53,000 words in 25 days... this is an exceedingly rough draft.
Most happily, though, I've come to the realization that the brunt of the next draft's work is about adding things and moving things around... with only some paring back of extraneous details that muddy the waters here and there. Poetry, journalism, screenplay, short story... every other form I've ever written in, I write a first draft and most of the work is dialing back. Long-form prose is the first form where, no, actually I didn't cover enough yet. Which is encouraging.
I need to develop the character who is... closest to an antagonist's role... a good deal more, everyone's saying that. Spread the sci-fi/magical realism elements around a little more evenly, not gloss over a few situations involving disappearances to bowl forward right back into "the good stuff", let the mystery linger and grow a little...
And then use the development of those elements to even out the plotting which is admittedly still weak. There's a plot there, there's a progression there but it's herky-jerky, in fits and starts and sometimes undermining the pacing because I wanna get to the next big weird thing. Hell, maybe there's a more marketable title. "The Next Big Thing".
But between wombles and Adam's notes and less extensive reactions from others, I think I have a weird interesting beginning, a big weird finish, a lot of well-developed characters and settings and some Large Ideas to hang everything on. I think I have the rough form of something good.
I need to apply the elements still missing in a manner that buttresses the pacing, more than anything.
And yeah, in subsequent drafts, I will probably run it by a few more of you girls and guys.
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That sounds really good.