Book querie for Brian

[Bob The Mercenary]

I'm not quite ready to start writing yet, but when you wrote your book, what format did you use? Just regular old Word with size 12 font Times New Roman, or some other setup?

[KefkaTaran]

I'm no Brian, I'll be the first to admit that. But as someone who has written a ton, including several different versions of a novel I'll one day finish, I personally have always found Word with 12 font Times New Roman the easiest and most convenient. This way I can get it to other people for proofreading/editing in its early stages very easily and such.

[Kurosen]

Yup. Most publishers will have Word anyway and can easily take your .doc file and do whatever they want with it to format it for their printing needs. You should still do certain things, like indent, page break at the end of chapters, etc.

Unlike your highschool and college instructors, they don't care so much about page count so font and size aren't a big issue (as long as they can read it). Their primary concern is word count ('cause they'll often use their own fonts and determine the size it'll be, so your personal font/size choices are irrelevant). Still, Times Roman + 12pt is a safe bet and fairly standard, so go right ahead with it.

[Bob The Mercenary]

Okay, thanks. That's all I really needed. Oh, and what exactly is a page break? I've heard of it thousands of times, just never asked.

[Kurosen]

Open up a .doc file with at least a page of text. Pick a paragraph to be the start of the "next chapter". Put the cursor at the beginning of that line. Go up to Insert, Break, Page Break. That paragraph and everything under it will automatically be placed at the top of the next page.

"But I could just Enter that down," you might say. And you can, but then if you make any changes that effect the number of lines prior to that, then you're going to have to come back and insert or delete some blank lines manually. If you do a Page Break, the new chapter will sit there at the top of the new page no matter how many lines you delete or add in the text before it.

This is why it's the preferred method of dividing chapter when it comes time to submitting digital works for publication. The publisher is going to do all kinds of work on the layout/formatting of the text. They are not going to want to bother manually adjusting every single little chapter division to make it work. The Page Break will handle that for them.

[KefkaTaran]

Oh my god. I just realized that after spending most of the past several months writing only LiveJournal entries and articles for AllRPG, I've almost completely forgot how to indent. It's going to be hard for me to get back in the habit for that once I start writing novel-y stuff again.

[Bob The Mercenary]

Thanks a whole lot for your help. As soon as I'm finished reading Mr. Majestic (I ordered it after looking it up on Amazon, your Nuklear Age FAQ piqued my interest ) I'll attempt to begin writing my story. I hope it comes out the way I want it. As of right now, I have no clue how long it's going to be. I'm just going to wing it and see where it ends up. And good luck on your release. I know I'm going to be on Amazon ordering 1-day shipping.

And Kefka, what stuff have you written? I might want to check it out.

[KefkaTaran]

Bob: Well, as most around here already know, I write editorials for www.allrpg.com. If you go there and click 'editorials', find ones by Philip Kollar. That's me. Only four there right now. More coming one day, I promise. Heh.

My current big project is my LiveJournal. Linked in my Sig. It gives me an opportunity to really practice writing in different ways and try to find what style suits me. It's fairly emo, but I like to think it's a step above the normal teenager journal fodder (especially since I'm hardly a teenager now). Also, not all of it is completely based in reality. Like I said, I'm working on stretching my writing and stuff, so I try not to let real events restrict me.

Besides that, there's the novel-y project I discussed. This is an idea I've been working on since (seriously) like third grade. I've written pages and pages and then scrapped them all and restarted numerous times. At one point I had fifty or sixty pages of mediocre material. Anyways, right now I haven't touched that for a while, but I have a good idea of what I'm going to do with it when I do choose to touch it again. So maybe one day, right?

Let me know what you think of the writing you check out. I love getting another writer's opinions.

All that said: What's your stuff you're writing?

[Bob The Mercenary]

Well, have you ever just been bored out of your mind during a class in school? I had extreme trouble staying focused in any of my classes because I was always daydreaming. I've watched a bunch of anime and played countless video games, so my daydreams tended to mix them together in my head. Everyone daydreams of being a superhero, but, my daydreams were...more epic then that.

It probably started out about five or six years ago when the "asshole factor" was at it's peak and I got picked on every single day. So, I started wishing I was someone else. Like, a Gundam pilot. That was the first thing that entered my head. Soon followed James Bond, then Final Fantasy 7, then Evangelion, then it just sort of ballooned out of control until I lost all attention in class. My grades dropped because quizzes that were announced surprised the hell out of me and I forgot nearly every homework assignment. My mom thought it might have been ADD, at least I suspect her of thinking that, but I think it's just that I have too huge of an imagination for my head.

Then, a storyline started forming. Every day I was in a class I would continue where I left off the day before. Eventually, the plot got incredibly deep and one afternoon about two years ago, after a few years of developement in my head, I said to myself, "this might make a great novel." Ever since, I've been slowly writing down notes whenever something new enters my head. The story itself has grown pretty huge. I've even thought up a back story to one of the characters that I can write as a prequel. But, I'm getting way ahead of myself. First things first. Something needs to get on paper.

Sorry for the disgustingly long response, but even so, that's about all I can let on about the book for now. When something actually gets on paper, I'll be happy to let on some of the plot.

[KefkaTaran]

Ha, it's no longer than mine was. Sounds interesting. I mean imagination is, of course, where most stories begin. The novel stuff I was talking about writing is some mostly sci-fi stuff that I've been imagining for years in school and such.