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Comment by lostcolony | Hacker News Reader

Yeah...I recall a family member telling me once "I have this great idea for a novel", and I immediately tuned out. I'm not a writer, but I know that -everyone- has a great idea for a novel. The difference between authors and everyone else is the authors did the work to actually get it down, edited, and published (to where I even have a little respect for the people who self-publish obvious vanity projects, simply for the fact they had the self-discipline to actually sit down and get it on a page).

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I was listening to an interview with John Greene, the author of A Fault in Our Stars and the excellent The Anthroposcene Reviewed podcast.

He talked about how one of his books basically sat on the shelf for ages (possibly a year), he just couldn't get the idea to work, until one day he came back to it and figured it out. People massively underestimate how much work it takes to turn an idea for a story into a working novel with a coherent plot and characters.

In sci-fi and fantasy I think this is particularly obvious. There's a lot of sci-fi that has an interesting idea or concept at it's heart, but the actual story just falls flat. I think it's why short stories are often a better format for sci-fi ideas.

Similarly I've encountered a lot of fantasy that was all about world-building but where the book itself just went nowhere. World building is kind of easy compared to actually writing a novel with a compelling story. It seems to be common for aspiring fantasy authors to spend years doing the former and never getting round to the latter.

> Similarly I've encountered a lot of fantasy that was all about world-building but where the book itself just went nowhere.

It’s like bands that spend years polishing their sound, but never actually write any songs.

People massively underestimate how much work it takes to turn an idea for a story into a working novel with a coherent plot and characters

A common piece of advice often repeated for fiction writing: when you finish your novel, leave it untouched for a few months (e.g. six months). When you return to read it again with a fresh eye, you'll spot all the clunky passages, clichés, and poorly written characters you didn't spot when you were immersed in the writing. The space of a few months gives you a more critical eye.

That's the advice. Whether writers actually heed it I don't know. (A pause of some months might feel too long for some writers itching to be published.)

Note 'one of'. In my experience all ideas are different. Some ideas just naturally work almost straight off the bat, and others take an inordinate amount of fine tuning.

In fiction writing, people who don't have any skills or experience often assume they can just sit down and write a novel because they have a cool idea. This is never ever the case, regardless of how cool the idea is, because writing a (readable) novel is actually really hard.

Source: have written several unreadable novels.

> Similarly I've encountered a lot of fantasy that was all about world-building but where the book itself just went nowhere. World building is kind of easy compared to actually writing a novel with a compelling story. It seems to be common for aspiring fantasy authors to spend years doing the former and never getting round to the latter.

I'd actually be interested to read some of those - I wish there was some kind of standard media form for that. E.g. I enjoyed reading the Eclipse Phase sourcebooks much more than actually playing the game. And while I didn't actually enjoy Christopher Priest's The Islanders, I liked the idea of the form.

I've had great ideas for novels ... until I started to write them. Then I realize there has to be a middle too. And it has to be interesting to read.

yes, yes, yes. the middle. if you can't keep a reader from taking a bathroom break until page 140, you can't write a novel.

There are a lot of novels that would beg to differ.

I do wish it was easier to publish and get short stories in a similar way to novels. Like, I don't need a 300 page tome every time. But even anthologies of short stories by new authors (as opposed to Sci-Fi classics) seem to be out of style.

I think the future for this is online publication. On a personal blog, or a shared website.

A bit like stories such as Sherlock Holmes’ were initially published in episodically in newspapers.

Many platforms now offer subscriptions options, so it definitely could work.

That still leaves the discovery & editing issues though.

Any thoughts on that?

In the west this is still growing, but in Japan at least, it's way more common, at least regarding 'light novels' (kinda of like YA?). I'm not sure about earning money through subscriptions, but there people who write to those sites (similar to Wattpad) often struck a deal with a publisher to adapt the 'web novel' to a 'light novel'[0]

Edit: I know that for webtoons (korean comics) subscription is turning into a reality, at least in English markets. Not sure about how's it in Korea though

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/6hgw1w/konosub...

That’s how Andy Weir did The Martian. It’s also how Isaac Asimov wrote the first two or three Foundation novels.

The Screwtape Letters (C. S. Lewis) were done that way.

Lots of prior art. Also, it makes the books easier to read.

Internet makes it fairly easily to publish your short novels on a personal website. You are not going to make a profit or be marketed but at least your work is now out-there. Reading qntm's ones [0] got me to buy his self-published books.

[0]: https://qntm.org/fiction

I agree that internet makes it easy to self-publish short stories. And sure, if you are using it as promotion it makes sense. But I was specifically referring to short-stories as a viable commercial enterprise.

Just write dozens and publish them 10 at a time. In fact, two of my favorite authors growing up did exactly that, Andy Griffiths and Paul Jennings.

There’s a whole market for short fiction actually if you look. Magazines, anthologies, etc still exist. Where do you think “the best American science fiction and fantasy” anthology sources from every year? Check out SFWA (science fiction and fantasy writers of America) qualifier list for short fiction, duotrope, and the submission grinder.

(Caveat: publication is competitive at these magazines/anthologies. Good luck to you.)

I'll look into it, thank you.

https://365tomorrows.com/

in the video game industry, I remember reading a person (an indie maybe, but I'm not sure) saying that values are basically: idea = 1 prototype = 10 shipped game = 100 shipped game that actually earns money = 1000

Can you explain this quote?

1000 ideas are as valuable as a shipped product.

> 1000 ideas are as valuable as a shipped product

that earns money.

It would benefit with commas or semi-colons after each number. It took me a bit to parse as well.

Think of it as XP.

And then prospective gamedevs took this to heart and build a flappy birds clone, ship it and feel they accomplished something. Shipping a game you know is shit wont teach you anything at all! You need to pour your soul into it first, try to work out the kinks and ensure it can be fun to play before shipping, and then see how what you think matches with how players feel about the game.

My father-in-law wrote five books during his lifetime. To his credit, they were ok. But he refused to ever work with an editor. And thus none were ever published.

I wrote a book on how to publish your ebook. The people who read it seem to love it but I haven't marketed it real well. In any case, you might find it interesting if you want to publish your own book or if you wanted to publish your father-in-laws unfinished books.

There's even a bit of information in there about using your computers text-to-speech tool for editing. You have it read the book back to you in order to catch mistakes.

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00A4112ZM

The text to speech idea is brilliant. I've read some books several times in print, but many finer details escaped me until I listened to the audio version.

As I’ve been working on my first novel since 2016… I agree completely. An idea isn’t much without the effort backing it up.

My dad would always tell me about his ideas for smart phone apps, if only I would build them (and in my mind---he'd get the money). I would always then search the app store for his "idea" and find N number of apps, already there. He never did stop with his "ideas" though (and he never bothered to do a simple search either).

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