So, I've been working on my first manuscript for going on four years here and I'm on my last draft. People who've read it like it, sort of created a fan base for it which is awesome, because people like my main character. It's about a psychopathic serial killer couple at the turn of the century (early 1900s. Think Moors Murderers or Fred and Rose West) and the psychological fascination of how such a pair is formed and their influence on each other. It's three books long, so a series. 2 tell the story and the third is an after math and the way it influenced their children and the stigma they're forced to face. 1.) Sound like something that would sell? Or anything that any of you would be interested in? (Trying to gage audience and likelihood of it being picked up by a publisher) 2.) I'm sketchy on my genre. I mean by NANO standards it's literary fiction, since it's based around the characters psyche rather than the setting or the plot. But outside of that, historical fiction? psychological fiction? horror? I mean, it's pretty graphic. It has some romance in it, but it's more obsession than your run of the mill trash romance novel and there's closure but no "happy" ending to it. What would you label something like that as?
I would call it fiction if details have been invented to improve readability. My piece 'Marathon' on this thread is labeled fiction for that reason. I tell the reader in a short preface that it is 5% fiction and 95% fact. Apparently Capote invented details to improve readability in "In Cold Blood", then called it non-fiction. If you do call it non-fiction, put something in the preface telling the reader what you've done. What is NANO, by the way? (Google Search first page return does'nt yield a relevant match.)
No, it's certainly fiction. My problem isn't fiction or non fiction, but exactly what genre of fiction. Oh yay I get to tell someone about NANO, lol http://www.nanowrimo.org National Novel Writing Month. It takes place in November. Thousands of writers take the month to writing 50,000 word novels in 30 days. People get together at coffee shops and things. Do word wars, to see who can write the most in a certain amount of time. It's to help writers get to that point of completion, and deadlines. It's quantity over quality for that month, but generally it helps you complete a first draft that you can buff up and fine tune later.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but I wasn't sure if the setting, since it's historical made a difference on the genre.
no it shouldnt... id love to read it though. im a huge fan of this kind of genre. I love stephen king,dean koonts, and james patterson. Its cool people like ur main character. to me the lead charater makes or breaks the book. Have u ever seen that show dexter?? it was a book and to me dexter's character made that whole series
Yes! I love Dexter! And I've read the first book, but haven't gotten around to getting the others yet. I know there's a new one coming out this year, Dexter By Design. /endfangirlrant It's strange, because the geek that I am, created my main character in harry potter roleplaying as a temporary character needed for plot. And then... he just never left. It was after another player made a statement about how he reminded them of Ted Bundy that got me thinking on what more I could do with him. I ended up picking Edwardian England for the backdrop because it was easy to take him out of JK Rowling's pureblood world and put him there, because they had the same morale and society at the time. I was going to do Victorian England, but it was just too close to Jack the Ripper for my comfort. But rping my main character created the fan base and I have to finish this soon before people start getting impatient with me. I just didn't think on how placing it in England and France in history would mean I had a lot of research to do and so I think a majority of those four years has been on research alone. Someone should give me a history degree.
Why not put it in the present and save yourself a lot of historical research? There is no shortage of serial killers about -- some of them are heads of state... What is 'rping'?
The books are already finished, so it'd take more time to try and change it. I already did all of the research of the era. And I'm not really interested in writing political thrillers or techno thrillers. Current politics don't interest me. RPing standing for roleplaying. Creating characters and writing out scenes with other writers. It's sort of like red robin stories, only its usually open ended. It's helped a lot with character development.
That would help, if I knew what a red robin story is. All a Google search tells me is that Red Robin is a restaurant chain. I'm not trying to be difficult, but you keep coming up with these keywords (NANO, rping, red robin story) that are unknown to me. And I'm not one of your know nothing (kewl, dude, LOL) readers.
You have a lot to learn about writing fads and groups haha. No offense. Red robin, aka round robin depending on your writing circle, is when you work with another writer, or a group of writers to write a story. Like you write a chapter, they write a chapter and so forth. In story book roleplaying we write out scenes together taking turns, where each of us write and portray a particular character.
