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Old 08-05-2010, 11:44 AM   #31
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Old 08-05-2010, 11:59 AM   #32
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Too many writers - amateurs and professional alike - are insufficiently critical of their work, and in many cases lack the skills to present a polished piece.
Being a user/reader in a far more smaller niche than F/SF (RPGaming) I support this.


the RPG tech term for a slushpile candidate rulebook is (since they re mostly "it's a lot like D&D, but") "fantasy-heartbreaker". Things written by people who are bot content, with specific aspects of the ruleset in their fav. games and think they can do it better. Unfortunately in most cases they cannot.

Since RPG is really a small niche in writing as such, the outcomes are very often publicly shown to the community during (a good development decision) or after creation, since most of them 'll end up indie (the most producers already HAVE main lines of a specific topics, so getting commercially published by an established company is not really probable.)

So there is somethimg what could be called "public acceptancy-driven slushpile"

Because of its nature i.e. usually containing gamesystem rules (referred to as crunch) as well as world/culture descriptions (fluff) a roleplaying corebook could be seen as a genere mix of a tech manual combined with an F/SF book
They just apply some changes wirh glue rewrite some pieces/rules without being aware of how far some (can) changes go (what do you mean with game theory/probability of dice-rolls?) A lot of these people go indy since even if you are successfull, you'll never make a living from RPG (as even pros admit)
Some of them offer really good stuff where "good" means "well made and playable" w/o even touching the aspect how many players d' be interested in playing such a setup.
the bad examples are as taken out from an "Idol"-episode and given them dice and a keyboard to type. It isn't about typos and things proofreading and peer-review copyedit couldn't repair (altough i even experienced pointing somebody to lexical errors being thanked with "so what"
Writing inconsistent settings; illogical and/or mathematically screwed rules, these people
actively block:
  • a worldfact needs changes or the setting d' become unplayable due to exponentially growing inconsistency
  • every explanation WHY a certain rule lacks logic.
  • why the math behind a rule is simply wrong to achieve the outcome the author intends by said rule
  • etc.
they block it as picking on their magnum opus.

my fav still is a rule (here math converted to explanation):
when both a pro and a layman bear the same injure making the task in question harder to fulfill the layman does better because he's more used to encounter obstacles, whereas the pro is "spoiled" by his routine.

now imagine (yeah picture them in your mind) a pro freeclimber vs. J. Average both with wounded shoulder hanging on a damn high piece of rock.
(the guy who wrote that sells the rules POD via Lulu)
I'm every day tempted to place a 1-line review on Amazon saying:
Please don't judge indie RPG's by this here as example"

Similarly to that, things become funny when said RPGeniuses feel some ingame used skills need more elaboration, withtout ever wasting time on the slightest research about that skill in reality. I'm not speaking about achieving 100% realism in a RPG - this is IMPOSSSIBLE. but I think a gamedesigner needs at least some basic info from which can be decided what and how to simplify the data to fit in the ruleset.
In comparison to that introducing /magic/kewlpowers/psi/whatever to the setting without further thinking how far and in which way it would change ALL normal life is a forgivable flaw. (that's what JKR actually did in Potter, but Eddings (all materials); LeGuin (Earthsea); and Canavan (guild saga) masterfully avoided. (and about what Heinleins SiASW is a the best long example followed by Asimovs robotics short stories).

There are some gems in the pile. Some of them unpublished, but given avay for free only because the creators know the hassle with it could cost more than it pays back. as an example for (with a special pointout for a great work on the bestiary) see "Legendary Quest"

But there is a such big amount of awul stuff in gaming that I'm really more than willing to believe that the crapometer in an average slushpile is in very high 9x% values.

More unfortunately, the niche is so small, that a such extensive level of editing and copy-editing, as common in book producing* is luxurious in RPG.

*)exceptions left away, you wouldn't want to take a look on 4 specific passages of the (new/original german edition of Heinleins SiASW I have here.
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Old 08-05-2010, 12:54 PM   #33
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[I] And they don't even check the submissions guidelines that clearly state: No Non-Fiction, including biographies and autobiographies. It drives me potty.
Which is why I need to get some new fiction written...
There's not much call for autobiographical stuff, even if it does feature a story about crapping your pants in public.
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Old 08-05-2010, 01:35 PM   #34
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every man woman and their household pet can knock out 65K words and then send it to hundreds of agents and publishers at the tap of a few keys.
That's depressing. I wish I still had a cat I could enlist to actually finish a novel.
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Old 08-05-2010, 07:10 PM   #35
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One book I recently read was poorly edited in the sense that formatting of chapters and paragraphs on the page were untidy and, despite the good storyline, it became annoying.
Unless the book is self published, there is *always* a layout person involved in setting up books for print. Everyone from POD all the way up to BPH's have layout people. So if the layout was bad, blame the publisher, not the author, with self published authors excepted.
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...every man woman and their household pet can knock out 65K words and then send it to hundreds of agents and publishers at the tap of a few keys.
Sorta reminds me of Ratatouille. In his case it was "everyone can cook". In this case it's "everyone can write". But as was evidenced by the movie, you may be able to cook, but that doesn't mean you can cook well. The same goes for writing. Just because you can write doesn't mean you can write well. Heck, I'd just about bet a box of books that there's only really one readable book per 10,000, and maybe 1% of those readable books is actually good enough to be publishable.

I think the biggest problem that comes to this industry as well is all the idiotic famous people who whip out some steaming pile of poo and sell millions of copies. Uh, duh. They sell millions because they're famous, not because they can write. My gawds, I've read some of the books penned by famous people, and while a few of them were good, most were the kind that nearly make your head implode. >.< And the only way we're going to stop nonsense like this is to get it through people's heads that they better have a knock out awesome novel, or don't even bother. And not awesome by their standards, but by a panel of at least 10 critics.

That's part of what helped me become so good at tech writing. You can't even imagine how many other writers I studied in the beginning in order to get good, and how many Hiroshima level roastings I went through in the process of improving myself. It wasn't until I started getting "Meh, it's ok" responses that I knew I'd finally reached the level of "acceptable". After that it was merely climbing the other half of the mountain to reach the peak. However, most people won't even step out of the house and walk across the valley to get to the mountain, let alone climb it. And yet they want to have that mountain peak success with valley floor experience and skills, to use a mountain metaphor.

And again, it may sound like I'm trying to discourage new writers. I'm not. I'm merely trying to get them to realize that success in writing is not push button. You don't just point, click, and suddenly become the next Stephen King. It's years of writing, hard work, and struggle. Heck, it took me 15 years to get to the level I am now, and I figure it'll be another 15 before I can even dream of writing on the same level as the great masters of the pen. So they either need to be willing to struggle and grow, or else they need to give up on ever being published, or writing for that matter. And I don't mean to harp on the subject, but it frustrates me to no end just as much as I'm sure it frustrates the many editors and publishers here too, not to mention all the good writers who get blocked by all the slush file chaff.
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the RPG tech term for a slushpile candidate rulebook is (since they re mostly "it's a lot like D&D, but") "fantasy-heartbreaker". Things written by people who are bot content, with specific aspects of the ruleset in their fav. games and think they can do it better. Unfortunately in most cases they cannot.
Agreed. Hence why when a friend of mine talked me into doing an RPG version of my book series, I said, "Sure, but you're writing the bloody thing." IE, I'll let him create the rules and the board and all that, and base it entirely on the world I've already created in my novels.
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Old 08-05-2010, 09:12 PM   #36
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Sorta reminds me of Ratatouille. In his case it was "everyone can cook". In this case it's "everyone can write". But as was evidenced by the movie, you may be able to cook, but that doesn't mean you can cook well.
That's not quite the moral I took away from that (fantastic) movie. But I suppose it's true nonetheless.
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Old 08-06-2010, 03:31 PM   #37
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Well, the way I saw it, you had two people in the movie who were primary characters: The rat and Linguini. The rat could cook with the best of them. Linguini couldn't. Yes, he could "cook", taking literally the proper definition of "preparing food", but that didn't mean you would eat it, or possible end up keeping it down rather than depositing it in the nearest porcelain thrown. So thin of it like this. The kitchen full of chefs was the 2% of great writers who are picked out of the slush piles of publishing houses. The rat was the magical individual from among that group who produces the next great classic/blockbuster. Linguini represented the worst of the other 98%. Anywho, that's what I took from it, and how I drew up the comparison.
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Old 08-06-2010, 05:21 PM   #38
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Linguini represented the worst of the other 98%. Anywho, that's what I took from it, and how I drew up the comparison.
I figured you were referencing Linguini, my take would be that Linguini didn't cook well at that moment in his own story, not that he couldn't cook well.

Even the ghost of linguini's dad told the rat not to scoff at the kid, repeating the everyone can cook line. I thought it was a strange movie to reference as supporting your point, because I think the real meat of that story would probably translate to this thread with the axiom that everyone can write well, not withstanding slush pile evidence to contrary. Just because what the 98-99% put down is actually drivel doesn't mean the authors of that drivel didn't have the capacity to write, just that they didn't exercise it.

Ratatouille was such fantastic narrative (my favorite of Pixar's many diamonds), and (IMO) the everyone can cook line wasn't incidental to it or disproven within its own story. In the end, what broke the hard-nosed critic -- who would have similar opinions of the very nature of the 98% -- was cooking that called to memory a meal made not by one of the greats, but by another 'everyone': his mom. That the cook who reminded him of that was a rat was almost (almost) beside the point.

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Originally Posted by Steven Lake
But as was evidenced by the movie, you may be able to cook, but that doesn't mean you can cook well.
...
The kitchen full of chefs was the 2% of great writers who are picked out of the slush piles of publishing houses. The rat was the magical individual from among that group who produces the next great classic/blockbuster. Linguini represented the worst of the other 98%.
This seems more like a judgement on the nature of the people (I apologize in advance if that meaning was not what you intended), than just on the quality of most submissions (or to say it another way): Some people are great writers and write great things while others are slush pile writers so they write slush pile things. True or not, citing the point to Ratatouille seems almost sacrilege (Yes, I do really like that movie ). The great ghosted chef and his rat pupil wouldn't have abided such commentary, though I'm sure he would have recognized most cooking was low quality, the problem he would see wasn't in whether you were innately a great cook, but whether you were a great cook yet.

I think he would say, in fact, everyone can (has the capacity to) cook well; it's not beyond their ability, some just need a little help. That doesn't mean everyone would have their own 5 star restaurant, only that they could excel in the art and use cooking where they are to brighten the life they have (the rat's life was enriched by it long before he got to the restaurant). Translated to this thread, while the masses couldn't compete with Clancy, they have their own story to tell, and if content to tell that without the accolades and wealth of mass market success and were willing to patiently learn and utilize the tools of storytelling, they could in fact be great writers and write well. Not that writing is natural to all, but that both story telling and the skills needed to do it are well within the grasp of even the commoner.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go contemplate the extent of the meaninglessness of my own life that would drive me to make such a thorough exposition of the credo of a computer animated cooking rat and his otherworldly mentor.
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Old 08-07-2010, 09:46 PM   #39
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The number of publishable manuscripts is greater than the number actually published. I would guess that agented manuscripts have a higher percentage of publishable vs. non, but if you're talking about the slush pile, I've heard from two editors at a Big Name publishing house that around 10% of those are of publishable quality.
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Old 08-07-2010, 10:38 PM   #40
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The number of publishable manuscripts is greater than the number actually published. I would guess that agented manuscripts have a higher percentage of publishable vs. non, but if you're talking about the slush pile, I've heard from two editors at a Big Name publishing house that around 10% of those are of publishable quality.
As someone who has done slush reading and script reading, I can say that the 10 percent is what I found. But most of that 10 percent suffered from mediocrity - very often not being daring enough. (EDIT: and I should say often very SERIOUS problems with mediocrity.) As if the author spend so much time adhering to the rules and making it to "publishable" that they never injected any actual life into the story. (Or crushed it out for fear it broke a rule, which really good writing almost always does.)

However, I've also been a writing teacher, and I read the stuff that never even made it to the slush pile. Most of the really bad literature in the world is never completed. I don't know that any of my students ever actually made it to the submission stage, but I think the biggest block was fear of rejection. It's possible some of those would self-publish because there is no overt rejection.

I don't know if what we see at Smashwords and on Kindle yet represent the slush pile. I think there are groups who are jumping ahead of the rest. Midlist writers with a backlist. Writers who have been in the "almost" pile for a little too long and realize that they just aren't marketable to a big publisher. The people who hate rejection and maybe never submitted. And the fringe who never thought of doing anything else.

So what we've got is a disproportionate number of the worst and the good but not commercial. And non-commercial works will likely be loved by a niche audience, and not by the rest of us. You're not going to see best seller types in the indie ranks yet. And you may never see it, because they sell at Walmart, and Walmart doesn't buy indies.

So yes, I think most of us will find two percent or less of books that meet our standards, but I don't think that fully reflects the quality out there now.

And yes, I think we'll see more junk, AND more good stuff coming this way. It doesn't matter what the proportion is, though, because I think we have the tools to sort through it. We've done it with the web for years. And Amazon's tools have been well honed to help us find what we want out of the hundreds of thousands of things we don't.

Camille
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Old 08-08-2010, 11:09 AM   #41
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And non-commercial works will likely be loved by a niche audience, and not by the rest of us.
Camille
I think you've really hit the mark here. This is what has happened with musicians and iTunes. The power of the internet has allowed those people with talent but a relatively narrow market to connect with that market and have success within it. Just because their product doesn't appeal to the mindless masses doesn't mean it's worthless.

--Maria
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Old 08-10-2010, 04:11 AM   #42
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I liken the internet to the point in the late 70s when bands realised they could just record and release their own single and not have to bother sending demo tapes out to record publishers. It meant that a lot of music that would otherwise never have been heard got to find its own market. A lot of it was pretty rough around the edges (one record I have apologises for the buzzing sounds caused by someone opening a fridge door during the recording*), but it was better that than never hearing them at all.

* I was quite annoyed when I bought the CD reissue and found out it had been removed. It just sounded odd without them.
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Old 08-10-2010, 06:37 AM   #43
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I don't know if what we see at Smashwords and on Kindle yet represent the slush pile. I think there are groups who are jumping ahead of the rest. Midlist writers with a backlist. Writers who have been in the "almost" pile for a little too long and realize that they just aren't marketable to a big publisher. The people who hate rejection and maybe never submitted. And the fringe who never thought of doing anything else.

So what we've got is a disproportionate number of the worst and the good but not commercial. And non-commercial works will likely be loved by a niche audience, and not by the rest of us.

Camille
I'm a writer in your category Writers who have been in the "almost" pile for a little too long and realize that they just aren't marketable to a big publisher. Several agents have told me they love my writing, but don't believe they can sell it to a publisher; three said they'd look at my next book.

But I don't think 'not marketable to a big publisher' is the same as 'not commercial'. Agents are trying to second-guess the taste of publishers, and publishers don't always get it right. There have been bidding wars for books that sold disappointingly, and surprise best-sellers.

And everyone in the publishing industry is getting more cautious and fearful of making a misjudgement. Thank goodness for the option of self-publishing.
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Old 08-10-2010, 07:55 AM   #44
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Originally Posted by Lexi Revellian View Post
And everyone in the publishing industry is getting more cautious and fearful of making a misjudgement. Thank goodness for the option of self-publishing.
I love the way you put that, and I partially blame the "profit focused" business model for that, of which I in turn blame shareholders for perpetuating. When pure, unadulterated, maximized profits are your only goal, risk ceases to be anything you're willing to undertake. As a result, a lot of really great things die, having been sacrificed on the alter of corporate greed.
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Old 08-10-2010, 08:36 AM   #45
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lake View Post
I love the way you put that, and I partially blame the "profit focused" business model for that, of which I in turn blame shareholders for perpetuating. When pure, unadulterated, maximized profits are your only goal, risk ceases to be anything you're willing to undertake. As a result, a lot of really great things die, having been sacrificed on the alter of corporate greed.
Let's hope most of the really great books don't die, but sneak into the gap in the market created by big publishers' caution.

Interesting times for writers.
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