2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

For all you new-ish writers out there with a finished novel, 2012 is a new year, and that means:

It's time again for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award! That annual chance to get your Young Adult or general fiction novel noticed by the industry. So pull out that manuscript and start giving it a going over, because submissions open in just 11 days and only the first 5000 entrants in your category are accepted.

I believe this year is the fifth annual award and they've gotten the procedure down to a science. For those who don't know, it works like this:

submissions open (Jan 23 - Feb 5): first 5000 entries in each category accepted: YA and general adult fiction
Round 1: industry experts narrow field to 1000 in each category based solely on a 300 word pitch
Round 2: Amazon readers select 250 in each category based on 5000 word excerpts
Round 3: Publishers Weekly reviewers narrow field to 50 in each category based on full manuscript read
Round 4: Penguin USA publishers review all information sent (manuscript, pitch, excerpt, etc) and narrow to 3 in each category
Round 5: Amazon customers vote to get winner in each category


Yep, 10,000 entrants and 2 winners. Approximately the same odds as getting published. Except, of course, you've already had some publicity for your book this way.

Best of luck to anyone who decides to enter.

Things that make you go hmmmm

Every author especially, I'm sure, in science fiction, experiences what I'm about to share. Still, it's weird when it happens, and weirder when it happens more than once.

I refer to that interesting story idea you've had stirring around, then eventually put down on paper. Perhaps, like me, you've even shared it online... only to have a book / movie come out that you swear was made based on your idea.

The first time this happened for me was with my short story, originally titled: Where Angels Fear to Tread. I wrote this story, with permission, based around a friend's creation so, strictly speaking, it's not my creation. The idea is a battle between angels where one renegade challenges the status quo, taking on and defeating the others in search of the truth. This story features sword play between Gabriel and Uriel, and the angels are actually avatars of corporate-owned kids who have grown up connected to a neural-immersive network. Uriel ultimate takes down the network 'Heaven'. The story also features Michael and Rafael, although originally it was Sammael.

It was published online at Writing.Com in 2006 and recently on my LightSpeedDreams.net site.

The movie that made me sit up and say 'hey' was Gabriel, release in late 2007 and then on DVD in 2008. In this movie, Gabriel takes on opposing armies with mostly gunplay, and there are obviously significant difference between the two stories, although there are also some striking similarities. The most notable for me was the last line of the trailer: This is a place where even angels fear to tread. Strange coincidence?



The next is the soon to be released Battleship. Now, perhaps this was just an idea who's coming was innevitable but it does seem a bit strange to be that another movie has been made of an idea I turned into a story. My own battleship story was done in a campfire style, alternating sections with another author that I invited to join. Again, our story was, and still is, on Writing.Com (www.writing.com/main/campfires/item_id/1160282-WDC-Battleship). Our story was military in nature, obviously. We had grand plans for the story, taking it in a sci-fi direction with the Japanese researching an alien 'angel' while the Americans and Canadians fought for control and tried to uncover what was going on. But, alas, the other author became busy and we stopped after some ten-ish turns each (it was structured like the game).

It's interesting then, that a movie now comes out called Battleship, with Americans meeting aliens in the middle of the ocean. Once can easily see how our Writing.Com version could be simplified to such a movie (disclaimer: I not saying that it was...).



Now, lots of authors have these moments and I'm by no means going to run around saying someone stole my ideas (after all, ideas can't be copyright) but it does seem intersting that both my stories were posted in the same place and later had movies that were... similar in notable ways.

Anyway, have a look, make up your own mind. Like all such authors, I'm undoubtedly too close to the subject.

btw

Happy New Year!

Iterative World Building

 As a science fiction writer, especially one interested in relatively hard far future sci-fi, I spend a lot of time world building and thinking about world building.

When it comes to creating your own worlds, solar systems, or even universal empires, imagination is the limit. But that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. Regardless of whether your story is high fantasy, hard sci-fi or even super-soft, let physics be damned, sci-fi, all world-building has to follow a one important rule.

Be consistent. Your rules, whichever ones you come up with, must be consistently applied throughout the world. If they are not, there must be a good reason. A very good reason that is, itself, consistent with the rules.

This is the crucial, guiding principle in world-building and is the difference between a believable world (even a high fantasy one) and a laughable world.

The extreme cases are possibly easier than those closer to home because it's more obvious that you're developing an entirely new world.For mundane sci-fi or urban fantasy, however, an author must be careful to clearly delineate the boundaries of where 'our world' ends and the story world begins. This includes understanding the consequences as they would play out in the world. This must be obvious to the author before they write, or they will never be able to convince their readers.

So, you have a great world-building idea, how do you make it believable?

Well, it's important to realize that the world doesn't make your story, you still need great characters and compelling plots for that. But the world will guide your story, lend its character and features to your story. If it does not, there is no use setting your story in this world. The world must be a reflection of the story you want to tell, and vice versa. Having said that, on to more world-building.

The first thing you must realize is that your idea, in it's crude form, has a 99.99% chance of having been done before. What you're looking for is a way to make it uniquely yours. For that you need to explore hidden areas, find consequences that haven't been thought of, or at least tried in this context, before.

For example, a region of floating stones. It's been done many times (Dungeons and Dragons, and Avatar come quickly to mind), yet the idea still has an interesting allure. The first thing to ask yourself is why are they there? After all, they're something so foreign to our experience. You'll start with the basics:

Fantasy -- built by ancient wizards / gods
Sci-fi -- built by ancient race / electromagnetic anomaly combined with rare alloys

The important thing to do is challenge the tropes. e.g. Instead, perhaps they are exceedingly bouyant structures and there is high density at that area, or they could be camoflaged ships, or illusions. Maybe they are actually suspended in a network of fine cables or set on invisible columns. Whatever you decide, the important thing is not to settle for the easy answer.

After you decide on the general, move to the specific. What type of people / culture lives in, developed around these rocks. Do they live amidst the rocks, above, below them? In one massive city or smaller tribes. Perhaps each rock is a colony. Were these the original builders/occupiers or did they only find the rocks.

From here you move into ideas about the people's appearance and social development and even 'secondary effects'--those less foreseen consequences of human nature in such an environment: how do they communicate? what is they driving motivation (sex, food, water, territory, raising young)?

The important things is, at each stage, to keep asking yourself any and all questions you can think of. And when you can't think of any more, ask your friends. While most of the information will not make it into the story, the more you as the author knows, the more believable the story will be.

At this stage you may turn to character and, most likely, certain ideas will come to you straight away. Resist them. The first ideas will, most likely, be bog-standard tropes. Dig deeper, ask yourself more questions on the characters, the community and what would make an intersting story in this world. Once you have an idea, ask some more questions. You will eventually hit upon that 'aha' idea that will really light your fire. Build on that. But don't stop asking questions.

In reality, the world building and story building process generally work in tandem since experienced authors have some idea of the story they want to tell before hand and are buiding a world in which to highlight issues and ideas they have. However, it's important to realize that in all other facets, the process remains essentially as described. The key thing is to never be satisfied with your first answer, always ask yourself what else might be possible.