Fiction - quality and quantity

[Editor]

There's a new LabLit podcast up here: http://www.lablit.com/article/561

Lots on writing this time, including that age-old question about adjectives/over-writing, but jam-packed full of other stuff too - sci-art, conspiracy theory, ancient scientific manuscripts and more. Do have a listen! Sorry for the long gap since the last one - we've been a bit under the weather.

[Dr Mike]

It's good! I liked the interview with Eva. I'm not sure I could write 50000 words in a month, novelistic or otherwise. Do we know if she made her goal?

Another things about NaNoWriMo - does anyone know if there is a winner - in other words do people submit their finished product to a judge?

[easternblot]

I'm the interviewed Eva =)
And I did finish! I made it to 50180 or thereabouts. I was traveling during the deadline (which is why I was in London to be interviewed for the LabLit podcast in the first place) so it was hard, but I made it!

There are no "winners" in the sense of being judged by quality of the output, it's really only about reaching 50k words within a month, and you're deemed a "winner" if you reached that goal. The winners get some freebies, including a 50% discount on writing software and one free print of a print-your-own-book thing.

Judging the novels written would be dreadful. In 2008, more than 20,000 people made the 50,000 words goal, so that's a LOT of reading material.

Most people don't finish a proper finished product within 50,000 words, but there are some cases of people then editing and finishing what they started, and even getting it published. There's a list on the NaNoWriMo website, on the media page (which has a ton of info) http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/mediakit The most famous of the published NaNoWriMo products is probably "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen, which was a NYT bestseller a few years ago.

There's also a "Young Writers Program" http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/ that encourages kids to participate. They can set their own word goal, and teachers can order some classroom goodies. Those novels aren't judged on merit either (unless the teachers are evil) but the program is something to get kids writing for fun.

My own crappy 50,000 word thing will eventually be edited. I liked the plot I had, and the characters, but the prose is dreadful and I know I can do better.

[easternblot]

Oooh, and more lablit related, I have one specific thing I need to address when editing: in my hurry to make it to 50,000 words, I didn't flesh out certain things well enough. There's a guy in a lab doing a particular experiment. The results don't really matter, because he never gets past the trouble shooting stage of the reagents in the story anyway (because of a delay that is related to the main plot)
I did mention what he's trying to achieve a few times, and I decided not to use real protein names, because I don't want to say in a fiction story that real existing protein X does this or that, and then have someone publish a real paper saying that it doesn't. Also, if I say that these fictional characters are studying a certain system/pathway, and there are REAL people out there doing that, then they'd be too much like them.
So, I have to make up fake proteins, and in my hurry I only called them HisProtein, OtherProtein, OtherSubstrate, etc. I'm not good at thinking up names. At least one of them is implied in synaptic vesicle formation, and at least one other is found in a non-fly lab (in other words, it has a boring name with ambiguous pronunciation).

[Octavia]

Wow, Eva - thanks for the insights! I am seriously impressed and I know all your friends must be too. It's a real achievement, not only that you made your goal but that you are relatively happy with the finished product, enough to edit in anyway. LabLit hasn't had a serial for awhile...

Making up the protein names must be the most fun part! How about trying to pun something around the synaptic vesicle formation angle. Where's tiddles? he's a neuron person.

[tideliar]

Loved the Podcast, and am finally caught up with them all.

Which means i have no excuse not to commit my dulcet baritone once more to the aether...

[Editor]

Eva, I've grappled with this problem myself in all three of my books, and I think you can't worry too much about being right in perpetuity. After all, it's fiction. I do find that basing the general idea on something known and then making up details is good (like in the first one, FRIP is loosely based on interferon, but is entirely made up). I'd say more but I can't type on this poxy iPhone. More when I'm home!

[Mad Dan Eccles]

Come on Ed, I know you're home now