13 KiB
Editing is evil. Yes, I said evil.
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Author: u/Farmerbob1 Level 1 author*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3q07fn/editing_is_evil_yes_i_said_evil/
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Score: 13
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Created: 2015-10-24T06:41:28
Post:
The first half of Set In Stone was written when I didn't have any sort of formal understanding of plot and structure. And I definitely didn't understand intensity or flow. Trying to cut out the fat and not change the story too much, while maintaining the world building and the character development is painful.
That said, I've finished another chapter of Set In Stone at my beta reading blog if anyone wants to see how the finished product is developing. The next chapter (not this one) is completely new content, a full-chapter flashback, and mostly completed.
When the book is published, all this content will go away.
Comments:
u/Transfuturist [+13] Carthago delenda est. (20 minutes later)
:(
hug
Flay your baby. Flay it good.
u/xamueljones [+4] My arch-enemy is entropy (8 hours later)
Despite the morbid turn of phrase, this made me laugh. Have an upvote!
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And the knowledge that I posted your comment to /r/nocontext. >:)
u/TotesMessenger [+2] (8 hours later)
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/nocontext] "Flay your baby. Flay it good."
^(If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.) ^(Info ^/ ^Contact)
u/Tommy2255 [+11] (7 hours later)
last edited 6 hours ago
u/Farmerbob1 [+2] Level 1 author (10 hours later)
Am I missing something? I'm not sure what the comment is supposed to express.
u/Tommy2255 [+12] (10 hours later)
Editing is evil.
u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (8 hours later)
Speaking of editing, I wonder why do you spend time in the early chapters talking about Allen's unusual metabolism? Unless it's meant to be a Chekov's gun for later books I think it could be one of the parts that you can cut out without too much trouble if you're looking to lower the word count. I haven't read the beta chapters yet so I don't know if you've reached that point yet or even already cut it out.
In addition, why are you writing an entirely new chapter if it's not going to even appear in the final version?
When the book is published, all this content will go away.
EDIT: Or did you mean that this will be our only chance to read the chapter for free?
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (10 hours later)
The discussion on Allen's metabolism could be a bit excessive, I suppose. I felt like I needed to justify some of his feats. He runs a marathon in about 2.5 hours and then comes back to the farm and cuts wood for more than twelve hours. That's barely within the realm of possibility for any human today, so I decided to spend a little time setting it up. Does that make sense?
The new chapter is a flashback to Allen and Marza's encounter with Rikard (who has been renamed Oskar, to avoid confusion with Riko)
All the Beta content will go away after I am ready to publish, or Amazon will definitely zorch me.
u/eaglejarl [+4] (11 hours later)
All the Beta content will go away after I am ready to publish, or Amazon will definitely zorch me.
Actually, Amazon only cares about exclusivity if you're in the Kindle Unlimited program. If you don't KU your book, you can feel free to distribute it for free as long as you want. If you do KU your book, then you can still distribute up to 30% of it for free.
That said, 30% of my total income and 50% of the income from my novels comes from there. It's probably something you want to do.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (11 hours later)
Interesting. I'll have to look at that more closely. Everything I've read on Amazon and about Amazon indicated that if someone were to press the link (which appears on every book's page) that asks buyers to tell them about a better price elsewhere else, then tell Amazon about the page, Amazon would investigate and immediately lower the price of the book to the price it was available for elsewhere. You say this only happens for KU?
I'll have to look at it again, if you're talking from the voice of experience.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (13 hours later)
I'll have to look at it again, if you're talking from the voice of experience.
I've received an explicit answer from Amazon customer service saying that it's okay to be in KU and still distribute 30% of the book elsewhere.
As to the other part, the following quote is from the FAQ: "If you choose to make a book exclusive to the Kindle Store, which is a requirement during your book's enrollment in KDP Select..." I don't know why Amazon uses all three of the terms "Kindle Select", "Kindle Online Lending Library", and "Kindle Unlimited" -- as far as I'm able to tell they are effectively identical. Regardless, the question is "do I (a) put it in KU, thereby making it exclusive, and earn money from extra money from borrows, or do I (b) NOT put it in KU and sell it on other platforms in order to make extra money?"
u/ulyssessword [+2] (11 hours later)
Huh, I had just chalked his superhuman endurance to a better environment, much like Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive books (where the world has about 2/3 of a g for gravity, and ~30% oxygen, IIRC).
"Earth-like" isn't necessarily the best for human habitability.
u/Farmerbob1 [+3] Level 1 author (11 hours later)
The gravity on Nirvana is a little less than that of Earth, but not much. I haven't put a number on gravity but I'm thinking 95%+ of Earth gravity.
Too little gravity, and the planet wouldn't have maintained an atmosphere or water. I'm pretty sure it's a leading theory that Mars is so dry because it has lower gravity than Earth. (Low gravity leads to atmosphere loss. Low atmospheric pressure leads to evaporation. Evaporated water becomes part of atmosphere and is lost)
Writing rationally in a world significantly different from Earth in gravity or oxygen, where there has been time for evolutionary changes, would lead to a lot of things I didn't want to deal with. Birds, rodents, insects, fish, and other rapidly reproducing animals would adapt and change their forms and functions. It's fascinating but it would have been too much.
u/Kerbal_NASA [+2] (15 hours later)
Edit: There are mistakes in this post, check below.
Based on this graph (from this wiki article) the escape velocity of the planet can be 6 km/s (assuming Earth-like temperatures), I'll assume that the density of the planet is the same as Earth's, and fiddling with the equations:
sqrt(2*G*m/r) = 6km/s,
m/((4/3)*pi*(r^3 )) = Density of Earth,
surface gravity = ((4*pi/3)*(Gravitational Constant)*r*(Density of Earth))results in surface gravity = 5.267 m/s^2 or about 53.7% of Earth's surface gravity.
And you can get it lower by assuming a higher planet density than Earth.
u/Farmerbob1 [+2] Level 1 author (17 hours later)
Hrm. Looks to me like atmospheric water has a lower bound of 7 km/s escape velocity at Earth temperatures. The density of Nirvana is significantly lower than that of Earth, but the planet is larger.
I used the following numbers: Nirvana radius = 2x Earth radius. Nirvana gravity = Earth gravity.
This leads to Nirvana having a radius of @ 12,732km. With @ 9.8 m/s gravity, I used this calculator
Nirvana's mass is 2.38x10^25 kg as compared to Earth's mass of 5.92x10^24 kg. Nirvana masses roughly 4x Earth.
Now, volume-wise, Nirvana is 2x Earth's radius, which means Nirvana is 8x the volume of Earth.
Nirvana masses 4x Earth, and 8x the volume. This means it's density is roughly half that of Earth's 5.51 g/cm^3. A vast number of different nonmetallic rocks are in that density range or below.
Using this calculator with 4x Earth mass and 2x Earth radius, I come up with an escape velocity of 15.8 km/sec, which puts Nirvana at the edge of the atmospheric helium zone, if it is roughly Earth's temperature.
EDIT - I had a math goof. Calculated escape velocity for Nirvana at Earth's mass, not Nirvana's mass. Corrected now.
u/Kerbal_NASA [+2] (20 hours later)
You're right about the 7 km/s escape velocity (I guess my eyes deceived me, oops). Also I made a silly mistake when I said increased density would result in lower surface gravity at the same escape velocity. It turns out the ratio between surface gravity and density (at a constant escape velocity) is proportional to g = D^.5
That explains why Nirvana's escape velocity is higher than Earth's at the same surface gravity. Sorry for all the mistakes! I was more cautious this time and calculated that if you wanted to, you could shrink Nirvana all the way down to a radius of 5642 km (with a resulting mass of 2.071*10^24 kg), giving it a surface gravity of 4.34 m/s^2 which is 44.3% of Earth's gravity. That seems to verify with the calculators you linked (the mass is .3468 of Earth's, and the radius is 0.8861 of Earth's). I don't know if that's actually a good idea for the story, but I'm decently confident the math and science at least works out.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (20 hours later)
A high density planet can't work for the story because it's a metal-poor world. Nirvana doesn't have an iron core, it's mostly oxides of lighter elements. Lots of silicon, potassium, calcium. Aluminum is the most common structural metal, and it's very rare. Iron and other heavy metals are so rare that they can't even be seen in rich deposits. Uranium and other extremely heavy elements are present in such low traces that even an advanced industry can't effectively collect it.
u/Kerbal_NASA [+1] (20 hours later)
Yeah, I used the density you gave in that latest post (well I inferred the density based on the mass and radius you gave and used that).
Edit: Nirvana's density in both the current story and in the small Nirvana version is 2753 kg/m^3
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (20 hours later)
Oh, I see! I suppose that could work, but I'd have to rewrite a great deal. I'll keep gravity at near-earth levels to save me mental pain.
u/Kerbal_NASA [+1] (20 hours later)
Yeah, sounds like a good plan :)
u/Nevereatcars [+2] The Greatest Is Behind (a day later)
As a self-identifying Sanderson Scholar, where are you getting these numbers?
u/ulyssessword [+1] (a day later)
(To be honest, I had source amnesia and couldn't remember where I heard those figures from, but the data fits.)
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (15 hours later)
That's perfectly fine. I was just pointing out the fact that you probably could sum it up in a shorter amount of words or even leave it out. If you leave it out, then most readers aren't going to notice it and the ones who do will probably just chalk Allen's fitness up to living on a farm where he's accustomed to hard work and a few centuries of minor genetic manipulation by Albert.
I personally prefer that you leave it in since it's so interesting and demonstrates Allen's intelligence and education with regard to genetics (and a lot of other implications about Nirvanian society), but it's my first choice if you really need to cut out a large number of words out in one go.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (17 hours later)
It is something I could cut if needed, but I'm going to see what comes out after first pass editing.