Re: Start the story somewhere else...
Posted: December 31st, 2010, 12:25 am
Maybe reevaluate who you are writing for, because atm it doesn't sound like it's for the readers. Which is okay. Not everyone needs or wants to be published. BUT, for those that do... there is something called a market out there. Prospective authors to some degree need to pay attention to it. Does this mean they should sacrifice their craft and start writing a YA vampire novel if their love is in historical fiction? Of course not! But it does mean that they may have to cater their writing with the interest of the people who will be reading it in the distant or not-so-distant future. Agents will be more forgiving than publishers, and A LOT more forgiving than readers will be.If an agent will want drastic changes, because of a matter of taste and not because of some serious mistake what I committed, then we will take two different path instead of walking on the same one. Unlike many, I'm not willing to impress an agent, especially if their salary will be paid from my sales. To me it's really matter who is going to get the 10% from the sales. There is one story, what is fix (With the exception of the aforementioned planned changed) and there are plenty of agents to choose from. If I must wait for the right agent for few more months, but for exchange the original story will be published, be it. :) I want to impress the readers instead. That's a huge difference.Enough of them are telling you something that I bet an agent will end up telling you the same thing. You will most likely be told to change it in order to get representation.
That's what makes books like Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World interesting. Nobody wants to read about sunshine and rainbows and butterflies. To hook the readers there must be conflict. There must be a reason to pause the television, put away the cell phone, and devote an hour to the blob of text in front of them. Perfect is boring.Every Utopian society is usually following the scheme of 1984. But if you can tell me some novel title which is presenting an Utopian world which has no conflicts (Literally), I would appreciate it, because that would be very helpful. (A novel about a true utopia which has no conflict. The utopias that about I read was an illusion, where in the background dark forces created conspiracies, conflicts and controlled the people. In those stories these gave the source of the conflicts. Here, the dark forces are not present in the beginning at all, so I can work only with the "conflict free" side.).While your world may be unique, Utopian societies are not unheard of.
There's always those artists that have the stance of "If you don't understand what I'm going for, then you must not GET ME." Or even worse: "If you don't understand it, than you're not intellectual enough to GET IT".If something is original, I won't dumb it, nor kill it. I rather try to find a solution instead of making useless sacrifices just to impress people, but write something on a way as I don't want to. I'm writing this story to present this exact story to the readers. Not an alternative version, not a dumb edition, not a trendy cliche parade. I want to present this story on the way as it is.Kill your darlings. Kill your ideal to make it stronger overall.
Nobody is asking you to make a "dumb edition". We're trying to help you create a finished product that people (like us) would actually want to read. Isn't that the point?
EDIT: That came across way more snarky then I intended, well I intended it to be snarky at the time but looking back that's not too flattering. It's your WIP, only you can make the choice you feel is best. I wish you the best of luck!