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Juggling Books
Nov. 15th, 2005 07:35 pmAh, the stages of book development. I seem to be in nearly all of them right now. What are they? Thought you would never ask...
• Planning: First, there's coming up with the idea, doing an outline, and such. I'm in the planning stage on all the Mutants & Masterminds stuff for the second half of next year.
• Writing: The actual writing stage is a surprisingly small step in the whole process. I'm in this stage for my chapter of Golden Age for M&M along with some other material.
• Development: "Development" is technically what I do for my job-title: namely reading over other work and making it fit into the overall game line. Right now that's what I'm doing with the parts of Golden Age I didn't write. A related part of development is overseeing playtesting of game material, which I'm doing for a couple projects right now.
• Editing: I don't formally edit books (we hire actual editors to do that) but I still give my work an "editing pass" to polish it up, which is what I'm doing on the Mastermind's Manual draft (while the real editor really edits it).
• Layout: I likewise don't lay out or design our books, but I do work with our graphic designer, writing fill text, adding bits and pieces of material, helping trim words where necessary, and so forth. I'm at this stage with Freedom City.
• Proofing: By the time you think you're done with a book, it's time to proofread it. I'm doing this with my Shadowrun novel, Fallen Angels this week.
• Promotion: Finally, once the book is actually out there, you need to promote it. I'm doing that this weekend for my Shadowrun novel Born to Run with a signing event at Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this Saturday from 3:00 to 5:00 PM. Since Pandemonium also sells RPGs, I'm sure I'll also be promoting M&M and whatever else of my work that I can.
That's pretty much what's going on with me. Now to have my last cup of coffee and get back to keeping those books in the air... See ya!
• Planning: First, there's coming up with the idea, doing an outline, and such. I'm in the planning stage on all the Mutants & Masterminds stuff for the second half of next year.
• Writing: The actual writing stage is a surprisingly small step in the whole process. I'm in this stage for my chapter of Golden Age for M&M along with some other material.
• Development: "Development" is technically what I do for my job-title: namely reading over other work and making it fit into the overall game line. Right now that's what I'm doing with the parts of Golden Age I didn't write. A related part of development is overseeing playtesting of game material, which I'm doing for a couple projects right now.
• Editing: I don't formally edit books (we hire actual editors to do that) but I still give my work an "editing pass" to polish it up, which is what I'm doing on the Mastermind's Manual draft (while the real editor really edits it).
• Layout: I likewise don't lay out or design our books, but I do work with our graphic designer, writing fill text, adding bits and pieces of material, helping trim words where necessary, and so forth. I'm at this stage with Freedom City.
• Proofing: By the time you think you're done with a book, it's time to proofread it. I'm doing this with my Shadowrun novel, Fallen Angels this week.
• Promotion: Finally, once the book is actually out there, you need to promote it. I'm doing that this weekend for my Shadowrun novel Born to Run with a signing event at Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this Saturday from 3:00 to 5:00 PM. Since Pandemonium also sells RPGs, I'm sure I'll also be promoting M&M and whatever else of my work that I can.
That's pretty much what's going on with me. Now to have my last cup of coffee and get back to keeping those books in the air... See ya!
