Buffy, Angel and Mourn's Gift

[lathany]

Some reviews on time, for once.

Him

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered already did this. And did it better.

Supersymmetry

Fortunately, following a hot contender for worst ever Buffy episode (having seen it, I agree with kauket's views) was a rather good Angel episode. After last week's incredible plotless slog, this episode went in for character development (pretty much everyone - mostly relationship development), back-plot development (Fred's) and made a few steps towards bringing Wesley back into the gang. Still little season four plot as yet, but a nice episode nonetheless. Also a good reminder of the pre-Angel Investigations Fred.

The twins are having good days and bad days. Beatrice's new mobility is mostly a wonderful thing, but there are moments when I get all nostalgic and miss the old "immobile blob" Beatrice. Ryan is still being Ryan (charging round the floor with his whine switched on), but we get a few more smiles from him than we used to.

bateleur has finally finished editing "Mourn's Gift" (my first book) so I am ploughing through his comments. So far, the vast majority of these relate to chapter three (which was the old chapter one and needs a heavy re-write). After that we need to find a package which will print it onto paper (this will probably mean purchasing something to make it look more professional than WordPad does) and then look into the best way of getting it bound (a printers either here or in Oxford I would imagine). Any advice on a "better than WordPad" solution or recommendation of a suitable printer/binder to deal with 100,000 words would be appreciated.

Comments

[nevecat.livejournal.com]

Theses, which I'd consider similar in terms of the fact they are printed & bound as single runs tend to be written in LaTeX.

Otherwise, how about Publisher or Word, as standard Microsoft packages?

Fundamentally, since it's a novel, you don't need anything fancy like inserting graphs, footnotes or anything, I presume - it's more a question of getting a font that's pleasing to the eye, and a page layout that you find comfortable (size of margins, length of lines for readability, page numbers/headers/footers being the main things I can think of that will affect this)

Avoid printing in 12-point - it'll come out as a /huge/ number of pages, and will look rather 'assignment'ish - 10 or 8 point is far nicer IMO, but I suspect that's because I'm not longsighted!

There are several binders in Oxford - I'd recommend asking people who've had theses bound for advice on these - I believe a couple are on Holywell street?

C

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Choosing a font and size should be easy - look at the printers notes on existing novels you like the looks of.

Whatever you do, don't buy Publisher or Word for one single use - StarOffice or something will almost certainly do the job, or borrow someone else's pooter who has Office already. I don't know anything about (semi-) pro publishing packages, though.

LaTeX: Yes. Although arguably it's a bit overkill for a novel. Or you could get John R. to help you format it in raw postscript ;-)

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on font and size.

I'll probably go for the cheapest alternative (whatever that may be). It isn't entirely a one-off, 'cos once I have it, I can use it for all my writing (WordPad falls short in a lot of areas).

Packages

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

LaTex is good, but requires very careful proofreading to spot the places where manual intervention is required. Also, you need to be quite good with the fine tuning to get a really professional look. (In the case of my thesis I didn't bother - I settled for having it look way better than everyone else's theses !)

The trouble with Word is that its naive output really doesn't look right. Possibly good results can be obtained by an expert, but I wouldn't know. And, of course, I'd be reluctant to buy Word unless I was sure it was the best tool for the job, 'cos it's horribly overpriced for what it is.

Don't know Publisher - is that a standalone system, or does it assume you have Office ? If the former, what does it do ?

Mostly, I'm trying to look for a cheap alternative to Quark ! Tempting though it is, I can't justify buying the real thing.

Re: Packages

[nevecat.livejournal.com]

I can't remember whether it's part of the Office package or not - despite having the same 'look' at a first glanc e, it's clearly been designed by different people to word/excel/etc.

I'm just a naughty bunny who doesn't seem to have ever actually /bought/ these packages ;)


C

[triskellian]

I have Pagemaker, which is the cheap-but-still-professional alternative to Quark. You're welcome to borrow my 'pooter, if that's even slightly sensible.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

The computer-borrowing, sadly, is unlikely to be an option. I think we'll probably be buying something. At least I can use it for other writing stuff.