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igenlodeMy attempt at producing a sample hand-bound copy of Arctic Raoul in its current state was a surprising success, although it used most of my blank paper and a worrying amount of my current laser cartridge! I spent ages fiddling around trying to get it to print pages two-up in 'realistic' proportions and whitespace on an A4 sheet, as opposed to the standard self-publishing approach of simply printing everything as an A5 page with minimal margins in order to reduce page count and simplify matters :-p
Using a hardback copy of "The Two Towers" as my template for 'traditional' formatting, I ended up using 11pt text with 15% leading, and printing a 4.1" x 7.1" block of text within a 5.2"x 8.27" page, thus allowing for a 0.6" top and outer edge margin, a very slightly shorter bottom margin (due to paper size constraints) and, counterintuitively, a narrow gutter of only 0.4", where I'd normally expect to add a bit extra down the centre to allow for binding. This did look pretty convincing, although it expanded the page count to about 340pp if you started all the chapters on a right-hand page :-O
Once I had stitched the typescript up and put it through the press it was actually quite a slender volume in proportion to its size; certainly it was a lot slimmer than the 352 pages of "The Two Towers", which may say something about the relative paper quality... However, that was in what was effectively hardback format as opposed to standard paperback (e.g. your average Terry Pratchett), where the page size would be smaller, albeit with narrower margins.
When constructing the cloth 'case' for the book I made the mistake of tipping on the boards with far too much paste and then leaving them on for too long while laboriously wrapping the cut bookcloth (an old piece of denim!) around them while held thus in position. This meant that by the time I wanted to 'quickly nip it in the press' and take the cover *off* in order to paste the endpapers down over the cloth hinges, the paste had thoroughly penetrated the fibres of the paper and begun to dry and make an indissoluble bond, and the half-completed cover was now very permanently attached to the centre of the endpapers. The only way of pasting down the remainder of the sheet at that juncture was to try to slide a dripping brush in sideways, and I couldn't dampen down the cloth at all, with potentially disastrous effects in terms of how securely the spine was hinged to the cover at the point of most stress.
I did the best I could, and mercifully when the book was finally dry a couple of days later -- in the absence of an airing cupboard, I was reduced to making a tent out of an old sheet and running an electric heater underneath the workbench at ground level -- the hinged edge appeared somehow to be very securely glued indeed. I think the paste had probably transferred from the outer cloth right through the boards to dampen the inside in the crucial area :-)
At any rate, I ended up with a slim and quite smart-looking dark blue volume; I used size 14 knitting needles as rods in the press to ensure that the cloth adhered in the slot between the edge of the boards and the bent-sideways edge of the 'backed' spine. (I am still not very good at mitring the corners of the cloth accurately enough to get them to overlap but only by a minimal eighth of an inch or so...)
Meanwhile, in other news, I have been attempting to construct a 'synopsis' of the entire plot in under 800 words, which given the sheer *amount* of plot (not assisted by running in two parallel strands for the first 200 pages) is unsurprisingly extremely difficult. It also doesn't help that, so far as I can see, my plot doesn't even have a standard three-act/five-act structure (normal background, setting out on quest, first obstacle, full commitment, despair, overcoming final obstacle, triumphant resolution) as recommended in synopsis advice!
This is the most useful page I found, as it actually gives a realistic example: https://www.caroclarke.com/synopsis.html
Also helpful: https://janefriedman.com/how-to-write-a-novel-synopsis/
I think that by the looks of it I shall probably have to omit the entire existence of Lancard from the synopsis, and quite possibly the whole Raoul/d'Artois and Raoul/Philippe relationships as well, leaving room only for Raoul's interactions with Christine and with Erik :-O It's also very difficult to describe the complexity of Christine's interactions with Erik in captivity, especially for a potential reader who doesn't have any idea that Erik is seriously mentally unstable at this point, and is not acquainted with his weird mixture of arrogance and cringing subservience...
Using a hardback copy of "The Two Towers" as my template for 'traditional' formatting, I ended up using 11pt text with 15% leading, and printing a 4.1" x 7.1" block of text within a 5.2"x 8.27" page, thus allowing for a 0.6" top and outer edge margin, a very slightly shorter bottom margin (due to paper size constraints) and, counterintuitively, a narrow gutter of only 0.4", where I'd normally expect to add a bit extra down the centre to allow for binding. This did look pretty convincing, although it expanded the page count to about 340pp if you started all the chapters on a right-hand page :-O
Once I had stitched the typescript up and put it through the press it was actually quite a slender volume in proportion to its size; certainly it was a lot slimmer than the 352 pages of "The Two Towers", which may say something about the relative paper quality... However, that was in what was effectively hardback format as opposed to standard paperback (e.g. your average Terry Pratchett), where the page size would be smaller, albeit with narrower margins.
When constructing the cloth 'case' for the book I made the mistake of tipping on the boards with far too much paste and then leaving them on for too long while laboriously wrapping the cut bookcloth (an old piece of denim!) around them while held thus in position. This meant that by the time I wanted to 'quickly nip it in the press' and take the cover *off* in order to paste the endpapers down over the cloth hinges, the paste had thoroughly penetrated the fibres of the paper and begun to dry and make an indissoluble bond, and the half-completed cover was now very permanently attached to the centre of the endpapers. The only way of pasting down the remainder of the sheet at that juncture was to try to slide a dripping brush in sideways, and I couldn't dampen down the cloth at all, with potentially disastrous effects in terms of how securely the spine was hinged to the cover at the point of most stress.
I did the best I could, and mercifully when the book was finally dry a couple of days later -- in the absence of an airing cupboard, I was reduced to making a tent out of an old sheet and running an electric heater underneath the workbench at ground level -- the hinged edge appeared somehow to be very securely glued indeed. I think the paste had probably transferred from the outer cloth right through the boards to dampen the inside in the crucial area :-)
At any rate, I ended up with a slim and quite smart-looking dark blue volume; I used size 14 knitting needles as rods in the press to ensure that the cloth adhered in the slot between the edge of the boards and the bent-sideways edge of the 'backed' spine. (I am still not very good at mitring the corners of the cloth accurately enough to get them to overlap but only by a minimal eighth of an inch or so...)
Meanwhile, in other news, I have been attempting to construct a 'synopsis' of the entire plot in under 800 words, which given the sheer *amount* of plot (not assisted by running in two parallel strands for the first 200 pages) is unsurprisingly extremely difficult. It also doesn't help that, so far as I can see, my plot doesn't even have a standard three-act/five-act structure (normal background, setting out on quest, first obstacle, full commitment, despair, overcoming final obstacle, triumphant resolution) as recommended in synopsis advice!
This is the most useful page I found, as it actually gives a realistic example: https://www.caroclarke.com/synopsis.html
Also helpful: https://janefriedman.com/how-to-write-a-novel-synopsis/
I think that by the looks of it I shall probably have to omit the entire existence of Lancard from the synopsis, and quite possibly the whole Raoul/d'Artois and Raoul/Philippe relationships as well, leaving room only for Raoul's interactions with Christine and with Erik :-O It's also very difficult to describe the complexity of Christine's interactions with Erik in captivity, especially for a potential reader who doesn't have any idea that Erik is seriously mentally unstable at this point, and is not acquainted with his weird mixture of arrogance and cringing subservience...
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Date: 2024-01-19 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-13 03:12 pm (UTC)