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The problem isn't the number of characters per se. In the interest to portray an arguing crowd, you've sacrificed attention to the important characters. Tobias and Mallory dissolve into the crowd, when you want them to stand out further. I think the word limit took some bite out of your story. If you had more space then you could have tried fleshing out Tobias and Mallory more, so that there's no question as to who we really need to listen to.
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Aug 22, 2013 02:54
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M. Propagandalf posted:Lessons to take from the last Thunderdome battle: Writing dialogue with crowds You have a lot more problems than just having too many characters. For one thing, you break one of the big "rules" of writing. You use almost exclusively said-bookisms. Let's take a look. M. Propagandalf posted:Holiday Break Not a single "said" in the entire story. Young and/or new writers often make the amateur mistake that repeating "said" over and over is a bad thing. It isn't. It's one of the few invisible words in English writing. Read some dialogue from a good book and you'll notice that unless you're looking for it you'll just automatically skim over the word. By good I mean something like Elmore Leonard (RIP), not whatever it is you're probably reading. Instead, you use terms like "mused," "replied," and god forbid "ventured." These all pull us out of the dialogue and make us pay attention to your poor word choice instead of what the characters are saying. There are, however, other ways to avoid repeating "said." Because sometimes, with long bits of dialogue, it can get repetetive. Here's an example from something I'm working on. The two speakers are the first-person narrator and a dude named Horricks. quote:“She has her own money?” I had the black queen in my hand now, and he didn’t seem to care. Note how I didn't use the word "said" once, nor did I need to replace it with "warned" or whatever. Instead I either drop dialogue tags entirely - easier with only two speakers - or inserted action in between the dialogue. Otherwise it's just a couple of talking heads in a blank white room.
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Aug 22, 2013 13:30
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Martello posted:crits Very much obliged. I believe the same issues were pointed to in my second Thunderdome entry. Bad habits die slow. I'll kill harder.
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Aug 23, 2013 06:05
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Nothing is easier to fix than said-bookisms. It can be a bit tricky to work in the non-attributed dialogue that Martello mentioned, but to get rid of said-bookisms you just need to do an editing pass on your story where you check every instance of dialogue and turn whatever the hell you wrote into "said".
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Aug 23, 2013 13:18
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I'm yet to be convinced that "said" is the sole appropriate tag for dialogue. Every single published book I have in my kindle library violates this 'rule' on a very regular basis. Like everything else, it's a matter of what works best. Most writing rules will tell you to favor strong verbs over weak ones, especially because doing so helps you avoid stupid adverbs. This is good advice, so why doesn't it apply here? For instance: it's far better to write "Marry slammed the plates down onto the table" than it would be to write "Mary set the plates down onto the table, angrily." Using this logic, is there any weaker verb in the English language than "said"? Sure, it's fine by default, but I very much doubt it's usually better to write: "You're never around when I need you," he said, angrily. than it would be to write: "You're never around when I need you," he shouted. An over-reliance on "said" usually means that people either stick with that rule against all possible sense, or else start throwing lame adverbs in there because they've gotten the poo poo kicked out of them anytime they tried to break from the crowd when using an appropriate dialogue tag. If you write a line of dialogue where the character shouts something, go ahead and feel free to say they shouted it, if that works. Same for whispered, croaked, asked, screamed, and so forth. As always, don't overdo it. Which leads me to The Problem--and there is one--with tags other than said: new authors get incredibly stupid with them. Postulated, ejaculated, mused, voiced--all of those are dumb and serve absolutely no purpose and don't do any real work. So with regards to that that I agree with the criticism posted here; I just feel it can be a bit damaging to a writer's voice to tell him that dialogue tags should always and forever consist of that one same safe word.
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Aug 23, 2013 14:17
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Chillmatic posted:"You're never around when I need you," he said, angrily. These are both bad. Use an exclamation point for this situation. Similar for "asked" and the question mark. Both "asked" and "shouted" are unnecessary attributions. When editing, if you come across any attributive verb aside from "said", you should stop, step away from your writing and think very very carefully about why that word is being used. As with any literary rule, you can violate it if you know specifically why you're doing it and cannot find any other way to express what you need. If you're trying to tell the reader that the line is a question or exclamation, use punctuation (!/?). If you're trying to convey an emotion, then use word choice, pacing, and sentence structure. Also consider using a non-dialogue flash of action. If you just need to attribute dialogue, either eliminate the attribution or change it to "said".
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Aug 23, 2013 14:36
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Agreement with what Chillmatic said above and adding: I try not to do "'Blah blah blah?' someone asked" because thanks to the question mark, "asked" is redundant. When it comes to using anything other than said, I sprinkle, and only if it works, and isn't made redundant by the dialogue it's tagging. I'm in love with prose-style emotional beats, though.
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Aug 23, 2013 14:38
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Here's a good way to do it. Combine the two examples you used, eliminating the dialogue tag and the need to describe how he's saying it. Chillmatic posted:He slammed the plates down on the table. "You're never around when I need you!" You could probably even pull that off without the exclamation point. I'll backpedal just a tad on my said-bookisms thing and agree that they can occasionally be appropriate. "Shouted" is okay sometimes, as are other similar terms like scream, growl, etc. But Propagandalf was using ventured, warned, mused, etc. Those are terrible and are never okay to use. And even the terms I listed as being "okay" should only be used when you can't get the character's tone across another way. Showing it instead of telling it.
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Aug 23, 2013 16:16
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My take: there's a well-known cognitive principle (going back to Eleanor Rosch, back in the 70s) that we try to keep our categories at an intermediate, basic level. So we say tiger, not mammal or male bengal tiger. Unless it's a lion, in which case we say lion. Warning, musing, venturing etc. can all be seen as hyponyms of saying. Shouting and saying, however, are mutually exclusive. So if it's a form of saying, we say "say", not "communicate" (above basic) or "murmur" (below basic). If it's shouting, it would be wrong to say it's being said, so we say shout. It's the difference between a Porsche, a humvee, a limo (all cars), versus a tank or a bicycle. Also, is the fact that nobody's said anything about my few paragraphs on the last page a sign that I need to go to the THUNDERDOME or what? vv thanks vv Cingulate fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 17:29
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Cingulate, I saw your thing and thought, "Cool, someone from the Linguistics thread is here," and then I saw your formatting and didn't bother reading it. After my lunch break I will read and critique it (unless real work hits me), but I will probably paste it into word and fix the paragraph breaks in order to save my eyes.
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Aug 23, 2013 17:46
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you can't post for a critique in the middle of a bitch fight because I skimmed right over it, assuming it was another long ranty piece of poo poo.
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Aug 23, 2013 18:24
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Cingulate posted:So now that the mood is all cozy ... I don't know how you formatted this, but don't try to manually end lines when writing into an SA thread. When I pasted this into wordpad it formatted perfectly, but it looks like poo poo in the browser window. You have some definite ESL issues, but they aren't that bad. If you want to keep writing in English, you will just have to practice a lot and build up your editing skills, because you'll need to catch the regular kind of issues native speakers have to find while editing in addition to some ESL-only errors. You open with a scene of dance instructors making fun of their bad students. The hook is pretty good and the situation is something most people can relate to, but the prose kind of drags it down. You have started off with a very long "hook" that does not tell us anything about the plot until the end of the fourth paragraph. Your opening line is a bit odd; I see what you are going for with it but it is too meandering from your main point. Opening lines in flash fiction have to be perfect. You succeed in establishing something of a hook, but it takes too long for the point of it to sink in. This is not the optimal solution, but just switching the order to: quote:Tyler’s was the only place in town to see worse dancing than the school gym during prom. Nobody hears as much awful guitar playing as a guitar teacher, nobody meets as many crazy people as a shrink. I would find this actually better (when you edit flash fiction you want to cut as much as you possibly can): quote:Tyler’s was the only place in town to see worse dancing than the school gym during prom. Sometimes, when the last student had left, Ms. Tyler and the night-class instructor would impersonate a beginner displaying a unique, unknown form of talentlessness I like this opening better because we are brought into the scene faster and the humor you are going for hits us quicker this way. The line I cut out about guitar players and crazy people can be cut out entirely or shrunk down and put in later in the paragraph. It serves to make the instructors not seem totally evil and sympathizes the reader to why they are making fun of their students, but it shouldn't be the opening line of the whole piece. The sentence about the newcomer is too long and slightly awkward. I don't really want to see "three-and-a-half-to-four non-rhythm" followed by a relative clause, it's just too much. Put in an example of one of the bad students, but avoid dropping in so much technical description. quote:One new student SHORTER DESCRIPTION OF BEING BAD. DESCRIPTION OF WHAT MS. TYLER WANTED TO DO TO HIM. You don't want a lot of short, choppy sentences, but if you have to have "that awoke in Ms. Tyler an urge to," just to combine the sentences, then it's not worth it. The description of Joseph dancing is fine, that is as much technical explanation as we need and it shows (rather than tells) that the teachers are making fun of the students. I don't like the "..." at the end of the paragraph, make him finish his thought. Third paragraph works as is. In the fourth paragraph we finally have our inciting incident! Up until this point, everything had been a hook and your plot was not moving forward at all. In flash fiction you need the inciting incident as close to the beginning as possible. After the inciting incident happens, everything needs to build up. You don't have room in flash fiction to meander or put in scenes that feel fun. The dancing scene could work if the story were about a conflict with a certain student or conflict related to being dance instructors. It doesn't work in a story about a robbery. You could possibly make it work, but they would somehow have to be talking about the robbery while making fun of the students, which would be hard to pull off. ESL mistake one: You can't "vividly" massage something. ESL mistake two: ”You’re beautiful when you’re confused”, Ms. Tyler said. Which, she added mentally, is mostly. Should be "is most of the time". 'Mostly' implies degree, not frequency. Why are you putting quotes in italics? You should make this whole thing in third-person and focused on Ms. Tyler. This would establish early on that everything is from her viewpoint so that you don't have to say stuff like, "she added mentally". quote:He’s adorable, she thought while explaining to him again what she’d learned last week after the Mambo class, sharing a glass of gin with Komaki Weizbaum. This paragraph doesn't work because it is acting as a very rickety bridge between the thought about Joseph being confused and what the next paragraph is going to describe. It doesn't connect well enough to the former and feels extraneous. The next paragraph should begin with "Komaki Weizbaum was a second generation..." You cannot start a paragraph like this with "she" because it's not clear enough who you are talking about. I realize your previous paragraph ended with her name, but again that paragraph was extraneous and added more problems than it solved. Start the paragraph off with 'Komaki' and make sure it's not redundant or repeating her name too much from the paragraph above. Komaki is a Japanese name, not Korean, so that confused me also. We have a rickety bridge followed by two paragraphs of info dumping/exposition. The paragraph I just critiqued above was your Komaki Weizbaum info dump, then the next paragraph is the info dump about the robbery (which never actually happens!) You want to figure out what information from these two paragraphs of exposition are vital to the plot and try to work them into the action. With a close third-person point of view from Ms. Tyler's perspective, she can reveal some of this exposition through dialogue to Joseph. But ideally you show as much as possible through things Ms. Tyler and Joseph do. You spent so many words on the info dumping and the dancing that you didn't have enough left for the robbery. After the exposition paragraphs we are taken back to Tyler and Joseph talking. "moving in" when talking about a house made me think they literally were going to move in. You should phrase this so that no one thinks of that connotation. I thought this was some zany scheme where they would move in and gain ownership through a legal loophole or something. I never knew this until I got "burglarized," by the way, but if you break into someone's house and steal stuff, it's "burglary" not "robbing". The police officer corrected me every time I said "robbed" or "robber," so it seems like a big distinction to law enforcement. ESL Error: as if he was lacking the imagination of himself as a rich guy. "imagination" is a person's SENSE of imagination, not a specific thing that they imagine. You can "imagine" something specific. As if he couldn't imagine himself as a rich guy. The last paragraph has some subject-verb agreement issues, but the biggest problem is that nothing has happened in this story. I know you said it's a "snippet," but you shouldn't write a snippet, you should write a stand-alone piece or you should write a longer thing and then post a snippet. It's very important to practice writing a compelling story; prose, voice, imagery, and all that stuff will fall in line, but if you don't have a plot you have nothing. Biggest mistake you made: You put your inciting incident almost near the middle of your story, and then nothing happened. I would actually recommend that you go to the Thunderdome and try to write flash fiction. Practice making compelling narratives and plots. I like the humor and voice that you put into this, but this couldn't have been good without an actual plot. angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 20:13
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systran posted:lots of helpful words Thank you for the comments either way, there's plenty of helpful stuff in there. Edit: seriously ... I can see how it would be amazingly lame if read as a one-shot where you expect some form of payback at the end. Edit 2: I'd like to keep working on the tone and language first before I continue with the rest of the story. Can I just put it in here again, as the first few paragraphs of what should become a short story, when I've worked on everything you've mentioned? Cingulate fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 21:59
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This is a snippet that I wrote a few days ago. It's probably going to be nothing more than just a snippet, but who knows? The Quiet Room Length: 272 words Help me. The man’s screams were muffled by the gag as he stared at the gaggle of people taken aback by his madness. Today had been an unusual day. Normally his days had been silent and solitary, except for the usual prison guard that came to feed and water him. But today, a group of kids showed up along with a camera crew. “You see, you like to fight?” one the guards pointed at a young black kid who stared at the prisoner with a mixture of false bravado and bewilderment in his eyes, “This is where you end up.” That example was him. Bound to a chair in four point restraints with a mask covering his mouth and a helmet on his head. He was catheterized in every possible way. Just one less bother for the guards to worry about. I’m certainly a lucky bastard. My skin hasn’t been made into a suit yet. If only they could see him grin. It was the devil in him. He never had an angel in his heart. He jerked forward in his chair and looked straight at the cameras. Get me out of here. His time was over and he knew it. Even the devil felt his body was useless now. Heeelp!! Heeeelp!! Now the only way out was death. The guards were smart. As much as they hated him, they prevented him from dying in almost every possible way. He was trapped, with only time to kill him. As the group left the room, ignoring his muffled screams, a thought was forefront in his mind. Help me, or I will kill again.
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Aug 24, 2013 06:17
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Cingulate posted:Systran, I'm really sorry I didn't make this more clear before. This wasn't supposed to be Flash Fiction, but a Snippet. I just wanted to know if I should keep on writing what I want to turn into a short story of a few thousand words, or if I should stop trying to write in English. Yeah if you want to put in the beginning of the short story or post a snippet that has a more clear arc it should be fine.
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Aug 24, 2013 17:27
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Oh, that WAS supposed to be the beginning of the short story. I've cut it down by a hundred words, but I'm not really sure how to deal with the info dump paragraphs about Komaki, who's supposed to be one of the main characters. Right now, it looks like this http://pastebin.com/3jjWQ8yh
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Aug 24, 2013 17:39
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So after about a decade of never writing any kind of fiction, I recently decided to expand my horizons and force myself out of my comfort zone by signing up for those weekly Thunderdome flash fiction contests. So far I've had a lot of fun throwing together entries and its been an awesome break from writing non-fiction. I've also learned a bit about myself as a writer; namely, I'm terrible at flash fiction, and maybe just short stories in general. I don't think my descriptions or writing are all that bad. They certainly aren't great and it would take a lot of work to be publishable but I think the best way to improve my prose is to simply keep writing as much as possible. On the other hand I am finding that I have a lot of trouble developing a story or idea that is actually appropriate for the format. Both the thunderdome entries I've submitted elicited comments along the lines of "this felt like a small part of a larger story," which was entirely accurate. I have trouble even envisioning what a 1,000 - 1,500 story would look like. Every time I try to start one I find the piece sprawling way beyond its specified word count, with the result that I then have to try and cut mercilessly during the editing stage, which in turn hurts the overall quality of the piece. I think this means that I need to spend more time thinking about the overall structure and plotting of my work. Rather than just having an idea that isn't necessarily appropriate to the word limit and then trying to awkwardly fit a square peg into a round hole isn't really working for me. Has anyone else experienced a problem like this? And if so can you offer any advice on how to get a better grip on the plotting and pacing of a short story? If anyone can recommend a decent article or book that addresses these questions then that'd be great, but I'd also love to hear from people who either have a similar problem when writing, or more experienced writers who might have some insight on how to overcome this problem (other, of course, than the obvious solution, which is to keep writing as much as possible. I realize this is the number one solution to almost any writing question, but I'm wondering if anyone can offer any advice in addition to this). For those who are interested, the two pieces I've submitted to Thunderdome are here (from the historical horror week) and here (from the petty political machinations week). If anyone wants to give feedback on those stories then that'd be great, but it isn't necessary (and its worth noting their word counts are 1200 and 1500 respectively so technically they exceed the limits of this thread). Mostly I'm interested in hearing whether other people have had this problem and what advice they have for getting around it.
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Aug 28, 2013 19:42
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quote:Your story will be structured into two scenes of roughly equal length. There's flex room there, so if you need 420 words in act 1 and 530 words in act 2, don't sweat it. Just make sure to obey the word limit. Enter this week's Thunderdome and do this.
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Aug 28, 2013 20:20
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Helsing posted:stuff First off, I'd like to point out that you are a better developed writer than most of the people who wash up on the shores of TD. Your dialogue already seems solid - enough that I wouldn't blink an eye to see it in a published work. Your descriptions, from those two pieces at least, can err on the side of heavy-handedness, but I can already see glimmers of subtlety and good flow. Given you've just come back to writing after ten years, I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. As to your question of "how the hell do I write something short?", the answer is probably one you might have feared: it really does vary from person to person. It is possible you are more suited to writing longer pieces, and yes, short stories do come more naturally to some people, but I wouldn't immediately close off an entire avenue of writing just on a hunch. I've written a whole bunch of TD entries and a number of short stories to word limits outside of SA, and even from the very off I've rarely ever gone more than 200-300 words over the given limit. More often than not I finish very close to the word limit without any editing whatsoever. I don't have a silver bullet solution for you, to me it comes very naturally and I have lots of experience of writing to word limits for years and years, but I might have a few helpful suggestions. - Don't spend much time thinking about world building. In flash fiction the name of the game is faking it, not making it. You don't have the space to wax on about the background or the world your characters inhabit. You are creating and resolving a single scene, you only need as much extraneous detail as make the background not ring hollow. It doesn't matter if things are off the cuff or unexplained, the human brain is brilliant at parsing over stuff that it doesn't understand while taking in general impressions of "ooh, sci-fi" or "oooh, words in latin". - If you're worried about coming to a single idea and then being unable to stop it unfolding out of control, stop yourself. You've come up with an idea: now, what is your ending and what is your beginning. Know how you will start and how you will finish and you will have total control over what happens in between. You may change some of it, you may change all of it - what matters is that you write under that belief during first draft. Write from goal post to goal post and you should find yourself with a much more manageable story. If you don't know how it ends when you start, you don't know when it ends either. - Finally, because overloading with info is never helpful, if you are writing a story and you can't help that it is balling out of control - you're on a roll and can't stop writing down the good poo poo - just let it pan out. Once you've finished your thousand-word-over-the-limit draft don't even think about line editing. Just don't bother. You need to step back, look at what you've written and decide: how much of this opening do I need? It doesn't matter how well written it is, if you can still make sense of the story from 500 words further in then move the beginning 500 words further in. Can you cut it off more abruptly? Are there some irrelevant paragraphs? Take your Historical Horror story for example. You said you had trouble keeping it under the limit. As an unbiased outsider, I can already see ~200 words that are easily cut from the start. The scene description of the battlefield is nice but irrelevant in the grand scheme. In fact, I much prefer to start with the dialogue. It is punchier and much better a hook than plain description. Even a casual glance over it and I can see at least two or three hundred more words that could be creamed off, not at any cost to the story and even sometimes to the improvement of it. NB: Next week's TD should be good for you; dialogue focus is already playing to your stronger suit.
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Aug 28, 2013 21:35
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sebmojo posted:Enter this week's Thunderdome and do this. I loving love the feedback I've been given in TD. I re-read my first entry in comparison to one of my later entries and hung my head in shame at how bad it was. Then I pumped my fist at how much better my later stories are. Then I hung my head again because everyone is so much better than me. edit: Erogenous Beef made that story structure recommendation. vvv Mercedes fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Aug 29, 2013 |
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Aug 28, 2013 22:19
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Thank you Jeza and sebmojo, those are extremely thoughtful and helpful insights. The time and energy that I've been seeing you guys invest into helping other writers is really impressive and your comments on my own work, as well as sebmojo's suggested story structure, are going to be really useful to me as a writer.
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Aug 29, 2013 17:19
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Helsing posted:Thank you Jeza and sebmojo, those are extremely thoughtful and helpful insights. The time and energy that I've been seeing you guys invest into helping other writers is really impressive and your comments on my own work, as well as sebmojo's suggested story structure, are going to be really useful to me as a writer. Yes - sorry, I should have cited my source  Another excellent trick is to ask yourself: o What does the main character want? o Why can't they have it? o Why do we give a poo poo? Nearly all weak stories (and yours are actually pretty good, btw - I agree with Jeza about that) fail to properly answer these questions. ps I got those three questions from some other dude too, might have been Joss Whedon idek sebmojo fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Aug 30, 2013 |
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Aug 30, 2013 00:29
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Currently Untitled Work, Chapter 1 My first flash fiction, and I didn't see a recent entry for a critique... The first memory I had is the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. That’s as far back as I could remember. Blood and pain. Everything was in a daze, and for a while I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming. Then the kick woke me up. A boot that must have come from the leg of some large goon. The pain rippled in waves, giving me goosebumps, and I was barely awake enough to even register it, but my body knew something was wrong and quickly sent adrenaline coursing through my veins. I rolled over on the floor, instinctively trying to shield myself from any further blows. “You survived, excellent.” I heard a voice from somewhere in the dark. I realized I still hadn’t opened my eyes yet. It felt like a herculean effort, but I began to examine wherever the hell I was. The first detail I noticed was the floor beneath me. It smelled of blood and bleach, and the stains were probably mine. Dimly lit in red, I was lying next to an operating table. Large, stained robotic drills arched menacingly over the table, with dark wiring protruding out. Monitors sat on the walls, giving off a mechanical hum as they displayed data. It was then I realized that the source of my current pain was casting a shadow through the red directly onto me. My eyes traced a path from the recently acquainted boot up his seven foot figure. He was augmented, that’s for sure. Looked to be pneumatic limbs, probably a reinforced rib cage for good measure. The usual fare for any hired criminal. He could likely punch through a brick wall while taking a bullet to the chest without breaking a sweat. His dark gray eyes stared at me from a skull covered in scars. “How does it feel?” the same voice asked again. I turned my head in the direction it came to see a thin man in a suit seated in a chair, legs crossed with his hands clasped in front of his face expectantly. I didn’t recognize him, but the suit definitely put him in the upper echelon, diamond-level category, from the rich high-rises. I staggered to try to get to my feet, but something prevented me from doing so. I had been so focused on the pain and confusion that I hadn’t noticed. My hair was all missing, but that couldn’t be, because I distinctly felt a pulling sensation on the back of my head when I moved. I instinctively reached back. That’s when I realized the magnitude of my situation. The numbing agent had prevented the pain receptors from my skull and brain from registering the situation, at least until they wore off. My hand reached the back of my neck, and I all I felt was metal. Metal and wires and probably blood mixed with bonding fluid, and a small mechanical heat. It was coming from my brain stem. I could hear a tiny click-click of an electronic processor operating right behind my ear “...What…” was all I could muster in my state of shock and confusion. “The operation was a success,” said the thin man. I slowly turned my head around, feeling the mechanics of whatever was attached to me slithering behind like a snake. Whatever the device was, it was hooked into the monitors behind me, reading out my heart rate, blood pressure, and other statistics that I had no idea what they meant. A terror began to fill within me as I processed what was going on, with the monitor registering my increased heart rate. I turned back to face the thin man. The anesthesia had worn off enough to where I felt like I could properly engage him. “Where am I?” “You don’t need to know that.” “Who are you? Who the gently caress…,” I raised my voice, which caused a spike of pain in my head, “Who the gently caress are you?!” Pain sheared and I had to shut my eyes. “He’s ready.” I felt a cold hand grasp the metallic object behind my head. A hard yank pulled my neck upward, followed by a *cha-thunk* and the most indescribable sensation that something was being pulled out of my head and out of my brain. That was the last detail I remember before I was in the alley. The rain woke me up, pouring like it usually does at night. I found myself seated against the side of a concrete building. I glanced out of the alley. The neon lights of “La Mystique” illuminated the alleyway. I wasn’t far from home. I staggered up, my head rocking with the worst hangover in my life. Whatever I’d had, it had thrown me for a loop. I’d never had hallucinations like that before, that real before. I walked out of the alley into the street. The road wasn’t too crowded this time of night. The bustle of citizens going to and fro was accompanied like a symphony by the rainfall, the occasional vehicle, and the banter of shopkeepers. I walked up to a stim-vendor. At least no one had taken my ID during my blackout. “One stimpak please,” I scanned my ID card. The shopkeeper verified my identity. As I moved to put it back in my pocket, it slipped out of my hands and fell to the ground. Must be the hangover. I bent down to pick it up. “Hey man, you’re bleedin’,” the shopkeeper muttered. I instinctively grabbed the back of my neck. I felt a steel and stitches, and saw blood on my hand when I pulled it back. It wasn’t a blackout that I’d just been through.
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Sep 5, 2013 05:51
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I may read and crit this later, but for future reference everyone: please make sure that the formatting of what you post looks godd in an SA window. If you c/p it from wordpad or something it's going to look like a mess. Either give us a google docs link or format it before you submit. I don't know if this bothers anyone else but it just kills me trying to read stuff with no white space.
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Sep 5, 2013 13:23
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systran posted:I may read and crit this later, but for future reference everyone: please make sure that the formatting of what you post looks godd in an SA window. If you c/p it from wordpad or something it's going to look like a mess. Either give us a google docs link or format it before you submit. I don't know if this bothers anyone else but it just kills me trying to read stuff with no white space. Yeah, now I just write my stuff for the forums naturally like that. Line break every paragraph, line break every instance of dialogue.
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Sep 5, 2013 13:33
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the posted:Currently Untitled Work, Chapter 1 Spare the rod, spoil the child. I regretted going into a line-edit on this pretty quickly because there is too much for me to correct but maybe in the end it's for the best. This is slapdash - there are tense errors, grammar mistakes and clunkiness throughout. The premise is cliché (did I mention that?), you reuse vocabulary to the extent that it is noticeable and the story itself doesn't have much going for it yet. This reads like a muddy medley of popular culture, a little bit Deus Ex/Judge Dredd/Matrix/Fallout. I realise this is flash fiction (though 100% part of longer piece, right?) and nothing in it feels original, individual or inventive. Key homework: - Avoid telling. cf. too much info about augments, diamond level. Work it into your story gently - don't overload reader but especially don't break immersion by clearly having a character act like a dictionary. - Avoid qualification of statements. This is such a common amateur mistake and is an instant red flag. There is no shame in doing it because every writer does it, especially if they are unused to writing prose, but try your best. This includes things like 'began to...', 'realised that...', 'felt like...' etc. All of those from a quick scan over this piece, there are more in there and hundreds more you can use in writing. Always remember to take the shortest route to the character's thoughts - Be careful to stay in your character's head. Too often in this story I can feel omniscient narrator coming in and filling blanks that the character can't possibly have known yet, given what the reader has been told. - Read over your work, twice, to check for sense and continuity. Unless this was you on a really bad day, you aren't at the level where flow comes particularly cleanly. Every sentence is a stepping stone and when you are writing action-type, non-literary fiction like this you want to keep each one as close as possible to make it easier for your reader to stay abreast of what is happening. - 'That's' is not a contraction of 'that was'. It is present tense, don't use it in stories written in the past tense. Jeza fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Sep 5, 2013 |
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Sep 5, 2013 14:30
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I posted a Thunderdome entry that was critiqued as the dialogue sounding like "a transcript of the English dub of an anime". (I watch a lot of anime, but I'd rather not have that seep unconsciously into my stories.) Let me crosspost it here: quote:Word count: 969 How can I make my characters sound more like college students? More importantly, what do people expect out of a college student's speech? Is it jaded? Apathetic? Peppered with slang? Or marked with a loss of innocence? My own experience is a bit different from the Western norm (closer to the story even), so I'm interested in noting the discrepancy. Also I understand that my story isn't riveting. I wanted to write about a sheltered young person on the cusp of entering the real world--living a life of relative privilege is often paralyzing if you're presented with too many options. I wanted to portray that anxiety and give a bit of weight to it. But nothing substantial happened--she sorted her emails, big deal? How do I fix this? Is the problem too trivial, or am I doing something wrong elsewhere?
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Sep 5, 2013 18:33
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I read some great advice that people never really answer each other in written dialogue. They change the subject, reply to questions that weren't asked, push their own agenda. Also a good conversational rhythm is alway changing. If you get locked into an even rhythm of back and forth it gets dreary super fast, like watching a boring tennis match. Make your characters scramble to grab service, drop tricky lobs on each other, hit their balls out and look sheepish.
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Sep 6, 2013 00:39
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I'm not the best with dialogue, but I've been getting more positive feedback. Here's my current strategy. Usually I just write a draft and get everything in place with boring dialogue that pretty much tells instead of shows. Then when I go back through I stop at each line and think "Is there a better way to convey this without using the actual boring description words I'm currently using." So for example, if in my story I have a line that is: The friends saw Pablo sitting alone. "Hey, we're going to to the movies. Would you like to come?" First thing I think is "what are they really asking here?" They're trying to include this person. Going to the movies is a PLOT point, and not descriptive. How can I convey that they want to ask him to go to the movies with them, without actually having them ask "wanna go to the movies?" Pablo was sitting alone. A kid he'd met in orientation approached him. 'Hope you've eaten, because you're coming with us to The Guilt Trip." Still not perfect, but now I've made it less boring and got to include a detail (they like dumb movies). In this case it ended up a little bit longer, but it's not as boring. If I really decided that I wanted to keep the original intention, I'd try to make it as short as possible: Two strangers approached Pablo. "Want to go to the movies?" Now it's still poo poo, but the reader's done reading it by the time they notice it's poo poo, so I feel better about it. These lines are all still pretty horrible. If this was in my actual story I'd probably just get rid of it entirely since it's just plot, and write something like: The friends asked Pablo to go see The Guilt Trip. He nodded and snapped his wrist. "I just adore Barbara Streisand!"
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Sep 6, 2013 01:21
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Chillmatic is generally very good on dialogue, go read some of his crits in the Thunderdome. He makes the point (paraphrased) that every line should say something unique about the character, so if you have placeholder dialogue that could be from anyone, then either cut it as unnecessary or change it so it's contributing to the story.
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Sep 6, 2013 02:27
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Jeza posted:Criticism Thanks, I'll try to work on that. Regarding the cliche nature, if I'm writing a piece of genre fiction, how can it not in some way be cliche? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I'm genuinely asking. I've been wanting to write a cyberpunk story for awhile, and I figured the best way to start it would be to drop the protagonist into a hard-boiled situation where he's being roughed up against his will by some nefarious corporation (which I didn't make specifically clear, yet), and also play on body horror imagery with his body being changed against his will.
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Sep 6, 2013 02:53
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the posted:Thanks, I'll try to work on that. Just do it better. Start with a cliché, then 'twiddle the knobs' until it's interesting.
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Sep 6, 2013 02:58
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So would you say that this didn't have an effective "hook?" If not, how could I have improved it grabbing the reader and making them want more of the story?
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Sep 6, 2013 02:59
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the posted:So would you say that this didn't have an effective "hook?" If not, how could I have improved it grabbing the reader and making them want more of the story? This is a general response, not about your piece specifically. The best way to make a reader want more of the story is to write an interesting story. A "hook" is part technique and part having something to back it up--you can't trick a reader into reading something lame by throwing a "hook" on the front of it. When writing in a genre, the trick is to focus not on what makes the book fit into the genre, but what makes it stand out from everything else in the genre. Cyberpunk? OF COURSE your character is getting roughed up and has some body-mods or whatever. AND WHAT? and...your character is a six year old girl; and...your character is devoutly Amish and rejects technology and...the cryptoanarchists have won, and your character belongs to an illegal corporation that is just trying to get anything done in this messed up world and...new-age nature-loving peace aliens have invaded and released a nanovirus that destroys technology (for our own good), so all the cyborgs are trying to ride out the plague in the country
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Sep 6, 2013 04:23
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I'm in a 4th year university fiction workshop, and God I am so loving tired at the moment so I'm going to type this really fast to get it done: one piece of advice the prof laid out on our first day (and hasn't fully delved into yet) is that most great short fiction stories have "an occasion". An occasion being something like a wedding, or a date between two characters, or a birthday party, or a job interview, etc. There's something in each story that's set up fairly early (this can tie into the hook) that readers can anticipate. A simple example off the top of my head: Jurassic Park(excluding the opening scene with the raptor from the movie). Dr. Grant and Ellie are informed of this island park with dinosaurs while on a digging expedition. There's the hook and the occasion right there: there's an ISLAND with DINOSAURS (don't you want to keep reading/watching?), which is the hook, and also the occasion (they're eventually going to go to this island dino park). Another great thing with setting up the occasion early on in the story: you give the reader a sense of the story's scale. If your story starts the day before a big wedding, and you give the reader the impression in the first few paragraphs that the wedding is going to be the big event where the drama/climax unfolds, then the reader is going to know that any jumps in time between then and now are most likely going to be minimal. Perhaps minutes, hours. Maybe overnight. But nothing more. In contrast to that, you might have something like the Foundation series, which spans centuries. It's been a while since I've read those books, but I remember early on that the original protagonist openly predicts how long (centuries) it's going to take for mankind to evolve to certain parts of their evolution. And it's later set up that he's devised a way to speak to our future civilizations at very specific intervals (every few hundred or thousand years), regardless of where their technology is at. So while you're invested in this protagonist, the story has already prepared you for the fact that he's probably going to die, and the reason why the book isn't getting bogged down in "real world" details is because you're probably going to get zipped forward seven hundred years in the next chapter. If you were to take that wedding story, make the first act the day before the wedding, the second act the day of the wedding, and the third act five thousand millenia in the future where the protohumans are attempting to enslave the cat people of planet yarn, your brain might just have trouble accepting that jump, since it wasn't set up in the hook nor occasion. Something to keep in mind when setting up either your short story or novel. Give us some stakes, an occasion, a reason to keep reading. Mike Works fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Sep 6, 2013 |
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Sep 6, 2013 05:48
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the posted:Regarding the cliche nature, if I'm writing a piece of genre fiction, how can it not in some way be cliche? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I'm genuinely asking. I've been wanting to write a cyberpunk story for awhile, and I figured the best way to start it would be to drop the protagonist into a hard-boiled situation where he's being roughed up against his will by some nefarious corporation (which I didn't make specifically clear, yet), and also play on body horror imagery with his body being changed against his will. Glad to see you didn't get put off by a mauling - it is 100x more useful to you to get a proper critique than it is to get some ego-assuring lies. Cyberpunk as a genre comes with a few strings attached, certain boxes that are often ticked or expected to. Including stuff that others have done before is simply unavoidable and there is nothing wrong as a writer to tread on old ground, so long as you make that old ground your own in some way. I pointed out 3 things in your line edit as cliché: 1) The first one was a language issue: Phrases like 'adrenalin coursing through veins', 'a shiver ran up her spine' etc are very derivative and played out. I was nit-picking, perhaps, but to get into the habit of avoiding that sort of thing is a good one to be in. 2) The opening line of 'You survived, excellent'. How is that cliché? Well if I put that into google in quotation marks, half my results are truly cringeworthy fan-fictions. Does that make it clear enough? It is uninteresting - I feel I have heard that kind of opener so many times it makes my head spin. It's so...obvious? Be more creative. It seems straight out a corny Bond movie. 3) My final line-edit cliché was again a different kind (this turned out surprisingly well). This time I was complaining about the scene setting itself. OK, we have unknown protagonist being tortured/modified by...a thin man in a suit, sitting down with legs crossed and hands steepled. Again, this is so very Bond villain. It might as well be Mr. Burns. It raises a million preconceptions and this harms your story. It is a shortcut to reader comprehension, using tropes, but it also turns a reader's brain off. Been there, done that. This makes for a poor story hook - you're writing not genre fiction but generic fiction. tl;dr When I whine about cliché, it isn't that you're doing stuff that has been done before, it's because you're doing stuff that has been done before the same way. You need to put your own spin on it and make it creative and novel. Twiddle 'dem knobs.
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Sep 6, 2013 14:41
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Sounds good, I'll give it another shot. Thanks!
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Sep 6, 2013 16:24
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I think I'm still a few crits ahead. Here's my thunderdome entry from last week with a few alterations to - hopefully - make it more meaningful. I'm particularly interested on feedback about the characters and relationships: can you piece together enough about Alvin, his mother, and Hank to get a sense of who they are? Are their relationships meaningful and/or interesting? How's the dialogue. Hank's Used Books Words: 1115 “...and Aunt May – you know, my stepmother's sister – wore this...” The old phone did no favors for Alvin's mother's voice; it sounded and felt like a dentist's tool. His neck hurt from cradling the phone against his shoulder, but his fingers were sticky with glue. A paperback lay open on his desk, loose pages lined up carefully. “...scandalous on a woman her age. But you know Sarah, she's too polite to say anything. Needs a backbone, that one. Don't you think?” “Umm.” It wouldn't be worth selling, but you didn't throw a book away. Someone might want to read it. People here didn't have money for books, but the free ones passed quietly from hand to hand. “Of course you do, you're a smart lad. Always were. Except for that store. Still losing money, I expect?” There was a tinkle of ice and a swallow. “Yes mom.” The margins were filled with Hank's cramped handwriting. A customer had traded the book in last week, but it had clearly been through the store before. Alvin stroked the back of his finger down the spine. “Such a lovely storefront. You could sell the place for a fortune. It'd make such a nice coffee shop, or a restaurant...” Another swallow. Ice squeaking between teeth. The last pages settled into place. “Are you even listening to me?” “I'm not going to sell the bookstore.” He pushed back from the desk, hard. His chair clunked as the wheels skidded over the uneven floorboards. The desk-lamp was on, casting a pool of yellow across the high wooden desk, the scattering of bills and paper, the pile of books. Beyond it the store was dark. “You've never made a cent off it.” Clink. Crunch. He picked the dried glue off his fingers as he walked, fingernails pulling at his skin in short, sharp pinches. “What you should do is raise the prices. I mean, I know most of those books are junk, but some have got to be worth something. Sell them on e-bay, if you insist on staying in that stupid little town.” “You raised me here.” He kept his voice mild, affable. Junk. Books weren't junk. Especially old books, with accumulated years of scribbles, broken in to open to the best parts. You didn't just read an old book, you read all the people who had read before you. “I don't want to sell on e-bay. I like meeting people.” The pipes clanked when he turned the sink on. Water sprayed over his hands. “Meeting people! Nobody interesting ever comes into your crappy shop.” She was swearing, which meant she was on her third drink. At least. Of course she wouldn't find his customers interesting. They were usually shy, quiet people, adrift in a town rife with anti-intellectualism. Useless people, she'd call them. Don't let her get to you. “I think they're interesting.” The faucet squealed as he wrenched the knob. On the other end of the line there was a clink of glass on glass and a splash. He should ask her about the drinking, but in the end, it was never worth it. She only liked talking about other people's flaws. “Have you been to a psychiatrist about your book hoarding? Just like your uncle. I knew we shouldn't have let you spend so much time with him when you were a kid--” “You left me here because he'd babysit for free--” “Your dad was sick, and I was busy. And now you're crazy! Pouring all your resources into that, that shop and ignoring your family. You know, the gardener hasn't been by in three weeks. I thought you were going to take care of it.” There was a quaver there. Was she really scared, or just manipulating him? Alvin found himself staring at his own dark reflection. The lights were still off in the shop – he knew his away around too well to need them – but his face was a twisted shadow. His hands were shaking. He took a deep breath, but the nausea didn't fade. She was old, broke, lonely. She needed his help and his support. “Are you even listening?” And then all the words he'd never said came up, hot and angry. “I always listen, mom. About every party, every flower show, everything. It's you that doesn't listen, or you'd know the gardener's out for surgery and he'll be back next week. Or were you too drunk to remember?” “How dare you speak to me like that! I have a drink now and then. It helps with my joints. At least I know how to have fun. You just sit all alone in your store and read your books and pretend having customers is the same as having friends!” “I don't have to drink to have fun, and I don't have to have people around to insult to feel good about myself. I'm not you, mom.” He regretted it as soon as he said it. It was true, but it was the mean truth, the ugly truth. The truth you didn't have to tell. The line went dead. He braced one arm against the sink as he watched himself lower the phone and press the button. He'd wanted to say that for years. He felt sick. He'd never talked back to his mother. Maybe that was the key – maybe she'd just leave him alone now. Maybe he'd be lonely. The phone rang. “Hello?” “And don't you ever speak to me like that again, you ungrateful, disrespectful--” He pressed the “end” button and set the phone down. When it rang again, he left it in the bathroom and walked back through the darkened bookshelves to his desk. He'd have to leave her a message in the morning about the gardener. She wouldn't remember tonight. He pulled open the top drawer and lifted out a battered old novel. Inside it was dedicated in neat, cramped handwriting: To Alvin, The only person worth anything in this whole misbegotten family. This is my favorite book. Treasure it. The money and the store are yours. I'm sure you'll spend some of it on that old nag you call a mother, but keep some for yourself. Take in the strays and the lost souls. There's love in the books, boy. Don't forget it. And I love you like a son. Don't forget that, either. -Hank. Alvin held the book carefully so the tears wouldn't smudge the ink. He let it fall open to the best part and began to read.
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Sep 7, 2013 04:00
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Anathema Device posted:I think I'm still a few crits ahead. Here's my thunderdome entry from last week with a few alterations to - hopefully - make it more meaningful. I'm particularly interested on feedback about the characters and relationships: can you piece together enough about Alvin, his mother, and Hank to get a sense of who they are? Are their relationships meaningful and/or interesting? How's the dialogue. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Sep 7, 2013 |
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Sep 7, 2013 04:31
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I don't know what the hell has been wrong with me this week. I've barely written anything even though I've had time too. Instead, I've been doing this crazy new fad, called reading books. Couldn't put it down. Anyways, here's one of Bad Seafood's homework assignments he gave me. Flash rule - Write about someone being born, living and dying within 200 words. The Soap Opera of my Life Innes came into the world naked, bloody and crying. Growing up, she bruised her knees and elbows playing all the boy sports, right up until she grew breasts. Boys will be boys, her father used to say whenever she came home upset. One boy in particular was merciless. Victor would pull her hair, take her things and call her names. It shocked Innes when Victor wanted to date a few years later. They didn't have a lot of money, yet the ring Victor gave her was so beautiful, that Innes cried as she agreed to marry him. Innes never figured out how their marriage deteriorated so fast. She followed Victor one night to a motel where he met with a woman she recognized from his work. She could barely see through the flood of tears. Her body trembled as she pressed the nose of the pistol to her temple. Her finger gently squeezed against the trigger. She aimed the gun away. Why should she pay the price? Innes instead emptied the entire clip into a surprised Victor and his home-wrecker. Distracted, Innes failed to stop at a crossroads. Headlights grabbed her attention and the fatal impact rolled her car away.
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Sep 7, 2013 16:36
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