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Cease to Hope posted:So I guess you never read the sixth book, where the happy ending is that the main character is allowed to have secret trysts with the underage daughter of another character because she's possessing the body of an adult woman who hates the main character so it's totally okay. It's two different kinds of rape in one! I didn't actually finish the series, no. I didn't even know there were more than five books until years after I'd moved on. What the gently caress.
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# ? Oct 31, 2013 20:09 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 22:34 |
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The Writer's Block Daily Thread. This one's always good for a laugh, with validation-hungry tropers pleading for someone, anyone, to pay attention to them and the anime inspired 'novel' they wrote 1000 words of last night and will probably never look at again. Someone was actually thinking of submitting this cri de coeur as an Elance profile. quote:Honestly, it's hard to sell myself as a freelance writer. Most of my training and experience to this point has been in photography. ...But I'm looking to move into a career that doesn’t require buying thousands in gear, driving all over the state, and wasting time on Craigslist dipshits who decide to pay you in middle fingers. Seriously, my car can't take that much longer. And then if you go back a few pages you get this. Eye'm the cutest! posted:
Happy Halloween!
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# ? Oct 31, 2013 21:32 |
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I like the price scale which charges $10 for 500 words, but only $50 for 70,000. I'm sure that both will be of equal quality because they'll both be garbage, but that's one hell of a pricing scheme.
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# ? Oct 31, 2013 21:38 |
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Why would you ever hire someone who wrote that? He's actively trying to unsell himself.
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# ? Oct 31, 2013 21:40 |
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Anais Nun posted:And then if you go back a few pages you get this. Did he write them both?
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# ? Oct 31, 2013 22:25 |
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Mors Rattus posted:Why would you ever hire someone who wrote that? He's actively trying to unsell himself. The only criterion for a writer on TVT is "wants to be a writer real, real, real bad," so I can see how you could extrapolate from that and try to cultivate a professional persona of raw, seething desperation. This guy also seems to be going at it from the perspective of "writing is easy, I can just crank out a poo poo-ton of words so I may as well sell them cheap," which fits with the general TVT "just crap out as many words as you can and you too will be a Real Writer!" philosophy. (I don't know anything about the freelance writing world, and I imagine a good chunk of it is word-crap scutwork, but surely even then you have to word-crap to very specific guidelines.) I also really want to live in the world where this guy will be commissioned for a 70,000-word novel for cash on the barrelhead, no questions asked. Is there any part of the publishing world that isn't flooded with lovely unsolicited manuscripts that they could probably get for free if they didn't care about quality at all? I imagine he's thinking of movie tie-in novels and stuff like that, but even then being the goddamn lowest bidder is not really helpful, unless you want to be hired to novelize Animal Soccer World.
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# ? Oct 31, 2013 22:38 |
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Antivehicular posted:I imagine he's thinking of movie tie-in novels and stuff like that, but even then being the goddamn lowest bidder is not really helpful, unless you want to be hired to novelize Animal Soccer World.
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# ? Oct 31, 2013 22:50 |
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In fairness, I would absolutely buy a novelization of Animal Soccer World. But let me ask you a question: do you want kids? quote:Well, my oldest brother was born just under a year after me, so that has me tolerating a baby or a toddler from my birth ('cause I'm not gonna give myself a pass here) to the day my oldest brother turned 3. Which would've been in 1993. In 1994, my next brother was born, so that has me growing to hate kids from my birth (1989) to 1993 and then again from 1994 until 1997. The next child was born in 1999, and the one after that in 2000 - so from 1999 to 2003, I was again learning to hate kids. Well, I moved from my parents' place in 2005, some time after yet another child was born. (There was one more after that.)
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# ? Oct 31, 2013 23:00 |
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Metal Loaf posted:Did he write them both? No, that's Major Tom. Who works in a school.
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# ? Oct 31, 2013 23:54 |
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Today's Chainsawsuit made me think of Tropers.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 00:34 |
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Anais Nun posted:No, that's Major Tom. Who works in a school. And apparently inspects the women's bathroom.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 07:09 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:And apparently inspects the women's bathroom. The loud Tropers are usually janitors or cart collecting robots.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 07:23 |
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crowfeathers posted:But let me ask you a question: do you want kids? The fact that he gets confused because his math must be off, because he spent one-third of his childhood not hating children but he still hates more than two-thirds of every child, is so delightful. BEEP BOOP CANNOT COMPUTE, CORE PROCESS "HATE_ALL_CHILD.EXE" IS NOT RESPONDING, FATAL FLAW REPORTED IN SELF-ANALYSIS MODULE
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 07:53 |
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Antivehicular posted:(I don't know anything about the freelance writing world, and I imagine a good chunk of it is word-crap scutwork, but surely even then you have to word-crap to very specific guidelines.) Nope. Word count is one of the things you get on a brief - but as often as not, the challenge is keeping the count down. There's only so much space on a book jacket or a pamphlet page, and you have to be able to get the necessary message into a finite space while still matching the required tone. Even a long commission has to have a high content-to-length ratio; you can't just waffle and pad. Every word matters. Also, you need to be a functional human being, because there are always going to be rewrites and discussions. 'Overinvested and desperate' just spells 'a nightmare to work with'. There's a reason why we charge the rates we do: it's skilled work. Also because it's not a loving hobby: like everyone else, we need money to live on and some of us would like to eat fresh vegetables. So gently caress you, troper, for trying to devalue the labor of people like me. And for calling copy writing 'bitch work'. It's an honest trade, not a last resort for failures with a big ego. There is no 'bitch work'. You do every job to the best of your abilities - and if you can't grasp that, you can't write.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 08:22 |
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Apple Tree posted:Nope. Word count is one of the things you get on a brief - but as often as not, the challenge is keeping the count down. There's only so much space on a book jacket or a pamphlet page, and you have to be able to get the necessary message into a finite space while still matching the required tone. Even a long commission has to have a high content-to-length ratio; you can't just waffle and pad. Every word matters. I stand corrected, and yeah, that makes sense; I apologize if I implied that freelance writing is in any way an unskilled occupation, because it's obviously not. I'd love to see this guy apply his strategy here to other skilled jobs: "okay, so I wanna be a carpenter, but my only experience is that I've assembled my flat-pack bookcases, and I took a semester of shop in middle school. How can I compete with the existing talented, properly trained labor force? I know! I'll be desperate as gently caress and work so cheap they won't bother to notice I don't know the difference between a screwdriver and a power drill! I'll put up a house for fifty bucks! This is surely a better strategy than actually getting training in my field!"
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 09:39 |
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I'd just like to point out that, judging from his costs, for two hundred bucks he'll write 1.3 million words, longer than Remembrance of Things Past.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 09:48 |
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The writers here will be aware of the oft-repeated maxim, "There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.", which I feel like could really apply to such many Troper efforts. The problem is that the site has a couple of elements - most particularly its dry categorisation and ingredient process approach to art - that imply a writer can just spew anything out onto a page and it'll be immediately acceptable. Writers know this isn't the case. I love writing; while I'd shy away from calling my stuff "really good", it's still a long, hard process. I'd even go so far as to say that academic criticism "flows out of me" easier than creative writing. This even applies to the some of the most experimental consciousness prose. See this display of Samuel Beckett's short story 'Ping' for instance and you'll very quickly get the impression that was anything but written randomly. Samuel Beckett posted:We don't have an article named Main/SamuelBeckett. If you want to start this new page, just click the edit button above. Be careful, though, the only things that go in the Main namespace are tropes. Don't put in redirects for shows, books, etc.. Use the right namespace for those. In all fairness there is a Waiting for Godot page. It doesn't really have anything of note, just the usual awful and condescending terms like "True Art is Incomprehensible". EDIT: Wait, wait, hold on. They have a page for "School Study Media", which is for collecting together "Those works of fiction that people tend to study at school, often called the "canon"." Now, I don't have a problem with people trying to compile canons, even though it's a pretty tetchy term that's constantly evolving. Heck, schools and universities in the UK have made a point of going outside the traditional canon in recent years when it comes to English classes, in order to reflect a changing, more multicultural environment. I don't really understand what the point of putting together this particular list is but what jumped out at me is this: TV Tropes posted:Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is apparently used to teach meme theory. I love Metal Gear Solid 2. I'd even go so far as to call it my favourite ever video game! ... but is this actually a thing? Or was it just hearsay and TV Tropes really just couldn't go one list article without referencing either video games or anime? On a lighter, more nerdygoon note, I'm unsure as to why Alexander Nevsky is listed there. I love Eisenstein, but in my experience Strike, October and Ivan the Terrible are far more likely to be used in film classes (Potemkin already being listed). Hedgehog Pie fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Nov 1, 2013 |
# ? Nov 1, 2013 11:51 |
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Hedgehog Pie posted:
I've heard that lots of times. Only from TVTropes.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 12:46 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I've heard that lots of times. It's not unheard of to do stuff like this in education (my personal favorite is studying Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3 in psychology courses, because Anakin exhibits textbook borderline personality disorder), so on one level I wouldn't be surprised. MGS2's climax, while doing a ton of weird poo poo, does manage to get the basics of meme theory right enough to be a decent introduction to the concept for someone who's otherwise unfamiliar. But on the other hand, I've never seen any evidence of this claim, and there's probably a much easier way to introduce someone to it than the end of MGS2.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 13:09 |
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Hedgehog Pie posted:The writers here will be aware of the oft-repeated maxim, "There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.", It's certainly oft repeated by people incapable of producing good writing. I wonder what TVTropes thinks of rewriting? Hm, let's see, first hit: quote:Rewriting Reality Ooh, the power to make things actually happen with your writing! That's gotta be a favourite with them. It's meta and flattering all at the same time, and it doesn't actually matter whether the writing's any good because it makes magic and that means it must have some kind of meaning! Apple Tree fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Nov 1, 2013 |
# ? Nov 1, 2013 19:24 |
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Cleretic posted:It's not unheard of to do stuff like this in education (my personal favorite is studying Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3 in psychology courses, because Anakin exhibits textbook borderline personality disorder), so on one level I wouldn't be surprised. MGS2's climax, while doing a ton of weird poo poo, does manage to get the basics of meme theory right enough to be a decent introduction to the concept for someone who's otherwise unfamiliar. Yeah, it's like when Warcraft nerds jumped on the whole, "Real economists study the cash flow in the Auction House!" While it's true those economists aren't saying that your Dragonrider Spear is worth real world money. In fact, if they really wanted to an economics class could run an experiment in which they crashed the game economy. Because there's no real repercussions for loving with your Internet Dragonbux. Apple Tree posted:It's certainly oft repeated by people incapable of producing good writing. I follow an editor's group on Facebook. On December 1 last year they posted an image reading "Congratulations! Now make 21 more drafts of that NaNoWriMo monster and we might publish it!"
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 20:07 |
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Apple Tree posted:Ooh, the power to make things actually happen with your writing! That's gotta be a favourite with them. It's meta and flattering all at the same time, and it doesn't actually matter whether the writing's any good because it makes magic and that means it must have some kind of meaning! Myst character sheet for Catherine posted:Hot Mom At least it's Catherine and not Yeesha.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 20:26 |
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Razorwired posted:Yeah, it's like when Warcraft nerds jumped on the whole, "Real economists study the cash flow in the Auction House!" While it's true those economists aren't saying that your Dragonrider Spear is worth real world money. In fact, if they really wanted to an economics class could run an experiment in which they crashed the game economy. Because there's no real repercussions for loving with your Internet Dragonbux. Right. There's been some genuine economics studies of Eve Online as well, because it's a flawed but workable example of huge numbers of people playing around with true deregulation -- and thus getting scammed all to hell. But those economists also know to stay the hell away from it, because it is crazy.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 22:51 |
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Antivehicular posted:I'd love to see this guy apply his strategy here to other skilled jobs: "okay, so I wanna be a carpenter, but my only experience is that I've assembled my flat-pack bookcases, and I took a semester of shop in middle school. How can I compete with the existing talented, properly trained labor force? I know! I'll be desperate as gently caress and work so cheap they won't bother to notice I don't know the difference between a screwdriver and a power drill! I'll put up a house for fifty bucks! This is surely a better strategy than actually getting training in my field!" I'm pretty sure the guys my former landlord hired as handymen did exactly this. But as someone else said, writing freelance isn't just making GBS threads out words as fast as you can and being done with it. Your client will have edits and rewrites and pretty soon your $50 job is stretching out for months. There are some clients who are looking for the cheapest bid and care less about quality of writing, but whether the client is looking for a high-end writer or not, they are going to be looking for someone whose specialty matches their project, whether that's SEO, B2B/B2C marketing, legal writing, educational writing, blogging, etc. Everyone's just going to skip right past his profile to the one that has the keywords they are looking for. I never understand people who look at a website like elance and think that THIS is the venue where being edgy is really gonna pay off.
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# ? Nov 1, 2013 23:42 |
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Apple Tree posted:It's certainly oft repeated by people incapable of producing good writing. Hm? Maybe we have a conflict of opinion here but I certainly don't write my best without redrafting and editing, so it's a worthy lesson in my eyes (unless I'm really dreadful after all?). I mean, Hemingway is supposed to have done upwards of 40 drafts for a lot of his work, right? TV Tropes posted:Rated M for Manly: Hemingway was the epitome of manhood See, TV Tropes thinks that's a good model to follow.
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# ? Nov 2, 2013 08:07 |
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Hedgehog Pie posted:I love Metal Gear Solid 2. I'd even go so far as to call it my favourite ever video game! Are there global meetings for all of us who feel this way? It should be easy to reserve a place, you'd only need seating for, like, six. I thought I'd take a look at the page for The Forever War, a good sci-fi book written by a Vietnam veteran about how strange and alienating it would be to go off to fight aliens and come back to a world hundreds of years later that's now nothing like the home you knew. Everything's different; government, money, how people function in society, sexual mores. About half of the trope page is about the sex part.
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# ? Nov 2, 2013 08:57 |
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TV Tropes was an embarrassing and shameful part of my underclassmen high school years. One thing I recall a lot of was nerds overselling stuff and trying (and failing) to be funny. I decided to look at the Welcome to Night Vale page, because that's popular and very different than the usual poo poo they consume. The worst part was when they called Cecil a deadpan snarker, the official TV Tropes label for "I like this character".
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# ? Nov 2, 2013 17:25 |
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An attempt at comedy backfires in Translation Train Wreckquote:Find times the transfer to are negative. Additionally find times she false distort velocity with it honorarium and initial position cranial trauma by subdivides a galaxy capturing wall.
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# ? Nov 2, 2013 20:45 |
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crowfeathers posted:An attempt at comedy backfires in Translation Train Wreck Backfires? Au contraire, that's the most genuinely humorous thing on the whole of that site and I'm shocked the more humorless tropers haven't accused it of being unhelpful and "fixed" it. FAKE EDIT: "More humorless" tropers ha ha what am I talking about.
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# ? Nov 2, 2013 20:58 |
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Mr Tastee posted:deadpan snarker quote:Ann Coulter is legendary as a kind of Trope Codifier for American Politics. When you read any of her columns or books at random, it's not too hard to see why.... quote:Japanese rocker Gackt is a weird version of this. Instead of saying things that are sarcastic or cutting, he instead says things that are deliberately absurd, nonsensical, or lewd, but always with a straight face. One particularly infamous joke has led some fans to think that he seriously believes he's a 496 year old vampire. quote:Jhonen Vasquez has an extremely deadpan, macabre, and sarcastic sense of humor. Its really quite fascinating. He said once on his blog that he would do a fact each day about Invader Zim, and most of them were'nt even facts, but fake stories he made up, such as kids in a control group dying from how scary ZIM was, Richard Horvitz being drunk at work and screaming at everyone in his Dagget voice, and even a fake interview where Rikki Simmons (the guy who voiced GIR and Bloaty) where dark powers overcame him and he killed everyone in the room. quote:The man that Colbert parodies, Bill O'Reilly, is another example. When Jon Stewart took him out of context and snarked about how Bill is "looking out for a poor, dwindling minority", implying that that rich were who O'Reilly was talking about, O'Reilly turned it into an Insult Backfire with the following: It really should't surprise me that these people don't even have a congruent definition of what a deadpan snarker should be.
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# ? Nov 2, 2013 21:14 |
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It's always seemed to mean "guy who is a sarcastic rear end in a top hat to everybody at all times", aka a Joss Whedon character, and it struck me as odd they'd idolise that kind of person so much. But all I really needed to say to explain it was "Joss Whedon" I guess. Edit: Having checked, they define Deadpan Snarker as just someone who makes sarcastic remarks. That seems overly broad to the point of uselessness. Flesnolk fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Nov 3, 2013 |
# ? Nov 3, 2013 07:18 |
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Flesnolk posted:That seems overly broad to the point of uselessness. TvTropes.txt
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# ? Nov 3, 2013 07:31 |
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Jay O posted:Backfires? Au contraire, that's the most genuinely humorous thing on the whole of that site and I'm shocked the more humorless tropers haven't accused it of being unhelpful and "fixed" it. Fast Eddie and several hangers-on (I'm too kind to say dicksucks) throw bitchfits whenever an article copies whatever it's about, like that. ^^ Oh, God. I remember when a brave little trooper (troper, whatever) happily announced on the Troper Tales page that he solely existed to annoy the gently caress out of assholes, and proceeded to tear into every insufferable entry left on the page. (Granted, it was still insufferable, but drat if it's not like watching Hitler and Stalin fight to the death.)
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# ? Nov 3, 2013 07:34 |
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JackMackerel posted:Fast Eddie and several hangers-on (I'm too kind to say dicksucks) throw bitchfits whenever an article copies whatever it's about, like that. I think that was actually a rare instance of tropers noting when something had been thoroughly run into the ground. For a while, "self demonstrating articles" were a thing, but it got to the point where everything on the site was like that and the community got sick of it. I could be remembering wrong though.
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# ? Nov 3, 2013 14:33 |
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Hedgehog Pie posted:Hm? Maybe we have a conflict of opinion here but I certainly don't write my best without redrafting and editing, so it's a worthy lesson in my eyes (unless I'm really dreadful after all?). I mean, Hemingway is supposed to have done upwards of 40 drafts for a lot of his work, right? Well that's me told. Guess I'd better work on my manliness. What I mean is that yes, of course there is such a thing in the world as okay writing that can be knocked into better shape. But there's a fuckton more writing that's not good, never will be good and no amount of rewriting could possibly fix, unless you began the 'rewrite' by Mickey Finning the original writer and putting someone else on the project. People of that kind - people to whom the only good editorial advice you could really give would be 'Shut down your Word program, take a few deep breaths and start making a list of other things to do' - absolutely love any saying that can be used to justify their stuff being poo poo. Denying the existence of non-poo poo is very popular among lovely writers. Because actually, there is such a thing as a good first draft. Probably a perfect first draft is rare to mythical, but to say there's 'no such thing' as good writing just isn't true, and kind of insulting to a lot of writers. I've seen plenty of good first drafts in my time. Some people use sayings like that to help themselves relax and get less self-conscious. The tropy type, on the other hand, often uses them to pretend that nobody's any better than them anyway so being a completely crappy writer doesn't mean they aren't a WRITER.
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# ? Nov 3, 2013 14:41 |
Of course there are exceptions to most first drafts not being that great and people that misuse helpful advice to justify their shittiness. It's just a helpful statement to people to remind them of the importance of editing and rewriting. Tropers that try to use that phrase to justify how lovely their first drafts are are also the sort of people that completely miss the part about needing to edit and rewrite.
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# ? Nov 3, 2013 15:45 |
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Apple Tree posted:Well that's me told. Guess I'd better work on my manliness. Who are these mythical writers who consistently pump out good first drafts? Because every writer I've heard of who's styled themselves a "one draft wonder" is a loving hack who suffers from George Lucas Syndrome. "Good writing is rewriting" coming out of the mouths of every professional editor/writer I've read means, "No, you're not special. It's ok for your first draft to suck, but we don't want to see it. Shut the gently caress up and learn how to edit." Only tropers can twist that phrase to mean the complete loving opposite of what it means. Stating that all first drafts need heavy editing is not insulting to writers, because most pro or semi-pro writers are not deluded enough to think the sun shines out of their assholes and that every piece of unedited word spew they crap out comes out rainbows. Sure, there are plenty of Phillip Jose Farmers in the world who managed to get their lazy one-draft garbage published because it had other things going for it, but the quality of their writing remains complete poo poo. Like George Lucas, they may even make a fuckton of money at it, but their dialogue is still stilted expository poo poo and their plots are full gaping holes bigger than Goatse's anus. That is what happens when you don't loving edit, and no, there are almost no exceptions. What you are basically saying is some people are just magically that good and others will never be. Bullshit. Anyone can learn to write if they bust their asses, read a ton of good writing, and learn from the masters. Of course you can't improve in a vacuum or a hugbox because you're not getting any instruction. Yes, it's fair to say tropers should just stop writing, but only so long as they do nothing but sit on their asses injesting pop culture all day. Some idiots on TVTropes or any number of fanfic sites will grow the gently caress up someday (I hope), gain some life experience, and learn how to apply themselves. There's a reason why most writer's careers happen after 30. It's because it takes them that long to write something that's worth a drat. For those who never grow the gently caress up and hide in a hugbox all day, they'll probably suck forever. Oh well. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Nov 3, 2013 |
# ? Nov 3, 2013 21:55 |
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Stuporstar posted:Who are these mythical writers who consistently pump out good first drafts? Professional writers I've worked with. Calm down. How about some content? I hit the 'random' button, and got this oddity: quote:Character Roster Global Warming This is a good example of why TVTropes is such a famous time sink, I reckon: it's pretty much incomprehensible unless you click the link. 'Mighty Glacier' apparently means this: quote:As the name implies, the Mighty Glacier is one of the strongest people in the world. A single hit is like ten hits from anyone else. Hitting them feels like hitting a solid wall of iron, and they'll usually laugh at anything that is too weak to have them Blown Across the Room. Mighty Glaciers also tend to carry weapons that would break anyone else's arms just to pick up, and can hold open doors that would break a lesser person's fingers off when they slammed shut. A long-winded (excuse me, 'breezy language') way of saying 'A character that's strong and tough but slow-moving', basically. 'Mighty Glacier' is cutesy, but it more or less makes sense in context; everyone knows that glaciers are slow-moving. But somehow the phrase has gotten so embedded that they think it's a useful resource to create another phrase that makes no sense at all unless you're already familiar with the original reference. When people say it's a time-sink, it implies that it's moreish like cookies are moreish: you keep at them because they're nice. Actually it's moreish because it's disorientating: you can't understand a lot of it unless you keep reading more and more. You pretty much have to take on board its entire way of thinking to understand what it's talking about. Less like cookies and more like cigarettes: by the time you start enjoying them, you've created a habit. Plus I think they deserve a 'no such thing as notability' star for the 'compare to the Smurfette Principle' thing. Because being a weird piece in the fighting game set and being a woman are totally the same thing.
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# ? Nov 4, 2013 00:02 |
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Apple Tree posted:A long-winded (excuse me, 'breezy language') way of saying 'A character that's strong and tough but slow-moving', basically. 'Mighty Glacier' is cutesy, but it more or less makes sense in context; everyone knows that glaciers are slow-moving. But somehow the phrase has gotten so embedded that they think it's a useful resource to create another phrase that makes no sense at all unless you're already familiar with the original reference. That's the thing about Tropers. They think that everyone is aware of trope names and in-jokes. Now then, shall I plow into the Your Mileage Might Vary page for Fire Emblem Awakening? Considering how much the games lends itself to that shipping bullshit, I'm sure that there's going to be something nice here.
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# ? Nov 4, 2013 02:11 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 22:34 |
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Testekill posted:Now then, shall I plow into the Your Mileage Might Vary page for Fire Emblem Awakening? Considering how much the games lends itself to that shipping bullshit, I'm sure that there's going to be something nice here.
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# ? Nov 4, 2013 02:34 |