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Ironic Twist posted:“it’s” i will murder u with my mind
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Feb 2, 2020 23:54
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 08:31 |
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On the subject of it's, what's wrong with it's as a shortening of it has? No one says "it has been a while." I feel like there's an emerging use case for this. It's been in our speech for some time.
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Feb 3, 2020 02:44
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Azza Bamboo posted:On the subject of it's, what's wrong with it's as a shortening of it has? 
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Feb 3, 2020 02:50
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Azza Bamboo posted:On the subject of it's, what's wrong with it's as a shortening of it has? nothing, I use it like that all the time
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Feb 3, 2020 02:51
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Azza Bamboo posted:On the subject of it's, what's wrong with it's as a shortening of it has? 'it's is only short for it is' is something i say a lot, lol. it's just a concise formulation, it's obv includes 'it has' as well.
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Feb 3, 2020 02:55
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EDIT: this post was a crime
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Feb 3, 2020 03:06
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You mean going back to pre Elizabethan times when English words could be spellt any way that made the right sound?
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Feb 3, 2020 03:10
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It's a standard contraction. What are you talking about? (Or was that a response to the deleted post?)
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Feb 3, 2020 03:43
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The deleted post.
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Feb 3, 2020 03:46
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Also to answer the actual question from the last page, the plural of it is "they". English only has the one plural third-person pronoun (aside from the demonstrative ones like these/those.)
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Feb 3, 2020 03:53
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Ironic Twist posted:“it’s” Don't do this to non-native speakers, thanks.
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Feb 3, 2020 05:48
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This thread is a safe space for grammatical dad jokes
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Feb 3, 2020 05:59
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Azza Bamboo posted:On the subject of it's, what's wrong with it's as a shortening of it has? I can't tell if this is a weird joke about people questioning extremely long standing usages or not. Merriam-Webster posted:Definition of it's
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Feb 3, 2020 15:05
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Merriam-Webster is liberal propaganda.
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Feb 3, 2020 16:43
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Safety Biscuits posted:Don't do this to non-native speakers, thanks. I apologize.
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Feb 4, 2020 02:01
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Is it normal to feel like you "have" to hit a minimum word limit for each chapter? I feel weird if I haven't passed that 2000 mark.
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Feb 4, 2020 03:26
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Kaiser Mazoku posted:Is it normal to feel like you "have" to hit a minimum word limit for each chapter? I feel weird if I haven't passed that 2000 mark.
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Feb 4, 2020 05:16
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Kaiser Mazoku posted:Is it normal to feel like you "have" to hit a minimum word limit for each chapter? I feel weird if I haven't passed that 2000 mark. I was at the library over the weekend and thumbed through ~5 james patterson novels. Not a single one had a chapter longer than 4 full pages, ~800-1000 words.
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Feb 4, 2020 05:27
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Just wanted to say thank you very much for the constructive feedback from the judges in the Thunderdome thread. The feedback was definitely fair and I struggled to fit in what I wanted to write versus having to explain everything within a limit of a thousand words. This was my first time trying this and i'm glad it was taken positively. 
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Feb 18, 2020 14:51
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I need to get in on that stuff to help keep my brain from melting any further. Have to figure out how to get a doc from my work computer to my phone app though.
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Feb 18, 2020 15:36
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I got some feedback on a story I'm writing that the third chapter was "jarring" and "hard to follow" because the PoV shifted from the main character to someone else. The reviewer said it should have just kept the PoV on the main character, because they appear in the chapter anyway, but I thought it would be more interesting to have this one through the eyes of his dad and it keeps from revealing some things that were happening to the main character internally that have another whole chapter exploring them later. I'm a little skeptical of the critique because it seemed like they were saying the very act of switching PoVs was bad, not anything about how I did it. What does everyone here think about it in general? Do you ever find PoV changes to be excessive or disorienting? Is there any way to make them smoother I don't know about?
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Feb 26, 2020 02:04
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Generally readers find POV changes disruptive and confusing (especially early in the book) and you have to make them pay off quick. They feel like they're starting over again just when they got invested in the last POV. Also if it's not a full length novel with a wordcount >40k or something, you should probably just have a single POV.
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Feb 26, 2020 03:37
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If only one chapter is from a different POV, it is strange. You could make a pattern of deviating from your protagonist, so every third chapter is from the POV of dad or a different character, to alleviate that. Maybe keep them shorter. On the other hand, I don't see the "pay off" for the reader.
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Feb 26, 2020 04:36
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Safety Biscuits posted:If only one chapter is from a different POV, it is strange. You could make a pattern of deviating from your protagonist, so every third chapter is from the POV of dad or a different character, to alleviate that. Maybe keep them shorter. There is a pattern to it. In the first few chapters almost every POV is different, because I want to show the events leading up to the main conflict from different perspectives to create a sense of dread and context. Then after the conflict is established it mostly sticks to the protagonist's POV with occasional switches when it would benefit the themes, mood or pacing by showing something the protagonist couldn't know.
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Feb 26, 2020 05:46
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There's always 'writing well enough to break the rules' but I think in most cases rapid POV swaps towards the start are untenable and should be avoided. And if it's not a full length novel you should almost never have multiple POVs at all.
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Feb 26, 2020 06:11
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oot posted:There is a pattern to it. In the first few chapters almost every POV is different, because I want to show the events leading up to the main conflict from different perspectives to create a sense of dread and context. Then after the conflict is established it mostly sticks to the protagonist's POV with occasional switches when it would benefit the themes, mood or pacing by showing something the protagonist couldn't know. why is it that the third chapter is the one getting the ire then? was the third chapter the first time you did the PoV switches? did they have any comments about the other PoV switches?
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Feb 26, 2020 06:33
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flerp posted:why is it that the third chapter is the one getting the ire then? was the third chapter the first time you did the PoV switches? did they have any comments about the other PoV switches? Dunno. First three chapters (or first four if you count the prologue) are all from different PoVs.
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Feb 26, 2020 06:42
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Speaking as a reader, I guess I don't find POV switches disorienting as much as just annoying and gimmicky. I don't know for a fact that there's more books in recent years doing multiple POVs, but I feel like I've read more of them lately and with rare exceptions it tends to just pull me out of the story and remind me that I'm reading a book (which is not inherently a bad thing, except in this case it's clearly not the intent and doesn't benefit the book). Also as others have kind of said, if your reader doesn't relate to one of the POVs, or does relate heavily to the "main" POV, you risk them getting frustrated that the focus is getting repeatedly pulled away from that main character or to a character they don't care about, which (for me) is sometimes enough to just ditch a book and move on to something else. I can't say it's happened a lot, and it's not as much of an issue in a book that isn't heavily centered around a main character or driven by their role in the story being told, but I think I see it in the same light as a lot of less-traditional storytelling methods that run the risk of being a gimmick: if the story can be told without the gimmick, it's probably worth trying to tell it without it. I could see a situation where you're telling the story from a wide range of perspectives to build dread either feeling very tedious and repetitive, or totally gripping, or anywhere in between.
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Feb 26, 2020 21:55
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I can only think of a couple of examples where there is a main POV who isn't the only one around. Ensemble works like GRRM or Turtledove, sure, but far fewer with a main character at all. And in all of them we start with the main character exclusively for a very long chunk of the book, and just go to the others in short vignettes (American Gods) or at the mid point (Richard Stark's Parker books follow a strict structure; the third of four acts is either from the antagonist point of view or a series of chapters from various other characters.
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Feb 26, 2020 23:30
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oot posted:I got some feedback on a story I'm writing that the third chapter was "jarring" and "hard to follow" because the PoV shifted from the main character to someone else. The reviewer said it should have just kept the PoV on the main character, because they appear in the chapter anyway, but I thought it would be more interesting to have this one through the eyes of his dad and it keeps from revealing some things that were happening to the main character internally that have another whole chapter exploring them later. I understand that you are trying to pace out the learning curve of your novel, what does the story gain otherwise? The main issue here is that you have both POV characters in the same physical space/setting. This is difficult to pull off with a straightforward 1st/3rd limited narrator. You really have to flex your writerly muscles to keep your reader going because that sort of shift will almost always guarantee a break in flow/immersion UNLESS the format has already been established throughout the novel, or is some kind of meta narrative. This is my own taste, but I find the most reliable way is to appeal to your reader's curiosity immediately. And I mean in the first sentence of the new chapter. There has to be some kind of information that challenges some other memorable notion you presented in the last chapter or two. It's one of the easiest ways to grease the mental wheels. But definitely not the only one.
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Feb 29, 2020 03:19
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I have a question: I've noticed in my writing that I tend to have a lot of paragraphs like this: quote:It was over in minutes. When they had confirmed the old woman no longer had a sign of life they shut off the engine and placed the key face up on the dashboard, taking any photos and mementos, emptying out the ashtray and shattering the mirrors and lights in accordance with the traditions of old. This done, they took a bottle of bleach from the laundry room and poured it into the engine to ensure that the car died with its driver. They took the spare cans of gasoline in the garage and set about dousing the house with it, piling all photographs and reminders into a makeshift pyre in the center of the living room. When they were finished they threw a match into it and watched the house consume itself from a safe distance. Which is the classic telling instead of showing style. My question is, I know these things are first-drafty as all hell and usually come out in editing, but whatever I do, these drat things sneak back in. Is there some way to catch these as they form? (outside of "write more" obviously). For instance this is kind of a load bearing scene in my current draft (the main character is part of an automobile based nomadic cult of sorts and his family are burning down his paternal grandmother's home after she dies because they believe a permanent dwelling place is a kind of sin), but none of this really gets conveyed (outside of the phrase "in accordance with the traditions of old"), and the next scene is the father basically doing an expodump as the house burns. I guess to clarify, are there some questions that I might ask myself to go "deeper" into a scene? Part of the problem is that I really struggle with characterization. Most of my characters feel "flat" compared to what I have pictured in my head, so as a result I kind of just picture the scene with some vague person going through the motions of the scene in my head which results in these kinds of "paint-by-numbers" scenes in my stories.
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Mar 12, 2020 05:42
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Take each sentence/clause in that paragraph and make it a distinct series of actions that have feeling. Feeling coming from the emotions the characters experience as they perform those actions. Have someone hesitate as they place the key, noting that she always liked to keep it around her neck, something like that.
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Mar 12, 2020 05:53
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That's not telling v showing, imo. Reads fine to me, it's a bit formal and cool which suits the events: it's like a procedures manual. As suggested above, you could drop in a bit of errant emotion to spice it up.
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Mar 12, 2020 06:00
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sebmojo posted:That's not telling v showing, imo. Reads fine to me, it's a bit formal and cool which suits the events: it's like a procedures manual. As suggested above, you could drop in a bit of errant emotion to spice it up. I suppose I chose a poor example from my own work considering this is the one scene where this style actually kind of works, but the emotion thing is a good idea. Thanks for the advice!
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Mar 12, 2020 06:05
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magic cactus posted:I've noticed in my writing that I tend to have a lot of paragraphs like this: Obviously I don't know what other context the reader has at this point but for example: magic cactus posted:in accordance with the traditions of old. You can also develop your characters by getting into the way they perform these actions. Are they just piling everything in the living room as quickly as they can, like a well-oiled machine that has done this a hundred times before, or are they lingering over the momentos before they stack them gently on a pire? If this is an important moment for a particular character, are they the one who throws the match or do they let someone else do it? Just my 2¢
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Mar 12, 2020 16:28
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magic cactus posted:I have a question: Feeling that your writing is "flat" and "by-numbers" doesn't mean you're showing rather than telling. The only "telling" here is at the start; anyway, it's fine to skip or summarise boring stuff; in another story, "They burned grandma's house to the ground and drove off." might be better. General advice: cut vague or unnecessary words and making sure the rest are specific and interesting. Of course the bleach is in the laundry room. What are the "reminders" mementos of? Try imagining exactly what's happening, as if you're watching a film and reading the characters' minds. First, think about the mood you want to create for the reader. Then, concentrate on exactly what the house is like: the surrounding scenery, where the kitchen is, the colour of the carpets. Then concentrate on what the characters do, what they're thinking and feeling, and what this says about their personalities and their relations to each other. (There's no emotions here at all, and they've just seen their mum/grandma die - no wonder it feels thin.) Make sure you include all the details you want, then write the scene and fillet it for the good bits. Here's a couple of questions this paragraph raises that make it seem vague: where is grandma when she dies? You imply she's in the car. Where is she when the house burns down? Why is the car running when she's dead? Why do they use all her spare petrol to burn the place, rather than taking some of it? I like to save this for a second draft so I don't get bogged down. When you have specific information you want to convey, use details and trust the reader to pick up on stuff. As Wallet says, you're already doing this: the characters destroy grandma's personal effects and car, stay to watch the house burn, and put the key down "face-up", plus you use "pyre" to imply a ceremony. You could explain why they're doing this before this scene ("They drove past towns of the damned, their souls chained to their houses"), as they drive to the house ("We'll need to make sure your grandma is freed from sin after she goes," said Dad) or in this paragraph ("They stayed to watch the fire consume the house and the sin blow away with the smoke"). Or more than one, of course. I wouldn't dwell on the details, though, because it'll make the reader wonder how a nomadic car cult actually works, which will probably distract their attention from the actual story... In general: think about why is this a load-bearing scene, and make sure you tell the reader why. If you don't it'll just be something happening.
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Mar 14, 2020 04:12
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Wallet posted:Just my 2¢ Safety Biscuits posted:General advice: This is excellent advice, and having gone over my latest draft asking the questions you guys recommended I ask myself really has helped me see what is missing from my writing (in this draft at least). Thank you very much!
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Mar 14, 2020 06:52
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im scared to read this thread im sure im doing none of this poo poo *follows thread title advice*
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Mar 22, 2020 05:25
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I think the most important thing to remember is that any “rule” can be broken, but you really have to know the rules before you can effectively (and intentionally) break them. Same goes for advice.
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Mar 22, 2020 12:18
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if you could rate your dialog on a scale from 1-10 where 1 is realistic af and 10 carries real weight what would you pick and how does that work for you if you say u do both...….. but seriously i'm struggling trying to choose my approach at this juncture
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Mar 22, 2020 12:21
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