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Mike Works posted:The problem is that I've already found that detail, that spark, that encapsulating image... and it's a drat zombie. It has to be a zombie. just do what everyone else does n' grab a couple of words from Shakespeare Something After Death (Hamlet) That Flesh is Heir (Hamlet) Death Will Have His Day (Richard II) Another Room in Hell (Richard II) Die All, Die Merrily (Henry IV) We Owe God a Death (Henry IV) Of Perpetual Night (Richard III) A Dry Death (The Tempest) I really like That Flesh is Heir  and as an aside someone needs to use "Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it" as the hook in a zombie storye: I really really really like That Flesh is Heir you better use it fellow hockey poster Mike Works T-Bone fucked around with this message at 11:42 on Aug 6, 2012 |
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Aug 6, 2012 11:21
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Adventures in Zombiesitting Bringing Up Corpsy Weekend at Zombie's Step-Zombie Of Children And The Dead Dead Things Should Not Play With Children Kidzombie Zom-brats Uncle Zombie's Closet of Secrets
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Aug 6, 2012 15:29
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Dr. Stricklove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Outbreak.
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Aug 6, 2012 15:44
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Nautatrol Rx posted:Well, is there anything special or unique about your zombies, or are they purposefully as stock as possible? That's the part that's hard for me to get unless I see the story, but I'll try tossing out a few rewordings of "zombie" that might make you think of something: T-Bone posted:just do what everyone else does n' grab a couple of words from Shakespeare But man, it is a good title.
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Aug 6, 2012 19:29
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Mike Works posted:Thanks for these, they're definitely worth working with. Where does "Southern Revival" come from? The story happens to take place in the southern states, so there could be potential there. Play on words relating to "tent revivals" common among southern protestants. There's a religious overtone to that, though. It may or may not be an area you want to trudge into.
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Aug 6, 2012 20:02
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My Dead Family has a certain sitcommy vibe, but maybe it could work.
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Aug 7, 2012 00:23
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Maxwell, enter the Thunderdome instead of talking about zombie titles. 
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Aug 7, 2012 00:44
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Call it Untitled Zombie Story (Classy Version, Where the Zombie Doesn't Have Sex With Anyone).
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Aug 7, 2012 15:06
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I'm posting this in a couple writing threads to bring attention to it. It's about the writing sub-forum of CC to protect work from being indexed in Google and thus getting you rejected from several magazines. Some of us have discussed this already, and I've posted a QCS thread at http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3500225 to bring it up, so please add your input whether you agree or disagree with what I've said.
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Aug 7, 2012 21:54
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Mike Works posted:But how the story is resolved really does center around the concept of the zombie, so I think it's important enough to be the focus of the title. Only problem is so many terms for zombies have already been eaten up by popular media. The Walking Dead would be a loving perfect name for the story and I'm grumpy that it's taken. Curious, is the climax/end of 2nd act the revelation that the mother is now a zombie? Follow up, is that the first zombie in the story? Cause if that's the case, using a zombie title might just lead to the reader sitting there waiting for the zombies to come piling out of their clown car. Dampening the "shock," if you were counting on it. And, since we're already talking about zombies and plagiarism, I'd like to use some characters from an aborted, multiplayer-only, HL2 mod I was a part of. All that the mod had for each character was single character flashcard with name, occupation, favorite weapon, one-two sentence intro ("When the zombies came..."), and a comic-book style drawing. From that, I have one completed story, two (lost) starts, and a loose, mental network of slightly connected ideas ("Nichols crosses bridge," "Sgt. Childes encounters the Hunter," etc.).
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Aug 8, 2012 01:33
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Nautatrol Rx posted:I'm posting this in a couple writing threads to bring attention to it. It's about the writing sub-forum of CC to protect work from being indexed in Google and thus getting you rejected from several magazines. Some of us have discussed this already, and I've posted a QCS thread at http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3500225 to bring it up, so please add your input whether you agree or disagree with what I've said. I can see why they're hesitant about throwing one up because the activity in CC for writers anyway has seemed to be in flux for a while. So people should keep being active, keep writing, and get your friends in here so this can happen
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Aug 8, 2012 03:13
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BirdOfPlay posted:Curious, is the climax/end of 2nd act the revelation that the mother is now a zombie? quote:Follow up, is that the first zombie in the story? quote:Cause if that's the case, using a zombie title might just lead to the reader sitting there waiting for the zombies to come piling out of their clown car. Dampening the "shock," if you were counting on it. Sorry for the ambiguity, but it'll make sense in the end!
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Aug 8, 2012 04:04
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UnfurledSails posted:I'm writing the first draft of my novel and it's about a guy who has to (at first) fend for himself in a foreign country with nothing. There is a point where he meets someone else who is in a similar situation, but until then I find that the pace is very slow, with very few dialogue. This guy has a lot of internal conflict; he is constantly at war with himself. This leads to a lot of inner battles that I find necessary but somewhat boring to write. It sounds tedious and it sounds like you find it tedious. This is bad. Can you put your guy in a lot more trouble? Really put him through poo poo? Steal his wallet, break his finger, give him dysentery. See if that gives you a more interesting way to deliver the payload of agonised self-interrogation?
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Aug 8, 2012 04:38
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Stylistic question: A small section (possibly two) of the story I am writing now is a flashback, and I am not sure how to lead into it without coming right out and saying "Hey guys here's a flashback", which of course I don't want to do. So far I am planning on switching from past to present tense for that section and doing the "scene break" (not sure what the actual term is for this?) I mean where you separate paragraphs like this: blah blah regular paragraph ----- Flashback ----- Back to regular stuff Is that all I need to do, or should I put the flashback scene in italics as well? I think I've seen authors do that on multiple occasions, but I'm not sure what the "correct" way of doing it is, and Strunk & White doesn't say anything about it.
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Aug 8, 2012 06:21
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I would think past tense would be enough (definitely don't do italics). Will it not be evident within the text that it's a flashback? What's the length/tone/genre?
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Aug 8, 2012 07:12
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T-Bone posted:I would think past tense would be enough (definitely don't do italics). Will it not be evident within the text that it's a flashback? What's the length/tone/genre? I'm not sure how evident it will be in the text, since right now I don't have any obvious line like "She remembered a summer day from her childhood..." and don't want to include one because it seems kind of ham-fisted. It feels obvious to me, but then I wrote it and know what my intentions are so that isn't really a good metric. I'm hoping the scene break and tense switch will get the idea across. It's not completely finished yet but it will probably end up around 3500-ish words, and the genre is "literary", for lack of a better category.
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Aug 8, 2012 07:33
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Two flashbacks within a 3,500 word story? I'm guessing they're pretty small? You could try writing them in a dramatically different style than the main text. Is the story third or first person?
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Aug 8, 2012 07:45
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T-Bone posted:Two flashbacks within a 3,500 word story? I'm guessing they're pretty small? Yeah, I'll probably end up cutting it down to one (the other I liked but looking at it now it seems to be a little too much exposition and I figured out how to get the same idea across without it) and the flashback is only a paragraph. Bulk of the story is in third person. I had thought about doing the flashback in first, but I guess I should actually try writing it out and seeing how it works. Thanks for the advice, I'm always afraid ideas for scenes I have only work since I know everything about them already, but I probably need to give the reader more credit.
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Aug 8, 2012 08:00
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Honey Badger posted:Yeah, I'll probably end up cutting it down to one (the other I liked but looking at it now it seems to be a little too much exposition and I figured out how to get the same idea across without it) and the flashback is only a paragraph. Regarding the time-shifts, the standard lately is to go *** with tabs in between, centered. Changing tense and person can work well or it can fail miserably. You have to change voice for it to make sense.
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Aug 8, 2012 08:16
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I enjoy marking time shifts using time-specific items/reference points within the context of our time period, or the story's time period. Here are two examples in that order: In Story A, the majority of the piece takes place in the late 90's (Ally McBeal references, Trapper Keeper's, Chumbawumba, etc.), but the final scene shoots forward almost twenty years later. How did I signal this? Aside from the fact that the physical appearance and the living situation of the protagonist had changed (or reverted) drastically, I had her answer an email on her iPhone in the first few sentences. Simple. In Story B (which happens to have zombies I don't know if you've heard of it), I have two flashbacks which are both purely dialogue. They don't have dialogue tags (nor quotation marks); they're just single line sentences bouncing back and forth. The main story follows an 18-year-old protagonist and his 8-year-old sister searching for their mother. The first flashback is a conversation between a younger protagonist and his mother just after his sister was born, and the second flashback is a conversation between an even younger protagonist and his mother when it was just the two of them. How did I (attempt to) achieve this? Context. Here's the start of the first flashback: quote:How did it happen, Mother? The second flashback comes just before the climactic scene, and while the content of the dialogue doesn't indicate right away that it's a flashback, the structure does, and after a few lines the context kicks in: quote:Are there other boys like me still alive out there? So yeah, aside from standard scene/paragraph breaks, I feel that the best way to indicate a flashback is through context, though I suppose it depends on your writing and narration styles too. Mike Works fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Aug 8, 2012 |
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Aug 8, 2012 08:57
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My first chapter is a flashback, so I was really lazy and said: 20 Years Ago Then, in chapter two it starts with: Today There are more clever and artful ways to do it, but sometimes the simplest way is the best way. I'm not saying it will work for what you're doing but don't overthink it, either.
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Aug 8, 2012 15:05
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Martello posted:Maxwell, enter the Thunderdome instead of talking about zombie titles. I would but potentially having a custom title for being judged the loser is a real turn off. I everyone in there has a good time though. Also the advice you gave a little while back has been extremely useful.
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Aug 8, 2012 15:39
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C'mon, don't be a scaredy-cat! How bad can the custom title be? Either way it'll be better than having nothing at all. it could be p. bad You're welcome for the combat advice stuff. Feel free to PM me or ask here if you ever have any other questions.
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Aug 8, 2012 16:04
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SkySteak posted:I would but potentially having a custom title for being judged the loser is a real turn off. I everyone in there has a good time though. Also the advice you gave a little while back has been extremely useful. I wouldn't try to actually start a career in writing if a custom title can break your ego. Then again, someone who couldn't handle that probably wouldn't make it at McDonalds either. You would only get the title for being the worst which is a subjective. If that is your concern, you have no business in the field. Edited for some clarity. Erik Shawn-Bohner fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Aug 8, 2012 |
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Aug 8, 2012 16:30
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While I generally agree with your sentiments, the man said he didn't want to participate. Lay off your little strongarming double-team posting combo supreme before I give you an ikari/psychicattack-style punishment.
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Aug 8, 2012 16:35
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pipes! posted:While I generally agree with your sentiments, the man said he didn't want to participate. Lay off your little strongarming double-team posting combo supreme before I give you an ikari/psychicattack-style punishment. I am typing on my phone because I live in the worst place possible for reliable connections. I must have come off harsh instead of funny due to my brevity. Sorry. It's supposed to be a fun thing. Please don't break out your wicked kung fu and end our lives.
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Aug 8, 2012 17:10
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I was only trying to encourage him while lying about how bad the custom-title would be even though I told him the truth in spoilertext using the always witty "abbreviate pretty to p." thing. Please don't destroy my brain with your wicked fierce mental powers. 
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Aug 8, 2012 17:22
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Nautatrol Rx posted:I wouldn't try to actually start a career in writing if a custom title can break your ego. Then again, someone who couldn't handle that probably wouldn't make it at McDonalds either. Why are you being so aggressive for one thing I said? I didn't exactly smear anyone doing it, gently caress I even wished them luck.
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Aug 8, 2012 17:23
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SkySteak posted:Why are you being so aggressive for one thing I said? I didn't exactly smear anyone doing it, gently caress I even wished them luck. Please relax, stay calm, and carry on. It was sarcasm.
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Aug 8, 2012 17:26
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In all honesty do you hold that view though? I'm not trying to pick a fight or poo poo up the thread, I'm just curious.
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Aug 8, 2012 17:32
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SkySteak posted:In all honesty do you hold that view though? I'm not trying to pick a fight or poo poo up the thread, I'm just curious. The 'net is back up in American Botswana, so I can respond using the big-boy keyboard. I do hold that view. If you want to get involved in any art, you need to get used to harsh criticism. Mine was joking, but it wasn't even touching on the potential harshness that an average critic will give you, let alone a crabby editor. You need that life skill to even work a minimum wage job, and I've worked them myself. Look at that currently popular Chick-Fil-A video where some rear end in a top hat rolls up out of nowhere just to be an rear end in a top hat to a random person. Be like the awesome lady in that video and blow it off. She can because that dude was more than likely not the first. The difference is, whether you're doing vanity publishing or standard, there are going to be people telling you that you should kill yourself and all other sorts of nasty things. You're walking into that situation willingly. That's just the nature of making something personal to you, your writing, public. Erik Shawn-Bohner fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Aug 8, 2012 |
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Aug 8, 2012 17:46
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What they're all trying to say is that a contest like the one Martello mentions is genuinely good for a writer. Since we're already talking about martial arts, apparently, you can compare it to the way that any practice fight is better if it's rough. You'll still learn the art if you practice your patterns, but a rough contest will improve more than just your writing. You need thick skin and confidence if you truly want to succeed, and if you can endure a custom title and some feigned (and real) anger, you've got a good start. So we're just trying to tell you the upsides of joining and the downsides of staying out. And this is the kicker: You're going to get the exact same treatment when you post a thread for your story. People are not going to be nicer to you there. But remember to do a couple of drafts and a proper edit before you post it, and I can guarantee that you'll get good advice. Edit: Or, what Nautatrol said.
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Aug 8, 2012 17:47
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If I am not able to handle it, does that imply you guys don't want anyone who can't, to write at all? I'm not trying to put words in your mouth nor am I saying that that's how I feel about it but that feels like one of the implications of both of your statements. I admit part of me is tempted to post a thread but I haven't had critique in a while (havent written in a while) and I'm really worried I might just shatter and close the thread. Then people get to attack me which will only make things shittier. SkySteak fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Aug 8, 2012 |
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Aug 8, 2012 18:19
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SkySteak posted:If I am not able to handle it, does that imply you guys don't want anyone who can't, to write at all? I'm not trying to put words in your mouth nor am I saying that that's how I feel about it but that feels like one of the implications of both of your statements. That's ridiculous, come on man. And no, if you can't handle it, you should not ever put your work out where people will respond to it. Just because you (you are not special) wrote it, does not give you the right to want strip your audience of their reactions to it. SkySteak posted:
Bottom line: you'll have to grow a thicker skin if you want to be a writer who is actually read by anyone. That's the deal. Your insecurities do not help your writing, no matter what you might think. Your insecurities are your mind telling you that it knows there are serious problems with your writing that you don't want anyone else to see. If you're never going to show it to anyone, then no problem. But the very fact that you're so worried what people will think about it means that yeah, you've already decided that you want people to admire what you write. That admiration doesn't come automatically, without cost. You'll have to go through the necessary steps of improving your craft. If you don't want to do it in a public setting such as this, then take some writing workshops or some writing classes where you will be critiqued on your creative writing. There's no way around it, sorry. If you want to hit a home run, you've got to step up to the plate and risk striking out.
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Aug 8, 2012 18:34
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The trick, I think, is to separate your ego from your work. True criticism (and, to a certain extent, criticsm from this forum in specific) is intrinsically harsh. It is meant to improve the quality of your work, not make you feel better about yourself. To quote the rules:The Rules posted:Critiques serve to help improve a piece of work - this doesn't necessary mean that the critiques have to be nice. This is, after all, Something Awful. If you're looking for quick, meaningless ego-padding, there are plenty of other sites out there that can help you out. Nobody cares if you post something what you perceive as weak (mitigated by fanfiction and the like), so long as you stick to it and work to improve it. We all have to start somewhere and we're all here to make each other's stuff better. I can't even begin to list all the amateurish poo poo I've posted here over the years, but where I am now I do, in fact, owe somewhat to having honest, real, constructive feedback.
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Aug 8, 2012 18:49
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This always bears repeating: There is nothing mystical about writing. It is a skillset that can be learned and must be practiced, just like drawing or playing an instrument. Part of writing is investing part of yourself in every story, which makes it easy to feel emotionally vulnerable whenever someone else, someone you don't know, takes it up and reads it with a critical eye. But they really aren't judging some deeply personal aspect of you, your mystical soul-nature or whatever other bullshit words some people have attached to the process of fiction. They're judging the words you put on the page. Those are the only link between author and reader. And that's why you shouldn't worry if people don't like what you write. No one will dislike YOU, personally. (Well, some goons might.) All anyone might dislike is the words on the page. And those are purely mechanical things, tools no more personal or mystical than a charcoal pencil or Zildjian drumsticks. You need critiques, harsh critiques, to learn how to use those tools properly.
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Aug 8, 2012 18:54
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There's actually a service that will automatically generate rejection letters for you. The whole point is to have a laugh and develop a thick skin. Same with the Thunderdome contest. It's meant to be fun, but if you don't think it looks fun, don't join.quote:The Rejection Generator rejects writers before an editor looks at a submission. Inspired by psychological research showing that after people experience pain they are less afraid of it in the future, The Rejection Generator helps writers take the pain out of rejection. You can order ones in different flavors of devestating: http://stoneslidecorrective.com/?page_id=441 Skysteak, we're not telling you not to write, but know where your confidence level is at, and know it has the same learning curve as learning to write itself. You need both to become a professional. I know this, because I spent the better part of a decade failing as a web designer, not because I didn't know my stuff, but because I didn't have enough confidence to say no to lovely clients. Timidity killed my business. It took a hard failure like that for my crippling fear of failure to go away. We sling punches in CC because we're sparring, practicing for the big leagues. We're harsh, sometimes humiliating (when someone's ego outstrips their writing ability), not because we want to laugh at new writers, but because we're honestly out to help you. If you're not comfortable stepping onto the sparring mat yet, then don't. If you post your own OP, you're inviting people to a sparring match. The smaller practice mat is over in the daily writing thread, where you can practice your moves and get a one-on-one with a coach on your form. Also, this is the second time you've had the forum rules quoted to you, for the same reason, this time by the man himself. Think carefully about if CC is right for you right now, and stop whining in this thread about it. If you get defensive about what I just said, go away from your computer and chill out for a bit. You don't send and email to an editor calling them a big meanie if they reject you, you never ever write responses to bad reviews, and you don't get to be a all defensive when people are taking the time to give you an honest crit and advice. Everyone's given you good advice here. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Aug 8, 2012 |
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Aug 8, 2012 19:06
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This turned into a long post, but I met my word count for the day in my WIP and still feel the itch. Time Cowboy posted:But they really aren't judging some deeply personal aspect of you, your mystical soul-nature or whatever other bullshit words some people have attached to the process of fiction. They're judging the words you put on the page. That really depends, actually. How I view the writer and/or his work depends on what phase of the process he's actually in. If he's god-awful terrible and cannot convey any ideas whatsoever, then sure, I don't judge him as a person. I tell him what needs to be improved and then shrug and move on. If, however, he's competent at a baseline level in terms of craft, (which, frankly, most writers are) then it evolves from judging craft to judging art. And then, yeah, I absolutely do move into judgments about him as a person. I do that because, let's be honest, the vast majority of stuff that is posted here for critique is cleanly written enough to get across what the author is trying to say. I rarely have trouble following action, or wondering who is speaking. I rarely see terrible shifts in diction level or psychic distance and so on. What I see, more often than anything else (both here and critiquing ANYONE'S work) is that's it's either boring, or lovely-mannered writing. When we tell someone to stop giving us eight paragraphs at the beginning of their story that describes some loving guy's weight, job, favorite car, favorite ice cream etc, I am not critiquing his level of craft, I'm telling him he's boring, because this is the best he can come up with. Ever noticed how people will fight you on that? They try and tell you how interesting their incredibly boring characters are, and why you ABSOLUTELY NEED to know all this boring poo poo about them up front. It's because they are boring and don't know any better. On the other hand is mannered writing, which in many ways is worse. You see stuff that's obviously some thinly veiled creepy sexual fantasies, someone's petty revenge bullshit against their 'totally unfair' landlord, or ex-girlfriend or any number of other really petty and/or weird poo poo. For those authors (if they can be saved at all) I refer them to The Art of Fiction's excellent section on mannered writing. Here's a sample: quote:Mannered writing, then—like sentimentality and frigidity—arises out of the author's flawed character. I think that many people would agree that there's way too much of the above poo poo floating around, especially stuff like the bolded part. So yeah, in a way, once you get beyond critiquing someone's use of proper grammar, passive voice and so on, you get into to judging their ideas which is understandably nerve-wracking for people. But great writers have, for centuries, written things that would have been unreadably offensive if not for the fact that they were writing not for their own personal fantasies, but for the sake of art. Lolita was a pretty drat risky move by Nabokov, but no one who's actually read it can claim that it was written by a creepy guy who desperately wanted to live out the events in the novel. That's what it means to be an author with good enough character not to imbue every word he writes with his own terrible opinions/fantasies. But still as I said before, nobody ever just crapped out a "great American Novel." It takes time and the willingness to have those ideas cut apart by people who will give you honest opinions as to the worth of not only your craft but the worth of those ideas as well.
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Aug 8, 2012 19:35
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Chillmatic posted:When we tell someone to stop giving us eight paragraphs at the beginning of their story that describes some loving guy's weight, job, favorite car, favorite ice cream etc, I am not critiquing his level of craft, I'm telling him he's boring, because this is the best he can come up with. Ever noticed how people will fight you on that? They try and tell you how interesting their incredibly boring characters are, and why you ABSOLUTELY NEED to know all this boring poo poo about them up front. It's because they are boring and don't know any better. No, man, this is a craft issue. It's not personal at all. I see it in so many amateur writers, not because they are boring, but because they haven't yet figured out what details are important and which aren't. Everyone writes loads of boring bullshit, which is a kind of process-writing people use to figure out their characters. That's why everyone cuts. An amateur doesn't know what to cut. I've you're making personal judgements on that specifically, you need to take a step back and chill out. There's also the many college-aged writers who write tons of boring bullshit because they haven't gotten out in the world and experienced enough yet, which falls more under your point number two: quote:On the other hand is mannered writing, which in many ways is worse. You see stuff that's obviously some thinly veiled creepy sexual fantasies, someone's petty revenge bullshit against their 'totally unfair' landlord, or ex-girlfriend or any number of other really petty and/or weird poo poo. For those authors (if they can be saved at all) I refer them to The Art of Fiction's excellent section on mannered writing. This is why Primoman got the gears so bad, and I'm sure there's a That Guy like that in every college writing class. TVTropes is full of them. In a lot of cases, they just need to move out of their parent's basements already. It's kind of sad people like this (John Norman) actually do sometimes get published and gain hoards of creepy fans.
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Aug 8, 2012 20:09
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The problem I see is that someone may -think- they're trying to be artsy with creepy bullshit, a la Primoman, but they don't pull it off. I honestly think that was just him covering his rear end after the fact, but for this purpose, we'll assume he was telling the truth. To put my own story on the line, my character in "When They Leave You" is not a person to be emulated by any means. He reaches a point where he's clearly projecting his personal problems onto all women. Yet, no one has gone "OMG that's creepy" in response. That could be from the effect of it being done well (I hope) or that people generally don't see me as a creepy dude and interpret it differently. Our communicating with each other regularly affects the criticism whether we want to admit it or not. I'm not disagreeing with you, to be clear, but I'd like to delve further into the topic of taboo subjects and see if we can identify some qualities of writing that set Lolita apart from Primoman. One thing to consider is the concept of quality. There's different elements of quality that come from the places of objectivity, subjectivity, and society. Taboo subjects are exciting and great material to write about. There's objectively bad writing, which breaks rules for no reason and makes a piece unreadable or immensely unenjoyable. Subjectively bad writing is something you don't like for personal reasons, justified or not, because it strikes you as horrible (for me, that's a story written all in second person that could just as easily be done in third or first). Something considered bad by society could be anything written in an antiquated form or that's too wordy since, from what I've seen, Hemingway style brevity and immediacy is what is popular with the majority of critics. The society angle can flip around by genre, though, so it's harder to pin down.
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Aug 8, 2012 20:14
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