|
Since the old writing discussion thread was almost 4500 posts, I've compressed the most common advice given to new writers in the OP. I may make some long posts in this thread covering pov, tension, and whatever, but don't let me drive the discussion. Jump in with your questions, answers, general advice, or writer's resources you've found particularly helpful. The old thread can be found here. Speaking of helpful resources, I have plenty here in the Creative Resources Thread. Since the discussion is open to just about anything writing related, I'll outline what we don't want to see here. Don't post your fiction here, aside from ~100 word snippets, given for context only. That's what the Daily Writing Thread is for. We'd rather not have you come and ask questions like "yo what's a better word for 'intertwined'"? Because we have thesauruses and precious time. Don't continually blather on about your ideas. Shut up and write. No-one can tell you whether your idea is good or bad. No-one cares before you turn it into a story. It's all in the execution. -- Critique Guidelines Also, here's a link to Mike Works' Workshopping Guidelines found later in this thread. I’ve sensed quite a few new people are reluctant to critique, which is a great way to develop a better eye for your own writing. It's also a good way to build good will with the people giving you critiques. It could be you’re not comfortable offering an opinion on someone else’s work when you’re unsure of your own skill. I’m here to tell you anyone can critique. Do you read enough to have an intuitive sense of story? Whether or not you know writer’s terminology, I’m sure you can tell if something’s boring you. First, try to read the story or sample the whole way through before giving a critique. If the writing is so bad you can’t get through it, then the writer has more serious problems obscuring the story itself. In this case, it’s ok to say, “This is unreadable.” If the writer asks for help, line-editing the first paragraph can help give the writer an idea why no-one can bear to slog through their crap. I’ve split critiquing into three different levels. So people who don’t know their stuff have some kind of baseline to go on, I’ve divided the macro level, or story problems, into looking at it with a reader’s eye or an editor’s. Reader’s Critique: This is generally the kind of feedback you’d expect when you pass your story along to readers before it reaches an editor. They can be the most helpful because anyone, regardless of writing skill, can look for plot holes, mischaracterization, bad pacing, confusing bits, and so on. You don’t need to know your writing terminology inside-out to give a crit like this, but you do need to make an effort to explain why something doesn’t work for you. If anything’s confusing, ask the writer questions. These are helpful, because they can indicate something the writer missed. Maybe they’re phrasing something badly, or aren’t filling in enough blanks to give the reader a clear mental picture. Does everything make sense within the context given? Maybe they’re stringing you along, hoping the mystery will compel you to read on, but are being too coy about holding back facts you need to know to get into the story. Did you stop reading at any point? Tell the writer when and why. Is the verbiage thick and convoluted? Is the writer using big words when it’s obvious they don’t even know what they mean, spewing word-salad all over the place in an effort to become the next James Joyce, yet too lazy to look up poo poo in the dictionary? Alternately, the pacing could be off and the characters could be bland. They could be slogging the story down with info-dump. Are you thinking, “Get on with it,” “Slow the gently caress down,” or worse, “I don’t give a drat about these people?” Did you enjoy the story? What did you like about it? Was there any bits that stood out? Did any characters stand out, whether you liked or loathed them? If it’s a sample, do you want to keep reading? Also, avoid the urge to say, “It would be cool if you did this …” I’m guilty of doing this once in a while, and regret it every time. The urge can be hard to resist when the writer is copying some formula and not taking risks. Sometimes you chime in with, “Hey, change the setting/characters to something less hackneyed and you’ll have a more original story.” You might have some ideas. Others might chime in saying, “Hey, yeah, that would be cool.” When this happens, the writer is at liberty to say, “Go to hell, this is my story,” because you’ve crossed the line. To avoid this, point out why you think the story doesn’t work, or what potential they’re wasting, and leave it at that. When it comes to ideas, let the author find them. Macro Edit: This is similar to the reader’s critique, but more technical. Point of view problems are a big one that your average reader might not pick up on, tone and voice are others. They may sense something’s not quite right, but can’t articulate why. POV - The biggest problem with pov is consistency. Jumping from one character’s head to another, or zooming out to look at the pov character, is omniscient. Having the narrator tell the reader info the pov character doesn’t know is omniscient. If you’re in first person or a deep third, accidental shifts like this are jarring. Even in a steady omniscient pov, you don’t want to head-jump mid-paragraph. The other spectrum is objective vs. subjective. First person is subjective by default. If you’re treating their eyes like a movie camera, refusing to get into the narrator’s head, people will think your character is a robot. If your character is a robot, go for it, but people have opinions. It colors the way they see everything. In first person, you describe everything in the narrator’s voice. A deep third pov is similar. You have to put your character’s outlook and motivations into a close pov to make us give a drat. Motivation - On a macro level, is the writer showing why a character is doing stuff, or are they dangling a plot puppet on a string? Worse yet, is the character doing stuff for no drat reason at all? On the micro level, motivation/response is what drives the story forward. It has to make some kind of logical sense. You don’t show someone reacting to a tiger attack before the tiger attacks, unless he knows the tiger is in the bush. It’s up to the writer to make this clear. Tension - for the most part it should rise up to the climax. This has a lot to do with overall pacing. It’s easier to diagnose in a full story than a sample. Writers use the term scene and sequel to describe yanking the reader up like a fish on a line, then letting it slack to let them breathe a moment before pulling harder. If you find the plot-line going flat (especially mid-story), you need to up the stakes. Even a non-linear story follows a plot in terms of tension. Tone - colors the whole story, much like film post-processing, where they color a film give it a specific mood. This is often tied to genre, but doesn’t have to be. It’s an artistic decision, one you maintain throughout the story. Is your story horrific, gritty, black humor, satirical, romantic, light humor …? A tonal shift can be used to great effect, but it has to look intentional. An unintentional tonal shift will bounce the reader right out of the story. Voice - this one’s harder to pin down than tone. It hides in the phrasing, and comes to the writer with practice. They say, “Write how you talk,” but if you’re writing as a character, you have to write how they talk. This means getting into their head, knowing them inside-out. People can tell when you’re writing outside your own voice, as in trying to emulate someone else and failing. It often ends up sounding unsure or pompous. Wanna be James Joyce or Douglas Adams? Ugh—we can tell. An great author's voice is unique, like Hemingway or Mark Twain. Emulating another writer is great practice, but be up front about it. A great voice can overcome stylistic quibbles—if someone’s a great bullshitter, they might purple up their prose or "tell" away and no-one will give a drat because they’re entertaining. So, how do you learn to recognize voice? Read. Read a lot. Line Edit: It’s not so helpful to dive straight into copy-editing when someone posts an early draft, since they’ll likely revise those words into oblivion anyway. You want to tackle bigger story problems first. However, if someone’s spewing out adverbs every other word, or making your eye scrape across every sentence with the passive voice, giving them some idea will help them write clearer prose in the next revision. You don’t need to know your terminology to pick out awkward phrasing, but it helps when you’re trying to explain. Here’s some red flags I look for, and why: “had,” “have” - used in the past-perfect tense to indicate past events. A past tense story reads as happening now, so you need a flag to reference events that happened earlier. Using it for action happening on-screen is jarring. “He had untied himself”—don’t do this if we’re watching. Tense shifts are also jarring. Some writers weave between past and present like a drunk. Watch out for this. “-ly” - these pop up a lot when someone’s abusing adverbs. However, tons of non-ly adverbs can be abused like “ever,” “just,” “even,” and “very.” The latter three are adjectives as well. “Very,” the most abused of the bunch, can almost always go. “Suddenly” needs to die in a fire, because it doesn’t make the action sudden, it slows it down. If you’re not up on your basic grammar, remember, an adverb modifies a verb. If someone’s leaning on them like a crutch, they need to look for stronger verbs. “was,” “were,” and “by” - the biggest passive voice indicators you’ll find, and the worst offenders among “is,” “are,” “am,” “be,” “being,” and “been.” In passive voice, something’s having poo poo done to it rather than doing poo poo. “She was hit by the ball”—double lame. “The ball hit her hard in the face”—active, but oh boy, there’s one of those sneaky non-ly adverbs creeping in to lame up the place. “The ball smashed her in the face”—there we go. “-ing” - either a participle or a gerund. A gerund is a noun, like “writing.” Any other time, it’s a present-participle, usually used as an adjective. Often found in passive phrases and dangling modifiers, “-ing” words are a red flag. You’ll find the worst offenders scanning for the verbs mentioned above: “He was running,” vs. “He ran.” Though “-ing” words can indicate weak writing, that doesn’t mean excise them from your vocabulary. “that” - a word commonly shotgunned into prose. If you can remove “that” from a sentence and it still makes sense, it can go. “of” - a few people have an “of” problem, using it in nearly every damned sentence, sometimes multiple times. Consider the writer’s voice though. “Of” constructions often sound formal. Is the piece meant to sound stuffy? Is it working? Fine then, keep it. “began to,” “started to,” ect. - think about this one. Is the character beginning to do something, or just doing it? “She began to run”—really? She didn't just run? “felt,” “saw,” “heard,” etc. - experiential verbs distance the reader. If it’s a close pov, they’re implied, therefore unnecessary. “Turned” is another one I watch for, added here because it can distance the reader from the action in the same way. “She turned and leapt out the window.” Why not just, “She leapt out the window?” We don’t need to see her turning. It’s padding. It’s worse in conjunction with an experiential verb: “He turned to see the”—get on with the damned story. “few,” “about,” “little,” etc. - if you drown your prose in non-specifics, you muddy the mental picture. Chances are the phrasing could be stronger. “Her phone was just out of reach.” vs. “She stretched until she brushed the phone, budging it half-an-inch beyond her fingertips.” The first one is telling us, the second is showing us. Most of these I've gotten from Ken Rand's book The 10% Solution. It has plenty more helpful advice on editing, so I highly recommend it. I don’t go on a witch hunt for these words and syllables in every critique. Voice and context override. Use common sense. Is the sentence slow, muddy, or awkward? Is the writer beating every sentence to death with them? If not, don’t be a prescriptive rear end. For example, would changing the last example to “She stretched until she brushed the phone, and budged it …” do anything to further clarify the sentence? Not really. It’s a matter of style. Tell the writer to read it out loud. Which has better rhythm? Within the context of a whole paragraph, it might change. Let the writer decide. Consider the author's style. If someone's writing in a Victorian manner because they're writing from a character's pov in that period, and pulling it off, don't tell them to cut every adverb just because that's what your teachers told you. If the writing's not getting in the way of the story, if it's purposeful and not clumsy, don't try to cram the writer into this decade's style guide. To the writer attempting an outdated style: try hybridizing it into something that has the period's flavor, but is as clean as concise as it can be, and show instead of tell when you need to. Advice to writers we give over and over again: Effort goes a long away around here, as well as basic reading comprehension when it comes to the forum's rules. If you're going to post an OP for your writing, make sure it's enough to warrant its own thread. A completed short story or chapter will get a better crit than, "Hey, I'm just going to throw this half-baked drivel up here. Tell me if I can do anything with it." That's what the Daily Writing Thread is for. If your half-baked drivel is over 1000 words, either post a segment, or polish it into something vaguely complete before drawing attention to yourself. I'm not trying to discourage new writers, but you'll appreciate the results better if you start by doing the best you can. If you're posting a chapter from your novel, the first chapter is usually the best, since it's the one where you need to hook the reader. We can usually tell if your story has problems right off the bat. Proofread before you post a writing OP. Also, wait a day and look at it with a fresh eye. Don’t drop your fresh brain spew on CC the moment it gushes forth from your head. We don’t want to see your mess before you’ve made some attempt to clean it up. Print it out, switch up the font, or stick it on an e-reader and wander over to the couch, whatever suits you. A visual or tactile difference can help make your mistakes stand out because your eye gets accustomed to seeing the same text over and over again. Don’t rely on your word processor to catch mistakes like mixed up homophones (their, they’re, there). Many great authors have not only given out great writing advice, but said it better than we could. I'm going to link some of the best here: George Orwell - His whole essay Politics and the English Language is a great read. His tips are near the end of the essay. Mark Twain - Listen to what the master has to say. Kurt Vonnegut - On how to write a great story. Show, don’t tell. You’ll get this advice if your characters are emoting all over the place without describing their reactions. Don’t just tell us your character is angry. Does he glare in the corner? Does he stomp around like a dinosaur? If you show us, you don’t need to tell us. You’ll also get told this if you do a massive info-dump. Do we really need a paragraph about some ancient war, or how your character grew up a sad little orphan, before you get into the story? Why should we care? If it’s relevant to the story, make its effects ripple across the story. Keep your backstory to yourself, and reveal it through what the characters are doing right now. This advice has its pitfalls, which we discuss here on the first page. Read it out loud. On your final editing pass, read the whole story out loud. If the dialogue sounds unnatural, if you stumble over your own words, it needs a rewrite. If you’re feeling ambitious, examine the rhythm of your prose. Think about how, for centuries, people passed stories down through oral tradition, and how rhythm helped those stories stick in their heads. People respond, even if only subconsciously, to the rhythm of words. Read. Read more. Read inside your favorite genre, and broaden your tastes outside your genre. Read character driven fiction. Read novels and short stories instead of devouring nothing but comics, games, and movies. You’ll develop a better eye for writing stories as you read them. Trying to write a story when you don't read is the equivalent of being a tonedeaf musician: why writers must be readers. Back up your work. You will be a sad panda if you lose it. Also, copying former drafts before I make massive changes tricks my brain into obliterating my shoddy old prose because I tell myself I can always go back to the original if things don't work out. If you think something should be in the OP, please mention it in your post. Now, I give the floor over to you guys. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Sep 12, 2012 |
#
¿
Jul 15, 2012 08:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 21:13 |
|
|
I'll update the "Show don't Tell" a bit. I was trying to stay as succinct as possible and explain why people say it, but I've talked before about its pitfalls as well. I've read Card's Characters & Viewpoint as well. Despite what one might say about the author, the man knows his craft. It taught me a lot when I was starting out. Great posts on it, Chillmatic and Nautatrol. Great posts everyone. Everyone front-loading advice and questions about it makes for a great front page for the new guys just popping in later. Here's my longer version on: “Show Don’t Tell” and Avoiding Exposition. “Show don’t tell” is the most often heard writing advice. You most often get it when you write a long passage without immersing the reader in the action. For example: Tell: John was angry. Show: John threw his phone across the room. The second engages the reader more because it gives us a better mental picture. When we can see he’s angry, you don’t need to tell us. You can bring weak passages to life with dialogue (internal and external) and action. Think of your characters like actors on stage, who show internal reactions with physical ones because we’re not telepathic. Sure characters can beam thoughts into reader’s heads with the written word, but a clear mental picture is always stronger. However, don’t be too prescriptive about “show don’t tell.” Sometimes you just want to get a character from one scene to another. In such cases, you simply tell the reader, “John got home late …” and get on with the next scene without describing a boring car ride. You use “tell” during scene transitions, and to skip over dull dialogue. For instance, we don’t need to see everyday greetings and small talk. You can simply tell the reader the characters have met and cut to the relevant dialogue. Though, include it if the greeting/goodbye is not everyday and shows us something about the character. Rule of thumb: if it’s important, show it. If it’s filling in an unseen detail, tell it (briefly). If it’s not important, leave it out. Sometimes “tell” enhances the narrator’s voice. It’s up to you to decide who the narrator is and how they talk. It’s easy to go overboard with this though, so get another pair of eyes on it to tell you if it’s working. Exposition is the bane of SFF writers, because often you’ve built a whole new world and you need to fill in the reader. It’s tempting to lay the groundwork in one big info-dump, but it’s boring. You need to hook the reader in the first chapter, and “There’s a big evil about to swallow the world. Let me tell you all about its history …” is an old crutch most people will roll their eyes at. Start with your characters and make us give a drat about them first. Show us why we should care about your world ending, then weave the backstory into the actual story once it gets going. The more detail you weave in through characters living in the world you’ve created, the more vivid the story world is in the reader’s mind. Sometimes you need to outright explain things to the reader, but avoid doing it in paragraph long info-dumps because they’re intrusive. You want to avoid ripping your reader’s head out of the story. Writing out the backstory is important for you, but there’s no reason to give it all away at once to the reader. In fact, some of the most potent backstory is left implied. You can use it create a mystery and let the reader discover it along the way. Mystery has a powerful pull on the reader. It’s far more effective than dumping out your Lego in a prologue and asking the reader to watch you fiddle with them, saying, “I’m building a castle. Here, you can look at the instructions while I do it. NO, DON’T TOUCH.” I used to punch my little brother for pulling that poo poo. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Jul 25, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2012 21:59
|
|
|
Hot Sauce Batman posted:I've recently started to really write seriously, and while I have a bunch of ideas that I've been working on for a while, my biggest hurdle is first paragraph or two. Should I just not worry about the opening until after the first draft? Or start the story in the middle and go back to the beginning when it hits me? Write in whatever order gets you writing. If you have a scene in your head, and don't know where it fits in the story, write it and figure it out later. Some writers start at the beginning, some at the end, and some at wherever it strikes them. I'm going to link Scrivener here. It's basically a customizable writing suite designed to accommodate a wide range of work methods. What I love the most about it is the non-linear part, because you can write your scenes, chapters, or whatever in individual text files and shuffle them around on virtual index cards. You can change the "corkboard" into an outliner, or you can view your draft all at once. It frees you from thinking of a large project, like a novel, as a single document. It treats it more like a proper project, allowing you to drop in research files, pictures, and websites, and open up a dual panel view so you can check one document against another. You can make new folders for whatever you want, so you can organize deleted scenes, backstory, ideas, or anything. It also compiles your draft into doc, pdf, ebook (one of the cleanest automatic ebook compilers too), etc. and can automatically convert it into a standard manuscript. Looking at all the things that program can do, whether you decide to use it or not, can give you an idea of the varied methods writers use to get poo poo done. Don't worry about starting at the beginning. Just start.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2012 06:47
|
|
|
On the library thing: there's nothing like a well stocked University library when it comes to obscure reference books. I've found fantastic references there, and when I wanted a copy for myself, found they cost anywhere from $200-$1500 on Amazon, or were ancient and out of print. Libraries also gives you access to scientific journals hidden behind paywalls.Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:I ask because I finished my first ever first draft of a novel in April and, after taking a couple months off to not look at or think about it, started editing with a pen and notepad. I've also started returning to the manuscript on the computer and typing my edits in. So far it has worked okay, but at times it also feels like I'm shortchanging myself because I have some big, sweeping changes to the story I want to implement. Right now, I'm thinking I could correct all the grammatical & legibility errors to form a "draft 1.5" and then insert the big story changes to round out the second draft. You're going at the process backwards. You don't want to edit your prose before making big story changes because the prose is still going to change as you revise the story itself. Focus on the story first. If you're going to put up something for critique, sure go over that segment's grammar and make it legible first, but if this is just sitting on your HD or drawer awaiting your revisions, you're wasting precious hours polishing before you rewrite whole sections. Cardinal Ximenez posted:What's with all the passive voice dissing? I know it is "common" advice, but at this point, you are a necromancer raising this long-discredited prescriptivist cliche from the grave. It irks me because it gets covered by fairly reliable sources about as often as the "eskimos have n words for snow" thing. This is why I included the warning "don't be a prescriptivist rear end," and consider the author's voice above all. It's not a blanket condemnation. Everything I've mentioned, I've seen abused all to hell by people posting their work for critique here. Much of it looks like they just came off writing essays for high-school/college, where using passive voice throughout the whole thing is either accepted or expected. Take science papers for example, where you want to emphasize the experiment being done, and not the experimenter. They then try to write a story in that mode, not realizing the passive voice is killing their action scenes and so on. Therefore, it warrants mention. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jul 16, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2012 19:41
|
|
|
Great post Mike Works. I'll add a link to the OP once I get a little more time later today. I'll also add Geekboy's backing up suggestion.Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I'm doing something similar, but I'm giving them each their own chapter. You might want to consider longer sections or separate chapters instead of just one or two paragraphs, though. This is great advice, except I wanted to point out the bolded part is allowed in an omniscient pov. You still don't want to jump heads mid-paragraph, but if you have a narrator and it's clear who's thinking what, you can bounce from paragraph to paragraph. In omniscient, you can also choose to follow only one character as well. It's pretty open, but tough to master. Consistency is key, and so is tone. This kind of omniscient works just fine for some types of comedy for example. In a deep third pov, you never want to jump pov except for scene or chapter breaks. This is generally more immersive and allows you to build tension through the readers not knowing what the other characters are thinking. The thing is to decide what type of pov you want to follow through your novel, learn its strengths and weaknesses, and stick to it. If it's not working, then diagnose and revise accordingly.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2012 15:01
|
|
|
Anais Nun posted:You're very welcome. I only recently crawled out of the rubble of a second draft myself. Third drafts are much nicer, so you've got that to look forward to. Yeah, second drafts are the toughest. I'm in-between, coming from my fairly polished first 2/3 of my novel to the rough last third. I stalled out and had to rewrite the beginning and middle over twice because the foundation was lacking, the pacing off, and the tone uneven. So, I left what I thought was a solid final act until later. I'm going through it now, and holy poo poo is it badly written. Looking at first draft material after beating away at more polished drafts is loving painful. I just rewrote an entire chapter. None of the events changed significantly (this time), but it was barely sketched out. I added 1500 words, and probably entirely rewrote the other 3000 in the process. The next chapter isn't much better. The events are all there, but need to be organized into a logical series. Every paragraph is a jumbled mess of poo poo half-said. That's first drafts for you. Learn to love pain.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2012 00:48
|
|
|
Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:Don't give up. It's a hard hurdle to get over, and the truth is it probably is terrible from a prose perspective. But the real point of first drafts for long-form stories (be they novel or whatever else) is to get the story down and see if the narrative is coherent and interesting. It's also the best time to get to know your characters. I let mine bullshit to each other for pages, and ramble off to do things that are completely irrelevant to the plot. I cut all that crap, sometimes tearing it out while still writing the first draft because it's derailed the story, but it was valuable writing time nonetheless. I keep that stuff in a backstory file, to remember who they are behind the scenes. While nearing the end of the second draft, I found I cut too much character bullshit near the climax. Focusing on getting the plot moving as fast as possible ended up making it a slog to read. I decided to add some of my character's bullshitting back in, just a tiny dose, to spice up the story. I snip tiny character moments from my bullshit files and weave them back in.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2012 21:09
|
|
|
If you've outlined during (or before) the first draft, your second will be a little easier. You'll still need to take a good look at your first draft, so my following advice is for both plotters and pantsers.CantDecideOnAName posted:Is it mandatory to rewrite the entire novel from scratch for the second draft? Rewriting is necessary—from scratch isn't. That's a matter of preference. I only do a blank page rewrite (of select scenes/chapters) if something's really not working, because it'll help me find another direction. Otherwise, the rewrite is rearranging, cutting, adding, and ironing out inconsistencies. When I rewrite, I mostly do it overtop the bones in the rough draft. Some people prefer to do it side-by-side looking at the original as a reference. I write new scenes on a blank page, then decide where they fit, or what I need to change to make them fit. If you're writing overtop, you'll probably do some editing along the way, particularly if nothing you wrote makes sense. That's ok, just don't get caught up in polishing every word, and focus on making the story flow in a logical direction. Remind yourself the words will get looked over again on the next pass and move on once the story is tightened up. You can trick your brain into thinking it's not as hard as it is by breaking it down into steps. First, read your whole story. Put it in a format like paper, pdf, ebook, something you can only make notes on. Change up the font (I pretty it up so it looks like a published book). The trick is to get out of writing mode completely for a moment to take a look at the big picture. Try to run through the whole thing with a readerly eye. Don't worry about bad prose. Look for poo poo that doesn't make sense, scribble it down, and keep reading. Keep the pace in the back of your head. If you feel like it's a slog, mark the passages your eyes glaze over. If shits flying by too fast, note that too. So, you got your basic notes. If you're a discovery writer, now is the time to plot. If you're an outliner, now is the time to look back at new things you've discovered along the way and adjust accordingly. Here's some suggestions I've picked up on plotting and tried out: Write out your scenes on index cards (real or in Scrivener), a brief synopsis. Then make notes on the back of the card (Document Notes in Scrivener). Here's points I cover on the back of mine: First Draft (if you didn't cover these in the first draft, look at them now). Purpose - What are you trying to accomplish in this scene? Tone - Writing down the general tone I'm going for helps me see if I'm sticking to it, or veering off in another direction (that can either be a good thing or not). Conflicts/Motivations - Identify what your characters want and what/who is holding them back. Do this for all named characters in the scene, not just the main ones. If you think it'll help bring more life to your scene, do this for unnamed ones as well like "cabbie" or "waitress." I tend to make that stuff up as I go along and keep it in the back of my head as I write (waitress has had a long day and her feet are killing her, protagonist has walked in ten minutes before closing, etc.) Identify subtext and make sure it's clear without turning it into text-text. Details - Stuff you need to keep track of: Did you wound your character? Does it have an impact on subsequent scenes? Is someone carrying something important? Did they lose it? etc. Second Draft (you don't want to inspect these until after you've written the first draft). Tension - Rating from 1-10 Theme - Is there a general theme coming out of this story? You can pick up a pattern by trying to find them in each scene. Decide which ones are the most important and if you need to strengthen them. Concerns - Identify anything you missed or are unsure about. Once that's all down, take a look at your tension. Identify which parts are scene or sequel. On a larger scale you might have whole scenes acting as either scene or sequel. The scene is upping the tension, the sequel is releasing it to give the reader a little breather. Plot the tension on a curve and look at the story's overall shape. It should generally be rising up to the climax. I also make sure the novel's mid-point has a smaller climax. If you have a few outliers, a big drop, or a long flat line, examine those because they might be killing your story's pace. You can break it down like this: Beginning - Either the inciting incident has taken place before the story starts, or it happens at the 25% mark. In either case, something has to happen to kick off the plot at the 25% mark. Spend the first 25% building a foundation. Middle - This is half your whole book, and where it most often falls flat. Breaking it into two halves can help you drive the plot. Make something happen at the 50% mark. Give it some kind of turning point. Ending - Your climax and resolution. Your story's events are leading up to something big at the 75% mark. Then take the last 25% to resolve it. The resolution is called falling action for a reason. This is because you're not spending 25% of the book having your characters reflect on what happened, you're spending it making them do something to resolve the plot. For example, if finding out who done it is the climax, then catching the murderer is the resolution. If your detective is chasing him down in a car, that's the falling action, not the climax. Some people confuse the two. After examining your story's pace, decide where poo poo doesn't fit. Don't worry about the sequence of events. If you find yourself thinking, "I can't change this stuff because that's how it happens" slap yourself. It's a story. You're making it all up anyway. Can you cut, rearrange, or rewrite events so the pace works better? Massage the details to keep them internally consistent afterwards. While you're doing this, remember your scene's purpose. Is it pulling its weight? Does it reveal character and/or advance the plot? How does it tie into the theme? If you didn't discover who your character was until later in the book, rewrite to frontload more character details in the beginning. Character is your hook, how you connect with the readers. Don't make us wait as long as it took you to figure it out. Go back and make sure we have some reason to care about your main character on page one. Next, go over your tone. Is it consistent? Are any tonal shifts on purpose, or are you going to jolt the reader out of the story because of an accidental slip? I discovered the importance of these points while rewriting my own novel. Is there anything else you guys have found makes or breaks your second draft? Edit: I've also edited my first post after the OP to add some stuff to the "Show Don't Tell" discussion. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jul 25, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2012 20:27
|
|
|
CantDecideOnAName posted:My apologies. I'm just very frustrated with this entire thing. Everyone gets frustrated with their writing efforts. It's normal. Buck yourself up and plough through it. Thinking you're poo poo means you're looking hard at yourself with an eye to improve, and that's a good thing. However, your second paragraph is bordering on the passive aggressive. Do not derail this thread with a pity party. If you do, I will ask pipes! to give you a nice vacation so you can take the time to sit down, sort your poo poo, and write something. Go away from your computer and don't post again in this thread tonight. Do not apologize. Do not explain. We all know what you're going through at this exact moment. Come back after you've refreshed your brain. You'll feel better for not having made more of an rear end of yourself. Play around in the Daily Writing thread and get your chops, man. If you give up, we can't help you. We can if you keep at it. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Jul 26, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2012 06:57
|
|
|
DrVenkman posted:What I find odd about my own writing is that my first drafts tend to be shorter than the others, with the second usually expanding on it. Is anyone else the same or does it tend to be "huge first draft, whittle it down afterwards"? I'm the same, writing down bare bones in the first draft and having to flesh them out in the next. Whereas a friend of mine bloats his first drafts and has to whittle them down afterwards. He loves the sound of words, has en ear for prose, and has an idea of how he wants to tell the story while he writes. I started out a tin-eared doofus when it comes to verbalization. Reading my poo poo out loud is one way I'm training my brain to hear the prose rather than just seeing the images it conveys. I see scenes in my head like a movie, and have to struggle to translate it into words. So, my first drafts are more like extremely detailed outlines, or cliff notes of the story in my head. If I try to flesh it out more the first time, I stall out. I spend too much time stopping the movie in my head and thinking, ok what exactly is my character doing? So, just to get it down before it goes poof in a cloud of blue smoke, I write like a total hack. It's all "tell," and I have to struggle to excise that crap in the second draft, painting over the sketch with prose. Sometimes finding the right word is like pulling teeth. On a good day, it can take an hour to bash out a measly 500 words. Maybe my next novel with flow through my fingers a bit faster. I'll probably still end up with a bare first draft and need to dress it up, but it'll go faster if I don't fight the process.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2012 21:26
|
|
|
FauxCyclops posted:Oh, god drat it! Yes, please stop posting in this thread about your dick avatar, or anything related to your dick avatar. Move along folks.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2012 05:08
|
|
|
I think a reminder about the forums rules is in order:pipes! posted:The Spirit of Creative Convention If you think someone has crossed the line, use the report button. I've chatted with pipes! several times in PM, and he really does appreciate it when we let him know about whatever poo poo's going down. You guys have been really good about stopping about-to-get-too personal derails in this thread, so I haven't used it. But if someone is being a trolling dick, only pipes! has any real power to stop it. Let him know about it. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Aug 5, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2012 06:14
|
|
|
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's always a good idea to give your characters someone to talk to, because external dialogue is generally more engaging than internal dialogue. "Imaginary friend" might give your readers the impression he's batshit, and can suck terribly if you treat it wrong, so think hard before you decide to go down that route. Bringing the second character in earlier sounds like a good way to revise, but before that, does your character really have no one to talk to? Does he not even attempt to communicate with shopkeepers or landladies, or try to bum money for a train ride, or anything? All of these little interactions are better ways to let your reader get to know your character than endless paragraphs having him sitting alone going, "Oh woe is me." You can use little social exchanges to help build your character until his proper foil shows up. Even if he can't speak the language, showing how he deals with that is a character building moment.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2012 21:56
|
|
|
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 |
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2012 19:06
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2012 20:09
|
|
|
Chillmatic posted:I of course agree that there are exceptions to this rule. I'd be more inclined to agree with you if so many people didn't outright balk at the suggestion to stop putting so much boring poo poo into their stories. But they do. Nearly every time. They sit there and argue that you NEED to know all this dumb crap, even though their own favorite stories don't fall into such traps. Which is in itself a symptom of immaturity, that myopic self-absorption that consumes most teenagers (that some people never grow out of). The problem is, those details are important to them and they can't imagine what it looks like to someone who's not them. Of course they respond defensively, because they haven't learned to think of their stories as not them either. What I'm saying, is I agree with you here, but not about getting too personal with them during a crit (that doesn't mean not cussing them out). Those people need a, as they say, "What you did talk, not a what you are talk," because most people grow out of this phase—if they don't, they become number twos.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2012 21:13
|
|
|
Mr.48 posted:So I've noticed that many people give writing advice along the lines of "keep your writing as brief as possible" in the sense of using the fewest possible words to describe whatever you're writing about. Mark Twain set the standard for modern writing. Listen to the man: quote:I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice. A lot of people, including myself, have had to break our undergrad habits of padding the wordcount. Breaking that habit is freeing, and so is learning to cut. Check out Ken Rand's 10% solution, linked in the Creative Resources thread. It's the most succinct book you can find on cutting the sluff off your prose. The whole point in doing this is when you economize, you're forced to choose stronger, better words. You get your point across faster, and what you have to say makes a bigger impact, no matter what kind of writing you're doing. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Aug 20, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2012 07:14
|
|
|
ultrachrist posted:Short sentences vs. long sentences -- If you can competently pull off shorter, direct sentences, you can decide if you want to add words back in, for rhythm, emphasis, or voice. You (the general "you," always) learn how to make careful word choices by learning how to be brutal when cutting them out. Some people have an ear for prose, can make the longest sentences roll off the tongue with ease. Most people have to develop that sense through careful training. I have a friend who's prose style is pretty old fashioned. It's rambling in a comical way, a bit archaic at times, and works because he writes comical fantasy. He spent years developing an ear for prose, has great rhythm, yet still needed me to tell him to switch to active voice in a few parts where it was getting in the way of more active scenes. Changing up the voice highlighted those scenes and made the visuals pop. The point is he can do whatever's called for to turn a story into a symphony rather than droning on.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2012 20:06
|
|
|
Brock Broner posted:Marc pumped his turgid dick into her sopping baby box as it thwacked wetly again his scrotal area. Steph’s back arched and her nails dug into Marc’s shoulders when she pulled them tight together. When he lost himself and began to cry out Steph jammed a sock puppet frog into his mouth. By the time he finished a minute later both had green felt between their teeth. Bwahahaha! Holy poo poo, this is terrible. The first part detracts from Kermit the Frog entering the scene though. I'd tone down the first half and focus on that, because it's legit funny, wheras in the first bit the languange is maybe too unintentionally funny (depending on how gawdawful ridiculous your general tone is).
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2012 22:52
|
|
|
Seldom Posts posted:I think this is right. Just ditch the first sentence and you have a sex scene that sounds like it is supposed to be funny. Yeah, I should've used smileys so Brok Boner got my tone there. Dude, you're first sentence is like this:  But the rest is like this:  gets you laughs. gets you laughed at.Don't mix up the two.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2012 01:52
|
|
|
Nirvikalpa posted:Can you be a novelist without liking to read fiction? I don't really like reading other fiction works that much, but I don't have any other outlet for expressing my ideas besides prose. Is there any other resource I can turn to besides reading other people's works? I seriously don't remember the last time I really enjoyed reading a novel. Oh great, another Idea Guy. So you hate novels, but want to write one because you think it's the easiest way to get your ideas "out there." Let me guess, you'd rather make movies or something but all the novel-to-film projects have convinced you the only way your ideas will ever make it to the screen is becoming a successful novelist and having someone buy the rights to your famous novel and making a film out of it. Give me a moment while I laugh … Ok done. I'm going tell you, right now, if you don't like reading novels, then whatever novel you attempt to write is going to suck so hard you will never write anything good enough for anyone to give a drat. Writing a novel is goddamned hard work, not a golden ticket for the lazy, and you have to love the medium you choose to work in. When you make any kind of art, you have to love the process. This is what drives you to succeed, not your ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Being a stone-cold badass wordslinger is what sells your ideas, and you will never become one unless you have a hungry enough mind to devour the words of badass wordslingers who've come before you. Great art is not created in a vacuum. It's a synthesis process. What comes out of you is the sum total of your experience, and if you have never experienced great writing, if it leaves you cold, then what comes out of you is going to reflect that. To sum up: Good writing = good reading + keen observation + elbow grease + feedback + more elbow grease. There is no escaping this equation. Anything less produces garbage. Garbage in = garbage out. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Sep 9, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2012 00:00
|
|
|
Nirvikalpa posted:Eh, I don't think people will enjoy my writing enough to get paid substantially for it. I never said books that get movies are the best books, but those writers, even if the prose is poo poo, know the mechanics of story, and they get that from reading. S. Meyer may be a hack, but at least she's a hack who loves Shakespeare and Jane Austen—that enjoyment came through enough for many readers to enjoy her dumb garbage. How do you expect to enjoy writing a novel if you don't enjoy reading them? How do you expect anyone else to enjoy your writing if you get no joy from the imagery others create with words? As others have said, how would you expect to make music if you hated music? Would you enjoy a violin performance by someone who's completely tone deaf? That violinist might even pick up a book on playing the violin and have their fingers in all the right places, but they'll still end up sounding like nails on a chalkboard. Sentences are also tonal creations. There is one thing you can do to change your situation: find a type of fiction you like. If you said you hated music, but had only ever heard polka music, someone would say, there's more than polka music out there. You might find something you like if you keep trying new stuff. To completely brush off centuries of written fiction because you've picked up less than 50 novels in your life and went "blahh" is the height of ignorance. I don't enjoy half the poo poo I read, but I keep reading. Here's a different take. What kind of stories do you like? You must enjoy some kind of stories (at least in other media) if you have ideas to write a novel. Go ask for the type of stories you like in the "Recommend Me" thread in the book barn.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2012 04:24
|
|
|
Oxxidation posted:Because as people have already said, asking how to write if you don't like to read is like asking how to paint if you don't like looking at art or asking how to play music if you don't like to listen to it. Anyone with sense is going to be incredulous as first, and then if the issue is pressed they're going to get pissed. It's not a request for advice, it's a request for validation of an idiotic choice. Exactly. It's like asking in the Daily Drawing thread, "How do I draw animes?" and then bitching and whining when people tell you to learn life drawing saying, "I don't wanna because it's boring and I just wanna draw animes. Waaaah." You get exactly the same response because that's every hard working artist's response to a lazy rear end who thinks making art is easy.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2012 06:06
|
|
|
Erik's missing a modifier here that might clear up your fears (sorry for mangling the grammar in the process).Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:Yeah, pretty much. Only If you say something blazingly retarded, people are going to mock you and spend money to do it as well. So no, we are not going to jump down your throat for asking newbie questions. I used the anime in the DD threads as a specific example because they are sick and tired of the same BS when it comes to drawing. Idea Guys who don't want to put in any work (and research), and fan artists who don't want to learn (but want a magic formula to get good anyway) are a huge pet peeve on every serious crit forum you can find. Edit: As are people who ask for advice and refuse to take it because it's haaaaard. (See below) Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Sep 9, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2012 06:26
|
|
|
Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Oh well, if you don't care about doing it well, then just have at it, type up a bunch of poo poo, shove it down the throats of all your friends and family, and bask in their awkward, insincere praise. And also 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2012 07:19
|
|
|
SkySteak posted:PS: Also do pistols get much more expensive then those deluxe models? Can we please take the gun chat outside? There's better places to ask these kinds of questions, like the newbie thread in TFR. To be fair, if I wanted info on rocket science, I'd go find a physics forum and ask a bunch of experts. If I wanted to know everything about horses, I'd go find a horse forum.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2012 22:58
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:Partly it's to not be an rear end in a top hat because some people love Mieville to bits. But also he has a great fecund imagination. And from memory his wordsmithing was at least competent. I wanted to like China Mieville because his settings are like gothic cathedrals filled with gargoyles. Unfortunately, so is his prose.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2012 04:49
|
|
|
Subway Ninja posted:Here's something I'm struggling with as a writer, most likely due to my preferences as a reader: The guy basically used a piss-poor example to subvert his own point. Distilling that whole passage to "It was a dark and stormy night," which has become a cliche for bad writing, is not how you go about improving it. Replacing purple prose with a bland cliche (and to give Bulworth Lytton credit, he owns that cliche) would have George Orwell rolling in his grave. Go read the Orwell and Twain advice I linked in the OP, and you'll see this guy's point better made. 
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2012 07:40
|
|
|
Black Griffon posted:I'm getting hung up on whether I'm allowed to use "yelled" and such if it's really hard to show through the rest of the text whether the subject is yelling. It's getting so bad that my editor is kicking in when I'm writing and halting my process. Should I just type "yelled" or whatever and fix it later, or am I too obsessed with eliminating anything but "said"? Hehe, proscriptivism strikes again. I chuckle because for a while I was trying to eliminate every single instance of "was" in my manuscript, until I realized I was going through awkward contortions not to use it when it was sometimes the best word. Just type "yelled" and don't worry about fixing it (unless you do come up with something better—later). There's nothing wrong with "yelled" or "whispered" in small doses. Hold it in reserve for when it's necessary, and it'll be all the more effective. You can't always tell from context alone, so use them when you need to.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2012 09:15
|
|
|
LaughMyselfTo posted:On an unrelated note (well, it's related in that it's about the same project), I've been wary of worldbuilding, because in my experience and observations, writers who don't know exactly what they're doing with worldbuilding can get caught up in an endless loop of self-congratulating, masturbatory sperging for the sake of it. Do the other writers in this thread have any advice on balancing worldbuilding with more substantive, character-based and theme-based storytelling? How should exposition be handled to avoid turning your novel into a fictional, and therefore useless, edition of Encyclopedia Britannica? The best way to weave in world details is to have people act like everything's normal when doing things differently from the way we do things. The most famous example is Heinlein's "the door dilated," which gives us an immediate picture that this is the future without pulling the reader out of the story. Small bits of exposition is ok when you can't get around it though. Your narrator, in any PoV, is allowed to explain things in a few quick sentences when necessary. Bad exposition is droning on for paragraphs. I keep worldbuilding and backstory notes, most of which never make it into the story. Writing it down elsewhere helps me avoid plopping exposition awkwardly into the story as I think up the details. Having it straight in my head means it flows naturally when I sit down to write a scene. I have a big book of Harlan Ellison stories, which has some accompanying essays about writing. He talked about how he knew exactly what a certain character's apartment looked like, which never made it into the story, but it was there as part of her story every time he got her to act on the page. Those notes are for you. When you know your characters and world inside out, it shows through. Beta readers are great for telling you if you're under or overexplaining. It's not something you should worry about while writing the first draft. Some people write too much in their first draft and some people (like me) write too little. When you write too much, your reader response will be, "This is boring." When you write too little you'll get, "I'm confused." Most of the people who wank about worldbuilding are the kind who either never get a story written at all, or think their first draft is the complete manuscript, only needing a quick polish for grammar. Anyone who realizes it takes multiple revisions to turn out a decent story is self aware enough to correct their exposition flaws when pointed out. So I say again, don't worry at this point, just get it down on the page. Also, for a great example of weaving in massive world details without stopping to explain a thing, read Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination and skip the (most likely obtuse editor demanded) prologue. It'll make your head spin at first because he just piles on the crazy and lets the reader sink or swim. It's beautiful. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Nov 26, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Nov 26, 2012 22:10
|
|
|
dromer posted:For a second example, what if neither the elevator nor the room is remarkable and I just need to get the guy to the meeting. Would I just skip the whole thing entirely, with a "Later, I arrived at the meeting..." Yes. Focus on the scenes, and only bother with transitions if they add something to the story.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2012 03:15
|
|
|
SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Adverbs are fine, it's that most writers tend towards using too many, so beating them over the head with "ADVERBS WILL EAT YOU" is an easy way to correct that. They're hard to use right, so avoiding them until you've got a more solid grasp of other elements can be a good idea. This goes for pretty much everything mentioned in the 10% solution. The goal isn't to cut every adverb, or words like "was," "of," or "that," but to cut down on their abuse. If you get in the habit of cutting those words, you'll get a better feel for when they're useful and necessary.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2012 07:46
|
|
|
SkySteak posted:To be brutally honest though, in the end a lot of good writing comes from inherent talent. You can practice all you want but if you don't have the ability, no matter what effort you put in, you'll just be 'alrigh't at best. Here, I'm gonna demystify talent for you. Talent, when it comes to art, is an innate ability to connect with an audience. Sitting all by yourself writing like crazy and never getting out of the house will never get you there, because you learn how to connect with people by interacting with them. There. That's the magical "talent" that makes people go, "Wow, this work really speaks to me." If you get people, you write relatable characters. If you write relatable characters, people think you have talent. So why is talent so hard to come by? Because too many writers are NERDS.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2012 08:11
|
|
|
I'm gonna qualify my last post by saying I've identified three core things that you need not to suck: Love of your chosen medium. Like the "I find fiction revolting" girl is just no hope. This is what often gets called talent in kids. If a kid loves drawing, they keep doing it until they're better than their peers, but they need the next two things to go beyond that. Self awareness—critical faculties. If you're lacking this, you end up like that Major Tom guy on TVT who's written a million words of crappy Gundum fanfic or whatever, never does so much as a minor proofread, and proceeds to write another million words of crap. Experience—not just writing experience, but life experience and a shitload of reading. When some kid strolls in CC saying, "I want to make anime" and proceeds to post reams of crappy animu drawings and a comic script with wooden characters ripped straight out of Sailor Moon, this is what they're lacking—and this is exactly what HiddenGecko is talking about. Garbage in = garbage out.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2012 22:10
|
|
|
Crisco Kid posted:Is derivative fiction created by a fan or a screenwriter so fundamentally different, though? I'm pretty sure Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh were huge LotR fans, likewise with any current Dr. Who writers. They appear to be creations in their own right because they jumped media and because the names and money attached to them give them credibility. Like with anything intended to make a profit, we only end up seeing the creme of the crop. Even Transformers, I'm afraid. You can pretty much cite copyright law to draw a (albeit fuzzy) line in the sand. A work based on another must be significantly different--transformative--to be considered an original work. Fan work can't be sold--except when you change all the character's names, the setting, etc., and then you have 50 Shades of Whatever. The whole "serious writers, don't waste your time on fanfic" thing is about not wasting time on things that can't forward their career in a concrete monetary way. Therefore, making anything based on Sherlock Holmes or Shakespeare is fine becuase they're now public domain. TV, comics, and novelizations of popular franchises belong in a different catagory entirely. These begin as group projects, and continue as group efforts long after the original creators have left the team. However, fans can't just write a superhero comic and turn around and sell it because large companies own these franchises. There's nothing wrong with dabbling in fan bullshit as a hobby. Hell, I mod games as a hobby and I can never make money at it because that would step over the copyright line. Is it a waste of time? Sure, it's a bigass waste of time, but it's fun as hell and everyone's allowed a hobby. Even artists are allowed to have hobbies and piss away their creative energy on harmless fun, whatever that might be. If a pro writer wants to take a break from their stories and write Firefly fanfic in their spare time, who the gently caress cares?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2012 22:45
|
|
|
Screenwriting advice tends to put the inciting incident at the end of act one, but there should be another to kick off the story right at the start. You need something to get your characters moving at the beginning, even if it's small. This doesn't mean you have to start in meda res. It means you give them something to do that will keep the reader interested and create opportunities to get to know the character without resorting to brushing teeth scenes. For example, say you start your story at a funeral, intending something to happen there that kicks off the mains story arc. This means someone had to die offscreen before the story starts to get all your characters to the opening funeral scene. That counts as an inciting incident, even though the main inciting incident (characters read the will, the body is missing, whatever) is yet to come.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2013 03:14
|
|
|
Mike Works posted:You're thinking of the first Plot Point (at the end of act one). The Inciting Incident comes with the first 10 pages/minutes. Right. I think a lot of people are getting the terms confused (including me), which is what kicked off the whole discussion in the first place. A lot of writing advice I've read uses the term inciting incident for the first plot point. The way you put it sets that straight, so I'll use that from now on. Thanks.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2013 05:33
|
|
|
Runcible Cat posted:Bear in mind that fantasy books from before when fantasy became A Genre do tend to have really slow lead-ins by modern standards - if you read, say, The Worm Ouroboros or The Night Land you get a first chapter of setup about a contemporary guy having Visions or Astrally Projecting To The Planet Mercury and This Is What He Saw which is promptly forgotten as soon as the actual story kicks in. This wouldn't fly for a second these days. The same goes for writers emulating Victorian authors. It can be done, but modern writers still have to quicken the pace. Saying, "I love Dickens, so I'm going to spend 5000 words panning over a foggy harbor," doesn't fly these days either.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2013 17:49
|
|
|
I love Scrivener myself, but I have to mention P.G. Wodehouse's editing method as it's similar to the corkboard method for outlining. He used to cut up all his scenes and pin them to the wall. He'd organise them by importance by pinning them higher or lower on the wall, and pin them crooked if they needed a rewrite. He wasn't satisfied with a story until all the scenes lined the wall in a single neat row. Now, I wish I could do that in Scrivener, but I settle for color-coding my index cards to indicate how far along a chapter/scene is in the revision process because I don't have enough wall-space to do that with physical paper.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2013 08:37
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 21:13 |
|
|
Ihmemies posted:It may sound like a bad idea with the potential of boring the gently caress out of readers, when they most likely would like to conentrate on the characters and their emotions instead of some long rear end infodumps. Yes. quote:But I think those dumps would serve a purpose by enchaning the character-driven parts, or that's what I say to myself No. quote:Anyways, how to mix the two? Some kind of an encyclopedia entry like in Isaac Asimov's Foundation before a chapter starts? Alternating between apocalypse and character chapters? Inserting a neverending wordy "This is John Galt speaking" rant somewhere? Any and all suggestions are appreciated, even the ones saying this is a poo poo idea from the get-go. No, no, and no. How you mix the two is to weave it in to the narrative. Show how the disaster effects people. Generally, people who are interested in post-apocalyptic novels have read enough of them that info-dumping the whole "this is how the world ended" thing is talking down to them. The fact you even asked if a "John Galt" rant is necessary makes me think you assume you need to talk down to the reader to make sure they Get It (even with your implied sarcasm). I can tell you right now that would be absolutely insufferable. Unless you intend to make this a YA novel (and even if you are), your book is not going to be babby's first post-apocalyptic reader. At the very least, they may have read The Crysalids in school (did you?), and John Wyndham practically invented the post-apocalyptic novel. If you haven't read The Day of the Triffids (for its plot organization and pacing, not the concepts) then you're starting blind, because it is one of the few stories that tell both the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories, just like you want to. Alternately, watch Thorns or the 80s televised series of The Day of the Triffids, and note how long they take to tell the full story. Do either of these before jumping headlong into writing a disaster novel AND post-apocalyptic story rolled into one, because that is what you'd be doing and why most authors don't. If you're aware that this is what you're attempting, you stand a better chance of pulling it off. Alternately, you might decide weaving the past disaster into the current story of the post-apocalyptic survivors is the better place to focus. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Apr 21, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2013 22:04
|
|