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I've got a science fiction story I'm working on, where the main character is transformed by technology into a different person. I'm trying to come up with a background/motivation for the character, and I keep on getting stuck in a "oh, that's too cliché, it's already been done before" rut. How do I get out of this, or should I just move past it? The ideas I keep coming to are: - He's a researcher whose research is too experimental to get funding, so he chooses himself as a subject (which inherently doesn't work anyway since this involves technology in the brain), and this idea has been done before. - He's a prisoner who is chosen for an experimental secret study as an agreement to commute his sentence. This has also been done before, and it would fundamentally change the character into a person who would have done something so bad that they were sent to prison.
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Aug 25, 2014 22:08
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It's frustrating to come up with an interesting character, but then have no kind of "arc" for them to exist in a story. Like if you came up with Dr. Gregory House. Okay, he's an interesting character. Now what? What does he do? for 1000 pages? That's the trouble I'm having.
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Aug 30, 2014 08:09
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Install Focuswriter and disable wi-fi on your laptop.
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Sep 3, 2014 23:53
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I finally put words to paper today. It wasn't much, just a few hundred, but at least I started the drat thing.
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Sep 4, 2014 07:15
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People will still read books. Think about it: Everything you all mentioned we can literally do now. Interactive books? Easy on a tablet. In fact, they already exist. People still enjoy reading text, and some people (myself included) still enjoy and prefer reading from paper. It won't change, at least not for a long time. It's just like video-conferencing. When it was invented in the 90s, it was hailed as a new revolution of human contact. You can now see the person you're talking to! Suddenly, visions of the future had video screens in everything. Calling your wife? She answers from the videophone in the refrigerator. Calling your boss? You see him on the video screen. It was predicted to completely replace text communication. Why write or speak to someone when you can SEE and HEAR them! That technology totally exists today and it's everywhere (skype, facetime, hangouts) but we don't use it nearly as much as they predicted.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:09
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How do I force myself to add more detail?
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Sep 8, 2014 01:59
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Tyrannosaurus posted:What are you missing? I don't know. I just feel like I don't spend enough time painting the scene. If I do, I feel like I'm forcing myself to do it, and then adding unnecessary fluff detail. I have a screenwriting background, so I often feel like I'm painting it like a movie scene, and I don't know if that's good enough or not. edit: Here's an example of something I'm working on. The character is having a dream (actually going to be a premonition) and wakes up on the floor of a hospital: ---------- Leonard stood in the alleyway lit only by the harsh white xenon of the streetlight. The rain wasn't going to stop anytime soon, and he felt it soaking through his shoes at this point. “Dr. Mann?” Blackness engulfed the alleyway, and then there was nothing but the brightest light. Leonard lifted his head up from the floor. “Dr. Mann, are you okay? How long have you been here?” Dr. Leonard Mann found himself lying face first on the floor of a hospital room. A nurse stood over him. A few drops of blood stained the floor near his wrist, just past the IV that had been yanked out. The nurse helped him back onto the bed. ---------- Liam Emsa fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 8, 2014 17:37
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If I want to devote a chapter to giving a historical background of a company, is that something I do in present tense? I know that this is probably a really bad idea, but I was just wondering. I'm thinking of something like Moby Dick, where he devoted certain chapters to historical background or explanation of topics. Something like: quote:Vandelay Industries is a cybernetics company that was founded in 2047. Currently owned by Lord Vader, it specializes in high-tech dildonics for the military age. It employs over 3 billion people.
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Sep 9, 2014 05:32
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Weird question, but has anyone thought about what name you should use when publishing? Stephen King could have been Steve King or even Stephen Edwin King. Have any of you gone through this? What made you choose one over another?
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Sep 10, 2014 06:38
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I'm trying to write about the main character having a vision of an alternate reality that he can see alongside the reality he's in currently. I feel like I'm doing a poor job of describing his first interaction with it. He is waking up in a hospital and it occurs when he tries to get a glass of water:quote:He reached for the glass of water on the table next to his bed. At the moment he reached out, he noticed two right arms reaching out of his body. The sight shocked him, and he pulled back. He slowly reached again. The second arm moved out again. He watched it carefully. It didn’t appear to be attached to his body in any realistic way. He didn’t feel it. It extended from the exact same location on his shoulder that his real arm extended from. But it was different. It appeared to be reaching for the same glass, but different. It was reaching in a different way. Slightly lower, as if it was just making a separate, second attempt for the glass. He pulled back once more in trepidation. He looked closely at his hand. It looked just like the view outside, slightly doubled, as if a ghost image was following it’s every move. Maybe this was some visual side-effect of the his medication. Regardless, he needed a drink. He reached for the glass. The ghost image of his arm again went out separately. He ignored it this time. He grabbed the glass firmly with his fingers. The second arm reached the glass at the same time, only this ghost image knocked into it callously. A separate, ghost glass fell to the floor with a loud crash, shattering and spreading water across the floor of the room. Then, in an instant, it was all gone. The floor was clean. The glass was gone, and the arm had disappeared. He was left holding his glass in his hand.
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Sep 12, 2014 06:28
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Thanks for the critique. It took me a whole week to get up the courage to read the comments. I'm terrified of reading criticism.
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Sep 16, 2014 22:07
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Sitting Here posted:I'm picking on this so hard because I suspect this story is riddled with the same adverb problems. I'm also guessing you use phrases like he noticed/he felt/he saw/he suddenly _______/etc a lot. I'm also also guessing you do too much telling about how the narrator feels. He was shocked, he was afraid, he was confused, he did _______ with trepidation, and so on. How do I not do this? Do I do something like this: "He noticed the walls were moving." and change it to "The walls moved." edit: I rewrote the paragraph I posted earlier: quote:He reached for the glass of water on the table next to his bed to soothe the nausea. At the moment he reached out, he noticed two right arms reaching out of his body. The sight shocked him, and he pulled back. Was this his imagination? A side effect from whatever medication he was on? He slowly reached again. The second arm moved out, and he watched it carefully. He knew it wasn’t real, because he couldn’t feel it. But what was it, then? It extended from the exact same location on his shoulder that his real arm extended from, reaching for the same glass, but different. Slightly lower, as if it was just making a separate, second attempt for the glass. He pulled back once more in trepidation. He looked closely at his hand. It looked just like the view outside, slightly doubled, as if a ghost image was following it’s every move. He reached again towards the glass on the table next to him. The ghost image of his arm again went out separately. He grabbed the glass firmly with his fingers. The second arm reached the glass at the same time, only this ghost image knocked into it callously. A separate, ghost glass fell to the floor with a loud crash, shattering and spreading water across the floor of the room. His blood ran cold with anxiety. It felt real. Was it? Then, in an instant, it was all gone. The floor was clean. The glass was gone, and the arm had disappeared. He was left holding his glass in his hand. Liam Emsa fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 22:14
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Here's a good essay: http://imgur.com/PVzNJ7t
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Sep 17, 2014 04:56
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Also, I hit 2000 words today, 
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Sep 17, 2014 05:18
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I'll just chime in and say that I don't have a problem with a critique, I just get really embarrassed and cringe when people are discussing stuff that I made, whether it's writing, artwork, or anything. It's probably because I don't have the confidence in my writing yet.
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Sep 17, 2014 05:52
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Ugh, I wish someone had quoted it before he edited it.
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Sep 20, 2014 01:13
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I have 2000 words so far, and in those 2000 words I have 4 chapters. Chapters in books tend to be like 10-30 pages, right? I guess I find myself switching gears too often and deciding to make a new chapter.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:28
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Has anyone ever posted anything where the response was, "Wow. This was amazing. I can't wait to read more" ?
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Sep 20, 2014 19:02
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I have two guys named John and Mike. I'm trying to write a scene where John sees Mike, but John doesn't know who Mike is yet. But I've already introduced Mike earlier in the story. I want the audience to know that John is seeing Mike. If this was a movie it would be easy, because of faces obviously. But how do I do this in a book? I haven't given Mike a physical description yet, so I'm not sure how to give a nudge to the reader letting them know that the guy John is running into is actually Mike. I feel like I'd have to give Mike some really weird obvious physical trait like a big mole on his cheek or something, and then have a line like "John noticed the big mole on this man's cheek," and it would be really obvious and gimmicky. edit: I should add that neither are in a situation where they can speak to each other, so there's no way they can give identifying information verbally Liam Emsa fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Sep 29, 2014 |
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Sep 29, 2014 03:30
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LOU BEGAS MUSTACHE posted:as long as the reader is supposed to know its mike, just call him mike. The problem I have with this is that I'm writing the chapter from John's perspective. It's what he's seeing around him, so it feels weird to write "He saw a man in front of him. It was Mike." Because he has no idea who Mike is at this point.
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Sep 29, 2014 03:48
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Thanks I'll try that out. As a side note, this twitter is hilarious: https://twitter.com/guyinyourmfa
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Sep 29, 2014 04:12
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CommissarMega posted:Just so this doesn't turn into a worthless fluff post, does anyone have any suggestions for good short stories/anthologies that one could read to help get the hang of things? Preferably non-sci-fi or fantasy ones; those are my favourite genres and I'm trying to broaden my horizons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl:_Collected_Stories
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Oct 2, 2014 07:52
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I saw 95 unread posts in this thread and clicked, hoping to see delightful chatter about fiction writing. My novel has been stuck at 4,800 words for the past two weeks and I don't know why.
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Oct 10, 2014 06:12
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Is there anything in specific you find yourself struggling with? I originally wrote the story when I couldn't think of a city to base it in, so I set it in New York City, US. Some paragraphs relied heavily on this (referring to US politics, laws, etc). As I was writing more and more, I started wanting to create a much different city than New York City, so I did. I gave it a name and I wrote a new introductory paragraph setting the scene for the city. Then I realized that this city did, of course, not exist in the United States. I'd also changed the tone to much darker than I'd written earlier, so my earlier parts didn't make sense. So I had to scan through and rewrite all those earlier parts. I'm also questioning my basic format for the entire novel. I have two central characters, and I've been going back and forth with each chapter describing how they're going to meet. They're the central protagonist and antagonist of the story. The chapters that are specific to that person are 3rd-person omniscient for that person only (i.e. if they saw the other person before *they* knew them they wouldn't know who they were). I'm wondering if this is going to cause me trouble later. I've also just sort of run out of ideas of what to do with them. Like, I have the basic arc of the story: The hero and villain are created, they're drawn to each other, and they have to collide at some point, but it's that big middle between that I don't know what to fill it with.
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Oct 13, 2014 06:19
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Szmitten posted:Don't you mean limited? That's kinda not what omniscient means unless you're doing something even weirder which might be tripping you up. You're right, limited. I used the wrong term. Thanks!
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Oct 13, 2014 21:54
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Is anyone else doing NaNoWriMo this upcoming November?
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Oct 22, 2014 07:10
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How many pages per thousand words are books, usually? Like, NaNo has people writing 50k, how many pages is that?
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Nov 1, 2014 22:08
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Is writing the same as other creative disciplines in that if I get feedback from a layman, I should take it with a grain of salt? When someone says, "Oh my god I love this, I would totally read it if it was a novel," how should I take that feedback? As a person who has dabbled in photography, I've gotten used to people overhyping the photography of others, leading to a false sense of confidence (and the millions of momtographers on facebook).
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Dec 1, 2014 01:36
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I made a thread, read it! ----------- On a separate note, I've been searching all over town for "Violence: A Writer's Guide" by Rory Miller. Finally asked the librarian about the ILL program. Turns out there's literally only one copy of that book in any library in the entire world and it's in Boise, ID. I should receive it in a few weeks.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:57
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I'm switching gears and starting on an idea I've been tossing around for a few weeks: An alcoholic space repo man and his adventures. His company is called SPACE REPOT, and the t is silent because it's so classy.
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Dec 3, 2014 17:22
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I loved The Man In The Black Suit by Stephen King. And I also loved The Long Walk, but that's a little longer.
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Dec 28, 2014 20:36
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I have a problem of being too concise, and I think it's causing my novel to be shorter than it should be. I feel like I've written a tremendous amount of plot, and I think I'm reaching the latter third of my story, but I'm only at 30,000 words. I have a problem where I write sentences like: quote:He took the train to Baltimore. instead of quote:"One ticket to Baltimore," he glanced around. The train station was nearly empty. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been inside a train station. A homeless man sat in the far corner, slowly shaking a jar with a few coins clinking in it. I always think I'm putting useless flavoring in, but I need to realize it adds to the story. I was thinking of, after I finish, going back page by page and trying to double the length of each page by adding in flavoring text. Is this a terrible idea?
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Jan 17, 2015 21:00
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It also relieved me to learn that Fahrenheit 451 is 46,118 words and The Great Gatsby is only 47,094 words. If critically acclaimed works of fiction can be around that length I think that's manageable for me.
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Jan 17, 2015 21:17
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Man, I wish I could write that much.
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Jan 21, 2015 02:25
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I just started writing a short story, and then I realized I was writing "Life on Mars" meets "Interstellar." What do you do when you realize this?
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Jan 24, 2015 22:41
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Everything is derivative, isn't it? I mean that's what I'm trying to come to terms with. I can always describe everything as _____ meets _____, so I shouldn't get discouraged if I start realizing I'm writing something that's similar to something else?
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Jan 24, 2015 22:53
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Pissin the night away....
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Jan 24, 2015 23:07
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So are we making a new thread or what?
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Jan 27, 2015 03:33
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Is anyone doing Camp NaNoWriMo? It starts tomorrow.
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Apr 1, 2015 03:07
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