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Wowie, that is a hell of a set of OPs. Meanwhile, I think I need to find another writing group. I'm not ditching this thing yet, but I just suffered through reading the second chapter of this jackass' novel, where he gave his main character absolutely crippling, hugely life-affecting agoraphobia, did absolutely no homework about agoraphobia or related anxiety disorders, and got stupid bent out of shape when I said I didn't think I could really read further on the piece and recommended he hire a sensitivity reader. Someone else talked him down before I got to it, which I guess is okay, because I didn't really want to get thrown out of the group for telling this guy to go gently caress himself, but geez. This is just one in the latest of things that are thoroughly driving me toward thinking I need to find something else. I don't respect almost all of these people's work (leading to a feeling of 'gently caress yeah I'm brilliant' which is literally the opposite of what I want), and I don't respect their opinions either (absolutely gushing over stuff, not mine, that is incompetent in literally every possible way) which is a bad combination for a group like this. I've had a fair bit of good stuff come out of this-- helped me identify some severe issues that sent me to redrafting a lot of this novel, and they're super consistent, the group isn't just dissolving or whatever, so this is super aggravating. e: note that I'm not really looking for suggestions or advice on this, I really just want to complain out loud.
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Jan 28, 2017 05:23
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A friend of mine is published through a (legit) small press and apparently her editor told her to shake up the dialogue tags more often, and that combined with her godawful back cover copy that she got convinced me to never submit there.
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Mar 6, 2017 06:15
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I go into a chapter with a loose notion of what I want to happen in that chapter; when that's been done, I close off when the last necessary scene is done. I try to keep them relatively uniform in length but, eh, whatever.
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Mar 7, 2017 04:35
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no but i would lustily verbalize it
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Mar 10, 2017 01:07
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For the love of god, use contractions at every possible instance. People run their words together, it stands out if you don't.
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Mar 11, 2017 03:24
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it's just a tense, the manner in which your verbs are conjugated* is not a big deal
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Mar 17, 2017 01:58
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Djeser posted:you will to have ought been being regretted having said that gdi i knew someone would do this and i hastily edited that asterisk in there for a reason
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Mar 17, 2017 02:13
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Sitting Here posted:That leads me to a question I wonder about a lot: how esoteric is the actual writing process for you guys? When I try to articulate my methods sometimes, they end up sounding wrong, or they just plain don't work for other people. But I get decent feedback from readers and publications, so apparently something in there is working. Obviously, writing blogs and books have to speak in general terms because they have a wide audience. How much do you guys tend to skew the process to better suit the weird machinations of your brains? I outline in the worst possible way, by which i mean, i don't actually write the outline down, i just keep track of it in my own loving head. i do not recommend anyone do this they're pretty loose outlines obviously but they're more concrete than nothing; i know what's going to happen in a story, what order it's going to happen in, and specifically what's going to happen in the next few chapters.
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Mar 17, 2017 04:05
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Life hack: write in present tense so your flashbacks are always clear.
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Mar 21, 2017 00:43
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Present vs past in general is such a minor style difference, the sheer hate some people have for it just baffles me. Inertia, man.
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Mar 21, 2017 09:30
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Nah I don't just mean you, I mean that there's a lot of people who really hate present tense in fiction, and they really want you to know that. Really, there's nothing special about it; people see bad present tense prose but I guarantee you they as much bad past tense prose, it's just that present tense prose is less common in general so it's always more noticeable.
neongrey fucked around with this message at 10:36 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 10:29
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:3) For highways, use whatever the person would say out loud, probably. So I'd say I-5 up here. In Austin most people call Loop 1 "Mopac" most of the time, and the signs usually (but not always) say both. I don't know how I would deal with Austinite's calling Capitol of Texas Highway/Loop 360 only "360" most of the time....that actually seems common in a lot of places. If your narrator isn't your character, you have to figure out what it would be in the narrative voice instead. Three-Sixty for most conversational usage, most likely, as in "I was driving down [the] Three-Sixty when I heard a thump so I pulled over and..." One of those things where you don't think about how it's actually said most of the time. God I dealt with too many roads in my last job.
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May 11, 2017 19:22
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Fair cop. It follows to me because of how I read but I also don't live somewhere with a lot of numbered roads, so I'll defer to you on that as far as regular usage.
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May 11, 2017 23:05
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only if you're willing to admit to it in public
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May 12, 2017 06:40
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crabrock posted:what about steampunk? that's about costuming
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Jun 15, 2017 23:49
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Ask in the self-publishing thread, too. People in there have lots of experience, and I don't know how many of them read this thread. Amazon's pod is createspace, isn't it?
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Aug 14, 2017 13:53
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I was in a fairly similar position not all that long ago; I had about the first third of a novel in hand, and I realized that if I kept going with it as it was, a large set of specific problems would basically cause everything to fall apart, and anything that happened after the point I was at would be so far out from what I needed that it wouldn't help subsequent draft efforts. So I did make my changes and start it over and now I have a third of a novel that does not have those problems and as soon as my dickbrain cooperates, I can keep going. Other problems, I'm sure, but not the ones I killed the first draft for. So honestly? If you know what you need to do, end first draft there and iterate to second draft. A first draft, really, does not need to be complete. But I would only do it if you know exactly what you're going to gain from doing it; if you're just not liking it or thinking it's not very good, everyone feels that way at points in the writing. But if you know what you need to do, then, you know, do it. And if you get a chapter or two in and it's not working, you can still go back to the original draft, it's not like you're burning the first drafts.
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Aug 21, 2017 20:01
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MockingQuantum posted:Hey, I was just rereading this! (Thanks for the fantastic OPs, btw). If it helps too, for my thing I was able to re-integrate about half the original text during this phase. Not as-is and not just because I changed tense, but you can probably reuse a fair bit of stuff. Now, as I was about 3/4 of the way through the process it felt like an agonizing slog (but I also swapped it a pov character too, late in that process) but I pushed through and the work is better for it. The real trick is not getting yourself bogged down in cycles of rereading the same ground.
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Aug 21, 2017 21:37
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Hey, you have your poo poo on the page and you know what to do with it, it's just not a linear process.
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Aug 21, 2017 21:51
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:56 |
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the old ceremony posted:you all write like shitass balls and one day your novels will float out to sea and be lost so what you're saying is that I'm going to finish several novels
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Sep 2, 2017 19:27
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