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I write lots of short stories, usually centered around my life in the culinary industry and growing up in the Appalachians. I mostly read non-fiction and weird genre-bending stuff like Vonnegut. I recently started playing D&D for the first time with my friends over Discord, and it really put me in the mood for Medieval fantasy. I finally dove in and read The Hobbit and LOTR books, followed by Ice and Fire and The Witcher. All of these books gave me an absolute brainworm of an idea for a fantasy story whose themes are kind of based around stories about The Eastern Front that my Russian babysitter would tell me when I was a kid. I've got an outline for roughly 200 pages, and I've stopped at about 110. I'm currently looking for some ideas from other books before I push further with the project. Can anyone recommend some good traditional Medieval fantasy novels that are a bit more 'grounded' than the ones I just mentioned? To be more specific, I don't mind if it has something like Elves, Orcs, Lizardfolk, etc., but I'm not really into the idea of 'Chosen One' plot lines or people waving their hands to make nuclear fireballs. It could even be something like good historical fiction, if that makes it easier. Bonus points if it focuses on settings inspired by more than just Western Europe and Vikings.
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Aug 2, 2020 20:35
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| # ¿ Apr 18, 2024 11:40 |
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Megazver posted:KJ Parker is a good start. He typically writes about brilliant, but deeply morally flawed scholars of some kind who fight to extricate themselves out of vaguely hosed up predicaments, often caused by said moral flaws. Most of the stories are set in what fans call the Parkerverse, which is a fairly low magic world mostly modelled after the Byzantine Mediterranean. Academic Exercises is a good introduction to see, if you like his schtick. sebmojo posted:Abercrombie the heroes is good, or the first law trilogy. Jv jones cavern of black is vg, if grim. Italo calvino invisible cities is an idea bomb in like 100 pages. China mieville is good on ideas and images though in not a fan. Gareth hanrahans gutter prayer books are excellent. Mievelle's stuff has been on my list forever, as well as Discworld. Those two have been my white whales for a while, and it's about time I finally go for it. But you guys gave me a lot to look at, and I'm liking what I'm seeing, thanks. My story is kind of a mix of inspiration from South American, Eastern European, Native American, Western/Northern European, and Central Asian cultures and attitudes interacting with one another. I know it sounds like manuscript-bragging (which is one of my all-time eye-rollers), but it's been sucking up so much of my brainspace while working my 12 hour "essential" job lately. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 23:59
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don longjohns posted:Now if I could just get that voice that keeps saying, "You're never going to finish this. Just give up you idiot. No one can teach and write a book at the same time," to shut the gently caress up I'll be in great loving shape. I've been fighting that voice for thirty years. Somehow though, I still manage to add lines to my docs.
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Dec 23, 2020 03:16
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I finally gave up on Scrivener. I get how this is probably useful for people who want a writing app that does very specific things for their profession, but it's a usability nightmare, especially on a large monitor.
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Feb 5, 2021 04:57
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General Battuta posted:What kind of issues were you having? I always found it super friendly. Vertical split, one pane for writing, one for looking up notes and stuff. Outline on the left, search on the right. Maybe it's just from using Works/Word for 20+ years, but I'm one of those people that needs to just have a that Word-style page right in front of my face with a minimum amount of futzing around involved. It's a good system for taking notes and planning out projects, and I'll use it for that in the future, but just trying to move forward and type out long passages feels like the furthest thing from the developers' minds sometimes. It's hard to describe beyond just a "bad feeling."
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Feb 5, 2021 05:27
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I've always been kind of averse to the author's manifesto delivered as a character's monologue. It often feels crammed into a scene and I can often feel the logic of the narrative being twisted to accommodate their views. I do like the original point though. I'm currently working on a novella about a woman who works as a bookkeeper for her family's criminal organization and she frequently gets frustrated by financial waste or people with no knowledge of finance or economics telling her how to do her job. It's created some fun conflicts for her to push against.
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Aug 13, 2022 19:02
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Ah okay, my bad. Yeah, I just came off of reading a string of books that heavily relied on introspection. I've been kind of itching for a new book where characters are willing to say or do wild things to get some kind of reaction out of one another.
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Aug 13, 2022 22:49
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change my name posted:One of my favorite recent fantasy novellas uses marks, I don’t know if obsessing that much over minor details instead of broader world building helps that much? That is, if it doesn’t actually figure into the story Sailor Viy posted:Details imply a lot about your world, and seemingly interchangeable words drag behind them a complex web of connotations. "Marks" sounds to me like it comes from an Early Modern, European, probably more "realistic" fantasy setting. "Gold pieces" invokes D&D or perhaps a fairy tale world. "Dollars" (in the context of a fantasy setting) might imply a world influenced by the Western genre. Individually, one of these choices might not do that much work, but a lot of them together add up to a richly characterised setting. Funny, I used "Marks" in my story as the money for my English and German nations. I reasoned that it colloquially came out of "marks" in financial ledgers. My fantasy France country used Royales because they were one of the few absolutist monarchies left. I just wanted the term for money to sound like something someone would reasonably throw into a conversation without it sounding unusual. I didn't feel like getting too involved in creating new worlds, so I basically have analogues of different Western/Central/Eastern European cultures as well as Native American ones. With that, I guess that I should mention that I did Nanowrimo last year as the first real creative writing I've done in over ten years beyond some times where r/writingprompts had an interesting thread. I've DMed D&D campaigns through my teens and twenties but stopped during the COVID shutdowns, so I lost my creative outlet. Then while working alone in a huge factory, I got a brainworm for a story involving a bunch of characters and it grew out of control, so I inserted it into a campaign world that I'd written a lore bible for but never used. I posted a pre-Nanowrimo chapter on a writing subreddit and got generally positive feedback. One poster who turned out to be a fairly well-known fantasy writer who frequents writing advice and fantasy subreddits told me it was promising. They recommended I pull the sample from the sub and join their writing group. It sounded sketch at first, but I got into a voice chat with them and they gave me good feedback, so I pulled the sample down and got to milestoning the narrative. A few months later I had the finished first draft of a novel. Response from the writing group was full of helpful criticism, but I received a shocking amount of nice feedback. While the criticism was helpful and appreciated, I got a lot more useful advice when the readers would find something they liked and would encourage me to keep moving in that direction. Too often, I participate in the "honest and brutal criticism" groups who actually make me feel discouraged when all they do is nitpick and poo poo on anything. Also, I definitely feel that getting feedback in voice form over Discord is way better than written feedback. Pennsylvanian fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Nov 5, 2022 |
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Oct 27, 2022 23:01
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| # ¿ Apr 18, 2024 11:40 |
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Admiralty Flag posted:I thought it was because of the metric system I'm having trouble yes anding this. I am beaten.
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Oct 27, 2022 23:39
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