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beep-beep car is go posted:Note: Mac has a good keyboard now. If you’re shopping used, the “butterfly” keyboards from around 2015 to 2019 were very very bad. Apple. Seconding this, an M1 Macbook Air or whatever will be $500-$600 and has an amazing keyboard and battery life. I'm a Mac skeptic but dang they're nice writing machines. I have a gaming desktop but use my work-issued MBP when I'm out and about at cafes etc
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Apr 30, 2024 19:02
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Admiralty Flag posted:I'd be very careful about overbuying for a hobby you haven't even started. Can you concentrate in coffee shops? If not, and you don't anticipate moving around, then get a desktop. Can't work at home? Laptop it is. I don't have any space for a desktop set up so it was always going to be a laptop. I'm not worried about the actual writing part I'm fine with that! I just haven't had a computer in a decade and would need to buy one. I like the talk about the lenovo keyboards, think I'll try a few out in a shop and see but it's a great place to start. Thanks writing advice thread!
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Apr 30, 2024 19:03
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cumpantry posted:if corn has a couch next to an outlet they will be unstoppable Also have the Post Tweets thread open and got really confused about the turn the $2m grand theft corned beef topic had taken
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May 1, 2024 03:28
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My advice on laptops is to check out the business model ones that are 1-2 years out of date. They tend to be pretty sturdy and have good keyboards, and they're often sold at a pretty good discount because corporations will just offload their whole inventory, even stuff that's only lightly used, and being enterprise products, they're usually built to be repaired, and you can usually find ones with dedicated video cards built in.(Business-grade video cards are usually optimized for CAD/multi-display stuff over gaming performance, but Civ and other 4X games aren't really GPU hogs anyway.) Plus they often have nub mice, and those are so much nicer to use than touchpads it's nuts. I think it's the Thinkpad T/P/X models that are Lenovo's business offerings, and there's Dell...Latitudes?
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May 1, 2024 03:39
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Djeser posted:I think it's the Thinkpad T/P/X models that are Lenovo's business offerings, and there's Dell...Latitudes? A new basic Dell XPS 13 (2023 model) will run you like $600 bucks, they're cleaning them out in a fire sale to make way for the updated versions with the stupid cramped keyboard layout. They're pretty good for basic productivity and writing but 13" is too small for my tastes nowadays
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May 1, 2024 03:50
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I love my Chromebook, great battery life, can't play game for poo poo but will let you watch YouTube or whatever, turns on instantly. Lenovo Yoga 300e gen 4.
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May 1, 2024 03:54
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sebmojo posted:I love my Chromebook, great battery life, can't play game for poo poo but will let you watch YouTube or whatever, turns on instantly. Lenovo Yoga 300e gen 4. Curious about writing on a chromebook - just type stuff into google docs?
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May 1, 2024 18:32
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mewse posted:Curious about writing on a chromebook - just type stuff into google docs? Dabble works on android.
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May 1, 2024 18:57
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mewse posted:Curious about writing on a chromebook - just type stuff into google docs? Yeah! It handles on/offline pretty smoothly.
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May 1, 2024 20:20
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I have a chapter coming up where two characters split off to find more info. I'm thinking of just doing the MC's side of what happens, because she's the MC and all, but I'm tempted to do a chapter after that from the 2nd character's side. Or have the MC get her info early and then go looking for her friend and finding out how he gets info out of people. (Not as nicely.) Or I could write from both perspectives in the same chapter, if I don't make it confusing? I need more than 3 pages per chapter like I've been doing lately. My 3rd character has decided to chill in the tavern again, so I think he's just allergic to any serious detective work, lol. He's staying behind to "ask the regulars," and totally not drink the entire time.
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May 1, 2024 23:48
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Write from as many perspectives as you want. There's no such thing as the PoV Police.
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May 2, 2024 02:33
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I love POV swaps but I have to admit my last few books have suffered badly from wordcount bloat caused by having too many POVs. So watch out for that if you tend to go long.
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May 2, 2024 03:35
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I also love PoV swaps, but it feels like the feedback I get overwhelmingly from readers is that they don't like them. So, maybe there's no PoV Police but a PoV Citizen's Militia? For me, the real issue of PoV swaps is pacing, and having each PoV character be as interesting/necessary as the other without feeling like it's two (or more) unrelated stories.
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May 2, 2024 03:48
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all i know is V by Thomas Pynchon is freaking amazing
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May 2, 2024 03:51
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POV shifts can be jarring because the act of moving away from a character the reader is presumably invested in can take them out of the story, remind them that they are in fact reading a book. It's good to set up early, spread that investment around. The worst is when a book introduces a new POV late, often from the antagonist's POV, because the writer couldn't figure it out. It's hard as hell to pull off the "two people experience the same scene, differently" trick and make it worth it, but it can be done. cumpantry posted:all i know is V by Thomas Pynchon is freaking amazing I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow and after the first 150 disorienting, borderline incomprehensible pages, the next 300 have been excellent. Must be the repeated dick joke limericks.
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May 2, 2024 04:14
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General Battuta posted:I love POV swaps but I have to admit my last few books have suffered badly from wordcount bloat caused by having too many POVs. So watch out for that if you tend to go long. still stalled halfway through exordia because of all the pov shifts tbh
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May 2, 2024 06:12
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POV swaps are great. I’m a boring idiot. I would love to see life through like five different POVs
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May 2, 2024 07:22
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fridge corn posted:I don't have any space for a desktop set up so it was always going to be a laptop. I'm not worried about the actual writing part I'm fine with that! I just haven't had a computer in a decade and would need to buy one. Three things to consider that haven’t been mentioned so far: 1) you can consider purpose built things like the Freewrite https://getfreewrite.com/ if you don’t actually need a computer computer. I don’t have one but I know people who swear by it 2) if you like to hand write drafts but not have to re type them, there’s also the Remarkable https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-2 which is an e-ink tablet. Again, I don’t but I know people who do and are happy with it. 3) if you are considering self publishing in the future, this is where I will encourage you to opt for a Mac instead of anything else because Vellum is the best out of the box book formatting software around. It is a lifetime license and they will do ebook and print and for all retailers and it just works and makes pretty books. I know people who have bought old Macs for the sole purpose of running Vellum to format their books. There are other alternatives but imo they are either buggy or janky or just don’t produce books that look as nice. Waffle! posted:I have a chapter coming up where two characters split off to find more info. I'm thinking of just doing the MC's side of what happens, because she's the MC and all, but I'm tempted to do a chapter after that from the 2nd character's side. Or have the MC get her info early and then go looking for her friend and finding out how he gets info out of people. (Not as nicely.) Or I could write from both perspectives in the same chapter, if I don't make it confusing? I need more than 3 pages per chapter like I've been doing lately. It’s a draft. Just try it and see what happens. You can do any or none or all of the things you proposed and then get some alpha and beta readers in and then realise that you should’ve done it the other other way. For what it’s worth, my current book is 83k words of single POV and then we get 6 different POVs from Act II onwards. I’m sure after I publish I’m gonna get reviews knocking off stars for introducing new POVs relatively late in the piece but not a single beta reader has hated the additional POVs (so far). That said, I’d written it all the way through alpha as single POV and that was how I figured out I needed the extra POVs. Leng fucked around with this message at 12:39 on May 2, 2024 |
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May 2, 2024 12:32
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Waffle! posted:I have a chapter coming up where two characters split off to find more info. I'm thinking of just doing the MC's side of what happens, because she's the MC and all, but I'm tempted to do a chapter after that from the 2nd character's side. Or have the MC get her info early and then go looking for her friend and finding out how he gets info out of people. (Not as nicely.) Or I could write from both perspectives in the same chapter, if I don't make it confusing? I need more than 3 pages per chapter like I've been doing lately. IMO (as someone who generally dislikes POV shifts, mainly because they're poorly done) the answer is "yes, if you have a good reason". In my opinion, POV changes usually make the story bittier and less connected, less satisfying and interesting; and they don't usually add enough to the story to justify themselves. And slows the plot, sometimes (such as here). You can work around those problems, though. E.g. M. John Harrison's Light has three alternating points of view in strict pattern, so the reader expects POV shifts from early on. Same with V., Ulysses, or R. F. Kuang's Babel (which has three brief but consequential POV shifts) - it's all part of the structure. If you're doing this, you can have the POVs reflect each other and other fancy stuff like that. Contrariwise, I thought this was the big flaw with The Moonstone, which is one narrative for about half the novel and then a grab bag of other POVs. Imagine yourself justifying the POV change to the reader, because you are. If you can, sure. Why not try it out? It's just a draft. You can cut it.
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May 2, 2024 14:14
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My Name is Red is another title that comes to mind for great POV shifts
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May 2, 2024 14:18
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Leng posted:Three things to consider that haven’t been mentioned so far: Good stuff to consider. Thanks!
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May 2, 2024 14:19
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sebmojo posted:still stalled halfway through exordia because of all the pov shifts tbh I heard when you summon all five POV's of exorida, you win publishing. Edit: A few examples of POV shifts that didn't work for me are: Red X by David Demchuk: Every second chapter in this horror fiction novel are non-fiction biography of the author. I can see what the novel was trying to do, contrasting the lives of gay men in Toronto next to horror, but the tonal shift of the non-fiction chapters made it a tough read for me. Tears in the rain by Rosa Montero: Every few chapters is a Wikipedia Entry set in the world. Pretty dull sections. DropTheAnvil fucked around with this message at 15:36 on May 2, 2024 |
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May 2, 2024 15:33
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sebmojo posted:still stalled halfway through exordia because of all the pov shifts tbh I'm kind of having this problem with Chain-Gang All-Stars, I want to get through it but every time I put it down and come back to it I have to back up a bit because of how often the narrative jumps around.
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May 2, 2024 15:37
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I'm re-writing a flashback chapter which originally delivered a lot of exposition in a tell, don't show style to instead try putting the exposition into dialogue, and also trying to give the main character something to do. It's slightly tricky because as it's a flashback, I have to show her with a little less character development than she has by the time the main story has started.Waffle! posted:I have a chapter coming up where two characters split off to find more info. I'm thinking of just doing the MC's side of what happens, because she's the MC and all, but I'm tempted to do a chapter after that from the 2nd character's side. Or have the MC get her info early and then go looking for her friend and finding out how he gets info out of people. (Not as nicely.) Or I could write from both perspectives in the same chapter, if I don't make it confusing? I need more than 3 pages per chapter like I've been doing lately. I have a plot point partway through "Act 2" of the story where my heroine is alone with her "assassin," and moves to attack him, and I considered pausing the book at that point and going back to show his perspective on various scenes - which painted a distinctly different impression than what the heroine was under... but I decided that was a bad idea, it would slow the plot down too much. I am still going to actually write those scenes, but only so I know what he was doing, in order for the heroine to leap to a conclusion which is entirely plausible based on the available facts... but was still wrong. Maybe it'll become a bonus story. What I was going to do was many chapters, and you're only doing one, but similarly, you may wish to write it, but not actually include it - unless, of course, the end of the MC's version of the scene has the 2nd character show up in such interesting circumstances that you think the reader will desperately want to know how they got there. quote:Or have the MC get her info early and then go looking for her friend and finding out how he gets info out of people. (Not as nicely.) You're talking about the MC finding out how the 2nd character is getting their information. That to me suggests that the most interesting thing there is the MC's thoughts and reactions to how the 2nd character gets the information - not just showing the 2nd character getting it. For that reason, I'd go with this. Leng posted:For what it’s worth, my current book is 83k words of single POV and then we get 6 different POVs from Act II onwards. I’m sure after I publish I’m gonna get reviews knocking off stars for introducing new POVs relatively late in the piece but not a single beta reader has hated the additional POVs (so far). That said, I’d written it all the way through alpha as single POV and that was how I figured out I needed the extra POVs. That's the kind of reader-jarring thing you may want to avoid, unless of course you have to do it because your single POV character is missing, dead, or in a coma (etc). If not, then set up at least some of those shifts earlier on. The reader will probably be more receptive to having 5 different PoV's later on if the first 83K words have occasional chapters from 1-2 characters other than the main character. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 02:41 on May 3, 2024 |
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May 3, 2024 02:35
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Shogun has had two very successful adaptations now, and that's a super popular book which not only has a zillion POVs but changes POVs between paragraphs. Wild poo poo by modern standards but it works!
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May 3, 2024 03:04
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:That's the kind of reader-jarring thing you may want to avoid, unless of course you have to do it because your single POV character is missing, dead, or in a coma (etc). If not, then set up at least some of those shifts earlier on. The reader will probably be more receptive to having 5 different PoV's later on if the first 83K words have occasional chapters from 1-2 characters other than the main character. Yeah, I’m terrified. I’m somewhat insulated in that this is a sequel and I have established that the prologues and interludes and epilogues will be from different characters so there’s been some signalling about POVs before, but there’s no narrative reason to fit another POV in that first 83k. Doesn’t take away the fear or the potentially jarring factor but I’m somewhat reassured by the beta reader feedback so far, which has been “oh, DIFFERENT POVs?! GIMME” so it might be okay. Especially since it’s a 200k+ book. It also might not be, but it also does help that the new POVs come right after an interlude and at the start of a new act so it hopefully doesn’t feel super random and it’s tied in to a plot promise. But I don’t know. I’ll find out when I publish though!
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May 3, 2024 03:11
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I have a short story that probably needs one more draft of meaningful revisions before I'll feel comfortable sending it out for submission. Do yall normally just let it sit for a while so you can gain some distance from it, and move on to work on your next project? Or do you hold off on starting something new until you're totally done with what you've been working on?
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May 4, 2024 06:47
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I always spot stuff which could be improved after letting something sit for a while. Take a breather and refresh yourself with something new, then go back and take another look.
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May 4, 2024 12:49
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Cephas posted:I have a short story that probably needs one more draft of meaningful revisions before I'll feel comfortable sending it out for submission. Do yall normally just let it sit for a while so you can gain some distance from it, and move on to work on your next project? Or do you hold off on starting something new until you're totally done with what you've been working on? Put it aside for a month and just read in your genre. A fresh set of eyes and some time to think about structure and what’s shown or skipped over will give you some perspective on what to adjust
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May 4, 2024 16:45
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A month's difference transforms a completely intractable paragraph I can't possibly get right to a breezy solution. It's magic.
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May 5, 2024 00:16
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ultrachrist posted:A month's difference transforms a completely intractable paragraph I can't possibly get right to a breezy solution. it's the same phenomenon where you cant beat a boss no matter how many goes you give so you go to bed and crack his rear end first try in the morning
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May 5, 2024 01:24
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