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Gary the Llama posted:Bragging time: I sold my first short story of 2013 yesterday. This marks my fifth short story sale so far and it's my first pro-rate (five cents a word or more, more in this case) sale. I haven't signed the contract yet so I don't want to mention the market but it is a very well known sci-fi/fantasy market. I'll post more details once the contract is signed. Now that the contract is signed I think I can safely announce that I sold the story to Daily Science Fiction. I'm pretty excited since I've been reading and enjoying their stories for so long. (Also, does anyone have any idea how they afford to pay so many authors so well with no advertisements or subscription model?)
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Feb 10, 2013 16:54
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I am about to start on what will be my first book once I finally get around to writing it. I've set up a bunch of exposition and characters for reference and inspiration, got most of my macro ideas on paper, so to speak. But upon reading some of the ideas my drunk friends decided they were expert fiction critics and pointed out some flaws that might just be legitimate problems with my infrastructure. Without going into too many specifics, my protagonist and another important character(and many others, but we'll ignore them for now) have apparent super powers. I'm concerned about two things; Is the protagonist's power too boring/dull to write a full length novel with him at the center, and are the two powers listed too similar where it will be noticed by the majority of readers? The protagonist is capable of creating a sphere around his body that imparts any object inside the field with kinetic energy away from his own center of gravity, forcing things away from him or stopping bullets, what have you. The secondary character's power is that she can explode her own body as if it were made entirely of TNT, then regenerate from the largest remaining chunk of her flesh left.(She accomplishes this safely by storing vials of her blood in predetermined safe locations.) At their core these two powers are both basically explosions, as an explosion imparts kinetic energy into whatever is around away from the center as well, however in writing the powers are extremely different as the protagonist's is used mainly defensively, while the offensive capabilities are very limited. Help put my mind at ease/critique me to hell and back, thanks in advance.
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Feb 15, 2013 11:54
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I think everything depends on the presentation. If you believe them to be similar (for instance, I find them different enough to be able to tell them apart), then write it as such and make it part of some ideological approach (two sides of the same coin, an offensive and a defensive power). Just my two cents.
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Feb 15, 2013 12:09
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Another "these are my ideas" guy, ok. Dude (or dudette as the case may be), it's going to be tough for any of us to tell you if your superhero story will work or not just based on your ideas. We need to see your writing. Even the dumbest idea can make for a loving awesome story if you execute it right, and a brilliant idea, poorly executed, will look like the worst Sailor Moon/Adventure Time crossover slash fic. I highly recommend posting a piece of your writing in the Fiction Farm, or at least a small sample here. Also, all you're asking us about is "will these superpowers work." Superpowers are just tools like any other storytelling device. You need to be thinking about things like "are these characters believable, do their motivations make sense, does my dialogue resemble the ramblings of a 14 year-old on mescaline." Showing us your writing will help us help you answer those questions.
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Feb 15, 2013 12:10
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Nycticeius posted:I think everything depends on the presentation. If you believe them to be similar (for instance, I find them different enough to be able to tell them apart), then write it as such and make it part of some ideological approach (two sides of the same coin, an offensive and a defensive power). Just my two cents. You don't know how disturbingly on the money you are. Despite that I've never thought of the two characters that way, when I thought about it that way it is extremely close to the truth. Good insight senor. Martello posted:Words words words These particular characters were originally from a text based roleplay, the owners of those two characters, me and a close friend, were the ones who created it. Had something like 80 unique players and 200+ characters over 7 years of story. I'd like to think they are pretty drat fleshed out and believable at this point, obviously I will be taking plenty of creative liberty since I will be writing all of the parts instead of just some of them. While I will probably share with you all parts of my writing when I begin to actually write the story, for now I am just looking for barebones discussion on whether or not these two powers are too similar to be put together, or if the protagonist's power might be a bit too dull/inflexible. I did use him in the roleplay for seven years worth of writing, and you can believe that I exhausted every avenue to make his power unique and interesting based on the context and situation, but thinking back on it, it really does boil down to 'Oh boy I'm in trouble, better make everyone/thing/this particular object go away.' And while that is not bad in and of itself it might invite a certain laziness into my work, or at the very least project it. (Thank you for your feedback.)
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Feb 15, 2013 12:25
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That's great. Can we see your writing so we know if it's bullshit or not? You know that "my characters are based on my RPG PCs" is like the least confidence-inspiring thing you could say, right? But I should probably just go gently caress myself since you clearly don't actually want feedback, you just want us to tell you that you're a special snowflake and your amazing unique and never-before-seen superhero ideas are going to make for a blockbuster novel. You really want my opinion on your superpowers? They both sound loving retarded and not even vaguely compelling. There you go, feedback.
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Feb 15, 2013 12:28
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Well that escalated quickly. I meant no disrespect by editing the quote, just thought it would make my post longer than it needed to be. I also didn't mean to offend you, I honestly meant I appreciated your feedback because I don't really know how things go in this here thread and what you've said it very useful information to me. When I begin writing the first draft I will come back and share my work to get more detailed critique, but in the mean time I have no work to show you and being that it's six in the morning I have very little time left awake to write some up. It also happens that this is the first post I've made in a long time of lurking, and more specifically the first time I've even asked for critique so excuse me if I'm a little hesitant. It's a bit nervewracking sharing your ideas with people who are apparently fiction buffs. Edit: I also did not actually see the thread you referenced until you linked it so thank you, I will probably be back relatively soon with a snippet of my work. Blarggy fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Feb 15, 2013 |
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Feb 15, 2013 12:40
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See, what you did was fail reading comprehension. My whole point was that your ideas are almost meaningless, your execution is what's important. That's why "I played these characters in RPGs with my friends" is a terrible answer and why I responded the way I did. Telling me that says you probably don't know how to tell a good story, and says nothing whatsoever about your actual writing skills. What we want to see (and what the reader wants to see) is a writer who can take the most mundane thing and make it interesting. RPGs are not anything like actual prose fiction. Trust me, I've played a lot of Shadowrun in my day. I see that you posted something in the Farm, and I'm proud a you. I'm in the process of critiquing it for you right now.
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Feb 15, 2013 17:11
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Blarggy posted:Well that escalated quickly. I meant no disrespect by editing the quote, just thought it would make my post longer than it needed to be. I also didn't mean to offend you, I honestly meant I appreciated your feedback because I don't really know how things go in this here thread and what you've said it very useful information to me. When I begin writing the first draft I will come back and share my work to get more detailed critique, but in the mean time I have no work to show you and being that it's six in the morning I have very little time left awake to write some up. I read your piece, but most of my thoughts were addressed by people in the fiction farm thread (listen to Martello, he's big and mean but he's usually right about things). I say step away from your baby. I got some good advice recently when I was trying to write something too close to an actual event; since I knew what was "supposed" to happen, it was hard to see my story from the reader's perspective. Which meant that I wasn't telling a very complete story and the emotional gravity wasn't coming through. Having source material is good. But if you've been playing this game for 7 years, there's almost too much background, and you're going to have a personal attachment to your characters that will make it difficult to write them well. Same thing with the setting....how are you going to shave 7 years of twists, deadends, retcons, and so on into a coherent narrative? Steve Erickson is a pretty well known author who basically did what you are trying to do with his Malazan series. I made it through all ten 1000 page books. Just barely. Because he had hundreds of characters, cumbersome backstories, and a bunch of repetative, redundant POV chapters. And he even has his RP buddy writing a companion series. And there's like 2 more related trilogies coming out. It's way, way too much. Put this story away for a year. Spend time in the Thunderdome thread, work on some short stories, whatever. Write about mundane things, things you like, things you don't like. Our brethren over in the art thread like to tell people to draw everything you see. Writing is similar; you need to write on a broad range of subjects in a broad range of styles or you're going to sound like a bloody collision of hamfisted exposition and purple prose. And I am someone who loves worldbuilding. It's great to have a fleshed out world. But go work on your conventions first, so that when you tackle the story that is close to your heart, it's as good as it should be.
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Feb 15, 2013 19:47
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Blarggy posted:Well that escalated quickly. I meant no disrespect by editing the quote, just thought it would make my post longer than it needed to be. I also didn't mean to offend you, I honestly meant I appreciated your feedback because I don't really know how things go in this here thread and what you've said it very useful information to me. When I begin writing the first draft I will come back and share my work to get more detailed critique, but in the mean time I have no work to show you and being that it's six in the morning I have very little time left awake to write some up. It went south that fast because your story ideas were all out of context content, and you didn't give us any form and execution. This is a thread about writing, not a thread about thinking about writing. Those are honestly the worst powers I've ever seen in a sci-fi story, I can't even conceive a way to make them matter to the reader, and they give your characters an "I win" button. One essentially can't be touched, the other can't die. I'm going to go ahead and give you the best advice I can towards anyone with a setup that smells so otaku-mary sue, die hard, hyper bullshit. Lose the powers. Focus on the people. I'm writing a mystery and my character has a gun, this gun is not central to my story in any way, it's just a tool. That's how superpowers should work. Now I'm going to go track down your other post so I can see if my snap judgements are right. Mrfreezewarning fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Feb 16, 2013 |
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Feb 16, 2013 06:59
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Am I the only one who p much needs the tactile fun of handwriting in order to jog my interest in whatever I'm working on? It's gotten to the point where I often do this for assigned papers too, not just the thing I'm writing. It's like the worst variation on blank white screen writer's block. Even once I have a number of pages in a word doc I still don't feel like writing if it means punching glyphs onto a screen; I need a pen and a notebook. I'm worried that it's gonna eventually fuel my laziness to the point where there's no workaround and I stop doing creative writing.
Peta fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Feb 17, 2013 |
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Feb 17, 2013 20:43
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I'm one of the most tech-heavy guys in my city, and I absolutely need to write my rough drafts by hand, for both fiction and screenwriting. The impulse to jump around and edit in a Word processor is just far too tempting for me. When I'm entering my handwritten stuff into Word, I'll edit on the fly, and I'll also often write from scratch in between scenes too, but not from the start.
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Feb 17, 2013 22:06
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Roquentin posted:Am I the only one who p much needs the tactile fun of handwriting in order to jog my interest in whatever I'm working on? It's gotten to the point where I often do this for assigned papers too, not just the thing I'm writing. It's like the worst variation on blank white screen writer's block. Even once I have a number of pages in a word doc I still don't feel like writing if it means punching glyphs onto a screen; I need a pen and a notebook. I'm worried that it's gonna eventually fuel my laziness to the point where there's no workaround and I stop doing creative writing. Get a speech-to-text program and a headset. You can kill two birds with one stone: -Reading it aloud so you know where the weak, awkward, or over-written parts are. -Typing that poo poo without it being laborious.
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Feb 17, 2013 23:24
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Roquentin posted:Am I the only one who p much needs the tactile fun of handwriting in order to jog my interest in whatever I'm working on? It's gotten to the point where I often do this for assigned papers too, not just the thing I'm writing. It's like the worst variation on blank white screen writer's block. Even once I have a number of pages in a word doc I still don't feel like writing if it means punching glyphs onto a screen; I need a pen and a notebook. I'm worried that it's gonna eventually fuel my laziness to the point where there's no workaround and I stop doing creative writing. I keep a huge stack of index cards and a fine tip sharpie with me essentially everywhere for that, but I just get so frustrated trying to write anything longer than a hundred or so words out by hand. Index cards are so much more physically pleasing than big fuckin' notebooks or endless reams of note paper.
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Feb 18, 2013 03:55
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Roquentin posted:Am I the only one who p much needs the tactile fun of handwriting in order to jog my interest in whatever I'm working on? It's gotten to the point where I often do this for assigned papers too, not just the thing I'm writing. It's like the worst variation on blank white screen writer's block. Even once I have a number of pages in a word doc I still don't feel like writing if it means punching glyphs onto a screen; I need a pen and a notebook. I'm worried that it's gonna eventually fuel my laziness to the point where there's no workaround and I stop doing creative writing. I always write things out on paper first. I always carry around a notebook and pens so I can jot ideas down. I used to use moleskins since I could draw in them as well, but I'm currently using regular half-size notebooks again. The hardcover ones they sell at Staples are the best; a good price for the paper quality, and a lot cheaper at around $3. I always try to make sure I use decent pens as well (currently a Pentel energel and a Zebra F-301). Plus, maybe I'm weird, but I love the look, feel, and sound of paper filled with writing. The way they crinkle and the texture gets bumpy from my heavy-handed writing just adds to that feeling of accomplishment that I just don't get in the same way from printed text. I used to just write things out as a little kid, even just re-write books or encyclopedia entries, just to see the pages and flip them back and forth and feel like I did something. The problem then becomes typing everything up, which I haven't done for anything except some of my poetry. I have a stack of notebooks with writing, but since most of it is old and not so great, maybe it's for the best. I plan on typing up some of the most recent notebooks though, just to get in the habit.
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Feb 18, 2013 04:48
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I'd have to say I'm the exact opposite and that my writing is pretty much all on computer now. Sometimes I'll do my outlines with Dragon speech to text software, but if I'm not typing, I don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything. I used to be dedicated to using a specific kind of pen and paper, but then when I wanted to send off things to publishers I'd have to waste an absurd amount of time typing things up.
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Feb 18, 2013 08:40
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Does anyone have a good recommendation for a good speech-to-text app for the iPhone? I've tried using Dragon Dictation but it can't understand most of what I say unless I talk really slowly and over-enunciate which kind of defeats the purpose of what I want to use it for (translating stream-of-consciousness spoken word to writing.) I don't slur my words or have an intense accent or anything but it probably gets about 25% of my words right when speaking normally. Maybe it just can't be used for that kind of thing?
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Feb 18, 2013 14:14
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Speech-to-text would make me wanna kill myself; I'm too self-critical.Whalley posted:I keep a huge stack of index cards and a fine tip sharpie with me essentially everywhere for that, but I just get so frustrated trying to write anything longer than a hundred or so words out by hand. Index cards are so much more physically pleasing than big fuckin' notebooks or endless reams of note paper. Get a Moleskine. You'll look cooler that way anyway.
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Feb 21, 2013 14:52
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So I have two questions. One: I have a project I've been working on for four years and I've passed out copies to multiple persons for feedback. What's an easy and surefire way to prove ownership in case somebody plagiarizes? Two, the major feedback has been my writing reads not like conventional prose but like a script. Now my education in the field of literature has taught me that all writers started from one base form of writing. Most of the great Elizabethan poets for instance started writing pastoral before they branched out into their own genres. Should I continue writing prose? Or can I branch out into scriptwriting?
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Feb 24, 2013 06:38
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Benny the Snake posted:So I have two questions. One: I have a project I've been working on for four years and I've passed out copies to multiple persons for feedback. What's an easy and surefire way to prove ownership in case somebody plagiarizes? No one is going to steal you're writing, and if you're actually worried that someone is then stop giving it to a bunch of people to look at. Benny the Snake posted:Two, the major feedback has been my writing reads not like conventional prose but like a script. Now my education in the field of literature has taught me that all writers started from one base form of writing. Most of the great Elizabethan poets for instance started writing pastoral before they branched out into their own genres. Should I continue writing prose? Or can I branch out into scriptwriting? You can do whatever you want. Write scripts, write Facebook posts, whatever. If you want to get better at fiction then try to figure out why your stuff reads like a script. Do you read books?
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Feb 24, 2013 12:47
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Benny the Snake posted:So I have two questions. One: I have a project I've been working on for four years and I've passed out copies to multiple persons for feedback. What's an easy and surefire way to prove ownership in case somebody plagiarizes? Definitely write pastoral. You'll know when you're ready to move on, but don't skip it. Pastoral's important.
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Feb 24, 2013 13:24
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I Am Hydrogen posted:No one is going to steal you're writing, and if you're actually worried that someone is then stop giving it to a bunch of people to look at. quote:You can do whatever you want. Write scripts, write Facebook posts, whatever. If you want to get better at fiction then try to figure out why your stuff reads like a script. Do you read books?
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Feb 24, 2013 19:54
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I have a quick question about writing software. I've looked up Scrivener, Ulysses, WriteRoom, etc. and tried the trial software, but I was wondering what others' opinions were about these programs, since they're kinda expensive for what you get. Are they any better than using Ms Word? Or is there some benefit that I'm not seeing? Is there some benefit to paying $10 for a program that blanks out the rest of the screen and only lets me see text? Another question: In terms of submitting works to lit journals, is it better to submit to regular submissions, or are contests also seen as a good "legitimate" way to be published? I'm thinking of submitting work for the first time, but I want to get the best bang for my buck out of what little decent output I currently have.
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Feb 24, 2013 20:16
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Some people like Scrivener because it allows you to compartmentalize scenes and chapters so you can move them around. For me, I'm just fine with Open Office as I've been using it for years and I've already learned how to compartmentalize myself. So, it's a tossup as to what you want in a writing program. As for the $10 to blank out the screen, hell no. You can set a word processor to full screen which will do the same if I understand what you're wanting. It'd just be one big page on the screen that you can write on. I do that a lot. Contests can be legitimate (not all of them are), but you have to pay money, so you're going to lose a ton of money, most likely. Definitely go for journals first because they will pay you if they accept, so it's no risk vs high reward. Also, with a few pub creds under your belt, you're more likely to win contests. The biggest bang for your buck would be a subscription to duotrope.com
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Feb 24, 2013 20:23
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Scrivener is phenomenal and in my opinion easily worth the 40 bucks or however much it costs. The guy who writes it offers a free 30 day trial that isn't limited in any way, so you can decide for yourself. (I realize you said you tried the trial, but it can't have been for very long otherwise you'd have all the info you needed on it) I'd never have gotten my book written without Scrivener and really can't recommend it enough. I didn't realize until later that all that sitting and staring at a blank Word doc was killing my ability to write and to finish writing. Scrivener lets you organize your thoughts and scenes in a cohesive fashion, giving you a nice overview of your project and the progress you've made on it. The best thing I can say about it is that you can really arrange everything in any way you want. It doesn't try to get you to write in any certain fashion or order or anything like that. You may use it entirely differently than I would, but that's ok and the software will let you do it however you're comfortable.
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Feb 24, 2013 20:39
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Thanks! I was thinking the same thing about the writing programs. They seem nice, but nothing about them seemed worth $45 bucks, or even $10. Edit: ^^^Hm, I'll try it for a little longer, then, thanks. I plan to use it for short stories and poetry, so some of the features are a bit too much, but I do like the interface and that it sets up the submission cover pages and exports in different formats. As for the contests, that makes sense as well. Ploughshares has a contest for unpublished writers, so I was thinking of entering it, but maybe I should just send a regular submission to them instead? The prize is worth it to me, and the cost to enter is just a subscription, which I would get anyway. I figured maybe a contest would be a good place to start and technically get published in a well-known journal, and then work on regular submissions after that. Would a contest prize from a journal help with getting published? I know they say to mention those sorts of things in submission cover letters, but maybe it'd be better energy spent trying to submit my stuff in a smaller publication to start. yoyomama fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Feb 24, 2013 |
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Feb 24, 2013 20:42
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If you're gonna get a sub to Ploughshares and that's all it costs, sure, go ahead and enter. It's a great mag. As for smaller publications, it's always better to start with the small ones and work your way up. As much as people claim that having a list of recent pubs in a cover letter won't affect their decision, it definitely affects their decision to take your story. It works on the snowball effect, so once you get your first in a small (but non-lovely) magazine, you can get a bunch in small magazines, which leads to getting some in the bigger named magazines.
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Feb 24, 2013 20:47
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Awesome, thanks again Erik and Chillmatic. I kinda wish there was a blog like Ask a Manager, but for writers for this kind of info. I'm kinda nervous to submit, but why not. I'll try to get it at least the poems together for the contest deadline. I have stories, but they're nowhere near finished yet (if ever) and need a ton of work. I'll try submitting those to small journals once they're ready. I guess to answer that earlier question about writing format, don't feel like you need to stick to one form of writing. Use the form that best fits the story, or even (for drafting purposes), what form best gets the idea down. Sometimes I write poems to get the right mood or character's feeling, then write out prose from there. Sometimes a poem or prose just says what needs to be said in the best way and I leave it as is. I like both forms, as well as scripts if the story is right for it. You'll probably have a form or two you excel at, but write what you want.
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Feb 24, 2013 21:42
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I use yWriter5 for larger writing projects. I tried the Scrivenir trial, and maybe it was just because I'd already gotten used to yWriter and didn't want to switch horses midstream, but it seemed to have more clutter that was a distraction rather than a help. yWriter5 is free which was the main reason I looked into it. Doesn't appear to have a fullscreen mode, though.
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Feb 24, 2013 22:47
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I've been using Scrivener for about 5 years now, and while I like roughly 500 little things, I'd have a hard time pointing to a single "killer app" it has. Still, I think it's pretty rad and worth the 30-day trial, especially if you're obsessively tidy like me. Some examples: I use a lot of its tagging features, such as tagging a scene by character presence. I keep my scene and chapter summaries updated, so I can get an instant overview of the story's high-level flow in the corkboard view. I use the snapshots feature whenever I revise a scene, in case I want to review how it changed or perhaps port some plot points/verbiage into a later revision, or a different scene. If I'm working on a scene and I change something that I know will impact another scene I've already written, I pop over to that other scene, change its status to "Needs Revisions", and type a short explanation into the notes section, so I know what I need to update later, when I'm not caught up in the flow of drafting/revising. I've also used it in my day job to do the early drafting phases of product proposals, presentations, stuff like that - any long-form writing project, creative or otherwise.
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Feb 24, 2013 23:07
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Scrivener's neat, but I discovered an irritating drawback. EDIT: Nevermind. It's a small thing, but it's irritating. Emils katt posted:If I understand you correctly, try selecting some of your text with the right settings and go to format->text->copy ruler (or ctrl+alt+7). Now select your pasted text and click paste ruler (ctrl+alt+8). And that should do it. Oh good, that works! Thanks. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 24, 2013 23:48
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Scrivener's neat, but I discovered an irritating drawback. When you paste something from another source, it keeps the tab settings from the source and there isn't a way to change them as far as I can tell. If I understand you correctly, try selecting some of your text with the right settings and go to format->text->copy ruler (or ctrl+alt+7). Now select your pasted text and click paste ruler (ctrl+alt+8). And that should do it.
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Feb 25, 2013 00:27
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I tried Write or Die again. It used to play MMMBop when you stopped writing. Now, it rickrolls. 
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Feb 25, 2013 02:40
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yoyomama posted:I'm kinda nervous to submit, but why not. I'll try to get it at least the poems together for the contest deadline. I have stories, but FTFY
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Feb 25, 2013 12:48
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Martello posted:FTFY Haha we'll see, I have to finish them first. They're not my usual, so it's taking me some time to see where the story goes. And I know this forum well enough to know I can't just post any old crap, I want to make sure my writing's as decent as I can try to make it before I post it.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:20
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I just wanted to say that because of this thread, I went and downloaded yWriter5. I don't know if the pay programs are any better, but I am amazed that I've been writing on computers for so long without using something like this. I like pretty much everything about it so far. It also runs on my lovely netbook. I can feel a productive streak coming on. Question: How painstaking are you when developing the climate and geography of a non-earth world (thinking more fantasy here than literally other planets in this universe)? For example, I'm writing about people who live on an isthmus in an area that has a roughly Mediterranean climate, and since they're fishers and farmers I have to figure out what would live and grow in that area, and so on. And then what starts as a simple scene with a villager getting run down on a clam field by a guy on a horse turns into a bunch of research about whether there would even BE clam fields in an area like that, or whether they would need to dive for clams, or what. After a while it starts to feel like a pointless holdup. The clam field is kind of a silly example. But you can only write "around" so much ignorance, so at what point do you guys give yourselves creative license to just say 'gently caress it, that's how this made up world works'? I personally like stories that have that extra air of authenticity, but I find it hard to write to that standard for sheer lack of knowledge.
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Feb 26, 2013 02:59
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Sitting Here posted:Question: How painstaking are you when developing the climate and geography of a non-earth world (thinking more fantasy here than literally other planets in this universe)? I would go so far as to say that I stake not a single pain. There are folk who really get into worldbuilding, really like to fill in every nook and cranny of their worlds. I don't. That, for me, is where creativity goes to die. I have to stop writing and look up poo poo on Wikipedia or Google so I know what I'm talking about. The most I do is make sure that I'm using the right terms to describe something. That's where it ends.
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Feb 26, 2013 10:10
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Sitting Here posted:Question: How painstaking are you when developing the climate and geography of a non-earth world (thinking more fantasy here than literally other planets in this universe)? For example, I'm writing about people who live on an isthmus in an area that has a roughly Mediterranean climate, and since they're fishers and farmers I have to figure out what would live and grow in that area, and so on. And then what starts as a simple scene with a villager getting run down on a clam field by a guy on a horse turns into a bunch of research about whether there would even BE clam fields in an area like that, or whether they would need to dive for clams, or what. After a while it starts to feel like a pointless holdup. I suppose it depends on how much a large, consistent, realistic world will contribute to the story. Personally, for bigger projects, I like maps, and I take two different approaches; the top-down approach when I'm more interested in a realistic world with large-scale consistency; the bottom-up approach when poo poo needs to be weirder and less realistic, or I otherwise don't care about consistency. The top-down approach is way more  and science-heavy. Wikipedia will be your friend.< >I was working on a fantasy novel about a year ago. After writing a few scenes to get a feel for the characters and figuring out what I wanted to accomplish, I spent about a week writing "research", starting literally with plate tectonics and wind directions. The actual geography was about two evenings' work. I took a piece of paper, in the center I slapped down the one thing I knew about the world - there is a city here. Then I worked out how a few imaginary plates could interact, which filled in the overall geography around - mountain ranges here, volcanoes there, wide flood plains here, and so on. If you really want to get into it, make the northern coasts more jagged and add a lot of lakes at the northern latitudes, for glaciation. The rest is water. Wind directions are dependent on Hadley cells which are dependent on latitudes. How far north/south is your continent? I went for middle latitudes, like NA/Europe, and I expect most folks will. So, wind moves from southwest to northeast, generally. This lets you figure out where the wind is going to pick up water and where it'll be deposited - look up rain shadows. Elevation, latitude and wetness gives you a rough idea of biome, so you know where forests, plains and so on will be. From that, you can pick wet spots in the mountains and hills to source major rivers. I ignore the smaller ones; rivers are so goddamn common that you can make up a smaller one whenever you need it. Major rivers will shape where people initially settled: look for confluences of two rivers (Paris), places where two rivers run close to one another (Mesopotamia), and places where major rivers meet large lakes or seas (Thebes). Look at a map of Europe and North Africa: major old cities are always on the water, somehow. Bam, fictional geography. Now you can start writing fictional history, which I prefer to write and subsequently ignore, because nothing is worse than a fantasy author banging on about some historic general or battle that is Super Important and Very Detailed but has absolutely no loving bearing on the story. </ >Bottom-up is easier, but more time-consuming and less consistent. Write a bunch of scenes for a bunch of different characters located in different places, preferably at different social stations. Use these as reference material, maybe build a map out of 'em, although Terry Pratchett says you can't properly map an imagination, and I'm inclined to agree. The real question is, if you need a world that's very realistic and earthlike, then why not just use Earth? There's a ton of bizarre stuff in our backyards, and you get the benefit of real local history and mythology to draw upon, which is often weirder than anything made-up. Your clam-field example could be based off of a Japanese pearl-diving village, or it could be based off a maritime city like Boston or Halifax. What does the story require?
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Feb 26, 2013 10:32
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Sitting Here posted:I just wanted to say that because of this thread, I went and downloaded yWriter5. I don't know if the pay programs are any better, but I am amazed that I've been writing on computers for so long without using something like this. I like pretty much everything about it so far. It also runs on my lovely netbook. I can feel a productive streak coming on. I only world-build as much as necessary for a story, otherwise a lot of time gets wasted on stuff that isn't relevant. The same applies to research. I would use various tools to help accelerate the process if the purpose of a story demands a large amount of world-building. This one time, I spent days trying to figure out if a protagonist could see his city of origin a long ways off from the top of a mountain. Me and a friend banged our heads together and eventually came up with the following workable equation: D = √H(2r+H) D = distance H = height r = radius (planet) Pretty neat, too bad readers don't care about exact distances.
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Feb 26, 2013 11:58
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 15:04 |
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Sitting Here posted:Question: How painstaking are you when developing the climate and geography of a non-earth world (thinking more fantasy here than literally other planets in this universe)? For example, I'm writing about people who live on an isthmus in an area that has a roughly Mediterranean climate, and since they're fishers and farmers I have to figure out what would live and grow in that area, and so on. And then what starts as a simple scene with a villager getting run down on a clam field by a guy on a horse turns into a bunch of research about whether there would even BE clam fields in an area like that, or whether they would need to dive for clams, or what. After a while it starts to feel like a pointless holdup. A lot of good responses on this already, but I'll add my two cents. From my own experience, I find it best to say "gently caress it" right off the bat during a first draft and save any authenticity and research for the rewrite/second draft. The first draft of anything should be about setting the tone, creating the characters and realizing the story. Your focus should not be about whether a clam field would exist in that environment, it should about why the guy on the horse is running this dude down and how the villagers around react and what twists and turns and conflicts this event leads to. Very few people are going to read your first draft anyway, so there's really no reason to give a poo poo if certain facets aren't realistic or scientifically accurate, since you can use the second draft to research and fix those issues. Like, if I'm writing a story where these dudes are flying a helicopter, I don't spend hours researching the ins and outs of how a helicopter flies. That will put me way off topic anyway and then I'll spend the first draft worried about getting the details of the helicopter right without placing the proper consideration on how these dudes are supposed to be reacting now that they've been shot out of the sky. World building is obviously a good thing, especially in Fantasy/Sci-Fi where the worlds are often not real. But no matter how detailed your world is, it won't make much difference if your characters are boring or your story is incomprehensible. Worry about batting down those hatches first before thinking about the nuts and bolts. If your farmers work in a clam field, then god dammit they work in a clam field (and, as someone previously said, most readers won't give a poo poo whether or not a clam field could actually exist in your environment).
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Feb 26, 2013 16:51
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