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asap-salafi posted:For someone who has never written anything before, I have big ambitions. I want to write an epic fantasy series. I've had ideas floating around my head since I was a little kid but I've never written them down and now, after finishing my education, I feel like it's time to get started. Here's my question, should I jump straight in and start developing the world for this series (i.e characters, story lines etc) or should I practice writing short stories and prose first? Don't make the mistake of being an anthropologist instead of a writer. That is, you can build the most elaborate and detailed world this side of Jordan or Tolkien, but I promise you that your work on that front will get in the way of your story. Short stories are good proving ground. Don't start with the world. Start with a character. Put them in a bad place and watch them try to get out. Or give them something that they want, something that they'll do anything for. Build your world around that. The end result is that you'll have a setting that serves the story, not the other way around, and you'll learn which parts of your world building are important (you keep these) and which ones are fluff (you file these away for later or get rid of them entirely). Write a few shorts. Nothing longer than eight or nine thousand words. That'll make sure you keep your stories lean. (Every goddamn fantasy in the world these days is overbloated, and not one of them couldn't use some heavy editing). Lean means your stories stay interesting and compelling. Compelling means people want to read them. Wanting to be read means easier to get published. This isn't my advice, as it happens; George RR Martin gave it to me when I asked him about becoming a writer at a book signing ten years ago. It worked for him; the series he's most known for he didn't start until well into his career. (It goes without saying, I suppose, that he's stopped taking his own advice, but like Stephen King, he's famous enough that he can do whatever the gently caress he wants now.) But his tips are the reason I started getting published after a run of rejections in my late teens and early twenties, so I can tell you firsthand that it's good advice. edit for clarity Asbury fucked around with this message at 20:54 on May 21, 2013 |
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May 21, 2013 20:38
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asap-salafi posted:For someone who has never written anything before, I have big ambitions. I want to write an epic fantasy series. I've had ideas floating around my head since I was a little kid but I've never written them down and now, after finishing my education, I feel like it's time to get started. Here's my question, should I jump straight in and start developing the world for this series (i.e characters, story lines etc) or should I practice writing short stories and prose first? If you want to actually make money and have people read your work, Medieval Fantasy isn't the best place to start.
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May 21, 2013 21:21
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In the Thunderdome, which is a good place to start practicing--$50 for the winner this week, we have had people come in and post a short fantasy-like piece. Out of 20 or so entries, this person gets dead last place. They then say, "I have a 60,000 word novel already written like this..." I just feel really sad when that happens. Don't be that person. I think everyone who "will write a novel one day" likes to just think about doing it and assumes that the ideas will carry everything else; the writing will just kind of happen, right? Writing is a skill that is difficult to acquire. You don't want to develop that skill from the ground up as you are constructing your epic fantasy series. Get good at doing it, then do it. If you want to learn to do oil paintings and have never drawn before, you will start by taking a pencil and filling sheets of paper with nothing but circles, not by buying a 20x20 foot canvas and doing an oil painting straight away.
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May 21, 2013 21:33
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I totally understand and I'm willing to put in the hard work and deal with my crappy writing skills. I just needed to know what I should be doing, so thanks for the advice. I'll keep my dreams in my head for the time being and focus on writing a short story.Thoren posted:If you want to actually make money and have people read your work, Medieval Fantasy isn't the best place to start. I didn't say that I wanted to write Medieval Fantasy but why is this the case? EDIT: I forgot to say thank you for the replies. I was expecting you all to shout at me. asap-salafi fucked around with this message at 22:01 on May 21, 2013 |
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May 21, 2013 21:51
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asap-salafi posted:I totally understand and I'm willing to put in the hard work and deal with my crappy writing skills. I just needed to know what I should be doing, so thanks for the advice. I'll keep my dreams in my head for the time being and focus on writing a short story. Sorry. I just sort of assumed. Everyone I meet seems to have some medieval fantasy fetish. It's just a very saturated market. Accomplished writers often tackle medieval fantasy later in their lives since nobody would read it without some author credentials. If you want to explore the fantasy genre in general, here's an incredibly cheap and good book I recommend. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/listing/2688888188638?r=1&cm_mmca2=pla&cm_mmc=GooglePLA-_-Book_5To14-_-Q000000633-_-2688888188638
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May 21, 2013 21:56
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asap-salafi posted:For someone who has never written anything before, I have big ambitions. I want to write an epic fantasy series. I've had ideas floating around my head since I was a little kid but I've never written them down and now, after finishing my education, I feel like it's time to get started. Here's my question, should I jump straight in and start developing the world for this series (i.e characters, story lines etc) or should I practice writing short stories and prose first? Practice with short form stuff first, even if you don't intend to try to get it published. I'm a lovely novice at fiction, so any advice I give should be taken with a grain of salt, but this has another clear benefit aside from teaching you craft. It forces you to be lean. If you want to do fantasy, this is probably even more important than otherwise, because no other genre suffers so much from setting bloat. To clarify: the one massive benefit of fantasy and SF is that you get to craft a world around the story you're telling. Reality happily bends around your characters and plot to suit whatever themes you're writing about. Look at published short stories in spec-fic and notice how little description of the world there usually is: the authors only mention the most relevant details, letting the readers fill in, simply because the wordcount is so limited. Meanwhile, novice fantasy authors (hell, even many published bigshots) tend to fill their fictional spaces with all kinds of unnecessary poo poo that's supposed to make them "cohesive" and "alive", and actually ends up a) cluttering their books with uninteresting sperging and b) restricting the storytelling freedom that's the biggest appeal of the genre in the first place. Write short stories, because you'll be forced to take the sprawling fantasy world that has probably already developed in your head and then mercilessly butcher it until you're left with the poo poo That Matters.
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May 21, 2013 22:06
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asap-salafi posted:I totally understand and I'm willing to put in the hard work and deal with my crappy writing skills. I just needed to know what I should be doing, so thanks for the advice. I'll keep my dreams in my head for the time being and focus on writing a short story. Honestly - come on over to the 'dome. You cannot help but improve.
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May 21, 2013 22:37
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sebmojo posted:Honestly - come on over to the 'dome. You cannot help but improve. Yeah it looks cool, I will after a few weeks. I really like my avatar though and it would destroy me if I came last. Can't they have a week where you don't get that horrible "THUNDERDOME LOSER" tag? :iamafag:
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May 21, 2013 23:19
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asap-salafi posted:Yeah it looks cool, I will after a few weeks. I really like my avatar though and it would destroy me if I came last. Can't they have a week where you don't get that horrible "THUNDERDOME LOSER" tag? :iamafag: Nothing ventured nothing gained. (Beyond that remember that only the worst person that week gets the tag--for every keyboard jock like Seb and SittingHere kicking rear end and taking names there are a half dozen dudes like you and me staggering behind, slicked with sweat, just trying to make a dead sprint for the finish line so we don't come in dead last)
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May 21, 2013 23:43
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systran posted:Out of 20 or so entries, this person gets dead last place. They then say, "I have a 60,000 word novel already written like this..." I just feel really sad when that happens. Don't be that person. As much as I hate being the dead last, (only after being nearly dead last twice) it's made me stop and think really hard about my amazing 55,000 word story. And these idiots are all exactly right. Don't start with your baby. Start with a tiny part of your baby. I can't bear the thought of starting over with the big huge story. But to be fair - there's something really exciting about saying gently caress-all and jumping in for 50,000 words. You get a real feel for doing something with your ideas. Just be prepared to discover your ideas (the world, the history of your place, the characters) are going to end up pissing you off because maybe you forgot to put a story in there somewhere. edit: and maybe you suck at conveying your point. and grammar.
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May 22, 2013 00:03
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asap-salafi posted:Yeah it looks cool, I will after a few weeks. I really like my avatar though and it would destroy me if I came last. Can't they have a week where you don't get that horrible "THUNDERDOME LOSER" tag? :iamafag: Absolutely not. But if you have a story with a beginning, middle and end, no major grammatical errors and recognisably human characters I guarantee you will not lose a round.* And, c'mon, you won't wager $5 on your writing? *No actual guarantee provided
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May 22, 2013 00:12
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HaitianDivorce posted:Nothing ventured nothing gained. Also I would like to point out that if you look far enough back in my post history, my first postings in CC were confused and grandiose. I am literally an ok writer right now because some people on the internet created some dumb thread where we write every week. I've improved more in the past year than in the rest of my life combined, barring that first bit where you learn about how to write a sentence in the correct order, of course. After I realized I could write ~1000 words a week, I realized that I could write 1000 words of chapter a week. And those chapters were better because I gained(and am still gaining) an understanding of how to create tension in a small space. Come to the dome, asap-salafi. You can fix your av but you can't fix a lifetime of being a mediocre writer because you didn't ever put anything on the line. It may just be a forums thread, but look at all of the people who've shown noticeable improvement. We may hand out a lot of losertars but the people who improve and really make an effort don't go unremarked either. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 04:05 on May 22, 2013 |
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May 22, 2013 04:02
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magnificent7 posted:I am that person. Speaking of people who should have a losertar and don't. Yes, join Thunderdome. Even if you don't join for a couple of weeks like you say you won't, read the entries, read the crits. Observe and learn and then jump in.
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May 22, 2013 06:41
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CantDecideOnAName posted:Speaking of people who should have a losertar and don't. Ahhhh good point. I will set the wheels in motion.
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May 22, 2013 12:52
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Regarding the Thunderdome, here's what you'll go through. 1a: submit something amazing. 1b: find out there are massive mistakes you should have known better than to commit. 2a: Submit something that manages to sort of address those first problems 2b: Not unlike your car, addressing some problems reveals bigger, worse problems. 2c: Congratulate yourself that at least you're STILL not the worst writer on there. 3a: Submit something that kind of maybe addresses the problems from 1b, and maybe touches on 2b, but like poking at a tiny bump on your arm, you're only discovering it's not a bug bite it's cancer. 3b: Congratulations, you are the number one worst writer this time around. And this is the critical part here. 3c: Give up. gently caress them, they're all literary scholar types comparing your intentionally trashy writing to yeats or poe or lovecraft. 3d: Collect all their comments, and one by one, prove to yourself they completely missed the point and just don't get it. 3e: Get really drunk and pissy for a day because you've opened your soul and had people point out that your soul sucks. 3f: wake up with a hangover and think that this must be exactly what college is like, if you ever bothered to go to college. 3g: Remember that every person who encouraged you to join the Thunderdome pointed out it's harsh but it'll make you better. 4a: Keep writing, just like every person in this thread (and the TD thread) says to do. So there you go.
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May 22, 2013 14:53
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Just a heads up, Brandon Sanderson is currently starting some sort of online fantasy-writing lecture dealie, as a followup to last year's amazing series. There's writing deadlines, mandatory crit and all that good stuff. If you're into fantasy, it might be worth a look.
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May 22, 2013 15:13
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At what point in your story can you throw up your hands and say, "gently caress it I don't CARE why that happened, who knows why crazy people do poo poo?" versus the need to provide a convincing reason for poo poo to happen? In horror/zombie stories, you have a monster that craves brains just because he does. You don't have to explain how the living brain cells awaken something deep inside the reanimated beast. In serial killer movies, you don't have to explain why somebody woke up and decided to start slashing people. I think my writing tends to err in the other direction, feeling the need to put a reason behind every drat thing so people won't question the logic. My stories grind to a halt while I try to provide the reason that a person went from unhappy to murderous. Can't I just say, "without thinking, this person loving snapped"? Don't get me wrong, a story that makes no sense isn't any good, but I think there's a grey area in there somewhere. A person snaps and goes batshit, bites and gnaws the throats of anyone nearby, do you need to explain why, if the rest of the story is more interesting? There is that level of suspension of disbelief - when do I get to just assume people will go along with it? edit: gently caress YEAH MY LOSERTAR! I AM PROUD.
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May 23, 2013 21:05
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There's an inverse relationship between how much 'sense' everything has to make vs. how entertained the reader is. If you've provided good characters and tension, no one's going to really care about believable zombies or physics whatever. It's only when the reader is left with nothing else to do (because you're not entertaining them) that they start to notice all the things 'wrong' with your story.
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May 23, 2013 23:03
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It all comes down to internal consistency, really. I don't need a comprehensive breakdown of how a gun works as long as I know that it fires when I pull the trigger (and only when I pull the trigger). It's when you pull the trigger and nothing happens, or something so completely out of left field as to be unpredictable happens, that you owe your audience any kind of reasonable explanation as to what's been going on. If Alice is regularly emotionally strained, taciturn, and highly neurotic, then I don't really need to read her psyche profile to understand why she might start cutting people's throats out with a pair of gardening shears. If, on the other hand, Alice is a reasonably well respected member of the community, healthy, happy, bright and shining, then you're gonna need to throw me some kind of bone here if you want me to accept that she locks people in her basement. As long as you have have established the nature of a thing, as long as it adheres to its nature then there's no real need to sweat the small stuff. If I have a knife that can cut through anything, it's only when it can't that I've got to say something.
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May 23, 2013 23:21
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As a mild counternote I've had a couple of 'dome stories where I didn't spend enough time joining the dots and should have added a line or two explaining what I meant (specifically this one and this one). In both cases I knew exactly what was supposed to be happening but didn't convey that well enough. So I guess the solution is to write the story and ask people what they think happens, and if no one gets it then add a bit of clarification.
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May 24, 2013 00:01
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magnificent7 posted:At what point in your story can you throw up your hands and say, "gently caress it I don't CARE why that happened, who knows why crazy people do poo poo?" versus the need to provide a convincing reason for poo poo to happen? Pretty much loving never. As the writer, you should know why everything happens the way it does in your story. It's part of making every word in your story count, because if you know why stuff is happening, then you can use just enough extra words to convey that meaning alongside the action itself. This is especially important with characters. Using your example, if you have a serial killer who just kinda snaps one day, you're probably going to have a really goddamn boring story if it's centered around the serial killer himself. (If he's just a background plot device to get other things to happen, then you might be less strict.) Why? Because you have no character there; you have a puppet. In a story about a sociopath, you (the writer) need to know what makes the killer tick. Some dude just snapped, you say? "Jimbob the Slasher cut Perky McJuggs' plump little throat, because he was loving crazy." Boring, no one cares. There's no tension or character development, just gore. You need to know why your characters are doing things, and then you need to illustrate the "why" with the characters' thoughts, the little details of their actions, the things they say (or don't say), how they see and react to the world and events around them. The second important point here is that, even though you as a writer know absolutely everything, you should not be dumping every drop of that onto the page. This is where the mantra "show, don't tell" was born. If you're writing about a character with mental issues, like your serial killer, don't tell us "Jimbob the Slasher sank his knife deep into Perky McJuggs, because her blonde hair reminded him of mom and he felt ashamed when Little Jimbob got happy when Perky flounced by", show us Jimbob's issues with women, show us how Perky arouses him and his failure to deal with that. (Or do it afterwards, through your detective's eyes, if it's a detective story.) Edit: There was a great bit in a writing article I read once, which I cannot find now. Which of these is better? I don't have the actual lines, so these are poorly reproduced from memory. Article the First: "After a long wait, Harold stood up from his seat and went to greet Helen. He was nervous." Article the Second: "After a long wait, Harold wobbled to his feet and staggered towards Helen. He shoved his gnawed fist into his pocket, hiding clench-whitened knuckles." Erogenous Beef fucked around with this message at 00:24 on May 24, 2013 |
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May 24, 2013 00:18
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Erogenous Beef posted:Edit: There was a great bit in a writing article I read once, which I cannot find now. Which of these is better? I don't have the actual lines, so these are poorly reproduced from memory. I think the second one is a bit much, but I agree with the point. It always matters why things happen, because writing should mirror real life to some extent. And, "everything happens for a real". The hard part should be in how you chose to convey why things happen, and how much you want to let your reader work things out for themselves. This is especially true for antagonists, I find, otherwise it's dull. Well, any character, I suppose. Characters need a reason to do things otherwise it just doesn't really add up. Even cheap airplane thriller novels usually have some sort of character motivation. I suppose it doesn't always have to make complete sense. There is a certain suspension of disbelief required for most fiction.
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May 24, 2013 00:47
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Thanks y'all. Great info.
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May 24, 2013 01:28
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Am I completely hopeless if I write a lot but still wonder how writers come up with their ideas? Sometime I might try the Thunderdome, but I've never come up with an idea within a week. I manage a couple a year, mostly by throwing random poo poo at a plot outline until it vaguely resembles a story. I'm not creative. It's even harder for short stories because I don't read or write them as often (or like them as much). I have no idea how my writer friends can think up dozens of ideas in minutes when I ask for suggestions. The silly thing is that I don't actually like most of the things the creative people write. I hardly like anything that anyone writes and a lot of what I enjoy is widely considered to be trash. So it might just be my impossibly bad taste getting in the way, and I don't write badly enough to interest myself.  My approach to writing might be hosed because my approach to reading is hosed: I don't want to know if the author is taking it seriously or not, which means that when I write I can't know if I'm taking it seriously or not, which is...not very possible?I'm much better at editing. I need to find a way to edit stories into existence. Does anyone have any tips, for anything? I'm starting something new and right now I just feel demoralised. P.S. I have a fever and possibly none of this makes sense.
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May 25, 2013 12:10
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The Duke of Avon posted:I hardly like anything that anyone writes and a lot of what I enjoy is widely considered to be trash. What do you read? PS: What do you write considering you have no ideas?
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May 25, 2013 13:00
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Murder mysteries and historical romances are what I most consistently enjoy (but not that consistently), though I read a lot of random stuff. I like stories that follow some sort of formula, because for some reason I'm not curious when I have no idea what to expect. I read fluff at times when other people seem to read serious literature. Serious literature has too many thoughts of its own and doesn't leave me room for mine. I came up with my current idea by making a giant list of "what do I want in a romance novel" and ending up with a sort of "plot" from my attempts to combine everything in a way that made sense. Everything on the list has been done before, just not all together. The main reason it hasn't been done together is because it is too stupid, but at least I like stupid. If I did manage to write a book I loved, everyone else would probably hate it.
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May 25, 2013 13:18
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The Duke of Avon posted:If I did manage to write a book I loved, everyone else would probably hate it. There's not really any shame in that. You can only write what interests you, dude. Besides trying to expand your reading I'm not sure what to suggest. If you do want to do that perhaps try branching out from what already interests you. Have you tried historical murder mysteries? What about hardboiled detective fiction (which could lead you to crime, maybe, and onward?). I like to think I could enjoy anything from any genre, as long as it's not boring.
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May 25, 2013 14:13
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The Duke of Avon posted:Am I completely hopeless if I write a lot but still wonder how writers come up with their ideas? I'm pretty new to writing, and my one trick so far has been to identify a feeling, think of a scenario or something which conveys that feeling and to then start writing. Now, having done that a number of times, it seems like my brain has become amenable to "spontaneous inspiration," which is just my brain doing what I was doing before but now automatically. quote:I have no idea how my writer friends can think up dozens of ideas in minutes when I ask for suggestions. I think a lot of this just comes down to systematization and automaticity. There's a certain music to good writing that doesn't really systematize, but much of the process totally does - at least for me. quote:I'm much better at editing. I need to find a way to edit stories into existence. Does anyone have any tips, for anything? I'm starting something new and right now I just feel demoralised. quote:If I did manage to write a book I loved, everyone else would probably hate it.
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May 25, 2013 14:47
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This may have been addressed before, but it's one of those debated topics with a wide array of opinions: What separates themes that can be presented in a YA series versus an adult series? For my understanding, it's not necessarily about the age of the main character(s). Also, judging from works like The Hunger Games series, death and war are acceptable topics. There's actually quite a bit of dystopian stuff out there these days that can be categorized under teen romance and whatnot. How dark can a writer reasonably go until it is inappropriate content for YA?
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May 25, 2013 15:39
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Panda So Panda posted:This may have been addressed before, but it's one of those debated topics with a wide array of opinions: What separates themes that can be presented in a YA series versus an adult series? I haven't read too much YA, even when I was a kid, so my opinion might be a little narrow, but I feel like really there are no 'themes' that are off limit to YA lit. At least, depending on how carefully you step. So maybe cross off stuff like deep explorations of sexual fantasy, the horrors of genocide, the intricacies of the legal profession etc. However, I do think at least all of these can be easily and acceptably inserted into any YA story provided they aren't the main 'point' of the story. - - OK I left my PC for like 2 hours and lost my train of thought a bit. What I was rambling towards was these two points: 1) There is no theme too 'dark' for YA, so long as the darkness is focused in the events and not so much in the overall tone/perspective. What ought to be be avoided are more introspective/intellectual themes that cannot really be appreciated by a young audience. A descent into alcoholism or the fall-out from divorce or whatever the hell - not really appropriate. Miserable wastelands and tortured souls are A-OK, so long it is framed within a less grim perspective a la adventure, revenge (maybe), save the world etc. 2) The key to defining YA, in my mind at least, is that difference in how close you are to the protagonist. A key feature of almost all adult fiction is a measure of distance between the reader and what the character thinks and does. It is more matter-of-fact, whereas YA tends to invite the reader to empathise and see through the protagonist's eyes very closely. You could say that it was written more to pander to an audience's tastes rather than being open to interpretation. I don't want to wax too theoretical, but adult fiction tends to write a story with characters in it while YA tends to write the stories of characters. Hope that helps maybe. People are welcome to throw tonnes of YA books which are exceptions to my general impression.
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May 25, 2013 17:29
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Accretionist posted:I have found that a facility for inspiration is absolutely A Thing you can refine. The problem with short stories is that I don't want to spend 3 months coming up with an idea and then only write a short story. I just don't really like them. I do think you can sort of practice getting inspiration, but it takes me forever. I've written pretty regularly ever since I was about 5, and it's only gotten worse since my standards for non-awful ideas just get higher and higher. This is okay if I have months to think up a plot, but not when I have seconds to find a decent simile (or a week to write a short story). I've thought of some things I might try, though. I feel better about my writing now, in any case. I made a rather stupid decision last night to ask strangers to send me their novels for beta-reading.
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May 26, 2013 05:47
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The Duke of Avon posted:I feel better about my writing now, in any case. I made a rather stupid decision last night to ask strangers to send me their novels for beta-reading. I have done this, and I still do this. At least it makes you feel better about your own writing.
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May 26, 2013 15:07
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The way I see it, you should take pride in being a natural editor. The world needs those just as much as it needs writers. Absolutely not saying you should give up on writing, by the way. Why not give Thunderdome a try? Like I told someone earlier, even if you don't join immediately you can read the entries and critiques and get a feel for it.
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May 26, 2013 18:06
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There's no way it should take you three months to come up with an idea. Put a deadline on yourself and force yourself to write something.
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May 27, 2013 19:49
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Writing out of what you think is your oeuvre is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself as a writer. What I'm saying is if you get a silly kernel of an idea in your head, write it. See where it goes. You may be surprised.
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May 27, 2013 19:55
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Sometimes writing without any ideas at all is useful as well. Start describing a character or a situation or an object, and let things happen, don't judge them as silly or stupid or unrealistic, just write a flowing narrative. Most of it will be poo poo but you might discover that there was something interesting you said that you'd like to expand on. Just because you write it does not mean you can't throw the majority of it to the cutting room floor and focus on the good thing you wrote accidentally. I do this sometimes when i have writers block. If you spend months trying to think of things to write may i ask why you even want to write? Most people i know who want to write is because they have things they want to say, and their struggle is with how to say it.
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May 27, 2013 20:38
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Jeza posted:1) There is no theme too 'dark' for YA, so long as the darkness is focused in the events and not so much in the overall tone/perspective. What ought to be be avoided are more introspective/intellectual themes that cannot really be appreciated by a young audience. A descent into alcoholism or the fall-out from divorce or whatever the hell - not really appropriate. Miserable wastelands and tortured souls are A-OK, so long it is framed within a less grim perspective a la adventure, revenge (maybe), save the world etc. Thanks for responding! That did help put things into perspective. I did wonder about the "descent into alcoholism or the fall-out from divorce" part, though. Aren't such topics (i.e. dealing with burgeoning sexuality, the struggle against drug use, etc.) frequent features in the Bildungsroman? Or would you say those are coming-of-age stories featuring young protagonists but overall meant for an adult readership? I definitely agree with your second point. I think that must be why a lot of those teen bestseller series feature first-person narrators.
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May 27, 2013 20:58
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Panda So Panda posted:Thanks for responding! That did help put things into perspective. I did wonder about the "descent into alcoholism or the fall-out from divorce" part, though. Aren't such topics (i.e. dealing with burgeoning sexuality, the struggle against drug use, etc.) frequent features in the Bildungsroman? Or would you say those are coming-of-age stories featuring young protagonists but overall meant for an adult readership? Sexuality, drug use and the like aren't exclusive to adults by any means. To the contrary, they often very really teenage topics. Divorce and alcoholism on the other hand aren't. You can't empathise with that which you cannot understand and most teenagers have no experience of either. I'd say coming of age stories can be appreciated by both teenagers and adults, but they are appreciated in very different ways. "I know exactly what he means!" "Man I was just like that when I was young *reminisce*"
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May 28, 2013 00:54
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Thoren posted:If you want to actually make money and have people read your work, Medieval Fantasy isn't the best place to start. Well if you want to make money then creative writing altogether isn't the best place to start.
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May 28, 2013 02:11
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systran posted:There's no way it should take you three months to come up with an idea. Put a deadline on yourself and force yourself to write something. I'm like this with all other types of ideas too. I might just be incredibly stupid or something. It's not really 3 months to get an idea though - more like 3 months to get the idea, turn it into a coherent novel plot and do whatever research needs doing beforehand (most of what I write seems to require a lot of research). The big problem for short stories is that I don't usually want to read them, so this ruins my main method of coming up with ideas, which is thinking about what I want to read. I can't get into stories or characters in the space of a few thousand words, and all the symbolism and lyricism in the world won't make up for it. I don't know how to fix that. crabrock posted:If you spend months trying to think of things to write may i ask why you even want to write? Most people i know who want to write is because they have things they want to say, and their struggle is with how to say it.
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May 28, 2013 02:44
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