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I think portal fantasy's not really suited for adult audiences unless you're subverting the trope in a really tongue in cheek jokey fashion, like, telling a story from the point of view of a team of D&D adventurers who suddenly appeared in Times Square. It's just a really juvenile way of infodumping all the ways your fantasy world is SO DIFFERENT from the modern world. It works for childrens fiction because they're not as familiar with the trope or need their hands held a little bit more to come to terms with poo poo being different but for adult audiences, eugh. We've all read it. If you think you can write something that fits with one of those exceptions then sure, knock yourself out. Write whatever you want. It's going to be one hell of a hard sell if you don't already have a name like Neil Gaiman, and you need to remember that Guy Gavriel Kay published that poo poo like thirty years ago in a dramatically different publishing ecosystem, but write whatever you want.
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May 27, 2014 16:07
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I think too many people read Narnia and thought, "Man, this sounds awesome." Which, at the time, it did. However, a lot of portal fantasy books just go too far out of their way to try and make Mary Sues experience a world outside their own. Like Whalley said, they go from telling an interesting story to just being info dumps about the author's "awesome world." There's nothing wrong with mixing fantasy and modern worlds. poo poo, my novel's doing just that, and novels have been doing that for ages (just look at Alice In Wonderland). The thing is, though, that if you're going to do something like that, it has to be grounded. You can't just take a bunch of MIT dudes and set them among a land of dragons and fairies. It just gets too outrageous. The reason Neil Gaiman is so brilliant at what he does is that it's not really "portal" fantasy. All of his locations and settings are very much modern pieces that people recognize and can relate to. Neverwhere is just the London Underground. Good Omens is all kinds of great around the UK. Hell, I grew up right across the river from Cairo, IL, which he spent some time talking about it American Gods. It's not a fantasy world at all. It's our modern world with a slight twist, something hidden right under the surface. That is significantly more interesting, at least in my opinion, than taking real world characters and placing them in a completely fictional setting. It also makes the story more relatable to adult audiences since, when written right, it allows the book to play just a little bit off the reader's imagination or desire for the unreal without stretching their suspension of disbelief too far. As much as I loved fantasy books as a kid, I'm learning as I grow that if it involves dragons at any point, it's probably too "high fantasy" for me. I can't imagine a lot of other adults being too far off that mindset, so you really have to make sure you're covering that thin middle ground really well if it's going to work. Axel Serenity fucked around with this message at 20:34 on May 27, 2014 |
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May 27, 2014 20:30
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Are there any resources that are not SWFA that list the cliched stories and aspects of SF/F. I'm in the early stages of making a story and I fear that I'll be hitting every cliche in the book. Is this something to be worried about?
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May 27, 2014 23:03
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Maybe? The best resource is reading a lot of books and talking to people who read a lot of books.
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May 27, 2014 23:14
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General Battuta posted:Maybe? The best resource is reading a lot of books and talking to people who read a lot of books. Pretty much. I mean, I was just reading over this list, which is pretty good, but it's really whatever bugs you, as a reader, the most. Otherwise, just Google "Fantasy cliches" and you'll hit up a ton of listings. Keep in mind the other side of it, too: cliches are there for a reason: they used to work, for a very long time in some cases. With so many stories out there, you're bound to run into a trope at some point. The thing that will separate the good authors from the generic, though, are the ones that take those cliches and own them. Make them yours. Understand it's a cliche and try to tell it in a fresh, new way that will turn your readers on their heads just when they thought they were getting something they'd already read before. Remember the great advice echoed over and over: if you're starting to get bored of something you're writing, give the plot a massive shift. You won't necessarily have to keep it in your revisions, but it can help you get out of those ruts where you run into cliche after cliche.
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May 27, 2014 23:21
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I had this idea for a sort of sci-fi story, but didn't know if it'd been done before. It's like, this artificial being, made out of...metal... or something, but like, he has feelings and stuff kind of like a person, but people know he's not a person so he doesn't get any respect. At the end of the story he cries from sadness. What do you think?
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May 27, 2014 23:46
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Hugo winner, right there, man.
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May 27, 2014 23:55
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I know it's the same questions over and over for you long-timers, and I can only imagine you'd get tired of answering the same way every time, but try to remember when you just started out and didn't know poo poo.
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May 27, 2014 23:57
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magnificent7 posted:I know it's the same questions over and over for you long-timers, and I can only imagine you'd get tired of answering the same way every time, but try to remember when you just started out and didn't know poo poo. this doesn't apply to me because i've literally never answered a question
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May 28, 2014 00:09
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Thanks a lot guys for helping me out,especially Axel Serenity who mentioned that I can use cliches if I make them my own. I don't hear that very often. Usually its either make an totally original story or don't bother.
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May 28, 2014 00:32
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Steal everything.
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May 28, 2014 00:34
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Tyrannosaurus posted:Steal everything. Well, yes. Or sue with a claim that you had the idea first. Then, you can get a settlement without even having to write!
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May 28, 2014 00:38
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Cacotopic Stain posted:Usually its either make an totally original story or don't bother. Let's all pack it up and go home right now, then. Writing is over. This is an old and interesting read for writing fantasy (and stuff in general). There's a lot there and I still haven't gotten through it all, but she points out a lot of things to consider. e: Looking at Axel's link (which is great), she covers a lot of similar things, but more in-depth. Good combination. Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 01:24 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 01:18
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Axel Serenity posted:Well, yes. Or sue with a claim that you had the idea first. Then, you can get a settlement without even having to write! Buy the rights from an obscure dead author's estate then go around and sue every other author out there for big bucks. If it works in tech fields, why not art? Making things is clearly for suckers, groundless lawsuits are where its at.
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May 28, 2014 03:49
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magnificent7 posted:I know it's the same questions over and over for you long-timers, and I can only imagine you'd get tired of answering the same way every time, but try to remember when you just started out and didn't know poo poo. If more people read a) this very thread, and b) books, they wouldn't all ask the same questions over and over again. And if you have to pick just one, pick books.
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May 28, 2014 04:40
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re: cliches I always found this "Stories we've seen too often" list from Strange Horizons to be amusing.
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May 28, 2014 05:32
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Schneider Heim posted:re: cliches Find a cliche you like then twiddle the knobs until its not a cliche any more. All art is variations on a theme. Edit yes read that list sebmojo fucked around with this message at 06:22 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 06:18
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That Strange Horizons List posted:Terrorists (especially Osama bin Laden) discover that horrible things happen to them in the afterlife (or otherwise get their comeuppance). It blows my mind that this is something they have received enough copies of to be on "stories we see too much." Sometimes I wouldn't mind going back to reading slush.
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May 28, 2014 06:37
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Schneider Heim posted:I always found this "Stories we've seen too often" list from Strange Horizons to be amusing. Just wanted to say thanks for this list- now I know what to watch out for, or at least pay extra attention to. Anything else like it? Anomalous Blowout posted:It blows my mind that this is something they have received enough copies of to be on "stories we see too much." Mine too- does anyone know of any story like this?
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May 28, 2014 08:48
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Setting aside my intense curiosity for Osama justice porn slush pile fever dreams, I was wondering if anyone would be up for a critique exchange? It has been a long rear end time since I posted a story for review here and I'd love to get some feedback on a piece I'm trying to polish. But rather than just posting a thread and seeing who bites, I figured I'd see if anyone was interested in swapping critiques? I love to edit arguably more than I love to write, so if anyone's got a piece in the 3-5000 word range they'd like to swap on, let me know! Then we can post threads and circle jerk. It'll be fun.
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May 28, 2014 08:53
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Whalley posted:I think portal fantasy's not really suited for adult audiences unless you're subverting the trope in a really tongue in cheek jokey fashion, like, telling a story from the point of view of a team of D&D adventurers who suddenly appeared in Times Square. It's just a really juvenile way of infodumping all the ways your fantasy world is SO DIFFERENT from the modern world. It works for childrens fiction because they're not as familiar with the trope or need their hands held a little bit more to come to terms with poo poo being different but for adult audiences, eugh. We've all read it. I've recently come up with a concept - just a sketch at this stage, nothing more - a detective story set in a world where magic exists, and the police have a Magical Crimes division. The problem was that everyone from that world who was qualified to work in the MCD - even police academy students - would already know most of this stuff. I wasn't sure how to explain the setting and rules without a "cabbagehead". To try and solve that, I had the idea that someone from that world was somehow abducting people from our world. On our world, the protagonist would be a detective investigating the disappearances, and gets sucked to the other world. But if that's really considered to be a clunky and poor way of telling exposition, I guess I'll have to think of a different way. Probably for the better too, since even I wasn't all THAT keen on the "sucked to another world" idea.
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May 28, 2014 13:43
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I've recently come up with a concept - just a sketch at this stage, nothing more - a detective story set in a world where magic exists, and the police have a Magical Crimes division. The problem was that everyone from that world who was qualified to work in the MCD - even police academy students - would already know most of this stuff. I wasn't sure how to explain the setting and rules without a "cabbagehead". The idea I had is somewhat similar, a man who finds out the software conglomerate (think Apple) he works for is actually quite evil and in the process of robbing other dimensions of their natural energy sources. The "portal" is discovered by accident in an out-of-limits research room and the MC enters, falling into a scientifically advanced world which is under the totalitarian thumb of the company he works for on Earth (corporatocracy/dictatorship). The implication is then that the corporation will one day do this to Earth, or is in the process of doing it already. Obviously, it wouldn't be some grim dark serious story with big serious messages. It'd just be a fun cyberpunk/fantasy romp because the subject is quite ridiculous. I guess maybe I'll have to do my best to disguise the portal fantasy elements in a potential query? Or is this not portal fantasy, because there is already something fictional (advanced interdimensional-type technology/ super advanced corporation) in the "real world"? Captain Mog fucked around with this message at 16:02 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 15:45
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Just because people know things doesn't mean they're good at them. Or, just because something is commonplace doesn't mean people don't want to tinker with it. Maybe the detective loves making ships in bottles, but as he's levitating toothpicks into a thick wine bottle, someone comes into the work lunchroom and the toothpick vibrates and explodes the whole bottle. Later, he sees the police captain's HMS Pinafore made of sawdust inside a miniature cocktail bottle and feels embarrassed, only to have the captain look and laugh and go "hey man you busted a fuckin' thick-rear end wine bottle up with a toothpick, that's a different kind of power, but you should maybe consider practicing your aim a little better" culminating in a scene where the detective is handcuffed to a wall and has to use his levitating poo poo to pick his cuffs without exploding his wrists in half. Or maybe the detective knows all about following genetic clues through the aether, but there's some kind of weird spiritual block and he has to find a departmental head who can pop that poo poo open, but refuses thanks to some kind of paperwork deal. Magic detective is forced to find someone from regular police who can teach him a thing or two about "regular" detectivery, showing the audience how things are different that way. Or gently caress, maybe the main character isn't qualified to work for the MCD but nepotism and lies got him the job, now he has to fake using magic using our real-world poo poo so his damily isn't discredited. He can troll teenage messageboards for kids who want to fake having powers to be more popular to get tips, and winds up not only in over his head but accidentally using way too much teenage slang and becoming an embarrassment that way. I just really don't like portal fantasy any more. It's awkward, clunky, and just seems like a tool for people who don't have faith in their audience. There's other, cooler ways to do infodumps - see Sanderson talking about infodumps here - and other, cooler ways to deal with alternate worlds with different rules - see the show Fringe.
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May 28, 2014 15:52
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Anomalous Blowout posted:I love to edit arguably more than I love to write, so if anyone's got a piece in the 3-5000 word range they'd like to swap on, let me know! Then we can post threads and circle jerk. It'll be fun. I'd love to do this- just need to get something down first. Speaking of which, I've got this paragraph that I'm kinda iffy on: quote:Miranda looked around frantically for her daughter in the scrum that consumed the school. She barely even heard the siren as equally terrified parents screamed as hard for their own children as she did, thanks to the flashing red lights disrupting their vision. It doesn't sound quite right to me (basically there's a red alert going on at a space station), but right now nothing better comes to mind.
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May 29, 2014 09:31
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Anomalous Blowout posted:Setting aside my intense curiosity for Osama justice porn slush pile fever dreams, I was wondering if anyone would be up for a critique exchange? I have something that's 3,500 that I think I like. Post away, and I'll follow up after work.
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May 29, 2014 10:16
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Feel free to disregard my suggestions about what specifically to replace here, since I am not an expert in your particular writing voice and without greater context I can't say what tone you are trying to set. That said, here is my breakdown: quote:Miranda looked around frantically for her daughter in the scrum that consumed the school. She barely even heard the siren as equally terrified parents screamed as hard for their own children as she did, thanks to the flashing red lights disrupting their vision. A few things leap out at me on first reading of this: you're trying to do way too much in two sentences here. You cram so much into those two sentences that the importance of the scene (given the subject matter I assume this scene is important to the story) can be kind of glossed over. The second sentence is also quite long, which detracts from the urgency of the moment. Also, the verbs you choose to describe such a frantic scene are somewhat weak, which is why you shore them up with adverbs. Lastly, the order in which things are presented seems weird to me, too. This is going to be a ridiculous amount of suggestions for a two-sentence snippet, but what the heck, it's been a while since I got my critique dick wet. Let's do this step by step. Step 1: Let's break down what happens into parts. That will help you see some aspects of why it "doesn't work," I think. quote:Miranda looked around frantically for her daughter. A scrum consumed the school. She barely even heard the siren. Equally terrified parents screamed as hard for their own children as she did. Flashing red lights disrupted their vision. The verbs here are very passive and ho-hum for a scene that is supposed to be so dramatic. What if we made the verbs more active and ditched some adverbs? quote:Miranda Now that we've fixed some language, let's mould those sentences back together... quote:Miranda searched for her daughter through the scrum that consumed the school. She barely even noticed the siren over the sound of other parents who screamed just as hard for their own children We already know she's screaming from 'just as hard', so we cut 'as she did' to tighten things further. See why things like 'looked around' aren't quite a good fit for a scene like this? I still think for two sentences, this is trying to convey too much about a complex situation, to the point of where it threatens to gloss over the drama of the scene. If I were to completely rewrite it, I'd add more details: where is she looking specifically? Where is the school in relation to the space station, other than obviously inside it in some way? This deserves to be a paragraph. For the sake of showing you how to fix small details in the sentences you've already written, though, I'll try to keep the length similar. Some wording here is just not great: "consumed the school" is melodramatic and the flashing red lights mention is a pretty big cliche in emergency scenes. Perhaps it's because I come from a rugby playing country but "scrum" is just a weird choice of words to me! I'll keep it, though. quote:Miranda stumbled through the crowd, searching for her daughter. The scrum that had overtaken the school was disorienting. She could barely even hear the siren over the sound of other parents, who screamed just as hard for their own children. I tried to keep as much of your original wording here as possible, so it isn't just "well here rear end in a top hat let me completely rewrite this to show you why you're wrong." I put more emphasis on Miranda's actions because Miranda is the POV character. What is she doing? She's searching for her daughter. She's stumbling because she's disoriented due to the yelling and crowd and lights, and by using words like "stumbled" we are conveying this through her actions rather than explicitly narrating it to the audience. After trying a couple rewrites that kept it in, I'm convinced the flashing red lights bit should just go. Aside from it being a cliche, consider this: if a scrum has 'consumed' the school, then isn't it equally disrupting to the vision of the parents searching for their kids? Why is it the lights that are preventing them from seeing and causing them to yell? The idea that they are yelling because they are caught in a panicked, surging crowd is just as believable without falling back on the cliche. In fact, the flashing red lights are such a cliche that if you mention there are emergency service vehicles there or alarms on the wall or space forklifts or whatever, chances are people will already imagine them. I just wrote like a few hundred words about your two sentences, but I hope this helps and explains a bit about my thought processes.  Original: quote:Miranda looked around frantically for her daughter in the scrum that consumed the school. She barely even heard the siren as equally terrified parents screamed as hard for their own children as she did, thanks to the flashing red lights disrupting their vision. Mine: quote:Miranda stumbled through the crowd, searching for her daughter. The scrum that had overtaken the school was disorienting. She could barely even hear the siren over the sound of other parents, who screamed just as hard for their own children. Anomalous Blowout fucked around with this message at 10:31 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 10:29
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Come on over to Thunderdome if you like, crits are always welcome and we have like 25,000 words of terrible goonprose every week to lay into.
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May 29, 2014 10:54
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sebmojo posted:Come on over to Thunderdome if you like, crits are always welcome and we have like 25,000 words of terrible goonprose every week to lay into. Holy poo poo Thunderdome done got different there's a website and stuff and  . Sadly the link to requesting an account on the Thunderdome site seems to be a 404? I'd totally be up for some crit but I would like to participate for a couple weeks first to get back in the groove. (I think I did Thunderdome in the first iteration of the thread eons ago, back in the simpler days of the CC Monthly Contest.) Symptomless Coma posted:I have something that's 3,500 that I think I like. Post away, and I'll follow up after work. Awesome! I just came up with a scene I want to add to my piece and I'll try to chuck it in and get it finished soon. If you'd rather post yours now, I'll leap on that poo poo like an irrelevant simile.
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May 29, 2014 11:15
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Anomalous Blowout posted:Holy poo poo Thunderdome done got different there's a website and stuff and That's just the archives. You don't need an account for that. Just sign up in thread, post in the thread, die in the thread, etc.
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May 29, 2014 12:45
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Tyrannosaurus posted:That's just the archives. You don't need an account for that. Just sign up in thread, post in the thread, die in the thread, etc. The archives username/password is posted two posts below the latest challenge. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3598931&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=85#post430172444 == Query Question specifically about my 1-page synopsis. Am I trying to rope them in? Or am I just showing that my story has a theme, a start, a middle, and an end, and characters with conflicts? Each time I start on this, I can't get it down to just 1 page; the POV changes between three main characters, there are actions that make no sense without telling WHY the person did something. Characters make bad choices, and without additional explanation, it reads like I don't understand how people think. To simplify, IF I READ my 1-page synopsis and nothing else about the story, I'd think my story was about stupid people doing stupid things. Once you add in the hearing voices, seeing dead people, paranoia and desperation, the actions make sense. But, that poo poo takes words. magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 29, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 17:24
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You need to be brutal and clear-headed. What's absolutely necessary in order to convey the thrust of your story? I used http://queryshark.blogspot.com/ as a model when writing my own query and my synopsis. Spend a while absorbing it - both the criticism she gives and the qualities of the queries she likes.
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May 29, 2014 17:50
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General Battuta posted:You need to be brutal and clear-headed. What's absolutely necessary in order to convey the thrust of your story?
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May 29, 2014 17:57
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All I can say is that the same lessons I took away from those query letters were useful in chopping my synopsis down and keeping it coherent.
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May 29, 2014 18:57
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I am now getting to the point where I can write 1000 words an hour. Which is great. Now if I write an hour per day my book will be ready in approximately 83 days  And then start editing and re-editing. Yaaay!
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May 29, 2014 21:19
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Whalley posted:A bunch of neat ideas Great ideas. That made me think of another. Maybe my main character was on the receiving end of "mind blast" and got all scrambled up, and part of his recovery treatment is being reminded of things to jog the memory circuits loose and remember them.
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May 29, 2014 22:33
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Great ideas. That made me think of another. Maybe my main character was on the receiving end of "mind blast" and got all scrambled up, and part of his recovery treatment is being reminded of things to jog the memory circuits loose and remember them. Zelazny started his Amber series that way, just to give you an example, but it was written in what, the 60s or 70s? There are ways to show an alien/fantasy world that don't require something so contrived as amnesia or a fish-out-of-water character though. You can have characters who know what they're doing and show them doing it for example. I encourage you to try that specifically for your magical detective idea rather than copping out with a cabbage-head character. A few weeks ago, I read through Can'tDecideonaName's magical detective story, and though it had a lot of problems, that wasn't one of them. She pretty much nailed how you drop a reader into the action with a detective doing some magicky thing to solve crime in the first chapter. You just go for it and trust the reader to follow along.
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May 29, 2014 23:04
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Stuporstar posted:Zelazny started his Amber series that way, just to give you an example, but it was written in what, the 60s or 70s? Fair enough, I'll try that method first. I've certainly read and watched enough stories which dump you right in without needing to explain everything, and I was able to get the gist well enough. systran posted:Sanderson has lectures on Youtube about balancing the "learning curve" of your world that you would likely find helpful Ah, these ones: Info Dumps & Learning Curves Blending the Familiar and the Strange Thanks for the suggestion. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 00:43 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 29, 2014 23:25
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Sanderson has lectures on Youtube about balancing the "learning curve" of your world that you would likely find helpful
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May 29, 2014 23:41
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systran's crit for my last TD piece Rebirth mentioned 'a few too many ESL errors'. If somebody could point out one or two of the most glaring mistakes I made, that would be much appreciated. Often times I'm uncertain about how to phrase something and go with my gut, and even in hindsight it's not easy for me to spot where I went wrong.
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May 30, 2014 09:56
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Entenzahn posted:systran's crit for my last TD piece Rebirth mentioned 'a few too many ESL errors'. If somebody could point out one or two of the most glaring mistakes I made, that would be much appreciated. Often times I'm uncertain about how to phrase something and go with my gut, and even in hindsight it's not easy for me to spot where I went wrong. Here you go.
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May 30, 2014 11:28
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