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Aug 22, 2014 06:08
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| # ? May 15, 2024 22:33 |
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Happy now, Crabrock?
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Aug 22, 2014 15:12
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lol i was being facetious but :strokesego:
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Aug 22, 2014 16:20
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blue squares posted:I'm completely stuck on my novel after about 120 pages, so I'm going back and making an outline about everything leading up to this point to hopefully get a better handle on the story and what should happen next. Previously I've been just winging it, but I think it's time to bring some structure into the mix. Have my default "structure" sheet. I've been using it on a few projects (and found my speed at writing drafts has greatly improved) and it's crazy helpful towards keeping structure going. I mostly wanted a sheet where I can plan out what's gunna happen in each chapter, to make sure I don't really have any "dead" space, as well as keeping everything going towards novel-length wordcounts. It auto-propagates estimated wordcounts and stuff; if you're averaging about ten pages per chapter, you wanna fill this out with roughly 40 chapters. I got a rejection from them today too 
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Aug 23, 2014 00:06
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I was so bad they didn't even send me a form rejection. 
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Aug 23, 2014 01:59
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Echo Cian posted:I was so bad they didn't even send me a form rejection. Send me the story and I'll write up a rejection letter for you.
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Aug 23, 2014 02:33
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You could also use The Random Rejection Letter Generator.
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Aug 23, 2014 03:57
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Echo Cian posted:I was so bad they didn't even send me a form rejection. Thank you for submitting your story to us. Unfortunately we hate it. We wish you good luck in writing something that doesn't suck as much.
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Aug 23, 2014 12:27
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ravenkult posted:Thank you for submitting your story to us. Unfortunately we hate it. "Thunderdome: The Journal"
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Aug 23, 2014 22:25
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Dear Writer, We know the news that we would rather drink antifreeze than publish this story may be a trifle disappointing. But the most useful way to receive a rejection is not to wallow in disappointment, but to see it as a guidepost toward how you can do better, how you can reach new heights. In other words, look up. Sadly, having read an example of your writing, we fear you’ll see the ceiling of your own limited talent hovering crushingly near. Really, we have no expectation you will ever produce writing that’s more pleasing than the feeling of insects crawling over one’s skin. Best Regards, The Editors
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Aug 24, 2014 01:19
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Dear writer: I didn't read much of your story, but I don't like you name, so gently caress you. Signed, Editor
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Aug 24, 2014 07:18
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Dear author hahahaha slush pile yours sincerely, Ed.
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Aug 24, 2014 08:39
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Dear Author, We really enjoyed your story and would like to become your publisher. Enclosed is our publishing contract. If you will review it, sign it and then pay our upfront publishing fees of $1200 or $1400 dollars depending which whether or not you want 4 copies of your book, or 6. Thanks again, and welcome to Random-Penguin House.
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Aug 25, 2014 03:39
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Dear Author, Yours, Editor
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Aug 25, 2014 03:41
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Dear author, Please find enclosed a print-out of hello.jpeg. Sincerely, Never submit to us again.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:04
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Dear Author, We greatly enjoyed reading your submitted MS, entitled "gently caress This Gay Earth". Unfortunately we believe the market saturation for 'Gay Earth' type novels to be currently beyond our target goals for this fiscal year. Would you be willing to work with one of our editor-interns and resubmit this as a "Darn this dumb earth" young adult 3-book dystopian series? We believe this could be a great fit. Sincerely, all the dicks, a million dicks per second, The Editors of All Things Published.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:06
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butt, faart. fart fart fart fart. fart noise. bigger fart noise sincerely, a butt, also fart
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Aug 25, 2014 05:04
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Dear Fiction Advice, sincerely, muffin
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Aug 25, 2014 05:14
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dear person who gets this fax: pen is stuck please help
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Aug 25, 2014 06:05
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Are there any advice for doing readings of stories? I have a thing I need to do next month for 15 minutes and I'm not entirely sure of the wordcount even (2000-2500?). I'm assuming it's advisable to do the voices of the characters' dialogue, since I'm listening to The Disaster Artist right now and holy poo poo you guys you need to listen to Greg Sestero doing his Tommy Wiseau impressions.
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Aug 25, 2014 09:08
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Dear Rhino, We're sorry to say that we will be unable to accept your question in this issue of the Fiction Advice thread. While we enjoyed it, it just wasn't the right fit for this publication. We wish you the best of luck in your future question-posting! -The FA thread
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Aug 25, 2014 09:16
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Are there any advice for doing readings of stories? I have a thing I need to do next month for 15 minutes and I'm not entirely sure of the wordcount even (2000-2500?). I'm assuming it's advisable to do the voices of the characters' dialogue, since I'm listening to The Disaster Artist right now and holy poo poo you guys you need to listen to Greg Sestero doing his Tommy Wiseau impressions. Roughly 100 words a minute, so shoot for 1.5k, then record it and see how long it takes. Don't overdo the voices; a touch of flavour is probably all you need if you're not gonna go full method. Flick me a link once you've done it if you want some specific comments.
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Aug 25, 2014 10:08
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Are there any advice for doing readings of stories? I have a thing I need to do next month for 15 minutes and I'm not entirely sure of the wordcount even (2000-2500?). I'm assuming it's advisable to do the voices of the characters' dialogue, since I'm listening to The Disaster Artist right now and holy poo poo you guys you need to listen to Greg Sestero doing his Tommy Wiseau impressions. I would personally recommend keeping the individual voices in dialogue to a minimum, unless you have some acting training. The best thing to do, definitely, is practice. Doing a dozen or so practice runs, experimenting with your choices along the way, is the best way to make it flow well.
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Aug 25, 2014 10:21
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I have two questions: 1. How does one write convincingly about music? As prose is not an aural medium, words about music are nowhere near as good as actual music in conveying what it is. Many books include song lyrics in the text, but since I don't know how they're intended to be sung, they just come off as poetry. I'm trying to write something that's going to deal with music a whole lot (protagonist is a pop star), and I need help on this. 2. Chemistry is something that comes up often in reviews and critiques. We have an intuitive grasp of it, i.e. we can tell if the two main leads have chemistry or not just from a gut feeling. How can I write with this in mind, striving for "good chemistry" instead of "bad chemistry"? Are there more concrete guidelines for this?
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Aug 25, 2014 12:56
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Schneider Heim posted:I have two questions: 1. I'm not sure exactly but I can say that a lot of music reviews usually talk by comparing the music to other music ("some kicking Led Zeppelin guitar melodies, with drummer George Tick all going full Ringo in places"), and also describing some specifics of the performance. Additionally read American Psycho for how to overdo it, and I think the character Hannibal says some classical specific things which makes him seem knowledgeable on the subject. Look up music terminology and buzz words maybe. Read up on some basic music theory.
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Aug 25, 2014 13:10
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Music can be tough. My advice is to keep in mind what you're trying to convey about the music, whether you're trying to get across snippets of the lyrics or the style of the song or the emotional feeling of the song. When I was trying to describe a certain sort of music, I had the kind of music I was thinking of queued up in my music player and listened to it every so often while I was writing. It helped keep the way the music sounded fresh in my head. If you're going for a comparison between styles, you could even just describe the difference in the performers--a trio with a banjo, cello and fiddle brings to mind different music than a skinny guy with a scruffy beard and an acoustic guitar
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Aug 25, 2014 16:15
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I've got a science fiction story I'm working on, where the main character is transformed by technology into a different person. I'm trying to come up with a background/motivation for the character, and I keep on getting stuck in a "oh, that's too cliché, it's already been done before" rut. How do I get out of this, or should I just move past it? The ideas I keep coming to are: - He's a researcher whose research is too experimental to get funding, so he chooses himself as a subject (which inherently doesn't work anyway since this involves technology in the brain), and this idea has been done before. - He's a prisoner who is chosen for an experimental secret study as an agreement to commute his sentence. This has also been done before, and it would fundamentally change the character into a person who would have done something so bad that they were sent to prison.
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Aug 25, 2014 22:08
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just skip that and write your story and let the backstory come out when it needs to. Work on characterization and then at some point you'll get to a part where he needs to reveal something about his past, and it'll seem super natural. I do more discovery writing than planning though.
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Aug 25, 2014 22:12
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Here is what I hate about my novel. It's a sort of Victoriana alternate history (like steampunky) detective novel. I kind of hate that it is steampunky and alternate history, but too many of my plot points seem to rely on it to change it, and I am a little bit into it at this point (about 50 manuscript pages). I could maybe rewrite it so it's just in the past but the weird elements are stuff that people in the present wouldn't know about because it would all be secretive and etc. But do I worry about that now or do I crank out this alternate history thing and see how that goes for a first draft? I feel for the first time in a long while that my confidence in a project is waning, but it's the furthest through a novel project I've ever been. Is this just normal?
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Aug 25, 2014 22:27
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crabrock posted:just skip that and write your story and let the backstory come out when it needs to. Work on characterization and then at some point you'll get to a part where he needs to reveal something about his past, and it'll seem super natural. I do more discovery writing than planning though.
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Aug 25, 2014 22:30
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PoshAlligator posted:I feel for the first time in a long while that my confidence in a project is waning, but it's the furthest through a novel project I've ever been. Is this just normal? It's absolutely normal. At this stage it can be very difficult to maintain the right balance of perspective and reality, but you have to believe in what you're doing and continue on. Novel-length projects are rough on self-esteem and confidence; there's no way around that. Once you're finished with the first draft, you can better evaluate where you're at and decide whether or not this is something you want to refine and push forward with. Hang in there--and for what it's worth... quote:It's a sort of Victoriana alternate history (like steampunky) detective novel. ...I'd read that.
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Aug 26, 2014 05:25
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PoshAlligator posted:Here is what I hate about my novel. I can't find the quote now (I may have seen it in this thread; who knows), but I remember recently reading a writing anecdote by Neil Gaiman. Basically he was bitching to his editor about how his current novel's a mess, and the characters suck, and the story's dumb, and everything is terrible, and he should probably just abandon the project and write something else. And his editor says, "Oh, you're at that stage in the novel, eh? You know you've gone through this same exact thing for, like, every novel you've ever written?" And Neil says, "Really...? Well, yeah, I guess you're right." Resolve bolstered by this fresh/forgotten perspective, he hung up and got his rear end back to writing. Trustworthy fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Aug 27, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 14:32
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My art teacher once said the trick is not knowing how to start, but knowing when to stop. If you keep picking at a story trying to make it perfect you'll drive yourself insane. The more you look at it, the more the good bits will seem less inventive and shocking revelations become boring, because they're not new and exciting to you any more. But they will be to your readers. Trust your instincts when you wrote it, then trust your proof readers. Make sure it makes logical sense, make sure it's gramatically correct, then move on. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 14:47
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Thanks for the advice! I'll definitely keep at it. It's easy to get in a funk with this sort of thing. Speaking of Neil Gaiman, he's quite certainly one of my favourite writers who writes a lot about "on writing". I also recently finished Chuck Wendig's first "Confessions of a Freelance Pen Monkey".
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Aug 26, 2014 18:29
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PoshAlligator posted:I also recently finished Chuck Wendig's first "Confessions of a Freelance Pen Monkey". Ugh. Man I hate that guy's lovely writing advice almost as much as his wacky writing style.
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Aug 26, 2014 19:31
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I'm definitely in one of those funks. However, being my second novel, I'm not despairing like I was before. My progress is a little slow and I have my doubts, but I know that all I have to do is keep writing as much as I can every day and eventually I'll get to the end. Nothing terrible is going to happen except time keeps passing. I also still haven't dedicated much time to an outline, but I really should just do that. It's hard to, though, after getting so far. It feels like starting over/procrastinating.
blue squares fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 19:37
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ravenkult posted:Ugh. Man I hate that guy's lovely writing advice almost as much as his wacky writing style. I'll admit it can grate, but I thought he raised some interesting thought points whenever I'd pick it up to read a chapter or two on the bus or on the loo or whatever. Not a deep book or a page turner by any accounts, but I found the nuggets presentable and useful. With that said I have essentially zero experience with him outside of that one book.
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Aug 26, 2014 20:54
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I went to a hospital and quit my job, maybe now I am prepared to write another book 
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Aug 26, 2014 22:48
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General Battuta posted:I went to a hospital and quit my job, maybe now I am prepared to write another book Hang in there geezer come into irc if you feel like venting, synirc & #kyrena
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Aug 26, 2014 22:57
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| # ? May 15, 2024 22:33 |
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General Battuta posted:I went to a hospital and quit my job, maybe now I am prepared to write another book Hope this isn't too forward but if you ever want to talk writing (or whatever) over beers, CC regulars myself, Sitting Here, and Nethilia are all in your area & not axe murderers
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Aug 26, 2014 23:39
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