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Thanks for the feedback. I posted a thread for the story below. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3688748
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Dec 18, 2014 06:27
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| # ? May 11, 2024 23:50 |
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I wanted come by and thank everyone here for encouraging me to post my stuff, and I think when I've gained a little more confidence in my writing ability I may even enter the THUNDERDOME -- if only for the novel thrill of being disemboweled by giants with pens mightier than swords.  Crass Casualty, I think your story is great, though I agree with what's been said about it thus far. I can also safely say the group with whom you shared your story was full of crap, especially with what little "advice" they gave you. Keep up the good work, and don't ever stop trying to improve!
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Dec 19, 2014 02:20
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Don't be a bitch.
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Dec 19, 2014 02:28
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Tyrannosaurus posted:Don't be a bitch. Seriously. Horribly offensive gendered insult aside (kidding) quit whining and just enter the TD. What is the absolute worst that will happen? Someone doesn't like your story. OH NO THE WORLD IS OVER. It's not a big deal. You've written way too many posts about how terrified you are of getting feedback. It's ridiculous.
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Dec 19, 2014 04:19
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Oh, I'm not afraid of feedback -- any criticism is good, as long as it's not just a string of white noise insults (which I've yet to see around here) -- it's the fact that if I'm going to write something, I want it to be worth your time. I'll get my rear end handed to me, but I want my effort to show, I want people to see that I wrote something I care about, I want to show that I tried to put at least as much effort into the piece as it took to read. I may be a bitch, goddammit, but I'm a bitch who cares.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:49
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Screaming Idiot posted:Oh, I'm not afraid of feedback -- any criticism is good, as long as it's not just a string of white noise insults (which I've yet to see around here) -- it's the fact that if I'm going to write something, I want it to be worth your time. I'll get my rear end handed to me, but I want my effort to show, I want people to see that I wrote something I care about, I want to show that I tried to put at least as much effort into the piece as it took to read. well quit talking about it and do it.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:55
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Done. Entered Thunderdome. TIME TO DEHUMANIZE MYSELF AND FACE TO BLOODSHED. 
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Dec 19, 2014 06:09
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Screaming Idiot posted:Done. Entered Thunderdome. TIME TO DEHUMANIZE MYSELF AND FACE TO BLOODSHED. 
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Dec 19, 2014 09:28
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Jesus Christ, did Gabe have a stroke and lose the use of his drawing hand or what.
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Dec 19, 2014 09:31
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From what I've seen it's more of a terminal case of "stopped giving a gently caress".
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Dec 19, 2014 10:14
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Moddington posted:From what I've seen it's more of a terminal case of "stopped giving a gently caress". Yeah. I think he plays games to see how deformed he can make them.
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Dec 19, 2014 10:30
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Gabe operates inside a vicious hugbox. Imagine how lovely your writing would be if, no matter what you wrote, everyone praised you with all praise and viciously defended your lovely work even when it's objectively ugly and gross.
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Dec 19, 2014 19:18
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It would almost be worth it if I was as obscenely, shamefully wealthy as Gabe, though. Almost.
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Dec 20, 2014 00:17
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A propos nothing, here's a quote from M John Harrison you should take the time to tattoo on your eyelids.quote:Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.
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Dec 22, 2014 00:33
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*unless you are Jorge Luis Borges
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Dec 22, 2014 00:52
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tbf if you are Jorge Luis Borges I think you've earned the right to just take a giant dump on any bit of advice anyone gives.
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Dec 22, 2014 01:09
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sebmojo posted:A propos nothing, here's a quote from M John Harrison you should take the time to tattoo on your eyelids. I need to write this on a brick and pay a homeless man to beat me with it. This is fantastic advice and I need to take it to heart.
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Dec 22, 2014 01:22
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I've accepted worldbuilding as a necessary evil in the writing process, even a really valuable one, but I don't let it get into the work unless it's carrying weight on some other level too.
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Dec 22, 2014 02:30
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I've got reams of material about the stories I write that I doubt I'll ever actually get to use, and it hurts because I feel like I have some really neat concepts -- energy as currency (with bills or cards being thin, flexible batteries), cybernetic plants that collect solar power (POWER PLANTS! ) as well as harvest trace minerals to be refined into useful materials, etc. Anybody can come up with "interesting" details, I think. But it takes a good writer to make those details work, and I don't think I'm anywhere near. Screaming Idiot fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Dec 23, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 02:56
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Its a lot of effort and energy that I, personally, don't have much interest sparing. Worldbuilding, I've found, often comes at the cost of theme, plot, and characterization. Except if you're good. Then gently caress everything.
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Dec 22, 2014 04:03
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Writing is just smoke and mirrors anyway, a whole lot of implications and suggestions of things that you could never fully get down in great details, or should never, perhaps. It's definitely important to trust your readers to be able to fill in things on their own part.
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Dec 22, 2014 11:44
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The only time that you should worldbuild is when there's a specific fact about your world that's going to be so important to the story that you need it to be explicit and consistent. If the story isn't going to go there, you shouldn't either. And if it does show up somewhere, it better be important for some sort of thematic or storytelling reason. If there's a novel faster than light drive core on the mantlepiece in Act 1 then it had better go off in Act 3.
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Dec 22, 2014 20:34
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Crass Casualty posted:Most of the writing groups have offered pretty good criticism and I've improved a lot of my writing over the past few months and I understand that I have a long way to go before I could be considered a good writer, but has anyone ever been told that they need to find a different profession like that before? Or perhaps received feedback like that before? How do you handle it? Am I being a little bitch for getting angry about it? Some groups can't get beyond the subject matter. If you write about something controversial, expect to spend most of your sharing time discussing the controversy and not the writing itself. (Same with typos and grammar.) I handle bad criticism by leaving it alone until I can be objective about it. Sometimes people are idiots. Sometimes there's a genuine problem presented in an idiotic way. You can't be afraid of criticism if you want to do this for a living. If your critique group can't provide constructive feedback, start looking around for a group that can.
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Dec 23, 2014 16:45
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How many POVs is too many? I know there is no particular rule about it, so I'm just asking for people's personal feelings. For context, this would be written in 3rd person, and I'd be aiming for an older YA reading level. Like new adult, or w/e. The idea is that I would rotate through a handful of POV characters, but I'm not sure how many is too many. I feel like five would be ideal for my purposes, but the more I think about it the more I'm not sure. Thoughts?
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Dec 24, 2014 04:02
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My personal opinion is as long as it is clear when you switch POVs, go hog wild. Have as many as you want.
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Dec 24, 2014 04:07
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Sitting Here posted:How many POVs is too many? I know there is no particular rule about it, so I'm just asking for people's personal feelings. I run with a similarly large cast in my own story, and it's difficult to give them each their deserved screen time while maintaining both their proper characterization and proper pacing. But I've read your work -- you're clear and concise, so you should be able to switch points of view with ease. Chairchucker's right -- clarity is everything, and the better defined your characters, the easier it will be to switch between them.
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Dec 24, 2014 04:23
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You should write from the POV of the characters' penises, IMO. EDIT: Or boobs, or vaginas, obv. Chairchucker fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 04:31
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Not exactly highbrow lit or anything, but the Song of Ice and Fire books have like literally 30 PoV characters, so you can definitely get up there without it becoming unreadable. I think if you manage to create a unique voice for each PoV, and there's enough time devoted to each one to build sufficient characterization / justify their existence, you can get away with drat near anything.
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Dec 24, 2014 06:25
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It really depends on how distinct the characters are. If their personalities, circumstances and perspectives are very different then there's not really an upper limit. But it gets really easy to get lost if they aren't really that distinct. I feel it's hard to pull off regardless.
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Dec 24, 2014 07:32
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Sitting Here posted:How many POVs is too many? I know there is no particular rule about it, so I'm just asking for people's personal feelings. I would go with two major character POVs, considering the audience.
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Dec 24, 2014 14:06
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Screaming Idiot posted:I've got reams of material about the stories I write that I doubt I'll ever actually get to use, and it hurts because I feel like I have some really neat concepts -- energy as currency (with bills or cards being thin, flexible batteries), cybernetic plants that collect solar power (POWER PLANTS! My take on world building: Any differences between "our world" and the "other world" need to fold back into the story. They need to have a narrative point. I'm not terribly familiar with these authors, but it's my understanding that there is an audience who appreciate stories based mostly on "world-building ideas" -- the authors I have in mind are Niven (with his ring world series) and Kim Stanley Robinson. I've also read a few (not-particularly-memorable to me) short stories based on the implications of alternate physical realities. Stories where the plot and characters serve as a means to explore the world, rather than the world supporting the plot and characters. For example, I think I've read a novel about a tiny world moving at a super-fast velocity, so that to outside observers, everything looked like ovals, but to everyone on the planet it looked like circles and then they evolved so quickly that in a week of "our" time they went from amoebas to curing a human observer of breast cancer. The characters in that story were not as important as the idea behind the world. Every story requires world building to some degree. I would argue that even narrative non-fiction involves world building. Any time you include one thing and not another, you're constructing a certain world. In a contemporary fiction piece, for example, you have your characters take a train. That train doesn't exist. Okay, story is set on a particular day and you've looked up the time tables, and THAT train totally exists. But your characters weren't on it. You didn't include every person who was actually on that train. You added a guy with an umbrella who asked the time. You left out a woman on her commute, who will break the heel of her shoe in a grate on the way to work. One is relevant, the other isn't. Congratulations, you're world building. In my mind, there's not much different between that and using energy for currency or whatever. If you put a dude with an umbrella on the train, he's there for a reason. If energy is currency, it better be for a loving reason. That's it. Chances are, once you start thinking about energy as currency, you start getting ideas. Why is energy currency? Energy must be a limited quantity, but also tradable. What does that mean? What happens when some people have a lot of it and others have nearly none -- even if you start from that concept, eventually characters develop, a story takes shape. One implication leads to another, one exchange of batteries has cascading consequences, you start to fill in the blanks, everything starts coming together. Or maybe it doesn't. Now you've come down with the early symptoms of what is colloquially known as "world-builder's disease." What is that? It's when instead of writing a story, you write a bunch of description about a made-up world. Shame on you. Just kidding, this is a judgment-free zone (this paragraph, i mean). What is wrong with writing thousands of pages about the various anthropological origins of eight different cultures and the history of how they were discovered and how that plays into the modern day politics of your world? Absolutely nothing, I say! Except that most worlds have more than eight cultures, even at a relatively early stage of development. You better add a few more dividers to that binder. Now why on earth, or under earth, or on a world totally different than our Earth, are you writing all of this history (and geology, and anthropology, and politics, and technology?) 1) Because it's hella fun and I can't get enough of it! 2) Because it's necessary to the story I want to tell! 3) Because it's easier than writing the story I keep telling myself I want to write! One of these answers is wrong -- can you guess what it is? Trick question. None of them are wrong. Here's the thing: build your world to the extent it needs to be built. Does it matter what train your character takes? (Hint: Yes, that's inherent in the placement of a train in your story. Does it matter exactly which train they take? Less so. Unless you are writing historical fiction based on a certain train thing. It happens). Do you love looking at train time-tables and lining them up with what kind of engine was almost certainly dragging that stupid loving train of cars out of that essentially replaceable (but it isn't! you say) train station? ("no seriously, the architecture embodies an entirely new way of approaching public spaces and incorporates new technologies of both glass casting and welding and"...cool dude, does your character work in a goddamned glass factory? -- someone write a story about a glass factory, imagine all the cliches that could be broken). Anyway, you say, dear reader, everyone has warned me of the perils of world-builders disease, how can you so blithely tell me that it does not exist? Well for one, did I not just use blithely in a sentence? I think that gives me some inherent authority. So. While I have that slight advantage, consider the following: If something is hella fun and you cannot get enough of it, then you are doing great and you shouldn't listen to anyone who tries to shoot you down. "But wait," you may say, "Everyone says I suffer from this disease." Well, let me be that 3rd of 4th or whatever number of second opinion doctors who you consult: If you love world building and it is hella fun, just do it. Just do a lot of it. Who cares? Build worlds. Don't give a poo poo about stories. Worlds are loving fun. Don't even worry if you are building some kind of world that might be the basis of some story, just build. Let go of any shred of guilt or "you should" or whatever else some jackass has emblazoned on a flag and stuck in your way, and just make up the most awesome and/or interesting world that comes to you. There is literally nothing wrong with world building. It's fun. Do it. Oh wait, you picked option 2? World building is necessary to your story? You already know what I'm going to say: develop the parts of your world that are necessary to the story you want to tell. Leave everything else well enough alone. If you get caught up in meaningless details, give yourself a break: Are they really meaningless? Or are they interesting to you because they are not in fact meaningless? Tie everything back to the story. Sometimes one thing just has to lead to another, and you've got to take it all the way down to understand the implications. Other times....see below for other times. This situation is the hardest. If you're like me, you want everything to have an explanation. You want to tidy up twelve thousand years of complicated history into one short story about an elf princess -- or whatever, Elves have a lot of history, okay? I think some people might say that this specific question is the one worth answering -- what amount of world building is necessary for your story? But give me a break. There's not a formula for that. Unless you want to count "the amount necessary" as a formula, which it isn't. There aren't universal answers to questions like this one. Welcome to the fabulous, horrible world of writing. You choose. What is necessary? And what about number 3? You're lying to yourself, it suggests, about your true intentions. That's what's at the heart of "World-builder's disease" -- lies to yourself. World-Builder's disease is only a disease if you should be doing something else. And you are the only one who can define that should. Should you be focusing on plot, or characters, or writing actual chapters instead of world building? Only if you think so. Or, possibly, only if you hope to publish. The primary symptom of World-Builders Disease is self-deception. And the only person it might hurt is you, the author. On the other hand... All writing is a lie, and being an author requires being a liar. In my opinion, a good author uses the lie to tell the truth, but no one has made me the judge of all writers. At the end of the day, we're just left with the fact that writing is lying. Which leaves the question of what lies do you tell yourself and why? If you say you are writing a story, or trying to write a story, or working on writing a story, or whatever but instead are developing backstory what are you really doing? There's no wrong answer. Even "I don't want to think about it" is fine. But, and I say this without equivocation, the most effective path to meaningful writing is painful honesty with yourself. You will invariably tell yourself lies, but be honest about what lies you tell yourself.
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Dec 24, 2014 14:26
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POV characters would be an "as many as you need" kind of thing. If every new POV adds something valuable to the narrative, then why not? The problem is imagining the scope of a story that would actually benefit from a ton of different POV characters. GRRM even pushes it with seven or eight of them per book, and he's writing some epic scale poo poo with tangled relationship webs which is how he manages to get away with it. A book I recently read introduced a new POV character two-thirds of the way in (i.e. the character had been there the whole time, we just didn't get inside her head until that point), stuck with her for about ten pages without managing to say anything significant, and then never revisited her POV. So uh, as long as you don't do that, there shouldn't be a huge problem.
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Dec 24, 2014 15:16
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I was gonna spew some poo poo about world-building, but the good Juris Doctor of Tymepiecekitty did a much better job than I would have.
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Dec 24, 2014 15:53
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Just got the first chapter (about 5000 words) done of the YA idea I posted about a couple of weeks ago. The holiday is great for writing! I'm burning hot!
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Dec 25, 2014 01:48
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Jesus Christ, Doc Klok, that was a hell of a post and it needs to be quoted for posterity in the OP.  Generally, the worldbuilding I do usually stems from me being bored at work and coming up with fun solutions to problems in my story. One of the conceits in my story is that scarcity is a thing of the past -- and with unlimited resources thanks to replication technology combined with empty, uninhabited worlds ripe with raw materials to harvest, what would have value? A high-school kid with Babby's First Replicator can make gold or silver, and most legally recognized resource-worlds are staffed with tireless automatons or 'Droid workers. So how about bartering? Some materials would be harder to make than others, and it's easier just to trade rare materials in exchange for manufactured goods, which is well and good for large organizations, but how about day-to-day personal transactions? I settled for generic "credits" -- do work for a company, and credits are awarded in exchange. The government monitors all transactions, with advanced AI systems checking and re-checking said transactions' validity. Okay, so the government controls the money. But there's always going to be a vocal minority that doesn't want to be tracked, and there will always be a need for material money. Why not make it something useful to anyone, anywhere, regardless of the world? That's when I decided to use energy as currency -- high-capacity batteries in the shape of bills or cards that could be exchanged and charged at a moment's notice. And hey, why not give them solar receptors so even the poorest person can let a few bills sit out in the sun and get enough of a charge to pay for a meal and a place to sleep? Now the important part -- where does all this fit in the story? Well, one of the stories in my setting will take place on a resource/factory world that's been stripped clean, and the situation is getting grim as riots and wars break out between the workers and their corporate overseers -- resources are nearly infinite, but the labor to work those resources isn't. Corporations are always out to squeeze more value out of their workers, so what about a planet-wide "company town" where the workers are essentially indebted to the company, little better than slaves? The main government would ignore worlds like this -- why step in and do something about the problem and risk losing out on cheap goods? A lot of this is basic cyberpunk material, but it's basic because it works. The test isn't whether or not the material is unique, it's how well I spin it into a story.
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Dec 25, 2014 02:33
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the op of this thread should just be a linke to all of dr.k's post cause she's the only one that doesn't post a bunch of stupid bullshit in here.
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Dec 25, 2014 03:28
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a linke is an old fashioned link
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Dec 25, 2014 03:29
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crabrock posted:a linke is an old fashioned link i think you mean olde-fashioned
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Dec 25, 2014 04:30
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Screaming Idiot posted:Jesus Christ, Doc Klok, that was a hell of a post and it needs to be quoted for posterity in the OP. Don't ever put an apostrophe before droid again, thank you.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:47
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| # ? May 11, 2024 23:50 |
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It's shorthand for Android. In my novel there are two distinct classes of Android -- those that pass the "Sapience Exam" and are given humanlike bodies and those that have yet to take the exam, who remain in squat, bulky, mass-produced forms. The former are referred to as Androids, a proper, respectable term. The latter only get the insultingly truncated form -- 'Droids. The apostrophe implies that it's not an entire word, simultaneously implying the 'Droid in question is incomplete, unworthy of the completed word. Also, I'm pretty sure Lucasfilm owns the word Droid.
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Dec 25, 2014 08:13
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