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Make all the women wear full wetsuits and SCUBA gear, completely unexplained. E: the wetsuitsare the patriarchy
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Mar 3, 2018 23:56
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Magnusth posted:Do any of you have any experience repurposing misogynist tropes and ideas, especially from noir and hardboiled detective stories, like femme fatales, in a way that makes them... not misogynist and sexist? Subvert the tropes or use them to make commentary about today's world. Just make sure you aren't simply using those tropes in a way that perpetuates them without putting in the work to make a specific statement with a point of view. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Mar 4, 2018 |
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Mar 4, 2018 00:10
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sebmojo posted:Make all the women wear full wetsuits and SCUBA gear, completely unexplained. do this, results in flawless victory
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Mar 4, 2018 00:39
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Magnusth posted:To specify, once i'm done with my current story, i'm planing to write, uh, an urban fantasy noir story in heian era japan? Complete with the dangerous woman walking into the gumshoe's office and hiring him for Trouble. But the attendant tropes often make womanhood out to be dangerous, evil, mysterious, or all three, and have, uh, rather specific ideas of sexuality that aren't all that acceptable in 2018, and certainly aren't anything i might want to endorse. While i can probably just leave the structure as-is and downlplay the various sexist bits, i honestly would prefer to see if i could find some interesting ways to turn the tropes themselves on their head in a more in-depth way. Tropes aren't bad and the way this reads a bit odd. If you think something is bad change it. Don't have the dangerous women walk into the gumshoe's office, make the women the gumshoe. Or, work on making the women a character, a woman in a tough spot trying to act tough, but the detective can see right through her and goes with it anyways. There's a bunch of ways you can subvert a trope, but meeting your criteria of "Not-sexist" is tough. If you want to go further and actually market your novel, instead of writing it, you would be best served by someone who knows more about the business. Like sebmojo said, a woke character in a hard-boiled universe sounds hilarious. Exmond fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Mar 6, 2018 |
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Mar 4, 2018 05:08
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Write good human characters and dgaf about tropes imo Here's a noir bit that I gender swapped, which I regret about half the time but I thought worked ok here Black wedding The sky is a hot and smoke-blackened sheet, hung out on a line for too long because no-one can be bothered taking it in. I have a gun in my purse, high-heeled shoes on my feet, wedding dress all tattered and torn. And, as I totter down the dirty street, my mind is a crawling pit of bugs. I lean on the door, knock, twice, close my eyes and breathe. There’s rain coming in but it won’t get here in time to wash my sins away. The door, wavy glass with writing on it that my blurry eyes can’t read, jerks open and there’s someone standing there, a woman, fat, curly hair. She smells of cheap whiskey and and expensive regrets but she holds out a hand and I grab it like a drowner, pull myself to shore. Time takes a holiday for a time and when my brain gets back to work I’m lying down, cushions on the floor. “Shamus,” I croak. “Danny Shamus; he’ll be here. He was following me, purse, there’s, there’s a gun. In my purse.” The lady looks at me with an expression like a closed up newspaper, but then there’s a rapping at the door, something metal on glass. “Pickard,” says the woman. “My name’s Pickard.” And now it’s Shamus' throaty voice behind the door and Pickard, sliding her hand into my purse and pulling out the little .22 I'd bought for shooting cans all those years ago. Pickard unlatches the door and motions him in. Shamus looks uncomprehending at the gun, then gulps. His tuxedo is a mess, not going to be getting the deposit back on that. "Sally-Ann," he says. "The police are coming. I had to call them. You'll need to go with them." Pickard squinted at me. She had tired, puffy eyes too. "What did you do? There are red and blue lights out there now, a harsh artificial dawn. I slide my legs under me and wobble upright. "Shot the priest. I knew him a long time ago. He... was a bad man. He took my confessions and made them worse." Pickard's face is curdled, now, like milk left out in summer. She clicks the safety off on the gun and slides it across the floor to me. "Back door. We had no choice. You made us. Understand?" This last is pointed at Shamus, who gulps again as I pick up the gun. The gun's heavy in my hand and in my heart, the smell a harsh reminder of the chemistry that rules our lives. With a bare nod, I stumble out the back door, as the rain starts falling; but never enough, never enough. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Mar 4, 2018 |
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Mar 4, 2018 06:38
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Guys, I just finished my first novel's first draft. I'm so excited 
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Mar 7, 2018 19:17
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feedmyleg posted:Guys, I just finished my first novel's first draft. I'm so excited Congrats! That's a big accomplishment. Do you have any plans for first readers?
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Mar 7, 2018 19:50
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feedmyleg posted:Guys, I just finished my first novel's first draft. I'm so excited Congratulations dood!
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Mar 7, 2018 22:29
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Thanks, all! I've been planning on taking a few days off and banging out some short stories, but I might be too excited not to just jump back in and consolidate all my notes and do a bit of notecarding.CantDecideOnAName posted:Congrats! That's a big accomplishment. Do you have any plans for first readers? I've got a couple friends-and-family readers lined up, but I figure I'll do two more passes before I subject anyone else to it. The first being a relatively significant rewrite of many parts of the second half that goes into a lot of issues that came up in the writing (and that I have a firm plan for), and then a purely prose-based pass where I clean up the style and voice enough so that that doesn't distract from other feedback. Then ship it out to some folks to read it and see what comes back in.
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Mar 8, 2018 00:32
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Steven Erikson, author of The Malazan Book of the Fallen has written an in-depth deconstruction of a scene from the first book in that series. He discusses his use of elliptical narrative. I found it very interesting and instructive. Here's a link.
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Mar 8, 2018 14:11
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Turns out when a Scrivener file gets large enough the auto-save function produces a noticeable half-second of lag, which provoked me to first turn the save function timer up to 5 minutes rather than 2 seconds, and then to ask "how large is this draft now?" I'm maybe 1/4 of the way into the third act (of four) and it's already 117 thousand words oh bloody hell this isn't supposed to be that long.
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Mar 14, 2018 14:52
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I know this is a really stupid question, but does anyone have some kind of cool method they use to spitball out character arcs? I'm trying to write something that is very character focused, but I'm actually really terrible at thinking up an interesting arc from scratch. I'm just thinking like some kind of exercise to get my brain working in the right direction. I write based on plotpoints, so I'd ideally be spitballing out like PP1 --> Midpoint --> PP2 or something similar to get a sketch of the arc out there
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Mar 15, 2018 02:52
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I like writing my characters in a circle and drawing arrows with loves/hates/fears between them. If you do it without thinking too much you can come up with some interesting relationships, and an arc can then arise from resolving the tensions.
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Mar 15, 2018 03:36
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angel opportunity posted:I know this is a really stupid question, but does anyone have some kind of cool method they use to spitball out character arcs? I'm trying to write something that is very character focused, but I'm actually really terrible at thinking up an interesting arc from scratch. I'm just thinking like some kind of exercise to get my brain working in the right direction. I write based on plotpoints, so I'd ideally be spitballing out like PP1 --> Midpoint --> PP2 or something similar to get a sketch of the arc out there I kinda have the opposite problem, where character arcs spontaneously shoot out all over the place and I have trouble tying all the threads together. But how I come up with so many is I often have characters wanting things tangental to the main plot and let them sidetrack a bit. To try to flesh them out I ask what else do they want? Then I spend some time letting them pursue it before the main plot smashes all their little side projects. Other times I try putting different characters in a scene together and seeing what sparks. Those usually end up in compost pile and rarely make it into the story without complete rewriting though. My writing methods aren't exactly efficient. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Mar 15, 2018 |
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Mar 15, 2018 03:41
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sebmojo posted:I like writing my characters in a circle and drawing arrows with loves/hates/fears between them. If you do it without thinking too much you can come up with some interesting relationships, and an arc can then arise from resolving the tensions. What happens when 90% of the circle is differing levels of hate?
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Mar 15, 2018 03:47
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Burkion posted:What happens when 90% of the circle is differing levels of hate? then you have identified an issue with your characters
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Mar 15, 2018 03:59
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I've tried like 3 or 4 times now to actually write a book I want to write for my own enjoyment, and every time I just kind of fall apart in the outlining phase. I've been reading a lot of SF/Fantasy/Speculative Fiction with an eye toward how the author is structuring everything. I look for the plot points as I read, and try to figure out how the author decided to build a character's motivations, problems, arcs, etc. I feel like I've gotten pretty good at spotting and appreciating all of this, but I still am absolutely awful at applying it to my own writing. The main thing I've come away with from my "critical reading" is that strong characterization is the only thing that readers actually care about. I know it's a very "no poo poo" type of observation, but it's also one of those things that you can't really understand just by having someone tell you it. There was a moment in Iain M. Bank's "Surface Detail" where he introduced a random new character around the 70% mark of the novel as a means to show the space battle happening in more detail. The space battle was cool, maybe, but I didn't give a poo poo about the character so it was the most tedious thing to read every time he came back to that character's POV. With all that in mind, I'm trying really hard to get a fresh Google Doc open and just draft up something that is a few sentences of a character's arc, look at it, and think "Yes, this is actually really good and compelling. This character deserves a story and world built around them." I usually most enjoy reading about smaller-scale and personal problems. I think most Scfi/Fantasy tends to get too far into "the world will end if..." type problems. I want to be able to write compelling stories about situations with smaller stakes...but every time I try to outline and plan stories, I keep ending up with ideas that are basically "the world will end if..."
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Mar 15, 2018 04:01
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Is there a specific character type you find compelling? Not necessarily an archetype, but the kind of person you think you could stick in any kind of situation, from shopping to flying a space ship, and come out with something you'd want to read.
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Mar 15, 2018 06:09
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angel opportunity posted:I know this is a really stupid question, but does anyone have some kind of cool method they use to spitball out character arcs? I'm trying to write something that is very character focused, but I'm actually really terrible at thinking up an interesting arc from scratch. I'm just thinking like some kind of exercise to get my brain working in the right direction. I write based on plotpoints, so I'd ideally be spitballing out like PP1 --> Midpoint --> PP2 or something similar to get a sketch of the arc out there Tie your character arc thematically to the story arc. Both the story arc and your character's arc should more-or-less mirror the progress of the other and climax in the same place. I had an idea for a plot recently (a groundhog-day loop thing), but the main character didn't have any sort of arc. He was just sort of there. It was only when I got the plot idea that the main character would NOT be able to come up with a "perfect" solution to end the loop that I made a character breakthrough: my main character at the start would be pretty arrogant and have the idea that they could fix anything given enough time. By tying the arcs of plot and character together, it strengthens them both. I think that approach can work if you have any combination of two start/endpoints in either arc. Use the points you have a solid idea on and use them to build the other start/endpoints.
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Mar 15, 2018 14:19
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I'm not dissimilar in my approach. My process tends to be plot -> theme -> character. I put together my setting and story elements, then ask "What is this piece trying to say?", then figure out what the characters arcs are that could speak to that theme, then develop the characters from that standpoint.
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Mar 15, 2018 15:28
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i actually come up with character arcs now and then write the plot (usually the character arc is based around some cool plot idea or thought tho). its way more fun that way anyway.
anime was right fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Mar 15, 2018 |
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Mar 15, 2018 16:33
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I start by plotting out each character's macro arc: who is this person when we meet them, why are they the way they are, who are they the last time we see them, how did they become that way. Doing that in detail for your core cast will accomplish a surprising amount of work- if you know that Drinky the Alcoholic Detective is going to start as a hopeless burned-out husk of a man and finish the story as a reluctantly hopeful jerk who's starting to get a handle on his problems, and his partner is going to start off as a young starry-eyed optimist and finish as a hopeless burned-out husk of a man, you can already start to chart out interactions between them that would move both along this trajectory, and find places in the plot to anchor their development along the way.
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Mar 15, 2018 23:43
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angel opportunity posted:I usually most enjoy reading about smaller-scale and personal problems. I think most Scfi/Fantasy tends to get too far into "the world will end if..." type problems. I want to be able to write compelling stories about situations with smaller stakes...but every time I try to outline and plan stories, I keep ending up with ideas that are basically "the world will end if..."  That's exactly the stories I like to write. I remember really enjoying Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (and I just finally getting around to starting reading "The Grapes of Wrath" today). I feel like I'm not great at making interesting stand-out characters, which those sort of stories hinge on more.
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Mar 16, 2018 00:03
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Thanks everyone. I guess I'm just terrified of doing the wooden sci-fi character sin of thinking of some cool world, worldbuilding a ton, and then thinking "okay now what character am I going to stick in here who can show my world off the most?" I'm probably going too far in the other direction though and need to work on both things at once to some degree
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Mar 16, 2018 00:26
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angel opportunity posted:Thanks everyone. I guess I'm just terrified of doing the wooden sci-fi character sin of thinking of some cool world, worldbuilding a ton, and then thinking "okay now what character am I going to stick in here who can show my world off the most?" That's pretty much what I did with my world, so  I think it can work. I worked on it for about 10 years before starting on this WIP in the world. Though, I'm doing a sort of fish out of water type story, which is maybe easier than doing a story about an insider character maybe.
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Mar 16, 2018 05:24
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How do you keep stories limited in scope and length? I'm looking to write some short stories while sitting on my novel's first draft for a few weeks, and have a giant document of ideas that I'd love to tackle. But every time I start to work on one, the scope of the story completely balloons up to at least novella length. With short stories in the past I often feel like I'm just writing a scene of an incomplete larger narrative, and then get excited about that larger narrative and want to explore it and its implications on the scene. As I mentioned above, I tend to be story-first, then develop the themes and characters from there, but looking at my premise document very few of them look to be inherently large in scope in-and-of themselves. So the scope creep happens somewhere in the development. This used to happen to me in writing short films as well, and I never quite cracked it there either, feeling like I was always just writing a summarized or truncated version of what I want to convey.
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Mar 21, 2018 18:17
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Why do you want to write short stories? Edit: my answer to "how" is to limit/eliminate side plots, and focus on a single narrative thrust. Figure out what the big idea is really about, specifically, and stay on a fairly straight course centered on that. Also read a bunch of short stories to see how other authors do it. Dr. Kloctopussy fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Mar 21, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 20:55
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Primarily to realize more stories in less time. To get them out of my head and onto paper, to make them tangible and put them out into the world. I love the process of developing and writing stories, and I have a lot that I've been sitting on for quite some time that I'm very excited about. Getting a first draft of a book out took me 4 months and finishing it will probably take about double that time (or more). I feel that every time I approach a new piece I learn a lot about the craft and grow as a writer much faster than being heads down in something longform—though I enjoy both. Doing shorts means that I can change up the voice and the style, experiment with different structures and types of characters, etc. The amount of mental and emotional energy that it takes to get a short story into its ideal form is significantly less than a novel, and I like the idea of a rhythm of doing a number of short projects in-between long ones. I mean, I realize that you're likely getting after the idea that I should let the content of the piece dictate the form of story I'm telling. Which I get. But I think that I would be frustrated if my output were only 1 or 2 books per year. I've got a handful of short story collections that have been sitting on my bedside table, so I'll definitely pick one of those up next with an eye toward looking at their form and structure.
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Mar 21, 2018 23:04
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Do a few weeks of thunderdome, once you can fit a story into 1k doing longer shorts should be a lot easier.
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Mar 21, 2018 23:08
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I got into thunderdome to try and get some creative outlet stuff going. I didn’t think I would be able to hit 2000 words and now it’s looking like I’m going to be way over. I’m going to have to cut like 1000 words. I wish I was better at being succinct:/
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Mar 22, 2018 00:24
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If you want to make your stories shorter, try writing them with as few words as humanly possible and then expanding to reach that limit. Start with a 50 word story, then blow it up to 100. Then go 200, then 500, and so on and so on until you hit the right length. It might not be the traditional way to write a story, but it'll teach you a lot about word economy along the way.
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Mar 22, 2018 01:55
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Hey there, fellow writers who'd rather not be writing. I found this pretty good article on the 60 rules to writing Science Fiction Short Stories. I'm sure it'll be eviscerated here but hey, for those of you who should be writing but want to blow time reading about writing instead, have at it! http://www.terrybisson.com/page2/page2.html edit: this guy is amusing. quote:Small talk in SF is like carbonation in wine. It detracts. magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Mar 28, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 21:08
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that's a great list mag7
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Mar 28, 2018 23:24
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Lol https://twitter.com/anna_mazz/status/978749557180977152?s=21 https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sean-penn-bob-honey-who-just-do-stuff-review_us_5ab9a1bee4b008c9e5fa89a2 quote:“Bob’s boyhood essence set him up for a separation from time, synergy, and social mores, leading him to acts of indelicacy, wounding words, and woeful whimsy that he himself would come to dread.” ― page 12
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Mar 29, 2018 02:07
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I love the fact that this book is also being discussed in the Lit Thread, but there hasn't been a single repeat quote.
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Mar 29, 2018 13:07
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magnificent7 posted:Hey there, fellow writers who'd rather not be writing. 6. Never write in present tense. It makes events less, not more, immediate. Past tense IS present tense. Whoooooa, Is this true? I love writing in present tense.
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Mar 29, 2018 17:20
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Present tense always sounds like someone's trying to write a screenplay to me. Personally I generally read past tense as present and pluperfect as past.
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Mar 29, 2018 18:40
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i like present tense for first person, cause it's like being in the person's head as they're experiencing things, and it forgives knowledge of a twist/unexpected ending, whereas a past tense makes me go WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THAT IN THE BEGINNING THEN. but that's being pretty pedantic, mostly it doesn't really matter if the writing is good.
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Mar 29, 2018 18:44
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On a whim, I started reading the Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. It's a good premise, and interesting, but...it's all in present tense. And one of the viewpoint characters is written in loving second person. It's a struggle to get through. I mean I assume maybe there is a point to her writing this in second person present tense, but I don't see it. Even if I was a psychokenetic black woman lol
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Mar 29, 2018 18:55
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feedmyleg posted:Present tense always sounds like someone's trying to write a screenplay to me. This reminds me, I really need to up my grammar game. I don't think I make any really egregious mistakes, but I occasionally agonize over verb tenses when I write in past tense. (drat "had", what the hell are you doing in like every fourth sentence for some reason) Any good online resources/cheat sheets for the weirder verb tenses? And by "weird" I mean anything that is more specific than "past, present, future"
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