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I am a massive planner in all things (versus being a "pantser"). I've been setting up my novel for so long and have most of it figured out. I finally started writing around new years (before new years! gently caress resolutions). I've got one chapter down at about 2200 words and it feels good (not so good to share, esp. without editing). It's really weird, though, because I know it's not really perfect but I'm resisting the urge to just spend so much time making everything perfect. I'm trying to just take this as a sketch and just put words on page, but drat it feels stupid sometimes.anatomi posted:Is there a word for when you drop your smartphone on your face? Phaced.
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Jan 19, 2019 17:59
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While we’re on rejection letter chat, I figured I’d share mine from late last year: Late in the year I queried eight agents. Got five radio-silences, one “liked it but no thanks,” one form rejection, and one “like it but not taking new clients” who kindly referred me to another agency, who became the form rejection. I also sent two manuscripts to publishers as an unagented individual and got one request for rewrite with a lot of feedback and one “we are kicking this up the chain” which I’m still waiting back on. The nerves continue to fray. Meanwhile, I finally got off my rear end and started a Patreon for the serialized novel I’ve been writing for the last 8 months. My goal in 2019 is to finish my commercial thriller and get it sent off to a whole new crop of agents. It’s a different beast to writing contemporary romance (which I have published both traditionally and self) and fantasy (my primary short story dabbling ground) but creepy page-turners about messed up individuals is such a fertile stomping ground. I haven’t swung by this thread in a while, but I got nostalgic and remembered posting in the old Fiction Farm thread about my first ever magazine sale back in like 2012-13.  Good to see we’re all still failing along together.
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Jan 20, 2019 00:57
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The Sean posted:It's really weird, though, because I know it's not really perfect but I'm resisting the urge to just spend so much time making everything perfect. I'm trying to just take this as a sketch and just put words on page, but drat it feels stupid sometimes. It's a really weird feeling to get used to. It took me a long time to grasp, and even then I still have trouble. Practice will make it easier to resist, and it might help you to look for some examples of what's expected in a first draft so you have something to compare to. Your expectations are at "second/third draft," which is a lot easier to find comparisons for. Keep it up, and try not to look back yet!
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Jan 20, 2019 03:19
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I have a quick question that came up in Thunderdome. The second line of my story sparked a grammar discussion, but since Thunderdome does not seem to be meant for prolonged sidebars, one participant suggested shifting the discussion here. So real quick, the original sentence was "The words of Peter's sister still rang in his ears as he dug through the dirt, seeking some trace of the buck's passing.". Someone critiqued this line by saying it read weakly because it's in passive voice, and proposed "Peter heard his sister’s voice in his head as he dug through the dirt, seeking some trace of the buck’s passing." This provoked responses that the original was not in passive voice, it had a shifting subject instead. I also agree that the original was a bit weak and could use revising, but I don't like the proposed line as much and there's some debate about what the original issue was. How about "Peter's sister's voice still rang in his ears as he dug through the dirt, seeking some trace of the buck's passing." then? It introduces Peter as the subject immediately, but keeps the "rang in his ears" bit that I think conveys the I-Told-You-So tone of the words better than "heard his sister's voice in his head". (Sorry if this isn't the right thread for this question, I read the first post and I think it is but I haven't asked one before.)
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Jan 22, 2019 19:21
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Dolash posted:Peter's sister's voice The sentence isn't awkward because of what is or isn't the subject; it's that the pile-up of possessives in "the words of Peter's sister" is awkward. (This is also why that replacement is worse.) My advice would be to split the sister off and focus on Peter in this sentence, something like, "The words still rang in Peter's ears as he dug through the dirt, seeking some trace of the buck's passing. He was almost ready to admit that his sister had been right." Obviously, there are many ways to write that second sentence, but however you say it, I think that it's the best way to go. But going back to the original sentence, a problem that sticks out much worse to me is "trace of the buck's passing" – it's almost impossible to read this without thinking of passing the buck, not the disappearance of a literal deer. I strongly advise rephrasing that. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 19:41
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Man, I hadn't even thought of that buck passing bit. I didn't want to use stag since a stag shows up later and I wanted to differentiate them, and deer also felt a little ambiguous since they later appear with another deer. Might be forgetting another word for male deer. I suppose I could make the deer Peter is stalking a doe and the deer he finds later a buck or fawn? "The words still rang in Peter's ears as he dug through the dirt," does eliminate the "Peter's sister's words" issue, and yeah, I didn't like the double-possessive there either, but Fuschia tude had suggested the larger issue was shifting subjects across the sentence. Doesn't your construction still shift subjects from the words to Peter? Dolash fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 19:58
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There's nothing wrong with writing a sentence more complex than subject-verb-object. Nothing is "shifted"; there are two subjects in that sentence.
Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 20:06
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Dolash posted:I have a quick question that came up in Thunderdome. The second line of my story sparked a grammar discussion, but since Thunderdome does not seem to be meant for prolonged sidebars, one participant suggested shifting the discussion here. I think the bigger problem is that you're starting the sentence by focusing on "the words of Peter's sister", then the focus shifts back to "trace of the buck's passing", but presumably the next sentence is going to go back to the subject "the words of Peter's sister". It might be better to keep the like subjects close to each other. "As Peter was digging through the dirt, seeking some trace of the buck's passing, the words of his sister still rang in his ears." Follow that up with whatever the words of the sister are and that should make it flow better.
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Jan 22, 2019 21:12
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Yeah it's the floaty subject that's the issue. Anything that makes you pause and reread the sentence should be, if not rewritten, at least reconsidered. And that's the case for all these 'rules': they aren't THOU SHALT, they are just a cue to look at what you've written and ponder if you can write it more clearly or evocatively. Break rules like cruskits if it's necessary for the effect you want to achieve, just try not to do it by accident or inattention.
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Jan 22, 2019 21:28
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On second thought, yeah, having two subjects really muddles the ending. Are the words seeking some trace? Stabbey and Seb are right.
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Jan 22, 2019 21:34
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I think the bigger problem is that you're starting the sentence by focusing on "the words of Peter's sister", then the focus shifts back to "trace of the buck's passing", but presumably the next sentence is going to go back to the subject "the words of Peter's sister". It might be better to keep the like subjects close to each other. Peter's sister's words was actually the first line of the story, rather than the following line. The story opens: quote:“It's the royal forest! Her ladyship'll hang you for a poacher, and I'll catch Hell from Ma.” I wanted to open with a hook, and originally had written an opening scene on that open moor with the missed shot and the sister. I cut it for word length reasons, so I replaced it with one line meant to try and bring the reader up to speed quickly then transition to Peter's present search through the forest. I still like the idea of ordering the opening as transitioning from Peter's sister's warning to Peter himself, so maybe Sham's rewording would work best.
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Jan 22, 2019 22:23
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Why was he digging?
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Jan 22, 2019 22:26
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“The words of Peter’s sister” and “Peter’s sister’s words” are needlessly cumbersome phrases unless there’s some story-related reason why you’re avoiding naming her.
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Jan 22, 2019 22:36
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Anomalous Blowout posted:“The words of Peter’s sister” and “Peter’s sister’s words” are needlessly cumbersome phrases unless there’s some story-related reason why you’re avoiding naming her. lol at this poor para the dead horse is a scourge-racked set of bones at this point. Still: while it carries some economic expositional weight, the decision to have a protag remember the words of a nameless and undescribed sister talking to him at an undetermined point in the past isn't a strong hook because the sister doesn't really feature in the story at all. The subject is the forest, so a better approach could have been to convey the same information by characterising the forest - make it threatening, have the shadows watch him like the kings gamewardens or w/e. Flash fiction puts a lot of weight on the first para and it's a useful exercise if nothing else to tool them as precisely as possible; yours isn't really terrible, but there are ways it could be improved.
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Jan 22, 2019 22:50
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Anomalous Blowout posted:“The words of Peter’s sister” and “Peter’s sister’s words” are needlessly cumbersome phrases unless there’s some story-related reason why you’re avoiding naming her. Yep. Unless this is the first mention of her, this: Dolash posted:"Clara's words still rang in his ears as he dug through the dirt, seeking some trace of the buck's passing." works just fine. But if it's early on, yeah, just drop the specifics. "Her words still rang..." is just fine until you reveal who "her" is. But the real core problem is that there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for us to know or care that they're his sister's words at this point.
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Jan 22, 2019 22:54
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Yeah, I was just trying to keep the set dressing as short as possible - our protagonist is young and taking a risk by going poaching, probably to support his family, who exist (a sister and Ma) to motivate his need to hunt but will not participate in the story. He's digging around for a trail to follow and getting nowhere, his horse thinks he's a loser, surely this hard-luck lad is in need of a break, etc. I could definitely have gone about it with an entirely different sort of opening, though I was mainly curious if there was consensus on one single grammatical issue with the original sentence and an obvious solution to it. This whole discussion's been useful for considering alternatives, so thanks for the help!
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Jan 22, 2019 22:58
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No prob, and thanks for bringing it in here, tdome deliberately doesn't support this kind of discussion but it can be useful to have.
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Jan 22, 2019 23:03
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Hart is an archaic word for male deer. The female equivalent is hind. 
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Jan 22, 2019 23:05
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Dolash posted:Yeah, I was just trying to keep the set dressing as short as possible This is a great discussion to have especially in regards to flash fiction because flash is a medium where you have to tread a careful line. Revealing too much bogs down short pieces; revealing too little leads to confusion and head-scratching. When considering stuff like whether to name a character or just describe them or their relation to the protag, I err on the side of “how would the character themselves think about this person?” If you’re writing in close third or in first, chances are your protag would just think of his sister by name. If you’re able to slip a name or two confidently into the narrative, rather than coming across as excess set dressing, it hints at a broader world beyond the scope of the scene your reader is actually reading.
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Jan 22, 2019 23:11
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giving the name tho would be pretty bad since itd create an impression that the sister would then matter when the story basically never refers to the sister again. having it be peter's sister actually kinda works because that's what she is, just peter's sister, and that's her only role. giving her a name gives an impression that she matters when she doesnt. and, if the sentence stays the way it is, the sister's name then becomes the first named character in the story when she's barely present in the story, which is not good. ultimately, id just either drop the sister or make her actually present in the story if youre very married to the concept.
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Jan 23, 2019 01:11
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Dolash posted:[“It's the royal forest! Her ladyship'll hang you for a poacher, and I'll catch Hell from Ma.”] gently caress that line it's boring, but the biggest issue i have when reading this sentence isn't the grammar so much it's the purpose. This sentence has 3 distinct ideas in it that would merit their own sentence IMO, and each of those sentences could be fleshed out to create a richer scene. they're right at the beginning of the story, so we have no idea what's happening, it's your cold open. What' you're trying to accomplish showing is: 1. He (maybe?) shot a deer in the royal forest. 2. He is not supposed to be hunting that deer (because his sister said) 3. He lost the deer. The problem is, this setup tells me absolutely NOTHING about your story, because none of this conflict you created even matters in the end. The fact that this is a royal forest and he was warned not to hunt there doesn't play into the story at all, and therefore is totally wasted prose that you could have spent fleshing out this character and who he is. If you boil it down, your story is about mercy and gratitude (he spares the buck and therefore the buck saves his horse), but 99% of the words are spent on other things. The reason he gives for granting mercy to the deer is "aw gently caress it," for no reason. Why does he decide to spare the deer? Why is he risking his life chasing this horse rather than climbing out of the hole and getting TFO? How different would his life be with or without the horse? (i.e. why does the consequence of this story even matter?) If I were to reframe your story and still keep the basic structure I'd open with his wife telling him not to shoot deer in the forest, because they're the only thing that keeps the forest monster at bay. but he looks at his kid, who is sick from not eating deer meat and he says "gently caress YOU, OLD COOT!" and packs his family's only workhorse. his wife begs him not to take it because the legend says FOREST MONSTER eats horses, and if they lose the horse they'll lose their farm. he says he has to provide for his family and heads into the forest. He sees the buck and takes a shot at it, but the deer gets away. Peter follows the trail of blood to the clearing and sees the buck kinda hosed up in the field, but can tell it was just a graze. he's about to shoot it again when the doe and a fawn come out of the bushes. the buck, despite being shot and scared, still licks them or whatever the gently caress deer do, and Peter's like "aw man, i can't shoot that deer cause he has a family and he's just like me cause all he's tryin' to do is take care of his family and he realizes he was a dick so he spares the deer and is going to head back empty handed when he falls down the hole, fights the monster to save his family's horse, and then the magic deer comes and saves everything. He cuts a big piece of bug meat off and loads up his horse to return to his family both fulfilling his mission and learning a valuable lesson about not rushing into poo poo without caring about the consequences.
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Jan 23, 2019 05:03
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crabrock posted:If I were to reframe your story and still keep the basic structure I'd open with his wife telling him not to shoot deer in the forest, because they're the only thing that keeps the forest monster at bay. but he looks at his kid, who is sick from not eating deer meat and he says "gently caress YOU, OLD COOT!" and packs his family's only workhorse. his wife begs him not to take it because the legend says FOREST MONSTER eats horses, and if they lose the horse they'll lose their farm. he says he has to provide for his family and heads into the forest. He sees the buck and takes a shot at it, but the deer gets away. Peter follows the trail of blood to the clearing and sees the buck kinda hosed up in the field, but can tell it was just a graze. he's about to shoot it again when the doe and a fawn come out of the bushes. the buck, despite being shot and scared, still licks them or whatever the gently caress deer do, and Peter's like "aw man, i can't shoot that deer cause he has a family and he's just like me cause all he's tryin' to do is take care of his family and he realizes he was a dick so he spares the deer and is going to head back empty handed when he falls down the hole, fights the monster to save his family's horse, and then the magic deer comes and saves everything. He cuts a big piece of bug meat off and loads up his horse to return to his family both fulfilling his mission and learning a valuable lesson about not rushing into poo poo without caring about the consequences. original aesop fable do not steal (but you're right, this does hit all the correct beats of 'character wants something/character has to sacrifice something to get it/charater must choose if sacrifice is worth it/character makes choice and events unfold accordingly')
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Jan 23, 2019 20:09
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it's not a story i'd want to write but just trying to give an example of the same basic setup with actual things that matter to the story, rather than just a series of events happening at random.
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Jan 23, 2019 21:25
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Is this a good place to ask about metafiction? I'm working on a Twitter novella, and I'm not even sure if it's worth continuing to pursue, or how to make it worth pursuing if it isn't. EDIT: It's an ongoing road trip narrative about four kids in a van, playing in a band, getting high, and running from the law down Route 66. The catch is that one of them is a Vulcan. HappyKitty fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 03:20
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Yeah go for it
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Jan 24, 2019 03:43
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An agent asked for the first 50 pages of my manuscript after my query letter  Don't worry I'm keeping my expectations realistic. I'm still gonna get bummed out when she says no, tho. It's okay I'll have some ice cream to soften the blow.
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Jan 24, 2019 03:45
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sebmojo posted:Yeah go for it So I started this Twitter account as a gimmick - initially, it was just supposed to be riffing on how teenage rebellion would be particularly obnoxious in Vulcans, because instead of getting all shouty at their parents, they'd just be really passive-aggressive and try to use tortured logic to justify getting their way. I created a Vulcan teenager with the intent of posting some of the pseudo-logical arguments he'd make with his parents. He was mostly just sort of a stereotypical weeaboo 17 year old arguing about the need for an anime realdoll as a more hygienic alternative to pon farr and poo poo like that (NB: I deleted some of the earlier tweets that weren't tonally appropriate to the direction the project ended up taking). It wasn't really a narrative at first, just a goofy Twitter gimmick that I updated for a little bit, got bored of, and stopped updating as frequently. The only narrative bit in those early tweets involved a bat'leth accident which served as a justification for his having not updated in a few weeks. Then I got super depressed and stopped updating for several months. When I started up again, I decided to head in a more narrative direction. The idea was that Soval is the son of two somewhat unorthodox Vulcan xenoanthropologists who have been living on Earth disguised as humans, and had led Soval to believe he was just a human with some very specific mental and physiological conditions, and sent him to a regular human school as part of their experiment of gathering data on human culture. It wasn't until he was 17 that they told him the truth, and at some point in summer 2018, he started his Twitter account. The important thing to note is that this Twitter gimmick is meant to take place in our universe, not the Star Trek universe. It still respects Star Trek canon, but it's more of an AU where the alternate universe is our universe, if that makes sense. That means that Star Trek exists as a media property - but Soval is too ardent a Star Wars nerd to ever watch Star Trek - although the real reason he is so averse to it is that his parents had subtly conditioned him to despise anything Star Trek through a combination of pre-natal and early childhood mind-melding, classical conditioning, and just buying him lots of Star Wars stuff; the idea there is that his parents came to Earth not just to study humans, but because they'd intercepted and decoded radio transmissions of Star Trek broadcasts perfectly describing Vulcan culture and potential future events, and came to Earth specifically to unravel the mystery of how this pre-warp society came to know about Vulcans and poo poo. The part that I'm a little wary of is that I've now started building toward what I've been thinking of as the "marathon livetweet" portion of the story, where it catches up to Soval's present tense real-time narrative, where he has run away from home to join a band, reveals that he has been a Vulcan this whole time, his friends insist that he watch Star Trek, he does, mind blown, etc. and then things ramp up really quickly as they have to go on the run from what they believe are government agents from Area 51 (but which are actually secret operatives of Vulcan intelligence called in by his parents who realize, after he runs away from home, that they can't clean up this mess on their own). I'm super paranoid about loving up continuity details. I've never done anything like this before, and it's almost like having an alter ego - every day I've been checking local weather for where Soval is supposed to be at any given time and calculating the band's most likely route (they're going to Area 51 because Soval thinks that the existence of Star Trek is due to time travel shenanigans, and Area 51 is a lot closer than CERN in terms of sites for weird technological conspiracy theories - I mean, they are a group of four very high teenagers). Google Maps is a loving godsend for this kind of stuff, and I've got a route planned out. I worry that if I overthink it, I'll writer's block myself into a corner. I mean, worst case scenario is that it just doesn't ever resolve, in which case it's like, nothing ventured, nothing gained - but I don't want this to fizzle. I think it's a neat concept, and I want to see it through. Are there any obvious continuity problems that I need to watch out for? Weather and road travel times are easy, but things like... whether certain parts of the Nevada desert have cell phone service and data - that's something I can't possibly know. Is that even something I NEED to worry about, or will people just not care? I contemplated multiple Twitter accounts for all four main characters, but I nixed that idea because  , and because the more moving pieces to this narrative the easier it will be to slip up. Besides, there's no real way to make the registration dates consistent with the main story.Basically, I'm asking if anyone knows of what pitfalls I should watch out for so that I don't give the game away too easily (and yes, I realize the irony of giving the game away on this forum, but whatever - I hope the project will be completed before the creepy internet decides to stalk me).
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Jan 24, 2019 15:11
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I feel like i need to use some slang in dialogue but my main fear is if i add that in, it ends up feeling cheesy and a sad attempt to connect with the kids. yet, i'm a young adult and the characters in the story are also young adults...sooo
Fruity20 fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 15:59
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Fruity20 posted:I feel like i need to use some slang in dialogue but my main fear is if i add that in, it ends up feeling cheesy and a sad attempt to connect with the kids. yet, i'm a young adult and the characters in the story are also young adults...sooo Say it out loud. Grab someone you know and bounce the dialogue off them out loud and try to feel for any awkwardness. If you saying it out loud in normal conversation circumstances sounds okay it should be fine. You should test all your dialogue like this (at least the ‘say it out loud’ test)
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Jan 24, 2019 16:50
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is it possible for a character to use a cell phone without ruining "immersion" ?
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Feb 1, 2019 18:48
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@HappyKitty You’ll get into writer’s block if you get too bogged down in details. Do a rough outline of where you want the story to go, what beats you want to hit and where you want your MC to end up. Then just go. Write. Wing it a little. So long as you hit the right stuff you’ll be fine.
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Feb 1, 2019 19:05
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Fruity20 posted:is it possible for a character to use a cell phone without ruining "immersion" ? In a sword and sorcery novel? Yes, you just have to explain that there are tiny demons with megaphones inside the cell phone.
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Feb 1, 2019 19:31
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when he can't get signal you can say it's because of the malign influence of the Dark Lord and if the battery runs out it's because, um, mad wizard
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Feb 1, 2019 20:23
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No, no, the battery is the awesome bit. It's captured baby lightning. Are there good examples of stories with animal characters, not for the stories themselves, but for the approaches to describing nature from a small animal/bird perspective? I looked through a few bits of The Wind in the Willows, but can't think of anything else. Tried Watership Down, but it has a more remote, human, view of the events. It's not even for a full thing, just for a chapter or two in the middle of something completely different.
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Feb 1, 2019 21:22
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SelenicMartian posted:No, no, the battery is the awesome bit. It's captured baby lightning. The Warriors series, Tailchaser’s Song, The Sight
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Feb 1, 2019 21:36
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Djeser posted:In a sword and sorcery novel? Yes, you just have to explain that there are tiny demons with megaphones inside the cell phone. Discworld's pretty good yeah.
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Feb 1, 2019 22:42
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SelenicMartian posted:No, no, the battery is the awesome bit. It's captured baby lightning. Redwall
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Feb 2, 2019 01:52
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duncton wood
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Feb 2, 2019 02:14
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Fruity20 posted:is it possible for a character to use a cell phone without ruining "immersion" ? Actual non-joke answer: Yes, just like it's possible for a character to use any piece of technology without ruining immersion. The only time it would do that is if you refer to it in some insane way that makes everyone think you're a time-traveler from the forties. It's a part of peoples' lives, just as much as a car, or a television, or a computer.
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Feb 2, 2019 02:45
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Djeser posted:Actual non-joke answer: tbh I don't understand the question
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Feb 2, 2019 04:10
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