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HIJK posted:It sounds like you want someone to collab with because you don’t trust your own abilities. You should work alone so that you can improve your skills instead of using someone else as a crutch. I pretty much do. My writing skills have gotten better but...I feel like I overuse words and phrase too much that I have to read a few prose and analyze them for a bit. That and well...It has a massive lack of engagement and feels wholly unrealistic on the dialouge side. Albeit, the story I was working was more on the Saturday morning side of things so the hokey dialogue was a given. Even then, I try so hard to go over that wall of cringe and actually DO IT! then leave it be for a few days until I grow bored and do a new project. (forgive my worrying but does this come off as rude? it's hard to convey mood intent in text so i don't wanna come off as a condescending jerk...) I just find the process as a whole lonely and overwhelming half the time. I don't know if that means I'm not cut out to be a writer...but i know someone is gonna say that obligatory "then why the gently caress are you a writer then?"....so I can get my stuff out there. Just doodling random things ain't gonna get people interested in me..I wanna showcase vast universes, world building, interesting characters, and actually have something contribute to the conservation...but all i have is a lovely short screenplay about a giant housewife....which I hate.
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May 9, 2019 18:55
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It sounds like you have bigger issues here than your abilities. Have you spoken with a therapist recently?
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May 9, 2019 19:16
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It's valid to want to collaborate with someone just for the companionship. I dunno, I'd suggest just starting to network with creators on your level. Join some Webcomicky Discords and talk to people there. Friend people on Twitter and reply to them in a non-weird way. Eventually you'll build up some meaningful connections. There used to be an old goon webcomic IRC channel where a bunch of creators hung out, but I'm pretty sure that's dead now.
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May 9, 2019 19:16
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Daric posted:It sounds like you have bigger issues here than your abilities. Have you spoken with a therapist recently? Can't afford one at the moment. Maybe once I land myself a job I might consider the option. Megazver posted:It's valid to want to collaborate with someone just for the companionship. I'm in a few...Just haven't talked often in them. That and well, I have a hard time socializing with people. I very rarely give a poo poo about other people until now when I realize maybe networking is important.
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May 9, 2019 19:23
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Daric posted:This whole thing is very weird. What type of editing are you looking for. From the OP: It is not helpful to finish your first draft, scroll back up to the first paragraph, and start looking for punctuation mistakes. First consider your book as a whole, then start narrowing your focus, in steps. Punctuation mistakes are last. Don’t spend time fixing punctuation mistakes when you might just delete the whole scene (or chapter, sigh….) later. Book Level At this level, it actually does not matter what exact words you have on the page. What matters is what happens and why. Does the flow of events make sense, especially based on the characters and their motivations? Where can it be made stronger? Tighter? More interesting? This is level where I’ve rearranged when things happen in the story, added subplots, deleted subplots, added foreshadowing, revised character goals so their actions are consistent throughout the story, and decided to eliminate what appeared to be a major character (everything he did could be done by someone else, and it would make things more simple and more interesting). A high-level summary of your book should make sense. Get it to that point before continuing. If you don’t have a solid story, making different parts of it better isn’t going to magically transform it into a solid story. Chapter and Scene Level Once you have a solid story, make sure that everything in the story is actually on the page. Do you have the scenes you need? Do people do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said in the scene? Is there a balance between action, dialogue, and description that is appropriate for the scene? At this point, it’s also useful to start looking at the items mentioned in the macro-level critique section below: POV, motivation, tension, tone, voice. Line Edits Finally we get to the point of really looking at the words, sentence by sentence! The guidelines for doing line edits on your own are the same as for doing line edits for others, as described in the next post. Proofreading/Copy Editing Get all your grammar and punctuation right. I find this extremely difficult to do for myself, because once I’ve read, rewritten, and read again, I’ve become blind to misplaced commas. I know there was a goon that would do Proofreading/Copy Editing for cheap. The link is hovering somewhere in the Creative Convention forums
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May 9, 2019 19:23
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Awesome, I'll keep an eye out. It'll be a while yet but I'm trying to get a solid plan together.
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May 9, 2019 19:29
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Fruity20 posted:I pretty much do. My writing skills have gotten better but...I feel like I overuse words and phrase too much that I have to read a few prose and analyze them for a bit. That and well...It has a massive lack of engagement and feels wholly unrealistic on the dialouge side. Albeit, the story I was working was more on the Saturday morning side of things so the hokey dialogue was a given. It sounds less like you need a partner and more a place where you can get constructive criticism and help when you run into problems. Are there any writing/artist or storytelling groups local to you? Those are an easy way of getting feedback on your pieces and social interaction but you can still write the story and draw the art the way you want. Discord servers can fill the same space and you would meet other artistic people that are friendly. They can also help keep you on track if you’re amenable to being poked. That would be my recommendation, anyway.
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May 9, 2019 19:56
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HIJK posted:It sounds less like you need a partner and more a place where you can get constructive criticism and help when you run into problems. Are there any writing/artist or storytelling groups local to you? Those are an easy way of getting feedback on your pieces and social interaction but you can still write the story and draw the art the way you want. no local storytelling groups around these parts... but I do have discord!
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May 9, 2019 20:02
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If you want to find out if your writing is ok then thunderdome is excellent. Or post a sample in a thread
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May 9, 2019 21:25
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Despair is the true enemy of a river. Trust me, I know. You must write in order to improve. Sure, reading and learning the language and craft is important, but you can only truly improve by putting one word in from of the other until you are done. Then start again. You have to let go of the fear. Actually, no, that’s wrong. Greet it warmly. Invite it in, give it a beer. Put on some music for it. Then start typing. Just write. It’s the hardest part, but it’s also the most important. e: WRITER, not river. gently caress it, that's poetic as gently caress, I'm leaving it. 
Doctor Zero fucked around with this message at 23:09 on May 9, 2019 |
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May 9, 2019 22:45
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If you're worried that self-criticism means you're not a good writer, that's not true. Self-criticism means you're a writer. There's some stuff that can help you be a better writer (critical reading, writing critiques) but it doesn't matter unless you're already banging out those words. They might be bad words, and that's fine. The difference between a writer and a good writer is not that the good writer doesn't write bad stories, it's that the good writer has written so many stories that they can hide the mounds of bad ones behind the couple of good ones.
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May 9, 2019 23:01
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Djeser posted:The difference between a writer and a good writer is not that the good writer doesn't write bad stories, it's that the good writer has written so many stories that they can hide the mounds of bad ones behind the couple of good ones. I agree. I'll add on that it isn't bad to feel anxious about writing or to have negative feelings around writing, I think everyone encounters those feelings. But you need to find a way to handle those feelings and write.
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May 9, 2019 23:13
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Daric posted:This whole thing is very weird. I’ve self-published quite a few books and worked with a few different editors at various levels (structural, line, proofing, etc). Feel free to shoot me a PM once you’ve got a draft ready and I can put you in touch with some folks who have good turnaround times and reasonable rates. It’ll be different depending on how much editing your work needs and, like Exmond said, what type of editing you’re having done. If this is your first book I’d recommend a full line edit unless you’re an extremely competent self-editor, which few people are early on in their writing careers.
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May 9, 2019 23:38
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Doctor Zero posted:Despair is the true enemy of a river. Trust me, I know. i read that line like 3 times thinking "what the gently caress are they trying to say?" before moving on. now you have to write something with that as the opening line.
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May 9, 2019 23:40
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Djeser posted:They might be bad words, and that's fine. The difference between a writer and a good writer is not that the good writer doesn't write bad stories, it's that the good writer has written so many stories that they can hide the mounds of bad ones behind the couple of good ones. Hell, they better be bad words, at first. Writing only the good is impossible. Editing is where all the hamfisted garbage you turned into a story becomes good words, and the only difference between a beginner writer and a great writer is the amount of those words you wind up accidentally turning into something kinda good on round one. Writers who say their work doesn't need editing are writers who aren't progressing and improving.
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May 10, 2019 02:04
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Whalley posted:Writers who say their work doesn't need editing are writers who aren't progressing and improving. Yep. And yet this is the kind of poo poo I hear from self-pubbed hacks more and more: “some chucklefuck on another website” posted:...don’t write a first draft. Write an only draft and move on to your next project. “another chucklefuck in response” posted:It’s interesting that the “clean first draft” approach is starting to make some headwind. My writing group thinks I’m slightly crazy, but of course one-draft is just another thing on the pile! I guarantee these people are writing the kind of poo poo that ends up in the pyf terrible books thread.
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May 10, 2019 02:41
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I thought of an interesting body swap plot concept but I'm not sure how to effectively and efficiently convey it in-story. Like if there was Kayla, Khamal, and Mike and they swapped bodies unintentionally I'm struggling to figure out who to convey to the reader, basically, "Khamal (as Mike's body) did whatever action and Mike (as Kayla's body) reacted by _____." It almost feels like this may have to be visual or a script format but I'm scratching my head to find a way for this to be strictly prose. I don't feel that constantly clarifying who is in who's body, especially if it inadvertently changes again, will keep the reader in the story. Any ideas? edit: googling brings up results that are completely not where I am going with this.... The Sean fucked around with this message at 06:38 on May 10, 2019 |
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May 10, 2019 05:50
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The Sean posted:I thought of an interesting body swap plot concept but I'm not sure how to effectively and efficiently convey it in-story. Like if there was Kayla, Khamal, and Mike and they swapped bodies unintentionally I'm struggling to figure out who to convey to the reader, basically, "Khamal (as Mike's body) did whatever action and Mike (as Kayla's body) reacted by _____." It almost feels like this may have to be visual or a script format but I'm scratching my head to find a way for this to be strictly prose. I don't feel that constantly clarifying who is in who's body, especially if it inadvertently changes again, will keep the reader in the story. Kayla-Mike? Kayla/Mike? Ka-Mi? Does it matter whose body they are in all the time? Might get tiresome to read it constantly. I would say that the mind is the name and keep that unless noting the body is important.
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May 10, 2019 10:50
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Doctor Zero posted:Kayla-Mike? Kayla/Mike? Ka-Mi? Ehn, kind of. In short: people stuck in a void and they wake up every day in a new body among the group and for politics/intrigue sake it does matter who is who. Maybe like a roll call at the start of each day/chapter to state it and then move on. It may be unfeasible.
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May 10, 2019 13:42
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That sounds tricky to pull off, but really neat. Don't give up on it too easily. maybe there's a way you can sort of tag details on what they are wearing to remind people ("Mike rested his high heeled shoes on his toes." or something, ) As cliche as it is normally, a mirror scene might help, and would be more fititng for this story. (Mike sighed. "Who am I today?" he went to the mirror in the bathroom. It was a woman with brown bobbed hair "I have no idea who this is")
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May 10, 2019 18:12
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Call people by their identity, not what their body is. If you really need to use some weird name construction to clarify, hyphenate and have the identity be the second component. (e.g., Mark in Greg's body is Greg-Mark.) But ideally you shouldn't have to resort to that, as long as you make it clear who's what at a given time through the prose.
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May 10, 2019 18:37
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What's going on guys, I loving hate prose. Did we figure out how to write yet, and if so, what's the trick.
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May 10, 2019 19:04
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The Sean posted:Ehn, kind of. In short: people stuck in a void and they wake up every day in a new body among the group and for politics/intrigue sake it does matter who is who. Maybe like a roll call at the start of each day/chapter to state it and then move on. It may be unfeasible. General Battuta posted:What's going on guys, I loving hate prose. Did we figure out how to write yet, and if so, what's the trick.
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May 10, 2019 19:18
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I'd imagine you could look at post-human sci-fi to see how those stories handle body switching—something like the Altered Carbon series would probably have you covered. Or you could look at scripts for Quantum Leap or Sense8 or that sort of thing and see how they handle referring to characters in different bodies or existing beyond their own body.
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May 10, 2019 19:22
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General Battuta posted:What's going on guys, I loving hate prose. Did we figure out how to write yet, and if so, what's the trick. We squat athwart the page and strain until the word poops come
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May 10, 2019 20:29
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I spend all day thinking about things like character motivations and themes and authenticity, but when I am sitting down writing it all out I just want to get to the fun parts where people are shouting at each other and someone gets punched. Why can’t I just write about cool sword fights or something and let some nerd handle that other poo poo?
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May 10, 2019 22:40
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sebmojo posted:We squat athwart the page and strain until the word poops come I’m pooping r now
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May 10, 2019 22:48
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Whalley posted:You type like real hard and make sure you're sweating bullets the whole time Literally bullets. If you sweat liquid you’re a hack.
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May 11, 2019 00:10
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The poop is also bullets. The bullets are also words. Writing's a very excretory process, it just squeezes out of you from everywhere. Everywhere.
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May 11, 2019 03:06
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My neighbours keep calling the cops on me every time I
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May 11, 2019 03:15
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sebmojo posted:We squat athwart the page and strain until the word poops come Whalley posted:You type like real hard and make sure you’re sweating bullets the whole time This explains why I keep ruining so many keyboards. Actual writing update: Slugged myself past the 44k mark on current novel. I always have a motivation crap-out at 40,000 words or so, so it’s good to be past that. Only problem is I think my second act needs some reworking and isn’t exciting enough–buuuut for now I’m forcing myself to stick to the outline with the mantra of We’ll Fix It In Post.
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May 11, 2019 03:18
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General Battuta posted:What's going on guys, I loving hate prose. Did we figure out how to write yet, and if so, what's the trick. AMPHETAMINES
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May 11, 2019 03:38
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Thank you for the feedback. I appreciate your responses. I don't really like scriptwriting and I was worried about how to convey it otherwise and couldn't think of examples but I didn't realize that Altered Carbon was a book previous to the show (that I only watched some of).
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May 11, 2019 04:44
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Anomalous Blowout posted:Slugged myself past the 44k mark on current novel. I always have a motivation crap-out at 40,000 words or so, so it’s good to be past that. Only problem is I think my second act needs some reworking and isn’t exciting enough–buuuut for now I’m forcing myself to stick to the outline with the mantra of We’ll Fix It In Post. Congrats! Looking at this from a positive POV just getting past your first draft is a perfect time to re-examine if your second act, or whole book, works well. Don't view it as a negative but instead as an opportunity.
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May 13, 2019 01:49
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CONGRATS BLOWOUT!  ...anywho...is there a way to write a teen character without them coming off as annoying or cilched? someone said they much rather write childern (a age group i stopped writing years ago) then plain or teen teens...and i'm uncertain how to avoid the cilched romance issues that plague young adult literature.
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May 13, 2019 14:15
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Fruity20 posted:CONGRATS BLOWOUT! Alternatively, lean into it, because teenagers are annoying and melodramatic IRL
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May 13, 2019 15:15
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Fruity20 posted:CONGRATS BLOWOUT! No, our most talented wordgineers have been working on this problem for years and no one's cracked that nut yet. For real though, absolutely, and you can absolutely avoid cliched teen romance plots by just, y'know, not doing them. You seem to have a clearer idea of what they constitute than we do, so just take those in mind when you're writing and...don't. If you're worried that your writing will end up cliched at the end, there's two things you can do: number one, stop worrying about that, because that's something you fix in editing. You don't worry about whether what you're writing is perfect as you're doing your draft, because it's not going to be perfect. Number two, if you find you're stumbling into a cliche, try turning it on its head. Change the way it works. Look at the underlying assumptions and twist them until it's no longer a cliche. Or lean into it, ramp it up, and make the fact that it's a cliche the point. Either way, make it your own thing, and it won't matter how played out a cliche is. Also, I don't want to assume your motivations or anything, but a lot of the questions you post have this sense of asking permission. Like whether you're allowed to do these things. The answer is: yes. Everything is allowed, especially if you have the guts and the skill to pull it off. I have read books where there are traveling colleges of mimes in a post-apocalyptic setting who take in and train the main character in the secret mime martial arts after he discovers that he's just an imaginary friend made real. I have read books about space travel where the method of getting around is literally shooting yourself in a giant bullet, Georges Méliès style, to the moon, which is where all the movies are shot now. With enough panache and enough practice, you can pull off anything. I'm saying this now though because these sort of "is this allowed" questions are frequently a way that writers keep themselves from writing. These kinds of questions are unhelpful, because everything is allowed if you pull it off, and to pull it off, you first need to write it, so it's just keeping you from actually doing the thing you want.
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May 13, 2019 15:23
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I hope you don't consider this piling on, but I'm going to agree wtih Djeser. A lot of your questions seem to be asking for permission. So if you need it, here it is: Exmond's official ticket given to you: You can, and you should, write. If you need a better person than I saying those words then pick up On Writing by Stephen King, it is half instructional, half motivational and half memoir. The greatest skill a writer can have is perseverance. The second greatest skill is telling their inner critic to shut up. Also, I got published again (potentially, future issue sale). WOOP WOOP!
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May 13, 2019 15:31
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Djeser posted:No, our most talented wordgineers have been working on this problem for years and no one's cracked that nut yet. I'm paranoid as stated before...And i feel like many stories i write or develop largely have young protags (11-21). I can't pull off a believable adult without them becoming a manchild at best to feeling like a child's view on a grown up at worst...
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May 13, 2019 15:32
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If that's the territory you're comfortable in, that's the territory you're comfortable in. The fact that teenage characters are changing and growing and on the precipice of adulthood is a strength you can write toward, not a weakness to avoid.
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May 13, 2019 15:40
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