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Exmond posted:That works but I want the reader to be far away, so the characters do not get names. I'm not sure why you feel you can't use names in third person. Is some vagueness built into the narrative, or some reason beyond you wanting it to feel distant from the action? I don't see how names would change that. But if you don't want to, you could also give more details on the characters' physical appearance or attitudes at some point and then use those additional descriptors. Using "the grizzled man" in place of "the doctor" would make sense if you'd previously described the doctor as grizzled. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 18:34 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 18:32
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fruity20 you seem to like talking about writing more than writing. Prove me wrong.
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May 17, 2019 19:00
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Fruity20, I would like to point out that you are on the discord and the extent of your interactions with us have been saying "hello" and then vanishing into the ether when someone says hello back. You have instant access to multiple writers who are willing and able to help you out and answer questions. I don't think you want to write. I think you want to have written. However, writing doesn't work like that. It's hard, and it's thankless, and if you're not willing to put in the work then perhaps you should think about trying a different storytelling medium that is more interesting to you. Nut up or shut up, dude.
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May 17, 2019 19:10
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CantDecideOnAName posted:Fruity20, I would like to point out that you are on the discord and the extent of your interactions with us have been saying "hello" and then vanishing into the ether when someone says hello back. You have instant access to multiple writers who are willing and able to help you out and answer questions. well, I'm mostly an artist. The reason I wanted to get into writing is because it's weird to come up someone and say "hey you wanna write a comic with me" without getting a few weird looks here and there. That and people like money. So every once and while I write about things like ideas, writing snippets, sentences based on a new word I learned recently. I haven't done those as often as I doodle art or read random articles about climate change or games. I hope this doesn't come off as rude. Since with the internet it's kinda hard to tell if someone is sounded honest or actually lying. (note: I don't have discord on my laptop so once I get home from school i'm gonna start talking more..besides saying hi then running away like a stinging bee. I neglect way too many discord servers as of late) though perhaps I should just do dialouge-free comics as a different way to tell stories. Fruity20 fucked around with this message at 19:42 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 19:24
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Wow Fruity20! It's awesome that you want to do writing! So do we, even though it's hard. As a random example there are nearly 8 million words of goon fiction in the thunderdome archive. Is most of it terrible? Sure! But it's done! Someone sat their rear end in a chair until they had something then hit submit! So that's what you're going to do because this is a   MOD CHALLENGEBefore posting again in Creative Convention you must write and post a story that is at least 600 words long. You can enter thunderdome if you wish, or post your own thread. Don't put it in here though it's not the place. If you post without a story°, you will get a probation to give you some valuable writing time! Don't thank me, all part of the service! ° unless it's to say 'in' in the thunderdome thread
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May 17, 2019 20:08
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feedmyleg posted:I'm not sure why you feel you can't use names in third person. Is some vagueness built into the narrative, or some reason beyond you wanting it to feel distant from the action? I don't see how names would change that. Like, here's an example of a close third: quote:Brad ran through the forest. He hoped he wouldn't trip on a tree root, but, knowing what his father had taught him about the woods, he knew it was inevitable without a careful eye. As he turned past some rocks, he braced himself for the pain that would inevitably tear through his ankle. And here's a distant third: quote:Brad ran through the forest. He jumped over debris with ease, slowing down as he rounded a corner to be faced with a knot of large, buttressed roots. Distance from the characters for the reader isn't about naming or not naming, it's more about how tight you bring the reader in to the character and their thoughts and actions. Third person narrative doesn't cause, or necessitate, distance, any more than first person narratives force a scene where the character looks into a mirror.
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May 17, 2019 20:22
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sebmojo posted:Wow Fruity20! It's awesome that you want to do writing! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 17, 2019 20:42
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sebmojo posted:If you post without a story°, you will get a probation to give you some valuable writing time! Don't thank me, all part of the service! Fruity20 posted:I can write anything as long as it's work safe and prose? (Seems freaking easy) got a good feeling about this mod challenge already
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May 17, 2019 20:55
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Fruity20 posted:I can write anything as long as it's work safe and prose? (Seems freaking easy) Somebody can’t follow instructions!
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May 17, 2019 20:58
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You know what's a really good way to refer to characters in the third person? Pronouns. English even comes with a couple of them, so if you want to get real flamboyant, you could decide that each character has a different one. If you do have two hes or shes or theys in there though, just make sure that the reader can follow the progression of who's doing what through position and context clues. An example: quote:The teacher and the student stood in the closet together. He reached for the doorknob, but he grabbed his hand and shook his head. Who's the first he? Who's the second he? They're probably not the same person but if there's some Evil Dead level shenanigans, maybe he could be grabbing his own hands. Let's try to solve this, but let's solve it without swapping a pronoun for a proper noun. quote:The teacher stood flat against the door, ear pressed against the wood, while the student huddled in the corner. His hand slid toward the doorknob, but then from the corner, he shot up, grabbed his hand, and shook his head frantically. That's better. It's not good, it's still a bit clunky, but by establishing blocking in the first sentence (now I know where the teacher and student are) I can guess from context that the teacher is the one reaching for the door, and the student is the one who's coming out from the corner. There's an even better way to tell who's who in pronouns though, and that's with word order. Context lets you suss out who you're talking about, but proper use of word order makes it intuitive, and it's better if people understand your writing without having to sit there and diagram out your scenes. I'm going to give it another go now, this time making heavier use of word order: quote:The teacher stood flat against the door, his ear pressed against the wood, while the student huddled in the corner, looking up at him. His hand slid toward the doorknob. The student's eyes widened. He shot up, grabbed his hand, and shook his head frantically. Let's run through where the pronouns crop up. His ear, that's easy, there's only one person so far. Even if there wasn't, the teacher is the subject of the sentence and from context, I can guess that it's the teacher's ear. Looking up at him, also easy. There's one person the student could be looking at. Now it gets interesting. His hand: how do I know it's the teacher's hand? One way I know is the blocking, like before. The other way I know is that the last person who was mentioned (via 'him' in the previous sentence) was the teacher. Since the pronouns are right up against each other, I can guess that they're referring to the same person. But that means I can't use 'him' when I switch back to talking about the student, I have to 'name' him again. Then we get to the next pronoun, he shot up. Again, I could figure this out from context, but the word order also tells me who's doing this. 'The student' was the subject of the last sentence, 'he' is the subject of this sentence, so I can tell because they're parallel that we're talking about the student. Grabbed his hand, now this is the real tricky one. Why is it not the student's hand? It could be, but we've already talked about 'his hand' in reference to the teacher's hand. There have been no other hands in play. Think of it like a film montage, if it helps.
Shook his head, it's far more common for someone to shake their own head than someone else's, so my intuitive guess is that the student's shaking his own head. Now, this could be more complicated if it was like "He shot up, grabbed his hand, and pressed a finger to his lips." His own lips, or the teacher's lips? If it was his own, that's easy enough: "...pressed a finger to his own lips." If it wasn't, we could specify that it's the teacher, or we can make it more clear: "...shoved his finger against his lips to keep him from speaking." There, we've got context and order telling us that the student is shoving his (the student's) finger against his lips--we're not sure whose but when we see it's 'to keep him from speaking' we can understand that it's the teacher's lips. Sorry for  ing pronouns but there you go.
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May 17, 2019 21:09
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Djeser posted:Sorry for
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May 17, 2019 21:12
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Fruity20 posted:(I was just wondering if you guys thought it was cool...since I wanna practice writing novels for naowrimo). I don't wanna dogpile on you Fruity and I hope you go and write something and post it, cause even if it's not great it's writing and writing makes you better at writing but this stuck in my brain while I was running to get a drink before typing up that giant post about how to use a pronoun. It doesn't matter what we think is cool. What matters is what you, the author, think is cool. I once wrote a story about a door for Thunderdome. The door was the protagonist. I don't expect anyone else in Thunderdome to think a door is cool, but I thought it was cool, and I wrote it because I thought it was cool, and people read it and said, "Hey, this door is cool." I don't think Romantic poets or London in the 1700's, are cool but I read Tim Powers' book The Anubis Gates, and he obviously thought both of those things were cool, and I enjoyed it, because it was a fun pulp adventure in a setting the author enjoyed with characters the author enjoyed. His enthusiasm was what made the book fun, regardless of my personal opinions about Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Don't ask for permission. Don't ask if we think it's cool. Do it, and show us how cool it is. Djeser fucked around with this message at 21:19 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 21:17
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Fruity, just post the single word “in” in Thunderdome. Then right a lovely spooky story by Sunday. It’s prohibited from being long already!
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May 17, 2019 21:21
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I'm backseat modding but can the earliest point for Fruity be Sunday at ~11pm or something? Writing something and then posting without drafting, editing, stepping away, etc. will be a bad habit to start with. I farted out that date and time bc that's close to the deadline for Thunderdome if they enter.
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May 17, 2019 21:26
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Djeser posted:It doesn't matter what we think is cool. What matters is what you, the author, think is cool. I once wrote a story about a door for Thunderdome. The door was the protagonist. I don't expect anyone else in Thunderdome to think a door is cool, but I thought it was cool, and I wrote it because I thought it was cool, and people read it and said, "Hey, this door is cool." I don't think Romantic poets or London in the 1700's, are cool but I read Tim Powers' book The Anubis Gates, and he obviously thought both of those things were cool, and I enjoyed it, because it was a fun pulp adventure in a setting the author enjoyed with characters the author enjoyed. His enthusiasm was what made the book fun, regardless of my personal opinions about Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Steven Brust posted:“The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature is as follows: All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. And that works all the way from the external trappings to the level of metaphor, subtext, and the way one uses words. In other words, I happen not to think that full-plate armor and great big honking greatswords are cool. I don't like 'em. I like cloaks and rapiers. So I write stories with a lot of cloaks and rapiers in 'em, 'cause that's cool. Guys who like military hardware, who think advanced military hardware is cool, are not gonna jump all over my books, because they have other ideas about what's cool.
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May 17, 2019 21:29
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Who has a link to that Discord that was mentioned earlier?
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May 17, 2019 21:39
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Daric posted:Who has a link to that Discord that was mentioned earlier? https://discord.gg/SRNurT
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May 17, 2019 21:49
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That "Cool Stuff Theory" is great, and feels very relevant to my current situation. I'm closing in on the third draft of my book, and over the two years I've been writing the damned thing it's absorbed a lot of stuff I think is cool that I didn't set out to put in it when I started out. The more research holes I went down and the more interests I pulled in from my general cultural absorption, the more the book pulled in lots of details and flavors from all of them. It's made the book more interesting and complex for sure, but I'm starting to think about what the next pass is going to look like and I've been wondering if I should pull back on some of that "cool stuff" because it feels like maybe I overstuffed the book to the point of giving it a schizophrenic personality. Anyone have thoughts on how to tell what's too much and how to tell what gives the work its character and identity? I've heard that when it comes to research you want to take as much of it off the page as you can so it doesn't feel like a constant parade of "it sounds like this guy read a 1920s Boy Scout manual before he wrote this passage," but how do I make sure all these elements aren't making the thing feel all over the place while making sure you don't remove something that's making it unique? I'm guessing that I should just do a polish pass that irons out a lot of the significant character/prose wrinkles I've got then just hand it to some readers and see what pops up for them, but also curious how others have dealt with this. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 21:52 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 21:49
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feedmyleg posted:Anyone have thoughts on how to tell what's too much and how to tell what gives the work its character and identity? I've heard that when it comes to research you want to take as much of it off the page as you can so it doesn't feel like a constant parade of "it sounds like this guy read a 1920s Boy Scout manual before he wrote this passage," but how do I make sure all these elements aren't making the thing feel all over the place while making sure you don't remove something that's making it unique? Ultimately, I think your guesswork is right - get the text in some people's hands, ask them what's working and what's not, and go from there. I'm not a fan of prescriptivist writing advice - for every Hemingway there's a Joyce, for every Gene Wolfe there's a Robin Hobb. If something's important, and you find it cool, paint that poo poo as cool and like Djeser said, your enthusiasm for the subject is likely going to be much more of a selling point than a drawback. e: Personally, if there's something I've researched or experienced that I wanna put in the book as something relatively dry, I'll find a way to make it characters explaining poo poo to each other with some conflict in place. Give an infodump a character reason to exist, or just don't put it in. That's my technique, anyway. Wungus fucked around with this message at 22:11 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 22:05
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Many books have passages where I'm, for a brief moment, going "ha, I bet this passage exists because the author loved this idea for a scene/got really into the thing described here". Ideally, this moment passes really quickly, because the scene doesn't really stick out, fits the world and is genuinely well-written. It's not a problem to put these somewhat out-there pet peeves in, if you can pull it off. I agree that it might be a little harder to do if you're suddenly going into deep detail out of nowhere, but if it's actually becoming your style at this point, then it's paradoxically easier. Because then I'll be expecting it.
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May 17, 2019 22:23
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feedmyleg posted:Anyone have thoughts on how to tell what's too much and how to tell what gives the work its character and identity? I've heard that when it comes to research you want to take as much of it off the page as you can so it doesn't feel like a constant parade of "it sounds like this guy read a 1920s Boy Scout manual before he wrote this passage," but how do I make sure all these elements aren't making the thing feel all over the place while making sure you don't remove something that's making it unique? I’m currently going through an edit where I’m yanking out bits that sound too much like, “I just researched this!” We were discussing Autonomous by Annalee Newitz on the discord the other day in less than glowing terms, and the problem was her character had no voice—everything sounded like a tech blogger (which the author is) imagining all the cool new tech she could possibly think up, and cramming it into her story with the same tech blogger voice. It was atrocious. And then I noticed myself doing the same thing in one of my chapters  In my rewrite I was able to take some of the same details (but not all of them—some poo poo just had to be cut) and reframing it how my protagonist would tell the story. The point being it had to tell a story, it had to weave seamlessly into the existing story, not just be a cool thing for no reason other than I thought it was cool.First person helps me frame things a lot because the question is always, Why would my narrator say this?
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May 17, 2019 22:25
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The Sean posted:I'm backseat modding but can the earliest point for Fruity be Sunday at ~11pm or something? Writing something and then posting without drafting, editing, stepping away, etc. will be a bad habit to start with. I farted out that date and time bc that's close to the deadline for Thunderdome if they enter. We are keeping it simple I fear reading comprehension may not be a core competency
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May 17, 2019 22:26
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Whalley posted:I think it's really down to your voice - so long as you're putting personality (or gravity) to your Here's Some Cool poo poo blocks of text, what you're seeing as a problem might not actually be one. Do you have an example of the kind of thing you're concerned might be too much? One of two intertwining storylines in the book involves a kid detective (who is a big pulp sci-fi fan) getting sucked into the world of crazy conspiracy theories, which leads them down the wrong path on the mystery that they're trying to solve. So in just that part of the story I insert passages from sci-fi magazines that they're reading, passages from the conspiracy theory magazine that they find, excerpts from newspaper clippings of their past mysteries, a chapter that (in a hopefully fun fakeout) begins with the ending of a sci-fi b-movie that they're watching, an atomic scientist who gives dramatic and biblical speeches about the nuclear arms race filled with terrifying true detail. It's all relevant to the plot and all of it comes from a place of character, but I'm just worried that it feels like too much going on at once. And that's just one of the two storylines— the other has its fair share of tangents it goes down as well: a group of conspiracy theorists getting excited about the dawn of CB radio, discussions of philosophical and sociopolitical worldviews, a passage from a magazine about this new beatnik craze, etc. I think you get a pretty good view of where my concerns lay with that. I want it to be a 50s sci-fi b-movie, but also a YA detective story, but also a rebellious youth rock-and-roll fable, but also a summer romance, but also a... e: I think it's more cohesive than that description implies and I exaggerated here and there to illustrate my anxieties, and again all of this stuff fits within the story nicely and comes from a place of character, but it's not the streamlined narrative I set out to write. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 22:48 on May 17, 2019 |
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May 17, 2019 22:44
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Exmond posted:Let's talk about writing Third Person Omnscient. I have a short story (I'll post it to TD soon so you can critique it later), that is set in that POV. One thing that is bugging me is my characters are called, "The Doctor", "The Father" and "The mega-shark". rely on your reader's ability to keep an internal consistency while reading your story. if one char is talking to another, you don't need to say poo poo very often. people will understand it's ping-ponging. i tried to rewrite your paragraph but was super loving confused as to what was happening. he leaves to get a glass of water then sees the dad? who was he talking to and who took the bill?
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May 17, 2019 22:45
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feedmyleg posted:One of two intertwining storylines in the book involves a kid detective (who is a big pulp sci-fi fan) getting sucked into the world of crazy conspiracy theories, which leads them down the wrong path on the mystery that they're trying to solve. So in just that part of the story I insert passages from sci-fi magazines that they're reading, passages from the conspiracy theory magazine that they find, excerpts from newspaper clippings of their past mysteries, a chapter that (in a hopefully fun fakeout) begins with the ending of a sci-fi b-movie that they're watching, an atomic scientist who gives dramatic and biblical speeches about the nuclear arms race filled with terrifying true detail. this kind of question is really hard to answer without examples.
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May 17, 2019 23:11
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sebmojo posted:this kind of question is really hard to answer without examples. Makes sense! I know there's probably prose issues (I'd be curious to hear anything egregious, even if that's not the purpose of this), but if you can look past those I think that gives a good sense of what sort of rabbit-holes the book goes into. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 13:06 on May 20, 2019 |
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May 18, 2019 04:09
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How do you all write texts? When it's a single text, I've been writing something like "I received a late-night text from Mom:" and the text comes after the colon or on the next line center-justified like a screenplay. But I'm writing something now that requires an entire conversation. I've been writing it using the framework of actual texts. Person texting the protagonist is left justified with their name and a timestamp under each and the protag is right justified with "me timestamp" under it. I think it works though it's taking up a lot of space for a small amount of words. Exmond posted:Let's talk about writing Third Person Omnscient. I have a short story (I'll post it to TD soon so you can critique it later), that is set in that POV. One thing that is bugging me is my characters are called, "The Doctor", "The Father" and "The mega-shark". People have given you good advice but another thing you can consider is dropping the articles for one or more characters. "Doctor" or "Doc" vs "The Doctor". Makes it easier to read. I'd recommend reading "Milkman" by Anna Burns. Nobody is named and characters have awkward sobriquets like maybe-boyfriend, third brother-in-law, tablets girl. There's three different varieties of "Milkman" that reference two different characters. Good stuff.
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May 18, 2019 05:41
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for texts, u can prob just do it like normal dialogue. like blab blab blab person texted blah other person responded including timestamps doesnt feel really important unless ur either rly trying to hammer home authentic texting, it’s a story whose gimmick is it’s told entirely thru texts so u keep the timestamps to amplify that feeling of reading a text history, or if the time it takes between the replies are super important (but then again, u can just say things like “it took her fifteen minutes to respond” instead of having a timestamp on every message) it’s mostly preference tho and feeling out what works best for the kind of story ur telling
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May 18, 2019 05:50
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flerp posted:for texts, u can prob just do it like normal dialogue. Are you having a stroke?
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May 18, 2019 09:21
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sebmojo posted:Wow Fruity20! It's awesome that you want to do writing! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3889797&pagenumber=1&perpage=30#post495190994 Here's my submission for the mod challenge. I hope you like it  (this is legit, a story, this time)
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May 18, 2019 13:41
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Doctor Zero posted:Are you having a stroke? no sir
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May 18, 2019 17:05
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Expired link 
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May 19, 2019 06:23
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Yeah if anyone else has an active link to the Discord I'd love to get it. I took a few days off from writing and then a great solution to an important plot point came to me from the heavens* so I've been hitting it pretty steady ever since. I do need to set some time aside to watch Brandon Sanderson's class on Pacing though because I feel like I'm moving a little too fast. *boxed wine
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May 24, 2019 17:56
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I mean Dionysus was a god so...
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May 24, 2019 22:42
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Hey I’d love an invite to the Discord too! I’m having trouble with my MS. I’ve done some massive rewrites and edits and now I feel like all I’m doing is slightly rearranging words. My premise gets a lot of interest from pitch events and contests and my query is polished but whenever anyone looks at pages all their interest dies. Obviously something is critically wrong with my writing but all the critique groups I’ve passed it around with are too polite to really tear into it. I’d love some tough but fair goon eyes on it but I’m also worried about starting a thread. My MS is for the Middle Grade market and I’m afraid some PTA or something is going to track down my thread years later and get me blackballed from the kids’ author club for being a goon who swears and talks about anime or something. And how do critique threads work? Do I post it a chapter at a time or should I just ask for volunteers to look over the whole thing? Edit: I should mention I’m also interested in swapping MSs because I wouldn’t feel right asking anyone to read a whole book for me for nothing. (Though to be fair it’s MG so it’s only 50k words) Getsuya fucked around with this message at 16:58 on May 28, 2019 |
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May 28, 2019 16:19
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Getsuya posted:Edit: I should mention I’m also interested in swapping MSs because I wouldn’t feel right asking anyone to read a whole book for me for nothing.
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May 29, 2019 01:33
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nae is a saint who does too much good
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May 29, 2019 02:07
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flerp posted:for texts, u can prob just do it like normal dialogue. Please tell me you published something, I would love to read it.
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May 31, 2019 14:26
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TigerXtrm posted:Please tell me you published something, I would love to read it. sure, there’s https://bluemarblereview.com/flying/ or http://www.vestalreview.org/issue50/ (mine is the flower one) or http://www.flash-frontier.com/november-2016-birds/#twittering or http://www.manawaker.com/podcast/ffp-0133-a-plea-to-the-little-bird/ or a few others if ur so inclined to want some more
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May 31, 2019 15:00
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Huh. So you can use capital letters and full-length words, you just choose not to when asking for writing advice.
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May 31, 2019 15:10
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