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Nae! posted:It's 109,000 words, so about the standard length of a published fantasy novel. I can export it in the iPad e-reader format and DM or email you the file. I am not sure if you can do any kind of note-taking or mark-up in there, either. himynameisdrevil@hotmail.com don’t have DMs, sorry. REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Nov 17, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 00:06
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I'm working on a story that involves an incident of abuse and nearly sexual assault, and I want to have the victim develop a good/semi-romantic relationship with the perpetrator afterward but I'm worried of how it might come off. I don't want it to seem like it's glamorizing or making light of abuse.
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Nov 17, 2019 06:16
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Nae! posted:I'm interested in getting a couple of beta readers for an adult fantasy novel I'd like to start shopping around next year. Is this the best place to ask? I’d be interested, shoot me a PM
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Nov 17, 2019 07:59
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oot posted:I'm working on a story that involves an incident of abuse and nearly sexual assault, and I want to have the victim develop a good/semi-romantic relationship with the perpetrator afterward but I'm worried of how it might come off. I don't want it to seem like it's glamorizing or making light of abuse. I'm going to need more context, but my gut reaction is "please do not write this"
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Nov 17, 2019 08:00
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oot posted:I'm working on a story that involves an incident of abuse and nearly sexual assault, and I want to have the victim develop a good/semi-romantic relationship with the perpetrator afterward Why? That's not sarcasm, or 'why god why'; I genuinely want to know why you feel this is the direction you want to go. What is it about this victim that makes them want to keep their abuser in their life? This is something you're going to need a very good answer to in order to write this well. sephiRoth IRA posted:I’d be interested, shoot me a PM REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:himynameisdrevil@hotmail.com don’t have DMs, sorry. Contacted! Thanks, both of you! FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Nov 17, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 09:09
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Nae! posted:Why? yeah, the only real answer is 'do it very, very well' which sounds unhelpful but it isn't - it's more that you need to unpack what 'doing it well' means for you.
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Nov 17, 2019 09:36
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You can shoot me a PM too, Nae!, I could try my hand at beta-reading. oot posted:I'm working on a story that involves an incident of abuse and nearly sexual assault, and I want to have the victim develop a good/semi-romantic relationship with the perpetrator afterward but I'm worried of how it might come off. I don't want it to seem like it's glamorizing or making light of abuse. Are you, the author, a man? Is your main character the perp? If the answers to those are yes to both, don't write this. Really, don't. If you're absolutely sure that you need to write this story, I would probably start by asking some questions: Does my perp need to be that villainous an rear end in a top hat - do they need to go that far? Look as hard as you can for ways to tone down how villainous the character is. Why would my victim, who has a lot of negative feelings towards the perp, be able to overcome that and turn those around into positive feelings?
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Nov 17, 2019 15:13
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Antivehicular posted:I'm going to need more context, but my gut reaction is "please do not write this" Nae! posted:Why? Partly because it feels psychologically real to me. I've known people who stayed or became romantic or friendly with a former abuser. And in fact, if that didn't happen, there would be no such thing as an abusive relationship. Only abusive incidents. The abused character also has a history of trauma, and I've noticed that can make you more susceptible to abusive relationships because you find it perversely comforting in its familiarity or have less context to realize it could be better. It also works well dramatically. It fits the pacing and thematic development of the story. There would be two betrayals, one of which is the assault and another that happens later. The second one isn't very meaningful if there's no trust to begin with. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:You can shoot me a PM too, Nae!, I could try my hand at beta-reading. I'm not a man, and the perpetrator isn't the viewpoint character, but he is the character the story's "about" as a villain that's slowly developed, appears in almost every chapter and mirrors the protagonist's internal conflict. The assault happens toward the middle-beginning of the story and it's illustrative of the villain's history and how frightening he is. How the victim turns it around into positive feelings is the part that's the most difficult to write, but besides what I already mentioned about abusive relationships, it has to do with the victim and the perpetrator having similar histories and sort of understanding each other better than they do most other characters. oot fucked around with this message at 23:27 on May 1, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2019 18:03
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oot posted:I'm working on a story that involves an incident of abuse and nearly sexual assault, and I want to have the victim develop a good/semi-romantic relationship with the perpetrator afterward but I'm worried of how it might come off. I don't want it to seem like it's glamorizing or making light of abuse. Write it, just write it. Close the door, don't ask for permission. WRITE IT. When it comes to revisions and sharing, be extremly careful. It's a very touchy subject, one that is prone to miscommunication. I think Sebmojo summed it up well. sebmojo posted:yeah, the only real answer is 'do it very, very well' which sounds unhelpful but it isn't - it's more that you need to unpack what 'doing it well' means for you. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Are you, the author, a man? The author hasn't revealed anything related to gender on their story, and you have now put them in the onus of revealing their gender. I think this question could have been worded better, to truly get your meaning across. If I have offended you with this comment, which I don't mean to, we can take this to PMs.
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Nov 17, 2019 18:59
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Exmond posted:The author hasn't revealed anything related to gender on their story, and you have now put them in the onus of revealing their gender. I think this question could have been worded better, to truly get your meaning across. If I have offended you with this comment, which I don't mean to, we can take this to PMs. Thank you, although I don't really mind revealing my gender because I understand what they were getting at. If the assault was male on female (which it is, incidentally, I just didn't specify because of a habit of being vague when talking about my writing) and I was a man, it could seem like a disturbing self-insert fantasy of assault with no consequences.
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Nov 17, 2019 19:10
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Exmond posted:Write it, just write it. Close the door, don't ask for permission. WRITE IT. Naw it's a fair question and relevant to this particular scenario, oot didn't need to answer after all.
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Nov 17, 2019 20:08
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If the question is "why does my abuse victim character keep their abuser in their life/deepen the relationship," well, there are a lot of answers. Maybe severing isn't a practical option. Maybe they've been socialized to always love and forgive instead of protecting themselves. Maybe they have issues of their own and think they deserve it, or it's normal. If they get together, and it's hosed up and terrible but the victim thinks it's fine... that's realistic enough, if grim and volatile. If the question is "how can I turn this abusive relationship into a healthy and positive one in my story without glorifying or minimizing the abuse," you probably can't; at bare minimum, it would require the abuser to be legitimately repentant and to successfully change their behavior for good, and even then it's hard to sell this as something healthy for the victim without it painting their history of abuse as not a big deal. Please do not write this.
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Nov 17, 2019 22:54
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Exmond posted:The author hasn't revealed anything related to gender on their story, and you have now put them in the onus of revealing their gender. I think this question could have been worded better, to truly get your meaning across. If I have offended you with this comment, which I don't mean to, we can take this to PMs. Yeah, it could perhaps have been worded better. Before I posted that, though, I did change it from asking "Are you a man" to a rhetorical conditional statement ("IF you are a man") specifically so they wouldn't have to answer if they didn't want to. But yes, it could have been worded better. oot posted:it could seem like a disturbing self-insert fantasy of assault with no consequences. I wasn't trying to imply that, just that a man writing about a sexual assault victim (I did presume a male perp and a female victim) getting romantically involved with her assaulter could make an already hard-to-handle subject easier to get wrong. If the assaulter is supposed to be a villain, that's not quite as troublesome than if the reader is supposed to like that character. But yes, this: Antivehicular posted:If the question is "why does my abuse victim character keep their abuser in their life/deepen the relationship," well, there are a lot of answers. Maybe severing isn't a practical option. Maybe they've been socialized to always love and forgive instead of protecting themselves. Maybe they have issues of their own and think they deserve it, or it's normal. If they get together, and it's hosed up and terrible but the victim thinks it's fine... that's realistic enough, if grim and volatile. If the villain is there for the victim to overcome and move on from, that's less tricky than if they're supposed to end up in a healthy relationship.
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Nov 17, 2019 23:18
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If you're doing it, just make sure you're doing it for a reason beyond "It would help move the story forward in a convenient way." Otherwise it's just exploitative. Having the point be "Yeah abuse victims staying with their abusers is a bummer, right?" isn't enough. You need it to resonate throughout the story and ladder up so some larger thematic point.
feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Nov 18, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 23:20
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Oot, we can’t critique your vague, edgy ideas unless we can see how it’s executed. Let’s read your actual writing.
Saucy_Rodent fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Nov 18, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 23:33
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Antivehicular posted:If the question is "how can I turn this abusive relationship into a healthy and positive one in my story without glorifying or minimizing the abuse," you probably can't; at bare minimum, it would require the abuser to be legitimately repentant and to successfully change their behavior for good, and even then it's hard to sell this as something healthy for the victim without it painting their history of abuse as not a big deal. Please do not write this. oot posted:There would be two betrayals, one of which is the assault and another that happens later. The second one isn't very meaningful if there's no trust to begin with.
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Nov 18, 2019 00:24
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I was wondering, maybe OOT could do the enemy turned lovers tropes? This isn't an excuse to gush over Gideon the Ninth I swear.
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Nov 18, 2019 00:39
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Fish Noise posted:hmm. i'm not seeing it: That's fair! I really wasn't sure what oot was going for and figured I'd cover all the bases
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Nov 18, 2019 00:55
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My advice would be to read accounts by victims of similar abuse and near sexual assault to make sure you don't come off like an oblivious dumbass Like if you're going to use that subject to edify yourself through the entertainment of readers, I hope you're well read on it
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Nov 18, 2019 01:18
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Sitting Here posted:My advice would be to read accounts by victims of similar abuse and near sexual assault to make sure you don't come off like an oblivious dumbass Yes, this. I recommend Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft as an excellent primer on the dynamics of domestic abuse and the psychology of abusers.
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Nov 18, 2019 01:25
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feedmyleg posted:If you're doing it, just make sure you're doing it for a reason beyond "It would help move the story forward in a convenient way." Otherwise it's just exploitative. Having the point be "Yeah abuse victims staying with their abusers is a bummer, right?" isn't enough. You need it to resonate throughout the story and ladder up so some larger thematic point. The assault is thematically important and so is the victim's reaction to it. It weaves into both of their character arcs as well as the protagonist's. I can't address any other posts without going into spoilers, but I think I might have their relationship do most of the development before the assault takes place rather than after, and have them be chilly the whole time afterward. It would be easier to write without producing a hosed up message, and would also fit with the rest plot just as well. And be even more dramatic now that I think about it. The second betrayal wasn't just going to be of the victim either, so she can be the one saying "I told you so."
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Nov 18, 2019 03:17
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This was my major source of writer's block so thanks everyone for giving me fresh perspectives that helped me figure it out.
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Nov 18, 2019 03:20
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oot posted:spoilers This may be a moot point now, but asking for writing advice about plot points you won't elaborate on because of spoilers is really not very helpful for anyone involved. It's like asking for cooking advice and refusing to specify what ingredients or methods you're using because "don't you want to be surprised?" Good advice requires specific knowledge of the problem!
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Nov 18, 2019 03:56
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Antivehicular posted:This may be a moot point now, but asking for writing advice about plot points you won't elaborate on because of spoilers is really not very helpful for anyone involved. It's like asking for cooking advice and refusing to specify what ingredients or methods you're using because "don't you want to be surprised?" Good advice requires specific knowledge of the problem!
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Nov 18, 2019 04:02
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Antivehicular posted:This may be a moot point now, but asking for writing advice about plot points you won't elaborate on because of spoilers is really not very helpful for anyone involved. It's like asking for cooking advice and refusing to specify what ingredients or methods you're using because "don't you want to be surprised?" Good advice requires specific knowledge of the problem! Okay, I'll keep that in mind.
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Nov 18, 2019 04:41
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I've already gotten some feedback from betas, including one very fantastic goon who not only finished the book, but found so many typos that I missed over the course of six drat drafts. Sometimes I forget how awesome this site is, but it's times like this that I'm reminded how lucky I am to have found this place as a bored teen. Thank you guys so much for all of your help!
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Nov 19, 2019 05:47
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https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/books/review/workshops-of-empire-by-eric-bennett.html I just stumbled across a link to this interesting article about how a lot of modern writing advice, such as "show, don't tell", is a result of Cold War politics specifically designed to discourage writers from writing social critiques. I am going to check out the book.
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Nov 24, 2019 20:19
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I've just read a book that claims "show, don't tell" comes from Percy Lubbock's The Craft of Fiction, which is a book published in 1921, which is a bit early for Cold War.
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Nov 24, 2019 21:15
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Show don't tell is not a CIA psyop. Sorry, socialists. And the Iowa School was just one school. Its impact on the American literary landscape was more of an impact on what books people thought were literary than an impact on what books people wrote. You look around and you can find tons of books from the Cold War period that were extremely explicitly about political issues. The Dispossessed is an entire novel about collectivism and anarchism, and that was written in 1974, right in the middle of the Cold War.
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Nov 24, 2019 23:59
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Yeah, that guy's full of poo poo. "Show, don't tell," is self-evidently good storytelling advice because it's what storytelling fundamentally is. It's what separates even a story as blatantly political as The Dispossessed from an essay on anarchism and the Cold War superpowers. Edit: The idea that it could somehow suppress political expression is also nonsense. Countless books have been censored for "showing" ideals that they never actually "tell" outright. Animal Farm managed to get banned in the USSR without once leaving the realm of metaphor. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 07:11
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Yeah, that guy's full of poo poo. "Show, don't tell," is self-evidently good storytelling advice because it's what storytelling fundamentally is. It's what separates even a story as blatantly political as The Dispossessed from an essay on anarchism and the Cold War superpowers. *adjusts glasses* Actually, the phrase 'Four legs good, two legs bad' was quite tell-y, and could've been shown through an extended dream sequence in which the animals struggle with past hurts brought about by those with two legs.
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Nov 25, 2019 16:10
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Nae! posted:*adjusts glasses* Actually, the phrase 'Four legs good, two legs bad' was quite tell-y, and could've been shown through an extended dream sequence in which the animals struggle with past hurts brought about by those with two legs.
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Nov 26, 2019 00:26
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Thoughts on exposition-dumps? Is there any way to do them right, or is the only good approach to weave them throughout the narrative over the course of the story? I'm writing a cyberpunk thing where I need to convey the events between now and that future, but I'm having trouble not just writing a couple of pages of history in the first chapter (after establishing the hook). If it's somewhat engaging on its own, it that sort of thing ever pulled off well? Or is always work for the reader to get through?
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Dec 6, 2019 15:21
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feedmyleg posted:Thoughts on exposition-dumps? Is there any way to do them right, or is the only good approach to weave them throughout the narrative over the course of the story? It's probably the latter. Books are probably the worst medium for exposition dumps, because TV, movies, and video games can jazz up exposition with music and visuals. Books only have words on a page. You'd be amazed at how effectively you can build a world without exposition dumps. "Outrageous Fortune" by Tim Scott has a world where city neighbourhoods are organized by music genre (really), houses can be packed up and stolen over night, you can take commercially-sold drugs that give you custom-designed dreams, and you can be infected by nano-bot viruses which play advertisements, among other strange stuff, and it's all explained quite organically through the novel so the strange world makes sense. Don't be afraid to dump readers in and explain a little at a time. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Dec 6, 2019 |
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Dec 6, 2019 16:12
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feedmyleg posted:Thoughts on exposition-dumps? Is there any way to do them right, or is the only good approach to weave them throughout the narrative over the course of the story? One way to sugar the exposition pill is by pretending it's something from an in-world source - a documentary, say, or an article from your world's Wikipedia-equivalent. It could even be a transcript of a talk-show panel where the guests are arguing over the meaning of this or that event, or a tweet thread from an in-world media figure with a bunch of dirtbags offering sarcastic commentary, which gets some interesting conflict going. Anyway, it avoids having an omniscient 3rd person pulling you out of the story for a few pages. Also it could be a good fit for a cyberpunk setting where everyone's being barraged by media all the time.
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Dec 6, 2019 16:37
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feedmyleg posted:Thoughts on exposition-dumps? Is there any way to do them right, or is the only good approach to weave them throughout the narrative over the course of the story? Read Lies of Locke Lamora. There are whole chapters of exposition dumps, later on in the story, and each chapter that does it is it's own little story about the city that eventually ties back into the greater narrative. The author does this later on in the book, when you are fully engaged with the story. For a bad example of exposition dumps, read Tears in the Rain by Rosa Montero
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Dec 6, 2019 16:56
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feedmyleg posted:Thoughts on exposition-dumps? Is there any way to do them right, or is the only good approach to weave them throughout the narrative over the course of the story? As with anything else like this, it's fine as long as it's enjoyable to read. A dry textbook of information your reader needs before they can appreciate the story won't come across well: it feels like you're setting the reader homework. However one character explaining things to another can work (as long as there's a reason for that character not to know the things they're being told. "As you know, Bob..." is never a good thing). A framing device can also work, although be careful you're not using one just to use one. My current redrafting project is an alt history, and I wanted to give some information about the ways the world was different quite quickly. My main character is a history student... so I wrote an early chapter where she's in a seminar and debating with other students about the effects of a particular historic event. It let me get a lot of the ways the world was different across quickly while having both an in-universe reason why it was happening and narrative consequence. The last thing I'd say is that you CAN just have big blocks of text where you tell your reader things, but they have to be really, really good big blocks of text. To put this in a cyberpunk context, Neal Stephenson could get away with explaining smart skateboards, Mafia pizza cars and Sumerian mythology for page after page in Snow Crash because he made them entertaining to read. To go back to the "read more, write more" advice, look at how books you enjoy have handled it, or how books you haven't liked have messed it up.
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Dec 6, 2019 18:02
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feedmyleg posted:Thoughts on exposition-dumps? Is there any way to do them right, or is the only good approach to weave them throughout the narrative over the course of the story? Been reading The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass (such a good writing book), and this is all he has to say on infodumps: Donald Maass posted:Take dry facts. Almost every story requires that you explain some things to your readers. Scientific, historical, occupational, or local knowledge is needed for the story to make sense. This stuff can sit on the page like a lump. When it does, it’s called info dump. Or it can feel lively, engaging, and important. That happens when that information means something to a point of view character and you put that down in words. That’s it really. When readers complain about infodumps, they’re usually complaining, “Why should we care?” If the pov character has no reason to care about the info, including it usually stands out, feels suspect. If you need to recount history, the most effective opening historical infodumps I’ve seen are the ones where some character related to the main narrative has been affected by that history, were involved in it or destroyed by it in some way. Otherwise, it’s usually better to weave the info in gradually. However, don’t let that stop you from actually writing a huge infodump at the beginning of the novel. Do it, to get it straight in your own mind, and then stick it in your pile of notes instead of calling it a prologue or chapter 1 or whatever.
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Dec 6, 2019 18:30
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Awesome, thanks for the perspective everyone. I'll try to keep the infodumping to the bare minimum and have any that remains be in context of the moment. I think it helps that it's written in first person so it's not an omniscient narrator, it's a guy telling his own story with the details he feels are relevant. Right now I'm still in the "getting way ahead of yourself by writing a bit of prose for fun because you're still outlining and notecarding" phase, but it'll help me in thinking about how I structure it. I've been doing a good amount of research, too, so it's also probably me having the urge to get some of that on the page, which I know is a bad instinct. For reference, the story takes place in future Hollywood and opens on the narrator (an actor) watching footage of another actor get murdered. All of the information I feel the need to convey is about how Hollywood went from what it is today to what it is in 100 years—which involves some obscure factual history that slowly morphs into future fictional-history. This is the slop-draft kind of stuff I've got so far: quote:--removed-- Y'all have confirmed my suspicions that I should just try to organically work it in as I go rather than just get it out of the way early on. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Dec 12, 2019 |
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Dec 6, 2019 20:44
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Is it anything like Nostradamus Ate My Hamster? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus_Ate_My_Hamster
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Dec 6, 2019 22:11
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