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In terms of the plot discussion, I've found Jami Gold's worksheets really useful for figuring out the basics of plot. What I like best is that she gives example page layouts for each beat andvsection. Obviously, sticking to this rigidly and writing by numbers is probably a bad idea, but it's been very helpful for me in terms of figuring out the basics of plot. The Master Beat Sheet is my favourite.
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Apr 3, 2014 10:17
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systran posted:Advice for Tube Knight: Worry way more about plot before you try to cram biblical symbolism and world building in. It's so easy to have a cool world and a tacked-on plot, I've done it in a 50,000 word novel. Oops! This actually sort of ties into something I've been thinking about/struggling with for a while, so I'll springboard it into a question of my own. In general I approach fiction through characters first and foremost, and that's where I start most stories. I'll have my protagonist (at least a general sense of who they are, their personality, their values, their skills and their flaws, where they come from and how it's shaped them), some supporting characters or antagonists that'll bounce off of them well or serve as interesting foils, an idea of what the story is about in a grand thematic sense, and a few specific ideas for story beats (ranging anywhere from vague "I'd like to write this kind of story" plot/genre ideas to specific scenes or even just snippets of dialog). Ultimately, though, all of that isn't very useful without a strong plot to pull it together, and that can be a real stumbling block. Coming up with a plot isn't necessarily difficult; it usually only takes a little bit of time for all those individual ideas to start naturally stitching themselves together into a coherent narrative: if the shootout is the climax, then the protagonist's burnt-out cop buddy is the most logical way to get us there, so we need a a reason to have them working together on this case, which means we start with the hero coming on as a consultant; etc., etc. It works, more or less, but ultimately I'm just connecting the dots and that's what the plot ends up feeling like. Does anybody have advice for going from the concept stage to specific beat-by-beat plotting without falling into the "and then, and then, and then..." trap? Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 10:21
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Opposing Farce posted:This actually sort of ties into something I've been thinking about/struggling with for a while, so I'll springboard it into a question of my own. If this is a first draft, write out the "and then, and then, and then," crap. It won't happen any other way. I'm only like 30,000 words into my first real attempt at a novel, and one of the most useful and humbling lessons I'm learning (over and over again) in this process is that you just won't get all the stuff you want in on the first go. A novice mistake in sketching is when the artist tries to jump straight into the "fun" details of a picture, forgoing things like proportion or perspective. So you get an elaborate anime face on an undersized body, hands lazily hidden behind the figure's back. To continue with the metaphor, I think beat sheets and outlines are the equivalent of a thumbnail sketch. But you still have to lay down the actual sketch, and build the composition from there. I think it comes down to being afraid of writing The Bad Version. Pretty much, like, just write and etc
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Apr 3, 2014 10:39
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Gonna echo Sitting Here on this: just keep going, don't be afraid to write that messy, disjointed first draft full of plot holes and contrived meetings. It's fine. That's why editing exists. But I will add one thing. I've experienced the same process - I'm doing it again right now - and one thing I have learned for smoothing events out into a more realistic pattern is pay attention to your characters' goals, especially if they conflict with getting all the pieces and people in the right places for that key scene or climax you've been looking forward to. Maybe that scene isn't going to take place in the way you thought, maybe it's going to be completely different or happen in a different way, maybe it's not going to happen at all. Let that plot grow from characters' motivations, rather than trying to fine-tune their motivations in order to serve the plot.
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Apr 3, 2014 12:13
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btw guys, SaddestRhino had a short story published in a real magazine, so you take his advice more seriously as of now!!!
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Apr 3, 2014 13:08
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Hey, me too, depending on your defintion of... you know, "real" magazine 
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Apr 3, 2014 13:19
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gameplusmeagan posted:Quick tip for anyone in the horror genre: I use http://horrortree.com to keep an eye out for submission calls and have had some success with them so far. It's a nice directory of publications seeking short stories, novellas, and novels, and it's very nicely organized.
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Apr 3, 2014 13:25
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Hungry posted:Gonna echo Sitting Here on this: just keep going, don't be afraid to write that messy, disjointed first draft full of plot holes and contrived meetings. It's fine. That's why editing exists. Depending on how long a story is I'll often even write a character dossier or two listing out the important goals, motivations, under thoughts and etc. It helps a lot with keeping your characters acting appropriately and helps to brand each of your characters as distinct. Not to mention, once you can lay out the building blocks in front of you it's much easier to visualize how they fit together.
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Apr 3, 2014 13:32
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General Battuta posted:Don't pay for submissions! Unless you mean postage or whatever. Money moves from the publisher/agent to the author, not the other way around. Oh, I should have specified that it's for query letters, stamps, envelopes and the like. I definitely know how agencies work, but the little details of when to send your info in or what literary people in particular want tends to trick me up.  As for characters, for my first book, I didn't really have much of my characters drawn out except for one of the main ones. Honestly, I kind of liked it that way. By not drawing out too much, it allowed the characters to change and grow into their own in ways I didn't really expect. The lead was originally created mostly as a way for the audience to view and see the characters and world I had already planned out, but by the end of the book, she'd really become a person. She's sassy, stubborn... a lot of things I never really expected. I don't know if it's really a good way to write a book, but for the first draft, it's definitely something that I think helped more than hindered the process. The great thing about writing is that you can always go back and improve upon it once it's done, so once you get past that first draft, you can take the new perspective on your characters and apply it to earlier parts of your book where they maybe weren't as fleshed out at first. If all else fails and you're someone who is really meticulous about outlining, character sheets, etc., just get Scrivener where most of the templates are already started for you.
Axel Serenity fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 20:30
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Scrivener's the best for editing. I hate writing in it, but chopping a long-term piece up and making long-rear end notes about every single little thing that comes up is not only really soothing, but it helps you identify problems in the text.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:14
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Apr 5, 2014 03:21
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Now that's some good advice. It is important to remember that your primary function as a writer is to entertain. Sometimes that's by turning phrases really well, but most of the time it's just by making engaging characters and fun stories. Keep it simple.
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Apr 5, 2014 04:54
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Whoa now, that graph is definitely missing a World Navel and possibly some Supernatural Aid. I call bullshit here.
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Apr 5, 2014 05:03
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I was a little confused on why the ugly duckling wanted to exact revenge against the ones who killed his family.
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Apr 5, 2014 05:45
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Axel Serenity posted:I was a little confused on why the ugly duckling wanted to exact revenge against the ones who killed his family.
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Apr 5, 2014 07:21
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Green Crayons posted:I'm confused why you think the default to having one's family murdered is not "exact revenge." True enough. Guess it's time to go work on my grimdark Darkwing Duck fanfic. It was bound to happen!
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Apr 5, 2014 08:15
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I will find you, and I will kill you *QUACK*
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Apr 5, 2014 11:02
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Fulfillment 550 words Yes, I knew it was illegal for my father to have me. But here’s the thing. He never actually got to go through with it. There was the time he had me bent over and the doorbell rang: encyclopedia salesman. Another instance I had my legs wrapped behind my head and we smelled smoke, and he realized he had left a quiche lorraine in the oven for over 2 hours. Once when camping we were getting hot n heavy in the tent and he said he was going to “split me like a piece of firewood” and then an air raid siren went off and we were forced to evacuate by rangers due to a mother bear rampaging at a campsite nearby. Now sure, father did do inappropriate things that were probably close to being illegal. French kissing your son every day when dropping him off at school can make problems with classmates like you wouldn’t imagine. I generally skipped and hung out behind the convenience store, or if I had to be in class I would put my head down on the desk and go to sleep. Any time I was in the bathroom at home and I left the door unlocked, he would come in with no pants on and try to get frisky. I got used to hearing the doorknob jiggling when I took a shower, but I simply had to lock it, as I wanted to wash my hair in peace. Overall, the crude acts dad did weren’t such a big deal to me, since he was a pretty handsome guy, so I just kind of tolerated it. One day we were in bed together and he was kissing me in his usual hard way, scratching my face with his bushy moustache. He would dart his tongue in and out of my mouth while I laid there stoically. “This is it son, I’m entering you” he said to me as he slid off my sweatpants. I closed my eyes. “You’ve got such a fine arse and I…” he didn’t finish his sentence. When I looked up, he was falling face first onto me, clutching his chest. Dad was having a heart attack. When the paramedics got to my house, they had a confused look on their faces. I’m sure they were wondering why this guy was fully naked in his son’s room. Dad was rushed to the hospital but he didn’t make it. I guess all that quiche really adds up over time. That night when I went to sleep I was a bit sad but also I felt glad to know I would have an undisturbed night of rest. There had been so many times when I would wake up in the middle of the night to dad’s member in my face, him breathing hard, and then someone would try to break into our van and he would run out into the street waving a gun. As I dozed off, an apparition appeared at the foot of my bed. It was dad! His ghost climbed on top of my body and mounted me, and in death he was finally doing what he never could in life. Dad’s ghost raped me all night long, and in the morning I was too tired to go to school. --- pls critque also more of my stories are available @ http://dadlust.com
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Apr 5, 2014 19:01
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edit: WHAT THE gently caress
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Apr 5, 2014 19:33
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It's a comedy, I see.
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Apr 5, 2014 19:41
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Huh.
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Apr 5, 2014 19:58
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he posts a billion of them. they all have to do with having sex with your dad. he probably makes millions on amazon
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Apr 5, 2014 20:08
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crabrock posted:he posts a billion of them. they all have to do with having sex with your dad. he probably makes millions on amazon self-pub erotica's dirty secret: young aspiring authors are making sweet bank on the back of Kafka-esque taboo father-son incest shorts, but at what psychic cost? our undercover journalists delve into the sordid world of incest erotica to discover more about the toll exacted on authors coerced by the market to spent up to 12 hours a day writing some truly horrifying...Read more at vice.com
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Apr 5, 2014 20:31
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Man, Bill Cosby got weird
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Apr 5, 2014 21:19
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No golden bean with a street value of exactly one million dollars. Would NOT read again: B----------
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Apr 5, 2014 21:42
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Not to derail the incest fiction, but here's an interesting video on how Pixar sets up their first act to drive the rest of the story. It's about movies, but I think everyone can get something out of it. I saw it thanks to this post from John August.
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Apr 5, 2014 23:33
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That's a very good video. First acts are where I tend to flounder--I'm trying to figure out my characters, what they do, how they act, and what their problems are. I'm generally able to solve this through intuition but it's a goddamned aggravating process because I'm rarely able to articulate what I'm missing or where things have gone wrong when they do go wrong. That video is a simple (and oddly humbling) look at how to make sure things get off to a good start.
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Apr 6, 2014 00:00
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thanks for the video. i can both identify good stories where i've basically done that, and lovely stories where i'm like "whoops, that's what's missing."
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Apr 6, 2014 00:42
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Chiming in on that video. Thank you so much. I favorited it and I am going to use that to look at a lot of my stories. I have some where I know that wouldn't really work for it, but I am going to incorporate it into future stories whenever I can.
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Apr 6, 2014 00:47
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Bear in mind that Pixar advice is really good for making Pixar stories - which are often great! But they are intentionally very conservative in their narrative design, so they won't fit every kind of story anyone could ever want to tell. It's pretty trivial to come up with great art that doesn't fit their spine structure at all.
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Apr 6, 2014 00:52
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I have some questions about the physical act of writing: using a pen isn't so bad, but when it comes to typing my hands freeze up. I know I've got RSI/Carpal tunnel/lovely joints hybrid turning my hands to lobster claws and it's really crimping my writing time. Have any of you come up with good ways to deal with this? At the moment I'm dipping my hands in hot water every so often when they get hard to move but this isn't so easy to do when I'm not writing in my house.
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Apr 6, 2014 22:02
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Have you tried getting a tablet so you can write with the stylus and have the computer hilariously misinterpret your writing?
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Apr 6, 2014 22:19
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What worked for my father is buying a mechanical keyboard, the feel of it somehow took some of the pressure off his joints. But he placed it low, near his knees and used a high chair so his hands could rest down but wouldn't be leaning upon the desk. There are also some wraps and gloves I've seen some people use to relieve the stress from your wrists.
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Apr 6, 2014 22:28
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Hold out for direct neural interface typing. I really wish this was already available. 
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Apr 6, 2014 22:38
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Martello posted:Hold out for direct neural interface typing. *a constant stream of unpublishable filth*
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Apr 6, 2014 23:13
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Martello posted:Hold out for direct neural interface typing. http://www.gtec.at/Products/Complete-Solutions/intendiX-Specs-Features
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Apr 7, 2014 00:56
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There's always voice recognition software. I'm pretty sure that's what Terry Pratchett uses now.
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Apr 7, 2014 07:29
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I think talking through your writing with voice recognition software would be extremely awkward at first, but even more beneficial once you got used to it. You'd be able to hear how your sentences sound aloud and probably get better at talking/telling a story. It'd be pretty annoying if the recognition was horrid though.
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Apr 7, 2014 16:56
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A woman in my writing group narrates every one of her books into a tape recorder when she's on the road, (which is a lot of the time apparently). She's done maybe 12 books that way. Afterwards, she'll type it out. I've tried talking through my story, and I spend so much time saying "wait, no, that's not right..." that I can't imagine working like that, (talking your way through the writing process). You'd have to have a lot of notes and guidelines. Or just go through the story a lot of times.
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Apr 7, 2014 17:09
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There are writers who don't speak their sentences and paragraphs out loud as they write? It's not something I've intentionally cultivated, just seems to be a habit that serves me well. Though it means I absolutely cannot write without real privacy. Almost all the time I'm working I'm speaking out loud, prose and dialogue, listening for rhythm and sound and voice. Hell, even doing character voices, which is deeply embarrassing the few times other people have witnessed it. I have a (very little bit of) acting background, so I wonder if that plays into it. I do think it helps though, and I'd recommend it to everyone else.
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Apr 7, 2014 18:28
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