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Well does he know the grenade can be disarmed? How much do airport security learn about this stuff? Is he alone here, or surrounded by people who know just as little about grenades as him? You had to ask the question if the grenade can be disarmed, so it might be that he's just as clueless. I say you should write ahead. It sounds like an interesting premise, and people usually expect that it's too late when you pull the pin. That's why you asked, after all. 
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Aug 2, 2012 00:01
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Well, in a tense situation like that, 1.) Most people aren't going to think 'I can just put the pin back in', and 2.) If you're wrestling a terrorists for a grenade, you're not going to be watching where the pin goes, anyway. I don't think anybody will hold it against you if you fudge it. At worst you just need to hang a lampshade on it - "Where did the pin go?" "Who knows" and you'll be fine. It's a pretty classic and powerful story, but I've always heard it in the context of a battlefield, like in No Man's Land. Moving it out of the war front and into the airport is an interesting idea. Either way, I really doubt anybody will stop reading just over the premise.
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Aug 2, 2012 00:18
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Great! I'll start tonight. Thanks for the help.
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Aug 2, 2012 00:30
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Just curious but I was thinking about DnD and Fantasy in general and how it often handled gods, demi gods and spirits. One thing that came to mind was how would one potentially go about writing such creatures? I can easily see the idea of making them totally alien in point of view and how they operate. However what if you wanted to make them relatable? I'm wondering how people would approach that given you may have beings of great power that may be millions of years old.
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Aug 2, 2012 01:56
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SkySteak posted:Just curious but I was thinking about DnD and Fantasy in general and how it often handled gods, demi gods and spirits. One thing that came to mind was how would one potentially go about writing such creatures? I can easily see the idea of making them totally alien in point of view and how they operate. However what if you wanted to make them relatable? I'm wondering how people would approach that given you may have beings of great power that may be millions of years old. Study the Greek and Roman pantheons. Their gods were very human in that they act like a person would if given great, supernatural power. Even the relatively benevolent gods would suffer from jealousy, spite, and anger. They'd make mistakes and sometimes come out of the blue with the perfect answer. Like any character, they become flat if they don't sometimes encounter a situation that is somehow dangerous to them, and they have to sometimes fail. The concept of a god is that they are immortal and extremely, if not all-powerful. The pantheon is in place to keep everyone in check with one another, and that's where they derive their conflict, and their conflicts spill out into the mortal world. From the mortal perspective they are all-powerful, but in the larger sense, they are limited. One mistake is to make them diametrically opposed. e.g. the god of fire is hot-tempered and warlike while the god of water is cool and nurturing. It's been done to death, so it's not interesting. To make them keep one another in check, go for more subtle oppositions in their personalities where you could see how both could be right from a certain perspective, but their goals conflict, much like how humanity doesn't always agree on the right path for us to take.
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Aug 2, 2012 02:20
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Hey look! I said I was gonna go draft up a short story tonight and I totally didn't put it off. I'm learnding. GRENAAAAADE
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Aug 2, 2012 12:15
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Oh, god drat it!
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Aug 3, 2012 03:43
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FauxCyclops posted:Oh, god drat it! We get it man, you don't need no fancy learnin' bout writing and so forth right? You're just doing this for fun, right? Well, it's curious then why you keep posting poo poo all over the place looking for approval, isn't it? And all the while joking and rolling with them punches. If you're content with being a lovely writer, then can you just keep it to yourself, or is that asking too much? If you actually want to grow and learn your craft, then have some loving respect and actually participate in that process like an adult.
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Aug 3, 2012 04:07
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What do you mean? I've said I'll take the short story from my other thread away for a week, put some real work into it and try again then. I've PMed almost everyone in that thread to thank them for their time giving me critique, and I had several in-depth posts discussing specific directions for taking it. How am I being disrespectful? I'm honestly asking, there's no need for hostility.
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Aug 3, 2012 04:13
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FauxCyclops posted:What do you mean? I've said I'll take the short story from my other thread away for a week, put some real work into it and try again then. There's no reason to make threats, now. P.S. please stop smearing your stupid poo poo across multiple threads. Contain your whinging over your avatar and reaction to the story to one so I can stop having to check who the last poster is when I see a new addition has been made, if you will so kindly.
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Aug 3, 2012 04:19
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I'm really pretty taken aback here, it seems like there's been some sort of latent undercurrent of irritation with my posts and now I'm being accused of things I didn't even do, or at least wasn't aware I was doing. How did I give the impression that I'm not willing to listen or improve?
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Aug 3, 2012 04:28
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What's the best way to introduce characters who have well-used nicknames? I'm planning to have a group of soldiers in a short story. It seems awkward to have something like: "Private Daniel “Dusty” Williams" or "Sergeant Cindy Sanchez - “Brass” to the squad." There is a character coming in who doesn't know everyone, so I could do a round of introductions. Any other ideas or suggestions? EDIT: I could have something like ""Brass, take point." Sergeant Sanchez nodded and clicked the safety off her submachine gun." (Yes I will be changing the names.) FauxCyclops posted:I'm really pretty taken aback here, it seems like there's been some sort of latent undercurrent of irritation with my posts and now I'm being accused of things I didn't even do, or at least wasn't aware I was doing. How did I give the impression that I'm not willing to listen or improve? Seriously, stop posting, right now. Do not even reply to this post. I don't know which sandy vagina gave me this title (almost everyone has thanked me for my feedback), but I resisted the urge to make posts complaining about it. Complaining is not helping your case. Stop complaining and making white-noise posts like "B-b-but my style!" As your title suggests, don't come in and say "I'm publishing my book next week, any feedback? Whoops, too late, I already published it." Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Aug 3, 2012 |
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Aug 3, 2012 05:00
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FauxCyclops posted:Oh, god drat it! Yes, please stop posting in this thread about your dick avatar, or anything related to your dick avatar. Move along folks.
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Aug 3, 2012 05:08
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:What's the best way to introduce characters who have well-used nicknames? I'm planning to have a group of soldiers in a short story. Is there a real need to refer to them by anything but their nicknames? I think it's pretty well-accepted that soldiers all have nicknames for each other, so it wouldn't be jarring in a story to see someone called "Dusty" or whatever the whole time. If you decide to do the second route, you have to be very careful. I can't tell you how many scenes I've read where someone is alternately referred to by a nickname or description and then their full name, and I have to stop and figure out if these two people are the same thing. Your example handles it well.
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Aug 3, 2012 06:19
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I was going to suggest just referring to them by their nicknames too.
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Aug 3, 2012 08:00
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Stabbey_The_Clown posted:I could have something like ""Brass, take point." Sergeant Sanchez nodded and clicked the safety off her submachine gun." Yup, that works for me. To make sure my reader quickly learns who's who, I would also tend to introduce "nicknamed characters" in tighter, smaller scenes with fewer characters, and I definitely wouldn't introduce more than two or three nicknamed characters at a time. (Hell, I think this even applies to non-nicknamed characters, since I tend to feel overwhelmed when an author tries to introduce me to ten people off the bat, nicknames or no.) Certainly, the connection between a character's handle, and their real name, should probably be made at least three times, because that's typically the magic number for alerting readers to details.
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Aug 3, 2012 14:53
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:What's the best way to introduce characters who have well-used nicknames? I'm planning to have a group of soldiers in a short story. Like a few other people said, you can just stick to the nicknames and not worry about the real name. If it's the main character or the real name is somehow important, you can pretty easily throw that in there in a number of different ways. I've done it myself with my Bronco character. Sometimes I introduce him as Brady "Bronco" Halligan and then never mention his real first name again. Sometimes I don't even say anything about his real first name. You could also have the squad leader (or whatever) introduce the new guy to the squad like this: "This is Sergeant Sanchez, but we all just call her Brass. The big ugly fucker is Corporal Gainer, and over here we have Detroit. His real name is unpronounceable so don't worry about it." Something like that. Also, depending on what kind of soldiers these characters are, the nickname thing could become cheesy. Contrary to what Dr. Kloctopussy said, we really don't all have cool-guy nicknames in the regular Army. Usually everyone just goes by last name (and rank if appropriate) among the enlisted, and officers call each other by first names among peers and from superior to subordinate. Most nicknames are insulting, used to differentiate between two Smiths (Fat Smith and Texas Smith), or because the dude's last name is difficult to pronounce, like the example I wrote above. In my old platoon we had three Johnsons. We called them Big Johnson, Fat Johnson, and Little Johnson. Even after the other two Johnsons left, we still called the one dude Fat J. I also had a Forward Observer named SGT Blake, who we all called Ballsackface for some reason nobody could ever properly explain. If a dude's last name sounds like something funny, we change it so it's that funny word. For an example I coined last week during a field exercise, there was an engineer LT named Burdick attached to my battalion for the exercise. Naturally, I started calling him Bird-Dick, which quickly caught on. He was in charge of a few dozer teams, so that made him LT Bird-Dick of the Dildozers. So if these are just regular Infantry soldiers, try to more or less follow the examples I posted above and still use a lot of just last names and ranks. If they're Delta operators or something like that, then they probably do all have cool-guy nicknames, because they use those as callsigns on the radio. Modern Warfare 2 and 3 did a good job with that. Sandman, Peasant, Grinch, etc. Those all work for super-black-ops guys of all stripes. And yeah, to echo Kloctopussy and Tartarus Sauce, the example you quoted works for giving both the nickname and the real name. quote:I don't know which sandy vagina gave me this title (almost everyone has thanked me for my feedback), but I resisted the urge to make posts complaining about it. In all fairness, dude, I've definitely seen some crits from you that went something like "I didn't like this and the story didn't work NEXT" which isn't exactly helpful. I certainly poo poo on plenty of people but I try to actually point out the problems when I do it. Also, you're complaining about the avatar right now so that kinda defeats the whole "I didn't complain about it" thing. 
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Aug 3, 2012 15:38
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Is it bad that I feel a little put off given the recent drama? I don't know, between that massive blowup in that other thread and what Martello said about stories just being dismissed, I feel really put off about posting here. I know it's silly but I dunno, it just feels a bit worrying. Not to say critique is valueless of course but yeah.
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Aug 5, 2012 05:26
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SkySteak posted:Is it bad that I feel a little put off given the recent drama? I don't know, between that massive blowup in that other thread and what Martello said about stories just being dismissed, I feel really put off about posting here. I know it's silly but I dunno, it just feels a bit worrying. Not to say critique is valueless of course but yeah. Dude. What are you talking about? Which blowup are you referring to? Who's dismissing stories? I said Stabbey sometimes gives lovely crits to the effect of "this story sucks," but I don't think that stories are generally being dismissed across the board. Even Stabbey gives good feedback when the spirit moves him or whatever. What do you mean by that last sentence? Critique is what we want here, I thought?
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Aug 5, 2012 06:04
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I think a reminder about the forums rules is in order:pipes! posted:The Spirit of Creative Convention If you think someone has crossed the line, use the report button. I've chatted with pipes! several times in PM, and he really does appreciate it when we let him know about whatever poo poo's going down. You guys have been really good about stopping about-to-get-too personal derails in this thread, so I haven't used it. But if someone is being a trolling dick, only pipes! has any real power to stop it. Let him know about it. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Aug 5, 2012 |
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Aug 5, 2012 06:14
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Martello posted:Dude. What are you talking about? Which blowup are you referring to? Who's dismissing stories? I said Stabbey sometimes gives lovely crits to the effect of "this story sucks," but I don't think that stories are generally being dismissed across the board. Even Stabbey gives good feedback when the spirit moves him or whatever. What do you mean by that last sentence? Critique is what we want here, I thought? Oh I just saw: quote:In all fairness, dude, I've definitely seen some crits from you that went something like "I didn't like this and the story didn't work NEXT" which isn't exactly helpful. It spooked me a little but it's no big deal. I'm sure people will be fine, critique wise.
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Aug 5, 2012 07:10
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SkySteak posted:Is it bad that I feel a little put off given the recent drama? I don't know, between that massive blowup in that other thread and what Martello said about stories just being dismissed, I feel really put off about posting here. I know it's silly but I dunno, it just feels a bit worrying. Not to say critique is valueless of course but yeah. I think everyone needs to understand that this isn't "a safe place for you to express yourself creatively, free of judgement." This community will kill your darlings, not coddle them. If you are lucky, we will use a scapel. You should post here to find the crucible, not avoid it. When someone asks for "feedback" but refuses to accept any criticism, they insult us by wasting our time. When someone posts a lovely first draft, they insult us by asking us to spend time when they couldn't be bothered. When all someone offers is a useless one line response, they insult us by demanding less than they give in return. If you ignore these principles occasionally, you will be chastised. If you break them repeatedly, you will be ridiculed mercilessly. If you disagree with them, you should make like a frog and get out. If you want to be a good writer, then you should put your whole heart into the effort, and thank these good people who do you the favor of ripping it apart.
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Aug 5, 2012 09:19
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Many people approach the writing and editing process as if it's the climactic therapy scene from Good Will Hunting. In reality, it's more like the scene from Pulp Fiction after they release The Gimp.
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Aug 5, 2012 09:33
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I'm really sorry. I didn't want to make a fuss or imply I was against critique. I guess it's just the idea of someone dismissing something outright without even an inkling on how to improve it, was most worrying to me. I understand what was mean now, so no problem.
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Aug 5, 2012 10:37
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For me, the purpose of constructive criticism--genuine, actual constructive criticism--is to equip someone with tools and knowledge they can apply towards making their work the best it can be. This means, yes, using a scalpel, rather than a feather, or a battle axe. This means, being tactful, supportive, and kind, while also being honest, and giving someone something they can actually use. This means, not giving a novice the same type of advice or criticism I'd give a seasoned professional, because the novice would just end up feeling overwhelmed and demoralized. This means, for me, only being overtly harsh, firm, hard, or snippy with someone who is an insufferable rear end in a top hat, or a complete lunatic, on top of being a poo poo writer. This means, doing my best to help someone to create the product they want to create, rather than trying to steer them towards the one I'd like them to create. So, I think those are my main critique rules-of-thumb.
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Aug 5, 2012 21:00
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I'm writing the first draft of my novel and it's about a guy who has to (at first) fend for himself in a foreign country with nothing. There is a point where he meets someone else who is in a similar situation, but until then I find that the pace is very slow, with very few dialogue. This guy has a lot of internal conflict; he is constantly at war with himself. This leads to a lot of inner battles that I find necessary but somewhat boring to write. Should I even care about this at this stage of my writing, or should I just try to solve this problem by figuring something out (maybe change the plot so that the protagonist meets the other guy earlier, or give him an "imaginary friend" to verbally fight against, or whatever, really)?
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Aug 5, 2012 21:11
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UnfurledSails posted:I'm writing the first draft of my novel and it's about a guy who has to (at first) fend for himself in a foreign country with nothing. There is a point where he meets someone else who is in a similar situation, but until then I find that the pace is very slow, with very few dialogue. This guy has a lot of internal conflict; he is constantly at war with himself. This leads to a lot of inner battles that I find necessary but somewhat boring to write. It's always a good idea to give your characters someone to talk to, because external dialogue is generally more engaging than internal dialogue. "Imaginary friend" might give your readers the impression he's batshit, and can suck terribly if you treat it wrong, so think hard before you decide to go down that route. Bringing the second character in earlier sounds like a good way to revise, but before that, does your character really have no one to talk to? Does he not even attempt to communicate with shopkeepers or landladies, or try to bum money for a train ride, or anything? All of these little interactions are better ways to let your reader get to know your character than endless paragraphs having him sitting alone going, "Oh woe is me." You can use little social exchanges to help build your character until his proper foil shows up. Even if he can't speak the language, showing how he deals with that is a character building moment.
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Aug 5, 2012 21:56
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Stuporstar posted:It's always a good idea to give your characters someone to talk to, because external dialogue is generally more engaging than internal dialogue. "Imaginary friend" might give your readers the impression he's batshit, and can suck terribly if you treat it wrong, so think hard before you decide to go down that route. Bringing the second character in earlier sounds like a good way to revise, but before that, does your character really have no one to talk to? Does he not even attempt to communicate with shopkeepers or landladies, or try to bum money for a train ride, or anything? All of these little interactions are better ways to let your reader get to know your character than endless paragraphs having him sitting alone going, "Oh woe is me." You can use little social exchanges to help build your character until his proper foil shows up. Even if he can't speak the language, showing how he deals with that is a character building moment. That's a great idea, but I guess I'll have to change these long bouts of internal dialogue in the second draft, then. I'm still wrapping myself around the idea of writing something as quickly as possible without giving much regard to sense. I agonize over stuff like this, which in turn saps my motivation. After all, I tell myself, if the beginning is poo poo then what's the point of writing more?
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Aug 5, 2012 22:02
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I should have posted this earlier - Stuporstar, Nautatrol Rx and I have started a new weekly fiction contest, Flash Fiction Thunderdome. It's going to be a no-holds-barred, minimal-rules type of thing, with an obvious concentration on short pieces. 
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Aug 5, 2012 23:12
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How much weight does having a degree in writing give you when approaching a publisher? I'll be going to college this fall and I'm going to study writing and literature.
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Aug 5, 2012 23:57
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None whatsoever, unless that's your area of expertise and you're writing about writing. But if that's the case you'll have other writing credits.
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Aug 6, 2012 00:13
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So how kosher is it to essentially gank the title of another work for one of your own pieces, assuming that a) the actual content is completely dissimilar and b) the title you're taking (stealing) isn't very well-known?
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Aug 6, 2012 02:53
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The question then is why? If it's a generic thing like "The Carnival" or something then it should be okay but if it's not it would have to have a pretty concrete connection to the work to excuse it.
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Aug 6, 2012 02:55
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Canadian Surf Club posted:The question then is why? If it's a generic thing like "The Carnival" or something then it should be okay but if it's not it would have to have a pretty concrete connection to the work to excuse it. It does. I'm the type who can't get a serious grip on whatever he's writing until I have the title first, and this one lines up the dominant themes and imagery as well as I can hope for. The only catch is that some rear end in a top hat thought of it first and then I read it and remembered it and now I want it to be mine e: actually I just thought of another one that might have some pop to it without being plagiarized, so maybe this isn't such a big deal after all Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Aug 6, 2012 |
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Aug 6, 2012 03:00
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Generally speaking every title that isn't very specific and elaborate has already been used, so don't sweat it.
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Aug 6, 2012 03:38
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psychopomp posted:Generally speaking every title that isn't very specific and elaborate has already been used, so don't sweat it. Works for me. My view on titles was more or less articulated by Krzhizhanofsky (and no, I could not spell that from memory alone): quote:...if the title is right, the whole text will hang on it, like a coat on a peg. The title, for me, is the first word (or words) of a story; it must pull all the other words after it, right down to the last. Generally if I can't see a clear title for something right off the bat in the planning stages it's a bad sign, but oh well, can't let that stop me.
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Aug 6, 2012 03:48
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I'm having a title-related issue of my own, which is odd since I'm usually very good with titles. Here are the potential titles for a short story I'm mulling over: Zombie Living Dead The Undead Nature Guess what the story's about! It's actually not a typical zombie story though: it stays with two kids who have been raised in isolation who are out searching for their mother. It's mainly psychological, how they were raised, their mindset from that upbringing, etc. But how the story is resolved really does center around the concept of the zombie, so I think it's important enough to be the focus of the title. Only problem is so many terms for zombies have already been eaten up by popular media. The Walking Dead would be a loving perfect name for the story and I'm grumpy that it's taken. The story's about 90% written right now (I'm taking my time crafting the climax + falling action), so I'm not sure how much it'd help posting what I can right now.
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Aug 6, 2012 06:55
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Mike Works posted:I'm having a title-related issue of my own, which is odd since I'm usually very good with titles. Here are the potential titles for a short story I'm mulling over: My way of doing titles is to find a very small, unique detail and draw it out into a broader theme. It's the reverse of how some people like to do it. Meaning that I'll write the story without a title (or a working title like the ones you mentioned), and then I'll go through to pick out some very small yet important detail that I want to turn into a horse for the story, and my title will be derived from that. An example of this type of this type of titling can be seen in the show Breaking Bad. Obvious choices would have something to do with crime or meth, but it's more likely that they wrote out the story beforehand and liked the little twist of the phrase, "breaking bad", so that became an important theme (which they probably went back and expanded upon) as well as the title. I'd suggest just finishing and posting it, and maybe one of us can suggest something that will spark a good idea for you. Better to finish it first because you may find a nice spark there.
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Aug 6, 2012 07:11
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The problem is that I've already found that detail, that spark, that encapsulating image... and it's a drat zombie. It has to be a zombie. Honestly, this is the one aspect of writing that I feel I'm really, really good at. Almost every title I've come up with at least touches on the theme, creates a concrete image, is catchy... and is often a combination of the three. I guess I'm less asking for help on finding a different focal point for the title and more asking any goons who happened to be raised in a family of zombies if they have a specialty thesaurus handy.
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Aug 6, 2012 07:19
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Mike Works posted:The problem is that I've already found that detail, that spark, that encapsulating image... and it's a drat zombie. It has to be a zombie. Well, is there anything special or unique about your zombies, or are they purposefully as stock as possible? That's the part that's hard for me to get unless I see the story, but I'll try tossing out a few rewordings of "zombie" that might make you think of something: Walking and Rotting The Second Breath Risen Thoughtless Body Southern Revival The Stride of Corpses Roaming Bodies The Body That Trudges Husks Just a few words there that you can maybe mix and match.
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Aug 6, 2012 07:35
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