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Grammatically, that is the correct thing to do. Narratively, I'd think long and hard about doing a thing like that.
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Nov 24, 2013 03:14
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Martello posted:Just drop "serpentinely." Or say it better. But seriously, it's a good line. If you can come up with that kind of poo poo off the top of your head, you don't need no emotion thesaurus. Serpentinely is kind of an awkward word, too many suffixes. I like sinuously. e: Maybe not in that sentence though.
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Dec 20, 2013 14:11
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Chairchucker posted:Actual real people do and say a lot of things, but not all of them make particularly good reading. What makes for good reading is the author knowing exactly how and when to use the words they do, and that's not limited to swearing. Swearing is one of those things that, by its nature, is just more obvious. Still, they're a tool in everyone's toolbox; you don't have to use them if you don't want to, but it's worth learning how they should be applied. neongrey fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 02:24
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Really any word is bad if you overuse it needlessly. Didactically refusing to use swears under any circumstances is not going to do anyone's writing any good*. There are times when the word you need is 'gently caress'.Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale posted:My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is loving. What he is loving is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for. That's a bit clinical for most times you're going to want to reach for the word, but it makes the point clear enough. Sometimes someone steps in poo poo, not poop, or doodoo, or feces, or excrement. *Writing for children nonwithstanding
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Jan 25, 2014 15:40
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Chairchucker posted:cussin'. Somehow I suspect your problem with overuse of a limited few incongruous words isn't really related to cursing.
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Jan 25, 2014 17:59
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I'm saying you're fairly well demonstrating relentless overuse of a specific word, how it can stick out like a sore thumb, and how it's not really related to foul language. If it's the only word you use for a thing it doesn't look good, or reflect well on the person (be it writer, conversationalist, or character) who selected that word. Basically  is what kills phrasing dead, not the particular words themselves.
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Jan 25, 2014 18:16
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By no means am I advocating the use of a thesarus, especially for conversational usage. But words need to vary in order to flow properly. In most cases where it would be important this happens without thinking about it. In this case you're actively selecting a less-common (or possibly more regional?) term, and additionally affecting it in a manner for intended effect (dropped g is generally intended to achieve a 'folksy' tone). Like I'm not trying to harp on you about this, this is just a pertinent and interesting example; intentionally or no, you're selecting and using the word in much the same way as one selects a swear word*. *in most cases. The kentucky meth heads above prrrrobably aren't using 'gently caress' for effect so much as for a comma. But that too establishes tone.
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Jan 25, 2014 18:54
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No, because the awkwardness in phrasing you get from avoiding swears in way that their absence is noticable is a really good way to make something an unpleasant read. If you don't need them don't use them, but conscious avoidance for the sake of it is painful.
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Jan 26, 2014 02:30
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I'm not? Like I said, if you don't have a call for it don't use it, but if a text's avoidance of swear words is obvious, it's going to hurt the flow of that text. It's pretty easy to tell when someone's explicitly phrasing around swears, as opposed to constructing the language such that they're not needed. e: Like it was a specific answer to that question. You don't come out of reading something saying 'that was great but it needed more swears' because if it was great, there weren't obvious holes in the text where swears should have been. neongrey fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 02:57
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Echo Cian posted:Yeah. It's called "bad writing." That's my point exactly, yeah. I was really only arguing with the 'never swear ever' camp. And when you start framing your language around avoiding swearing it's just not going to sound natural. You lose a certain amount of expressiveness when you start closing yourself off from a big category of words. This is one of the standard showcases for what you can do with swearing, and it's deliberately contrived, of course-- you wouldn't re-create the scene or anything, but there's a lot of articulation you can get. When you lock yourself out of specific classes of words, you lock yourself out of a lot of tones and connotations.
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Jan 26, 2014 04:42
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I think the subject of how and why one selects specific words to establish tone is fascinating, and I think dismissing the potential of vulgarity in doing so is nonsensical, is all. v vI probably veered off course far too far at various points. Sorry, it's been a long day.
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Jan 26, 2014 05:45
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Bruiser posted:I feel like I have to go in depth to explain where my main character is coming from, and why he does every single thing he does 90% of the time, you absolutely do not. Most necessary exposition can be achieved just by contextualizing your description to match your viewpoint character's perspective (so the mind hoovers up information without realizing it's picking up information), and if you do the work that way the leftovers won't be hugely intrusive. If the interesting parts of your main character are where they're coming from and why they do what they do, tell that story. If not, breadcrumb it as necessary.
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Jan 27, 2014 04:39
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Seems serious to me!
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Jan 30, 2014 06:01
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But really, you need to be asking yourself things like how someone who hates themselves behaves, how they talk, the sorts of things they do. If it's important to the character it'll show up in what they do. If it's critical to their personality it'll permeate their actions. Self-defeating behaviours are pretty common in such circumstance, but there's a lot of ways you can go with it if you stay away from needing to narrate the fact of the hate.
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Jan 30, 2014 06:23
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Ouch. No hope of it having been the January issue of something?
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Feb 1, 2014 00:39
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General Battuta posted:Just got two offers from agents on my first novel and an interview at Bungie Studios for a writer position. To everyone mired in the loneliest, bleakest parts of writing, there is hope in this world Super-congrats. I really enjoy your work, you deserve it. Waiting on a rejection any day now from Strange Horizons, myself.  e: that's what I get for saying something, it came this evening. 
neongrey fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 00:06
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That being said, I think I read mostly fantasy and I read about one book a year that has elves in it, let alone any of the others. The genre has its problems by the truckload but I think a reliance on Tolkien's races has lessened drastically over time.
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Feb 24, 2014 21:46
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This is the least helpful answer in the world, but whatever works for you. Some people can't get a story to completion without having a full outline. Some people just dive right in and would go bats having it all laid out in advance. There's no real way to be sure until you've hosed it up. My best suggestion is just to write down what you know, then see where that takes you. If it goes nowhere without a plan, well, you'll know you need to outline more.
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Mar 2, 2014 07:05
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CommissarMega posted:How do you guys introduce new concepts, lingo etc. into a story without overwhelming the reader, especially if they're common, everyday things in your world? One of the things I plan to write includes stuff like 'arcaneers'- basically, magician-engineers who design and maintain the magitech the universe runs on. I'm just not sure on how to introduce them easily. If you remember one thing, remember this: if you use a thing every day you do not think about how it works. Every time you use a door you don't think about hinges or what makes that door open the direction it did. You can use this a lot to your advantage, too-- it's very easy to convey that something is ordinary simply by how people in contact with it don't find anything remarkable to say about it. I've got more I could say on the subject but that's the most important part, I think, and I've got to scoot.
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Mar 13, 2014 18:30
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Yeah, it's not that self-publishing is never the way to go, I just don't really think it's nearly as broadly applicable as big self-pub advocates would like to say it is.
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Apr 1, 2014 22:40
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Yeah if I see the mirror thing, I stop reading, full stop. If that's how an author chooses to solve that particular problem, I'm not going to be thrilled with how they handle other, trickier expository issues.
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Jun 12, 2014 01:37
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Coffee in fantasy is fine, for me, anyway, but boy howdy would I not make that comparison.
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Jun 16, 2014 06:44
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General Battuta posted:I know this will sound like an absurdly nice problem to have, but it's really bothering me. I have my first story in an anthology coming up, written by invitation. I'll be alongside a bunch of authors I really respect. The problem is that the story's just dreadful. I reread it for proofs and I can't stand it at all. Well really-- say that to the editor, you know? This is what you've got, you're really unsatisfied with the work, but you don't want to pull out, what do they suggest? Sometimes fresh eyes are the important thing for that kind of work in the first place, and there is, as always, the chance that your current impression of the piece is wrong. But you wouldn't have been invited if the editor wasn't willing to work with you, so work with the editor. If it really is the crap you think it is, you know, they'll work it out in some way or another and you'll look better for having tried to work it out with them rather than just tossing it in their lap as-is or fleeing.
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Jun 21, 2014 11:43
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I don't think it's just the usual self-conscious preciousness writers have, either; it really is a pretty unsuccessful piece of fiction on nearly every level.
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CommissarMega posted:She's actually a trader who wants a steady business, that's all. There's a few more twists in the upcoming chapters, but this is all I'm planning to reveal so far. As for preliminary worldbuilding, I've decided to move that to a prologue chapter instead. Yeah if you do that, that's going to make anyone who reads it skip the prologue as soon as they realize what's happening. And if they skip the prologue and can follow along with the story fine, you could have saved everyone the trouble and just cut it entirely.
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Jun 26, 2014 04:42
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Well, yeah, there are plenty of writers out there who are good enough to discard rules of punctuation and form for the sake of creating mood and/or atmosphere. But they're the sort of rules that you need to be extremely proficient with before you break them. You need to know how a period, or a comma, or a semicolon will affect the way a reader mentally ingests your sentence before you start manually tweaking that stuff. 'Cause really, it's a level of fine-tuning that is rarely, if ever, going to be necessary. The words you use are gonna be doing the heavy lifting there, and if you leave the punctuation in some standard form, it's going to have a neutral effect. If you manipulate punctuation for effect and you do it right, it'll enhance it, yeah. But if you do it wrong, your sentences will look awkward at best and unreadable at worst. That's not to say there's no value in experimenting to see how it works, but it's definitely worthwhile to master how the comma (for example) really works in its natural state before surgically placing or removing them to refine tone.
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Jul 9, 2014 12:08
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Yeah I could go for that. I'm focusing a bit on shorts right now but the more work I get prodded to do the merrier.
neongrey fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 06:48
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Yeah, IRC is perfect for me; my schedule is wacky and shifts around a lot but the only time I'm really unable to be in an irc channel are times when I'm asleep.
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Jul 11, 2014 08:48
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I think it's not a huge deal if not everyone does a thing every week, if there's enough people in on it. Maybe a rotating list of who's up to submit each week? People could swap places if they wanted, I guess, but it'd have to be a swap, not a cancellation.
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Jul 12, 2014 12:09
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Yeah, I'm not sure 'urgent' is the word but it will affect the pace at which you read the story. Sometimes you want that, sometimes you don't.
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Jul 18, 2014 21:25
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Free yourself from the hegemony of style. Write in second person future tense.
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Jul 21, 2014 03:44
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Yeah, that feels like a personal thing. If only there were a right way and wrong way to do this, this would all be so much easier. e: Though honestly I've been focusing a little bit more on reading the shorts a bit more... maybe that's because that's just what I've been putting up though, idk. neongrey fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 23:08
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Well, this might be a weird way to do it since I'm writing in pairs (I write with my ex a lot; I'll do first draft and he'll do second, then we fiddle with the result), but try just retyping the whole thing out. Apparently he catches a ton of poo poo that way that no one does on the first read-through. With that much time since you did it, that might help?
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Jul 31, 2014 00:22
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Yeah, I got nothing for last week, probably not this week either, but I should for next, so yeah. I'm trying to avoid being in the process of redrafting as the crits are coming in like happened with the last one. But that requires some coordination so it takes a little bit more time on my end than I might like.
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Aug 8, 2014 19:18
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You're absolutely being an idiot about it. Ideas are the absolute cheapest thing around when it comes to anything creative (hence why the "ideas guy" is such a joke). There is no reason to steal ideas from anyone, let alone from you (generic).
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Aug 13, 2014 18:13
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I don't think you understand what criticism is.
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Sep 17, 2014 00:57
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I really think your problem is conflating critique and just telling people you don't like what they wrote. Like there's basically no relation between the two at all-- a good critique is good regardless of whether the person giving it liked what they're critiquing or not. What do you think isn't supportive about telling people what you see needs to be done to make their work better?
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Sep 17, 2014 05:39
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Yeah it's hard to resist the urge to explain, but in the end in 90% of cases, if you need to explain what you were going for, you didn't convey it well enough in the first place. (the other 10% of the time, it's just that one guy who never gets anything not getting it, every group's got one, and you probably don't care what he thinks anyway because gently caress that guy)
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Sep 18, 2014 16:11
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Also at least one of those dudes is perma-probated.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:18
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I have handwritten Xenogears fanfiction that I wrote in high school sitting around in a box somewhere. I used a purple ballpoint pen. The main characters were the members of the male cast I found most attractive, and a mysterious, angsty, and very pretty original character. She wasn't a Mary Sue, guys, she couldn't be, she was just so dark and brooding.
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Oct 10, 2014 03:01
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General Battuta posted:My book is due Monday and I'm preeeeetty freaked out. I should've had plenty of time but then the narrative encountered complications — a cold, a party, a dead dog, a lot of scenes I realized could be way better. Feeling kinda rough. You have got this. There'll always be something you figure you could have done better, it'll be fine.
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Oct 10, 2014 03:15
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