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HiddenGecko posted:Celebrate by starting your next novel. While you drink good port.
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Sep 25, 2012 23:08
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Molly Bloom posted:Since we're arguing about poo poo, can I ask about white people writing minority characters? I've been reading around on the subject and finding the answer to be a general 'don't do it (unless you have good beta readers from said ethnic group and even then probably not)'. Writing Excuses recently had an episode about this: Writing the Other. Aside from either perpetuating stereotypes or the reverse side of that coin - tokenism, I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is to start writing with the thought, "Okay, what would I do if I were a girl/gay/Latino/etc?" This is an immediately flawed foundation, and that way of thinking probably ruins a lot of characters no matter how good the intentions. Because nobody thinks that way; nobody thinks, "Okay, you're a black woman. What do you buy?" It's very artificial, and no way to write a successful character of any type. Our background, and our relationship with our background, certainly influences us. The more deeply you know your characters, the more you can allow those influences to creep in subtly and naturally, and this is just as true for personality, family life, education, age, and experiences as it is for culture. This requires a fair amount of research and taking the time to build nuanced, complete humans. Many writers don't take time to do this for any character, much less ones of different backgrounds. If you write anything besides memoirs you are writing outside of your experience, and that takes work. Anyone who says writing minority characters is "too hard" either doesn't have the ability to write fiction at all or is making excuses -- it requires the same skills as any good writing. Other links from the podcast's comment section: The Danger of a Single Story Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is The Importance of Casting In Breaking Open Movie Stereotypes *Edit: The above links also illustrate how choosing not to write others is not only lazy, but perpetuates itself; and why minority people often don't have the same difficulties in writing characters of the majority. When people talk about privilege, they're usually discussing systematic social inequalities, but it also has an impact on you as a writer. The vast majority of our movie stars and television leads and novel protagonists are white (specifically white, straight, and male), and if you live in this culture you're constantly being shown a thousand different stories about white people, straight people, and men, so is it any surprise that a person from a different background has a pretty good handle on writing the majority? Unfortunately the reverse isn't true. Other viewpoints are either invisible or regulated to "incomplete stories" as Chimamanda aptly calls them, which is a disadvantage to both the marginalized groups and anybody who wants to write about them. tldr; writing more diverse voices makes writing diverse voices less hard. The invisible becomes visible and accessible. Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 19:47
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CB_Tube_Knight posted:Question to all of you: How do you feel about low work magic systems? I ask because I was listening to "I Should Be Writing" and Lou Anders was on talking about how there's a growing trend in the US where a character doesn't have to put any time studying or learning into their power, they just have to believe that they can do it or believe in themselves and it works. The thing that I enjoy about magic systems is their execution - both in how cleverly they're used in the story and the tone the author creates through magic. This has nothing to do with how structured the magic is. It's possible to write a story where a character's powers are inherent and they use their abilities in ingenious and interesting ways, or you you could write an overwrought academic system that's incredibly boring. Yeah, I'm against lazy writing, but I don't necessarily equate that with low-work magic. I guess the two extremes would be like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, where both main characters study throughout their lifetimes to gain their abilities, but the magic still feels "magical" and it's awesome, as opposed to Jojo's Bizarre Adventures where you either have a Stand or you don't, but survival depends on out-thinking other Stand users, and it's awesome. Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Oct 21, 2012 |
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Oct 21, 2012 16:57
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I Am Hydrogen posted:I eventually stumbled across this lecture by Ray Bradbury. As you can see, about half the authors took the short story path, and the other half jumped straight to novel-length. I think the correct method depends on the individual writer. Some people are just natural short format writers, and it doesn't surprise me at all that Ray Bradbury would be one of them; perhaps you are as well? I'd never written a long piece of original prose, so I also thought starting with short stories would be more manageable, but the thing kept blowing up and expanding and expanding and... I may be more naturally inclined toward longer formats. Still, I think the short story has a lot to offer as a learning tool, and they're dang fun to read. I've been blasting through several anthologies in the last few weeks, and I'm going to continue to work at a few of my own stories. But if you find you're really passionate about this format, don't feel you have to work up to a novel. We tend to look at novels as the highest form of fiction, but why? There's nothing wrong with setting personal goals, and novels sell more in today's market, but unless your plan is to become a full-time professional writer then do what you love.
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Nov 9, 2012 00:46
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If it's bothering you too much, it might be worth just scrapping the attribution altogether in favor of character name + action beat: John flipped the table. "That's the last puppy I'm eating, Martja!" (Exclamation points are usually gross in narration, but I think using them sparingly is fine in dialogue.)
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Nov 11, 2012 06:46
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Side Thing related to the TD publishing bit: there's another contest by the same people running right now. Subject is MMA. Not my cup of tea but I'm sure there's a few people here who could put something good together. Deadline December 15th. That's not a lot of time but it's way more than we had to knock our Cipher Sister entries together and look how that turned out. Haha, that's awesome. I'd hop in if I had the time and I wouldn't make everything super gay. (Not a knock against MMA, I actually love the sport.) On the subject of publishing and short fiction anthologies, do smaller publications or aggregates like Duotrope have any advertising partnerships with large book stores or groups like NaNoWriMo? It seems like everybody wants to sell a story, but ain't nobody want to buy them, so what was once a thriving sub-genre -- where half the nerds and their mom had subscriptions to Asimov's, for example -- has been much reduced. I didn't read short stories either until I joined a writing group this summer. I wanted to try some short fiction, but it seemed very stupid to be writing in a format I wasn't familiar with, and as a result I've been reading short stories almost exclusively for the last few months. And you know, there's a lot to like and a lot to learn. I've especially enjoyed the genre collections edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling; thanks to them I've discovered Australian fantasist Margo Lanagan and Jeffery Ford's wonderful "The Night Whiskey." Someone please correct me if this kind of thing is already happening, as I may very well be wrong due my inexperience with the business-oriented aspects of publishing, but short story publishers and especially NaNo would be a match made in heaven. Finished your novel? Great! Now that it's December, why don't you give back to the community by buying lit subscriptions for your friends and family this Christmas? The range of anthologies available is more than enough to please anyone (and more accessible than ever thanks to digital readers), and hundreds of thousands of writers participate in NaNo every year. The idea seems so mutually beneficial I almost can't believe it isn't happening already.
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Dec 6, 2012 23:35
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Whenever I draw, I keep open books or tabs up of art that inspires me and which is a style that I want to flavor my work. When I write, I'll have a small stack of books nearby for the same "flavoring" purpose. Carefully reading through someone else's work gets my brain into the rhythm of their voice, and I often find this helps me carry beneficial aspects of a style I admire into my own writing. Of course, the stack of books changes depending on what I'm doing - maybe Elmore Leonard for focusing on dialogue, for example, though I find transcripts and great screenplays are great for that as well. It's an ever-rotating list as I discover more writers, distinct voices, and create new goals for myself. My favorite reference books are Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke and Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. I can crack them open anywhere to find great descriptions that alternate between wry, quiet humor and shocking beauty.
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Dec 26, 2012 00:54
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Pladdicus posted:As a 'winner' of nanowrimo I can attest to everything in this post being true. Nanowrimo was a hell of a thing to get me actually writing but the output is...barebones at best. Less 'workable' more 'needing a severe rewrite from the ground up' NaNo helped me in a similar way. I could never complete a project other than the shortest short story, because anything beyond that and I got stuck in the endless loop of beginning rewrites that never got anywhere. I would get a few pages and trash it because it didn't remotely resemble my favorite works or authors. I kept waiting for ideas to formulate, for characters and theme and conflict to become perfect. A lifetime of loving books and trying to teach myself about writing had locked the art in this ivory tower that I could never hope to access. Anecdotes about people claiming they were "born to write" and heard the characters' voices in their head didn't help, because no way could I relate to that - so it must be an innate talent I lacked, right? NaNo gave me the excuse to gently caress up. I would want to spend all day waffling over some word arrangement, but I had to charge through or fall behind in wordcount. The result was a very flawed first draft that actually went somewhere. Of course it needed editing, but being able to see the whole helps tremendously when you're trying to fix the parts. And I discovered all the stuff about discovering themes and the characters coming alive is true, but you have to write it first. Relationships and conflicts emerged that were far more interesting than what I had planned, but I didn't discover them until I wrote myself into them. You can plan a year-long trip in advance, but you don't know exactly where each footfall will land until you're a few steps away. Unlike real life, in writing you have the opportunity to go back and tweak every one of those steps, so take advantage of that ability. loving up is part of the process. No matter how good you become, you will gently caress up and that is normal, because even though timeless works may appear as if they flew fully-formed from the masters' foreheads, what we're actually looking at is the result of lots of polishing and rewriting and mistakes. This all seems obvious in hindsight, but for a perfectionist beginner who doesn't know any better, the realization that flaws and mistakes are a part of the process is an invaluable lesson. NaNo is whatever you make it, and for me it was the antidote to editing paralysis. This is also my advice to supermikhail: just do it. Especially when you don't want to, and when you can't figure out why or how. Do the next best thing. It will be wrong, but you will better know how to repair it later. This process is called "writing."
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Dec 27, 2012 23:14
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screenwritersblues posted:So what's the general opinion of Fan Fiction? I know that most of it is really bad, but I've come across some really well written ones, but not really good, just well written. Is there really such a thing as good fan fiction or is it all bad and is it strange that I want to dabble in it? Both of these sins fall apart under scrutiny, because fanfiction can't be compared to published fiction in terms of quality/percentage on equal terms since it's usually the work of a single person without the benefit of slush pile sorting or an editor. Most creative efforts, without the benefit of a quality gatekeeper or professional editing, will be pretty bad -- this is not a special quality of fanfiction that makes it inherently inferior. The derivative part is more complicated. There are some people who find derivative work offensive by definition; this is especially hilarious when they're fans of comics, the most successful fanfic market in existence. You have to start asking at what point does dabbling with someone else's characters stop being fanfic and start being "real art," if ever? Is fanfic the only thing you're supposed to hate, or fanart (which seems to enjoy more approval for some reason)? Star Wars novelizations? Any version of Batman not a product of Bob Kane and Bill Finger? Everything from Nolan's Dark Knight to the Timm Bruce cartoon to Frank Miller's Dark Knight is derivative. So is the BBC production of Sherlock, and the Downey Jr. Sherlock films. All could be called fanfic regardless of production values and creative teams attached. I personally don't think working with someone else's creations requires less effort or can produce less entertaining art. While it's true fanfic can be the training wheels for young writers (who often move on to original creations), plenty of published authors have admitted to writing it. This gets down to the reasons people write it in the first place: love of the original subject. Whether a 14 year-old is fumbling through a Sailor Moon story or an experienced writer is covertly penning some lost Firefly episodes, they're all doing it because they love the original world enough that they're moved to create something in response. This is true of any fanwork, even the stupidest ones. It's just a love letter, is all. Nothing about that affects the integrity of the original work, but something about it grabbed hold of someone and made them ask "what if this happened?" tldr; of course it's possible to be good, and no it's not weird to want to be part of an idea you really like. The real questions you have to ask yourself are, do you want to write and create beyond fanwork (not everybody does, and that's fine), and if so what can you learn from it?
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Dec 31, 2012 04:17
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HiddenGecko posted:But it is still a crutch on your imagination. It makes you lazy and dependent on what is possible within a canon rather than exploring your own ideas or creating new things. I'm not saying that most fans don't do exactly as you describe, but there are so many fans out there -- and of such varying ability and intention, since literally anyone can make fanwork -- that it feels like no absolutes on quality can be made without a whole lotta goalpost moving. Whether or not derivative art makes the artist better, I certainly think it can make the subject better: the Batman mythos has benefited enormously from the mentioned additions, for example. This is something I find particularly fascinating about television and comic writing, since it's not so much about the development of you the writer but about the development of a shared world. But I hope every artist learns from everything they create, whether it be a failed short story, a 1000 word Thunderdome challenge, or a self-indulgent fanfic. edit: I guess this is partly a reaction to some of the lit threads and communities, where you can always find a few people creating increasingly exclusive (and arbitrary) markers for what is or isn't "good art," and what their refined tastes are therefore able to find useful. Like, why would someone brag about how little you're able to learn from?? Basically, you can do anything in a stupid way or a non-stupid way, execution is everything. So it's your fault if it's stupid. Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Dec 31, 2012 |
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Dec 31, 2012 04:48
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Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:I'd rather not think of fat married women flicking their wrinkly beans to what I'd write while they contemplate their miserable lives. So we can take it you're not a fan of erotica, then. Speaking of, thanks to whoever linked that "Ask me about" Delilah Fawkes/Erotica thread a few pages back. It turned out to be way more interesting than I expected!
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Dec 31, 2012 06:34
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 Happy New Year, CC! Tartarus Sauce posted:I can understand why people would want to write fanfiction, but for the most part, it just doesn't resonate with me. I'd rather create my own characters and settings, and continue to let myself be surprised by the things my favorite fictional characters do, say, or experience within their own stories. Eventually I stumbled onto fanworks, and it was great because not only did they satiate the desire for more of my favorite stories, the authors and artists Got it. They loved the same things I did, and also found it frustrating that we only got to have these adventures for a couple hundred pages. At least half of them were recent fans like me (teens with little to no writing experience), so of course most of it wasn't amazing, but I was grateful for the new content. If I had made the mental leap that the only difference in what I was doing by making things up in my head and what they were doing was the simple act of putting it in a doc, then I probably would have written a lot earlier, but at the time writing was just something other people did. Regardless, it was all in fun and helped form a community and sense of camaraderie. At the time nobody was wondering how fic would develop the writer's craft, because the whole point was "X IS AMAZING, let's make more!" not development. And I still think that's a totally fine motivation as long as you're aware of it, though granted it's a different motivation from what most readers of a "Writing Advice" thread are used to. Now that I'm older and I have made that mental leap, I still understand the attraction to fanworks, but am much more interested in my own ideas. Tartarus Sauce posted:For you as a reader, which is more suspenseful and compelling: knowing something that the character doesn't know yet, and waiting in anticipation for them to learn it, or being as equally in the dark as the character, and journeying alongside them as they work to uncover the truth? Are there certain ingredients that allow one or the other to really work? Are there certain things that cause one or the other to fail, in your eyes? Take the French farmhouse scene in Inglorious Basterds: the Nazi interrogation could have been a slow character/setting piece that ended in a shocking reveal, but since the audience knew the Jews were hidden under the floorboards the whole time, every second was laced with tension. But like the dairy farmer who was hiding them, we had no idea how the scenario would play out, so we get both types of suspense used to great effect. Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jan 2, 2013 |
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Jan 2, 2013 01:25
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I Am Hydrogen posted:The best advice anyone can give you is to read more books and to pay attention to what you read. This. Find a (good) book that you really enjoy and go through a paragraph, breaking down the structure of each sentence. Make sure to not only note sentence diversity, but how different structures evoke different tones and when their use is most appropriate. Keep it by you for when you get stuck. You'll discover a lot of ways to vary structure, but a word of caution: be really careful with present participle phrases. Ex: "Putting his key in the door, he leaped up the stairs and got his revolver out of the bureau." Firstly, they're very easy to overdo if you're a new writer, and secondly, they're easy to do wrong. For instance, the example I just used is impossible because there is no way a person can be leaping up stairs and fetching their revolver WHILE putting a key in the door. Don't let your phrasing muddy the sequence of events.
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Jan 5, 2013 05:49
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Tartarus Sauce posted:You're creating the appearance of authenticity, without the "authentic" conversational fat and gristle that doesn't actually serve your story or characters. The great dialogue writers (like Elmore Leonard) manage to recreate the cadence and flavor of the spoken word and put it on the page, but when you think about it, scripts need to do the same thing and work in both directions, so good film/television dialogue is always worth listening to. What I like even better is a good transcript, because at its best a good transcript takes good dialogue, refines it through good actors (who hopefully distill the script into its most natural-sounding form while retaining all that good storytelling subtext), then translates the refinement right back into prose form. Yes, you have to make a few allowances when considering the change in format, but transcripts are literally what juicy dialogue looks like. Skimming a good exchange can jumpstart your brain into bridging the audio-visual gap. A transcript--as opposed to a script--can be hard to come by, but sometimes I'll pause what I'm watching and create my own abbreviated versions. Of course you'll have to consider what flavor best matches your own dialogue goals. Chinatown or Deadwood? Annie Hall? I think some of the best television dialogue right now is on FX's Justified, which is based on (surprise surprise) work by Elmore Leonard.
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Jan 11, 2013 05:36
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Does anyone have experience/knowledge about open readings by editors? I've been writing for a while, but this year will the the first time I plan to get down to some serious submitting, and I have a lot to learn. I'm more familiar with general submission guidelines for publications, but an editor whose work I enjoy is currently putting together an anthology, and while she usually solicits short fiction from a list of experienced authors she's also (unusually) providing a month-long "open reading" period later this year. How would this be different from regular submissions, and what would that entail? Edit: Found out! Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Mar 16, 2013 |
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Mar 14, 2013 19:27
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Links about plot and conflict: Hugh Howey: Got a cool idea for a story? Now break it. Caro Clarke: What is conflict?
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Mar 24, 2013 00:17
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magnificent7 posted:More information. I wrote the story. Hell yeah I wrote it, and I'd have gotten away with it too. However, now I'm doing revisions, and sharing the first few chapters, and some people - just some - are asking me who's my intended audience with this book? If I'm going to write about a brash bar-hopping sailor talking floozy, I should skew the characters to twenty-somethings because darn it women in their 30s just don't act like this. Obviously, I disagree -- BUT I'm wondering how big of a gently caress should I give about that when the story isn't so much about the 30-something woman who cusses as it is about the aliens taking over our planet by burrowing into our skulls. People of any gender and age can and do act like anything, including late 30s female hard drinkin', hard cussin' hussies. The only thing I can imagine that would have her age read "wrong" is if you throw in a lot of irreverent banter and cultural references that are more suited to the early-mid 20s crowd -- it's going to be a stretch if you have her making Aqua Teen Hunger Force jokes. Experience also suggests age. Even if this woman has no ambitions, she's still been an adult for 20 years and has seen some poo poo. Letting that inform her behavior will go a long way in making the audience respect a character that they don't necessary like, something that will be lost if you make your protagonist a 21 year old moron.
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Apr 4, 2013 14:51
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Chillmatic posted:Art cannot be taught. Craft, on the other hand, can. Totally agree with all this. I'll go on to add that I don't think traits like creativity, curiosity, and enthusiasm can be taught, but they can be learned. Having the resources in place for people who are willing and able to learn these things is a worthwhile environment.
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Apr 5, 2013 22:02
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Pladdicus posted:I think it's that I feel like it'd be writing the same character with another skin, the issue becomes that it just feels under utilized, that there are interesting things to say about gender even if it's not a very deterministic quality. I find I want to acknowledge that there should be -some- difference if the gender changes but that I have trouble finding where in the hell that change might be. So while I feel it's fine that I make secondary or supporting characters, my main character who I focus on their thoughts far more is usually male just because of that comfort. Ironically, I find it easier to write for men despite not being male, and I've spoken with other women who feel the same way. On one hand I've grown up reading books with male protagonists and watching films and shows with male heroes, so the viewpoint is anything but alien in the media I consume, but on the other hand there's also the fear of inserting myself too much into a female protagonist. It's not so much an issue with creating Mary Sues, more that I don't think as much about what *this character's* reactions or thoughts would be before I react with my own on the page. I find the comfort of writing in the same gender or culture can actually work against me, and by removing that comfort I focus more on what is true to the character -- not just their sex, but every aspect of their fictional identity that makes them an individual. It's also a personal preference thing: characters whose backgrounds and experiences are a few degrees removed from mine are more interesting to read and write. Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Apr 20, 2013 |
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Apr 19, 2013 23:26
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Also, don't write about a character getting shot unless you yourself have experienced a bullet wound, otherwise you'll never get it right. Same thing with childbirth: don't even think about writing that poo poo unless you have literally pushed a baby out of your vagina. Same thing with being a wizard and/or serial killer. Realism, folks! What loving terrible advice. 
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Jun 12, 2013 22:08
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Icon-Cat posted:If anyone's looking for an agent, the Twitter hashtag #MSWL might interest you today. Thanks so much for this. I sent the link around to some of my friends, and one of them just got a full manuscript request as a result. 
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Jun 29, 2013 05:38
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I'd be happy to critique as well, though I only have a few short stories of my own (well, verging more on novellas or novelettes) to offer. Due to work constraints I won't be able to follow the Write About Dragons class format, but I'm always willing to harness outside pressure when it comes making myself more productive. I'm familiar with critiquing both one-shots and sections of larger works through email and in person.
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Jul 8, 2013 22:03
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Panda So Panda posted:Yeah, but it's also not realistic to be super good at a variety of things since most things worth learning take time to develop and there's only so much energy one can devote to certain activities (i.e. you can't be a concert pianist, a varsity player in 3 sports, AND be an expert sniper -- at least it would be extremely rare). And all joking aside, to be that knowledgeable about certain academic topics, yeah, there would be some narrowing of topics of study involved. Are you familiar with the ten thousand hours theory proposed by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers? Whether or not you subscribe to all of Gladwell's ideas, the concept isn't too crazy: it takes about ten thousand hours of devoted practice to reach an expert level of skill. If you subscribe to this, time is really your only limit -- how many things would she have this much time to devote to, or 7000 hours, or 5000? And as others have said, being intelligent will only help in these areas; even in less intellectual skills like art or physical abilities, intelligence certainly won't hurt. Smart = weak is a fallacy. Ignore what other specifically female characters have done. God knows we more diversity to draw from, so reference any character or real person you like. Don't forget that what makes a character interesting are not her abilities, but her complexities and flaws. Give her all the skills you want as long as you don't trick yourself into thinking that a character is her skills.
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Jul 20, 2013 03:31
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Chairchucker posted:Or kick him in the yarbles. Yep. Being rear end-kicky is sort of vague, anyway. Cunning, ruthlessness, and being good with a weapon are all ways to work around a lack of pure strength. And as SuBeCo mentioned, you don't want to take for granted that there are different types of fitness, just like there are different types of intelligence. For example, I'm also a young woman, but my distance endurance is pretty poo poo. I can do 10 to 21 pull-ups though, depending on how much I've worked out.
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Jul 23, 2013 22:14
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Symptomless Coma posted:An unrelated form question about the short but not-so-short story. Just check out some great short story anthologies and reverse engineer them. Honestly, I've heard 3000-7000 words is the sweet spot for sales and fairly normal, and I'd much rather read that than a bunch of thousand word snippets. Though I have never been able to write anything less than 7000 words, so take that with a grain of salt. Some famous examples: Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: 3804 Shirley Jackson, The Lottery: 3773 Edgar Allen Poe, The Black Cat: 3998 Roald Dahl, The Lamb to Slaughter: 3899 W.W. Jacobs, The Monkey's Paw: 4134 Rudyard Kipling, The Cat that Walked by Himself: 4108
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Jul 24, 2013 05:18
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Has anyone here taken a short story or novella and converted it into a longer work? Right now I've got a finished novella, but my mind keeps wandering back to the characters and world, and I keep inventing all these complicated scenarios in stray moments that exist outside of what I've already written. On one hand, I know that we're supposed to like the characters and world we're working in, but on the other hand I feel strangely guilty about it. Like it's self-indulgent to try for a full novel, as if I'm writing fanfic for myself. I am fully aware of how insane that sounds.
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Aug 2, 2013 05:44
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I started thinking seriously about writing a year ago. I've always loved reading, and various visual arts have been a part of my life from an early age, but writing is new. Since last August I've had the privilege of meeting talented, insightful people who do good work and love it, and they want to help others do the same. I've been reading, listening, thinking: novels, series, screenplays, comics, flash fiction, short fiction anthologies, literary, genre; on the web, traditional publishing, local zines. Things I wouldn't have explored otherwise. In the past year I've had a lot of fun, worked hard, learned more than I could have imagined, and as a result I'm engaging with media -- not just prose -- on a deeper level than I ever have before. It's been a tremendously rewarding experience, and I wish I'd gotten into it earlier. But I didn't, because I believed all the stories writers tell each other: "If writing is not your life's purpose; if it is not the first thing you want to do when you get home from your day job, you should stop doing it." I wasn't burning with passion from birth to tell stories. I had interests outside of writing, didn't want to quit my day job and become a full-time novelist. Writings wasn't something I simply couldn't live without. You know, all that stuff I was supposed to feel in my soul if I was a real writer. Thank God I realized it was horseshit, all of it. A bunch of horseshit. All circles of artists have a fetish for mysticizing their craft, but writers are probably the worst about this. A real writer writes in certain formats and avoids others, edits a certain way, feels a certain way about their work and others', measures success a certain way, and if you're not a real writer -- something no one can agree upon -- then get the hell out. There's no telling how many budding amateurs and veterans alike the Ivory Tower has destroyed. It's worse than useless, it's counterproductive and a lie. Underneath all the navel-gazing dithery, writing is just like any artistic endeavor: creativity plus craft. I'm happy for those of you who have found success in whatever measure you're looking for, but the only right way to do something is whatever way works, and we all know that is far from universal. The only requirement of a hobby is that you enjoy it. Period. If you want other people to enjoy it, and you would like to better yourself, then be honest about your goals and prepare to work hard. If you don't want to, fine, but for gently caress's sake, don't avoid something because you've made yourself completely insane with the idea of it.
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Aug 12, 2013 05:45
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Speaking of creativity + craft, a lot of people here have recommended the Writing Tools craft guide. I believe it discusses the importance of sentence variety, but let's go a little deeper. Let's talk about syntax versus diction. Diction: word choice. You can fool around with diction. There are some guidelines to follow -- avoid excessive modifiers, and try to be specific so your verbs and nouns can covey needed information without modifiers -- but you have a lot of room to wiggle around and create different tones: formal, colloquial, dry, historical, whimsical, concrete, abstract, and so forth. Diction influences style. Syntax: sentence structure. Don't fool around with syntax. You want to employ a variety of sentence structures: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. Sure, you can alter the blend to create temporary effects -- after all, written language was devised as a record of spoken language, so in many ways it is aural as much as visual, and both senses influence the effect of the written word. Choppy sentences create a frantic effect, because that's how we speak when we're out of breath and frantic, while long, complex sentences are luxuries of a more languid, descriptive mood, and we can lean heavily on either sentence type to transfer this mood to the reader. But you cannot sustain that poo poo. Pages and pages of only choppy or only run-on sentences are unreadable. Unnatural, even. Good syntax is lyrical, musical, but usually invisible; poor syntax is so jarring and tin-eared that even a novice reader will notice. Here's a great example of syntax in action:What We Talk About When We Talk About Flow. The author supplies an opening paragraph by D.H. Lawrence, then he rewrites the first part using repetitive sentence structure. The content stays the same, the order of ideas is the same, he only changes the syntax. And it's just horrible. This is something we are able to recognize by instinct, but it's helpful to be able to consciously pin it down, especially since "flow" is one of the more nebulous reading/writing principles.
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Aug 12, 2013 06:25
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My pal who got asked for a full manuscript as a result of #MSWL has just set up a meeting to discuss representation for his first book. This works, folks! http://agentandeditorwishlist.tumblr.com/
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Aug 27, 2013 18:35
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I wonder if some people aren't conflating theme/moral/message (these aren't the same things!) with didactic. A didactic story is something intended to teach or instruct, with the story itself being just the vehicle. This usually results in something that is a very clear allegory, but not so much a story -- Ayn Rand is a common example and this was totally her intent -- or it can begin with the intent to instruct and then unfold in the telling into something more approaching a traditional narrative -- Tolstoy. But this doesn't mean that most stories don't have a message or central theme in addition to the events they are superficially describing. Message or theme is something that can be an objective from the beginning, reveal itself to the writer gradually, or be beefed up in later drafts, but I'd go so far as to argue this makes any story stronger because you want to know what your story's about, including what it's really about. Your focus will be sharper, more effective. What you're doing is describing fictional events, but ideally you're also revealing truths about the human experience. This is what sticks with us after the pages are closed; this is how you can say a real thing while telling a pack of lies. I just read Ken Liu's award-winning short story "Mono No Aware," for example. What it's about is a young man trying to repair a spacecraft so the survivors of humanity can find a new home in the stars, but the reason it affects readers so strongly is because it's about so many other things: reconciling a cultural heritage you barely remember with future generations you won't be a part of, the lessons of a father, the sacrifices of a mother, honor, trying to keep a way of understanding alive because that's the only thing that will remain after your death. Even though we'll never be in space, never float weightless over kilometers of solar sail, we can connect with that. Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss," is about monkeys and bathtubs and magic, but it's also about grief and madness and coping. The best way I've heard it put is, don't tell a story about the BIG IDEA, but find a character that allows you to touch on that big idea and tell THEIR story. Don't give your readers answers, but show characters struggling with the questions. I guess what I'm saying is message and story aren't mutually exclusive. It's a spectrum, and I think most works fall in the middle rather than toward either extreme.
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Sep 14, 2013 06:48
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Most genres have their own award ceremonies - the Hugo, Nebula, and so on - horror presents the Stoker awards. You can check out their website or Wikipedia for a list of winners and nominees from each year, and it's often possible to find links to free versions online, either on the author's website or on the publication's page. You'll be able to get an idea of what are considered the best stories in the genre and see if/how tastes change across the years. There's also an annual "Best Horror" anthology edited by Ellen Datlow that you can get cheaply on kindle.
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Sep 16, 2013 21:19
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systran posted:I'm not directly responding to graphic novel guy with this post. This is for everyone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiKmP-tL4vo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQWDZp05leA Butcher has some pretty solid advice here that he also covers in livejournal posts to varying degrees. He focuses primarily on structure and characterization as opposed to surface prose details like the beauty of language, and I found it very valuable in recent appraisals of my own work, which was technically okay but way too unfocused plot and character-wise.
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Oct 11, 2013 02:14
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ravenkult posted:Who the hell takes writing advice from loving Jim Butcher? That's just bizarre. Fortunately, some people are able to distill successful concepts and apply them to any type of fiction they like! Unfortunately, a lot of renowned and very successful authors are incredibly lovely at examining their process and teaching it to others. You see the same thing with other experts, like top athletes who make lovely coaches, et cetera, because sometimes people who are uniquely gifted either forgot how they became that way or they don't understand why other people just can't do what they do naturally, so they can't explain things well to beginners. Jim Butcher is one of a handful of people who seem to be able to communicate his process, probably because he had to work a long time to build his career and was able to identify techniques before internalizing them. CantDecideOnAName posted:I don't really want to get into writing comedy hardcore, because I know and understand that it's one of the hardest things to write. But let's throw this out there anyway: how do you write comedy?
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Oct 12, 2013 21:13
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:I can think of three reliable ways to find decent, modern, sci-fi and horror short fiction. There will likely be some overlap between the stories you find using these methods--and those might be the best ones to check out? Yeah, seconding short stories as a method for sampling of great genre fiction -- short works are also good for getting to know new authors and styles without committing to 400 page books to do so. I think anyone interested in horror will especially benefit from short fiction, as many of the authors considered to be horror's most influential contributors (Lovecraft, Bradbury, James, Pierce, Poe, Ellison, Jackson, Barker, King...) either worked primarily in shorter formats or made their names that way. I've heard short fiction described as horror's natural format, and you can find some surprising things there. (George RR Martin actually became well-known first through his dark SF and horror shorts and novellas.) Another great thing about these types of anthologies is that they all begin with introductions that discuss the genre, how it's evolved, and what makes it tick, and most of them also provide author introductions that talk about the writer's body of work. I recommend in particular: The Dark Descent http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23793.The_Dark_Descent?from_search=true Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (older stuff, so you might be more interested in The Dark Descent, but still a classic) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137763.Great_Tales_of_Terror_and_the_Supernatural The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12344319-the-weird?from_search=true The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 1988-2008: http://www.goodreads.com/series/50217-the-year-s-best-fantasy-and-horror Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Dec 5, 2013 |
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Dec 5, 2013 01:04
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As a writer, you're portraying points of view and actions you have little-to-no personal experience with all the time. At least I hope you are. You don't need permission for any of that, and regional dialects should be no different. Though it's a good idea to keep it toned down and use vocabulary choice and word order to reflect dialect rather than lean too much on eccentric spelling, not just for sensitivity reasons, but because weird phonetics can put off readers, and they're harder to parse to the point of being impractical. Richard Adams has a character in "Plague Dogs" who speaks in a phonetically spelled brogue that's so thick, I had to go over his lines several times to understand what he was saying. That's too far. Leaf through some Elmore Leonard to see how a white guy writes excellent dialogue for a variety of races and classes in a way that feels natural and is easy to read. Leaf through some ZZ Packer to see how a black woman accomplishes the same thing. God Over Djinn posted:Is it inherently offensive for me (a white person) to write a story where the narrator speaks in AAVE? Or just if it's inaccurate/over the top 'Law' sakes I gotta get me some co'nbread' poo poo?
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Dec 6, 2013 06:33
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I don't think you can compare profanity across mediums, though. I think it is easier to over-do it on the page than in spoken dialogue, and needs to be treated accordingly. Compared to speech, it does tend to "leap off the page," but so does any repeated word or sentiment. You tend to get the opposite effect with sex or violence, where visual representations can have a stronger, potentially more exploitative impact than a written description. Even so, profanity, sex, and violence are the easiest crutches when it comes to goosing the reader or viewer's emotions, and as such they're often abused through the confusion of "adult content" with "mature content." It's insulting to me that a writer (in any medium) would try to pull that gimmick on me in the hopes I'll confuse it for actual style or content, so my tolerance level is short unless they can prove they know what they're doing.
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Jan 26, 2014 02:40
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Christmas Jones posted:I find myself constantly baffled by how conservative (in values, in the subject matter they choose to portray) writers can be. Which I suppose is a lesson I'll eventually learn if it gets hammered into my skull enough. Take HBO. In the first few seasons of True Blood, the sweet Christian girl-next-door protagonist rarely curses, but when she does it underscores how serious the situation has gotten. Goofy and campy, but not bad. By the last few seasons every single character is dropping "gently caress" left and right, regardless of how little sense it makes given their background. The dialogue is "edgy," and it's also interchangeable. That's bad writing! In Deadwood there's cussin' aplenty, but Al Swearengen never curses or speaks like Calamity Jane, who doesn't cuss or speak like Seth Bullock, who doesn't speak like Alma Garret, who never curses. That's good writing! You mention Tarantino. I enjoy Tarantino as a director, and though he never shies away from extreme language or gore, I find he is generally self-aware enough to not veer into the exploitative. The way he frames violence in, for example, Inglorious Basterds, is ironic as hell and demands as many questions of the audiences as it does of the characters, which is far different from the portrayal of violence in a splatterporn flick. Or the Bride in Kill Bill? She is a figure of sexual desire, but she is also allowed to be dirty and unsexy and in pain and have her own arc and be an adult and have agency in a way that none of the female characters in Suckerpunch ever do. Tarantino is controversial, but the fact that he actually warrants conversation and debate is more than you can say for many filmmakers. Sex, profanity, and violence have no inherent value either way, so they must be viewed in context of the work. And honestly, the lazy way they're often used warrants strong critique. (see also: your avatar) Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 06:08
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Hi I'm sure you foul-language connoisseurs find the usage of naughty words very fascinating but I would like some help with my genuine question quoted above, please How do you mean writing styles? Like in wording and structure, or theme? It will be a lot easier to find common themes and occasionally structures in regional folklore as opposed to prose style, unless you stick to really distinct formats like the sagas. Anything less obvious than saga formats or West African word repetition, etc. won't be recognizable enough to register as different to most readers. I've seen linguistic, structural, and psychological approaches, and there's the Aarne-Thompson classification system, but it sounds like maybe "comparative mythology" as a general search might be more useful to you. Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 06:13
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Hey, thanks very much for this and sorry for not responding earlier. I wasn't aware of the Aarne-Thompson classification and that looks really fascinating. I'll have a read! When it comes to prose style, I think you're probably seeing distinction as a result of a single, recognizable version of the story or the work of the translation/writer. Especially so with Kipling. The Sagas and Arabian Nights are unusual in that they have a long written history, but most folk tale traditions I'm aware of are passed down orally, so you don't have an associated prose style as much as recurring themes or language quirks, like the West African repetition. Still, if you bring in a combination of regional naming styles, specific vocabulary, and themes, I bet you can approximate a decent fake that sounds believable. Like the Just So Stories have a really recognizable prose style that Kipling invented; you can tell they're meant to be read aloud just by looking at them, which I think is what makes them feel very much like traditional folk tales.
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Jan 28, 2014 01:54
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FouRPlaY posted:I've been doing some editing of stories online and I'm noticing a trend of authors mixing in character action with their dialogue. Almost like reading a movie script in paragraph form. Mr_Wolf posted:
Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Jan 29, 2014 23:07
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