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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Let's talk about plotting and structure! I hate the formulaic nature of some of this stuff so take this as vaguely as possible, but when you're at the lowest point you need to inject some new information that carries you through the last fifth of the story. Ideally, you'd have some kind of B-story running throughout that comes to a head and converges with the A-story; it might be the love story, it might be a revelation, it might be a character from earlier taking on greater relevance, maybe some investigation has turned up something new, etc. You then go through a series of minibosses until you get the the final boss and deal with them. If possible, the actual ending should evoke the opposite of the beginning. The Shrek movies, especially 1 and 2, are extremely transparent: Shrek: At the lowest point the group is seperated and you have sad music, slow camera pans and everyone is bummed out; Donkey reignites Shrek's passion and they head out to stop the wedding with the help of the dragon; wedding climax. Began with Shrek alone in the swamp, ends with Shrek surrounded by people in the swamp. Shrek 2: At the lowest point the group is arrested and you have sad music, slow camera pans and everyone is bummed out; Shrek's friends rescue them and have the muffin man build a giant gingerbread man to storm the castle; the awesome "I Need A Hero" sequence and the confrontation with Godmother is the climax. Began with shakey relationships (parents, in-laws, friends, lovers), ends with strenghtened relationships. Granted, these are films, but you're outlining and the same kinda applies. But also treat structures somewhat tenuously.
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Oct 10, 2014 19:02
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Liam Emsa posted:The chapters that are specific to that person are 3rd-person omniscient for that person only (i.e. if they saw the other person before *they* knew them they wouldn't know who they were). I'm wondering if this is going to cause me trouble later. Don't you mean limited? That's kinda not what omniscient means unless you're doing something even weirder which might be tripping you up.
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Oct 13, 2014 14:44
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I actually wouldn't mind Thunderdome, I just think that a chronological thread makes it really hard to parse what's happening and I generally find it messy, especially when there's overlap between brawls, previous entry crits, and current signups/entries. I'm sure the structure makes sense after x entries though. I'd crit but I don't think I have enough for people to take my word for it.
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Oct 28, 2014 17:42
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magnificent7 posted:Hey how do I stop not writing. I need to know asap thanks. When I finish writing for the day I email a backup copy to myself. Every single day of July has an email from myself with a doc file attached. So in a weird perverse way, you wind up making a game where you want to ensure that you have a new backup in your inbox at the end of each day. It's enough to make you go "...Well gently caress it I might as well do a bit."
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Nov 4, 2014 23:53
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Hungry posted:I'm about to do something which has presented itself as a natural course of action, but which I am concerned might be bad practice or lead to bad habits. I'll spare the thread the explanation of how I got to this point. I'd just write it in third. Your idea sounds really long winded and is going to be a really painful process because a lot of it will get thrown out anyway. I think you need to decide how important the voice is and how vital/unique/worthwhile it is to the text: if it is that important, maybe just do it in first person; if not, go straight to third limited and tinker afterwards rather than going crazy.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:17
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People are really afraid of writing in the present tense or are cautious about recommending it because it can be really weird when done badly, but I think it can work. Just read more of it and get proficient at it. It took me ages to realise that the Luisa Rey portions of Cloud Atlas were in present tense, but it gives it a certain effect.
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Nov 9, 2014 21:07
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blue squares posted:I have a dumb question that is way too premature for me to be worrying about, BUT: I, like many, roll my eyes at any amateur writer whose first book is going to be an epic fantasy series, or something involving werewolves. I decided long ago that I'm not that guy and would never do something so transparently crap. So naturally the first two things I'm thinking of are an epic fantasy series and something involving a werewolf. It just happens. If you give a poo poo about the work and it's making you enthused in spite of the genre then just do it. Look at it when it's done.
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Nov 12, 2014 10:24
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Mild plagiarism but there was an old episode of Doctor Who with two races of slave robots: gold plated ones that could talk and I can't remember the name, and the other couldn't talk and we're treated as less sapient, and thus were called Dumb. Or you could call them Bots, like the AI in multiplayer games. Maybe stray from the word android a bit?
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Dec 25, 2014 14:40
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PoshAlligator posted:It's The Robots of Death and it's a great serial. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. Script Editor Robert Holmes thought robot stories were dull and wanted to generally not do them, but Philip Hinchcliffe, producer, insisted they could do a good and interesting one. Chris Boucher wrote it and it's considered by many to be a truly classic serial. Some people don't like it though. Made that post on an iPad in a hurry and it was bad. but yeah, the main point is that I always remember one of the humans explaining why they're called Dumb and he says it with such mean spirited relish, and it was actually a clever name because they're dumb as in mute, and it's used as a derogatory name because they must be stupid if they can't talk ohohohoho. Basically, don't go for something obvious like two variations of the word "android". Remember things like robot literally meaning slave and such.
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Dec 25, 2014 21:13
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In your head the plot is "Go from point A to B to C to D" and you don't think to add dumb little details in between. An example I use is the short scene in Star Wars where Han/Luke escort Chewie to the prison block and you have this random moment of the cute little robot meeping, getting roared at, and scarpering off. I'd never have thought of that because I'm preoccupied with getting to point E, but people remember that moment. People like moments.
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Jan 17, 2015 22:49
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It was either that spreadsheet or a composite of several and I entered the wordcount for Harry Potter &t Philosophers Stone and nearly threw the book at the wall when the spreadsheet accurately predicted story beats down to the page number. It was only one or two near the beginning though so that's just a coincidence, but it's useful for general flow.
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Jan 23, 2015 23:10
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Wheat Loaf posted:I need advice. I decided to try writing a screenplay. I thought it was going pretty well and I was just a little under halfway done on the first draft, but to my great frustration, I lost all my work when the memory stick they were on had to be reformatted, and the only copies of the Trelby file and the Word document with the outline ended up irretrievably corrupted. This is a mixture of bad luck (they were only on the memory stick in the first place because I was switching files over to my new laptop) and my own carelessness (it's my own fault for not keeping a spare copy; I thought it'd be a routine switch from one machine to another so I did a Ctrl+X on the files instead of Ctrl+C). Congratulations, you're on your second draft.  You say it was half finished but you would have redone most of it anyway on the editing phase; now you can get some of those later ideas you had into the manuscript earlier.
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Feb 18, 2015 15:11
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Echo Cian posted:Reminder that if you don't want to/can't pay for Scrivener, yWriter is free and does many of the same things, though it's lacking some features like the fullscreen mode. It looks kinda claustrophobic. Is it alright though?
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May 6, 2015 14:13
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Too many facts in the fiction thread.
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May 10, 2015 00:53
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General Battuta posted:Hobbies can be really good crutches when you don't know how to handle a scene. Robert Jackson Bennett's CITY OF STAIRS has a scene where he can't figure out how to deliver a bunch of exposition, so his protagonist demands a shitload of ingredients and then cooks a delicious-sounding meal while she explains everything. It's transparent, but reasonably effective. I just imagined Obi-Wan cooking a curry while telling Luke about his father and I love it.
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May 29, 2015 12:26
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magnificent7 posted:For a long time I went on walks with audiobooks, and then music. I'm always bewildered by people who can produce while listening to anything. I can't concentrate even though I'd like to not be in a silent void.
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Jul 2, 2015 16:43
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Broenheim posted:I listen to music while I write or do homework or whatever, but I listen to video game music which has a tendency to feel more like background music so it kind of falls in the back of my mind. I like it though, it makes something id normally consider tedious or boring into something more enjoyable thanks to how much I love my music. It's more about the person, I think, because it's hard for me to stay concentrated and not get bored of something before it's finished, so music definitely helps in that regard. I actually have some but I like the music too much and jam instead. Or game dialogue enters my head.
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Jul 2, 2015 21:47
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General Battuta posted:The Interesting Person's Daughter A title I've had in mind for a long time and would love to write a story for is The Gay Gardner's Wife.
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Jun 11, 2016 12:39
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change my name posted:Think of writing as being one of those North Korean soldiers who have chairs smashed over their backs every day so that they grow more bone mass.
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Jan 8, 2017 14:50
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