Fiction Writing: Advice and Discussion

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Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

When I read the posts on this topic I found myself kind of uncomfortable because I thought ambiguous was the wrong term. I still think it's not a great fit for what we're talking about.

I have always thought of good short fiction much like building a bell, then ringing it with the final punctuation in the story. If you build it right and end it well, it will resonate long after it's over. It has direction (the shape of the bell), so strictly speaking it should not be vague or ambiguous. If that direction is not clear, either the author has built her/his bell with flaws or the reader fails to listen to the ringing.

I'm not even sure how something like this is faked. If you hit a bell and it quacks like a duck, then the bell is a failure. Really ambiguity is the symptom of bad craftsmanship.

I for one thank god I am ignorant on what is going on in fiction workshops these days.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 22:55

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 20:30

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

"With an emotional detachment born of professionalism and experience" is to me very heavy-handed. Especially when all of it is implied in the action. If you want to make him as you describe him in that phrase, then strengthen the action so he is so.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2012 04:33

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Since you guys are into critique mode, maybe you can give me some help. I want to post two drafts of the opening ~500 words of a short story I have finished, but am currently trying to tighten the screws on.

I have been struggling with length a bit (it's still a shade over 7500, slashed down from 11,000!) and initially made this edit for that reason, though it only bought me 50 words or so. In the end since it's not a huge impact on length I am torn as to which version reads better.

The first edit has the action starting at a beach where the main character fucks some girl in a beach tent, then spots a brunette. Both come back into the plot later. The second edit has the same action, but from the perspective of a sort of flashback from a car ride that he takes after leaving the beach.

A bit of background: the MC (Brett--still not sold on that name) is an international real estate broker and kind of a womanizing shitheap. His goal is to buy a winemaking estate in the French Riviera, but he does not want the current owners/occupants to know that the people he is going to turn it over to will just bulldoze the whole loving place and put up some gaudy hotel and resort for Brits. That's the long and short of it, anyway.

EDIT 1 posted:

He smoked and made casual converstaion with the blond as she put her bikini back on. From the other side of the pale blue canvas dressing tent he could hear people chatting listlessly. As she was pulling her hair back, he put his trunks on and said goodbye. He went back out onto the beach and into the sea.

He had taken her from behind with a few dozen people lazing around closeby. She was young, very pretty, and very easy. But you could never tell with girls of that age if they had truly gotten off. Sure, they would flail around like candy wrappers in a stiff breeze and they would make a lot of moans and squeeks. But there was no music to it.

He had known of her type before. These are the pretty girls that languish around pretty towns waiting for a bit of adventure or a bit of cock. They are almost adults. They want to believe they are worldly and womanly because they have a casual gently caress in a changing tent or a bathroom somewhere, but they know nothing of it. He suspected they never seemed to come to any clear climax because they had no idea how to take the pleasure they wanted.

As he walked up the beach to his hotel, he passed the blond standing in a circle of her equally young and beautiful friends. They were whispering nervously and looking at Brett. He winked at them as he passed. He would have liked to have a go at the tall brunette, but there was no time.

He went back to his hotel suite and showered and dressed. He took a small bag and his briefcase outside, but did not check out. He knew he would be obliged to stay out at the ch�teau, but he always kept a safe point to retreat to in these negotiations. The bellhop called a car for him and he set off on the short journey out of Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer towards his target, Le Ch�teau Chatoyante.

On the slow ride out, Brett pumped the driver for information. At first the driver just went "pfhh" and waved his hand at the mention of the place. But then he said, "Yes, but it in the old days this place was incroyable. The wine was simply divine and the grande f�tes that Titine had there were simply unbelievable. You could not believe of them."

"What happened to all these parties and all the wine?" he asked.

"The wine is garbage now. A donkey could make better. It is just a bunch of washed up drunks. Let me tell you, it is just sad."

He liked to hear of a property in decline.

Next to the road they passed an old stone tower. The driver ground the gears down on the Renault and turned a right just past it and onto a pale and rocky dirt road that was hemmed in by low scruby evergreens. The ride in the Renault was very bad.

They broke out of the low forest and into a brush clearing. There was no grass here, just brush and that sandy rocky dirt.

"This is where they make the poo poo," the driver said as they passed a large stone and wood barn with a green, badly tarnished copper roof.

EDIT 2 posted:

The ride out of St.-Cyr-sur-Mer was slow. He smoked and made casual conversation with the driver of the dilapidated Renault. In his mind, he was still revelling in that little blond he had hosed in a dressing tent down by the beach not even an hour before.

He had taken her from behind with a few dozen people lazing around closeby, then watched her get back into her bikini. She was young, very pretty, and very easy. Though you could never tell with girls of that age if they had truly gotten off. Sure, they would flail around like candy wrappers in a stiff breeze and they would make a lot of moans and squeeks. But there was no music to it.

He had known of her type before. These are the pretty girls that languish around pretty towns waiting for a bit of adventure or a bit of cock. They are almost adults. They want to believe they are worldly and womanly because they have a casual gently caress in a changing tent or a bathroom somewhere, but they know nothing of it. He suspected they never came to any clear climax because they had no idea how to take the pleasure they wanted.

He knew what he wanted, though, and that was the tall brunette that was standing with the blond and a few of their equally young and pretty friends. It was a pity there was no more time.

"Are you enjoying St.-Cyr, Monsieur?" The driver broke the silence.

"Oh yes. Lovely people. Say, what can you tell me about Le Chateau Chatoyante?"

At first the driver just went "pfhh" and waved his hand. "But in the old days this place was incroyable. The wine was divine and the grande f�tes that Titine had there were simply unbelievable. You could not believe of them, Monsieur."

"What happened to all these parties and all the good wine?" he asked.

"The wine is garbage now. A donkey could make better. It is nothing but a bunch of washed up drunks. Let me tell you, it is just sad."

He liked to hear of a property in decline.

Next to the road they passed an old crumbling stone tower. The driver ground the gears down on the Renault and made a right off the main road and onto a pale and rocky dirt road. Brett spotted a plinth at the corner with an etched marble sign, but it was too overgrown to read. The little one lane driveway was hemmed in by low scruby evergreens and the Renault did not take it well. A few hundred yards down, they broke out of the low forest and into a brush clearing. There was no grass here, just brush and that sandy rocky dirt.

"This is where they make the poo poo," the driver said as they passed a large stone and wood barn with a green, badly tarnished copper roof.

I am not delicate, throw whatever (constructive) thoughts you might have on either edit at me. I made some other small changes to edit 2 as well, so let me know if you think those work.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2012 15:04

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

drat you guys are harsh.

I love it.

To the two posters who commented on passages: I have to say on the larger point of the passage being needlessly meandering and boring, I've looked at it and I can't agree more. Thank you for shedding light on that. I think I sometimes fall in love with plot points or a plot arc and will sacrifice the quality of certain passages to service that arc/point. This is fiction, baby. You gotta know when to put it in a burlap sack and take it down to the river.

The smaller crits are also valid, but mostly the product of a lovely edit. Good points, nonetheless.

Unfortunately, Brett won't be any less of a shitheap throughout the story. He tries to redeem himself somewhere along the line there, but it's too little, too late. Hopefully the other characters and events make the overall thing interesting. I'm not really a believer in the notion that all main characters have to be likable.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2012 01:15

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Nirvikalpa posted:

I think joyless might have been the wrong word. I like reading, but I don't really like what I'm reading. I think with non-fiction it's better because at least I'm learning. But with novels, I enjoy the process of reading, but I end up revolted by the subject matter most of the time or I can't understand it.

Then loving write non-fiction.

Let me tell you something. If you think reading a good novel sucks, then boy howdy are you going to loving loathe writing a good novel, provided you are in any way able (you aren't).

# ¿ Sep 9, 2012 04:25

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

I know I certainly would like to see the books others recommend to read. I would find that helpful, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Originally, I wrote a snarky reply, but to be helpful, such a list might be useful in the OP. Just as with Dr. Kloctopussy's list, it should attempt to cover a wide range of genres AND styles.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2012 14:52

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Sometimes Melville is just talking about whales when he talks about whales, but quite often he is just using whales and whaling as a metaphorical vehicle. One of my favorite passages is after they catch and slaughter their first whale, they hoist its severed head up on the mast to extract more oil out of it later. But, to right the ship they go out looking for an easy-to-find Right Whale so they can hoist its head on the opposite side of the mast, thus righting the ship. However, Melville likens this to hoisting the head of Immanuel Kant on one side and some other philosopher on the other. Surely, the mast will be upright, but the ship will be under some strain and will not sail well. This is a metaphor for thought, as I see it. You can't hoist up the ideals of two different windbags and expect your ship to sail straight.

On book recommendations: I was thinking to make things more constructive we can maybe make a thread to discuss/gather/cull definitive recommendations, then we could put the finalized list in this OP or something.

I think we should focus on genre and style and give a one or two sentence blurb about the book. The recommendations should be given with a mind for what is the definitive book for neophytes given a certain genre and style. What do you guys think? I can make a thread, then gather the info and keep running lists sorted by genre and style so that everyone could discuss redundancies and deficiencies. I would put some sort of time limit on suggestions, like a month or something.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2012 18:04

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

It's up. Head on over and make your suggestions. Please note that I'm not adding anything that has been posted in this thread. If you would like to submit those titles, please do so in the thread and in the format requested. Thanks.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2012 18:53

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Footnote Fiction is an odd genre and I think I have one more for the pile. Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is a fantastic example of footnotes loving with your mind, much as the entire book. They are used sparingly (with a couple remarkable exceptions) but to great effect.

O'Brien to me has the perfect wit. It is sharp enough to be both hilarious and enlightening yet it's not so turgid that it collapses beneath its own weight.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2012 13:34

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

I'll never get the academic fascination with Old Man and the Sea. It may be the worst of Hemingway's novels published in his lifetime, though we can argue that. One way or another it's not by any means it's not the swan song that everyone makes it out to be. You'd think that literary people would be more focussed on his more "important" works like A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's not like the guy wrote nothing but inscrutable novels. Pretty much everything is easy to read if nothing else.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2012 20:31

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

*locks doors*

# ¿ Sep 25, 2012 00:01

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Black Griffon posted:

Didn't one of you note earlier that the best course of action is to just submit to everyone and not give a poo poo if they get their panties in a twist? Not that I'm recommending it, I want to know for my own sake as well.

I'm not going to try and speak from a position of authority, but logic would tell me, yes, this is the best course of action. No one can claim the exclusive right to reject you, so gently caress 'em. Looking around Duotrope it seems like so many encourage multiple submissions that you can just wave a middle finger at the ones that don't without an appreciable dip in your statistical likelihood to get published.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2012 16:53

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

I'm not lying, if I found a hastily bound novel sitting on a public toilet toilet, I'd read it. There should be a NY Times bestseller category for Toilet Novels.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2012 03:08

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Geekboy posted:

After taking a fairly long break from working on editing my novel I came back to it and realized just how much the person I saw as the protagonist really kind of isn't. In fact, she's based more closely on my ex-wife than I thought. This wasn't my intention and makes me a bit crazy.

This character's actions are incredibly bitchy, but I was still trying to frame them as if she was always right and good and pure and Jesus this is way too much like the last two years I spent with the ex. "No, no. She's great. I promise. It's me that's the problem." Fuuuuck.

I'm saying that I wrote a mega-bitch but hadn't embraced it. Time to rewrite like mad to properly frame who this character really turned into during the writing process and make her more of her own being rather than this square peg I was trying to force into a round hole. She isn't without her good qualities and I actually really like her as this flawed thing that I hope I can flesh out in the edits. She'll be far more interesting this way.

I had planned this as a three book series, and now this arc for her character has become crystal clear. She may be the main viewpoint for this thing, but she's not the one who is clearly in the right most of the time. In fact, these guys who are floating around her (an ex-husband who can't get over her and an old flame that's back in her life after 15 years) are probably going to end up having to grow some backbones and leaving her entirely in the end.

I think I'm going to write a reverse-romance here. The two characters I had intended to fall back into love would really be better off moving on. I suppose we'll see what they end up doing if I ever get this thing done (since I might just still put them together as the audience screams "WHAT ARE YOU DOING! HE'S CLINGY AND SHE'S SELFISH!"), but stepping away and coming back has given me a perspective that I think is going to make this end up being a much more interesting story.

In the end this is still going to be a plot-driven confection, but I think my craft is improving by leaps and bounds working on it. It's the kind of book I think I can get my Mother to read, if that makes any sense. I'll save my more literary aspirations for when I have more experience.

Don't be too hard on yourself, man. Seriously. I think every great novelist has spent their entire writing career writing long couched messages to themselves. We have been watching the greatest minds of our times beat themselves up on the page.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2012 14:05

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Yeah that article was a good read and it's definitely along the lines I've been thinking recently. Someone over on AW asked "How do I know what my characters are thinking?" In the past I'd go "huh" and think about it for awhile then spew some poo poo about how you have to live with them and let them speak to you etc etc etc.

But we need to acknowledge that everything we do as writers is a construct created from our minds out of whole cloth. The plot doesn't tell you where to go; you tell it. The characters don't tell you what to say; you make them say what you want. You don't reproduce reality in your work; you create it, even if you are writing "realistic" fiction.

Now, there's a deeper conversation here that what you write probably always has to be referential to reality at the least. However, I take the main thesis of this article to be "you don't really know what you know" or at least not in the way you think you know it. By trying to convey what you know you are tranfering those (often flawed) lenses onto the page. If you want to lead the reader as well as yourself to a more perfect clarity, you necessarily have to break the bubble you're in.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2012 00:13

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Well what if it can be a thing about a thing? :v:

Seriously though, I don't agree with what he said 100% either. It sort of smells like that particular brand of anti-canon that quickly becomes canon. It gets the juices flowing though, and most importantly it gets you to at least think hard about what your own conceits my be.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2012 02:11

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

It's funny to call a pursuit that is basically all semantics "all semantics". And hey, aren't you the guy that just infodumped his thesis on writing into a post a page or two ago?

To respond seriously to you, no, that's a recipe for simply writing reams upon reams of total garbage. You have to develop an inner auditing sense in parallel to your writing sense. Articles like this are commentaries on the auditing sense.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2012 02:32

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

I'm of the mind that everyone has a certain ability to do lots of things. Even a person with little language acuity can become a passable writer, but I agree this takes work, plain and simple. Some people stand on top of a mountain and look down on others from their vantage. It's usually those people who fail to see that the real goal is up in the stars and that everyone has a long way to go.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2012 02:39

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

I think the question at hand is not how much should you work (answer: a lot), but how much talking about how you work can help and/or hurt. There are so many people out there spouting "rules" about fiction and indeed the author of that article started off with a list of rules that he hands out to his students (gag). Of course most of these people are trying to reduce the irreducible, but on the other hand I cannot accept that a writer banging out tomes in a vacuum can accomplish anything. The question is how do we approach these things in order to make them useful and not harmful?

# ¿ Sep 30, 2012 03:01

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

I also fight with the writing/editing time struggle. I always sit down to write first and lately (thanks, one month of unemployment!) I can bang out at least 2500 words per day. But by the time I'm done I'm sort of spent and now I have a backlog of poo poo that needs serious work. As well I'm beta-ing someone else's novel so I may have bit off more than I can chew. Add to that that I'm starting a new job tomorrow and my time aperture is closing fast.

Today is an exception. My last day of terrible "freedom" and I decided to write a very short story (about 2500 words) and edit it all today. Now it's not anything like don, but it felt good to go back while the iron is still hot.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2012 21:55

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Sitting Here posted:

Gotta keep those pipes lubed up.

I'll probably give the piece I wrote the once-over and maybe post it here for critiques. It definitely needs work, but it's one of the better things I've written in a while. I started off with just a conversation fragment in my head. I literally sat down today and said to myself, "yeah but how does it go from there?" Then I gave up on it and went to something else. Then I gave up on that and came back. I wrote the fragment in my head and the rest just came.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2012 03:07

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

dromer posted:

I always seem to have issues with transitions from one scene to the next. I have difficulty deciding what to describe and what not to.

For example, someone walks into an office building after driving there and enters the elevator. Assuming nothing is remarkable story-wise with the room, would I skip straight to the elevator, annex the room thing to the paragraph where the character is driving, or write a short paragraph acknowledging the room's existence?

For a second example, what if neither the elevator nor the room is remarkable and I just need to get the guy to the meeting. Would I just skip the whole thing entirely, with a "Later, I arrived at the meeting..."

Just start the next segment. If you say something about a man in a room, then suddenly he's in a taxi writing something down, the reader gets it. It's not like someone is out there tearing their hair out saying "DID HE TAKE THE STAIRS OR THE ELEVATOR OH MY GOD I CAN'T LIVE THIS WAY!!!"

Hemingway was great at eliminating transitions without jarring the reader one bit.

I would avoid a phrase that starts with "Later,..." though because it's implied. You're writing one sentence after the other, we know it's later. So, to use your example, here's what I would do:

quote:

On the street, there was no valet so he parked it diagonally in the loading zone and walked inside. Upstairs, Reg sat at his oversized desk that looked like it was sinking into blood red quicksand. Thomas stepped across the soft hushing carpet and barked, "Don't I pay for loving valets? If I'm paying I better see them."

"You are not paying for anything any more," Reg said, not looking up from his copy of the Wall Street Journal.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2012 03:22

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

It's nothing new that blabby writers often enjoy great popularity. They never last in anyone's mind, though.

Overwined fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Apr 28, 2013

# ¿ Apr 28, 2013 14:06

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Runcible Cat posted:

Not all of us are hoping to write for the ages, you know - the bestseller lists and a TV series sound pretty sweet to me.

I don't remember qualifying the set beyond they aren't remembered. Yes, many popular writers end up dying fat and happy. If that's what they wanted, then good for them. On the other side many of the "Greats" die penniless and miserable. Which one sounds better to you likely depends on your sensibilities, that's all.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2013 22:15

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

magnificent7 posted:

I would prefer a prompt more related to the topic at hand, though. Like, "commit 90% of the word count to describing the phone being used in a conversation"

That is actually an excellent idea. You'd be forced to somehow put narrative action in a expository setting, which is probably how it should be. Or the inverse at least.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2013 05:42

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

magnificent7 posted:

No. It's a horrible idea. Don't make me.

Dooooo iiiitt.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2013 19:35

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Phil Moscowitz posted:

I get this as a warning against overly expository dialogue, but would you explain a little more what you mean?

It's part of show, don't tell.

A: "Why would you do this to me?"
B: "Well you see when I was a child I was neglected by my parents and blah blah blah."

You achieve a lot more with a deflection which would be much more likely in this scenario anyway. I don't for the record think he means answering a simple need for information like:

A: "How many houses did you sell?"
B: "Four."

But in reality there aren't too many requests for information that aren't loving boring and really don't belong in the first place.

Personally, a "rule" like this is just something to make you self-aware. No it's in no way absolute and if sebmojo is trying to say that then I say fiddlesticks. However, it is a good thing to make you ask, "Hmmm, I'm getting a lot of asked and responded dialogue. Does this scan well? Does it need to be in my fiction?"

For example, one good exception I can think of is perhaps when a character is asking a series of questions and the other character is answering elusively and the first character keeps re-phrasing the question. Obviously you wouldn't want this to drag on for too long, but it would show both the over-inquisitive nature of the first character and the evasive nature of the second.

# ¿ May 20, 2013 16:02

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

To continue this discussion, I hear people talking about how real life conversation and fictional conversation should not be similar. It's happened in this thread and I've heard it from others. I cannot stress how much this is prejudicial oversimplification. Granted, we aren't always talking about significant things, but I bet most people would be surprised how much subtle connotation and inference occurs in day to day life as we talk about day to day things. The reason directly answered questions don't work in fiction is because they rarely work in real life! People are always deflecting, obfuscating, and otherwise trying to divert the agenda.

Just a couple weeks ago I was in a lovely restaurant with a friend who had gone to the bathroom after everything was over. I eavesdropped (yeah, I know it sounds terrible, but it's a good practice as a writer, okay?) on a couple on the other side of a half wall from me. They were trying to decide whether or not to get the shrimp appetizer or the chorizo quesadilla. Neither was backing down and it became obvious they were arguing about anything BUT the appetizer. It was a beautiful and sad conversation in which it became clear to me that the man wanted to deepen the relationship and the woman had no inclination because of something that had happened a couple weeks prior. The funny thing was, they rarely stopped talking about quesadillas and shrimp and you could pick this information out. I put that one in the old memory banks.

The best line was from the woman when she answered the question about why exactly she objected to the quesadilla (you could tell he thought she was just being obstructionist), she answered, "Because a sausage quesadilla is the type of thing someone orders when they don't give a drat about what happens to them tomorrow."

# ¿ May 21, 2013 01:46

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Writing out of what you think is your oeuvre is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself as a writer.

What I'm saying is if you get a silly kernel of an idea in your head, write it. See where it goes. You may be surprised.

# ¿ May 27, 2013 19:55

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

I think getting a story out of an idea is putting the cart before the horse, but what would I know?

I can say that every time I think to myself "Wouldn't be cool if there were a story about..." it ends up as garbage no matter what I do. The best stories I write start with a thread of story-telling: an image, a sound, a kinetic impression. Then I pull out the thread until I've unraveled the sweater, so to speak. I find that within a story written in this way there is a depth that I could not have put in if I were not relying on my intuitive self.

I would concede to anyone that this may be largely a individualistic thing. However, the notion that you somehow turn an idea into another idea (because that's kind of what a story is) is largely foreign to me. The story is the idea. Write it.

# ¿ May 28, 2013 05:26

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Erogenous Beef posted:

I'm pretty sure it's not meant to be a character thing, given how many adverbs and purple phrases I had to slog through to find it.

Actual phonecam shot from my Kindle:

Given that this is an actual, properly-published book from an actual publishing house and not some $0.99 selfpub thing, I had to ask.

What made me cringe isn't the lovely grammar. My jaw almost unhinged itself from yawning at the cliche.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2013 23:56

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

HATE TROLL TIM posted:

Hey CC goons, is there a non-fiction thread around here somewhere? I couldn't seem to find one. I just got a book deal with McGraw-Hill and wanted some advice about the whole editorial process and such.

Since this is a humor forum, the writing subset of the community is a bit nichey. Your best bet is the forums over at absolutewrite.com. There are plenty of people over there that have problem gone through the exact processes you will go through.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2013 14:07

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

I like to
use
my carriage return at totally rand
om places

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 20:07

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

In my case the DTs were just getting the best of me.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 20:51

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

I'm fairly prolific. 2k-3k words in a sitting is easy enough for me provided I can get myself to sit for it.

They are generally of pretty low quality, though. So while I can (and have) written the first draft of a novel in a short few months, the revision takes 3 to 4 times longer. Again, if I can get myself to do it at all

EDIT: Also by the end of the first draft I loving loathe everything I have written, am writing, and will write. It's a serious demotivator.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2015 16:22

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

ravenkult posted:

Everyone post your writing desks.

Okay.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 01:14

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

To contribute, I have tried more than a few writer applications for Chromebooks and have settled on this: http://calmlywriter.com/

# ¿ May 6, 2015 01:15

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

ravenkult posted:

Much like your writing.

(I'm just kidding, I haven't read anything you've written).

Hah, that was the joke anyway. Although the dumpster should be on fire and some Greek demi-god should be making GBS threads into it ceaselessly.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 01:31

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Mrenda posted:

I think you should laboriously throw out your story ideas here.

I made some big dumb long post and the internet ate it, which is pure serendipity.

I don't have to laboriously throw out story ideas. That's why I write on a dumpster.

I spent about 3 hours writing today and about 2 of those purely in outlining and about 1 in actual writing. I don't feel I've wasted my time at all. In fact, I am totally on the outlining bandwagon these days. How much do you jerks outline?

# ¿ May 9, 2015 22:11

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 20:30

Overwined: Sep 22, 2008; Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.

Sitting Here posted:

it's a writing F@ct that you spell lips and kiss with the same T9 combo

It's a fact that your phone is old/cheap

#phoneshaming2015

# ¿ May 9, 2015 23:44

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Fiction Writing: Advice and Discussion

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