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I think steampunk is a valid and interesting genrahahahahhahaha wow.
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Jan 22, 2013 23:00
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So what can we discuss regarding the skeletal construction of fiction? Not so much ideas as how you plot a story to ramp up interest and keep a reader interested independent of the plot points. Or prettymuch anything other than the genre v lit.
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Jan 22, 2013 23:03
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FYTc55nGEI
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Jan 23, 2013 09:59
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Gary the Llama posted:Bragging time: I sold my first short story of 2013 yesterday. This marks my fifth short story sale so far and it's my first pro-rate (five cents a word or more, more in this case) sale. I haven't signed the contract yet so I don't want to mention the market but it is a very well known sci-fi/fantasy market. I'll post more details once the contract is signed. Thanks for wasting our time by wasting your time. You could have submitted twice more while writing that. Order of events: Read. Submit. Write. Or die, plox.
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Feb 2, 2013 06:36
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I was talking about doing it in TD, but here would be better I think. Once Stuporstar gets done being a coding nerd, she'll have more time. Maybe she can recreate this thread with a new OP, and we can all collect a few of our favorite articles to be linked in there. Dump the info for writing from her resources thread (which you should all check out if you haven't) along with whatever else we find that's useful.
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Feb 3, 2013 21:41
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Some people like Scrivener because it allows you to compartmentalize scenes and chapters so you can move them around. For me, I'm just fine with Open Office as I've been using it for years and I've already learned how to compartmentalize myself. So, it's a tossup as to what you want in a writing program. As for the $10 to blank out the screen, hell no. You can set a word processor to full screen which will do the same if I understand what you're wanting. It'd just be one big page on the screen that you can write on. I do that a lot. Contests can be legitimate (not all of them are), but you have to pay money, so you're going to lose a ton of money, most likely. Definitely go for journals first because they will pay you if they accept, so it's no risk vs high reward. Also, with a few pub creds under your belt, you're more likely to win contests. The biggest bang for your buck would be a subscription to duotrope.com
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Feb 24, 2013 20:23
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If you're gonna get a sub to Ploughshares and that's all it costs, sure, go ahead and enter. It's a great mag. As for smaller publications, it's always better to start with the small ones and work your way up. As much as people claim that having a list of recent pubs in a cover letter won't affect their decision, it definitely affects their decision to take your story. It works on the snowball effect, so once you get your first in a small (but non-lovely) magazine, you can get a bunch in small magazines, which leads to getting some in the bigger named magazines.
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Feb 24, 2013 20:47
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Jimmy4400nav posted:I'm trying to write a story right now set in the era of Imperialism. My premise is that a new rare element was discovered in Antarctica that can be incredibly useful. This leads to a colonization races for the continent, and eventually war was well (complete with cool weapons created because of said rare minerals). This is my first real attempt at writing something, so I had a couple of questions. Just sit down and write it out. Don't get up until you have a first draft, and don't spend any time researching or questioning things too much. If you don't even have an attempt to write a story, all you are doing by asking questions is spinning your wheels. It's like saying you have a cool idea for a picture, but this is your first time to try to draw something, so you want to know if you should use a pencil or crayon. Great Rumbler posted:For all you guys who self-publish a lot of short stories, what do you do about the cover? Do you just go with some standard and simple or do you whip out the checkbook and get something custom made up? And do your readers even care? There's a thread for just that question: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3400124
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Mar 6, 2013 21:07
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The thunderdome never has been, and God-willing, never will be a good place for anything. You'll be mocked but everyone is. It's just a place to practice writing and have some fun. So, yeah, I'd say hop in and enjoy yourself. If you lose--oh well. It's not a big deal to anyone. The only thing that people genuinely hate is when you write something gross that isn't even an attempt at being funny.
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Mar 19, 2013 08:11
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I think I speak for everyone when we say that we all just can't wait to sign up to be your personal editor for your long work since your only editor-friend is avoiding you. Surely, an IRC channel to talk about our writing without showing it to anyone is productive.
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Mar 27, 2013 06:18
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SaviourX posted:This is a dumb thing to post. Do you speak like you type? Do you write the same at work as you do on the net? Jesus. His comment was legitimate compared to the product, but yours is good too.
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Mar 28, 2013 06:10
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Wolfsforza posted:I have a "What genre am I?" question. Agents won't give a poo poo if they can sell it. They'll market it for you in better ways than you can. Just (politely) spam it. Don't be obnoxious of course, but just let them decide the genre and all that for now.
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Apr 14, 2013 05:55
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CantDecideOnAName posted:Does Tolkien count as blabby? I'd say he's stuck around pretty well. Very long-winded and goes into poo poo that's just bad storytelling. But he was a linguist, so the language and technical aspects of the writing were great. Tolkien would dive into long, boring passages that are simply opportunities for him to play around with his languages and mythos. It provided a wealth of fixatable content for early spectrumites to read and memorize while stuffed in trashcans and lockers. GRRM isn't even trying to do the same thing, so it's comparing apples to carburetors. He's all like, "I wanna write a story about titties, murder, and wolves." So, with much drooling and asthmatic wheezing, he typed out a 14 year old boy's fantasy world without the dinosaurs and electric guitars. It's essentially a YA novel with adult content, so it has some good appeal, and he's rightfully getting rich of it. To bolster my point, Shakespeare wasn't really an innovator on stories. He just rewrote some poo poo he either read, saw, or heard. Why people even give a poo poo about him is because of the language he used in his plays. It made a story about two teenagers bitching that mommy and daddy don't want them to date then killing themselves interesting. S-Dawg wanted to write poems, which he did a lot, but plays made bling. So he took his poetry to plays and made some traditional, poetry-based storytelling into new poo poo. So son, [ESB puts his cowboy boot up on a stump and takes a match to his rugged tobacco pipe] that's why it's a silly conversation to even start. It's apples to carburetors. One you eat and makes you go. The other mixes fuel and oxygen so you can get from place to place. And each writer has something they're trying to do. Maybe they won't get there, or maybe they'll get rich writing something they didn't intend to. Apples and carburetors. [ESB puffs on his pipe and tips his stetson. He walks into the sunset. FADE TO BLACK. Blind Melon - No Rain plays as ROLL CREDITS]
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Apr 28, 2013 22:52
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Veg posted:Ha, poo poo. Structure isn't your problem. You thought it was a good idea to post a blurb of fanfic poo poo, apparently. Here's some good advice: you should look into pottery. Or, if you really want to write, read some books. What would possess you to take a screenshot of your horrible fanfic and inflict it on us? Even though there are soul-crushing low standards for CC in terms of writing, you've failed to meet them. You have managed to act like the horribly obese dude that ate a dozen boiled eggs and a bowl of beans for breakfast and decided to waddle to the back of a tiny airliner on a two-hour flight to take a horrible poo poo before you even got off the ground--then left the door open. If you actually want to write in a way that doesn't make you look like a complete idiot, at least put minimal effort into seeing what the most basic standards are. Excuse me while I take a blurry selfie with my cellphone in a dirty bathroom mirror and ask what the photography subforum thinks about it.
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May 19, 2013 03:05
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:17 |
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For a bunch of people wanting to write fiction, the lack of ability to communicate in this thread is fascinating (and snippy!) 
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May 19, 2013 23:44
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