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I recently read a pretty good example of quotationless dialogue, but it's use is probably not quite the same as what we're focusing on. Death's dialogue in Wheel of Time (specifically Color of Magic) used bolded text instead of quotations for his lines which seemed pretty effective, but ultimately it sidestepped the issue entirely since the bolded text filled the role of quotations for making the dialogue stand out.
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Oct 18, 2012 01:14
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Before you consider whether they have "won" I would suggest you read their 100k output and reconsider. Most novels from that month are barely edited rush jobs and padded with words just to reach the target word count which is not the way for novels to be written. 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' 50,000 in a month is still feasible, in my opinion. If you have a solid foundation and ideas and aren't just writing to pad up word count for the sake of 'winning' at least.
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Dec 27, 2012 10:49
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I skimmed past your opening and read what you quoted, holllly poo poo. I thought I was reading some of your(no offense, I didn't know who you were when I was reading it) amateurish writing. I think what I hate most falls in to two seperate things. One, the author is trying real hard to TELL us things and not SHOW us them. The forced silences and talking quiet, they're really not subtle at all. Him suddenly stopping the conversation to reminisce about a baby, assuming this is how they tell you a baby exists it's really forced, nothing here flows. Second is the terrible Lila dialogue. It's not organic at all, feels like the writer was writing completely out of his comfort zone and has no idea how a conversation like that would go. Chillmatic posted:hell— he did what he’d told himself he wouldn’t do and dialed Lila’s number. Edit: I think ideally good expositional dialogue should go unnoticed by the reader, I shouldn't know the author is trying to fill me in on the lives, it should just flow with the natural dialogue. It really doesn't seem like that worked here.
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Jan 10, 2013 20:09
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Ah finally caught up with this glorious thread. I've been caught with work and life and all those other lovely reasons to not be writing (ALWAYS BE WRITING). A friend who's reading through my novel so I can finally edit it for a final loving time and throw it to the wind linked me a writing contest that has an end of the month deadline. It's got a prize but I'm not too concerned about winning, it's just fun to finally be free of editing an old story I've sat on forever and working on something fresh. Anyway I'm actually here for some help, the writing cap is 3500 and while I've written flash fiction before nothing at that restraint. It's both much longer and shorter than I'm used to. My current idea for it is a faux noir set up to a silly detective story about a paranormal detective who isn't terribly good at his job. The trouble I'm running into is I'm about 1000 words in and currently have the set up and case established but am wringing my hands over how I plan to wrap it up with another 2500. I'm fairly confident I can work something out about it but do you guys have any advice for writing under 3500 words? Especially for something with a loose detective story trapping. I imagine I'll be busy chopping down as much unnecessary wording as possible. On a separate note, I find whenever I'm writing characters, other than my main character, and I'm about to decide their gender I ask myself if swapping it would change anything and then I swap them. It's helped me interject a lot more female characters into my writing than I'd of normally had without changing the work or calling too much attention to it by being arbitrary. That said I am entirely uncomfortable writing a female main character, anyone currently write either gender comfortably regardless have any advice for tackling this?
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Apr 19, 2013 04:48
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Martello posted:What about writing a female protagonist makes you uncomfortable? It's hard to help you out with it when we don't know exactly what the issue is. 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. Erogenous Beef posted:Excellent words Yes I've nervously eyed the Thunderdome from afar, with my new job starting up I think it'll be a perfect way for me to flex my writing and improve despite not having the time to devote to big projects. That's the issue I'm running into now, detective stories usually have a lot of nuanced plots and clues and misdirects so I'm concerned about cutting that down and trimming for 3500 words. It may be poor genre, especially for me who's not the most experienced with it, which is pretty much why I chose it in the first place, but I'm starting to think it may be quite doable if I'm smart about my pacing thanks. I'm not much of a planner when it comes to writing, usually I'll mull an idea out in my head for a few days then write furiously and adjust as necessary, out of curiosity what's your method of planning? These questions are all incredibly helpful, I don't think you're really looking for me to answer them in the thread. I really like the idea of figuring out a set of scenes before hand, writing them out and then hacking away at them to streamline them.
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Apr 19, 2013 17:46
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Crisco Kid posted: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. One 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. An excellent point and probably properly sums up my issue, I'm afraid of stepping out from that comforting area of familiarity be it female or a person of another culture. I should probably add 'making sure these characters aren't too much like me' to my editting checklist to be extra careful. I make sure I speak for the character, not myself but I'm not sure I allow characters to deviate as far from myself as Imight like. I figure the best way to get used to this is to write what I'm uncomfortable with and then get it critiqued.
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Apr 20, 2013 01:40
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:It's probably hard to do a really good mystery story in only 3500 words. It'll be hard to get in the twists, misdirections and red herrings and foreshadowing that a proper mystery has. I tried my hand at writing one for the Steam goons Christmas giveaway contest, and it came in at about 12,000 words. About 900 words were used to introduce the larger-than-normal supporting cast, so even if I stripped those away it'd be a lot, because I felt that it wouldn't be a proper mystery if I didn't have twists and false leads. I think I'm looking at this less of a full blown mystery and more a segment of a fuller story. I'm focusing on interesting character interactions and making it less about the plot insomuch as its the background to let the characters do their thing while still trying to keep it self contained. Ihmemies posted:I've deciced that writing could be a way to vent my feelings regarding anthropogenic climate change, and, short of being big comapny CEO or a politican, at least provide me with an illusion that I'm trying to do something to influence people's opinions about it. Post-apocalyptic speculative fiction feels like a natural choice, and I have a basic plot for a couple of dudes eking it out After the End. Post-apoclyptic was the genre I went with for my novel, I found I actually went in a different direction of talking about how society would rebuild after all the chaos and everything calmed down. I personally think so long as your characters are interesting and the conflicts between them are interesting as well (doesn't have to be direct, conflicts are very flexible!) it will work fine. Don't do infodumps ever, I think the most I ever said about the apocalypse was two paragraphs as setup and anything else was in dialogue or straight up narrative/flashback. I used 'flashback' to do infodumps of the past, I had my character journey through settlements and deal with the people there to explain the present. I find that the best way to handle any sort of information telling is through character experience, not necessarily having people explain it to the characters in a fish out of water way, but having them see it or have to interact with the things you want to explain.
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Apr 20, 2013 17:50
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Thoren posted:Cpt. is on point. Rewriting is essential. When you read over your story you can find so many patterns and do so much with them. It's not a bad idea to rewrite entirely from memory, too. Your words ain't valuable until they're published. Butcher away. Yes! Rewrites are gold. I've killed characters out of my book, I've turned good guys bad and bad guys interesting. I've hacked out dumb plots and reworked three scenes into one. Whee rewrites forever  (Seriously though get kickin' on that first draft, I wanna read how you get this thing started.)
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Apr 23, 2013 07:37
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SaviourX posted:I've been kicking around pieces of a book similar to this for a few years now, but with a deliberately more fantastical angle to it. Folks have gotten over most of the destruction, but their part of the world is still a strange, scary mess, and they have to deal with what new problems come out of it. Little to none, I started with the character and what he was doing that was all I had in my mind when I started writing. I then expanded on it as I went. At certain points I'd have to make up my mind ("so what's the deal with the abandoned unbombed cities?" "well society broke down early on and eventually those who did stay" and whether or not I'd go mutants (I didn't)) and from that I developed the world around what my plot needed. The only concept I walked in is, a war happened dozen years ago and the story is about this man who uses his technical skills to help settlements.
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Apr 26, 2013 18:44
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