Fiction Writing: Advice and Discussion

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Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Dr. Stricklove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Outbreak.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2012 15:44

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 02:23

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

bengraven posted:

Anyone already planning what to write for NaNo?

It's coming up fast!

I've had this idea since, I think, July? Something I thought would benefit more from the November pressure cooker than my usual writing schedule.

SkySteak posted:

I intend to do Nanowrimo as I've been procrastinating like mad and, well Nano is a great chance to play around with concepts that you'd not normally do.

It's the gun to your head school of motivational therapy.

Does wonders for the productivity.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2012 21:11

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

screenwritersblues posted:

Is someone going to create a NaNoWriMo thread for this year?

I wouldn't mind typing one up. My Wednesday's clear (Gaecheonjeol), so I should have the time in between packing up my apartment.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2012 20:58

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

What is a man who styles himself as a modern knight going to use?

Colt Peacemaker with an ivory grip.

Just like those Lone Ranger shows he used to watch.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2012 05:52

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

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.

Not too fond of them.

Typically I prefer the supernatural be something wholly out of the protagonist's depth, wild and uncertain, an obstacle to be overcome rather than a tool to be used. On what occasions I do let my characters dabble in it, it's still something to be wary of, something you bargain with and can only hope nothing goes horribly wrong (or horribly right).

Innate talent isn't necessarily a bad thing though, if it brings out the right things in the character possessing it. Someone who has everything go their way always is a boring character regardless of whether they solve problems with a snap of their fingers.

Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Oct 22, 2012

# ¿ Oct 21, 2012 17:46

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Always write for yourself. The trick is to write in such a way other people don't mind listening in.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2012 23:04

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

It all comes down to internal consistency, really. I don't need a comprehensive breakdown of how a gun works as long as I know that it fires when I pull the trigger (and only when I pull the trigger). It's when you pull the trigger and nothing happens, or something so completely out of left field as to be unpredictable happens, that you owe your audience any kind of reasonable explanation as to what's been going on.

If Alice is regularly emotionally strained, taciturn, and highly neurotic, then I don't really need to read her psyche profile to understand why she might start cutting people's throats out with a pair of gardening shears. If, on the other hand, Alice is a reasonably well respected member of the community, healthy, happy, bright and shining, then you're gonna need to throw me some kind of bone here if you want me to accept that she locks people in her basement.

As long as you have have established the nature of a thing, as long as it adheres to its nature then there's no real need to sweat the small stuff. If I have a knife that can cut through anything, it's only when it can't that I've got to say something.

# ¿ May 23, 2013 23:21

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

3Romeo posted:

For me, Tolkien-influenced means any combination of the following things:

- High fantasy setting. Castles, mines, mountains, ruins, magical marvels from ancient civilizations.
- Expansive lore that people confuse with depth.
- A quest that doubles as a travelogue. This isn't just a fantasy thing, of course. But it became a trope of the genre.
- The last heir of a dead dynasty reclaiming their birthright.
- Invented languages.
- Races other than human.
- Dragons and magic.
- Epic war and epic stakes and epic need of an editor to cut away the fat.
- A story that exists only for plot and character.

By this criteria most airport paperbacks regardless of subject matter would qualify as Tolkien-esque. As would most James Bond novels. As would Frank Herbert's Dune, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, and Gabriel Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. You might consider fine-tuning this list.

Alternatively you could just post No Fantastical Elements in every thread forever and not worry about it.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2014 20:18

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Zhe xells xezhells by the xezhore.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2014 19:40

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

spectres of autism posted:

hey seafood, if youre reading this, i dont remember what pizza week was but sometimes i feel my stories are such bullshit that i dont even feel like reading the crits on them. (this is something im trying to change). if you critted me on one of those weeks thats prolly what happened. sorry for the story and for making you feel like you wasted your time

Pizza week was the week Crabrock asked you and another hapless volunteer to each write half of a story and glue them together. He also asked for lighthearted, upbeat stories, so of course you turned in a child genius whose creation kills everyone around him and an insane recluse who breaks his shotgun out of storage to kill his therapist. My crit for you that week was much the same as this weeks: too much focus on superfluous details, not enough focus on characters.

Speaking of which, let's talk about your homework. Yaay, homework!

spectres of autism posted:

Seedling
100 words

�Treechild,� he heard someone say, but he couldn�t understand. It sounded good to him, sonorous. Then they were covering him in dirt. It was a comfy blanket and he fell asleep, dreaming of distant lights.

And as he grew, memories would start in his head and flow down his body into the earth. It felt warm, like maybe they would feel when they played on faraway spheres, going round and round the distant lights.

He understood, when he was fully grown, that somewhere else trees and children were separate things. But by then, he was rooted.

I didn't like this, but I'm glad you wrote it because it serves as a perfect microcosm of your problems. We've reduced the issues with your writing to their simplest, most distilled form. That's good!

So as far as I can tell the plot here is our protagonist is buried in the ground as a child and grows up to be a tree. That's it. That's what happens. There's this quasi-mystic atmosphere and the sort of implication that perhaps he was never quite a person or a plant but something in between, but that's peanuts. The core of what's going on here is exactly as I have described: a dude gets buried underground and becomes a tree. Later he has a revelation of dubious importance. The end.

I don't like this story because I don't care about anything that happens in it. In this case, I don't care because there are no characters. Your protagonist isn't a character, he is an object acted upon by unseen forces. Assuming there existed an entire forest of these seedlings, your protagonist has nothing going for him which in any way distinguishes himself from his peers.

Here is a list of everything I know about your protagonist based off this story:

He is a tree.
Sometimes he thinks about not being a tree.

Okay. Not a great start.

Does this tree aspire to be anything? Does he want to be the tallest tree in the forest? Maybe a family of birds makes a nest in his branches. How does he feel about them? Does he talk to them? Can he talk to them? Can he talk to anyone? I mean, he's a tree, sure, but not quite a tree-tree. When spring comes, does he produce fruit? Is he proud that people like his fruit enough to climb his branches and gather them? Is he angry that they're taking his fruit away? When it's cold and snowy and his leaves all fall off and he's standing naked and alone in the dead of winter, does he find it a pain to be rooted in one spot? Does he hate dogs because he pee on him? Does he laugh when squirrels climb up his side? Is he afraid of fire? Maybe he isn't. Maybe he's never seen fire. Maybe he doesn't know what this fire business is, but he's sure he could handle it.

Maybe a young couple carved their initials inside a big ol' heart right on his trunk. Maybe it hurt but he couldn't get mad because they were in love in a really sappy movie kind of way and it warmed him to his core.

Maybe someone cuts him down to make something out of him. People do that with trees, you know. Is that the end of him? Does he die, or does he live on in the objects they fashion out of him? Is it painful? Is he bitter about his fate or does he calmly accept it?

Here are some professionally published stories about trees with goals and personalities. Real stories by real authors!

"But Seafood," you might say to me, "Those are full-on books with pages and illustrations and dust jackets and sections about the author. Those are way more than 100 measly words!"

Well you can write plenty in 100 measly words. Allow me to demonstrate by doing my own homework.

Bad Seafood posted:

HOMEWORK: Someone is born, lives, and dies in 100 words and don't you dare waste a sentence on meaningless details.

Bad Seafood's word processor posted:

Metamorphosis (100 words)

Erica's parents wanted a boy. Instead they got Erica. Her father added the extra letter to the birth certificate himself.

Erica liked baseball and bugs. She would quietly disapprove whenever the neighborhood boys got together and tried to fry ants. When she was older she stole their magnifying glass. They were too chicken to beat up a girl.

College came and went. Erica was pleased to learn you could make money studying bugs. She had less time for baseball, but kept the radio running in the lab when her team was playing.

Marisposa Field is named in her memory.

I typed this up in maybe five minutes. It's not a great story. I tell a few times when I could be showing. I could probably clip some words here and there to make more room for her later life. Arguably the real story starts in the second paragraph, meaning the first lingers on meaningless details. Guess I failed my own homework.

But let's not talk about that. Let's talk about what I've established about Erica in a mere 100 words.

She likes baseball.
She likes bugs.
She is implicitly a tomboy.
She preferred to avoid direct confrontation as a child, but...
...Grew bold enough to swipe someone else's stuff right in front of them because...
...She disapproved of their cruelty.
She goes on to become college educated.
She goes on to become an entomologist.
She retains her childhood interests.
She became influential or beloved enough to have something named after her;
Implicitly a baseball field;
Implicitly after her favorite insect;
Implicitly after her death.
Her death isn't expanded on, so you can reasonably infer it was probably later on and peaceful...
...Which suggests she continued to like baseball into her old age.

Not too shabby for 100 words. Of course, that's a mighty brief period of time to get to know her. At 100 words, you'll certainly be stretched thin. However, herein lies the skeleton of a possibly compelling character. Imagine if I took this rough sketch and gave it a 1,000 more words to shine? Erica isn't a particularly deep or novel character, but I'll bet if I polled everyone in this thread, all or nearly all of them would rather read about her than your vaguely defined plant person.

So Autism, if you actually care about writing and improving, I'm going to ask you to do that homework one more time. I'll even grant you 100 extra words. That's 200 words! Surely you can make me care about someone's life story in 200 words.

That said, if you can't even do this - after the sentiments you've expressed in this thread - I'll probably never throw a crit your way again.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 07:19

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

My fireplace awaits.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2015 05:25

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 02:23

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Gorefluff posted:

What genre would you guys categorize a story that takes place in the far future, say like 1000+ years after some natural disaster sent humanity back into the Stone Age? As in the story is about primitive hunter-gatherers that are only vaguely aware that some advanced civilization once existed but they're relearning how to farm, write, make tools, etc, and are essentially cavemen. I guess it's technically post apocalypse but I don't feel that term really evokes the right sentiment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx-F6VnLezM

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 12:03

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