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This is really basic question, but how do you motivate yourselves to write? I know everyone says "Just start writing," but I can't seem to get myself that far. I got absolutely nothing done in December. I know I'm not self-motivated but this is ridiculous. I go out of my way to convince myself why not to write.  On that note, is there enough interest for another daily writing pledge thread this month? I know there's the daily thread, but what I write is usually over 500 words (unless that's not a hard rule?) and nowhere near good or complete enough to warrant individual threads. The pledge thread's emphasis on just writing regardless of quality (or lack thereof) made it the only place I felt comfortable posting.
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Jan 1, 2013 23:53
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Belated thanks for the responses to my last question. I do feel more like writing when I read good books - or sometimes bad books. ("I can do better than this published crap" is a pretty good motivator, actually.) What got me going on something other than roleplaying for the first time in years was the pledge thread. Getting feedback from people who care about writing helped immensely, as did setting the goal for X number of words a day and feeling like I had to live up to that. What this means is I have to learn how to do decent critique so I can start posting stuff in Fiction Farm, I guess. The specific thing that's been bugging me was that I hadn't worked on my NaNo project (which I want to finish and ultimately try to publish) since the end of November. I knew I was stuck because events were out of order, but I didn't know how to fix it. Yesterday I think I finally figured out what needs to be done. Now I just need to kick myself to make the changes and move on. Chillmatic posted:I'll take any suggestions from anyone as to books they've read recently that they think have killer characters/dialogue! I finished Among Thieves by Douglas Hulik (2011) a few weeks ago and thought it was very good about that. It's very much character-driven, with just enough worldbuilding to serve the story (and I should use it to learn how to write action scenes because he writes some great combat). I also like Carol Berg and Lynn Flewelling for characterization, though Lynn's got some technical problems - her dialogue gets unnatural if there's exposition to be had, and she has a bad habit of switching perspective mid-paragraph. I also don't know how recent you're talking so they may not be terribly relevant. That first excerpt was just unremarkably boring until I got to "You're making me sad." Nice of you to tell us that since there was no other way to know. (People don't talk like that.) The second is barely comprehensible with those dashes since they're not even consistent.  The dialogue itself doesn't seem bad there, but it's framed horribly and there's nothing to attach a reaction to. Is Jean near tears or holding it together? Is Bill standing looking nonchalant or getting aggravated, leaning over to look menacing? The only reaction we have is a little girl wetting herself and that doesn't say anything about the other two.
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Jan 11, 2013 06:23
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Chillmatic posted:I'd like to know if any of you have any recommendations for well-written books that might also be considered "genre" in that they take place in a fantastic or interesting setting or involve some kind of adventure, but that also have complex characterization and subtext/theme/etc. Already answered: Echo Cian (paraphrased) posted:I finished Among Thieves by Douglas Hulik a few weeks ago. It's very much character-driven, with just enough worldbuilding to serve the story. I also like Carol Berg (namely Song of the Beast, and especially her Lighthouse Duet and Collegia Magicka series, interesting settings/themes) and Lynn Flewelling (Nightrunner series, first three books only) for characterization, though Lynn's got a lot of technical problems. I'm interested in comparing your idea of good characters and writing with mine. The Bananana posted:Posting in here too, because I'm new to CC, and didn't know who'd better field my question: This is barely comprehensible. Death draws near, crushed by thousands of pounds of pressure in an endless night (If you MUST keep this, put it here; but without context it seems like total nonsense (how can death get crushed?), so I'd sooner chop it). Sean’s hand at last finds a useful lever: the battery’s priming pump. Alternatively, to keep it a single sentence: With death drawing near, Sean's hand... Like Molly Bloom said above, don't nest commas. Keep events sequential rather than simultaneous (something I'm working on myself). Trying to describe so much at once just turns it into a mess. e: Yeah that's not embellishment, that's gibberish. If you're going to embellish the idea, find words that make sense together.
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Jan 22, 2013 20:32
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Molly Bloom posted:Oh, you can do nested commas, you just have to be damned sure they work. True, a better way to say it would have been "don't nest commas often." If a single non-list sentence is broken up by five, though, might want to take a good second look at it. 
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Jan 22, 2013 21:09
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freebooter posted:Someone posted a link in this thread ages back - I can't find it anymore, here or on Google - to an article about how Cormac McCarthy's habit of dropping quotation marks for dialogue was dumb. It was in a fairly major publication, the NYRB or New Republic or something. Can anyone point me to it? This one? Wall Street Journal.
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Jan 24, 2013 02:32
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I use yWriter5 for larger writing projects. I tried the Scrivenir trial, and maybe it was just because I'd already gotten used to yWriter and didn't want to switch horses midstream, but it seemed to have more clutter that was a distraction rather than a help. yWriter5 is free which was the main reason I looked into it. Doesn't appear to have a fullscreen mode, though.
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Feb 24, 2013 22:47
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magnificent7 posted:When the crits come in and I don't understand them, I try not to make excuses, Excuses are all I've seen from you so you're failing at that rather horribly. quote:Like, does the bridge have to be something more than a bridge? Does every short story have to be about human nature? Can't it be a shallow mindless tale? Like an Aesop's Fable? Have you ever read an Aesop's Fable? They are all about human nature, they just happen to use animals to display those traits. If you want to write, then read books and pay attention to what you're reading - and I don't mean how-to books. Actual fiction books. If you're expecting to find 5 Secrets To Becoming An Amazing Writer, they don't exist. Read a story. Make notes of things you like, work out why you think something works, and figure out how to apply it to your own writing. If you don't like something, same thing. Think about what the story said, what the author was trying to get across, whether they got it across, whether it could have been done better. You can read about stories needing a beginning, middle and end all day but it won't matter if you don't actually read a story with a beginning, middle and end - just as you can stare at tablature all day, but your fingers won't magically find the strings as soon as you pick up the guitar for the first time in your life. You'll slowly pick them out and stumble and soon your fingers are all callused and you want to throw the drat thing out the window but, hey, you can pick out a blues run now at better than 5 notes per hour and shift between C and G chords without looking. Try critiquing some stories in the Fiction Farm, or at least reading stories and crits. quote:edit: sorry one last question; do you guys tend to consider the 'dome as having a Real Literature angle? So then the lovely fiction, zombies, serial killers, hard loving, crap like that it instantly disregarded by most folks on there? You got that part right at least. Unfortunately what you followed it with is only "lovely" if it's written badly. There's been plenty of pulp, cyberpunk, sci-fi and fantasy, and it's all judged on its own merits, not discarded for not being literary enough (unless that's the prompt, of course). I take it you haven't read much of the thread, if you've looked at any other entries at all. Read other entries and crits, and not just the winners. quote:Am I reading that right? Perfect prose is better than something interesting happening? Not even remotely. Beef covered this. Listen to him. No one's going to care about perfect prose if nothing interesting is happening, but likewise no one is going to care about what's happening if you can't write well enough - and I don't mean spelling and grammar. Compelling characters, believable conflict, a clear plot, an interesting setting if you're doing genre work. All that comes back to my earlier point of paying attention to what you read. If you want help, there's nothing we can do until you get your head out of your rear end, stop making so many excuses, and accept that if you want to become a writer you're going to have to put some effort into it. Regarding your fable: As has been mentioned before, it could have been going somewhere, speaking on the consequences of the characters acting according to their nature. However, by the ending you realized you didn't know where you were going with it after changing it several times during writing (as ideas are wont to do), threw up your hands and ended with "women are bitches, amirite?" For a fable, there was no moral. It could have gone somewhere and you threw it away for a pointlessly misogynistic gag. Don't play up the BEST IDEA EVER, splat down this piece of nonsensical garbage and then pointedly ignore all those things when it goes over like a brick to point at B-B-BUT YOUR IDEA. If you plain didn't think of any of that before you posted, then take the above advice and start thinking before you ever try writing again. Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 20:38 on May 28, 2013 |
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May 28, 2013 20:33
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Chillmatic posted:...the people griping the loudest about this are also those who appear to be struggling the most to produce readable work. [citation needed] I don't know why you're taking this so personally. No one's actively disagreeing with what you're trying to say (well, most of it, anyway), but it's getting lost in your defensiveness over Your Advice On The Internet and strawman generalizations. Take a step back. You do this with every argument you make and it's extremely off-putting even when some of us would otherwise agree with you, but I digress. It's not an either/or matter. Yes, you learn a fair amount from how-to books, and yes, writing in a vacuum can ingrain bad habits. Just look at the Dominic Deegan mock thread: A man who's been working on his fantasy webcomic for ten years, and both his writing and art got progressively worse the longer it went on because he never listened to criticism and was incapable of thinking critically about his own work. He was so blinded to storytelling convention that, among other things, goon-made edits swapping the heroes and villains made more sense than the original story - and this is a man who has panels at conventions on how to write memorable heroes and villains, with apparently decent advice gleaned from other sources but never applied to himself. Don't be that guy. No one here who's saying to keep writing, is saying to do so in a vacuum. Keep writing, get feedback to identify your weaknesses, take the advice to heart, read up on it if need be, apply it, write more with the new advice in mind, repeat. And learn critical reading skills from reading other fiction, but I covered that in my last post. Thunderdome is harsh but (...usually) fair. If you don't want the competition aspect, there's the Fiction Farm. Either way: You need to learn the basics, but you also need practice and feedback. No one improves by writing in a vacuum or by reading every how-to book they come across without taking the time to apply it. magnificent7, good on you for accepting the offers; I really hope it helps. When you're done with this week, or whenever you feel up to it, maybe you could try critiquing some pieces in the Fiction Farm, or even other 'Domers? It can help to look at others' work to notice things you won't see in your own.
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May 31, 2013 04:57
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Yes. Thrillers/suspense. Fiction Writing: Advice and Discussion: The Answer is "Read More" For writing books, it depends on what you want and this may not apply, but I always recommend How Not to Write a Novel and Eats, Shoots & Leaves as general suggestions for being both hilarious and informative.
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Dec 20, 2013 21:31
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magnificent7 posted:I think I'm going to approach him with it, and ask him to refer to his favorite authors, or books. Between this and your other post, you (or the thread) are conflating two different things. "X said" versus "said X" is preference. Using a thesaurus to go out of your way to avoid ever using "said" in favor of "he shouted," "he interrupted," "he stated," "he ejaculated" every single time is plain bad writing. Those things should be conveyed through the dialogue itself. Cut off his fingers until he stops. As far as the bolded bit goes, where did you find that one?
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Jan 3, 2014 00:02
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neongrey posted:It's pretty easy to tell when someone's explicitly phrasing around swears, as opposed to constructing the language such that they're not needed. Yeah. It's called "bad writing." If we're talking about good writing, that won't come up. As has been already said, the only way to get an ear for it is to read more, and pay attention. Much like everything else in this thread. I'd say that if a writer is relying on swearing constantly to show emotion, they should probably try conveying the same feelings without it, because they might just have fallen into a lazy habit they don't need. Sometimes it fits. Other times it isn't necessary. Christmas Jones posted:And (this is a real question, not sarcastic) are there really a lot of people that are okay with going to R-Rated movies but aren't okay with reading similar language? The people who can't stand cussin' (  ) in books probably aren't viewing other media with it, either. Even if they are, movies are a lot shorter than books, with different standards in general. And if I feel like reading a story addressing mature themes, it doesn't necessarily mean I want to read a character swearing like it's a comma for the duration. These things are not really connected.Christmas Jones posted:I don't really see sex and violence and other naughty things like that as "gimmicks" so much as I see them as "parts of the everyday world portrayed and sometimes exaggerated for my entertainment and education." It's almost like people have different experiences, opinions and preferences on the sorts of things they find entertaining. Who knew?
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Jan 26, 2014 03:46
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neongrey posted:That's my point exactly, yeah. I was really only arguing with the 'never swear ever' camp. That doesn't exist? Chairchucker said that he, personally, wouldn't use swearing in his writing. Not swearing fits perfectly well with his tone, so trying to make him an example of whatever your point is really doesn't work. Christmas Jones posted:I could also go on a boilerplate rant about how you can have kids murder each other in children's entertainment as long as they don't say "loving cumsluts," but I think we've all heard that one before. I guess you're just rambling at this point, so see: the part of my post you quoted. Handling mature content =/= being "adult" and shocking about it, if it's not the tone the writer is after. If swearing works for the tone of a story, great; but try alternatives, because its overuse could just cheapen the impact. Someone who uses "gently caress" as a comma has less differentiation between their normal conversation and actually being mad at something, whereas someone who doesn't normally spout curse words left and right gives more impact to a scene when they do swear, because things just got that bad. It's not a matter of how people really talk (and I know plenty of people who don't swear, so that's a faulty argument; I don't in person, either), it's a matter of what serves the character, story, and tone.
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Jan 26, 2014 05:00
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Christmas Jones posted:Why would you say that? A personal rant on your frustrations with whether or not other people like cursing are irrelevant to a thread on Ficton Writing: Advice and Discussion, which seems to be a point of frustration when we answer from a fiction writing standpoint. To put it bluntly, all that matters is whether the use of cursing or not fits the tone of the story, and starting on a personal rant has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Some of us thinking that jumping straight to "loving fuckcunts gently caress you" is a bad idea when there are other ways of showing frustration in a scene is not an insult to you. Suggesting ways to vary and improve writing that don't involve falling back on the same thing does not mean that any of us are saying that no one should use swearing, ever - merely that it is a tool that can be overused, much like book-saidisms. Let's not completely go off the subject here.
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Jan 26, 2014 05:21
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Christmas Jones posted:Then simply: A part of writing is also to portray your subject authentically, which can be just as important as self-censoring to preserve an audience. If being authentic to people that swear a lot suits your tone, then write a lot of swears. If it doesn't, then don't. I'm glad we agree on what I've been saying this entire time.
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Jan 26, 2014 05:41
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Then look up as many sources on creative writing as you possibly can, and pay attention to the sentence construction and flow in the books you read (you already mentioned that reading your story out loud helped - do that with your future stories and some of the other books you read to develop an ear for it). I learned grammar mostly from absorbing it through reading before I started paying attention to the actual rules, and I honestly don't understand how your grammar is that bad if you read that much and have read books on the subject. Just...read more, then, with an eye to learning instead of just consuming. Public schooling is terrible whether you skipped grades or not, that's not an excuse to throw up your hands. Writing and grammar really aren't anything like math. Stop comparing them.
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Feb 14, 2014 00:35
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A bit of a tangent, but how many recent (within the last 10 years or so) fantasy series still follow the Tolkein trend? I haven't read a wide variety of it, but I've still apparently managed to avoid nearly all these unending Tolkein ripoffs I keep hearing about. The closest to that were also the ones I ended up putting down a few chapters in, or skimming by the time I got to the third book after a promising start. I'm not so sure it's as common a trend these days as the complaints about the fantasy genre as a whole would have you think. Granted, now the trend seems to be relentless grimdark shock value, which is not an improvement.
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Feb 25, 2014 16:52
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3Romeo posted:- Races other than human. I'm only quoting highlights that stood out, but that's such a wide definition it's effectively meaningless. Every fantasy book that uses magic is Tolkein-esque, is it? Pack it up and go home, everyone, that one guy already wrote the whole genre. Sarcasm aside, fantasy is by definition a form of escapism, things that can't happen in real life. It is pretty sad that a lot of it is derivative, especially with so much focus on medieval European settings, but I doubt it's much moreso than with other genres or litfic. Fantasy fans just tend to be more vocal, perhaps. The SF/F thread over in TBB is pretty depressing for how often it recommends the same books, over and over and over. As for recommendations... My favorite author is Carol Berg - strong focus on characters and solid plots, which apparently counts as Tolkein-esque to you, and magic and non-humans exist, but not in any way remotely like LotR. Her Rai-kireh series has a Middle Eastern kind of setting rather than medieval European. I prefer her Lighthouse Duet and Collegia Magicka series, which are also kind of European but with a different sort of take on it. Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard is hilarious, witty, and about as far from Tolkein as you can get. Diana Wynne Jones is also pretty far off, and very fun. Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick is low fantasy with only minor magic and some great action scenes, falling in line with the previous discussion. Comparing video game writing to book writing gets strange. I have some ideas that would only work as games, whether because they heavily incorporate visual elements or because of the interactivity. Games are important for their way to convey some stories better than other media could, but it is rather like comparing apples to oranges.
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Feb 25, 2014 20:16
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CB_Tube_Knight posted:Because of the popularity of the HBO show and the novels now, I worry that we're going to have to wade through ASOFAI clones for the next twenty years or so. I gave up on the books already and the show is wearing thin on me. That's a much better summary. The only things I've seen with those elements are LotR and the Fionavar Tapestry which was of questionable quality - those things being directly derivative. I think we've already got ASoIaF clones, didn't GRRM start this current grimdark craze? I wish people would move away from that already, it's gotten old much faster than Tolkein since a lot of writers just seem to use it to go "Look how gritty I am!" Realism is not gleefully stomping on or ignoring hope just because that's how the world supposedly works. But this isn't really on topic.
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Feb 25, 2014 22:41
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CB_Tube_Knight posted:The other issue is that she's only partially a person. She's a supernatural being, but I tend to treat them more human than not anyway. Does it have a personality? Then it's a "person." This isn't something that needs splitting hairs. Also all your characters, if they're important, whether they're actually human or not, should have some aspect of humanity or they'll be unrelatable. I don't know what pointing this out has to do with anything.
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Mar 12, 2014 07:40
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CommissarMega posted:How do you guys introduce new concepts, lingo etc. into a story without overwhelming the reader, especially if they're common, everyday things in your world? One of the things I plan to write includes stuff like 'arcaneers'- basically, magician-engineers who design and maintain the magitech the universe runs on. I'm just not sure on how to introduce them easily. Don't feel the need to explain. Just present them as a common thing and let the reader fill in the gaps from what they do as long as it's relevant to the plot. Carol Berg does a pretty good job of pulling the reader into the world without explaining things unless they're directly relevant, if you want an example (though one of the common complaints about my favorite series of hers - Lighthouse Duet - is that she doesn't explain things enough). However, I would also suggest against inventing a word just for the sake of being "original" when existing words would suffice. Off the top of my head, I've seen artificer used for much the same thing you described. Or arcanist. And if magitech is a common thing in the world, why wouldn't they just be considered engineers? "Arcaneer" sounds like a magic pirate.
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Mar 13, 2014 23:53
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ravenkult posted:Why can't crit communities do that? I've yet to see a serious crit in this subforum that wasn't helpful, so I don't know what your point is. (There have been some duds, but those were typically the critiquer going purely for what they thought was funny over anything resembling productivity.) Other places, sure, but that's presumably why we're all here and not there. blue squares posted:I'm glad I've found my place in this wonderful community. Just like elfdude is the resident 'guy who should just give up' Your place is "stop saying things" corner, please stay in it.
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Mar 21, 2014 21:15
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blue squares posted:Oh come on, I was just messing around. Nobody should just give up. Nor should anyone insult someone personally because of their writing, even if it is on the internet Then stop doing it, even if it is "ironically," because you're apparently quite bad at making a joking tone clear.
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Mar 21, 2014 21:35
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General_Disaster posted:I have a question for the assembled. Whalley got into more detail, but in short: No. If you want to switch perspectives, start a new chapter. And think long and hard about whether perspective shifts are even necessary. If you have to keep switching willy-nilly, maybe you need to restructure the story.
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Apr 21, 2014 21:16
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Cacotopic Stain posted:Usually its either make an totally original story or don't bother. Let's all pack it up and go home right now, then. Writing is over. This is an old and interesting read for writing fantasy (and stuff in general). There's a lot there and I still haven't gotten through it all, but she points out a lot of things to consider. e: Looking at Axel's link (which is great), she covers a lot of similar things, but more in-depth. Good combination. Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 01:24 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 01:18
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magnificent7 posted:Is there such a thing as Comedy Fantasy that isn't a satire of Fantasy? Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Howl's Moving Castle and its sequels + Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones, Discworld is probably parody but hey, it's fun. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:> women (peaches & cream, porcelain, alabaster) You know, I'm so used to seeing these meaningless descriptions that it never occurred to me to consider what that would actually look like until now. Please see a doctor.
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Jun 17, 2014 17:52
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Symptomless Coma posted:To that point: I see a lot of people writing about writing, and a lot of people asking abstract questions - and yes, a lot of people critiquing responses to the esoteric challenges of Thunderdome - but I don't see a lot of writing. Because posting in the Farm is hard and scary.  Speaking of which, it's probably time for a new Farm thread. E: holy poo poo saber people are trying to help and this is how you act when people are understandably annoyed at your cluelessness? gently caress off, you don't deserve this thread.
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Jul 9, 2014 02:21
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blue squares posted:How many of you guys have to drag yourselves to the keyboard rather than away from it? I sometimes get into streaks where I don't want to stop, but often enough one of my last thoughts before I go to bed is "drat it, as soon as I wake up I have to write for an hour." I know I'm good at writing, but sometimes the hardest part of doing it is just doing it. I worry about my longevity. Same for me pretty much; hell, I've had someone offer to buy me books if I write just a bit more of my novel, and there it still sits (I bought the books myself). I automatically drift to any excuse not to write - irc, MMOs, even Solitaire as long as it's not writing, which annoys me to no end. I've even tried removing all my shortcuts and it doesn't work. But Monday my computer died, leaving me with only a notebook and my phone which is a pain to use for more than a few minutes at a time, and I'm most of the way through a story outline that I probably never would have bothered to write if I was sitting at a computer. This isn't actually much help, except to say that maybe the keyboard is the problem when you can think of other things you'd rather be doing that are just a click away, but it's definitely a common sentiment. (Of course now I want to actually write the story and can't easily since I have to go to the library to type and writing by hand is slow and hurts after a while. But when I fix the computer it'll be back to distractions and nonproductivity. Can't win.) Sithsaber posted:The brown and bloodied hut shelters a ragged woman within. Unnamed, I have empathy already. She heaves in the confined space, unable to choke down the final vestiges oh boy you have a thesaurus of sorrow and humanity. Kind of works but is also pretentious. The floor is ruined oak and the walls are crushed adobe fashioned from the rotting remains of the world. This is actually pretty good, suggests a lot about what's going on beyond this scene. She cries, cooking her latest stillborn child in a pot made from the hollowed skull of her final mate. The hut begins to sink typo? as 1 acrid fumes envelop her; vision blurs as 2 the primordial dolmen put down the thesaurus reasserts itself over the final witch. There were more? This isn't as atrocious as your attitude led me to anticipate, has some good details; but it's overwritten, showing off your vocabulary rather than bothering to tell a story, and I'm left going "Yeah, and?" Some do write for imagery and atmosphere, but most people are interested in a story, and a snippet like this doesn't give room to care about a scene description. "The woman" isn't even a named protagonist, unless she's Ereshkigal, but I'm not even sure of that; it's too unclear.
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Jul 9, 2014 22:14
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Don't worry about it too much; hop wherever you want and when it's too confusing, rip the pages out and put them in a binder so you can reorder them at will and use page marker sticky notes to keep track of things. I don't really recommend writing in the binder, though, because the pages rip too easily.
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Jul 27, 2014 15:24
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If you've been working on it for ten years and all you can say for it first is "worldbuilding," move on. Speaking as someone who draws, though I haven't done a comic, no one is going to agree to illustrate a graphic novel when there is no novel to graph. Ten years and you don't even know one of the characters yet. You know what will let you figure that out? Writing. e: I have two video game ideas. Well, three, I guess. I know it's not even worth considering any of them until I write the plots at the absolute minimum, and I would really need to also include weapon and item stuff in the case of an RPG, write branching paths, dialogue, optional scenes, etc. And then learn RPG Maker at the very least (one could be done in Renpy, at least as a rough concept, the other is way too ambitious for me to make alone), then graphic assets, music... Not getting anywhere with any of them without a complete storyboard to either work off of myself or pitch to someone. Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jul 28, 2014 |
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Jul 28, 2014 15:27
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True fact: The only way to become a Real Writer is to post endlessly in a fiction advice thread about the magical daily wordcount you should reach and how much money you should make to qualify for entrance into the exclusive Real Writer's Club all those published authors keep talking about. 2k a day written in the blood of a virgin or you don't get in, and no publisher will ever take you seriously because they'll know you don't write twelve novels each year. On a serious note, since maybe someone else subbed there recently: does Daily Science Fiction normally not send a rejection notice? I wanted to print out my first serious rejection and thumbtack it to the wall all fancy-like but all I got was a status change on the website.  I know they must be busy, but it seems lazy.
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Aug 21, 2014 23:31
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I was so bad they didn't even send me a form rejection. 
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Aug 23, 2014 01:59
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Zip posted:I'm going to be completely honest and say, I don't think criticism serves a real decent purpose. I, too, wish to stagnate and never improve my craft, because my ego is far more important than developing critical thinking skills. Also: good luck earning any respect in turn if yours can only be bought Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Sep 17, 2014 |
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Sep 17, 2014 00:58
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ravenkult posted:Oh you sure showed me what's up. Oh hey I forgot I'd done that crit I never posted. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NeuwPs_xeDRnD0LbJndzYgTiGftr0I5jONZh9gO3zNg/edit Enjoy.
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Oct 21, 2014 17:34
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General Battuta posted:This article on why conventional praise may not work on writers was kind of interesting. Makes the case that it's hard to get meaningful positive feedback except from other writers with an appreciation for process instead of output. Thanks for linking this - the article (and podcast) were very interesting, and I've been reading the rest of his blog all day. Reminds me I ought to pick up City of Stairs before I forget (again). Also looking forward to being able to read your book, eventually. But drat, sequel due in March? I think I'll uh scrap any series ideas I had. 
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Oct 25, 2014 00:14
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Screaming Idiot posted:We're human beings. We breathe, we eat, we poo poo, we gently caress, we fight People be lizards. But yeah don't worry too much about originality as long as you don't go directly ripping things off plot beat per plot beat and name your character Fromo who is a Mobbit looking for the Two Keychain. It's more in how it's written and later you can worry about that and change things if it is too similar to something.
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Jan 26, 2015 05:36
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Think of a character, and what they want, and why they can't get it, and how they respond to that conflict. You will notice that "look at Wikipedia and copy/paste hunting or photography mechanics" is nowhere in that formula.
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Jan 31, 2015 23:01
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My advice for developing critical reading is to note things that stand out for what you particularly like or don't like - if a passage just strikes you the right or wrong way - and then figure out why. Don't have to necessarily sit there and analyze everything, just learn to pinpoint what you do or don't like and therefore avoid it. Thunderdome is really good for this, since you get your own work critiqued, and have a ton of other critiques to read that might well point out things you didn't notice or couldn't put into words, whether it's your own story or someone else's.
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Feb 15, 2015 22:29
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Stuporstar's got a good suggestion. One of my favorite TD stories I wrote in one sitting, with a borderline migraine, finishing at 4 AM because I didn't let myself go to bed until the draft was done. The combination meant I didn't give any fucks about whether it was good or not, which is key to getting the ideas down. No stimulants were involved.Megazver posted:That's a good reason to keep trying to quit drinking and low your caffeine. Basically this.
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Mar 1, 2015 22:46
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Stuporstar posted:Good advice This wasn't directed at me, but I'm printing this out and sticking it on my wall, because knowing in my head that I need to do this stuff and having a reminder for it in my face are two very different things.
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Mar 2, 2015 05:50
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TheGreekOwl, the best advice is to just shelf this project. The entire premise sounds uninteresting, the language is stilted enough to be unreadable, and there's no way all this dialogue can make a good webcomic; there would be no room for the art, just Read more books (fantasy or otherwise) in English, preferably that tell a story rather than existing to deliver a Message. If you actually want to share this where people will read it, you need to improve the very basics of language structure first, and you do that by reading. A lot.
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Apr 11, 2015 04:59
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