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Best I can suggest is finding a writer friend who you can mutually bounce criticism off of. Regular friends tend to just give you "it's good", but if it's someone who also wants to get better you can both help each other. Also posting here in CC. It's a slower board, true, but still.
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Nov 10, 2014 20:11
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crabrock posted:It's somebody in the past telling a story about another person telling a story in the past. So it's The Orphan's Tales?
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Nov 13, 2014 04:28
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I also like poetic description. What makes it work for me, I think, is a combination of ingenuity and clarity: thinking about something in a way that's fresh and elicits an emotional or sensory response, and conveying that clearly enough to get the idea across. If you miss the mark with ingenuity, it's cliched, and if you miss the mark with clarity, it's not effective.
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Dec 4, 2014 12:07
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Just make a new thread for it if it's over 1000 words.
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Jan 11, 2015 08:17
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Sitting Here posted:i like wizards pizza wizards now i'm hungry
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Jan 26, 2015 10:02
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Pronouns are part of operator words (probably not the right name) that the human brain doesn't accept new entries into. For instance, The Left Hand Of Darkness features gender-neutral aliens, and also bits of alien vocab, but only tells us about the alien pronouns. Even when presenting translated works from the aliens' culture, the author uses English pronouns. I'd say point it out, but if you use it in text keep its use sparing and only in dialogue. I personally wouldn't try to use it at all, but that's up to you. I think it'd be enough to have a character mention it from time to time (when it's relevant to plot or characterization) rather than trying to beat the reader's brain into accepting a word that doesn't fit.
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Jan 29, 2015 13:29
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Corrollary if you do want to use the pronoun: say it once, have someone point out that it's a pronoun translates to that kid, and from then on just say that kid. The problem that hits me when using a constructed pronoun is that it always feels like a nickname instead of a pronoun.
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Jan 29, 2015 17:01
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The Hemingwayapp site is a good tool, but just keep in mind that it's giving you advice based on simple if-then rules. Maybe that adverb is really useful or it's important to the tone to have a run-on sentence. What it's really good at though is letting you make those informed choices, so if you choose to use an adverb, it's an adverb you've thought about.
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Feb 13, 2015 00:14
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That's the sort of writing that's only interesting to the person writing it. If they're there to learn how to write, that probably means writing in a way that's relevant to other people. One hundred percent use your life to inform what you're writing about. You can even write about your life if it's interesting. If they're not making it interesting, then gently caress 'em.
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Feb 13, 2015 21:48
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Anyone know of resources that talk about incorporating illustrations into a story? Specifically on working illustrations into the layout, rules on wrapping text, that sort of thing. Or also recommendations on what kind of program to use for doing that. I've never had to do it before, but I'm betting there's slightly more to it than Word Wrap in MS Word.
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Mar 2, 2015 21:39
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Yeah, I think what DrK is saying is just that those books are, by economic and pop cultural metrics, successful books. They're not super great from a technical standpoint, but if you're looking to get published, understanding why they're popular is still important. I think that sort of issue you're having is pretty common, because I know I get that more than I'd really like. The tough part is that getting around it is really just training yourself to write through it. Even if you don't feel "motivated" or 'inspired', because motivation/inspiration is a transitory rear end in a top hat that you can't rely on. Maybe you force yourself to write a scene that's half as good as it could be, but that's still better than having not written it. A story/chapter/passage/paragraph that's not as good as it could be is infinity% better than a perfect but nonexistent story/chapter/passage/paragraph. I finished out a story I was working on by writing the second half, then when I went back to edit, deleting each paragraph and writing that part of the story over, but better. If I hadn't gotten it out on the page first, I would have been left struggling to try to untangle what works from what doesn't work while it's all still unformed in my head. It'd be like trying to decide which cookie is the tastiest before you've even rolled out the cookie dough.
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Mar 3, 2015 23:55
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100% literal with my song. it's in second person and it's about a guy who's got a date in constantinople but every gal in constantinople lives in istanbul not constantinople so if you've got a date in constantinople she'll be waiting in istanbul
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Mar 5, 2015 23:33
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Bompacho posted:
i already changed it and showed it to my irl writing buddy. why i changed it i can't say but people just like it better that way.
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Mar 6, 2015 00:48
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Can't wait to read that.
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Benny the Snake posted:Hey Maugrim, just wanted to say thanks for the crit. I've noticed people commenting on my sudden shift into 2nd person and how it's disorienting. It's a personal conversational habit I have where I use "you" in the rhetorical sense. I'll say "you wouldn't do x" or "you don't expect x" whenever I'm expressing something that ought to be common knowledge and it's bled into my writing style. Should I abandon this weird tic in my writing, or is there any way I could refine it? Try to frame it from the point of view of the character you're writing about. So in the example of "Rosa sprung back from the armoire. You don't expect table ghosts in wardrobes!' as a reader, I wonder, okay, who's 'you'? Is that me? And then if it is, why do I know about table ghosts? And if it isn't, who is it being addressed to? But let's say this whole scene is written from the viewpoint of Rosa Flores, Paranormal Investigator. 'Rosa sprung back from the armoire. She didn't expect table ghosts in wardrobes!' is a pretty simple fix, if it makes sense that she'd know the information. Instead of a nebulous second person, we know know who doesn't expect table ghosts.
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Mar 6, 2015 15:24
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No you don't expect TABLE ghosts in armoires, you expect dresser ghosts in armoires. I'm beginning to think you're not even a paranormal investigator.
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Mar 6, 2015 16:13
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 posh you do good things
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Mar 11, 2015 02:38
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I generally have trouble seeing issues with order when I'm editing. I'm fine with cutting, adding, rewriting, tweaking wording, but it's just really hard for me to see when things should be moved around.
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Mar 22, 2015 05:58
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There's bits like "the beings of others unable to understand, let alone his own self" - What are the 'beings of others'? Their personalities, identities, struggles? There's a lot of places where the wording gets in the way of comprehension. It's not necessarily grammatically incorrect, but it's elaborate in a way that makes the ideas you're trying to convey difficult. The more complex an idea you're putting out there, the more plainly you'll need to describe it. I'll say that I do like the ideas at play here, even if I can't necessarily get a clear handle on the way they're talking about it. And I kind of like the way that it definitely feels translated. As a historian I've read a lot of translated works, and where your style works, I get that sort of feeling from it. Unfortunately, there's a lot of places where it doesn't work. I could pull out specific lines, but I don't think that would necessarily help, since the problem is that you need a better ear for what works smoothly in English. (Believe me, I get that writing in another language is really hard.) The best I could suggest would be to read some more English books. I don't know whether more complex books would help (since the dialogue here is more complex) or more straightforward books would (since that would help you get a sense of how to convey things clearly). The idea of warrior animals puts me in the mind of the Redwall books, and I remember reading them as a young teen, so the language is probably pretty easy, if you want to try reading one or two of those and seeing if that helps. That said, I've got to agree with newtestleper that this doesn't feel like comic dialogue. Like I said, it feels more like a play, where the dialogue and acting are going to be doing the most work. What's going to be going on in the background while they're doing all this talking? Just shots of the two of them going back and forth?
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Apr 9, 2015 16:01
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I was suggesting it mainly because I remembered reading it and enjoying it, and because I figured getting a look at simpler prose could help you get a better ear for how to make things clear. When it comes to comics, I definitely think you should approach it with the images first. Writing only prose is one thing, but comics are primarily visual with writing to complement the images. You could still make an extended dialogue scene interesting, but as you're planning out a scene like that, you'll have to keep in mind a balance between dialogue and action and having the two work together for greater meaning, and all that.
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Apr 9, 2015 20:46
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Creative writing isn't an exact science, and any rule you learn is going to be a rule you can toss aside once you've decided you don't need it. But that doesn't mean that a rule isn't helpful, even if it's not always going to be helpful or necessary. There's a lot of those handy rules of thumb I use when I'm writing short fiction, and sometimes I won't follow them, but I still think they're pretty useful. Knowing a rule, and knowing why it helps, lets you make a conscious decision about whether you want to do this thing or not. I think describing your story in one sentence is a good rule of thumb to use if you're not sure if what you're writing is contributing to the story or not. If you clarify what you're writing about to yourself, you'll be able to better judge whether the scene you're writing right now contributes to the arc of the story. It doesn't even need to contain the plot, as long as it gets to what the story is about. Then you can make an educated decision about whether what you're writing contributes to that, and if it doesn't contribute, you can decide whether you want to keep it anyway. To make a long post short, writing 'rules' are more like tools you can use to make smarter decisions about your writing, not edicts you have to abide by.
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Apr 22, 2015 00:22
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Abundant Atrophy posted:Two questions: First, how do you write characters to care about? Well, the most basic way is to give your character something they want. This is as broad or as specific as you please. But, the key for writing a character people care about is to connect it to some common element of the human experience. That's a fruity way of saying we should 'get' what they want. Maybe a man wants to find the woman he loved--that's a pretty easy motivation to connect to. But what if Erethor wants to reclaim the Gem of Unyielding from the Fallen Steps? Well, then you'd better connect that to a more human motivation too. Maybe he's trying to prove himself to his father and to society in general--that's something we can connect to. But what if you're writing something entirely nonhuman? That's fine, as long as there's a motivation there we can understand. A ship's AI wants all its crew to be happy. A golem wants to be freed from its master's control. These aren't situations we can relate to, but we can relate to the motivations. Even if, let's say, you're writing an antihero, that's someone with an identifiable motivation that goes about it in a way we'd see as immoral. A vigilante superhero is motivated by his protective drive toward his friends and family, but he beats up criminals to within an inch of their life. Second, how do you convey internal emotions without stating them? Well, what do people do when they feel that internal state? If you're sad, you might be quiet, preoccupied with what made you sad, unwilling to talk to people. Or maybe you get drunk and act out to hide the sadness, but either way, it's pretty clear you're hurting over something. If someone's malicious, they're probably coming up with ways to hurt someone in their head, or maybe they're always stealing glances in their direction. If someone's emotionless, they'll probably be unfazed by events that would make a normal person excited. Another option is to use a bit of internal monologue, which works mainly if you're writing from a limited perspective: "Bob opened the door and saw Mary. loving Mary, again." Now we know, without being told, that Bob's agitated for some reason at seeing Mary again. A third option is to use facial expressions and body language, which is a bit tougher, because you can be happy without smiling and you can be mad without making a >:( face. There's a lot going on in people's heads when they're feeling strong emotions, so there's plenty to pull out to describe states of mind. Abundant Atrophy posted:A less vague question that's prevented me from writing is research. So I have a story about a space elevator in the Philippines that leads to a resort where the staff mutiny. The story is centered on a single character's experience going into space and dying during the mutiny. So of course I should read up on the mechanics of the elevator, physics involved in the elevator, mechanics of the materials, Filipino culture, maybe tour a bible for a lesson of the Garden of Eden and other kinds of themes... A part of me says I should "Just Write" then do some fact-checking in a later draft, but (a lot of words about my own indecision) The question here is does research even matter for something that doesn't exist? From experience which have people found more useful, researching before or after the story? Even when writing spec fic stuff, I don't worry too much about research, but I think if you're going to do some research, do it before the story. Myself, I rarely do "targeted" research like that, because usually my mind lands on an idea I'm already familiar with from tootling around. Then again, most of my spec fic stuff is soft enough to be sliced with a butter knife. Personally, I think research can give you interesting angles on a story you wouldn't have considered. (For instance, lifting the idea of a Matrioshka sphere for a story about bitcoins, or visual telegraphs for a story about Victorian terrorists.) But that's more research to find interesting elements to add to a story, less research to ensure you get the details right. If I was doing a harder scifi story [and I probably wouldn't] I'd do the concept research first, then do my detail research for an editing pass. Get the ideas you want out there, then worry about whether they're proper science enough. Being fact-checked is far less important than having a good story.
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Apr 22, 2015 21:03
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I don't have a lot of experience with writers' groups outside of Thunderdome, aside from a few abortive writing communities I found online. Making it explicitly a genre fiction group could work. What's the goal of your group though? Are you thinking of just having a space to discuss writing in general or are you thinking about a group that's more focused on feedback on each other's work? Both could probably work, assuming you've got enough interest, but the latter would probably be more challenging just because critique puts people's feelings on the line, and it's much harder to deal with feelings in person than it is IRL. Probably why my attempts to recreate Thunderdome with first graders have failed.
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May 1, 2015 00:57
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It's a Writing Fact that less has fewer words than fewer.
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May 9, 2015 23:35
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I started reading Valente's Orphan's Tales book but got lost in the six layers of frame stories  Not an indictment of the book, just something I personally couldn't handle.
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Jun 2, 2015 20:10
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Hocus Pocus posted:So I want to start giving crits in Thunderdome, but I've never really critiqued short stories/flash fiction. That's pretty much it. There's no magic to crits, it's just telling someone what you thought of the story. It's all pretty self-evident once you start reading. Here's some basic story stuff I keep in mind when thinking about crits--I don't consider these questions methodical, I just have them kinda floating around in my head: Was there a conflict? Did I understand the conflict? Was I able to identify with the characters? Did I get lost at any point? Did the words get in the way of my understanding? Was there any part that was particularly compelling? Did the ending feel satisfying? At any point did I want to stop reading? Also, be sincere. I don't believe in the idea of wrapping up a criticism between two pieces of praise. Sometimes there's not much to praise about a story, sometimes there's not much to criticize. A critique is your opinion about a story, so don't equivocate and don't feel shy about saying you liked or didn't like it.
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Jun 7, 2015 19:28
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http://www.onethrone.com/#!joust/c19mu for the next three hours, this contest is still open. get a beginning and ending line at noon pst tomorrow, then within 24h write and submit a story of >1000 words. goonrush it.
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Jun 27, 2015 04:46
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Sitting Here posted:believing oooh we're halfway there
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Jul 24, 2015 15:37
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Twist Endings Suck 1. Twist endings suck because they undermine the rest of the story. An ending that changes the entire context of everything you've just read wrenches away all the emotional capital, all the dramatic tension, all the excitement and interest. Suddenly, nothing is what it meant before, so why did the author waste my time like that? However much the author made me care about the story I was reading, a twist ending means, woah, hey, suddenly I'm reading a different story, one that’s not the one I cared about. Twist endings make the rest of the story feel less real and resonant and more like a setup to a punchline. 2. Twist endings suck because they rely on withholding information from the reader. This is especially egregious in works written from the perspective of a character who should know this information. Now, I'm not saying you need to put all your cards on the table, but if you're withholding information that is obvious and relevant to the characters, all you're doing is making me feel stupid for the fact that you didn't tell me something. I remember some advice I heard about writing mystery stories, along the lines of "never let your character know something that the reader couldn't". Imagine a mystery story where in the end, the detective solves the mystery based on a bunch of clues the reader never saw. Or imagine the detective solving the mystery like, "Ah, well, we know that alien wasps require two power crystals per hour to maintain their cloaking, so that white powder on the late Mr. Prendergast's chest told me we were dealing with alien wasps," when up until the end, it's been standard Victorian mystery-solving. 3. Twist endings suck because they're not an ending. At best, they're meta-endings, getting their legitimacy from the fact that the story is over now. But twist endings don't resolve your story--see point number 1. They unresolve your story. Now, it's suddenly a different story, but it's also over. It doesn't conclude the narrative arc in any meaningful way, it just ends abruptly. There's no sense of closure apart from the fact that there's no more words on the page. 4. Twist endings suck because they screw up a good story's structure. In a story, the early parts are where you introduce the information and the rules your story operates under. The later parts are where you move those pieces around, see how they react together, and bring it to an end. I'm not saying you can't have a hinted-at reveal near the end (oh no, your brother was the killer all along!), but you definitely can't have something that changes the rules at the end (oh no, werewolves exist and your brother, who is the killer, was a werewolf all along!). I expect a story's background to be fairly consistent once I pass the midway point. By then, I should know what kind of story I'm dealing with, and a twist ending puts off a crucial piece of the story until the end. 5. Twist endings suck because they’re designed to make the reader feel dumb. Here's a riddle: What's worth more, a new hundred-dollar-bill, or a five-year-old one? Here's the answer: A new hundred-dollar-bill is worth more than a five-year-old one-dollar-bill. Yeah, that riddle sucks. I hate riddles that rely on communicating poorly, because all they're there to do is to make the riddler feel smart and the riddlee feel dumb. Twist endings are like that. They make you feel like a clever author and make me feel like a dumb reader. Why do I want to read your story if it's set up to make me feel like a big loser at the end for not 'getting' the fact that you were being deliberately obtuse? Some people like feeling smart by figuring out twists, but it’s still an ending that’s designed to make some people feel smart. 6. Twist endings suck because they violate the trust between reader and author. When I go to read someone's story, I'm putting trust in them. I'm trusting that this story's going to make sense. I'm trusting that it's not going to waste my time. I know that what I'm reading is fiction, but I'm trusting the author to have created a consistent reality within that fiction. And I'm trusting that the author is going to tell me what I need to know to understand what's going on. If the author's trying to lead me on, planning to do a bait-and-switch with a twist ending, when I hit that twist, I'm going to lose all the trust I had in the author. 7. Twist endings suck because they turn your story into the setup for a punchline. No matter how much work goes into the beginning, a twist ending reduces the rest of the story into the preface for the twist. Sometimes, this can work in your favor, if you intend the whole piece to be a setup to a punchline, but if you want the beginning of your story to have resonance of its own and be meaningful, don’t use a twist ending. 8. Twist endings suck because they’re easy to use wrong. I have actually seen good stories make use of a twist ending. To bring back the mystery story example, I’ve read a story online that ended with basically, “all that stuff you were unable to figure out, mister detective, was because I’m actually a werewolf and my partner is a ghost,” and they still managed to fashion that into some sort of satisfying ending by focusing on the character’s reaction to that reveal and the choices he made because of it. It’s possible for a twist ending to not suck. That doesn’t mean you should write them, though. They're tough and tricky and require creatively breaking a lot of rules of good writing, and you shouldn't break rules until you understand fully why those rules are there in the first place.
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Sep 16, 2015 23:12
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I generally don't care about twist endings in published works but goons please stop writing twist endings in Thunderdome flash fiction thank you.
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Sep 17, 2015 23:35
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America is within your heart
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Sep 20, 2015 12:30
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Tyrannosaurus posted:For the record, I would be interested in reading people's actual methods. I start out in one of three places. Either I've got a good opening, a good concept, or a good conflict. From there, I need two things before I start writing: conflict and resolution. If I've got a conflict, great, I just need to figure out a resolution. If I've only got an opening, I've got to work that into a concept and then a conflict. Once I've got a conflict and a resolution, I know where I'm going. I take some time to track the plot points I need to hit on the way, or if it's a straightforward plot, I just jump in. I don't plan things out very carefully, but I'm very slow when actually writing, because I'm deciding on the fly how long to linger on a certain point. I like the in-the-moment control it gives me over what I'm writing, because I don't have to worry about a detailed plan, I just have to make sure the parts line up in the end. When I go back and edit, that's when I tighten up the parts that didn't work because I was spinning my wheels, or change the tone of parts where I didn't know what direction I was going in yet. I know a number of my stories have suffered because I didn't even follow my own process--there's one where I didn't decide on a good conclusion, for instance, so instead of ending, I just kind of meandered around and fell over myself at the end, despite having a solid concept and conflict up until then. Sometimes a resolution on the fly can work, sometimes it doesn't, which is why the editing pass is important. Sometimes I don't manage to get that out either, though. The above is all for short story/flash fiction stuff. With stories that have larger and longer plots, I generally plan out more, but still leave a lot of space for on the spot improvisation. My mental outline usually runs something like [waking up] [goes down to kitchen] [mom is weird] [conjoined parent chase scene] [rope ladder to backyard], et cetera. At its most detailed, it's like a loose storyboard with imagery tacked on that I want to hit along the way, and then I just fill in the rest as I go.
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Sep 30, 2015 12:29
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If you had fun doing a bit of writing then keep writing. Don't let some goons who stalk Creative Convention just waiting to snipe threads with new posts get you down. I like the motto of 'just write'. It sounds authoritarian, but it's got a hopeful side. Whatever you want it to be, just write. Don't worry about 'is it good right now'. So what? Just write. Writing is all you, just yourself and the ideas and creation. If it makes you feel good, do it. It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be a story, it doesn't have to be something you want to commit a month to so that you can come out the other end with 50,000 words and a sloppy rough draft. Just write. One of the first things I wrote creatively was made-up books for Elder Scrolls games. If that's not a terrible place to start from I don't know what is, but you know what? I just wrote them, for an audience of no one but me. It's late, and I'm sleepy. But just write. That's my Fiction Advice. Even if people think you weren't good. Especially if people think you weren't good. gently caress them. Do it again, have more fun, and do it better. The only way you could waste my time is if you decided, after taking my advice, not to write. 
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Oct 29, 2015 12:00
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I've never read anything where I felt like "man, I wish they used less attribution for their dialogue." He said/she said/John said are beautiful in how little you notice them.
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Nov 3, 2015 01:20
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Shageletic posted:Cool post! Here's a quick question: what's the difference between fantasy genre and young adult? Is there one? Its hard to think that fantasy can be literary or mature enough to not qualify as YA, but I'm not exactly an expert here. The YA genre focuses on young characters dealing with issues of finding their personal identity or their role in the world. Building friendships and relationships and issues of responsibility tend to take the focus. The fantasy genre is a genre generally notable for its inclusion of magic or other non-realistic elements. The two genres have no real relation other than sometimes there are books in both genres.
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Dec 11, 2015 09:23
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Hey, bandmates of my prog rock band, should we write a concept album about how the power of rock saves the world?
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Feb 28, 2016 09:07
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i'm permahmed user djeser. i would advise all people who "get" td to be careful because that likely means you have a predisposition to a mental illness. peace.
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Mar 23, 2016 22:11
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You can get something like Q10 to do that. http://www.baara.com/q10/
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Apr 4, 2016 17:26
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Oh no I have a character but no story
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Apr 17, 2016 21:24
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I'm trying to aim for a terse, dehumanizing tone for something I'm writing, but I'm kind of at a loss for examples. Anyone familiar with something written like that?
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Apr 18, 2016 21:33
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Blue Star posted:How do you guys deal with plot contrivances? What counts as a contrivance? When I find one I ask, why? Do I need this to happen in some specific way? If so, I build up details earlier on so that it makes sense that it can happen that way. If I don't, then I remove it. To me, something that's contrived is something that happens in a blatantly artificial way, where I can see the author's hand moving things instead of the world and characters working on their own accord.
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Apr 20, 2016 23:57
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