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Marshmallow Blue posted:How do you guys keep your stories within word-count limits. Aghh I have to cut out so many "good" (lovely) words, and I was blessed with 1300! Couple of tips for word limits: 1. Don't try to tell a story that's longer than your word limit. This sounds obvious, but like obvious things, it's easy to forget. Maybe you try to introduce a ton of characters, or you have too many scenes in the story, or maybe there's too many plot points for you to hit. (For the last reason, don't try writing mystery unless you've got a couple thousand words to play with.) Flash fiction works best with simplicity of focus. Some of my favorite Thunderdome stories could be summed up in a few sentences, like "A wizard casts a spell that reverses his gravity. He has to climb down from the ceiling of his tower to get the counterspell." It doesn't need to be that simple, but the summary of a flash fiction piece shouldn't be longer than a paragraph. 2. Don't write about what doesn't matter. Beginnings suffer the most from this. Our own Sebs Mojanks says you should cut the first 100 words of your story because it's all faff. My rule of thumb is to start when things get interesting. Don't start with a boring day, start when the boring day becomes no longer boring. Don't start with waking up, start when the UFO crash-lands into your car. When you go back through your story to edit (and you are editing, of course you are) cut out anything that doesn't improve the atmosphere or the plot. You don't have space for fluff; if it's not there to set the tone or make new things happen, cut it. 3. Move the plot along. Take a thousand-word story. After a hundred words, I should know who the main character is and what they want. After two/three hundred, I should know how they're going to try to get it. By five hundred, you should be in the middle of the main action and heading for the climax. Three-quarters of the way through is the sweet spot for the climax, if you ask me, and then the main character either succeeds or fails, and you resolve the story with the words you have left. That's just an example, and you could write a story that's completely different with a climax at the very end. The details aren't as important as keeping that immediacy in mind as you're writing. The tiny space you have to write in flash fiction makes pacing hugely important, or you'll have no room to actually finish your plot.
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May 18, 2016 19:14
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Tirranek posted:Quick thing about joining critique circles. I like the idea of being helpful and critiquing someone's work but haven't yet gotten past that point of feeling like an unqualified rear end in a top hat. I've been saying I love writing for years but have been apathetic to the extreme, haven't gotten anything published and haven't even finished anything longer than a piece of flash fiction or two. Does this factor in to how I should consider other peoples' work at all? A critique is a response to someone else's writing. It's fine if you're not some great writer yourself, because you don't need to solve all their problems. The most important part of it is the response, and that comes directly from your experience, not from knowledge.
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Jun 4, 2016 05:29
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Moddington posted:Sick burn on Bilbo outta nowhere. Frodo's a better protagonist anyway
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Jun 11, 2016 15:03
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Two options: either write raw, then go back and mercilessly edit so everything makes sense. Or plan out, write, and then go back and edit slightly less mercilessly but still without a whole lot of mercy anyway.
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Jul 10, 2016 20:03
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I found it on archive.orgspectres of autism posted:tbh its p obvs that writers need 2 b readers You would think so but I've gotten in multiple arguments with writers who don't think you need to read books or do editing.
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Jul 21, 2016 05:45
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The main thing that I do when reading something as a writer is to watch for points where I hit something that really evokes something in me. When something trips that feeling, I know to stop, look more closely, and pull apart whatever it is that made me feel that way. That's mostly for specific prose beats, I don't think that you need to do something special to pick up on character dynamics aside from possibly just recounting to yourself what happened when you're done reading. I'll do that sometimes and I'll occasionally stumble on some connection or something I had overlooked at first.
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Jul 21, 2016 22:43
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MockingQuantum posted:I have what is likely a very stupid question about horror writing, but bear with me. I have a bunch of ideas for short horror stories, but none of them are intrinsically all that frightening/suspenseful/terrifying. Is it possible that I could craft them to be any or all of the above as I move through drafts and edit them, or is an unfrightening core idea never going to be very bone-chilling? I'm planning on writing all of my ideas anyway, since I'm pretty new to writing seriously and need the experience, but I kinda want to know what I should be shooting for. The core I use when I'm thinking about a horror story is breaking a rule that's taken for granted. For instance, in John Carpenter's The Thing, the idea that you can trust someone is broken by The Thing's ability to mimic people and The Thing itself breaks a lot of biological rules. Home invasion thrillers break the rules of being safe in your home. Evil Dead 2 practically lives on weird stuff happening that shouldn't. The most recent horror story I wrote was about being forced to feel a certain emotion, which breaks the rule that your emotions are your own, and played up the uncanny valley angle with the monster, which is breaking a lot of rules we have as humans about how creatures should act. That's how I handle horror on a concept level. When it comes to tension, I think that's more about focus, established stakes, that sort of thing.
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Jul 30, 2016 14:21
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Aug 26, 2016 04:04
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I don't think much about genre when I'm writing. If I was approaching writing as a business (which is a valid way to approach it, don't get me wrong) then I might consciously try to categorize while I write. As is, I've never been too concerned with staying inside what people expect out of a genre. That can limit your possibility space, if you're beholden to a genre that doesn't want to include what you want to put into it.
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Aug 26, 2016 05:07
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The Shunn Manuscript example I've seen posted around also notes where you should put the name you're publishing under and where to put the name that goes on your check.
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Sep 7, 2016 16:12
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Re: writing in short word count Focus on a single conflict and make sure everything in your story ties back to that. Conflicts that involve a lot of moving parts are going to be very hard to sell as opposed to a simple one-on-one challenge. One of the Thunderdome vets said "start when your story gets interesting" and that's a good way to tell if you need to cut your opening. Generally also a good idea to write something that can be concluded without needing scene breaks, because multiple scenes require extra effort to set up and execute. Re: challenge in action scenes There's a few structural things you can do to make things harder for your characters.
In broader terms, I think an ideal action scene is one where a character trait becomes an advantage--not a trump card, but something they can use instead of brute force. An action scene that's too easy might be one where the hero knows the weak spot, so all he has to do is shoot the monster there and then it dies. That's not fun. But if the monster can guard its weak spot, then he has to wait for an opening. Don't give your character an opening that any bozo could use to succeed, give them an opening that only they could use to succeed.
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Sep 8, 2016 20:54
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Additionally, what's a "target organization" and why does she have to infiltrate it and commit crimes? Note: I'm not actually interested in the answer to this, just in pointing out that it doesn't make sense
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Sep 10, 2016 03:55
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What is worse to the goon writer, jukies or sports?
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Sep 10, 2016 21:33
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Sitting Here posted:someone should do the world a favor and burn my writing, but lol it's in the cloud I don't because google drive is terrible nonsense so all my redundant file storage is between the computers that are all sitting in my room
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Sep 17, 2016 23:04
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Accomplishes the same thing as google drive but is way more frustrating to do? Why not 
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Sep 17, 2016 23:35
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The mood of a lot of cosmic horror/Lovecraftian stuff ports well to other times and periods. I mean, At the Mountains of Madness is set in Antarctica, which is pretty far from New England. But I wanted to answer the question about writing fiction where failure is a foregone conclusion. I think you can actually extend this to cover a lot of world-heavy fiction. By that I mean things like cyberpunk, or fantasy, or cosmic horror, or anything where you need to put a lot of work into the detail of a setting. It sounds simple, but what I've found helps a lot is asking in this world, what would someone want? I've noticed when I do a lot of worldbuilding that I run into plots that involve explaining the world. Someone has to learn about the world, and given what they now know, they come to a decision. That's not a great way to start a plot. What do they want in the beginning? Why are they learning about this? What's forcing their hand to make this decision? A better way to start, I've found, is by thinking about the character. Put the world aside--not away, but just off to the side--while you think about them. What do they want? Sure, maybe the world is doomed; sure, maybe they can't even hope to stand up against some horrible force of nature. But they still want something. Maybe it's to escape. That's what the deal is in Call of Cthulhu. Maybe it's to find answers, like the explorers trying to figure out what happened in At the Mountains of Madness, or the protagonist trying to learn what the deal is with his family in Shadow over Innsmouth. Even 'rescue my loved one' works, that's the ultimate goal in King of Shreds and Patches, a Lovecraftian text adventure. None of these people want things that involve the ultimate fate of the world, and the ultimate fate doesn't even really matter in their stories. The stories are all about their personal struggles. None of them are really trying to change or fix the world. That's not to say that you couldn't write about someone who's eventually trying to save the world, but no one gets out of the shower thinking they're going to save the world today.
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Sep 19, 2016 00:15
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Danknificent posted:There are too many intertwining factors to untangle it all, and there's nothing anyone can do to protect themselves from chaos and luck, which affect us all. All you can do is practice solid fundamentals: patience, perseverance, thick skin, and acceptance of the likelihood of taking some hits along the way. Actually if you grab a pyromancy flame and put on Flash Sweat you're going to be fairly well protected from chaos weapons and for luck builds I think weapons do dark damage so just grab the Black Set or something.
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Dec 10, 2016 03:34
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Krunge asked for some tips on taking your prose beyond a basic level, so here's a rambling meander of a post. There's a filmmaking principle called the Kuleshov Effect, and it says that two shots placed together create more meaning than a single shot. Because they're placed together, the audience draws relations between these two shots. If you show a skyscraper from outside, then the interior of an office, the audience goes "ah, the office is in the building." If you show a distant shot of a battleship and then someone at a periscope, the audience goes "ah, that's what they're looking at." Meaning exists not just in the content of the shots, but in the placement and structure of the scene as a whole. You can probably guess the analogy to fiction here. In critiques I've said before, "Your story is just what's on the page," which is true, but maybe not entirely accurate. Your story isn't what's in your head, but there's more to it than just the words. What the words imply is just as much a part of the story as what they say outright. That's enough faffing though, let's get to some actual tips. 1. You can show a lot with a little. It doesn't take a ton of detail to draw a quick picture, and the audience's brains will fill in the rest. Think of something you want to convey, some detail that gets across the idea you're going for, and let it act like a sketch. Say someone's got "a smile like an uncle over for Thanksgiving." That gets you a whole lot with just a little, because it's not just the smile you're thinking about now, it's the vaguely familial social obligation and the sense of someone who's trying to be your friend, and maybe even the image of a middle-aged man with a mustache. This is something that poetry uses a lot, and it can be worthwhile to read some poetry to see how people are able to get at images with only a few words. Here's a few lines from a Carl Sandburg poem I enjoy a lot: "And at the window one day in summer / Yellow of the new crock of butter / Stood against the red of new climbing roses…" It's just describing colors, it's doing it in a particular way that creates a sense of soft domesticity. Just from reading that, I imagine a house with yellow stucco walls and a wooden lattice with roses climbing up the beams. 2. Sense, thought, action. This is one of those rules that you should probably break, but it's a good way to think about things. So, there's generally three things you can be doing in a story: you can be describing a sensory image, you can be providing someone's internal monologue, or you can be giving exposition. Sense, thought, and action is a rough estimate of the mental loop people go through. You see(/taste/smell/hear/feel) something new, you think about it, you do something. "Emily began to cry. How could she get emotional at a time like this? I offered her my handkerchief." It's not wrong to do it in a different order or to sustain one of the phases for longer, but I've found it to be a good way to move through a series of events. 3. Specifics and action. When it comes to anything involving action, being specific is better than being general. Enemies didn't pour in from three different directions, they poured in through the doors and came charging toward us. He didn't miss his throw, his rock hit a foot to the left. The reason that specificity is important is because action is something that needs to be clear in the reader's mind. And not just actions, but spaces too. If you're climbing onto a ledge to escape the snakes, is it a ledge big enough to curl up into a ball and weep or are your sneakers barely big enough to fit? With action scenes, the physical details become important to the conflict, and being vague on them is like being vague on whether it's the protagonist's mother or father who died. 4. Voice is important. Even outside of dialogue, the voice you write in can add a lot of meaning to a story. Sebmojo's Dave: is a great example of this, where the story is narrated by someone who's berating the main character for his incompetence, but in a lot of cases, you'll be writing in something close to the voice of your main character, and that's an excellent space to give them personality. Show the way that they reflect on things. Let them be impartial. Show them so frustrated at a crying kid that they start to refer to the kid as 'a football'. A lot of the time when I'm judging Thunderdome a story that has a good voice will stick out of the ground against stories with more dry and narratorly voices. I hope some of this is vaguely helpful. I tried to write more but I was just rambling by then.
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Jan 10, 2017 03:06
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Utopian fiction is absolutely possible, take a look at most early Star Trek episodes. Just because your society is post-scarcity doesn't mean that you won't run into border disputes or negative space wedgies or the holodeck breaking down and sending waves of orcs to take over your ship. Even on a personal level you can have an ideal society that works and yet people within it have their own challenges--they want to pass a test, they want to win an athletic competition, et cetera. Star Trek gets a lot of mileage out of principles versus pragmatism and whether, say, the long-term costs of violating a law are worth alleviating someone's suffering in the short-term.
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Jan 11, 2017 22:42
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crabrock posted:i dunno if a society where you have to bury your own kids becasue cpt. kirk just had to see what was behind that gas cloud is a utopia I never watched TOS because it's bad
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Jan 12, 2017 00:15
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Then we get into a dumb and stupid argument about No True Utopia Scotsman, and that's not what the question was about. Ideal societies can still have conflict, it's just that the conflict is going to be of a different character.
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Jan 12, 2017 02:31
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