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Stuporstar posted:Read. Read more. Read inside your favorite genre, and broaden your tastes outside your genre. Read character driven fiction. Read novels and short stories instead of devouring nothing but comics, games, and movies. You’ll develop a better eye for writing stories as you read them. I think this is the single most important piece of advice in the OP and I can't even count how many times this advice was given out in the old thread. A lot of people seem resistant to it-- "I don't like character-driven fiction, it's boring", "I don't have time to waste on reading things I'm not interested in," etc. First of all, anyone who says this just hasn't read enough outside their genre-- there's certainly something out there that will appeal to them. Second of all, you just can't be a truly competent writer if you don't broaden your horizons and read things in many genres, from many different perspectives, with many types of characters and situations and varying styles of prose. I guess if you've literally never read anything at all and start to write you might produce some kind of interesting outsider art due to lack of knowledge of conventions, ala The Shaggs, but you probably won't. You're not a special snowflake and neither is your pet project, so get your rear end to the library and you'll improve both in the process.
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Jul 15, 2012 14:55
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You might want to check out books of short stories, especially if you're a slow reader. Even if you write only long-form fiction, a good short story can teach you a lot about tight structure and economy of words. Raymond Carver, for instance, is a master of very, very tight and sparse short stories and while not everyone is going to want to write that way, they're enjoyable stories and are useful as a teaching tool.
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Jul 15, 2012 15:39
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FauxCyclops posted:Picked it up on your recommendation. This better be awesome! It's a funny book and a quick read, but if you've been writing for any real amount of time, a lot of the problems it warns against are pretty drat obvious and probably ones you're aware of already. It is entertaining, though.
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Jul 16, 2012 04:06
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Even if your local library doesn't have a ton of books they can probably order what you want from other libraries in the area through interlibrary loan. Seriously, free books. Why not? You just have to remember to return them, and you can usually renew a few times if you're a slow reader, as long as they aren't new/really popular.
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Jul 16, 2012 14:39
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Has anyone here had experience writing "historical" fiction that is still set within living memory? The project I'm working on right now is set before I was born, but still well within living memory (i.e. millions of people alive today lived through that time period.) I'm obsessively well-researched, but, well, sometimes I feel like a fraud for writing about something I could never have experienced. I get the sense that I can consume as many firsthand accounts, historical documents, nonfiction books, media and ephemera from the time as I possibly can but I'll still always lack something that those who were alive then would not. Any thoughts on this?
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Jul 26, 2012 14:35
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Nautatrol Rx posted:First off, what's the event you're talking about? I'm not actually talking about any specific event-- I guess I should have specified that I put "historical" in quotes because while the setting/time period of the novel takes place in the past, it's not the main focus or driving point of the story. However, it is essential to the story in the sense that it would not be the same if set in any other period. The time period ranges from the mid/late 1950s to the mid/late 1960s, which was obviously a historically important time in America. I understand that "write what you know" doesn't apply to only what someone has literally experienced, or most fiction would be pretty drat boring. I do, in a sense, know it as I'm well versed in the various social, economic, political, etc. realities of the time, but I worry that the project lacks a certain characteristic "feel" that could be more easily captured by those who lived through the era. I can explain in an intellectual sense all the factors that contributed to this particular "feel" but I don't know that I can accurately represent it-- if that makes any sense.
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Jul 26, 2012 15:50
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I'm not trying to write about an Everyman in that era or anything; I have well-defined characters that exist as their own entities who just happen to live in this time period. The story isn't about the era, it's about the characters-- but I do want to accurately represent their surroundings as much as possible. I also have a couple hundred pages of varying usability written for this project, so it's not that I'm not writing-- I just have some concerns that I feel I should address before I get any deeper into this thing. I guess what I am talking about is the sense of place (because time really is place, in a sense), similar to writing about a city you've never actually been to but have read about/seen movies about/etc. Someone who has actually lived there is likely to feel its lack of authenticity.
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Jul 26, 2012 16:47
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I was being vague because I was asking for general thoughts from people who have written about time periods still in living memory. I'm not asking for specific critiques on my specific project; I already have a writing group for that (and some of the people in that group are "geezers" who lived through the 60s.) If no one has had this experience, then no one needs to respond. I just thought I'd tap the population of CC for any thoughts/comments/personal anecdotes that might help me along. Sorry for somehow offending you?
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Jul 26, 2012 20:58
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Canadian Surf Club posted:The only logical advice to give is to find films, other stories, photos, advertisements, etc. from that time period. If it's within the 20th century it shouldn't be too hard, the internet is a big place. Yes, I've done that extensively. I was really just asking for other people's experiences with this type of thing. Never mind v  v
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Jul 27, 2012 18:17
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justcola posted:Ended up being a cheap cigar with fish and chips. What an extravaganza. Each journal has different guidelines. A lot of them do accept simsumbs; you just have to note it on your cover letter. I've only submitted to a few that don't. That's for general fiction, though-- I'm not totally sure about genre submissions.
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Sep 26, 2012 13:04
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Chillmatic posted:About writing "the other": you either understand people in terms of what makes them unique (race, gender, sexual orientation, weight, height, childhood etc) or you do not. I want to point out that you also need to understand what makes all people the same. Hell, you just need to understand people. I think what you're saying here is you shouldn't pretend a character's differences and unique viewpoint don't exist, but a lot of people tend to take this too far and think "this character is a woman/black person/gay person/whatever, they must not be anything like me and must constantly think about the fact that they are a woman/black person/gay person/whatever.*" At the heart of it, people are people and if you don't have a deep understanding of human behavior and an insight into the workings of the human mind your characters are going to be pretty flat. *I know women are 50% of the population and plenty writers are women, but as a woman there is nothing that makes me roll my eyes harder than a story written by a man where the female character thinks about or examines her breasts. We really don't feel ourselves up constantly or think about ourselves as "a perky A cup" or whatever, hence my mention of this category.
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Oct 19, 2012 03:32
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Chillmatic posted:I can't speak for squeegee, but I got the impression she was talking about those books where a woman is introduced standing in front a mirror, naked, and playing around with her breasts for absolutely no reason whatsoever- or "thinking" about them with no relevant context. Yeah, this is pretty much what I meant. If the character's breasts are relevant to the scene for some reason, then no one's going to be bothered if you mention them, but what I see a lot in male writing (especially amateur male writing) is poo poo like this: Martello posted:e: An example of thinking about sex parts being unnecessary and creepy is in one of the A Song of Ice and Fire books where Dany is walking somewhere and absently thinks about how her breasts feel against the rough weave of her Mongol vest. Ok, so now we know she has a rough Mongol vest on. Not really necessary to describe how it felt against her breasts specifically. So I think we might actually be on the same page here. where the man may think the breasts are relevant, because he's a straight man who has a hard time not thinking about this character's breasts or her physical body in any given situation. But just like painstakingly describing a character's hair color, eye color and clothing, we don't really need to know how large or perky a woman's breasts are and it comes off as kind of skeevy. I think it's better to err on the side of caution here. In reality, yes, a woman might look at herself in the mirror and think about her overall effect, including the size of her breasts, but that comes off oddly in fiction regardless of the gender of the author. And I can only speak for myself, but I really do not go around thinking "gee this fabric feels rough against my breasts" or "my breasts sure are perky today!" Pretty much the only time I think about them is to judge how they look in a certain shirt or if they are getting in my way when lying in bed at night (this is really loving annoying by the way!) Of course, sex scenes are another thing entirely. It makes perfect sense to be describing sexualized body parts during a sex scene. EDIT: Also, I just want to point out that "my female friend talks about her breasts all the time!" isn't necessarily a valid argument. I don't know your friend, but there's one major reason that a woman does that, and that's to garner male attention. Yes, that's a valid character trait, but you have to be sure that you really know what you're doing if you're going to write character like that as a male, or else you will come off as exploitative. squeegee fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Oct 19, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 13:15
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Yeah, a male character talking/thinking about a woman's breasts is a whole different animal than a female character talking/thinking about her own. The male character's probably going to come off as vulgar or sleazy, depending on how far he goes with it, but that's a valid character trait and you just have to make sure that you're portraying the character the way you want him to be seen (i.e. if he's not supposed to be vulgar or sleazy, dial back on that poo poo a little.) But when a (straight) male author writes a woman who is constantly thinking about or making reference to her breasts, it suggests a lack of ability to get out of his own mindset. Because he is thinking about her breasts all the time, clearly she must be. Yeah, humans are all fundamentally the same when you get down to it, and women aren't some mysterious Other, but it's really problematic when you are writing from a female character's POV and she is objectifying herself. Breasts are just another body part, and they aren't even inherently sexual (as in, they aren't involved in the standard act of sex), and when you're working from the perspective of the person whose body they are attached to, it's important not to fetishize or emphasize them. In reference to my looks, I probably think about my hips or stomach or thighs just as much as my breasts. They just aren't some magical focus point to a (straight) woman. I'm honestly not sure about a lesbian POV, but the average person doesn't fetishize their own body/isn't sexually attracted to themselves so I imagine it would be the same. Boy, that's a lot of words about titties!
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Oct 19, 2012 14:06
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Yes, but dudes also need to get out of the mindset that breasts are inherently "sex parts." They're only sex parts in the sense that people who are sexually attracted to women are usually attracted to/aroused by breasts as an aspect of the female figure. They aren't inherently involved in the sexual act and don't serve an inherent sexual function. To a woman who isn't into other women, they're just these lumps on her chest that get in the way sometimes and that men are attracted to and that may or may not produce milk for her real or theoretical children.
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Oct 19, 2012 17:31
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I've been really lazy about submitting lately and haven't been on Duotrope in months, so this thread was the first I'd heard about it moving to a pay system. At first I was annoyed, because why couldn't they just run ads? But really, $5 a month is nothing, and if I'm paying for the service I'm more likely to use it as much as possible (i.e. getting off my rear end and submitting) so it's probably a good thing. I just hope that too many publications don't pull their listings, or it won't really be worth it.
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Dec 6, 2012 22:18
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freebooter posted:Do publishers pay for their listings? I don't think they do. Not at the moment, but apparently some publishers are considering pulling their listings because they don't agree with the move to a pay system.
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Dec 7, 2012 17:06
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There's really no reason to get depressed about rejections. Having your story rejected doesn't necessarily mean anything about its quality, it just means it wasn't right for that market at that time. Keep submitting it and if you literally run out of places to submit and it's been rejected from every one, then, well, maybe that does say something about its quality, but chances are someone will accept it if it's truly ready for publication. It's a nice feeling when a previously-rejected piece finds its home in a legitimate journal 
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Jan 10, 2013 14:31
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I find that a good 75% or so of the books I randomly pick up in the new fiction section of the library are like that. Just pages and pages and pages of mundane drama and boring dialogue with no subtext and artless execution. I'd much rather read something with the same plot but with evocative language and multiple layers of meaning and no meaningless filler, but that's I guess that's not what people want because this stuff is getting published left and right. Yawn.
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Jan 10, 2013 15:52
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A fiction writing tip that I've always found helpful is that your characters should never directly respond to each other or literally answer each other's questions. I do think the "never" aspect of this can be taken too far, because I've read stories that take this infuriatingly to heart and everyone is just spouting out mysteriously dense sentences past each other while staring off into the distance, but it's a good thing to keep in mind. Fiction dialogue should not mimic real life dialogue; it should distill it to its essence and it should always advance character, plot, or theme, preferably in multiple ways. The way a character responds to a question or statement should show something about his/her values, concerns, thought process, or priorities. It's hard to do that when they're just literally responding to each other in the small-talk kind of way that real people do.
squeegee fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jan 10, 2013 |
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Jan 10, 2013 16:40
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Chillmatic posted:I really think the confusion here arises from the fact that authors too often include utterly banal interactions in their novels; interactions that couldn't possibly ever be made interesting. And so what happens is that other writers then believe that good dialogue consists of people who "don't talk like real life people do" when the truth is more along the lines of: good dialogue consists of compelling people talking about compelling things. Real-life people say "uh", and "um", they stutter and repeat themselves, they use five sentences when one could do. Dialogue should ultimately ring true and sound real, but it shouldn't sound like a transcription of a recorded conversation, because no one wants to read that. I don't think I've ever read good, satisfying dialogue that sounded 100% literally like the way real people talk. At the other end of the spectrum is stiff, awkward, unrealistic dialogue, but there's a good middle ground to play around in. I agree with you about subtext-- that's essential-- but in as much as the actual words and sentence structure that people use, good dialogue should be the distillation of all the things that real people say and the ways that they say them, not a literal transcript of reality.
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Jan 10, 2013 17:00
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Chillmatic posted:Well, yeah. I thought that was something so obvious that it wasn't worth pointing out. Maybe because I actually can't recall ever reading anything that was written like that, so I guess I didn't even think that could be a problem; and I've critiqued a lot of garbage. Sure, it's obvious to you and me, but a lot of people who are just starting out seem to take advice really literally. "Write dialogue that sounds like the way real people talk" is good advice at its core but it can be misleading. Good writers don't write dialogue that is identical to the way real people talk; they write dialogue that sounds like it could come from real people. There's a difference, and I think that a lot of new writers fail to realize that. This is all just my opinion, of course, but it's never steered me wrong as far as writing dialogue (something which I once really sucked at but am now told is one of my strengths.) Open up a good book, though-- something that you really admire that has a good amount of dialogue-- and really dissect what the characters are saying. Then go outside and find some strangers to listen to who are having a conversation about something at least a little bit compelling. Generally the dialogue in the book will be a tightened-up, carefully worded version of what a real person might say, distilled down to its most important elements while still "ringing true."
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Jan 10, 2013 19:06
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CB_Tube_Knight posted:For the most part I feel like they're trying to make ordinary situations interesting and at times it just drags on. I don't even know what to say to this. Do you really think that "ordinary situations" can't make for compelling writing? Sure, there's a lot of mediocre crap out there, but some of the most moving fiction I've read is at heart about ordinary people doing ordinary things. It's the craft, the language, and the insight into the human condition that make it good writing. I get tired really quickly of all the writers who think a story needs to be full of explosions and daring escape attempts and interstellar wars or whatever to be worth reading. Raymond Carver is a good example. Most of his stories that I've read take place in one or two rooms and his characters might easily be our next-door neighbors, but it's artful and compelling writing. Obviously everyone's going to have their own tastes, but disregarding a huge swath of entirely worthwhile fiction because it involves "ordinary situations" is just ignorant.
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Jan 12, 2013 23:21
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I'm a huge fan of third person limited because you can get into your character's head without having to adopt their speaking style (which can easily come off as inauthentic) and you have a little bit of leeway to get into things that a character might choose not to discuss if the narrative is actually coming directly from them. CB_Tube_Knight, I know we've had this conversation in the thread before, but you seriously need to widen your range of reading material. If you never see the alternatives you're going to just keep falling into the same traps again and again.
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Jan 22, 2013 17:31
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Says the guy who literally has no idea what literary fiction is. Seriously, stop. You're embarrassing yourself.
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Jan 22, 2013 20:48
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CB_Tube_Knight posted:Do you have to be such a child all of the time? You cry when people bring up anything you don't like. You're not saying anything constructive or even an opinion about what I'm saying. I think you're wrong about who is the one embarrassing themselves. There was already a conversation several pages back, initiated by you, about what exactly literary fiction is and how you don't seem to have read anything outside of your pet genres aside from high school required reading. I don't think we really need to sum all that up again for you; you can feel free to page back and re-read it. You can read and enjoy whatever you want, and write whatever you want, but don't go around theorizing about the future of fiction or criticizing modern literature if you literally have not read 90% of what is considered good contemporary writing.
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Jan 22, 2013 21:58
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No one is arguing against the idea that most serious creative writing classes/student workshops discourage genre work. That is absolutely true and I've been in many a workshop where someone tries to pass obvious fanfiction off as an original work with the names switched around and it's just awkward for everyone. Also, no one is arguing that "literary" authors rarely make as much money or have as much popular success as genre authors. As a group, they never have, and most likely never will. This is not a new development. We're not going to suddenly see "less and less" literary fiction out there because you just noticed these basics facts.
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Jan 22, 2013 22:26
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Does anyone have a good recommendation for a good speech-to-text app for the iPhone? I've tried using Dragon Dictation but it can't understand most of what I say unless I talk really slowly and over-enunciate which kind of defeats the purpose of what I want to use it for (translating stream-of-consciousness spoken word to writing.) I don't slur my words or have an intense accent or anything but it probably gets about 25% of my words right when speaking normally. Maybe it just can't be used for that kind of thing?
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Feb 18, 2013 14:14
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Molly Bloom posted:I can't decide what's more depressing- getting a rejection almost immediately or getting a rejection where you know you didn't even make the top 25 in a contest. I never really get down about rejections (after all, even the most awesome story ever isn't going to be right for every market at every time) but I submitted to one of the Glimmer Train contests for the first time and it is a little disappointing when they send you both the runners-up and the honorable mentions ("hey, here's like 100 stories that also didn't win but were still better than yours! Peace!) 
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Mar 15, 2013 20:26
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One of the most valuable pieces of writing advice I ever received was to start as close to the action as possible (or, in some cases, even after the inciting incident.) Sometimes I take this a little too far and my beta readers let me know that I need to start earlier to add context, but I'm a strong believer in throwing the reader into the ring at the start and revealing details of character, setting, etc., naturally through the narrative. As humans we're pretty good at picking up on context clues and it always feels a little insulting to me when a story wants to lead me by the hand through a character's mundane life (or, in genres like sci-fi or fantasy, a dry description of the world) before anything happens that I can get invested in.
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Mar 19, 2013 17:07
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Great Horny Toads! posted:The first thing the reader has to know, in most cases, is what business-as-usual looks like. Set up the everyday world, then let the Kool-Aid Man bust in. I don't really agree with this. I guess it depends on what kind of fiction you're writing (I don't write genre stuff, just "general" fiction), but a skilled writer can get these details across while things are actually happening in the story. I mean, you might not want to open with "Suddenly, to Steve's surprise, The Kool-Aid man burst the gently caress through the wall", but you don't need to spend several paragraphs going through Steve's morning routine before it happens, either.
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Mar 19, 2013 19:18
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Why can't the protagonists know about the events? I'm sure the layman's knowledge of what happened would have been passed through the generations being that it's a really big deal, and that the passing down of history/legend is a basic human trait. Some details may have been distorted, and people far removed from the event may have their own interpretation or understanding of it, but that just makes it more interesting. All or most of your potential readers will have some idea that climate change is A Thing; you don't need to explain the basic scientific principle of it for your story to work.
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Apr 22, 2013 00:26
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