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fellow thunderdomers: what do you do when the story you're working on is just complete garbage and you realize the idea just doesn't work? Do you scrap it and start over with a new (rushed) idea or do you try to edit it and make it work? I had this problem a bit ago, and I'm having it again. I don't want to be a "no-show" but I also don't wan't to submit something that I think is lovely even as I'm writing it.
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May 11, 2013 16:38
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:53 |
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You should post your picture in the photography thread as text for absolutely no reason.
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May 19, 2013 04:10
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Sometimes writing without any ideas at all is useful as well. Start describing a character or a situation or an object, and let things happen, don't judge them as silly or stupid or unrealistic, just write a flowing narrative. Most of it will be poo poo but you might discover that there was something interesting you said that you'd like to expand on. Just because you write it does not mean you can't throw the majority of it to the cutting room floor and focus on the good thing you wrote accidentally. I do this sometimes when i have writers block. If you spend months trying to think of things to write may i ask why you even want to write? Most people i know who want to write is because they have things they want to say, and their struggle is with how to say it.
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May 27, 2013 20:38
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magnificent7 posted:To each his own I guess. That's my biggest problem - I have great ideas, (I swear I do) and then execute them in the most fumble-thumbed ways. That's why I keep coming back. Somehow I want to learn how to take an idea and retain the good parts of it and convey them in the right way. This is long and ranty, so I posted it in this thread: Stop falling in love with your ideas. You know how when you wake up from a dream you think it's the best thing ever and you want to tell somebody about it, but after a few minutes it starts to make less sense and then you realize it is really stupid? That's how your ideas are materializing. Except instead of purging them from your mind you gather the family up to all sit through a three-hour retelling of your really boring and disjointed dream. Ideas are much less important than saying things effectively. That's part of the reason literature is "boring" to a lot of people. Even though they often have clever ideas, they're much more concerned with style and the overall narrative. Your stories read like somebody made them out of refrigerator poetry magnets: chock-full of over-descriptive words and that you're forced to say things a certain way even though they don't make sense because of your limited word choice. Your story involved rock, paper, and scissors, which every kid knows are used for making a decision when you can't agree on anything with another party. THIS should have been the basic premise of your story. How to make a decision, letting fate decide, and then the moral of that decision. There's no reason to make these characters symbolize other things. That is just convoluted and you're going to lose the reader. If you wanted to tell the story about technology, art, and pragmatism you should have picked three unknown characters (the prompt begged you to do this anyway). Having them go somewhere because "everybody loves to go to a fair!" is a really dumb reason for a story. It's not even an "idea," it's a scramble for an excuse. Same with putting a river/bridge in their way just because they needed something to set up the fight. These arbitrary things are the reasons your stories are boring. There's no REASON for them to exist. In stories where a bridge is relevant there has to be a reason to get to the other side. Maybe they all want to gently caress the same girl and the first one over the bridge gets her? That's a lovely "idea" but it's already better than your idea, because in your story they just wanted to get over the bridge so they could all attend a fair, because in your opinion that's a "fun thing to do." But nobody would DIE to go to a fair (which is what happened in your story). You keep getting a huge loving boner for your great "ideas" and then sticking with them when you should have given them up. Once you found yourself giving different meanings to stock characters, you should have been like "wait, is this such a good idea?" Stop being convinced that your idea is too good to give up. If you don't, you'll always be like one of those directors who has a film that's too long filled with a bunch of horrible scenes that drag on forever. You ever watch a DVD and see a deleted scene that you really liked and thought should have stayed in the film? The reason they're out is because even though they were a good idea, they didn't work with the overall film/episode. Learn to murder your babies; each one is not a precious jewel, some of them grow up to be assholes. And until you actually start getting good feedback, assume that all of your ideas are horrible poo poo. Don't brag about them BEFORE you even release them for a crit. You seriously keep talking yourself up as having the greatest ideas and that we are all going to be so honored to read them. Then we tell you they're bad and you're confused. My girlfriend read your story and told me that you are pranking us and nobody would submit that story seriously. I've definitely thought this myself a few times reading your stories. Your lack of knowing what the hell to do + the insufferable arrogance made me think you were 15. You say you're actually older and have achieved great success in your other career, which is sad in my opinion. If this is how you achieved success in your other career, then other people probably hate you. If you can't learn humility, then fake it. Don't post anything in the thunderdome thread but your story and a "thankyou" if somebody gives you good advice. Don't give excuses as a reenactment of the Tommy Boy scene "OH MY GOD I MURDERED MY FRIEND." Just realize that you suck, your ideas suck, your prose sucks, everything about your writing sucks. The only way to get better is to read more and write more, not to make more excuses. Stop making excuses, just STOP MAKING EXCUSES for why you suck. There's not "one thing" holding you back from great stories, it's EVERYTHING holding you back. That's not to say that you should quit or give up. Keep at it by all means. I hope you get really good because you might actually have some good ideas, and I'd love to hear them. But until you can share your ideas with us in a way that doesn't want to make us stop reading three lines in, do more listening and thinking and less talking and bragging.
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May 28, 2013 04:21
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Mag7, you should enter this weeks thunderdome, send me your story by Friday evening, and I'll give you a preliminary crit with what is working and what is not, privately. Then when you submit Sunday I'll have another judge take a look at it. one negative thing about the dome is it doesn't really encourage revisions. this will give you the chance to do that.
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May 28, 2013 18:14
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systran posted:Crabrock, whose first entry was a pedophile story that made almost no sense and who now, two months or so later, just won the $50 prize and is getting published. You can probably learn something from him and he's willing to help you.
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May 28, 2013 20:49
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magnificent7 posted:Thanks but no. I think maybe I should have waited before jumping into the Thunderdome. I'm not there yet. No, I think you've come to the perfect place to get better. Other writing threads will sugarcoat things and keep you chasing your tail. Here people are giving you real advice for how to get better. I've learned a lot in just the past few weeks from reading the crits I get, reading other people's stories and those crits, and trying new things. I've also gotten worse because I'm reading Infinite Jest and it's hard not to emulate his style by saying "gently caress everything."
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May 29, 2013 03:25
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He said he's started several books on writing but never finished them, which i assume means he's read several times how to construct the elements of a story. He shouldn't JUST keep writing, he should write and get feedback and adapt. In your guitar analogy a music teacher has you come in and play for them each week so they can see your problem areas. Mag7 has several people here willing to help him improve so he should write and get crits and then revise and learn, not read endlessly. Sooner or later you have to stop reading and jump in. Writing is more like loving than playing music. A book on sex ed is useful to a point, but no matter how much you read about it you're going to be terrible until you pull your pants down and go at it (and you'll be terrible at first but if you get feed back you can become a good lover).
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May 30, 2013 16:22
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Loling at your problematic sex ego
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May 30, 2013 20:23
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Consider that my advice may harm his writing? Sure, but I think that it's not, hence why I gave it. Your advice boils down to "stop writing until you think you're ready" and my advice is "hey, why don't you write and we can help point you out where you're going wrong." People learn by doing, not by reading about doing. You can read all day and get a good idea of the steps, but give me a person I can train for a few weeks and I'll take them over a person who has read a bunch of books about doing it when it comes down to the wire. I'm trying to help him with the things I have learned from other writers. Also yelling "you suck poo poo gently caress you" works when the other person hasn't listened to the nice suggestions.
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May 30, 2013 22:01
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The "advice" i was giving in that rant was take your head out your butt and let people help you. Maybe it's not helpful; maybe the advice we give him will turn him into a horribler writer. Guess we'll see.
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May 31, 2013 02:38
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What I've gathered from my reading about writing, and this may be stupid and unfair but seems to hold true, is that once you've published a few stories with correct grammar and sentence structure, you are free to start playing with that structure. Basically, once you've shown you CAN do something, you don't necessarily have to. I think this is mostly because people don't want to read some accidents by a moron and consider them genius, but if you know the person is doing it on purpose then you don't feel bad.
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May 31, 2013 05:30
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I actually love that process in theory, but it's hard to get use to. It's very elitist to say language has to be a certain way and stay that way and only certain people know how that is. But I'm against the language changing in ways that don't make sense, like idiots saying "i could care less."
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Jun 1, 2013 22:36
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One good thing is that after mag7 sent us the first rough version, he went back and rewrote large sections of it and fixed the mistakes and made it make sense. He didn't just do a line-by-line edit of things we corrected. Also he didn't brag about his idea or story at all!
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Jun 3, 2013 14:52
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Sitting Here posted:^^^ That was a really cool story and one of the few short stories I've felt moved by. I'd never read it before so thanks for linking bro. I enjoyed the "cutesy" words. I think it made it more hosed up. It made me feel like she had a really immature and early introduction to sex. I'll have a full critique later when I have a bit more time, but right now I'm trying to finish reading all 28k words you assholes wrote this week.
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Jun 5, 2013 00:58
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In my defense, I hang out with middle school children all day long, which is an interesting mix of age appropriate silly words and graphic sexual talk that is way beyond anything they know about.
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Jun 5, 2013 01:26
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Sitting Here posted:I agree completely, and thank you for scratching the itch that was in the back of my head as I was posting it. I picked kind of an unnecessarily challenging piece, if only because I felt like I was walking the line between a sincere story and grimdark gore porn. Maybe I'm just oversensitive to the subject matter, but about 3/4 of the way through I was kind of anxious to just get the thing done and posted. It's a good story and with a little more work it probably could have been a winner.
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Jun 5, 2013 03:43
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DivisionPost posted:I considered going to The Book Barn's recommendation thread but I thought I might get some better answers / advice here. Hope I'm not out of line. The pills are placebos. TWIST
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Jun 6, 2013 02:14
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Was in a writing group the other day and they told me that a line in my story sounded like what somebody who never did crime thought a person who did crime would say. They were right. Off to commit crimes to better my writing...
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Jun 13, 2013 02:48
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I edited it out already but it was something like: "just make sure this doesn't trace back to me." Now that I have killed a man I will avoid such embarrassments in the future.
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Jun 13, 2013 03:23
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So I have this problem where sometimes I write for myself. Like after I write something I think "well, people aren't going to like that." My last thunderdom is an example of this. Both the judges found it confusing and awkward, but that's the mood I was in. I'm still don't feel bad for doing it. I can write more clearly, and I do so when I want to, but I usually get bored. I still have to go back and edit out a lot of weird lines. Help.
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Jun 18, 2013 19:36
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I used to write very exposition heavy stories, and people told me it was boring. I've been trying to put more dialogue in but it's often difficult for me and people tell me my characters are flat. I need to remember to give them personalities, and not just use them as vehicles for more exposition. So as an answer to your question: have enough dialogue, but don't overdo it at the expense of describing what the gently caress is going on. In other news: http://www.bartlebysnopes.com/contests.htm
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Jul 3, 2013 02:50
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Schneider Heim posted:I'm not sure why there's an entry fee for that contest. Is it an incentive for writers to submit the best work they could make? It looks like it all goes towards the prize money. The more people who submit the bigger the prize. I just stumbled across it looking at journals to submit to and thought it was relevant.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:57
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Yea I'm down. I'm doing a collaboration with my soon-to-be wife and love the idea of critiquing decent stories instead of the rehashed crap I'm sure will be everywhere.
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Jul 6, 2013 20:21
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Martello posted:You do realize real life is not a PnP RPG and you don't have to specialize in one or two things, right? TRY COLLEGE THEY LITERALLY MAKE YOU DO THAT OK
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Jul 20, 2013 02:29
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ViggyNash posted:just read Just messin' with you. :P
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Aug 4, 2013 21:23
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Reading Infinite Jest on the kindle was so much better than a physical book, because it was super easy to go back and forth between footnotes. They were all little links.
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Aug 7, 2013 20:35
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I like books with different chapter lengths. I think it's fun to have a very short chapter. To me it's like "this is very important, but not that long, so it gets its own chapter instead of being tacked onto the end of something else."
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Aug 9, 2013 03:02
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The thing about kill your children is, after you kill them, you forget about them and don't feel bad. hello nsa.
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Aug 9, 2013 16:48
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As one of the few people I look forward to reading in TD, you better not stop writing  I write in my office/craft room. It's not really a writing space, but it's where my computer is and I'm used to doing stuff in here. One day I want to have like a lovely little shed with just a computer where I can go to write. I think that having a writing space would help me like having a room just for sleeping has helped my insomnia.
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Aug 13, 2013 00:17
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I think that if you create more efficiently in your happy space that's cool. But I bet if that was taken away you'd still get stuff done, maybe you just wouldn't enjoy it as much. It's just people who don't create and bitch that they need a happy space in order to create. Even if they get one they probably still won't, because it's just another excuse. But there probably does have to be a certain level of stability in your own brain in order to do it anyway. In chaotic times, it'd be really hard. But the place is probably less important than the mindset. There's always headphones.
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Aug 13, 2013 20:13
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Yea, I'm a big fan of google docs (Drive) because of this writing group project. They have everything backed up so many times themselves that I'm not really worried about them losing it. And when they stop a service they let you know well ahead of time.
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Aug 21, 2013 00:21
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http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_home/
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Sep 1, 2013 21:56
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Would you rather hear the plot to a movie, or actually watch the movie yourself? The same is true for books. When somebody tells you too much with their writing, it becomes more like a summary or cliffnotes version. An encyclopedia of the ideas in your head. Jack was afraid. When you show somebody what Jack does when he's afraid, it becomes easier to picture in our heads, and can tell us something about him. Jack pressed his body as flat against the wall as he could, hoping to not be seen. Sometimes, telling is appropriate because you don't need to describe something to me. The personal location mover had four thick rubber tires, and transparent glass around the perimeter so that those sitting inside could stare out. Jack gained entry to it by inserting a small metal object into a slot and turning it. Or you could just tell me: Jack unlocked the car.
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Sep 7, 2013 16:55
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ugh this argument is so stupid. some people sit down to write a book for a reason. some people write interesting stories with motifs and themes that they didn't necessarily intend, but are still good books. some people write books with absolutely no overall connections and nobody reads them because they are lovely. do whatever works for you.
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Sep 15, 2013 13:40
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Jagermonster posted:I focused this time around on trying to write a strong opening due to your advice on the last page. Now I need to follow your timeline guide since I probably could have fixed a lot of the failings if I were more diligent in drafting. For what it's worth, I liked your story the most, but I also liked Fumblemouse. The other two judges liked Fumblemouse's better than yours so I gave it the win, but yeah, with a few more edits you probably could have won.
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Oct 15, 2013 00:06
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Learning to respond to criticism is why I started doing thunderdome in the first place. It was really hard at first not to get mad when people didn't like something or even understand it. Now it feels natural and I welcome the feedback.
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Oct 21, 2013 05:50
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I think maybe a key difference between the excellent video game advice and writing advice is that if your philosophy in game making leads to confusion, your player may actually not get to the next area of your game and give up, whereas if somebody doesn't like something your writing because of a stylistic difference, they can at least keep reading and move on to the next chapter. Sometimes I've been reading books where I didn't like a small part of subplot, but I kept reading anyway. So I think we can get away with a tiny little bit less of "writing by committee" and stick with stuff we like even if others hate it. Obviously if your whole piece is filled with that poo poo people are going to put it down 10 pages in, so stick it near the middle 
crabrock fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 22:11
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in our writing group we tend not to tell people how to fix something, just what to fix. Although sometimes you can't help it.
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Oct 22, 2013 22:12
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:53 |
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qntm posted:One thing I am sure of is that nobody can write a sentence for somebody else. "Hey, instead of holding a sword it'd be better if she was holding her big fat dick." "oh, that makes perfect sense, and actually flows better with my story. Thank you person, for telling me how to fix my story."
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Oct 26, 2013 01:18
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