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HIJK posted:I'll start one when I get home today. Should it be in this subforum?
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Oct 10, 2016 16:53
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Stuporstar posted:Has anyone here come across good examples of epistolary first person that borders on second person because the letter is addressing another character in the story? I've been trying out the style because I thought it would help focus the story, since it forces me to consider exactly what my protagonist wants to say to this other person and leave out the rest. However my first reader says it's "dense and hard to follow." I'm in the middle of (listening to the audiobook of) Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer (Book 3 in The Southern Reach Trilogy) and the story is in two voices - one is that second/first person kind of thing, and the other half is third person odd. It is INDEED hard to maintain an interest in it... after awhile the entire drat thing becomes exposition and reflection with very little action, just a whole lot of "you could've done better but Bob never believed in you, so you just keep tagging along because you know one day, you'll overcome your BLAH BLAH BLAH JESUS DOES ANYTHING HAPPEN." It would probably work if those chapters were a WHOLE LOT shorter; so it'd be a great refreshing break from third-person narrative, a chance to get inside the head of the person, either reflecting on what's already happened or setting up what's coming, and then bounce back to third person, but these chapters go on and on, and I find myself losing interest in most of it. Which is unfortunate because this series has a lot of high praise. I loved the first book, gave up on the second one, and I'm pretty much forcing myself to finish this third one. That's right, I gave up on the middle book so I'm probably missing a ton of AH-HAH! moments but holy crap I couldn't give a rat's rear end after 45 minutes of "you know you shouldn't read the diary, but you go ahead, because Bob's story just doesn't make sense to you; you can't think of a single person who'd trek through the woods for three days; hell you barely made it out alive when you were well equipped to --" blah blah. It is the unending inner monologue of a person sitting in a bathtub about to slit their wrists as far as I know, having one of those inner arguments of how they should've said "OH YEAH? THE JERK STORE WAS OUT OF YOU."
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Oct 19, 2016 14:02
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What do y'all mean by "finish a story" What is that.
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Oct 31, 2016 17:52
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Write, Review every crit, specifically the part where they don't get what you're trying to say. That's on you, not them. Repeat.
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Nov 4, 2016 14:13
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Hell YES I decided to write a tale with some crazy rear end Lovecraftian beasts that defy explanation and then summed it up with: It was a like a giant walking stick bug with the body of a jellyfish with like really long tendrils or tentacles that looked a lot like tree trunks and it kind of just lives up in trees. LET THE NIGHT TERRORS BEGIN. THE HORROR. I hate writing. It is REALLY hard to believe I have this avatar <==============================================
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Nov 15, 2016 18:37
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35,000 words and no antagonist. What the gently caress. SOOOO, I'm writing a 400,000 word novel and all this has been world building. That's it.
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Nov 26, 2016 21:12
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Echo Cian posted:Good. Now put aside your setting bible and write the story. I'm trying. In my first book, I had to stop and actually build the mechanics for my ghosts; why they could do whatever they did, when/how it worked. That was some bullshit right there. So yeah, this is all that. I was trying to write a Lovecraft kind of tale where the gigantic horrific beasts weren't out to destroy the world, they were just there. And now I understand why that's a loving dumb idea, right up there with "Granite: The Musical."
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Nov 27, 2016 23:53
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Sitting Here posted:I dunno, the project I'm working on doesn't have an explicit antagonist. Or rather, the setting, and the demands it puts on the characters, is the antagonist. The protagonist-antagonist relationship, when it's done right, is often just people with irreconcilable goals bouncing off of each other. So if your Lovecraftian monsters aren't explicitly "bad", they should still have an effect that causes conflict between your various characters.
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Nov 28, 2016 18:41
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Hey Writertards Open Culture just dropped some wisdom for your rear end. (Okay, more than two years ago, but from the perspective of the milky way's existence, it JUST loving HAPPENED.) http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/stephen-kings-top-20-rules-for-writers.html Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writers 1. First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience 2. Don’t use passive voice 3. Avoid adverbs. 4. Avoid adverbs, especially after “he said” and “she said.” 5. Never let Stanley Kubrick pull a face-hugger-chest-burster with one of your stories. 6. The magic is in you, but only in bulk. etc. etc. Read the article to get the rest.
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Dec 6, 2016 21:59
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I want my book to be more than just another by-the-numbers forgettable lovely horror/thriller/suspense novel like 99.99% of the scary books out there. Now - before you laugh and call me an idiot (again and again) what I'm asking isn't "wahh wahh how come nobody loves my poo poo?" I'm asking if certain books (authors) deliberately break away from genre / cut-out-bin / forgettable poo poo because that author is amazing, (the obvious answer) or because they're writing a style/genre that goes beyond "horror" or "Suspense." TLDR? I list examples you'll probably disagree with and that's okay my point is that there are authors/books that go beyond disposable airport books. == still reading? okay. == Cormac McCarthy has written ten novels since 1968; each one a disgusting display of incredibly crafted deep symbology/theme/motif, untypical plot structure, character arc, stuff that, YES I KNOW comes from years of writing, a liberal arts degree, and stuff, but also, the overall style goes beyond typical fiction. Another example, this time a debut novel: The Girl On The Train. On goodreads, it's called "The debut psychological thriller that will forever change the way you look at other people's lives." None of the characters are likable, it's an unusual style of writing, (to me at least), there's something more going on than just an author who knows a 3-act plot structure, character arc, show-don't-tell and all the typical earmarks of an author's early novels. == EDIT: In fact, let's break it out of just books. Tales like The Babadook; why do you think THAT movie is being hailed for breaking out of the typical horror genre? Is it the psychological mix? Or was/is the screenwriter pushing outside of just one genre and they succeeded? == Is the style that she's writing -- is that Spec Fiction or Fancy-Pants Literature or something that distances THAT TYPE of book from the poo poo books that show up in grocery stores? Or is it just the answer I really don't want to hear: THOSE AUTHORS ARE REALLY GOOD (or not, if you hate them) AND WORK REALLY HARD. Because if that's the answer, gently caress that noise. magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Dec 30, 2016 |
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Dec 30, 2016 21:06
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change my name posted:In the case of Girl on the Train, you could try reading a book you liked and just ripping it off.
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Dec 30, 2016 21:16
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flerp posted:yes it does turn out being good and spending a lot of time on your books means they come out better. i dont think it has anything to do with the genre, there's a lot of bad poo poo in every genre and a good writer knows how to make their genre work. Maybe I'm over-complicating / procrastinating. NAAAAH. change my name posted:It's not a direct ripoff per-say so that was a little harsh, but yeah, the author lifts a lot of the tone and style from Gone Girl. It's more of a cash-in on the new popularity of the "bad girl/noir" genre directly.
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Dec 30, 2016 21:33
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sebmojo posted:it's maybe literary (novel as art) vs genre (novel as predictable unit of entertainment) HIJK posted:they looked at what they liked and then they asked themselves "what can I do differently in this genre?"
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Dec 30, 2016 23:01
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If you're in it for the money, something something give up now.
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Jan 3, 2017 15:02
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 07:53 |
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Djeser posted:DAMMIT YOU KNOW SO MUCH GOOD STUFF AND YOU SHARE IT Wouldn't it be great to have fiction that ends with the perfect world not being flawed? Or does that lack so much conflict that it'd be filed under YAWN instead? What about utopian and some guy hates utopia? That'd be the conflict, right? magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Jan 11, 2017 |
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Jan 11, 2017 16:53
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