False God (1189 words)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > False God (1189 words)

supermikhail: Nov 17, 2012; "It's video games, Scully."
Video games?"
"He enlists the help of strangers to make his perfect video game. When he gets bored of an idea, he murders them and moves on to the next, learning nothing in the process."
"Hmm... interesting."

Oh. Well, I read the original draft and your reply to Helsing's critique, and I don't really want to re-read the new draft (sorry), but I noticed,

1) that you for some reason switched to present tense. I guess you're experimenting, but I'd be interested to know what the purpose of that is.

2) and tying into the previous point, you say that you want to emulate the Bible. I don't think you can do it by half, and I'm not sure you're even there. I haven't read any Edmund Spenser, so maybe there's more similarity there. I don't mean to say that I can't tolerate an imitation of the Bible that isn't completely faithful. I think you have too little of it there to make it noticeable, and the story comes off just as rudimental modern prose. The thing is, as I understand it, the Bible is rudimental at heart, because it's spoken legends put into writing, and spoken stories are rudimental compared to well-developed literature. But on top of that, the modern Bible is a product of translation and adaptation by people holding it to be a very sacred text, and depending on the edition this brings with itself a quite distinct vocabulary.

To sum up, emulating the Bible might not be as simple as it seems, and if you still want to go that route I suggest you take a better look at it. However, it might not make your story the most publishable material. If you, instead, want to go for modern prose, you need to redo your dialog accordingly, as I've noticed that you have left it the same in the last edit.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2014 19:10

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 01:19

supermikhail: Nov 17, 2012; "It's video games, Scully."
Video games?"
"He enlists the help of strangers to make his perfect video game. When he gets bored of an idea, he murders them and moves on to the next, learning nothing in the process."
"Hmm... interesting."

I don't like it. As criticism I can offer that it's clunky. Possibly you overdid it with de-verbosing. Possibly it's the style. I still think that if you're imitating someone, you should try to make it a closer fit. (Assuming what you're trying to imitate is good - I still haven't read that author.) If they didn't describe armor it's of course going to be harder. I keep looking at the dialog, and to be bitingly frank, I don't know what you mean by "bombastic", to me it comes off as childish, somewhere on the level of a bad anime. I sort of get a kick reading it in that style, but you probably don't intend to take the story in this direction.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2014 00:18

supermikhail: Nov 17, 2012; "It's video games, Scully."
Video games?"
"He enlists the help of strangers to make his perfect video game. When he gets bored of an idea, he murders them and moves on to the next, learning nothing in the process."
"Hmm... interesting."

Well, in case this is indeed the final draft, I'm going to go into nitpicking. :cheeky:

quote:

Presenting their tributes... to the feet of the shrine

means they worship the "feet of the shrine". It should be "at the feet of the shrine".

quote:

A familiar person walks inside...

is both unusual - it's usually "a familiar figure", but of course it's not wrong - and also it implies there isn't anyone familiar at the shrine (besides Dad). I had a small community in mind as the setting, so I thought there'd be many familiar people. Doesn't apply, of course, if it's a large city this is going on at.

I want to back up a bit -

quote:

It's rather eerie, in retrospect...

implies that the story is a narration of the events. This begs the question why it can't be narrated the regular way - in the past tense. Also, the first sentence then is false.

quote:

Like everybody else, he's become disillusioned in their faith in God.

In "his" faith would be more smooth, I think.

quote:

His eyes are absent of the kind of love and caring he usually has for his flock...

I think "kind of" here is redundant. (I know it's not the "kinda" "kind of".)

quote:

He immediately makes his way to the front and ~~stood~~ stands next to the false idol.

Watch out.

quote:

�Step down, padre!� a cultist shouts. "How dare you desecrate our Lady's shrine!

Here's what clashes for me: "step down" is kind of a very colloquial implied threat, while "desecrate" is quite formal. Come to think of it, "how dare you" is kind of... formal? :ohdear:

quote:

Father Aguilar exclaims with religious fervor

doesn't really bring anything in the way of description, i.e. obviously it's religious. I'd probably edit it.

quote:

�Who are you to judge us?" another cultist says accusingly.

Or maybe I'm the wrong person for this. I wouldn't read something with dialog so unrealistic, but I figure it's a taste thing. Anyway, if you wanted to make it more realistic, just adding "and" before "who" would get there.

quote:

"She's dead now!� Everyone else roars in agreement.

This reads as a misattribution, and the second sentence should go to a new line.

quote:

�I ask you, why worship death when you should instead worship our lord and savior, Jesus Christ? Who died for your sins to ensure us all everlasting life?�

Bad grammar. Normally, the who sentence shouldn't be on its own, but it could be spoken this way, and then it's not a question. That is, he's not asking "who died for your sins".

quote:

�Who says we can't?� he asks.

Suddenly we're speaking like normal people? :v:

quote:

Before a single person could rise up in anger, I fire a single shot in the air.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds... wrong. It should be "can" but I struggle to come up with a name for this misuse of a modal verb.

quote:

Everyone jumps and backs away from us as I hold the gun out and pan it around. As I corral the cult, Father Aguilar positions himself next to the idol of Santa Muerte.

I'd just like to opine that the protagonist isn't at all established as someone who "pans the gun out" and "corrals the cult".

quote:

�In Second Kings, the prophet Ezekiel challenged the false prophets of Baal by seeing whose God would send fire from the heavens first,� he says while dousing statue of Santa Muerte in gas. �Let's see if your god would stand my test of fire!�

Also, it's not logical. I don't know what you want to achieve by making your protagonist participate in a scheme as devoid of logic as that. The two tests have barely any similarities.

quote:

I hear a raspy snarl and from the statue while a giant miasma flows exudes from it like smoke.

I feel kind of energized by finding so much to criticize, so I hope you'll excuse me if I just say, that is not a sentence. You'd know it, too, if you noticed, but you didn't. :shrug:

quote:

�Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,� Father Aguilar pleads...

This is not "pleads". Pleading implies a less-than-certain imperative. He exclaims.

quote:

The spirits escape from the pile and return from ~~once~~ whence they came, inside the idol.

quote:

Everybody else gasps in terror. I want to run as fast as I can but I�m hyperventilating too hard...

This is wrong on several levels. First, "hyperventilating" means "ventilating too hard". Second, the use of a modern medical term in this biblical story... Well, maybe not biblical, but you've been keeping it quite low on modern words up till now.

Also, writers until now have been satisfied with "frozen in terror" and similar succinct descriptions. I don't know why you have to go into anatomical detail.

quote:

I lock eyes with the demonic idol. Locking eyes with the demonic idol I grab the shotgun tightly

quote:

Locking eyes with the demonic idol I grab the shotgun tightly, turn the barrel towards my chin, and slip my finger around the trigger. I no longer fear for my immortal soul for I know now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am damned.

I don't understand the motivation behind the protagonist's actions. A second ago he was quite eager to run away, then without much preamble he wants to kill himself. I'm not sure what effect you want to achieve, but you could insert a freeze-frame in which the protagonist's worldview turns on its head.

quote:

I grab my cross as another host of spirits escape from the idol. I wrap my fingers around it tightly and I feel a warmth flowing through my hand, coursing through my veins, radiating around me.

quote:

a gargantuan, satanic dragon with giant wings and glowing red eyes...

"Satanic" is a rendundant non-descriptor.

In conclusion, you've really upped it with descriptions, especially in the beginning... hold on.

quote:

In her right hand, she holds a scythe ready to harvest souls while in her left she holds a globe...

Repetition.

As I was saying, your descriptions have improved, but it may be not apparent because of the unusual narration. I'm sorry to say but I think it's still nowhere near ready for publication.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2014 13:35

supermikhail: Nov 17, 2012; "It's video games, Scully."
Video games?"
"He enlists the help of strangers to make his perfect video game. When he gets bored of an idea, he murders them and moves on to the next, learning nothing in the process."
"Hmm... interesting."

I've had some controversial thoughts brewing in my head on this topic lately, I hope you'll indulge me.

I don't think there have been, or at least I've never been presented with any studies that confirmed the fact that a lot of diverse reading causes, or even correlates with good writing. This may be related to the fact that everyone has their own standard for good writing so a randomized group of judges could easily produce a "no preference" average result for a group of stories of different genres, or maybe of a single genre but by different writers... actually, of a single writer, at different times in his or her career (when both the daily and accumulated amount of reading differing). And maybe this doesn't have to go as far as preference. I am quite confident that there would be the same ambiguous result if the judges were instructed to mark stories that they considered simply good. Unless probably if you presented them with Shakespeare, and even then, I don't think that would be a universal esteem of quality, considering that a randomized group of judges wouldn't understand half the words and expressions used by Shakespeare. So adding the amount and variety of reading to this hardly makes sense.

There, I've said it.

:ohdear:

Note that I didn't say that I'm opposed to diverse reading. Just something I've been thinking about in relation to me leading a writing thread at one time. (And telling other people how to become better writers. I regret things.)

# ¿ Nov 1, 2014 01:49

supermikhail: Nov 17, 2012; "It's video games, Scully."
Video games?"
"He enlists the help of strangers to make his perfect video game. When he gets bored of an idea, he murders them and moves on to the next, learning nothing in the process."
"Hmm... interesting."

Maybe. That makes sense. But I've been wary of any rules and laws in writing, especially since I realized or had my eyes opened to the fact that at least traditional publishing is a lottery. Then consider that many things going on in our minds are confused and counter-intuitive, so the fact that it makes sense that diverse reading would contribute to your writing ability doesn't mean that it does. It could be a complicated mental process whose two results are better writing and more diverse reading. I just want to propose that in absence of solid evidence, reading things you like should be a valid alternative to forcing yourself to read things you don't like.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2014 03:41

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 01:19

supermikhail: Nov 17, 2012; "It's video games, Scully."
Video games?"
"He enlists the help of strangers to make his perfect video game. When he gets bored of an idea, he murders them and moves on to the next, learning nothing in the process."
"Hmm... interesting."

Eau de MacGowan posted:

Traditional publishing is not a lottery.

You are sounding incredibly like the anime artists on Deviant Art who are incapable of drawing an accurate human likeness but defend it all by going 'you dont understand my style!!!'

Stop wasting your time on 1000 word sketches and attempt a story of a significant length (20,000 words+)

What?

Helsing posted:

I've never heard of anyone trying to "study" the correlation between diverse reading and better writing. That just isn't the kind of information that conventional studies can capture in the first place. Writing is an art, not a science. The kind of empirical studies you are thinking of are not some kind of universally valid form of knowledge, they're a way of stylizing facts gathered in the domain of the social sciences so they can be made legible to other social science practitioners.

Anyway taste in fiction is obviously going to be largely subjective but if you spend your entire life reading and writing in one genre then I'm pretty sure that I won't be interested in reading what you've written, and I think that's a sentiment a lot of people will share. If you literally cannot find any enjoyment reading anything but High Fantasy or Hard SF then that definitely would make me question your qualifications to actually tell a decent story with good characters.

Firstly, I would like to make a disclaimer that I might not completely believe what I've written and am about to write here. I am to a degree agnostic regarding these issues, partly because I'm relying on pop-sci sources to draw my conclusions.

Now, it sounds like you assume that if an aspiring writer reads only scifi or fantasy, he only reads trash. (Maybe you think all scifi and fantasy is trash, but that's a matter of taste and not what this discussion is about.) I think that is practically impossible, unless he specifically goes out of his way for trash. If only because the advice that I responded to is almost universal which means scifi and fantasy writers have been refining and diversifying their style for a long time (and even regardless of that advice, but simply because they naturally like different genres). So I think it can be argued that if a writer reads only scifi (because he only likes it), it should be quite possible for him (or her) to achieve stylistic refinement (if that's what it's about).

As to writing in one genre and people's enjoyment of it, I believe that's what the situation is and has been maybe forever. Probably the majority of writers write in a single style, and the diversity for readers is achieved by taking many single-style writers together. Also, a single writer's style often changes over time, but I don't think you can clearly attribute that change to reading - there are many other things that could have made an influence.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Wait, step back there chief. You're going to have to explain this one to us.

I have been drawing inspiration from The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow so for better reasoning and interesting examples refer there. I'll just make a small argument.

The widely accepted procedure in traditional publishing is this: you write a book, you submit it, you get rejected. Maybe you also get tips to improve your work, but chances are, you don't (and I'm doubtful if those tips are worth much). In fact often you have polished your work as much as you can. So you submit your book again, and get rejected. And you keep submitting until somebody takes your work. I think the statistical implications are obvious. The quality of your work doesn't change. You don't control who gets to read and evaluate your book. What changes is the accumulated chance that one of your attempts will yield a positive result. Maybe the equivalence to a lottery is unfair, I don't remember the odds in book publishing, but I know they are not in favor of an aspiring writer. So, many writers buy a ticket, to a large degree by chance a few win, if one of them buys more tickets he/she has better chances of winning.

In retrospect, all this sounds kind of trite. Well, for me it's about the implications of this on conclusions that are drawn from "success" and "failure". For example, some people's advice shouldn't be given so much credence because their success is largely due to luck.

:ohdear:

# ¿ Nov 2, 2014 02:46

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > False God (1189 words)