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Awesome OP, Dr. Kloctopussy. I have one contribution I've been sitting on a while. I moved it from Dropbox to Imgur so anyone can throw it up when needed.
Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Jan 28, 2017 |
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Jan 28, 2017 21:52
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Jagermonster posted:Currently reading Handmaid's Tale and the first person present tense is very off-putting. The book has wonky rear end prose in general. What the gently caress is this yoda-rear end sentence in chapter 2: "Late Victorian, the house is, a family house, built for a large rich family." That's stream-of-consciousness style writing. I find myself doing it sometimes when I write a difficult scene in first person, and have to decide after whether I want to smooth the sentence out or leave it choppy, in the way a character in shock would try to piece their thoughts together. Yeah, it can be off-putting until you get used to it (so if I do use it, I use it minimally, for impact). I thought in the Handmaid's Tale it was pretty well done—it gave me the sense the protagonist couldn't shake off the shock at her new hosed-up reality. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Mar 28, 2017 |
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Mar 28, 2017 21:17
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Jagermonster posted:awww crap, this is one of those? It's probably one of the most readable entries in that style. If you're already past chapter 2, you pretty much already know what you're in for.
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Mar 29, 2017 18:05
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MockingQuantum posted:Pardon the double post, all. Ok, but what if your story ends up more like this? 1. A character is in a zone of comfort, 2. But they want something. 3. They enter an unfamiliar situation, 4. Adapt to it, 5. Get what they wanted, 6. Pay a heavy price for it, 7. Enter a totally loving freaky situation. Oh gently caress, what's going on? 8. Fuuuuuuuuuck! (character ends up changed into something they don't want to be)
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Aug 26, 2017 01:47
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Naerasa posted:If there's nothing to hint at 7 and 8 earlier on in the story, then it's likely to be a pretty unsatisfying ending. A lot can work if you set it up right, though. This is why I've had so much trouble with the beginning, having completely rewritten it from scratch several times over, every time starting with a different scene to try to set the right tone. I want to set up the right reader expectations from the start, because if I set the wrong ones, it's gonna piss people off. Especially since there's a strong romance arc, and there's sure as hell not gonna be a happily ever after. I finally said gently caress it and just started the story with an epistolary aside saying, "By the way, I'm not dead. Something much worse happened..." and going from there. I really hope my beginning doesn't suck this time around. I'm getting sick of ripping it up and starting over.
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Aug 26, 2017 03:24
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I just write scenes in whatever order they come to me, even if they're for a different novel entirely. I have the basic outlines done for six of them, and totally lovely rough drafts for four and a half. If something's hot and ready to be written, I don't dare say no. If it's a choice between words on the page or stalling because you feel bound to linearity, words on the page is the way to go. Of course this is why I have half a novel done (the lovely draft doesn't count) and yet I'm repeatedly trying to figure out where the beginning is. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Aug 26, 2017 |
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Aug 26, 2017 06:43
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Burkion posted:That was my plan, yeah. Jump onto the sequel then, and once you have a first draft of that, go back and edit the first. That way you get the right amount of distance and maybe even some more idea about what to edit to make the first book match up better with later developments.
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Aug 26, 2017 20:27
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Okua posted:Here's some venting: Coming up with titles is haaaaard. Avoid X of X titles for a start. Every hack writer trying to capture the same feel as Game of Thrones have beaten that poo poo into paste.
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Aug 28, 2017 20:11
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Thranguy posted:Nah, the people chasing Eddings readers beat it into paste; the people following Jordan beat it the paste into dust, and the Martin followers are beating it to atoms and quarks. Yeah, this is far more accurate than what I said. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Seriously, check all this poo poo out: A third of those were written before it was cliche though (and another third of them are garbage). Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 22:08
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I detect a new Thunderdome theme in the making.
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Aug 29, 2017 00:49
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CantDecideOnAName posted:It's been sitting, mostly, while I write other stuff. I reread what little I have of the third draft yesterday so it's been on my mind again. It's been hard to get back into it for a number of reasons- plotting, pacing, tightening up characters- and I can't seem to get my thoughts in order. I've actually been thinking of doing the post-it note method to try and get things ironed out but I'm leery of trying that until we get moved into our new place, and I want to use the deadline of Nano to push myself into actually writing the drat 3.5 draft but before then I have to have things plotted so that I know where I'm going. I still have some really good emails saved from- what, two years ago? (Three? Jesus.) that I'm using as my current basis for reworking but it'll be a lot easier if I have someone sitting down with me and talking it out chapter by chapter. Whatever. That's probably editing and I'm getting ahead of myself. I still think Blue Star has a wicked cool premise. I hope you keep at that one, but if you're writing new stuff, that's awesome as well.
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Aug 29, 2017 05:37
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magnificent7 posted:Last week I researched "tell a better story" and it's all about characters. If your story feels flat, it's probably weak characters. When I try adding wants/needs/quirks into characters, it reads like I'm just forcing things, painting by numbers. Try reading more non-genre fiction that relies almost exclusively on character to make the story interesting, and pay attention to the details the writer uses to flesh their characters out. I also copy out story passages when they grab me, to try to steal their mojo, and write down my own experiences as well, to later mine for character details. That's what I've been doing, for a few years, and it's now way easier for me to figure out how my characters would react to something strange (in an SF setting) without feeling forced or predictable. It's not enough to figure out character drives and flaws. What about all the seemingly inconsequential things they like or dislike, have strong (possibly stupid) opinions on, and so on? Lumping those things into a list of "quirks" isn't enough—if you stop there, it's definitely going to come off as forced. If your character is, say, really into pink or some poo poo, coming up with deep-seated reasons for their stupid color obsession (that has little bearing on the plot, but is still essential character detail) is part of the fun of writing. I've been sadly disappointed by a lot of contemporary SF because the plots clip along so fast I'm not given any time to get to know the characters enough to give a poo poo. It's like their editors are too eager to hack the story to the bone, cutting every detail that doesn't service the plot. The last book I read like that, I knew exactly what I was supposed to be feeling in every scene, but wasn't actually feeling it. There wasn't enough breathing room for me to find a place to land and settle into the story, so I ended up hovering above it a passive observer with no emotional stakes in what I was reading. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Sep 6, 2017 |
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Sep 6, 2017 22:25
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Echo Cian posted:Read More, Write More is good basic advice but there's more to it than just that if you actually want to get anything out of it. Plenty of people read and write a lot, but only copy the things they read without understanding why they liked it beyond "dragons are cool!" and don't improve because they don't know how to analyze the content (and, usually, react to even gentle criticism like you murdered their puppy). That's something I forgot to mention. When I copy out passages I like, I write a paragraph below about why it grabbed me. I'll sometimes reread the same passage in a year or so and maybe write another paragraph on whether or not it holds up out of context. If I loved or hated a book, I'll write a short review and send it to a friend of mine who enjoys my bullshit. I chew through one book after another, averaging 3 a week, so if I don't stop to reflect on them, they fall right out of my head. Even a book that's so mediocre my only reaction is meh warrants some effort to figure out why.
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Sep 7, 2017 21:46
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Self-pub seems more and more the way to go with a novel that's good but not considered saleable by an increasingly risk-adverse publishing industry. As for whether or not it's actually good, I'd say if you found a freelance editor (if you can afford it) who's worked on novels you can see are good, then hire that editor to help you make your poo poo good. What's the difference, really, between doing that and landing a publishing deal with a meagre advance, an overworked editor, and the complete lack of marketing so many new novelists actually get?
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Sep 14, 2017 05:40
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What do ya'll do when you notice you're using a particular word too much? I keep shoving "especially" into my sentences, can't think of any word that works better. I finally checked the thesaurus, and not a single word in there has the right emphasis or works in the same context. It's driving me crazy.
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Sep 16, 2017 02:54
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Mrenda posted:I'm agreeing with this. They sound natural and you put them in naturally but they don't add much unless you're going for a conversational style of prose. Even then, when you're going for a colloquial, naturally rambling style it's better to chose a few particularly standout sentences where their usage emphasizes the tone and voice than to shove them in everywhere. This is the problem. I'm writing in a conversational 1st person, and my own conversational habits are slipping in. Trying to rearrange sentences like these often leaves me feeling like they're not colloquial enough, but I'm convinced eliminating them will make my narrator sound like a better conversationalist than my own lazy self. I also have problems with "only" and "just." They're definitely more frequent than "especially" but the latter stands out in a particularly annoying way. I have to purge it before it leaps off the page like J G Ballard's chronic use of "pudenda." I only wish I could get hung up on a more interesting word like that.
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Sep 16, 2017 17:49
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Burkion posted:I go with this. I'm doing a complete rewrite, so the bones are already there, but there's so little muscle to my draft zero it's more like writing a proper first draft rather than a second. Yeah, I'm letting myself get bogged down on the sentence level too early and spending too much pissing around. I know this well by now, yet I have to keep being reminded. Stupid brain
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Sep 16, 2017 22:15
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I found doing NaNo once valuable to help me figure out how fast I could write. at what quality, and what my mental and physical limitations were (I had serious hand pain after the first week). But I discovered writing that fast left me with such a garbage first draft, what I had written had to be rewritten from scratch, and it was full of holes so huge I couldn't even call my effort a first draft. After coming up with five novels worth of material that way, my time's better spent trying to work with what I have over trying to spin more poo poo out at that rate.
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Sep 20, 2017 06:59
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magnificent7 posted:Run-on sentences? Probably, but, but, but I feel like in first person, there's a rhythm that sells the character. Without those pauseable commas, it loses that magic. Run-on sentences can be great. Marlon James posted:From A Brief History of Seven Killings:
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Oct 23, 2017 19:43
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Condescention. It's exactly the word Jane Austen used for that kind of noblesse oblige attitude, but maybe the meaning has shifted too far into the negative, if that's not what you're going for. I already know it doesn't fit well in your current sentence.
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Dec 4, 2017 06:25
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Foolster41 posted:Yeah, we share like up to 8 pages, which is usually a chapter of a novel. Way back when I started out I tried using the character sheets I found in some book on writing, personality tests, whatever, and I had the same feeling. All that poo poo I filled out ended up being completely forgotten by the time got down to writing the story. It's just dog loving. Since you mention D&D, think of it this way: you don't really figure out your characters until you put them in play. On the other hand, this can actually help: CantDecideOnAName posted:I've tried those character sheets before when I just started writing, and they weren't very helpful. Recently I decided I needed to "get to know" a bunch of my characters, so I wrote interview questions. "What is something that irritates you", "what are you afraid of", "what do you want to be remembered for", that sort of thing. Obviously I'm working under the assumption that they would be willing to answer touchy questions because even if it's in character for them to say "gently caress off" and nothing else, it's not helpful. I don't know if I ever posted this before, but taking the questions from this ridiculous article and using them to write interviews of my main characters gave me so much background material to work with I never had to fill out another dumb sheet for them again. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 20:00
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Like, why does their favorite food matter?
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Foolster41 posted:These are good questions. Thanks! This will maybe help me at least with Dog and Deer. I tend to focus on my central characters and let the rest radiate outwards from the main character's pov. I'm not sure if you're going for an ensemble cast or something more focused, because I'm not well-versed in creating the latter, but from a focused pov, you start with what your main character wants and figure out who they run into on their way to pursuing it. Fleshing those characters out, I usually save that for the second draft. Only then do I bother turning a stock character I threw in to give my main some conflict into a person with conflicting drives to make their interactions less cliche. Unrelated, I have a question for people comfortable enough to share their early drafts with a trusted writing buddy. There's a person I trade early drafts with for mutual encouragement. So how do you be encouraging when that person's latest story isn't grabbing you without them detecting your sense of meh? I don't want to be discouraging because that's like the total opposite point in doing this, but I'm such a hypercritical rear end it's hard to turn it off, put on a fake grin and say, "Oh yeah, it's great!" This is also a person who normally values my honesty and harsh crits, but is right now in a terribly fragile state. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 21:12
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sebmojo posted:Ask them how blunt they want you to be? They've directly asked me to be gentle this time around. I just... I don't know how. My crits somehow end up being brutal even when I think I'm being nice. Whenever I try to use the compliment sandwich the compliments are two thin slices of tasteless white bread--the kind that form ugly little pills when you roll a pinch between your fingers.
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Jan 18, 2018 21:31
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Foolster41 posted:Yeah, I think that's the problem. I feel like individually they're not really opposed or really intact in any interesting way with the MC, and feel undersecretary. (Except maybe for one female character and the embarressing encounter at the public bath, but I have a vague idea of her personality). But at the same time, I feel like I need these characters to exist, because Laila would have friends, and I wanted to have other kidst o play this team-based sports game. Also, they are there to ignore him during the game to give t he main conflict. You may be overthinking things. How much time is the MC (and story) hanging around these characters? It's ok to have background characters who aren't fully fleshed out, all depending on how many scenes they get. Impressions of them are going to be colored by the main character's thoughts about them anyway, so it's ok to make some one dimensional. Figure out which characters matter, focus on them, and don't worry about the rest. Unless it's an ensemble cast and you're spending the entire story with all of them, don't even bother giving them all names, because no one gives a poo poo. I mean hell, I sometimes give characters names like Hurf and Durf (and only to differentiate them as I write). When my MC is say collared by a couple security guards. I'm not worried about Hurf's deeper desires or if Durf has a wife to go home to. I might have them interact with each other, have them chat about dumb poo poo if the MC is stuck in an elevator with them overhearing their work banter, but that's about it. So if your character wants to play a team sport and is shut out by them, the most time off the field any of them might get is your MC overhearing their locker room banter. I usually draw from experience to make that kind of dialogue interesting, and that's half your job done right there. What I mean by that is I've had interesting conversations with people I was never close enough to care about—it was something to pass the time, at a bus stop, a dreadful party, with the plumber, etc. You may find these people all have interesting thoughts about life, but there's not enough time in a book (or your life) to get to know most of those people beyond those one or two interactions. This is what I mean by focusing on your MC and radiating out from there. If there's only one or two points of contact, they only need one or two dimensions. Anything more is you wasting time not actually writing your story. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:What about something along the lines of "this one isn't grabbing me as much as the other things you have shown me, but I think it has potential. Especially (whatever good thing you can find in it). How are you feeling about it?" They're likely aware it's not great, and it's such an early draft I'm gonna curb my urge to crit and do exactly this. Thanks. sebmojo posted:In that case just say nice things. If that is a short list, that's not your fault. It's not really unfair. This person has read a lot of my barely-baked drafts and been exhuberantly supportive, especially when I was coming back from being derailed from horrible life poo poo and now they're going through the same thing. I'm trying to reciprocate. Man, here's me realizing I came into the thread just to ask, "My friend's asked me to be nice, but I'm too much of a jerk. What do?" Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jan 19, 2018 |
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Jan 19, 2018 03:57
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Naerasa posted:- someone vomiting/making GBS threads/pissing/jerking off (apparently this is common enough in submissions that it needs to be said?) Does the protagonist giving a blowjob count? I'm kidding, when I did that I already knew it was a bad idea.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:38
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Naerasa posted:Only if they choke on it and puke. Lol, he did actually. Not the best idea if trying to establish some reader sympathy. I ended up scrapping the scene. I don't know why, but I have this impulse to follow through on what I know are bad ideas, just to get them out of my system or something. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jan 20, 2018 |
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Jan 20, 2018 23:04
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Ursula K Leguin's book on writing is on the Kindle daily deal today if anyone's interested.
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Jan 27, 2018 02:12
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Exactly. I'm not going to drop the five novels I've been working on for almost a decade just because Star Trek introduced the idea of a dude who can teleport AND see through time because he's symbiotically connected to an organic network that weaves through spacetime. Because who loving cares. My stories aren't a bit like Star Trek (and they're not even using the idea to its full potential), so I can carry on with the same idea happily knowing my story is uniquely mine no matter what resemblances there might be. Why? Because this one idea doesn't completely define my main character--there's so much more going on with him. I wouldn't have been able to plot six books around him otherwise. So what if your idea might be "done before." No one cares about your Idea. The golden age of science fiction, where you could hack out some one-dimensional trash propped up by a single original idea--those days are loving over. Now you have to bring more to the table than your precious Idea. If you can't get over that, you've doomed yourself before you've even started. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jan 28, 2018 |
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Jan 28, 2018 20:30
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Dadbod Apocalypse posted:Are you having a meltdown because I stole your cryogenic sleep idea? lol you're not-all-that-original idea is safe to work on, dude What I'm sick of is seeing Idea Guys pop up in this thread again and again thinking their ideas are so special they start whining when told their ideas don't count for poo poo
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Jan 28, 2018 21:58
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Dadbod Apocalypse posted:I don’t really know what you’re getting all angry about. I never said that I had a great idea; I just want to know if there’s a way to check if something has been done before because I’d prefer this to be a unique premise. Chill out. And we keep telling you that doesn't matter but the advice (to let it go) from everyone who's responded to you refuses to sink in
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Jan 28, 2018 22:19
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Guiness13 posted:Pretty sure Philip K. Dick beat both of you to the punch on that one. lol don't validate this dude's wild defensive flailing by saying "both" I'm pretty sure no one's gonna write another Ubik, even if they tried, and that's the point.
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Jan 29, 2018 00:06
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CantDecideOnAName posted:I thought he was talking about King's short story. Or watching the world pass by in The Time Machine Or the sensory deprivation chamber in Stanislaw Lem's Tales of Pirx the Pilot Or the cryogentic chamber in Cixin Lui's Three Body trilogy And he could read all those and go, "Nope, nope, not what I was thinking..." and if he were smart would come to realize his story is never going to be so like something already written that he needs to stress about it.
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Jan 29, 2018 00:32
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HIJK posted:jesus dude, chill out. Why do you assume I'm not chill? I was trying to tone it down to give good advice. Do I need to change my avatar to not seem bitchy all the time or something?
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Jan 29, 2018 01:55
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HIJK posted:I have no idea who your avatar is but when you say this: I meant what he needs to do to be smart, but yeah the italics made a nasty implication that he isn't and for that I apologise. I keep forgetting this isn't the Thunderdome and I'm no longer even in the Thunderdome Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Resting bitch poster. lol I should've kept the Tina Turner av. It seemed to play better with my aggressive tone
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Jan 29, 2018 02:12
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sunken fleet posted:So I've been grappling with a (probably stupid) problem for a while. That is what is a good way to write "thoughts" in first person perspective? I just read about this in Steering the Craft of Story the other day: Ursula K. Leguin posted:Many writers worry about how to present characters’ unspoken thoughts. Editors are likely to put thoughts into italics if you don’t stop them. Thoughts are handled exactly like dialogue, if you present them directly: Now that's in third person, and a lot of lit fic I've read doesn't even bother to flag thoughts as thoughts if it's a tight third person limited. First person is even easier because you never need make any distinction at all. Go ahead and cut right into the narrative with your character's thoughts—that's what a good first person should be doing often anyway.
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Jan 30, 2018 19:04
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:To add to this, when you're writing in first person, also keep an eye out for redundant descriptors like "I saw", "I heard", "I felt", which add distance between the reader and the text and don't add anything (because in first person, everything is already "I..."). In first person I will sometimes use the phrase "I thought at the time" when the character is trying to justify past behavior on limited knowledge. Also, "I didn't hear" "I didn't see" etc. for similar reasons. I once even did this: quote:Hugh Bastard didn’t call, since I was already conveniently face-up, but I caught the motion in my periphery. I swear I heard the snap of its wings over the spray, but my mind may have edited that in. In an instant I knew what was coming. I rolled. One of my beta readers said they liked that touch, but maybe the fact they noticed at all it isn't the best thing. I dunno. My protagonist questions his senses frequently, for plot-critical reasons. I could also be breaking the no "I feel" rule in the second paragraph, but it's not a thing someone's supposed to be able to feel, more a hyperbolic turn of phrase—a cliche one maybe, but it's not a redundancy. "In an instant" could probably go too. When I go to edit I'll have to read both out loud to figure out which construction has better rhythm, which is more important than cutting everything in your draft to the bone. A lot is allowable in first person if it fits the character's voice, but it has to be a voice clear enough for people to want to read. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jan 30, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 20:54
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crabrock posted:the thing about doing stuff like that is, what's the point? I get really annoyed when i'm reading something and it's presented in the negative or it just didn't happen, such as "My eye almost twitched." it's just like oh cool, poo poo that didn't happen. tell me what else didn't happen. did you also not see any dogs? did your heart almost skip a beat? you're saying there that he thought he heard something...but he didn't. Ok? is thinking he hears flapping wings really that interesting? It's not to me. If you focused more on the "spray" (whatever that is), which is the ACTUAL SOUND that's being heard, it'd make for a stronger, more visceral scene imo. The spray is from the fountain he's sitting by, which is context I didn't include in my post but is set in the story. I get your point, which is why I need to justify it as crucial to the story, otherwise it has to go. Is it crucial he exaggerate the bird's flight as being more violent than it probably was, and admit he might be exaggerating? Do I do it enough to be annoying, or do these incidents subtley add up to him being completely unable to trust his mind near the end of the story? That's the kind of decision I have to leave until more beta readers have read it in context. If they call me out on it again and again, then yeah I'm probably loving it up and need to tone it down. As to your hypotheticals, you wouldn't state the character didn't see any dogs unless he didn't see the dog that ripped his arm off, in which case not seeing it beforehand might be important. Maybe you wouldn't mention it before the dog rips his arm off, because that would telegraph it too hard, but have that be part of the character reeling from the blow—I didn't see it coming, WTF. Your other examples, eye almost twitching, heart almost skipping a beat, are definitely lame poo poo someone would diserve to be slapped for. For one, those tics happen instantaneously and uncontrollably—they never "almost" happen, so it's the writer trying to be cute. "I didn't slap the fucker" is an entirely different beast, worth stating.
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Jan 30, 2018 21:55
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crabrock posted:yeah it depends a lot on context, i was just making a general point about when people try to get into somebody's head. i love writing first person cause you can say all sorts of weird poo poo and it's your character's fault Yeah, I didn't mention how important context is in my first post, in terms of using "didn't see" or "didn't do" type constructions, and your examples were great cautions against doing it badly. Some general rules I've come up with since could be: 1. If a character fails to notice something, that anti-detail can be important, if that something blindsides them. 2. If a character doesn't do something, that can be an action in itself, so long as the character is holding themselves back from doing it. 3. If a character thought they saw/heard/etc. something, but it turns out they're wrong, that can be a useful misdirecton—but tread carefully with this one. 4. If you're using sensory verbs in unusual ways, and not redundantly, that can sometimes excuse them. Edit: I just realized I included another one in that passage, when the bird "didn't call," which also has context I left out, because my character explains that's a thing the parrot usually did to get people to look up so it could poo poo on their faces. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Jan 31, 2018 |
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Jan 31, 2018 00:19
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angel opportunity posted:I know this is a really stupid question, but does anyone have some kind of cool method they use to spitball out character arcs? I'm trying to write something that is very character focused, but I'm actually really terrible at thinking up an interesting arc from scratch. I'm just thinking like some kind of exercise to get my brain working in the right direction. I write based on plotpoints, so I'd ideally be spitballing out like PP1 --> Midpoint --> PP2 or something similar to get a sketch of the arc out there I kinda have the opposite problem, where character arcs spontaneously shoot out all over the place and I have trouble tying all the threads together. But how I come up with so many is I often have characters wanting things tangental to the main plot and let them sidetrack a bit. To try to flesh them out I ask what else do they want? Then I spend some time letting them pursue it before the main plot smashes all their little side projects. Other times I try putting different characters in a scene together and seeing what sparks. Those usually end up in compost pile and rarely make it into the story without complete rewriting though. My writing methods aren't exactly efficient. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Mar 15, 2018 |
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Mar 15, 2018 03:41
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Is there a specific character type you find compelling? Not necessarily an archetype, but the kind of person you think you could stick in any kind of situation, from shopping to flying a space ship, and come out with something you'd want to read.
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Mar 15, 2018 06:09
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