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cumpantry posted:i have no idea what this "readers expect 3rd person to be objective and historic" thing is about, if i am understanding this right. read V You’d be surprised how many readers do, just by default. It takes something like V to jolt them out of that assumption ultrachrist posted:I think I just fundamentally disagree. Or else am misunderstanding what you mean by objective. Nearly all fictive narration is subjective. It has an agenda. When I say 3rd person narrator, I don't mean an actual character telling the story, I mean regular 'ole narration. For example, I recently read Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke. Every single character in that novel is described in the most disgusting, negative light possible. It is delightful. No one would call it objective. Another book I read recently: You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue. In that book, characters from 500 years ago speak with colloquial language and at the end, spoilering just in case, it turns out we're living in a dream Cortez had while tripping balls before Moctezuma broke his neck and repelled the Spaniards. I don't even know what objective would mean in that case. Yeah, I think you are misunderstanding because I agree that true objectivity is not real in narrative fiction (debatable if it’s something we humans can even claim to be). What I’m talking about is the illusion of objectivity that the reader assumes when reading a novel—I thought I made that clear with “pretends” to be objective. As you’ve just demonstrated, it takes more work for a 1st person narrator to firmly establish their claim to objectivity. While Severian’s eidetic memory claim in Book of the New Sun makes him even more suspiciously unreliable in a “doth protest too much” kinda way. Sure lots of readers read a 1st person novel without questioning anything the narrator claims, but 1st person lends itself to being questioned, by the nature that we’re less likely to trust people relating their tales—we’ve been conditioned not to. It’s a strength you can use to great effect. Whereas in 3rd person readers have been conditioned to just take things at face value, so it takes more effort to establish the subjectivity of the narrator, by doing exactly as you say—describing characters in an incredibly judgmental way and offering opinions. Creating devices or framing the story to throw that objectivity into question. It’s something that has to be broken on purpose or highlighted otherwise the reader is gonna take poo poo at face value. If you want them to take everything at face value, 3rd person is a dead simple way to just go ahead and do that. You can challenge these assumptions or use them to play to your strengths quote:This just isn't true! Of course that can work, but I don't know where you came up with "they're not supposed to be "telling" the reader their story." It's extremely common that that is exactly what a 1st person narrator is doing! Either directly addressing the reader or not. I recently read a collection of George Saunders stories and one great example is Escape from Spiderhead. 1st person, past tense, in which the narrator dies at the end (meaning, it is impossible for him to tell an actual person the story), that is probably 75% explanation of what he's doing in space. We accept this because we are willfully submitting ourselves to worlds made up of small letters and not questioning it too much. I think you’ve not been subjected to really bad YA or YA-like writing, because yes the self-insert protagonist is “not supposed to be telling their story.” People actually do write this poo poo with the assumption that the reader is just gonna insert their head into the protagonist and pretend they’re the one doing all the poo poo, and that the “I” of the story is the “I” of the reader. And it’s exactly as bullshit as you think it is Because of course the 1st person narrator is telling their story. It’s in forgetting that, or trying to deny that, that these writers make so many mistakes with the pov. That’s what I’m arguing with when I say it’s not supposed to be as immersive as a clear windowpane into the character’s head. Also with “explaining what they’re doing in space” you missed the modifier “like they’re unnaturally conscious of it all the time.” In too much detail, like a 3rd person narrator would “show, not tell,” rather than describing what they’re doing from an inside perspective. It’s just something I’ve noticed a lot in writers who take 3rd person writing advice and shove it into 1st without any consideration—like the said bad YA writers. As you say, it doesn’t matter if the 1st person narrator is telling their story to anyone. They’re still telling it. 1st person’s strengths tend toward “tell” while 3rd tends toward “show.” There’s no hard boundaries to this, but the balance scale tips more toward one than the other and you can stick your thumb on the scale in either way. Also I love Escape From Spiderhead Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 29, 2024 01:19
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I'm writing a story in first-person and the narrator making subjective judgements which leads to them misinterpreting things and getting things wrong is important to much of the story. This is cool and good. quote:You're thinking about it way too much. You're thinking about it more than readers do. Sometimes the author needs to communicate important information to the reader. In a novel, the only medium for communication is the written word. If a first-person narrative should not include necessary exposition or spatial placement, what's the alternative you suggest? Is it completely wrong to ever use first-person narration, ever? Nah. Thinking about it more than readers do is kinda the writer’s job lol. Don’t turn yourself inside-out getting all hyperbolic on me  Seriously though. What I’m saying is because in 1st person exposition is being told from the character’s perspective, it comes with their baggage. If you forget that and just blorp it out straight like you would in 3rd person, it tends to be clunky. So, think about their opinion about things, or how this thing you need to let the reader know emotionally connects to them. I don’t have my 1st person narrator just spell out, “By the way ya3ny means ‘I mean’ in Arabic, but we use it as a filler word like y’know.” But you see that a lot in not-well-written sff, and you see it even more in YA, and 1st person makes it really egregiously stand out. Good exposition is tied to the moment and it’s tied to the character. This is true regardless of pov, but in 3rd you can get away with just spelling things out without tying it to the character, just because the reader needs to know. In 1st person you gotta think a little bit more about why they’re saying or thinking poo poo. As for spacial placement, in 3rd person you can paint a whole picture about how a character is standing, what they’re leaning on or holding in their hand, if they have a nervous tick, etc. etc. But in 1st person, unless you have a reason for them to notice this—particularly about themself, like if they’re trying to control their nervous tick or whatever—otherwise you’re in danger of accidentally flying into 3rd person perspective. I’ve read writers going on and on like, “I was sitting in the stool leaning forward with my elbows on the bar, a whisky glass in hand making a ring on the lacquered wood as I tapped my foot to the music against the barstool’s foot. Blah blah blah etc.” And I’m like WHY? Why are you telling me all this? There’s no interiority whatsoever, like how the music makes them feel or what the whisky tastes like or if the stool is comfortable—it’s just 3rd person objective with “I” pronouns. That is the bad poo poo I’m talking about—excessive spacial description at the cost of what poo poo matters. Because in 3rd person, we’re not trying to read the protagonist from the outside. I’m not saying describing where the protagonist in space is bad. I’m saying please don’t do it like that, it’s awful. Even Raymond Carver, with his minimal interiority, knows how to balance interior/exterior. Like in that example from the link I posted earlier: quote:“The Naches? We always go there. Every year, at least once.” We sit on a bench in the sun and he opens two cans of beer and gives one to me. “How the hell was I to know anything like that would happen?” He shakes his head and shrugs, as if it had all happened years ago, or to someone else. “Enjoy the afternoon, Claire. Look at this weather.” Ending her careful observation of his actions with the thought “as if it all happened years ago” is doing a lot of heavy lifting because it’s so minimal. It’s not my style but I can appreciate how carefully balanced it is. There was a lot of careful thought behind every word he put down. It was intentional—vs the other example I paraphrased to protect the guilty that wasn’t intentional at all, just thoughtlessly procedural because the author was so focused on setting the scene like a movie, or describing who did what, that they gave no thought to the narrator’s perspective at all. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 29, 2024 05:07
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Nethilia posted:This is why, for example, my black protagonist doesn't explain the AAVE language she uses causally. She does to a new character who has not spent time around black folk like this before so is getting the explanations--framing devices!--but she ain't bout to be like "bougie is a variation of "bourgeois" that was modified in meaning the African American community, and high yellow discusses the skin tones various combined with an elevated sense of self and colorism." Yes! And this kinda framing you need to do to make it sound natural. Like, as you say, characters explaining things the other characters don’t actually know (cause otherwise it’s the dreaded as-you-know-bob). Or having the character remember something important when it’s important to them, like finding their dead mother’s necklace and having a bunch of memories well up. Or having to recite some piece of history for an oral exam. Or talking about things like it’s everyday and letting the reader get stuff from context. There’s so many ways to weave information into the narrative, that just having the character think, “Oh yes, today is Exposition Day, where we all think quietly about the historical event that is so important to all of us. And I have been elected Prime Expositor and am expected to blah blah blah…” while they’re just sitting on page one eating breakfast. Not when you can go, “Oh poo poo, I forgot it’s Exposition Day!” instead. E. I wanna add to this (cause I’m hyperfixating lol) All these concerns don’t matter in the first draft. My first drafts make all these mistakes. They contain boring procedural action, focusing on details that don’t matter, badly done expository dialogue and just shoving in the info the reader needs to know with no consideration of character and voice. This is why my last edit is focused on voice. I’m not thinking about all of this all the time. I’m only thinking about it now, in the final draft, after a complete revision of stuff to get the plot events in the right order. And applying it to your writing is nowhere near as complicated as it seems (when I’m getting all philosophical about the art in this thread because I wanna have a discussion dammit.) There are actually only four criteria you need to do this kind of edit (for 1st person): 1. Does this sentence naturally come from the character’s pov or am I accidentally writing like it’s 3rd person? 2: Does the character have knowledge/talk about things they possibly could not have known? 3. Does my character have a reason to say or think this or directly tell the reader (if you’re acknowledging the reader exists, or another character they’re writing to etc.) and if not can I work it in more naturally? 4. Does this sound like my character or does it just sound like me? That’s it. It’s not that hard. But it’s a layer you don’t need to think about in your first draft, just get the story down. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 29, 2024 06:20
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Chillmatic posted:What's the primary purpose of this scene? Based on the limited information I have, I'm assuming it's to show how cool or tough the proctor/Fox guy is? If that's the case then he strikes me as overly verbose for the kind of archetype you seem to be aiming for. Turning to Rose to deliver a wicked bon mot before Doing Action saps the scene of inertia. Can't believe I'm about to say this, but the scene needs a healthy dose of 'show, don't tell'. It definitely depends. Like if the purpose of the scene is to show this Fox guy is the type to give sage advice (or friendly quips*) to the few under his wing he thinks is worthy and is hard on students until they’ve earned it—if Rose is in that position, the dialogue makes sense. But you’re absolutely right about breaking up the flow and explanations should come after he’s shocked her in the way you edited it. *Like the Master Corporal I had in basic (I’d joined the Reserves but flunked out on medical), was the type to be an rear end in a top hat on the job, but the rest of the time he was joking with new recruits and pointing and laughing with us at even fresher recruits going, “Haha look at those fuckin rat bags! You all used to march like that.” Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Mar 9, 2024 |
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Mar 9, 2024 19:03
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cumpantry posted:hello everyone i'm going to attempt to frankenstein some romance fantasy litrpg to life in hopes of crumbing together KU sales. here is a very brief prologue, this thread reminding me some significant and scary population of readers skip them, from being too weighty i assume. anyway be rough with me it's ok This is like the absolute exemplar of the terrible type of prologue everyone hates. A terribly overwrought travelogue entry about a town with a name that lands with a dull thud. There is nothing here to care about coated in a thick layer of florid prose so abstruse it seems like you don’t actually know what words mean. cumpantry posted:i have tried... a good portion seems written by children. maybe this style will help it stand out? or alienate it... The latter, my dude. No one will read this. The eyes slide right off the page. What are you even doing, just taking the piss? litrpg is popular because it’s cheeseburgers for rpg nerds. They’re not eagerly waiting for someone to “elevate the genre” with a pseudo-literary attempt to sound like Fritz Lieber without his prose mastery or a breath of his charm If you could make sure every word is actually doing what it’s supposed to other than being a stumbling block for the brain and eyeballs, and infuse it with more charm than disdain for a genre you don’t even read, you might have something. But sorry, dude, this is not it.
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Mar 21, 2024 23:37
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cumpantry posted:i am surprised theres hatred for the genre seeping through my words so visibly. it really hasn't been the intention, it's not like i don't enjoy The Hobbit, i play Morrowind and Oblivion. i've enjoyed the very thorough examinations provided by Fate Accomplice and Mewse, and DropTheAnvil dropping the anvil. i've been reworking based on their words but Stuporstar is making me think it should be thrown out completely. chapter 1 follows a maid being fired by her employer navigating Tometown home on foot. is it worth posting a snippet for an animosity check? To be less dismissive… The disdain comes more from thinking you can write good fantasy without having read much of it at all, just because poo poo sells that is terrible. I get the “I can do better than that” impulse, but if you’re saying that out of a place of ignorance (like not reading much of the genre), that’s pure hubris and it shows. As for scrapping it, I’d say throw the prologue out and start from chapter 1. No one needs to know the town’s origin (or cares) before the book starts. Also read more fantasy. Read good fantasy. Forget Rothfuss and other poo poo that sucks. If you want the kinda fantasy that inspired RPGs then read Fritz Leiber’s Fafard and the Grey Mouser series. If you want the best written fantasy then read Ursula K Leguin. If you want fun fantasy then Terry Prachett. You’re not gonna get the feel for prose from video games and movies (as great as Morrowind is)—you have to read widely to write well. Also you don’t have to worry about writing well for your first draft. Focus on getting the events on the page as clearly as you can. Worry about style in later drafts. And don’t be afraid to try out different styles—if they don’t work, then scrap that and try something else. Revising is often total rewriting. Think about your tone and what effect you want to achieve. If you want your prose to feel poetic, then study a bit of poetry. For example, one of the things your attempted style seems to be trying to do is mimicking the feel of Old English poetry (the Tolkien influence showing)—except you’re trying to bend metaphors into shape without understanding their grain or composition. You need to know about things like kennings—compound words used as epithets like “whale-road” for ocean (in Beowulf). These were used in alliterative poetry so you could invent a new word for something that fit the scheme. But if you’re doing that, you have to pick words that work in a clever way rather than making unfortunate bumbles that make people go, “huh?” And also you need to pay attention to the musicality of your phrases and how they fit together in your sentences and paragraphs to turn them into music, otherwise your wall of metaphors turns into an eye-glazing drone. Read your words out loud to find the music and rhythm in them. But if, on the other hand, you want to write fun story that doesn’t read like crap, then study comic writers instead and their patter. If your tone doesn’t match your intent, it simply doesn’t work. Think about these things, but don’t fret too hard about them during the first draft. Experiment if you want, but be willing to toss failed experiments out. And again, I can’t say this enough, read read read Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 01:50
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Phat Phingers posted:I have an idea. A Samurai and a little girl from the future (modern day) interact. Time travel/Genetics science idk. expect gags and silliness. Would it be more interesting if the girl was in the past or the samurai in the future? If it's in the past the girl can interact with the culture and break social norms and all that. (i.e. Samurai is about to kill a thief and she stops him) or if it's the future the girl the Samurai is kinda like her guardian angel that talks funny. The latter sounds like an 80s movie. Do it
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Mar 27, 2024 23:01
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magic cactus posted:I've got a question for the thread. What do you do when a work just... isn't coming together in the way you envisioned? I'm not talking about something like a "happy accident" where some random tangent develops into something more interesting than what you had planned, more this idea of whatever voice or style you try for the piece just doesn't feel right for the work. I've been working on this book for the better part of four years off and on, but stylistically it's all over the place. One draft is a star trek style space opera. Another is a kind of lovecraftian style thing, another is just William Burrough's cutup worship. The problem is, none of these drafts are giving me that "click," that feeling of "yeah, this is good, we've got something here." Does the novel have multiple povs or just one? Because letting the pov define the story’s voice is the likeliest way something is going to click. And if it is multiple pov, then varying the narrative voice for each pov is something you could maintain throughout the story. Even with a single pov character, you’re allowed to modulate the voice to fit the tone of whatever events are happening. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of interesting experiments, but yeah, if none of them are clicking, perhaps it’s because those voices don’t have enough relation to the pov characters? Even in 3rd person, that relationship between their personality and the narrative voice is something you do unless you’re going for objective pov or a specific narrator with their own voice
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Mar 30, 2024 22:14
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It took me a long time to find the right medication to fix my executive function, and since I’ve actually been able to sustain a daily writing and reading habit (along with regular workouts and taking care of mundane reality). Here’s hoping you find a similar solution soon 
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Apr 10, 2024 15:55
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MockingQuantum posted:I've been on the same scramble, and I finally can function pretty well in day to day life, but the tradeoff is that I frequently have zero desire to write now (or any other creative pursuit). It sucks, and I'm left kind of asking myself whether it's more important to me to not feel like a perpetual low-key fuckup, or be excited about writing. I’ve been through that. I relied so much on hyperfocus and obsession to write, that once that was leveled out I kinda wallowed in meh just trying to get my basic poo poo together for a while. The biggest thing I figured out is if I don’t do things at the right time, they won’t happen, because my brain goes through cycles of ability/attention throughout the day. These cycles are gonna be different for everyone, so it takes time to figure out when you feel like doing certain things (or when you even can) and trying to build a routine around it. For me, if I don’t get some writing/editing done first thing in the morning, I’m not gonna be able to do it later once all the distractions of daily life roll in. Years ago I used to fight this the opposite way, by staying up light writing like crazy, but since I did CBT to fix my insomnia I can’t stay up late anymore. Because I started getting up early (totally against my will at first) I started using that time to write instead. If I try to write/edit later in the day, I just can’t focus on it at all. So now I get up, have breakfast and tea, and read a bit of something to get me in the mood (usually some kinda writing book or blog). Then jump straight into writing for a couple hours. In the same way I have to do my workout in the late morning or around noon. If I do it too late, it feels sluggish and horrible. I have to have lunch right before or after. When I was doing it too early in the morning, I wasn’t doing any writing. By the time I finished my workout, I was no longer in the right headspace. I’d be too awake and rearing to get other poo poo done. I found it’s much better for me to leave active chores and poo poo until the afternoon, because by then my creative focus is shot but I still have physical energy to do all the boring poo poo I gotta do to live. I can manage to do other hobbies though, like the study it takes to learn another language or something. I just can’t make fresh good words by then. Also this is when my neighbor tends to spontaneously pop by and ask if she can have tea with me, which is fine. And I try to schedule appointments for the afternoon now too. And whatever I don’t get done by dinnertime won’t get done at all. I’ve learned to accept my evenings as time off to read or watch tv (usually reading), which lets me settle down before bed, get straight to sleep, and wake fully recharged in the morning. After I figured all this out for myself, I realized this is exactly how my autistic dad learned how to function working from home. He does his work in the morning, eats lunch, works out, then spends all afternoon fiddling around with hobbies and the evenings watching tv or reading and hanging out with my mom. Actually I kinda knew that for years, but it took the right medication to realize it was something I could do too. Being medicated to basically functional is a great time to figure out how to cobble together a routine for a non-neurotypical brain. I really hope I can keep this up, even if I only get a little bit of writing done slowly every day, rather than being the flailing fuckup who only wrote madly sometimes. I hope the routine idea can help someone else in the same boat too Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 19:10
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juggalo baby coffin posted:im currently going thru the adhd diagnosis process and i have been worried that i will write less if there isnt a sucking black hole of dopamine-lust driving me forward These all work really well for me too. A few others: - priming the pump by reading the last bit of my wip before going to bed and trying to imagine the scene as I drift off to sleep - imagining the scene I’m gonna write as I slowly wake up (with the cat slung across my head purring). CBT + cat usually wakes me up early, so I got some time to wallow (and the cat won’t let me fall back asleep) - reading stories close in tone to what I’m currently writing, usually before bed - even better if the blog/book I’m reading on writing before the start has some advice that actually applies to what I’m working on - letting myself leave a scene or paragraph unfinished as soon as my brain fizzles out in the morning, because my subconscious will be cooking it on the backburner while I go about the rest of my day. Or if I must, putting down words I know are wrong so they can sit there and unconsciously bug me. By the time I wake up the next day, the right words usually come to me
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Apr 10, 2024 21:39
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I just wanna read about Gnock the Bloodless teleporting into an ordinary high school. I don’t give a poo poo about the kids in fantasy land, cause that’s so done
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Apr 18, 2024 19:01
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Waffle! posted:I had this idea like an intergalactic Iron Chef, that followed Robert Irvine using his big muscles to subdue alien ingredients. This sounds like Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera but with cooking and I am here for it 
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Apr 20, 2024 18:33
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fridge corn posted:Hi! I've decided I'm going to start writing. But I don't have a computer! I'm wondering if there are any considerations to take into account when looking for a computer that will be used primarily for writing. Is this the right thread for this or is there a better thread to ask? For one, yeah you definitely want a laptop for writing so you can take it to a park/library/coffee shop etc. One with good battery life over horsepower. Like Intel has P-core and E-core CPUs for “performance” and “efficiency” and the latter are recommended for work laptops, whereas the former are for stuff like gaming (you’d have to do your own research there). One of those could still handle Civ, but you’d probably want to stick to smaller maps. I went for an I7 myself so I could do Civ as well lol For size, you want one where the keyboard is comfortable because that matters more than screen size for writing, so I’d suggest going to a computer store and trying to get a feel for the different sizes yourself. As for backlighting, it could be useful if you’ve not used a keyboard enough to have muscle memory for the keys. If you’re gonna set up a desk, I’d suggest getting either a separate keyboard and mouse so you can place the laptop at head height, or get a separate screen you can look at straight on while you use the laptop’s keyboard
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Apr 30, 2024 17:03
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cumpantry posted:$200 refurbed dell laptop off amazon I’ve not had good luck with the battery life of refurbs, so that’s something to watch out for
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Apr 30, 2024 17:06
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cumpantry posted:if corn has a couch next to an outlet they will be unstoppable True. That’s always been a problem for me, cause I do not
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Apr 30, 2024 17:12
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Yeah, when I was looking to replace my old refurb 13” Macbook, I ended up looking at Lenovos because I’m not paying Apple prices for what I want (especially since I wanted it to function as a drawing tablet as well in my case). I ended up getting a really good deal one of those Asus 14” flip touchscreen laptops with a pen instead, which is exactly like the bigger ipad I wanted but with a real OS. I woulda got a Lenovo too, but I’m pretty happy with the Asus and the price I paid for it. It’s also big enough for the keyboard to be comfortable while still being really lightweight. One thing I did though is shell out a bit more for Win11 Pro so I could kill their goddamned AI assistant and other spyware poo poo
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Apr 30, 2024 18:36
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