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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Editing to add: think about Shakespeare, and how amazingly memorable and vivid his stories and characters are. Not a drop of physical description. Having read A Midsummer Night's Dream until I pretty much quote chunks in my sleep, there are two quick descriptions of two characters: Hermia and Helena. However, they are quickly integrated into the text. Shakespeare never came out and said "Hermia is short and dark" but at one point Hermia says (modernized) "Did you just call me call me short? I'm not so short I can't bring you down to my level!" Also one character, Flute, is stated that he has to play the woman cause he has no beard yet and has a high chirpy voice perfect for a bit of the old Boy-Plays-Girl Switch-a-roo. But that's the thing. Don't do a whole paragraph of, say, head to toe description of someone. Of anyone. Unless it is character important and chances are it is not. It's jarring and annoying and stops the momentum of the story, and often comes off like a mix of purple prose and weird online role play garbage. Story time! When I was a small, we used to have to write descriptive essays for grades. The teacher would put up a picture of, say, a bear in a tutu holding a polka dotted umbrella, and the task was to start at the top of the picture, describe everything in minute detail, and the more descriptive words you put in the better. I could not get away with "The bear has a black nose." I was expected to barf up something like "The bear's small, shiny, triangular nose was slightly rough and black like the soul of the goth kid someone in this class is liable to grow up to be." I am convinced this was half because it was the 80s and nothing made sense. (Which is also why I had to write "how-to essays" like I was describing making a PB&J sandwich to someone who hadn't yet figured out that peanut butter generally comes in jars with lids that are expected to be removed in order to reach the smashed goober goodness. Look, the 80s was a crazy time.) In one part it was a semi-useful exercise in teaching us descriptive words existed, but in a lot it was not because then you had a bunch of kids writing Jennifer E.'s First Fiction Story and they'd go on for ten pages about How Green And Lush is The Front Lawn at Bonnie-Sue's house. Seeing paragraphs of overtly flowery description down to the gold buckles on the shoes makes me think you got the same Texas mid-to-late 80s elementary school education I got. Or perhaps read a few too many Baby-Sitters Club Books and had to hear all about what Claudia wore from head to toe that sounded like garbage but somehow she magically pulled it off with her Magic 80s Powers of making sure sheep earrings were so fetch. Basically, the purple prose description lump? Do not do this. You can describe people in one or two lines, or even just one off ref. One of the crits I got on an otherwise meh story pointed out that the only description of a character's mother was quote:"Her manicured nails dug into my arm as she dragged me to our gas stove[.]" No one needs a head to toe description off the bat the moment you see Joan F. Protagonist (the F stands for Robots). Integrate that poo poo. Nethilia fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Feb 4, 2017 |
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Feb 4, 2017 13:09
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Leng posted:Somebody please post Neth's recent smackdown on what is/isn't storytelling from the Discord. I gotta do everything around here, don't I? Well now it's modified. Ahem. *~*~* I've been writing in some form since the first Bush admin as a eight year old who was handed a piece of paper and a pencil and told that I could do that as long as I stopped falling asleep in second grade. And even if the target audience don't read this, I'm going to slap it down for everyone, the way I used to slap facts during debates on Gaia online so if other people saw them, they could read. If you take language and make a story in it--any story--you are a writer. There are no "Those Writing Actual Books" Real™ Writers that are better than other writers. If you take a language and you tell a story in it, you are a writer. People write fanfic about two characters touching rear end and that's writing. Children making up stories about the monster under their bed and how their teddy bear fight it that they tell to mommy are writers. Teenagers writing about how when they become adults they'll show Sally who turned them down for prom someday with their money and the hottest boyfriend ever are writers. People submitting clearly fake as gently caress "AITA" on Reddit are writers. People replying to the writing prompts tumblr in longform on Tumblr are writers. People writing, as one person so loving rudely put it, for a weekly contest named after a movie, are writers. Hell, celebrity authors are writers and I don't even want to give them the credit, but they have it if they were part of the creation of the story. And if not, their ghostwriters are writers. All things are creating stories and a form of writing and storytelling. Short stories count. Fanfic counts. Oral storytelling counts. All writing and story creation makes you a story creator. All writing is "real writing." If you're going to be a writer, write. And for the love of chicken fucknuggets, don't call people "not real writers" because we haven't offered our longform braincraft to the publishing industry. And stop whining about how you have to be gifted or blessed or some other fuckery otherwise you can't make art, because that's bullshit. Now I'm going to go write some indulgent bullshit about cows that's for me and maybe like, four other people to ever see. Nethilia fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Nov 17, 2022 |
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Nov 17, 2022 13:33
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BigFactory posted:Some people listen to audiobooks at 2x while working and say they read them. Some people use Blinkist to get a 15 minute summary of an entire book and call it the hustle.
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Feb 7, 2024 03:25
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Stuporstar posted:This is cool and good. This is why, for example, my black protagonist doesn't explain the AAVE language she uses casually. 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." She's just gonna be like "so bougie mean you think you better than me, and high yellow mean you light skinned and think you better than me. " Nethilia fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 29, 2024 05:58
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