Fiction Writing Advice and Discussion: Read. Write. Crit. Repeat.

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Fiction Writing Advice and Discussion: Read. Write. Crit. Repeat.

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Exmond posted:

Ahh I read these, but uhh, I have no idea what a narrative summary is. I think it's like a scene where your character is like 'AS YOU KNOW THIS IS THE SITUATION'?

Just general telling about events instead showing them. The narrative is the story. Summary is, uh, summary. Summarizing what has happened is narrative summary. It's useful if you want to skip past boring but necessary stuff (like traveling) and a waste if you pass over something interesting or important.

As an example, the part in my last Thunderdome entry where the guy mentions moving back in with his parents is summary, but the part where he describes the gig isn't.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Jan 17, 2018

# ¿ Jan 17, 2018 00:47

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:50

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Dolash posted:

Peter's sister's voice

This is worse.

The sentence isn't awkward because of what is or isn't the subject; it's that the pile-up of possessives in "the words of Peter's sister" is awkward. (This is also why that replacement is worse.) My advice would be to split the sister off and focus on Peter in this sentence, something like, "The words still rang in Peter's ears as he dug through the dirt, seeking some trace of the buck's passing. He was almost ready to admit that his sister had been right." Obviously, there are many ways to write that second sentence, but however you say it, I think that it's the best way to go.

But going back to the original sentence, a problem that sticks out much worse to me is "trace of the buck's passing" � it's almost impossible to read this without thinking of passing the buck, not the disappearance of a literal deer. I strongly advise rephrasing that.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jan 22, 2019

# ¿ Jan 22, 2019 19:41

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

There's nothing wrong with writing a sentence more complex than subject-verb-object. Nothing is "shifted"; there are two subjects in that sentence.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jan 22, 2019

# ¿ Jan 22, 2019 20:06

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

On second thought, yeah, having two subjects really muddles the ending. Are the words seeking some trace? Stabbey and Seb are right.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2019 21:34

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Yeah, that guy's full of poo poo. "Show, don't tell," is self-evidently good storytelling advice because it's what storytelling fundamentally is. It's what separates even a story as blatantly political as The Dispossessed from an essay on anarchism and the Cold War superpowers.

Edit: The idea that it could somehow suppress political expression is also nonsense. Countless books have been censored for "showing" ideals that they never actually "tell" outright. Animal Farm managed to get banned in the USSR without once leaving the realm of metaphor.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Nov 25, 2019

# ¿ Nov 25, 2019 07:11

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Leal posted:

Confirm/deny?

Half Price finds from this weekend.

(To be fair, the first one is self-published.)

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Dec 24, 2019

# ¿ Dec 24, 2019 04:15

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Djeser posted:

Here is the thing you were directly looking for: https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/

Boy howdy, does that take me back.

Edit: lol

# ¿ Dec 31, 2019 06:42

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

ketchup vs catsup posted:

The monster doesn�t look scary to me. Something about the scale compared to the man, and how it fills the frame. And its proportions too, the arms vs the rest of it.

It's the perspective. The preliminary sketch was imposing because it was drawn from the viewpoint of looking up at the monster, but this picture is eye-level with it or even higher.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2020 03:06

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Azza Bamboo posted:

On the subject of it's, what's wrong with it's as a shortening of it has?

No one says "it has been a while." I feel like there's an emerging use case for this.

It's been in our speech for some time.

Has anyone said otherwise? This is the first I've heard of anything "wrong" with it or that it's "emerging" usage. :confused:

# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 02:50

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

It's a standard contraction. What are you talking about? (Or was that a response to the deleted post?)

# ¿ Feb 3, 2020 03:43

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Kaiser Mazoku posted:

Is it normal to feel like you "have" to hit a minimum word limit for each chapter? I feel weird if I haven't passed that 2000 mark.

Just write a big block of text and put chapter divisions every 2,000 words. It worked for Erofeev.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2020 05:16

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

What flerp said. There's no reason for anyone unfamiliar with the word to be reading this in the first place.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2020 04:54

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Doctor Zero posted:

The first time it happens she is at a so-called happy hour sipping a martini that tastes like a corroded battery surrounded by people you label colleagues, not friends.

I feel I should point out that the missing comma after "battery" here turns this into a very strange simile.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2020 00:48

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

There's also some questionable advice that definitely needs to be addressed.

Doctor Zero posted:

"is surrounded" - passive.

Doctor Zero posted:

However, you use "terribly dull" and "fantastically interesting" several more times further on. Adverbs are evil. A necessary evil, sure, but evil.

This is grade-school writing advice. There is no reason to avoid using the passive voice or adverbs per se, and this post doesn't seem to have a solid grasp on the passive voice anyway. "Is surrounded" is passive, but so is "she is at a so-called happy hour sipping a martini that tastes like a corroded battery, surrounded by people you label colleagues" � putting a passive participle in an appositive phrase doesn't make it any less passive. (That appositive phrase also needs a "would" in there; the reader doesn't label these people colleagues, because they don't exist.) But what do you get if you use the active voice? "People you would label colleagues surround her." It's bonkers! Using the passive voice to convey an action is the kind of dumb mistake that schoolkids make, which is why they get that reductive proscription against it, but it's just as maladroit to use the active voice for a state. Adverbs are the same way. That a kid writes "very big" instead of thinking a second longer and writing "enormous" is no indictment of adverbs themselves. The post itself is loaded with adverbs and adverbial phrases, some of them crucial to the meanings of their sentences ("play consistently with imagery"). Here, I think that "dull" would work better than "terribly dull" (which doesn't convey greater dullness as much as it does greater bluster about dullness), but "fantastically interesting" is reaching for something more than simply "interesting"; "riveting" or a similar word would be best.

Doctor Zero posted:

Also the "flared out" in sad fireworks" I dig. However, 'flared' and 'sad' don't go well together. 'Flared" is bright and energetic. 'Sad' implies weak and pathetic. You probably were trying the ironic flip, but it didn't catch here. Just stick to the 'sad' metaphor.

I don't understand this at all. A sad pink firework is good, but to flare out sadly isn't? "Flared" and "flared out" are distinct actions, too; in the excerpt, that part of the character's brain burned bright for a moment before exhausting itself. "Flared out like a sad pink firework" is a perfectly decent bit of imagery.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Jun 21, 2020

# ¿ Jun 21, 2020 01:28

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Doctor Zero posted:

I agree that avoiding passive voice and avoiding adverbs completely is grade school level advice. That's why I never said that. I also wasn't attempting to give advice on the grammatical construction of the writing, because I thought it was fine.

Fair enough. I apologize if I misunderstood your post.

Doctor Zero posted:

There's a bit of subtlety here. To me, "She is reclining on the couch." sounds like someone reporting something - perhaps talking about their memory of an event. "She reclines on the couch." sounds more "active" in that I feel like I am observing the event myself. That's what I was getting at with passive with the author's voice, not the grammatical voice.

Both of those are active. "Reclines" is in the simple present tense, while "is reclining" is in the present progressive. The passive voice is when the subject is acted upon in some way (just now, for example), not any time the word "is" gets used with another verb (there it is again). I'm not trying to be a dick here; I just think it's important for anyone who writes to know the difference between voice and tense.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Jun 21, 2020

# ¿ Jun 21, 2020 16:07

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

ultrachrist posted:

Does grammar acknowledge that the characters in the story don't truly exist?? You're right. It definitely reads better with "would".

It's a logical error, not a grammatical one; both versions are grammatically valid. "People you label colleagues" says that the reader knows these people and labels them colleagues, which cannot be true. The hypothetical "people you would label colleagues" says that there is a kind of person that the reader labels colleagues, that these people are that kind of person, and that the reader would therefore label them colleagues if he or she were in the character's shoes. One makes a patently false statement, while the other gives the outcome of two reasonably likely premises.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Jun 23, 2020

# ¿ Jun 23, 2020 09:15

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Crowetron posted:

I had this idea for a character in something I'm working on to try to cope with trauma by learning a musical instrument. The thing is I don't know how to write effectively about music without lyrics. Does anyone have any suggestions of books or stories that do that sort of thing well? Where should I look to learn how to describe music?

The Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers, although it uses music very specifically as a metaphor for the genome.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2020 16:00

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Djeser posted:

Hah, yeah, what kind of dance routine would have anything to do with architecture?

It wasn't even said by Charles Mingus (or Frank Zappa, or whoever else gets credited for it); it was an actor and singer named Martin Mull.

Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Aug 9, 2020

# ¿ Aug 9, 2020 21:31

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

I dispute this idea of an even "arguably" good Honor Harrington book.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2020 01:54

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Learning dialogue from the Left Behind guy is like learning neurosurgery from Walter Jackson Freeman II.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2020 07:26

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:50

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Rad-daddio posted:

Is it bad?

General Battuta was referring to the query letters themselves, not the site.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2020 21:30

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Fiction Writing Advice and Discussion: Read. Write. Crit. Repeat.