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

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Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

In drawing, every contour you add to someone's face adds five years. The extra detail complicates the picture, making it harder to read what's important and what's not.

You have to learn how to use just a few lines to capture the important characteristics, while avoiding all the irrelevant detail.

I feel like this is applicable to writing, somehow.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 18:22

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 14:22

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Oh, hey, one of the first writing questions in a new thread. How would you show rather than tell someone noticing that someone had changed since they last saw them? In terms of demeanor, not physically. The last time they saw them was before the story started.

Think about this: what does it feel like when someone's changed? It's like they're doing the wrong thing, or it's like everything they do becomes hightened and evidence that something's different. Have the point of view character dwell on what they're doing in between sentences, maybe. On some level you will have to point out to the reader that they're not supposed to be like this, but it could be like "she tapped the menu on the table and grinned, wider than i'd ever seen her grin." While that 'than i'd ever seen her' feels blunt, it's doing a couple of things. First, it's not dancing around the issue. The reader knows what's up. Something's different Second, it makes the whole sentence about what's different. And third, it's in reference to a physical thing. It's not saying that she's more energetic than before, it's saying that she's tapping her menu and grinning now, and that's strange. It's concrete detail instead of an idea.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 03:02

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

HEY GUYS LET'S MAKE A HUMAN HEART HAPPY, BUT I ALSO HAVE A REAL QUESTION

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT NOVELS LIKE INVISIBLE CITIES THAT ARE MORE A STRING OF THEMATICALLY-CONNECTED VIGNETTES TIED TOGETHER BY A LOOSE FRAMING NARRATIVE

HOW DO THEY GENERATE FORWARD MOMENTUM WITHIN THE NOVEL, IN THE ABSENCE OF TRADITIONAL STORYTELLING STRUCTURES

I really didn't like Triburbia but that had less to do with the collected-vignette structure and more to do with the fact that everyone was rich and unpleasant. It did generate some sort of forward momentum through a few plot threads that were expanded on as the novel progressed, not in the sense of a single narrative thread but in providing different viewpoints and adding context, until by the end I felt like I had a full concept of the events from different angles.

Honestly, you could probably get a shambling simulacrum of something like that by writing a bunch of short stories and vaguely tying them together with callbacks.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2017 03:21

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

A human heart posted:

I can't really think of many writers off the top of my head this applies to. It often tends to be the opposite, where a writer's earlier works are more experimental and they write more conventionally(as far as that's possible) later on.

While I can see this trend applying to writers' published works (sometimes, at least), it's certainly not the case for an amateur writer, and that's what most people on this forum are. Maybe The Name of the Rose is Umberto Eco's most experimental novel, but it's not the first thing he ever wrote. Very few authors' first published novels or short stories are going to be the first piece of fiction they ever wrote.

A human heart posted:

I'd be more interested in this thread if there was more about prose style, more focus on language. That's where everything else comes from after all.

The difficulty here is that everyone's going to have their own style, and it's hard to talk about it in a purely theoretical context without examples. And we do have a thread for posting and getting feedback on style and language, The Fiction Farm.

Aside from that, be the change you want to see in the world. If it's something you want discussed more, bring up questions about it and people will talk.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 04:05

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

For a bit more explanation on dialogue tags:

'said' and 'asked' are two magic words in that they vanish when you read them. (This effect is broken, by the way, if you use adverbs or try to join clauses, e.g., 'said softly' or 'said, swinging his sword'.) They're so simple and ubiquitous that they don't read as prose, they read as information. They are important because the focus the reader on the dialogue, not on the tags.

The problem with fancier dialogue tags is not that they're bad in and of themselves. It's that they're often redundant, and they call attention to themselves, which makes the redundancy all the more obvious. Here's the rule of thumb: A dialogue tag should only add information not available through context.*

quote:

"Are we ready?" I asked.
"Yes," he replied.

I don't need 'replied', because there's nothing else this could be other than a reply.

quote:

Romeo embraced Juliet, pressing his lips against her neck.
"I love you, my dear," he cooed.

I don't need 'cooed', because I would expect that to be spoken that way anyway.

quote:

"How are you feeling, honey?" Mae's mom asked.
Mae smiled. "I'm fine," she lied.

I do need 'lied', because without it, that line means something different.

quote:

Andrew grimaced. "I'm going to need more time on the project."
"That's fine," his boss sighed.

I do need 'sighed', because if his boss had said it, it would have conveyed a different meaning. Compare this to, say, ""I'm exhausted," he sighed", where the same tag doesn't add as much information. I can expect someone exhausted to be sighing.

*Yes, technically 'asked' adds information available through context (since it usually follows a question) but to a lot of readers, 'said' following a question reads strangely and 'asked' shares the same vanishing ability as 'said'.

Djeser fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Mar 6, 2017

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 06:09

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Writing is first and foremost a communication of ideas from the author to the reader, and one of the most persistent problems amateur writers have is prose getting in the way of their ideas. This applies across all genres and styles. Effectively conveying ideas is difficult. A lot of the advice people give (especially in this thread, or in places like Thunderdome) is meant to develop the writer's ability to effectively convey their ideas. There's nothing inherently wrong with a stylistic choice, but a super common mistake amateur writers make is focusing on their stylistic choices to the detriment of conveying their ideas.

This is something I did for a while when I started out writing. I was so concerned with these weird flourishes I could do (intercut paragraphs with no punctuation! write like a fake textbook! do it all in a transcript style!) that I was spending more time on the style of my writing as opposed to the content of it. Now, style is important. But it's not more important than content, and that also applies across genres. Something plain and meaningful is better than a flashy nothing. I'm not pulling this out of nowhere or reading it off my Code of Hammurwritebi, by the way. This comes from having spent like eighteen weeks judging amateur fiction written by goons.

Prose style is an important part of writing, but it's something you discover as you build your skills, it's not the first thing to ever work on. It'd be like trying to learn a drawing style first, before you have a solid grasp on form or texture or anatomy.

I can sympathize a lot with showbiz_liz cause there's a lot of weird ways writing gets taught between high school classes that focus just on essays, electives meant to broaden your vocabulary, and college programs run by professors with grudges so old the grudges themselves have tenure.

Djeser fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Mar 9, 2017

# ¿ Mar 9, 2017 20:11

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

an embarrassment of trolls

# ¿ Mar 10, 2017 02:54

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Ironic Twist posted:

Can everyone share their own strategies for writing dialogue? Besides stalking/wiretapping

For me writing a person's dialogue is a bit like playing badminton but you can't see the other player, only the birdie. Each person's line is based off their thoughts and what the other person's said, so it comes out as a back and forth flow. Each person has the ideas in their head that they're trying to convey, and each line is taking what the person said before and wrapping that back around to their ideas.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2017 02:36

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Chairchucker posted:

Here's some fiction: sebmojo is a good writer

present tense is a flashy, distracting fad in fiction
:goonsay:

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 01:54

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

you will to have ought been being regretted having said that

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 02:09

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

anime was right posted:

how about this, how do people feel about information density? is it cool to thrust people into buzzword city so long as it makes sense as you continue to read? do you think its better to introduce elements slowly at the cost of lengthening your pace?

As long as the reader is never in the dark about something relevant to the plot, then it's fine. You can look at something like His Dark Materials or the Abhorsen trilogy, where they've got a lot of thick worldbuilding, but it's all presented at a rate at which by the time something becomes relevant to the plot, the reader understands it. I actually personally like the effect that a flood of information can give you (when done right) but that's because I'm generally a fan of hyperreality in fiction and media. See: the avatar someone gave me because I loving love the Speed Racer movie.

I think it probably varies too when you're talking about short stories versus longer works. I've seen a lot more in novels asides where they'll go and kind of flood you with information and then later on tease bits of it out that had more meaning, where in a shorter story most of what you're going to be accomplishing with a flood of information like that is creating a sense/image of something more than setting up future plot points.

Probably the easiest way to dump information in without slowing down pace too much is to put the reader in the viewpoint of someone who's competent and let the internal monologue lead an explanation of the practical aspects. I remember in The Gods Themselves there's a part that's like a huge exploration of a tri-gendered alien society and Asimov basically explains it through the perspective of the viewpoint characters going through their lives.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 07:20

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

that was actually a joke, i really liked the present tense in Angelmaker and it never bothered me, even during the part where the girl had sex on a bed bolted to train tracks so she could get train orgasms

# ¿ Mar 21, 2017 05:32

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Generally in prose I'd spell everything out, including numbers unless they're unwieldy to write in prose. State Street, and fifty-five, but 1849. The only time I wouldn't do that is if you're quoting a piece of written text that did use the abbreviation.

# ¿ May 8, 2017 00:03

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

The west coast has a bunch of features that all contribute to the addition of an article in front of highway numbers. Since the states are much larger than the east coast, a highway is much less likely to change number, so it makes sense to refer to 'the X' as a highway instead of 'well it's 218 in new york and that becomes 33-west in connecticut and the Palisades Parkway if you go toward new jersey'. (There's also much less likely to be multiple routes with the same name.) Plus, since the numbering system starts in the south west and counts up, it means the west coast gets a lot of simpler numbers. If you've got I-5 you might start calling it The 5, but if you've got I-96 it's a bit harder to make the jump to articles.

this has nothing to do with fiction but a lot to do with roads :pseudo:

# ¿ May 12, 2017 02:41

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

self-pubbing your erotica counts as getting published right

# ¿ May 12, 2017 06:38

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Any character you write is going to have a bit of your own narrative voice to them, because you can't get entirely outside of your head when you write.

If you're having trouble distinguishing them from your normal narrative voice though, maybe try coming up with a couple mental rules for how they sound different? You'll want them to tie back into some aspect of your character so they're not just doing it to sound different. It could be anything from a simple preference for vocabulary or forms of speech to more complex personality traits. I recently read a novel where all the characters had a certain energetic wordiness to them because that was how the author wrote, but each character did have their own mannerisms within that--like a lawyer who would always be outwardly courteous but also very presumptive, so when he talked to other people he'd start genially telling them what he thought was in their best interest to do.

So I guess the real question you should answer for yourself is what actually is your character's voice? Like, if they want something from someone, how would they ask for it? If they're trying to convince someone, how would they do it? How would they describe themselves? How would they want to come off to other people?

# ¿ May 23, 2017 18:33

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Wheat Loaf posted:

Hope that this is an appropriate place to ask a question: can anyone explain the difference between an homage and a pastiche to me?

Wikipedia, Pastiche posted:

A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates.[...] Pastiche can also be a cinematic device whereby filmmakers pay homage to another filmmaker's style

Wikipedia, Homage posted:

Homage (/ˈhɒmᵻdʒ/ or /ˈɒmᵻdʒ/) is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic. [...] See Also: Pastiche

Homage is intentionally dedicating a piece of art to something, pastiche is an imitation of something in celebration of it. You can create an homage through pastiche. Homage is creator intention, pastiche is creative device.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 22:39

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Sociopastry posted:

Soue Ie gwt Scrivner forr writng nd sso ftar Ie louve itt, bott I'va gotue aa bint gof aa probalem- itt keps underlnng evry snigle wordde ats mispelted, noo mattre waht. Gogole's naot helpng mee.

Sorry, dunno how to help you

# ¿ Jun 8, 2017 17:18

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Sociopastry posted:

what're the main differences between a western and a southern gothic? besides the obvious more rooty tooty point n shooty of a western, I mean. I'm writing what I'd tenatively call a southern gothic, but other people are calling it a supernatural western. Not sure what the gently caress to label it. I feel like I should have some kinda label on it, for when I finally get the drat thing done so I can pitch it to the right publishers

The broad themes of a western are more about Humanity and The Wilderness, whether that's literal wilderness or metaphorical wilderness where the law doesn't reach. Southern Gothic is about aging authority and elegant facades. In a western, authority comes from practical power, while in a southern gothic, authority comes from tradition.

The way it divides up in my mind is that a western is new/untamed/wild while southern gothic is old/rotting/ornate.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2017 21:05

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

FunkyAl posted:

Sheriff Niles - A Cheers/Frasier Expanded Universe Fanfiction

Niles sat on the precipice of the cliff and let out a long, satisfied breath. good intro, there is a lot of potential energy here, both metaphorically and literally. The sun was setting over the little old west town he had come to call home, drenching the sand in red and orange, interrupted by the cool winding shadows of rock formations both near and in the distance. whoops then you got boring. this image works for me like zero percent and 'interrupted' doesn't work the way you want it to. it scans like they're interrupting the setting sun, not the colors. It had been a big change, leaving his old life as a psychiatrist and coming here in his brother Frasier�s time machine, this is a very awkward way of getting across information, but at least you're not trying to be coy about it. also isn't fanfic usually written for fans of the work? why are you explaning the relationship between Niles and Frasier? it just slows it down but he had never been happier. gently caress wait, you mean the cliff is just for a pretty scene? this cliff better be loving important if you lead with it

He would never forget the day it had arrived. He was at Frasier�s apartment, watching TV with his Father like his catholic priest? if not why'd you capitalize it and Daphne. Daphne. He still thought about her, but every time he did he was ~~slightly~~ ashamed at how long it had been. Ever since he had fallen in love with that whore from the saloon and had sex for the first time it had changed this is bad grammar. ever since he'd fallen in love what had changed him? you mean falling in love changed him? ever since falling in love falling in love had changed him? write your sentences in a normal human manner please his life immeasurably. Frasier had been embroiled in a conflict with a caller on his radio show, the way you put this next to the saloon bit makes it sound like this is the event that made him fall in love with Ms. Saloon but it's not someone who had called Frasier a �big doody,� and ~~of course~~ no had shanghaied his closest family members into helping him resolve the issue. In a moment when the gently caress is this moment happening. 'had been embroiled' is ongoing action. you mean this is happening at the apartment? maybe try showing some of what's going on instead of the most bland telling that had seemed to last an instant and stech lol. also boring metaphor into forever, the room was filled with a brilliant flash of light, every color of the spectrum so, white light. that's what light that's every color of the spectrum is and yet its very own. ??????? The light vanished and in its stead was a mahogany box the size of a closet that was puffing odorless purple smoke out of an exhaust pipe on its side.

Out came Frasier, drenched in blood. cool something happened i guess Frasier, ~~of course~~, seriously gently caress you was still where he was moments ago, i don't know where that was since you didn't say frasier was there you just said he was involved in radio show shenanigans mouth now agape, staring at this new Frasier wildly. all i imagine when i read this is the emoji for surprise But new was the wrong word to describe him, not what you use a comma for the Frasier that stepped out of this box was grey and overgrown, like...with plants? or is his hair overgrown? i figured grey meant complexion but you may have forgotten the difference between person and hair his skin wrinkled and spotted, his red hangdog i literally had never heard this word and couldn't figure it out from context so i guess i'm the idiot here eyes drinking in the scene. He seemed distant from this place now, so Darkest Frasier wasn't distant before? estranged from his idiom. lol gently caress you He sniffed the air and approached his doppelg�nger. He whispered something in his ear, and then turned to the rest of the room and announced that the time machine he had come into easy joke: lol gross. seriously though this phrasing blows more than frasier penis joke ok joke over now belonged to them, to do with whatever they saw fit. He then sloped so he didn't move just kind of leaned over? toward the door, patted Eddie on the head, and the elevator inside of Frasier's apartment?? rode down the elevator, never to be seen by anyone in that room again.
i think you forgot to press enter here
It started small at first. frasier penis joke callback After the initial shock wore off, Frasier took the opportunity to take his family on a tour through his glory days at Cheers. The young barflies took an interest, and a couple of them ended up joining them on their further adventures through history. These were wonderful days to be sure, seeing King Lear performed by Shakespeare�s company, �running into� Sigmund Freud and had a wonderful, mind expanding discussion, standing on the stony and firey surface of an earth still millions of years from supporting life. either make this list shorter or more interesting

Time Travel what's with the capitals dude quickly wears on a person, however, and after a (relative) year of timehopping Niles and a few of the others had expressed a desire to settle down for a while. Niles had won a deed to a small town to the whole town? i guess land barons were a thing but who the hell was he gambling with in the old west also this sounds like someone in the present just had a deed to Small Town, Wild West, Only Valid 1850-1900 in a poker game some months back, and thought it a good opportunity to create a community for this group of people who no longer seemed to fit anywhere else in space and time. wow yeah after doing three touristy things in a time machine you really feel like settling down in the old west???? He became the sheriff, a role he was surprised at how easily he fit into. dear god what did you do to the word order here. His father would have been proud, had he not gone insane shortly after seeing the two Frasiers in the same room at the same time. might have mentioned this when frasier was taking "his family" back a few seasons to Cheers

He had put Carla in charge of the saloon, a place not unlike Cheers, and with much of the same clientele, with the important distinction that the clientele was made up of �time variants� of the regulars. oh sweet time shenanigans time for something interesting to...well not happen but maybe to exist within this story Carla herself was 80 years old and completely bald. Woody was still in his prime, lifting casks and crates and ranching in his off time. oh nvm Four Norms from four times each sat at their own corner of the bar. reasonably amusing Cliff had died during one of their adventures, but they had uploaded a copy of his consciousness to a wisecracking computer console that stood in the corner and answered any trivia question you could ask it, much to the chagrin of Carla, who had only ever really liked Cliff for his sexual availability whenever those times came that her husband would show up, impregnate and abandon her. this sentence is like four separate thoughts you sausaged together Sam �Mayday� now that i've read this far i can say the audience is clearly frasier fans because that's the only sort of people who could handle this level of boredom so why are you re-explaining things Malone had also died, of an advanced future STD that made his body collapse in on itself and turned his bones into chalk. vaguely amusing though 'advanced future STD' is a really flat phrase Coach was alive and puttering around though, so that was nice. aw hey thats nice real nice
forgot another enter here, that's cool i got you
Some of their friends from Seattle had come along as well, although Niles did not like to think about that too much. Roz was of course doing fine, taking the opportunity to become the promiscuous gunslinging outlaw she seemed to have been destined to become. what a horrendous verb prhase But Gil Chesterton did not make it through the winter, having refused to adjust his lifestyle to the hard conditions of the desert, and he who, gil? had had to hang �Bulldog� Briscoe for the unspeakable time crimes he had committed, crimes so severe they cannot bear repeating here. this isn't an epistolary story this is niles's loving boring memory while he looks at a boring desert scene why is he redacting it Niles wondered often if they would ever know the extent of the damage he had caused, at one time theorizing who, bulldog? that the root of man�s evil could be traced back to the Bulldog. vaguely amusing but undercut by the fact that you dropped the phrase 'time crimes' and didn't even elaborate on what a single time crime could be He had not seen Frasier in over ten years. same tbh

It would soon be too dark to safely climb down the mountain and back into town, so Niles stood up, brushed off his pants, and began his walk. Just then, time froze and Niles� eyes were filled with a brilliant symphony of light that he knew could only mean one thing. He approached the smoking time machine. A mustached man who was just around fifty years out of step with time what in god's gently caress does that mean stepped out. Niles felt that he had seen this man somewhere before, that he knew him in some way.

�Dr. Crane?� the man asked.

�Yes, that�s me,� Niles replied.

H.G. Wells shot Niles in the stomach and went back into his time machine. lol

---

H.G. Wells knew this day had been coming for years. That was nothing new, he had known practically everything that was going to happen for longer than he hadn�t, but today felt different. He felt a sick feeling in his gut, but there was a relief to it. He would no longer be burdened by the weight of all time and soon he would be able to freely rejoin it. He checked his watch. Any second now. oh wait redact that lol you kept going after the punchline

The room filled with light and a haggard, hardened man with wild grey hair strode out of the time machine. Wells squinted. The long forgotten sensation of uncertainty began to creep up through his spine. This couldn�t be it, this couldn�t be the man who was supposed to be here. He had to be sure. who had to be sure of what? why what?

�Dr. Crane?� H.G. Wells asked.

�Yes, that�s me,� Frasier replied.

Frasier shot H.G. Wells in the stomach, crossed the room to the original time machine, and disappeared.

you almost had a shaggy dog story that ended on a lovely-funny joke but you blew it. also most of it wasn't engaging to read even in the sense of bad fanfiction. i prescribe two uli harbussens and one shakespearehemmingway

# ¿ Jun 16, 2017 04:40

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

why did you need to use a japanese word for the thing

# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 02:42

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

"It's soft sci-fi focusing on plot and theme" or something. I don't know what your book actually focuses on or to be honest what it is that sci-fi readers want aside from a big ships that are guns in space

# ¿ Jul 21, 2017 07:21

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

20000-names.com is good too

# ¿ Jul 23, 2017 00:20

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

i call him branderson sanderson because anything else is like a melody that doesn't resolve

# ¿ Aug 6, 2017 14:03

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

That's a good reason why to ask in the self-pub thread!

# ¿ Aug 14, 2017 14:14

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Do it anyway, now it's postmodern

# ¿ Aug 28, 2017 19:39

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

yes

# ¿ Aug 29, 2017 21:35

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

good question btw

# ¿ Aug 29, 2017 21:36

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

fridge corn posted:

im only asking cuz ive got an idea for a novel i want to write but when i think about the premise of it and how i want to write it, it sounds very much like a kind of book that some other authors ive read would have written. authors with very distinctive styles.

how do you avoid the trap of mimicry or pastiche?

i know this is ultimately a dumb question cuz i haven't actually written anything yet and i won't get a chance to start writing anything for a while due to life and not even owning a computer but wondering if anyone else struggles with anything similar?

It's not something to really worry about until you start writing it. Two different authors can have the same outline and same goals in mind, and end up with two completely different stories, simply because they're different people drawing from different experiences when they write. If you're worried about unconsciously mimicking the prose style of the writers you're drawing inspiration from, that's something to look for in editing, where you'd be able to pull out and revise anything you feel is too close to mimicry.

Right now, this sounds like the sort of excuse your brain will make to keep you from writing, along the lines of 'but I can't write it until it's perfect'. Every author, whether consciously or unconsciously, is using elements of style picked up from other people.

Are you worried that your personal voice as a writer isn't strong enough? That's something I'm often concerned about, because my voice varies a lot between the pieces I write, but again, that's something you can sort out in editing. One of the major things I end up doing when I edit is trying to work everything back into a cohesive style.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2017 23:56

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Yeah, the thing you're describing is just like good writing, which isn't something that's specific to literary fiction. There is a lot of poorly written genre fiction, but there is plenty of well-written genre fiction too.

Anyway my advice there is still the same, style is something to worry about once you're going back and editing your drafts so don't let it be the thing that stops you from putting words on the page.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2017 19:50

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

MockingQuantum posted:

I'm finally over the bump of writing regularly, which is great. I no longer feel like the barrier is actually getting words to paper. But writing regularly has kind of left me realizing how lovely my writing is quality wise. That's fine, because I feel like a lot of mechanical stuff I can learn to improve, but I feel like I have a deeper problem where my ideas and story concepts don't really go anywhere. They're all pretty half baked and lack much in the way of impact or arc or anything. I alway run with an idea that's intrigues me, then when it doesn't really take off, I tell myself "I'll fix it in the edit" but it doesn't get appreciably better, really.

Is this just business as normal for a new writer? Do I just power through and trust that I'll start coming up with better concepts? Is there a way to deliberately improve?

I know I'm too in my head, and that's contributing. I was super disappointed with how my TD entry turned out and it's got me second guessing recent stuff I've written.

Part of learning to write is learning how to take an idea full circle and make it satisfying to read. So no, you're not struggling with something other people haven't struggled with.

A lot of what you're talking about could be down to planning. I know sometimes I'll have an idea for a story in my head, and I know a couple of the beats I want it to hit, and the general shape of it, but I just can't work it into a satisfying shape on the page. Usually that's because I'm thinking about a vague mood I want the story to have, instead of focusing on the character/theme/conflict.

Working on stories that have relatively simple plots can help you wrap your head around the mechanics of making something that wraps up to satisfying whole. That's why I'm pretty fond of pulp stories, especially for writers still developing their skill. The plot is simple, but you get practice taking a story through a complete arc and concluding it.

Alternatively, you could try spelling out for yourself what you want the structure of your story to be in the beginning. Not every story needs to have the standard "motivation, conflict, resolution" structure, but it's much easier than trying to get experimental with your narrative when you're still trying to figure out how to write effectively. Start with a motivation: what does the character want to have, do, or achieve? Then the conflict: what's in their way? Finally, the resolution: what do they do to overcome that conflict, and is it enough? It's a straightforward structure, but it works if you want to write a story with a satisfying ending.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2017 10:11

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

brag to your writing group about becoming a meme on the something's awful creative commons forum

# ¿ Sep 21, 2017 18:51

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Hungry posted:

I know that during editing I can/should shed 10-15% of each scene

Is this based on personal experience or what? I'm asking because for me, my stories tend to grow when I edit them, so if this is a rule you're trying to apply to your own writing, it may just be that for this story (or just for this scene) that the rule doesn't work.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2017 17:57

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Simbyotic posted:

Can someone explain to me why I lost this last TD? Apart from some awful punctuation issues, and a weird phrases or two - I shouldn't have posted it that early, I've learned my lesson, - I actually quite like my little story.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3803906&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=90#post477466445

A critique for you

Simbyotic posted:

The Amazing Victor Steele Amusement Park

You don�t expect, when you�re young and running away from home, walking down a road through a silent forest in the middle of nowhere, that you would find the most beautiful and enticing and fun I know the word count is small, but this would have been a good place to add something concrete. Show me why it looks beautiful etc etc. amusement park you�ve ever seen in your life. The premise of this opening line is fine, but it loses its oomph when it's one long sentence with two independent clauses and a bunch of dependent clauses. You can get a good striking opening by juxtaposing two contrary things--forest in the middle of nowhere, enticing amusement park--but this one meanders to the point that once I got to the end of the sentence, I wasn't sure where it had started.

John Little, or Little John like his friends call him, certainly didn�t. Transitioning between paragraphs by reflecting earlier phrasing is good, but at this point there's so many phrases between this and the original 'you don't expect' that I had to glance back and remind myself what he didn't do. Not that he�d seen many amusement parks before, this might be his first even. Why is he unsure about this? Still, his surprise discovery excited him like no other could. Why? He�d been just about to give up and head back into town, night having already started to settle, and him still not having come up with a plan to finally break free from his parent�s stranglehold. Whooph that's some awkward phrasing. Again you've got the problem of a bunch of phrases glommed onto your sentence. And what is 'his parent's stranglehold'? Does he live in a broom cupboard? Is he a lovely teen upset that his parents make him go to school? I'm asking because these are the sorts of things that will get me to sympathize with him. Without that, I just know he's running away from home.

Good thing too he�d had no plan though, Get rid of 'too' and 'though'. I've noticed a few other conversational fluff words that add neither meaning nor atmosphere, like 'certainly' and so on. for now he could bathe himself in the bright blue red and white light that announced the park. This sounds to me like he's standing outside the park, just staring up at the lights and grinning. The Amazing Victor Steele Amusement Park, the sign read, Where the Magic Never Ends!

It didn�t seem that you had to pay for a ticket to get in, What made him think that? and Little John didn�t bother to try to find if that was true. How would he have done that? The park was full, he saw now that he was inside. People were walking around, going from one amusement to the next, What kind of amusements? their merriness in full display. He could hear, over all the ruckus, loose strands from the stories and adventures that they shared.

�It goes up until you�re almost touching the sky, and when you least expect it plunges straight down full force! It was going so fast I thought I was gonna puke!�

�Then she pointed her wand at the hat and when she lifted the hat the bunny wasn�t there anymore. I don�t know how she did it, but then she dropped the hat to the ground, made a big show of it too, like she�d tripped but not really, and then she picked up the hat from the ground and there was the rabbit!� Why are these people so impressed by basic carnival rides?

Little John can�t quite choose what his first amusement will be. Whoops, you switched tenses, not great. There�s so many, and they all promise tons of excitement. So far I know of two, the ride that takes you up and down, and a magic show. Then, near to the end of the park, he spies the one he hadn�t known he was looking for all along. Step Inside, If You Dare! The letter sign announced. So what is it?

He�s always liked those old B-horror movies, with the fake blood and all. His father made his best not to let him watch them. I've never heard the phrase 'made his best' before. He thought they were unbecoming for a child, said those movies were all depravity and wickedness. But Little John was smart. His parents couldn�t know what movies he watched at the library. Until they did, and he was forbidden from returning to the library. Still, they weren�t here now were they? Yeah, I get the idea that he's not doing what his parents want. But you still haven't actually said what the amusement is or even what it looks like, you just mentioned a sign outside.

At the entrance there stood a man in a suave three-piece suit, a wide grin and bone white teeth.

�Ah, young man, I see that you dare enter into my house of horrors! Be warned, never before have you, or will you, experience such fear as the one you�ll feel 'such fear as the one you'll feel' reads oddly to me, IMO should be 'such fear as what you'll feel' once you�re inside. Vampires will battle for a chance to dip their fangs into your neck. Mild lol at Vampire Bachelor Werewolves will try to show you their sharp claws Mild lol at werewolves showing off their manicures and rip your guts out from inside of you. Pretty ladies will entice you with their looks, and only too late will you be able to tell they aren�t ladies at all, but horrifying monsters of the night. Well now that you told me I'll be able to avoid the pretty ladies, idiot! Are you sure you�re up for the challenge?�

It was like the man had read his mind and created this one amusement for him alone. This would have been moderately more impressive if John's love of horror movies had been established earlier than 'in the paragraph right before'. Of course Little John was ready. You might even say his whole life was leading up to this moment. Sure, he definitely doesn't have any other character traits. He nodded.

�Then go get your parents and step right inside.�

Color blanched from Little John�s face. �My parents?�

�Well, of course. Is this your first time in our humble amusement park? Don�t you know the rules?� The man�s question was met with silence. �You can�t go into the amusements if you�re not accompanied by at least one of your parent�s.� Pedantic grammar joke: at least one of his parent's what? For real though watch your apostrophes.

�But� my parents aren�t here. I came alone.�

�Well, you shouldn�t have. Young man like yourself can�t just walk around in the night without his parents. What if something happens to you? Park policy. I can�t let you in. I�m sorry.�

His parents found him walking aimlessly down the road, his face struck in tears. They beat him mercilessly to ensure he would never again run away from home. Lol okay now I guess I know why he was running away. The Amazing Victor Steele Amusement Park hasn�t been seen around that area since. Dun dun...dun?

Coming to the end of this, my big question is: what's the point? That's a rhetorical question, don't answer it. But here's your plot: Boy wants to run away from home. Finds amusement park in forest, wants to go on a ride. Can't because his parents aren't there. Leaves and gets beaten by his parents. When I say 'what's the point' I'm not saying that the story's got to have Something to Say or a moral or whatever. I'm asking why is this worth telling? What am I supposed to get out of this? A story's point could be rollicking action or an intriguing character or an shred of raw emotion, but I'm not getting any of that from this. It feels almost like a morality tale with no moral at the end besides, I dunno, 'don't run away?' If this was supposed to be tragic, there's no catharsis, no chance for a release. If it's supposed to be dramatic, the ending comes out of left field and stops any sort of dramatic tension. If it's supposed to be funny, I don't get the joke.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2017 20:06

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

There's no rule about where to put your attribution for a sentence. You can do it before, after, in the middle of the sentence, or even not at all if you're feeling cheeky and you think the reader can follow along anyway.

It's worth noting that I've also seen books where they broke the 'new paragraph for every speaker' rule. (Not that they were great books to begin with.) Still, any rule in writing is one that you can break if breaking it improves what you're trying to convey.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2017 16:08

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

I managed 30k in one week once but my job is like eight hours of actual work per week.

It's not a high-paying job, I'm just underemployed.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2017 20:40

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

The question for getting traffic is where are people coming from? Is your story being posted to a community where people would go and read it? Is it somewhere that you could search and find it? Do you have an online following somewhere?

If you're starting from scratch and not really posting it anywhere, it'll take a while to gain traction. Like, possibly years of consistent work. That's how it goes with a ton of projects, whether writing or videos or podcasts or what. You don't have to promote yourself (I never really have) but it's a slow thing unless you're doing some kind of networking.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 23:09

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Tips for editing:

Read it out loud. If it doesn't sound good coming out of your mouth, fix it.
Look out for sentences that should be split apart. If two parts of your sentence are unrelated, they ought to be two separate sentences.
Vary sentence structure. Make sure you're not doing "subject verbed, verbing an object" over and over again.
Look for things that don't fit your voice. Would a medieval monk use "prank"? Would a modern punk use "perhaps"?
Change the font. This is strangely helpful for seeing your words in a new light. I usually write in whatever the default is (Arial or Calibri) and then change it to something more 'bookish' (Garamond, Georgia, etc).
Rewrite if you have to. Sometimes, I'll just take a paragraph and write a new version of it right there. Sometimes I'll do that for most of the story.
If something feels boring either make it interesting or cut it out.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2018 18:02

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

I frequently use beta readers for my stories (not for TD, I don't need the cabal leaving any crow heads in my bed) and I never bother giving them the rough draft, because by the time my second draft rolls around, everything will have changed so much that the feedback I got would essentially be worthless.

If it makes more sense, think of it this way: you don't want to make your beta readers read something before you yourself have read it. And when you're writing it, you're not reading it. So make sure that you give anything you're working on one whole reading yourself before you pass it off to someone else.

(Novels are a bit of a different beast because of their size, but still, you'll probably catch so many things to fix, add and remove on an edit pass on your own that it's not worth getting beta readers until then.)

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 13:36

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 14:22

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Dr. Kloctopussy posted:

Eh, we've all been there at some point...

I too find that my readers are less sympathetic after I puke on their dick.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2018 23:37

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