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tbh you'd be lucky if you got screamed at and insulted these days #wheresthekayfabe
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Jan 29, 2018 04:53
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 16:39 |
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The benefit of first-person writing is that everything is told from the narrator's perspective. Everything is already words in the narrator's mouth, so you don't have to establish that a thought presented on the page is something the narrator thought. Because the reader knows that everything is coming from your narrator, you don't have to say that he's thinking something, or even that he decides something:quote:Today's work wasn't particularly messy, so I don't bother sweeping the dirt floor. Even in third person perspective, you can use thoughts from a character's internal monologue. I've read plenty of stories that will have the viewpoint character's thoughts pop up in the third-person narration.
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Jan 30, 2018 16:49
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quote:I was already in a tremendously foul mood when the arrow pierced my horrible pointy hat and pinned it to the high-backed chair. The wordiness is tripping up your tone here. "horrible pointy hat" and "high-backed chair" each have about one adjective too many. "I said that as I was reflexively hurling myself to the floor..." is both awkward and uses the progressive tense (was hurling) when the regular past tense (hurled) would be more immediate. "Planks" didn't read as the floor to me at first, I just imagined her there with some excess lumber or something. Are there high-class peasants? If not, "low-class peasant" is redundant. The line about the mother's illness is so meandering it took me four tries to actually get what it was saying (she faced death with dignity). "Panicked screaming" is redundant and you've got a lot of adjectives there too ("panicked screaming", "trampling boots", "rough shouting", "brief distraction".)
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Jan 30, 2018 17:04
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:- High-backed is one word, so it can't be one adjective too many. I'm trying to give the reader a sense of a chair which has a substantially taller back than what they would normally think of when they hear the word "chair". The purpose of the description is to help them get a sense of how the arrow is pinning the hat. One adjective can be one too many, especially when every other noun in the sentence is preceded by an adjective. The context of 'planks' is clear, but the word itself is strange because I don't often think of floor as planks unless I'm engaging in construction or trying to reveal the Telltale Heart or something.
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Jan 30, 2018 22:03
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The character descriptions I remember from the Abhorsen books were either things that were a part of someone's character as well (Lirael is pale and dark-haired, unlike the rest of the tanned, light-haired Clayr, which is one of the reasons why she feels distant and alienated from them) or that added flavor and specificity to a plot beat (describing what clothes someone packs for a trip, or the outfit someone gets when they assume a new role.)
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Feb 2, 2018 08:22
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in my experience it's writing with your dick that brings in the big bucks it's just hard to keep it up long enough when you're mashing it onto the keyboard
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Feb 15, 2018 05:41
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MockingQuantum posted:This reminds me, I really need to up my grammar game. I don't think I make any really egregious mistakes, but I occasionally agonize over verb tenses when I write in past tense. (drat "had", what the hell are you doing in like every fourth sentence for some reason) Tenses in English aren't too complicated once you break them down. Or maybe that's just how I feel having learned foreign languages with more complicated tenses. You've got three simple tenses: present, past, and future. (I surf, I surfed, I will surf.) Then you have two kinds of modifiers you can add to your tense: perfect (has surfed) and progressive (is surfing). Verbs in a perfect tense talk about completed actions. Present perfect says that the action is currently complete. "I have surfed before." Past perfect says that at a point in the past, the action was already complete. "I had surfed four competitions by the time I was eighteen." Future perfect says that by a future time, the action will be complete. "I will have surfed in every state once I find where Idaho hides its beaches." If you notice, perfect tenses are like an extra level of past tense. If you have surfed (present perfect), then it's also true that you surfed (simple past). This is handy if you're already writing in the past tense and need a way to refer to actions further in past. Verbs in a progressive tense talk about ongoing or continuous actions. Present progressive says that the action is currently ongoing. "I am surfing, can I call you back?" Past progressive says that in the past, the action was ongoing. "I was surfing, minding my own business, when the lion attacked." Future progressive says that at a future time, the action will be ongoing. "By the time you read this letter, I will be surfing somewhere you will never find me." Progressive tenses turn an action into a state that you can either have going on in the background, or interrupt with something more immediate. Verbs can also be in a perfect progressive tense, which is just the two put together. "I have been surfing," "I had been surfing," and "I will have been surfing." They refer to continuous actions begun at an earlier point, like "I finished the conference call; no one knew I had been surfing the whole time." or "I have been waiting here for two hours, where were you?" Perfect progressive emphasizes the ongoing nature of the action. Compare past "I surfed for four hours" with past perfect progressive "I had been surfing for four hours."
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Mar 29, 2018 20:54
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readingatwork posted:but can I write my novel in future tense!? I read an entire biography that was basically written in conditional tense because the author wanted to make it clear when she was speculating versus providing actual fact
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Mar 29, 2018 21:33
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I've read a story told in non-linear epistolary format with paragraphs from two sources interleaved so it alternated between an article about the protagonist's birth and the protagonist's death. And that was in a sci-fi book, which everyone knows means it was genre garbage for babies.
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Apr 10, 2018 01:03
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magnificent7 posted:House of Leaves or S? Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente. (That's just the first chapter.)
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Apr 10, 2018 01:56
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Yeah imo from a lit crit perspective I can see the argument the guy seems to be making, but from the perspective of someone offering advice to writers, "writing isn't valuable unless it's Meaningful and your Opus" seems like not the best perspective have, especially if you're someone who's still learning as a writer and can benefit from practice.
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Apr 12, 2018 00:16
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Safety Biscuits posted:This isn't the argument at all; have you read it? He draws a distinction between "good" writing, which is clear and competent and "talented" writing, which gives the reader a compelling reason to read it specifically rather than the next book on the shelf. Yes, he does stress that talented writing is difficult. But that's obvious to the ambitious writers it's aimed at. And he talks a lot about the importance of not getting discouraged, too. No, I haven't read a random book someone else mentioned in the thread, so I'm not surprised that my interpretation of it based on two forum posts was inaccurate
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Apr 12, 2018 15:00
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Critical reading is a good skill to develop, and you can work on it by pausing whenever you find a passage that hits you particularly hard, or even just a sentence, and then reading it over carefully and trying to test out why it works. What word choice did they use? How is the sentence structured? Do you see any rhymes or repeated sounds? Can you feel some kind of rhythm to the sentence? Did they use an odd or clever way of describing something? This works more broadly, too. If you're enjoying a character, stop and try to think about why this character is appealing. You might not be great at it at first, and that's fine--but the more you stop and consider, the more you'll build up a bank of examples to draw from in your head, and you'll start making connections and getting a better sense of how the authors you're reading have created effective prose.
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Jun 17, 2018 02:41
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The Sean posted:I don't know if it will work for everyone, but give solitary museum meditation a try. This sort of thing is helpful for a lot of creative blocks. I've had it work in other situations too--going to a Renaissance fair, going to a concert, going hiking. I think the big thing it does is break up your patterns of thought. When you're at home or at work or whatever, you've got patterns of thought you follow like routines. There's a way you check the internet, a way you play video games, and a way you sit down to write. It's harder for new ideas to get in, because you're following the patterns. But when you go out and do something new, when your brain has to take in these entirely new ideas, you'll find it's easier to break out of those patterns and come up with new ideas.
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Jul 12, 2018 18:40
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Make sure you're not ignoring characterization just because they're loving right now. Sure, you can have any two idiots having sex, but what makes these two idiots having sex special? Likewise, don't tell the audience something they already know; make sure each scene is interesting in some new way. Using a setpiece, like an interesting setting, can go a long way especially if it's part of the scene and not just window dressing. Also, don't be afraid to let your characters slip up or make mistakes. It helps to humanize someone when they're not just a glowing immortal sphere of light that's constantly having simultaneous mind-blowing orgasms with their partner. I think the advice about emotions Dr. K had is good, even if you're not going for a full-on romance. Give the scene an emotional arc, and you'll find it flows better, because you're giving the physical actions context and you're letting their emotions and reactions reflect on how they're acting. (To be honest, most of this is just 'how to write a good action scene'.)
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Jul 17, 2018 04:54
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magnificent7 posted:Just like my struggle in dating, I'm having problems with length, it's just too much for the thunderdome. A lot of fitting a story into a short length comes down to picking a story that can be told in a short length. If I've got 1000 words, I probably don't have enough time to set up political intrigue or an ensemble cast. I'm going to want a story that's one scene long, or maybe two, if the scenes are short. The conflict is going to be pretty straightforward, and I won't have a lot of time to spend on worldbuilding. (A good rule of thumb is that you've got about enough space to explore one weird concept, if you're taking your story in that direction.) Start as close to the conflict as possible; in a TD-length story, you usually want your conflict present by the time you get to the second paragraph.
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Jul 25, 2018 00:02
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I can't outline because I can't properly envision story events until I actually write them out. I jump in with an idea of the beats I want to hit and work it all out in editing. It does mean a lot of rewriting, but oh well.
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Jul 31, 2018 21:49
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MockingQuantum posted:I suspect this is more how I lean, but I've struggled with losing steam around the halfway mark on past attempts at a book, and I feel like a lot of times it's due to not really knowing where the book is going. I figure the options are "start with an outline next time", "stop there and outline what you have so far to get a 1000-foot view", or "just knuckle down and write through the uncertainty" but I'm not sure which option is the right one, or even that it'd stay the same from project to project. My two options are usually go back and start from the beginning again or just plow straight on through and sort it all out in editing. In some ways, a bad rough draft is just a really wordy outline.
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Aug 1, 2018 18:10
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I write it all out as if it's a proper story, but sometimes I'll lay down prose that I know is complete garbage just so that I can move on, since I know I'll come back in editing and go "oh, that's complete garbage". I keep trying, since every so often something tumbles out that makes it into the final, but I try not to get too caught up when I can't get something to turn out right. Another thing I do is I often wind up redoing the last couple paragraphs when I start for the day, especially when I stopped previously because I had some kind of block or another.
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Aug 1, 2018 18:52
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Google Docs has a built-in commenting system. If you don't want to comment directly on her draft, make a copy and then comment on that.
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Aug 11, 2018 00:08
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I've written several stories with women protagonists where my readers have assumed they were guys. I'm not sure if this is because I suck at writing women, because the stories themselves were too coy about it, or because of normative gender assumptions on the part of my readers. I'd like to blame patriarchy for this but maybe the real patriarchy was inside me all along 
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Sep 29, 2018 18:10
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Terrorforge posted:I'm curious though, do you habitually write in the first person or something? Otherwise I would've thought the pronouns would give it away. Yeah, it mostly happens in first-person stories. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Is no one addressing your character by name? Is it that they only have a title, or a gender-neutral/unclear name? Why are you being "coy" about their gender? In the stories where I've had trouble with this, the protagonists don't get addressed by name. I'm not trying to be obtuse, it's just that their gender never comes up directly. When it's important to the story, I've tried to infer it through the way they interact with other people or through environmental detail, but sometimes readers don't pick up on the fact that they've got a corset and sun hat in the closet. Also, I mostly write short stories, so the level of detail I'm working with might be different than what you're imagining.
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Sep 29, 2018 19:57
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:If your character's gender is important to the story, but it remains unclear to the readers, you are not communicating with the readers properly. Perhaps stop merely inferring and go to explicitly putting it in the text, if only through your character being addressed by name. There's a lot of stories where that's not an easy option. Like, what if there's no dialogue? What if there aren't any other characters in the story? That's honestly one of the tricky parts of first-person narrative, especially if it's written like they're talking to the reader. How often do you explain to someone you're talking to that you have boobs?
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Sep 29, 2018 23:40
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she had deep, dark circles under her eyes, like a racoon ready to gently caress
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Oct 2, 2018 23:28
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I had to write a bio for the one time I got a short story published and it came out as the most awkward and dorky thing, but I have no accomplishments related to writing or anything so all I could say was like "I like mountains".
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Oct 11, 2018 01:41
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Pham Nuwen posted:Make sure to mention your ample breasts in your bio. I have no accomplishments regarding my breasts either.
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Oct 12, 2018 01:46
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"the least racist out of the american harry potter houses"
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Oct 19, 2018 19:27
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feedmyleg posted:"practise" 'Practise' is the correct British spelling for the verb "to practise". British English preserves the distinction between the verb "to practise" and the noun "the practice" while American English uses the "practice" spelling for both. English has many surprising ways of being dumb! 
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Oct 29, 2018 18:54
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feedmyleg posted:Oh geez. You mean oh geec in American English, or oh gees in British English.
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Oct 29, 2018 19:52
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 "take care of" is an entire verb phrase, not a verb and a preposition, and only dumb prescriptivists will tell you otherwise
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Oct 29, 2018 20:50
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Nae! posted:so to say 'to take good care of' is a split infinitive?????? split infinitives were only ever a problem because stuffy nerds had a Latin fetish and wanted English to be like Latin, and in Latin infinitives are one word, so it was literally impossible to split an infinitive. it's always been perfectly cromulent English to split infintives
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Oct 30, 2018 03:23
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Fruity20 posted:can you take a overdone idea and make it interesting? i've been using too many as of late. notably the 7 deadly sins as themes for a series of short stories. nope, once an idea is used it's gone forever. authors don't like to think about it but we reached Peak Ideas back around 200 CE and we've just been recycling everything ever since
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Nov 21, 2018 04:28
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Don't make it a metaphor, make it its own thing. That isn't to say you can't write about uploading digital consciousness as informed by the process of gender transition, but if uploading is literally just a cipher for transitioning, why aren't you just writing a story about transitioning? Perhaps more importantly, if your story is equating the two, that opens you up to a whole host of unfortunate implications. Draw parallels, sure; make a story that says "isn't it funny that we still struggle with self-determination". But make sure you're actually writing about uploading digital consciousness. Give it things that aren't just a metaphor for transitioning. Make it different, but relatable. In a similar vein, make sure your story has a point beyond "uploading is like transitioning, isn't that weird?" That's an easy trap to fall into when you're writing stories with A Point, and I've seen it even in published short stories, where people will be so focused on the 'clever' thing their story does that they forget to give the reader another reason to keep reading beyond "do you get it??"
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Nov 24, 2018 01:03
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I've read a (really good) history book that was almost completely written in conditional mood, because most of it was speculation and the author was determined not to make any declarative statements unless she had evidence for them.
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Dec 1, 2018 11:45
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Find a word that's close but different. "Splice" and "scion" would work well to capture the idea of some kind of sci-fi offshoot gene combination nonsense.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:38
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Are you writing it in the character's voice, or in a different voice? If the former, go with what they'd call them. If the latter, go by their name.
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Dec 13, 2018 06:24
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Screaming Idiot posted:If a character speaks phonetically most of the time, should I drop the apostrophes? I've seen a lot of people do it, and it looks wrong, but if I keep the apostrophes it looks like ev'ry uvva word's got dem apostr'fees innit. If it looks bad, that might be your brain going "hey dummy don't do this".
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Dec 13, 2018 06:44
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Don't forget the always-popular "never hearing back from them" rejection.
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Dec 20, 2018 02:09
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Hart is an archaic word for male deer. The female equivalent is hind. 
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Jan 22, 2019 23:05
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 16:39 |
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Fruity20 posted:is it possible for a character to use a cell phone without ruining "immersion" ? In a sword and sorcery novel? Yes, you just have to explain that there are tiny demons with megaphones inside the cell phone.
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Feb 1, 2019 19:31
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