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It's been a long time since I've thought about this thread. I'll make a note to try and re-read part of it when I find the time. I started by reading all the tip posts in the OP(s), but it's the ones on story structure/character arc which are giving me trouble. My question is when is it the right time to see if your story fits into the generally-used story structure? When is it the right time to make sure your characters have arcs and that they fit into the story at the right points? Because stories don't come out fully formed instantly. They're built one idea at a time, and not always in order. Last week I actually had an idea which developed from nothing to fairly developed in the span of 24-48 hours. I know who my protagonists are, I know what their dilemma is, I know what the villain is (both the obvious villain and the real one are), their motivations, I have some of the important plot beats and twists, I know the note I want to leave my story on... but how do I know which of those big generic boxes of Story Structure the individual moments specific to my story fit into? sunken fleet posted:So I've been grappling with a (probably stupid) problem for a while. That is what is a good way to write "thoughts" in first person perspective? First person feels like it's almost all thoughts, one characters internal monologue so to speak, so how do I differentiate between the ongoing monologue and specific thoughts? Typing it out like this I feel like maybe I actually shouldn't even bother making that sort of distinction - is it only for a third person perspective? Interesting question. I think in first-person, I would have no distinction between specific thoughts and the monologue (unless telepathy is a thing in the story). I'm actually doing a story from the first-person and I have a little stream of consciousness in the middle of action bit as well. I am not sure how well it works, so I'd be interested in hearing feedback on that as well. 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. Again, I'm not sure how well that works, so advice is welcome, but I think it does give a pretty strong voice to the character right away. sunken fleet posted:I dunno if I'm explaining what I'm asking right so, for example the most recent time I hit this stumbling block was with this sentence: Both sentences are from the same perspective. I don't think the italics are necessary. I'd remove the italics. The "Thinking as much I decide" part is also unnecessary, I would delete those words. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Jan 30, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 16:41
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Wordiness is a problem of mine, I'll try and work on that. I'll also remind myself about keeping a closer eye on how I use adjectives. - Good catch with "horrible" - that does not convey useful information about why she hates the hat, making it useless. - 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. - I would have thought that "hurled myself to the floor" would have made the context of "planks" clear enough. I'll see if there's a way I can revise it. - The lines about the mother's illness were one of my concern areas, I'll revise them. - I've also replaced "blah" and the extended "sooooo" for being too anachronistic. Quite helpful, thank you.
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Jan 30, 2018 17:56
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Stuporstar posted:I just read about this in Steering the Craft of Story the other day: To add to this, when you're writing in first person, also keep an eye out for redundant descriptors like "I saw", "I heard", "I felt", which add distance between the reader and the text and don't add anything (because in first person, everything is already "I...").
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Jan 30, 2018 19:30
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I've read/skimmed this whole thread and there's lots of great advice and links to advice, which has helped me a bit. If I find myself unenthusiastic about writing a scene, if I'm not really interested in writing it, that probably means I should take a careful look and see if the scene itself is really necessary. One simple concept that it was helpful to be reminded of was that character arc and story arc should be connected. This isn't a big revelation. Almost every episodic TV show with an A-plot and a B-plot are connected by a common theme. That's not an accident. But it can also work in your favor. A story idea I had was a "Groundhog Day Loop" on a starship, but it was just really a plot, I didn't really have a character arc, my protagonist lacked character. I added a murder mystery subplot to complicate the protagonist's life - he's framed for the murder of his supervisor. (That happens before the loop starts, so the protagonist has to hide the body and evidence every day.) To set that up, I added a conflict between the protagonist and supervisor. Stuff like he shows up just one minute before his shift starts, his boss tells him that even though he's technically on time, he should be there earlier. I noticed that I was writing friends of the protagonist telling him stuff like "hey, you should take this job more seriously, it's not enough to be smart, attitude counts come promotion time." From there I figured out that my character arc for my protagonist is that he should be smart, but pretty egotistical. The key was a (pre-loop) line which essentially says "Give me enough time and I could fix all this myself." That right there ties the character and plot arc together because for the ending I already decide that unusually for the trope, he CAN'T fix everything himself, there is no perfect scenario. No matter how many times he loops, he's just one person and can't do it all on his own. If you only know where your plot arc is leading, use that to think about what your character arc should be (or vice versa). *** The discussion on flashbacks/prologues from page 11 might have helped me with a serious thorny problem as well. There was one story I was struggling with. I tried to start it as close to the action as possible, but there was key plot stuff which happened during a couple of events five years earlier, stuff which tied directly into the relationship of one of my protagonists with the antagonist. I decided to shift the start of the story back and start with the five years earlier bit, then skip ahead five years once the life-changing moments have happened. That lead me to another issue. I was showing the two protagonists characters living a certain way five years ago, and because of (separate) life-changing events then, they were both radically different in the present day. I wasn't showing that change, they just did. From the perspective of the reader, they gained skills, knowledge, and had a different attitude virtually overnight, and I was showing none of the change or even how they started down that path. Whoops! If, however, I did spend the time to show them starting down the path of change, I would be adding a substantial amount of time showing each of them separately, and I actually wanted the focus of the book to be on the relationship between the two protagonists. It would be far too great a delay between when the story starts and when they team up. I shelved the story for a while, until I read page 11 of this thread. It seems to me that the only real way forward would be to start just before the two main characters meet, and reveal the important plot events in pieces as the story progresses. Also about that same story, I also was struggling with the story-structure idea that the hero needs to sacrifice something. My problem was that the protagonist had already lost pretty much everything - parents, friends, status/identity, money, even the freedom to just settle in one place where they couldn't be hunted. All he still had, all he was holding on to was his quest - which was his need to learn the secret which his parents and friends were killed to protect. It only hit me recently, that it was obvious - that was what he needed to sacrifice. He had to be presented with the choice of finding out the reason why, but that would cost him dearly if he accepted. Your characters always have something to lose. Find out what it is and turn it into the weak point which gets exploited. There's an six-month old post in this thread which never got answered, but I think I have an answer for it. Omi no Kami posted:I find that I have a consistent structural problem where I write out a complete story- I have very little trouble coming up with interesting ideas, but my capacity to actually picture the scene and start writing out prose inevitably begins at the 50-60 page mark, when the entire cast has been brought together, the stakes/situation has been established, and all that's left is to actually iterate through the main story arc; it'd be liking starting It with all the kids assembled, and the concept of a killer clown already having been introduced. To me this seems like an odd problem. You should know who your protagonist is, your main character. Who are they, what are they doing there? One exercise which might help work through a problem like this is that at this point, imagine that a powerful authority figure bursts onto the scene, and insists that the characters explain what is going on. Maybe it's the cops, maybe it's sufficiently advanced aliens, maybe it's a god or gods descending. Whichever it is, they've put all your characters in a box, and they aren't going to leave until they tell the authority how this whole thing started and how they got there. Write the response to that in character for your protagonist and however many other characters you wish. Even go backwards if you want, starting with now, what happened just before? What happened just before that? When you reach the point where your protagonist's answer is "I was living a normal life", that's where your story starts. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 22:07
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Sociopastry posted:How in the gently caress do I do character descriptions Remember that the operative word is character. Don't just say "Bob had black hair", say "Bob liked that his black hair added an air of menace." Don't say that "Lisa was short", say that "Lisa actually enjoyed being petite because it led people to underestimate her."
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Feb 2, 2018 01:46
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- Hmmm... you open with two sentences poetically describing a field of pretty flowers, then the third and fourth sentences say that they're irrelevant because the main character has much more important things on his mind. The main character probably has a point. Even if this is some In Media Res thing we'll come back to later, we'll probably have forgotten about the flowers by the time we get back there anyway. This strikes me as the kind of image you open a movie with, but that probably works a lot less when it's only text on a page. - "eyes panic wide" - I guess you're trying to avoid the well-used phrase "eyes wide with panic". While the meaning does come across, this draws attention to the fact that the author is trying to avoid the phrase, which reminds the reader that there's an author. - "His right foot went for the ground and missed." - You've managed to make this unclear. It tends to be difficult to miss the ground with one's foot. After a certain age, people stop thinking about how to move their bodies, it becomes automatic, so I'm wondering how he managed to lose coordination all of a sudden. Did he slip? Was there a hole his foot plunged into? Did an existing injury cause his leg to buckle? I'm reminded of Douglas Adams "to fly, you just throw yourself at the ground and miss". - "Goddamned flowers." / "Sweat fell like damned rain," - It might just be me, but I'm feeling a little disconnect in the point of view. You started off with a detailed description of flowers, then state that the main character wasn't paying attention to them at all, but now we're getting his thoughts in the narration. How much of this is supposed to be in Danny's voice, how much is the narrator's voice? quote:Because Danny might not be a lot of things, but there was one he definitely was. - Danny is a Goddamnit? I realize that you're apparently trying to be coy and to tease the audience about something, but that sentence does not convey any meaningful information. quote:Even as he barreled down the field, it started up. The quiet voice in the back of his head, the one that whispered before a payoff, right before one thing or another would catch up to him and in a cold, considered voice, tell him precisely, perfectly, that it was time to get the hell OUT. This definitely seems like an In Media Res situation now, but to me, this paragraph doesn't seem to say much of interest. We already know he's running for his life. He's already trying to get the hell away (or whatever). It's the equivalent to "The quiet voice in Danny's voice informed him that he should probably continue to do what he was already doing, running for his life." It doesn't tell the reader anything. I assume this is trying to be coy again. - "He reached the end of the field and sprinted into the forest itself, a wall of green and shadows. He slammed right into it," - That gives the impression that it's a literal wall, painted onto a flat surface. If it's an actual forest, Danny should probably do what human beings do - observe tree trunks which are right in front of him and adjust his course before running straight into them. - "never-ending number of ivy's" - Typo. There should be no apostrophe there, that's used to indicate possessiveness, like 'Bill's truck'. quote:the quiet voice whispered in the back of his head. - To be brutal, my first reaction is "I don't care." That's very bad for the first page of the book. This situation is vague and doesn't catch my interest, it's a guy running from something through a field of flowers into a forest. The main character has nothing to do but run and say "Goddamn it". The only thing I know about him is that he is a male, with arms and legs. quote:There was no easing into, no build-up, just bam, his legs wind-milling and everything in full chase. His arms winded wildly, snapping the last of the vines. He caught himself on one of the thick trees infesting the forest, bunched close enough that all he saw between were slivers of dark. He then stood up and smacked his head against one of its drat branches. - I would have appreciated some easing into and build-up. You're also jumping back and forth in time in the same paragraph. The first sentence should be attached to the previous paragraph "how did he get here again?". - "Winded" is not the right word in this context. Maybe you mean "windmilled", but the image of someone doing that is just silly. You say he snapped the vines. I didn't realize he was tangled up in them in the first place. What kind of vines are they? Snapped suggests they are brown and dead, making them easier to snap, but they could be green, and alive, which would make them more difficult to snap. If the vines are "never-ending" how did he clear the last of them so quickly? (Probably delete "never-ending".) - You aren't describing the flow of events in enough detail. I can't get a sense of where he is and what he's doing. He goes from clearing vines to immediately hitting a tree without any indication that he's started running again. This is an action scene, we need the detail. - "He heard the bushes rustle and ivy get snapped clean somewhere behind. " - I thought that he was just right at the outskirts of the forest, because it is unclear where he is and what he's doing. I'm not getting any sense of movement or progress through the forest. It's like he was caught on the vines right at the edge, then suddenly he's a lot farther inside without warning. - Danny's pursuers seem to be really, really slow. He's running at top speed, fine, but he fell on his face and had to start running again, he got caught and tangled in vines and had to free himself, he ran into a tree and hit his head, and it's so dark in the forest that he can't see where he's going, which means he can't go as fast, and they're still a good distance behind him, apparently. Overall, this opening did not grab my attention. When opening a book, the reader has a blank canvas in their head, they know nothing of the world, the conflict, and its characters. The canvas is still blank. It's fine if you want to use an In Media Res to hook the reader with some action, hiding the specifics for later reveals. However, you still need to give the reader something to connect to. In this case, it's probably Danny, and his dilemma. Who is he, what is his problem, what does he want? I don't get any insight into Danny's character at all. Can you give Danny some thoughts which are vaguely worded enough to give us a reason to connect, without spoiling your later reveals?
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Feb 10, 2018 15:46
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MockingQuantum posted:God, sometimes writing is just the worst thing ever. I'm still chipping away at a book, and I'm really enjoying the process, but the last few days I've worked on it I've kind of gotten discouraged because I feel like I have no idea where it's going. I'm figuring out a lot of the key elements of the book while I'm writing it, like character needs and relationships, plot points, conflicts, etc. but I have no strong feeling about how it's going to end, even in the broadest sense. And I'm not sure what to do about it. No one knows every element of a story before writing it, everyone discovers things as they work through it. That's perfectly normal, it's called writing. Maybe sometimes you need to write all the way to the end and look at the story at a whole before you realize what it's about. As for me, I have a difficult time writing a story if I don't have a good idea in mind for how it'll end. But some of the stuff I've read has helped me think about story and character arcs and how they are related in good stories. When writing a story, you should probably know at least two of the following four things before you start: a starting point for your character, a starting point for your plot, an ending point for your character, a ending point for your plot. If you know two of those things, you can think your way to the other two. The ending of the plot should spring from the seeds sown in the beginning. What is the major plot problem which gets the main character involved? What outcome does the main character want to see? Will they succeed or fail? What is the main character like at the beginning? Generally speaking, your character at the end of the story should be basically in the opposite place they were at the beginning (in outlook or circumstance or even both). They start out with one mindset, one view, one major flaw/misconception, and at the end, they are different, they have recognized their flaw and overcome it for a positive-ending story (or fall victim to it in a negative-ending story). That's where you get a character arc from. Character arcs should be thematically related to the overall arc of the story. Character and Story arcs should follow roughly the same course. This can also work in reverse too. If you know an endpoint for a plot or character arc, it can inform your beginning. I had an idea for a plot about a starship technician whose ship is caught in a time loop, but I didn't really have much in the way of character for them. However, I figured out that for the ending, I wanted to end it without the tech being able to resolve everything the way they wanted. That led to realizing that the tech's flaw is that he's pretty arrogant/egotistical, who thinks he's hot poo poo and can fix everything. Boom, because I had a story arc, I could match it to a character arc. Sorry for my sleep-deprived ramblings, I hope they make sense.
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Feb 14, 2018 06:10
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A novel has to sustain the reader's interest throughout. While a short story can get away with less at stake and less plot, for a longer one, the reader has to be invested enough in the characters and their struggles to want to keep turning page after page after page. So the plot has to be of sufficient interest and depth to hold the reader's attention. Just adding subplots might not do it if they aren't that related to the protagonist. It doesn't need to be fate of the world stuff, of course, but the protagonist should have something they want but can't have, and they have to make meaningful choices about how to try to get it. Ask these questions for yourself.
Tie your subplots into how they'll affect the protagonist, what they want and how to get it.
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Feb 26, 2018 02:39
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angel opportunity posted:I know this is a really stupid question, but does anyone have some kind of cool method they use to spitball out character arcs? I'm trying to write something that is very character focused, but I'm actually really terrible at thinking up an interesting arc from scratch. I'm just thinking like some kind of exercise to get my brain working in the right direction. I write based on plotpoints, so I'd ideally be spitballing out like PP1 --> Midpoint --> PP2 or something similar to get a sketch of the arc out there Tie your character arc thematically to the story arc. Both the story arc and your character's arc should more-or-less mirror the progress of the other and climax in the same place. I had an idea for a plot recently (a groundhog-day loop thing), but the main character didn't have any sort of arc. He was just sort of there. It was only when I got the plot idea that the main character would NOT be able to come up with a "perfect" solution to end the loop that I made a character breakthrough: my main character at the start would be pretty arrogant and have the idea that they could fix anything given enough time. By tying the arcs of plot and character together, it strengthens them both. I think that approach can work if you have any combination of two start/endpoints in either arc. Use the points you have a solid idea on and use them to build the other start/endpoints.
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Mar 15, 2018 14:19
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Speaking of unconventional story structures, in something I'm currently working on, I was planning on having Part 1 told in first-person from one character's perspective right up until a big suspenseful confrontation, leave that on a cliffhanger of sorts, then Part 2 starts back at the beginning, told in first-person from a different character's perspective, which shows how the first character had misinterpreted things (and also, since by this point you'd seen all of Part 1, how the second character also misinterprets things). Part 2 would have many different scenes form Part 1 and I would try to avoid repeating dialogue as much as possible. It would also go up to the confrontation and cliffhanger. After that, Part 3 would probably alternate first-person viewpoints in different chapters, and by that time the "voice" of the characters would be distinct and recognizable. However, I decided that might be too gimmicky, so instead I'll focus on writing Part 1 (keeping in mind to layer in the right subtext), and then continuing on afterwards using only the first character's perspective in what would have been Part 3. If at the end I determine that the book is too short or Part 2 would help, I could always add that part on. If not, I won't have spent a ton of time writing a part I won't use. This is probably a good idea since I'm uncertain where the climax of Part 1 would fall in terms of the overall length of the story.
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Apr 12, 2018 13:18
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I've read a lot of advice from various places, and a couple of books. The stuff which has been the most helpful is that which essentially goes "you probably shouldn't do X, because..." It's actually helped a lot. I'm actually able to highlight lines which are seem weak or which need elaboration while I am writing them, so that even if I am not sure how to fix them at the time, I know to come back and give them another look later. (Hooray for Scrivener's highlight feature.) For the current story which I am working on, it's going relatively smoothly. Whenever I reach a minor problem plotting the story, it doesn't take me much time to come up with a way to fix it. The pieces are falling into place surprisingly well. If only I could solve my problem of disciplining myself to stay focused on actually writing, I could make a lot more progress. I did put a clock below my monitor where I can't possibly miss it, and that does help a bit. I'll just have to work on it more, I guess. Listening to music helps, too. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 17:37 on May 2, 2018 |
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May 1, 2018 23:38
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Hungry posted:I've recently got a huge amount of free time on my hands with which to write - though I don't know for how long. So I figured hey, why not make the most of it, surely I can slam out 5k words a day if I have nothing better to do. That's one of my problems too. I see a sentence has a problem, and I know how I want to fix it, but I'm just supposed to ignore it, keep writing forward, and come back days, weeks, months later, when by then chances are I'll have forgotten? That just doesn't seem right. To me it seems better to fix it now while the solution is fresh in my mind. Does that make sense? It does lead to the problem of over-editing my work even though it's a first draft and I'll have to go over it again later anyway. Part of the reason I over-edit is that it seems like saving time. I usually know how a story ends before I'm deeply into it, so it's unlikely that I'll reach the end and realize I need to change my whole character's arc. That's probably a bigger problem for those who don't know how it's going to end from the start. I'm trying to compromise, though. If I know how I want to fix a sentence, I'll do now. If I am unsure, I'll just use Scrivener's highlight function to note problems and continue.
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May 2, 2018 13:41
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Hungry posted:My problem is on a more macro scale. I can ignore sentence or paragraph or even scene level issues, but with each scene I write I want to go back and reshuffle the story around or change entire arcs because I'm never sure if anything is working. That's another thing I love Scrivener for. It's got a corkboard view which lets you move around scenes easily to put them in different places, earlier or later, without needing to cut and paste any text. Just write your scenes individually and make a new text file for a new scene.
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May 2, 2018 18:28
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After The War posted:The first question is what kind of information you want to impart.You probably remember "omniscient" versus "limited" first person from school, but there's really a spectrum in between. True omniscience has been pretty rare since World War One, but it was common practice in the nineteenth century and still crops up in fantasy trying to evoke a feeling of that era. Perspective and distance can definitely change how you approach a scene. In a scene I'm working on right now (written in first-person), I was planning on having my MC stay behind while her father and brother went off to investigate a threat, and she would convey the information to the reader in a fairly detached way, summarizing the events, because she was hearing about them secondhand. It was going fine and then I wrote a line which (paraphrased) said like "Father had been provoked into a rare rage." That made me pause to consider, because it felt wrong. She wasn't there. She can't really give the right context to a scene that she didn't witness (and it, along with the rest of the scene is more telling than showing). That led me to consider "why can't she be there?". The answer was that so I could have people feed her resentment by telling her that this was a matter for men, and besides the situation could be dangerous. I realized that I could still keep that patronizing treatment, but she could then present a counterargument. Now that my MC actually is going, what was going to be just a short scene of exposition can have a lot more detail, more impact, and more character development as my MC realizes that maybe stubbornly insisting that she be allowed to go, for the sole reason that she was told she couldn't, might not have been a very intelligent decision. If I was writing in third person like I usually do, that scene would probably have stayed as a detached summary. feedmyleg posted:Took some time away from the first draft of my book, jumped back in early this week. I'm writing through the second chapter now and... I came back to another work-in-progress which had been on hold, and after much time away, I could now see what I hadn't at the time I was writing it. My main character's plan to sneak into a place was stupid. It had too many moving parts (things which could go wrong), and it undercut one of the main flaws my MC had. I replaced it with a completely different plan which was simpler.
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May 11, 2018 14:19
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Not sure if this is the sort of thing that belongs in this thread, but maybe writing it down will help me work it out. When raising the stakes, things should escalate each time, right? In my work-in-progress, someone is trying to assassinate my main character. I was thinking there would be three attempts.
What I'm not sure about is if that really fits the pattern of escalating stakes. The first and third attempts would be done by hired killers, the second probably done by the one behind the plot themself. (EDIT 2: No wait, the villain could just bring the poison in and pass the poison along to the assassin already in place - no need to personally put the poison in the glass.) (The heroine would think that all three attempts were made by the same person, though.) It seems like a violation of escalation to go from blatant attempt to disguised attempt to blatant attempt. Additionally, if the schemer has an assassin in the castle already for the third attempt, it seems risky to try and go for the kill in person for the second attempt. I suppose I could flip the order of the second and third attempts (by slightly altering the reason the party is being held), that might help. But would going blatant-blatant-disguised be a de-escalation because it's not as obvious (and because a killer in the ballroom is less personal than in her bed chamber), or an escalation because it means she would have to fear everything she ate or drank in the castle from then on? EDIT: Oh... but one of the reasons why I was having the party-poisoning attempt second was to get my heroine to realize that walls and guards wouldn't be enough, and she would have to leave the castle, which would require preparation. If the second attempt could have been stopped with better guards, that's less reason to commit to leaving. Am I overthinking this too much? Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 13:21 on May 24, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 19:54
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feedmyleg posted:Presumably the reader is as in-the-dark as the character about the true nature of these events? And the third attempt acts as a revelation that ties all three together? If that's the case, I don't think that escalation really applies in this situation, because the reader wouldn't even realize that the events are connected until after the fact. The very first thing which happens is an arrow just missing the heroine's head. She believes she is the target, but others think it was meant for her brother instead, and it missed because the assassin was surprised by someone who barged in. (That someone is needed to be able to progress the story.) The poisoning attempt could possibly be another attempt on the brother, but the bed chamber attempt will confirm that she is the target. The way I've written the archery attack (the first one) leaves essentially no room for doubt that this was an assassination attempt on someone. An anonymous arrow assumed to be from a drunken archer won't get me to where I need to go in this case. I could possibly re-write that, but I don't have any idea how without changing the start of the story drastically. The assassination attempts are not the entire story, they serve as more of an inciting incident to get the heroine to strike out on her own, and they serve as a justification for why she would do something that dangerous.
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May 23, 2018 21:32
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Deltasquid posted:The tension could escalate not in the severity of the attack but rather on how close it actually gets to killing her. Maybe attempt 1 leaves nobody harmed but establishes the threat, attempt 2 wounds somebody close to the heroine, and attempt 3 actually gets close to killing her and leaves her with a permanent wound of sorts? Something like that, as well as maybe in how much collateral damage the assassins are willing to cause. Attempt 1 is clean, attempt 2 poisons a bunch of people, attempt 3 is a bloodbath on the guards as the attackers get more desperate to succeed? At the moment, the first attack (the missed arrow) hurts no one and establishes the threat, the poisoning nearly kills her brother and leaves him in a weakened state. I've been back-and-forth on the attack in her personal chambers. (In both cases, she was asleep in her study, not her bed chamber, which is the reason she escapes.) In one version, the guard outside her door is killed, it's the light of the corridor door opening and the sound of the body being dragged in which wakes her up. I also wrote a different version where no one is killed, but she isn't believed for reasons which, now as I am trying to explain them, stretch credulity a bit too much. Only if the bed chamber attack is the second one does it matter if she isn't believed, and I'm leaning towards making it the third one. Huh, "explain your ideas to other people" helps. Now, I am leaning much more towards the dead body version. So thanks, talking it through helped at least a bit. Since the assassination attempts are the thing which happens before the adventure, I'll probably save any major wounds for the actual adventure.
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May 24, 2018 00:08
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Does it seem awkward for a first-person narrator to describe their instinctive reactions? “I see,” I said, pursing my lips. I mean when one is irritated, they don't consciously think "I'm going to move my muscles in such a way as to tighten my lips," do they. It's subconscious. I know this may seems like a really tiny thing not worth thinking about.
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Jun 10, 2018 04:25
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anime was right posted:that sounds more awkward because it sounds like they had intent, usually the flow of actions should be: I'm getting better at recognizing awkward writing. That version is better, and the advice is helpful for what to do in the future. Thank you. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Jun 10, 2018 |
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Jun 10, 2018 04:47
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revolther posted:If first person narrative doesn't have a bunch of left brain chatter there's probably a better narrative for it. There is, just not in that sentence, which was the sole subject of my small question. It's important for pacing reasons to vary the length of your sentences. Sometimes, short sentences and paragraphs are good for emphasis. If every sentence in a book written in first-person needs to have attached three or four more long sentences of my characters head metaphorically huffing their own farts, the book will get bogged down before it can get anywhere. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Jun 10, 2018 |
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Jun 10, 2018 13:43
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For now, focus on finishing the book, then polishing it and re-polishing it. No one is going to buy a book from a new author which isn't finished. Done? Okay, after you finish the polishing, you'll want an agent. Look around for agents in your genre and see what standards they have for submission. Usually, you need to send a query letter first. If they like it, they'll usually request some pages, or sometimes the whole thing (this is why you need the book done first). Never go with an agent who wants money from you first; an agent makes their money by selling the book to publishers. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Jun 13, 2018 |
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Jun 13, 2018 22:06
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I actually had an issue with beginnings for a novel-in-progress. It wasn't that I didn't know the point at which I wanted to start the story, it was that I had two such points. The first point set up the motivation for my main character and set up the overarching mystery of the book. The problem was that right after that there was a five-year time skip until just before my main character met the other main character, kicking off the plot. I wasn't entirely sure which was the point at which I needed to start the story. It took far too long for me to determine that putting in a five-year time skip would - from the perspective of the reader - seem to change the characters into completely different people overnight, with different attitudes and new skills, without showing how they got from "A" to "N". If I were to add "B", showing them start down the path that changes them, it would add a lot of extra pages, delaying me from the story I wanted to tell, which was about the relationship between my two main characters. Realizing that finally made it clear that yes, "N" is the proper point to start, and I can show "A" and "B" in flashbacks if I really need to. Of course, when I took a look at the scenes I first wrote for point "N", I realized that my main character's plan was utterly ridiculous and relying far too much on things he could not control going perfectly, so I ditched it and wrote a plan without those flaws.
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Jun 23, 2018 20:56
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I'm the kind of writer who needs to know where the story will end before I start, and I often have several major scenes scattered around in my mind. That still leaves gaps connecting them, so I'm trying the Snowflake method because it's not like it'll hurt. I've discovered to my surprise that even the simple character summary step (what is their concrete goal, their general ambition, their personal values) it's actually helping me develop my characters. I'm learning things about my characters I hadn't known. Mirage posted:I was writing a book once that HAD to have a particular story beat. I mean, that was the linchpin of the story, that a character would do a thing which dominoes into a gigantic disaster which would be the theme of everything afterward. I'd written several chapters, got up to that point in the story, and had a horrific realization: this character that I'd built up in all the preceding chapters wouldn't do the thing. He might want to do the thing, but he would probably talk himself out of it. I have put aside a story I have been thinking about for ages because my goal was to have two equal protagonists, each with a story arc. I did figure out both story arcs, but well, it's two stories welded together. While the pieces fit perfectly and I couldn't tell the story if I split them into different stories, it means the story isn't simple to explain. It's probably too difficult for my first big project, so I should start with something simpler. (Also, another reason I've set it aside is because I have not figured out how to solve my issue where too much of the story doesn't have any characters in it except my two protagonists. Nor have I figured out how to get other characters to fit there.)
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Aug 2, 2018 04:21
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feedmyleg posted:How do y'all refine character arcs and themes? I've now got 2 drafts of my novel under my belt and I feel really good about the overall structure and narrative. However, I've found that after all my writing, I have several different arcs for each character that are all relatively surface-level, as well as a pile of different themes I'm speaking to. Anyone have any advice or techniques on how to get more specific about what I'm trying to say and separate the wheat from the chaff? An insight I had about that was to tie a character's story arc to the novel's story arc. A story shows a character in need of a change and places them in some kind of crisis which forces a reaction, it tries to force a change. It could be a change for the better, it could be a change for the worse (or rarely it could show how the character hasn't changed at all, but that can be trickier). Both the story arc and your character's arc should more-or-less mirror the progress of the other and climax in the same place. The climax of the plot should reflect the ultimate expression of how your character has grown from the start of the story. The neat thing is you can also do that in reverse too. If you know how your plot ends you can use that to figure out the starting point for the character's arc.
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Aug 17, 2018 13:17
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quote:"Hey buddy, you don't look so hot," graveled Tom from the next cubicle over. I know that was just an example, but never use adjectives as verbs, especially as a speech tag. That would be better off reading: quote:"Hey buddy, you don't look so hot," came the gravelly voice of Tom from the next cubicle over. quote:So I'm considering trying to limit myself to natural-sounding first-person observations; Bob grew up in a world where fantasy creatures were normal, so he might occasionally notice Tom's rough, pebbly green skin or observe that everyone in the office flinches and covers their ears when he laughs or yells, but he's never going to sit down and say "Here is what's happening and how it fits into the setting". My thought is that as long as the reader doesn't need the background details, all they should really get is information necessary to picture the scene and empathize with Bob's reactions or behavior. I would call Tom a Troll, and maybe sketch a description of what he looks like, as there are many varieties of fantasy trolls, but I wouldn't do a deep dive into world lore. The state of the world comes across sufficiently by showing that office-worker Bob knows his colleague Tom is a Troll and Bob thinks nothing special about it.
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Sep 8, 2018 01:17
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Stuporstar posted:Sorry, no. This is a stylistic quirk I would totally put up with, especially when the rhythm flows better than your example. There are no hard rules in writing. SORRY FOR USING THE WORD "never". Okay? Yes, there are no hard rules in writing. There are guidelines though. This thread is for advice on writing, and I'm not going to apologize for pointing out someone brushing up against a guideline. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Sep 8, 2018 |
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Sep 8, 2018 20:44
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How about "if you deliberately use words in rarely-seen ways, some people might stop thinking about the story they're supposed to be reading, and start thinking about the author of the story and wondering why that word was used".
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Sep 8, 2018 21:45
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Fruity20 posted:I just now realized that a lot of ideas i've written down tend to have male protags. only a few them have a female character as the lead. the funny thing is I'm a girl yet i barely write people of my own gender ( or even). maybe i just like writing out of my comfort zone sometimes. is this even normal to do? What is a story but a chance to step into the life of a different person and see the world from their eyes? What does an storyteller do but try and imagine what it would be like to be in the shoes of a different person from them? There's nothing wrong with what you're doing, it comes with the territory, really. I'm male and right now I'm working on a story with a female protagonist in first-person, and a second story with both a male and female protagonist, told in third person. It happens.
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Sep 20, 2018 14:53
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Mirage posted:It's funny about breasts. I wrote a book with a main character who was a tiny flying pixie-like thing similar to Tinker Bell, but naked. (Mostly because she thought humans' reactions to her nakedness were hilarious.) I think I mentioned her boobs twice in the whole book and never really described them beyond "ample." Otherwise she was smart and wise and adventurous and a valued friend and teacher to one of the other characters. "Naked mostly because human reactions were hilarious" / "boobs described as ample" Smart, wise, adventurous, a valued friend, and teacher don't seem likely to have any big memorable moments associated with them. Those are fairly common characteristics for lots of main and side characters in stories. What's less common is a fairy who is naked for the sole character purpose of making people go "Yikes, you're naked!" Of course people will remember the "Yikes you're naked" parts more than generic smart/wise/adventurous/valued friend/teacher moments. Also, Fanservice still manages to be obvious even in a medium where you can't actually see the fanservice.
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Sep 29, 2018 01:28
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Djeser posted: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. Speaking as a reader, when I read first-person books, it often bothers me if a lot of time passes before I'm told the character's name. We all make assumptions about who the character is, and it's always jarring to be 30-50 pages into the book and have the assumptions shown to be wrong. I need to mentally readjust my mental picture of the character, and that's always distracting for me. That doesn't mean you need to march your character up to a mirror in chapter 1 to give a full description, but unless there's a good reason to hide your character's gender, or unless you're writing an Ageless-Faceless-Gender-Neutral-Culturally-Ambiguous-Adventure-Person, it should usually be made clear enough to the reader who the protagonist is. 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? Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Sep 30, 2018 |
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Sep 29, 2018 19:32
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Djeser posted:Yeah, it mostly happens in first-person stories. 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.
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Sep 29, 2018 23:06
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Djeser posted: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?  You're the one who said that you sometimes have trouble with readers not always being clear on the gender of your protagonist, sometimes when said gender is important to the story. It's up to you to decide if it's an issue you feel needs fixing, and up to you how you want to fix it. Personally, if a high fraction of readers are missing something important to the story, I would try and find a way to make it clearer.
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Sep 30, 2018 00:51
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Fruity20 posted:to you, what is a good antagonist? like what traits make them understandable to audience? I think some of the best antagonists have sympathetic or understandable motives, but what makes them a villain is that they pursue their goals by unacceptable methods. For example, a scientist who wants to save the planet from the destructive behavior of humans. That's a great goal, it's one we can agree with, but if his means of achieving that would be to wipe out human civilization, most of us would consider that unacceptable. *** I've got a small question of my own. I know there are no set rules for chapter length and such, but in my WIP, I want to start the book off with a very brief scene, no more than a page long at most which ends with my protagonist finding a dead body. The next part starts off with "TWO DAYS EARLIER" and serves as the actual introduction to the setting. Even though the in media res part is so short, should it still be its own chapter/prologue, or could it be tacked on to the start of Chapter 1? Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Nov 3, 2018 |
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Nov 3, 2018 16:49
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This is something I'll probably have to solve myself, but I may as well share anyway. I'm writing in third person, and it only just now occurred to me that I don't know whether I want to refer to the protagonist's father as 'Jim' or 'Dad'. Obviously it'll change how much inside the protagonist's head the reader gets, so whichever distance I choose, I need to be consistent.Whalley posted:Just make them internally consistent and make them have a link with your protagonist. If your protagonist has trouble with words, make them able to actually say the right thing to the antagonist. If your protagonist has bionic limbs, make the antagonist disgusted by the augments. You don't even need to do this with the characters in the scene; maybe the protagonist is a vampire, so you cut to a scene where your antagonist is eating garlic kale chips before addressing the congregation of their church. Or maybe they're also a vampire, but willing to do the thing the protagonist isn't. Hmmm... that gives me something to think about for another project I have in the works. I have a clear solid, understandable motivation for my villain, but I'm not sure the connection is there. ...Or maybe it is. In that project, both my protagonist and antagonist are of noble birth. My antagonist thinks that makes him superior to commoners. My protagonist is a princess, much higher in rank than the antagonist, but she truly cares for her people and agrees with the reforms her grandfather started and father continued to make a fairer society. I guess that falls under "they're also a vampire". quote:Great for drafts but I hate reading them every time. Just bring up the important bits from the prologue as they happen dammit, don't give me a short story then instantly start a novel sequel This is also my impression of a prologue, so calling a one-page fast-forward of something a couple chapters ahead doesn't seem to fit. That said, I am thinking of calling it Chapter 1 (or maybe Chapter 0) anyway, instead of putting it at the start of the next full chapter. Stuporstar posted:My favorite antagonists to write are genuinely good people trying to make the best decisions given the knowledge they have—they just happen to be at odds with the protagonist's goals and/or worldview. They're not fanatics trying to do good using evil ends. Instead they're good people trapped in a bad system trying for the best outcome. The system itself is the evil, or if not evil at least poison to the protagonist. By that, do you mean that in essence your antagonist is an agent of the law and insists on the law being followed even if it is considered unjust by people like the protagonist? Guiness13 posted:Absolutely yes. The original antagonist of my current WIP has become a second protag in practice. And I'm fascinated by the antagonist I developed in response to that. I may have delved too deeply into the main characters before starting this. One of my antagonists in my WIP has such sympathetic motivations that even though he tries to kill the protagonist, he would not be an antagonist in the second book.
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Nov 4, 2018 15:04
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Stuporstar posted:That's a rather narrow interpretation, but it's an example of what I'm talking about, yes. I was asking because I wasn't entirely sure what you meant. The impression I got from your description was that your antagonists were essentially someone who puts upholding an existing system (lawful) against someone fighting the system for being unjust. What other examples did you have in mind?
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Nov 4, 2018 17:28
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Axel Serenity posted:Most books I read mention their skin color or really obvious feature like once and then never mention it again. Additionally, if you are going to describe a person's race or skin color, try not to let unconscious bias seep in. By that I mean that the skin color of caucasians is rarely mentioned because the author unconsciously considers that "the default". So if you're going to mention skin color, even just in passing, consider doing it for every major character.
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Nov 19, 2018 03:55
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Lead out in cuffs posted:On the flip side of this, I'd imagine it'd also be easy to gently caress this up and end up sounding kinda white pride-y. Axel Serenity posted:I would hesitate to say "make sure to mention skin tone for all characters" in a book. Not only does that run into the realm of checking off boxes on the diversity list just for the sake of it, but it can also limit a reader's interpretation. Not every character's race is important to their core, and flat out saying who they are means potentially cutting off representation for someone who might see themselves in that character until race is mentioned. Reading is supposed to be fun for the reader and allow them to use their imagination. Sometimes vagueness and avoiding details can enhance what they enjoy or connect with. One person may see a character as one race, and another might see them differently. That can be a good thing. Also true. I was just trying to make the point to not let subconscious bias about what "normal" is influence your writing by only writing description for characters when they are different from the author's "normal". Personally, I'm more inclined to do what Axel Serenity says and try and not mention race or skin color. I also don't write fiction set on Earth which means I get to build them myself, but I also can't just take Earth culture and stick it in without changes. Any culture I build has to make sense for that world.
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Nov 19, 2018 22:17
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feedmyleg posted:You're going to be in iffy territory no matter what. If they can mate then they're not completely different species, outside of F1 hybrids. You are correct, but really, cross-species mating is so common in sci-fi and fantasy that most readers aren't really going to even bat an eye when you mention that a character is half-human, half-Arzaninan. I mean, there will probably be a few scientifically knowledgeable people who go "that's not how species work", but this isn't something I'd lose sleep about unless you're really going to go deep into exploring what it means to be part of two different species. "Interspecies" sounds like a good term to use.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:34
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I'm writing in a third-person PoV, and I can't seem to decide whether to have the dialogue tags "X said" refer to the protagonist's parents by their names ("Jim said"), or what the protagonist would call them ("Mom said".) It's such a small choice, and it seems dumb to worry about it (especially since this is only relevant to the early part of the novel). But I think it matters in terms of distance between reader and protagonist. I should have a consistent distance, it can't shift. It feels awkward, or false to me to see "Dad said", but going "Jim said" puts greater distance between the reader and the protagonist.
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Dec 13, 2018 06:02
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Djeser posted: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. That's helpful. If I was doing this in first person, I would be writing it from the character's voice, but I'm writing in third person because there will be multiple PoV's in the book. Thinking about it like that, your advice makes a great deal of sense. I'll probably stick to the name, I'm more comfortable with that. 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. You should probably not go overboard with writing phonetically, as that can get tiring to read. Eew woodnt rite a dum caracter sew awl there wordz r miss spelled, wood ewe? An occasional word here and there for flavor is fine, just be careful not to get carried away. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 06:32
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