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#21 Mister Blastman

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Posted 21 August 2015 - 06:06 PM

Interesting. I find that lyrics and especially drums are distracting while trying to write, for myself, at least.

#22 XxXAbsolutZeroXxX

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Posted 23 August 2015 - 12:12 PM

View PostMister Blastman, on 21 August 2015 - 04:24 PM, said:

So what do ya'll listen to while writing for inspiration?
















#23 XxXAbsolutZeroXxX

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Posted 23 August 2015 - 12:26 PM











#24 Samyblizs

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Posted 23 August 2015 - 02:33 PM

Uh...Would a crossover fanfic about Mechwarrior Online count here?

#25 Nightmare1

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Posted 23 August 2015 - 02:38 PM

View PostSamyblizs, on 23 August 2015 - 02:33 PM, said:

Uh...Would a crossover fanfic about Mechwarrior Online count here?


Sure! I write a lot of those myself! :)

I'll have to post the link to that thread later today.

#26 Samyblizs

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Posted 23 August 2015 - 07:14 PM

Well, ok. I'm not sure how it's turning out since I've never written anything before, but hopefully I'm doing both the game and the show justice.

https://www.fanficti...hwarrior-Online

#27 Mister Blastman

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 07:23 AM

View PostSamyblizs, on 23 August 2015 - 07:14 PM, said:

Well, ok. I'm not sure how it's turning out since I've never written anything before, but hopefully I'm doing both the game and the show justice.

https://www.fanficti...hwarrior-Online


Nice first attempt!

A few things:

It reads like a screenplay more than a narrative work. If this is your intention, then that is okay. But the way it starts off--it sounds like it is going to be a narrative story in first person i.e. "Once Upon a Time..." You get the idea.

It switches from first person narrative to third person--that can get confusing to a reader.

One of the greatest pieces of advice Ernest Hemingway ever shared was essentially to "show, don't tell." What this means is instead of saying a character is mad--show it! Instead of telling folks someone walks into a room or does this or that, show it! To elaborate, that means it involves connecting the reader with the scene as if they were there.

When you think back to times of old--good memories like that birthday party you had as a child or perhaps your first romantic encounter--what are the things that come to your mind when you remember it?


Telling of this encounter might be...

Katherine and I kissed. We made love all night long. When I woke up in the morning she was gone.

Showing instead builds an emotional connection to the scene through our senses--if you let the reader feel what your characters feel in the scene, the impact will be far more substantial and not only will they imagine it better, they will remember it as if they were really there hours or days after they put the story down.

So showing might be...

I stared into her starry eyes. They were radiant pearl blue saucers under the moonlit sky. Her perfume consumed me--rose hips and dandelion, I wanted to taste every inch of her.

Her soft, smooth hands moved to my thigh, "James, do you feel it too?" She crooned.

I stretched a single finger against her lips, "Shhhhh" I whispered. I slid my hands around her waist and and ran them up along her sides. I leaned in. I felt her body's warmth against my cheeks. Her hair undulated in the breeze. Her lips were like pillows dipped in sweet nectar; they invited me. I opened my...

You get the idea. Showing can sometimes take a lot longer than telling--but often it takes less, as far as word count is concerned, and ends up being less dry and far more exciting!

Which scene would you remember better?

Not a bad start. Writing is fantastic fun. Keep it up!

Edited by Mister Blastman, 26 August 2015 - 07:26 AM.


#28 Samyblizs

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 12:55 PM

Thanks a lot for the advice! (Even though I don't fully understand it.) Like I said, I've never written anything before and at very-nearly 11 chapters, I still have no idea what I'm doing! There are also times where it can be surprisingly difficult to write anything, especially when starting a new chapter. There have been multiple times where I just sit and stare at the page because I can't think of anything to write.

But, no matter how frustrating it is or if it's no good, I'll keep powering through it because it's something I want to do! By my Shadowhawk's extra thumbs, I will not stop writing!

#29 Mister Blastman

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Posted 26 August 2015 - 03:43 PM

Hah yes, yes he has.

View PostSamyblizs, on 26 August 2015 - 12:55 PM, said:

There have been multiple times where I just sit and stare at the page because I can't think of anything to write.


We all experience this one way or another. It is part of the initiation!

Ernest Hemingway had a great tip for this and it went something like this:

Quote

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.

When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing you were writing before you could go on with it the next day. It was necessary to get exercise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read in order not to think or worry about your work until you could do it again. I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.


Read more about it here:

http://www.opencultu...te_fiction.html

I'm not suggesting you write like Hemingway--you must develop your own style. While he is regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time, even he was not perfect. He once remarked to F. Scott Fitzgerald,

Quote

But it was very difficult, and I did not know how I would ever write anything as long as a novel. It often took me a whole morning of work to write a paragraph.


His style was minimalistic. He tried to pack as much information into a block of words as he could while simultaneously retaining clarity and simplicity. I liken it to simplifying a fraction. It's funny, sometimes I look at prose as a form of math when I write, throwing out words and trying to emulate what Hemingway worked so hard at. He was right--it is hard.

But he's only one example. One of my favorite writers is Truman Capote. His prose sparkled and was spotless. Check out "Breakfast at Tiffany's" sometime. While I write hard science fiction, there is no substitute for good prose. Seeing how I've been editing hardcore for the last few months, it is my own personal demon.

Another good book I read on style is "Clear and Simple as the Truth." It is a great read. I suggest you check it out at your local library if you'd like.

Posted Image

Good luck! You've come a long way! If you write every day I promise you'll see yourself evolve.

#30 Hex Pallett

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 02:25 PM

So...I guess I could share a few things of my own.

I've been having this idea of a space saga for a while now - something to keep my mind busy before I fall asleep every night. A very vague idea. If I have to describe it I would say it is somewhere between BattleTech and Witcher, something both fantasy and realistic, told from a very personal perspective. The first book is gonna be a collection of short stories, about a young woman with a half-assed nano-augmented body and nothing to lose, goes on a vindictive journey to find those people who botched the job and abandoned her to her death. On her first job as a bounty hunter she meets a retired space pirate, a middle-aged man escaping from war with his only family - his young son, who ends up on this slum of a planet, working his ass off to find a way out. Together, the ruthless young rogue and the aching adventurous soul embarks on a turbulent journey that takes them deep into the unknown depths of space.

The problem is, what I'm envisioning is way beyond what I'm capable of right now. I have some of the characters ready, I have a very vague idea about how the world would look like, but I don't have the knowledge to create the dynamic of the world, I have a hard time imagining the dynamics between characters, and worst of all, my depressed mind rarely spawns good stories, and the two characters I mentioned before are just fragments of my depressed self. How would the relationship between them play out? How would the opinions on a same subject defer between a woman who don't give a **** and a depressed mid-life crisis on legs? How would the sexual tension play out? How would the story ultimately end up? I have no idea.

So all I could do right now is learn. Research on whatever subject comes to mind - power dynamics in international politics, how specific technologies influence military designs, how far our technology would reach (and more importantly, would not reach) in another millennium. And I try my best to soak in as many stories as possible. I'll have to learn how to human before I can have multiple characters having conversions in my head in a living, breathing world that is similar to, but not our own. And that's why the book I'm working on probably wont reach fruition in another decade or so, cuz I like my idea, and I don't wanna botch the job executing it.

#31 Hex Pallett

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 06:45 PM

View PostMarack Drock, on 28 August 2015 - 04:46 PM, said:

So for maybe the female character, being left for dead, experimented on, and then going bounty hunter, would probably just leave her as a shell. From my experience, severe trauma like that just furthers people from emotions in order to not be hurt like that again. So her end of the relationship might be hard, tough, and maybe just not caring at all. Then with your element she would definitely be depressed from all of this. The other character who works his ass off to keep him and his son afloat, would be loving and caring to his child, but could have the following traits possibly: PTSD from combat, anger from having nothing left but his son, and then gruff because of how hard he works. Their relationship would probably be built on a "it benefits the each other" stance because they both want to leave, and then they would also have hardships and really tough lives so they have things in common. At the same time it would be conflicting as she may not want to get to know them or be attached because of her past. So they may have a beneficial, but conflicting relationship. One that could play out to them becoming closer as they go on, because they'd gain experiences and things in common that they can all share.


Something like that. The obvious question to ask about the character would be: Where did the girl get those expensive nano-augs? What are those for, and why is the job botched? I have the answers mostly ironed out for these questions, and it will tie into the meta lore in a huge way and defines her character. Her history would involve repeated love and lost, therefore on one hand she would act indifferently as a form of self defense, but on the other hand understand the idea of love lost enough to care, given the right incentives.

Which ties in to the father character. How did he, a badass space pirate-merc-person ended up in a slum planet? What happened to his wife and how did he react to various related incidents? It takes a certain masculine romanticism to be a space pirate-merc-person, which will hugely influence his character. The relationship between them is gonna be interesting but very tricky to handle - especially when I don't have the stories to chain them together yet.

However, I have decided on one thing that the girl is not really depressed - there are theories that depression is genetically related, and some people don't react as badly as others. Think Faith from Mirror's Edge, or Ciri from Witcher. The man however is definitely depressed, and the her vitality is definitely something the young him from a bygone age admires. So that's another level of character development. I just need the stories...and I don't want them to be all gritty and dark. There's gonna be a fine mix of fun and hope. It needs balance.

Oh, and here's another thing: there will definitely be giant stompy robots involved. :D

Edited by Helmstif, 28 August 2015 - 06:53 PM.


#32 Hex Pallett

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 07:05 PM

View PostMarack Drock, on 28 August 2015 - 06:51 PM, said:

Giant stompy robots? I am sold, where do I sign up for a preorder?


I'll get back to you in...like a decade or so...but until then I do very occasionally post random stuff here.

#33 Mister Blastman

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 10:00 PM

View PostHelmstif, on 28 August 2015 - 02:25 PM, said:

So all I could do right now is learn. Research on whatever subject comes to mind - power dynamics in international politics, how specific technologies influence military designs, how far our technology would reach (and more importantly, would not reach) in another millennium. And I try my best to soak in as many stories as possible. I'll have to learn how to human before I can have multiple characters having conversions in my head in a living, breathing world that is similar to, but not our own. And that's why the book I'm working on probably wont reach fruition in another decade or so, cuz I like my idea, and I don't wanna botch the job executing it.


Don't worry about the details, don't sweat the perfection--bust out your keyboard and start writing now. I'm serious! If anyone had any idea how just how bad my dialogue was in my first draft, they'd laugh at me. You can't figure out your characters until you bring them to life. And the only way you do that is by writing them into situations and getting inside their heads.

Think of real folks you know or knew, real experiences and situations you saw them in and go from there if you need to draw inspiration from anything.

But whatever you do, don't try to emulate dialogue you see in film. Most of it is bad--and in some cases, real bad. You won't start catching that until you spend a lot of time writing your own but when you do--wow, it stands out and it blows away the suspension of disbelief. There are exceptions, of course. There's some great film out there that is well written. Any dialogue by Tarantino or the Cohen Brothers, for instance, is pretty good.

Just write. The puzzle will fall together the more you do it. The time is now. Trust me. :)

#34 Hex Pallett

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Posted 29 August 2015 - 05:27 AM

View PostMarack Drock, on 28 August 2015 - 08:07 PM, said:

Also to everyone got a question? How often do you try to visualize your worlds and characters by drawing them or something? I do this quite frequently myself and it helps me to really get a good idea of what I want.

I do picture them in my head very often, though I don't draw them out because, well, my drawings are terrible. Though I do make other associations, like trying to think of actors and roles from what I've seen before to base my characters on, or specific songs that explains character's moods. For example, that girl character's overall mentality is very much based on this:



View PostMister Blastman, on 28 August 2015 - 10:00 PM, said:

Just write. The puzzle will fall together the more you do it. The time is now. Trust me. :)

It's more than that. I need to know where my story is going and how it's going to end, and I've seen writers who don't have it in mind mess up and go all over the place. Plus, I need to nail down the details of the world for the characters to act maturely, realistically and make proper decisions. It's not the characters themselves - it's the world, the meta that I have to work on.

#35 XxXAbsolutZeroXxX

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Posted 30 August 2015 - 04:23 AM

View PostHelmstif, on 28 August 2015 - 02:25 PM, said:

The problem is, what I'm envisioning is way beyond what I'm capable of right now. I have some of the characters ready, I have a very vague idea about how the world would look like, but I don't have the knowledge to create the dynamic of the world, I have a hard time imagining the dynamics between characters, and worst of all, my depressed mind rarely spawns good stories, and the two characters I mentioned before are just fragments of my depressed self. How would the relationship between them play out? How would the opinions on a same subject defer between a woman who don't give a **** and a depressed mid-life crisis on legs? How would the sexual tension play out? How would the story ultimately end up? I have no idea.


Those details aren't necessarily of the utmost importance.

Storyline arcs can be heavily themed based. Think about a movie, book, or story you enjoy. What do the characters represent? Most characters can be summarized with a single sentence or label. Hero, villain, optimist, pessemist, humanitarian, liar, betrayer, coward, lover, fighter, sarcastic *******, apathetic, pirate, soldier, leader, follower, cool, uncool, hip, square, etc. Characters don't necessarily have to be multi-dimensional or complex. The reason a story succeeds can have a lot more to do with the underlying themes and morals than it does realism or characters who are dynamic or who behave like complex, multi-faceted, people.

Like how harry potter is a story about a neglected and ignored orphan and his rise to the top of the wizarding world, maybe there just has to be some underlying theme or plan. Once the characters are defined and there's a blueprint for the story, the interactions play out naturally because its not that hard to figure out what happens when an ******* character comes up against a hero character...?

WWE style wrestling could be a good example of how storytelling works. How to get the audience to empathize with certain characters and hate others. The way that being emotionally involved in the story makes the ending sweeter when stone cold delivers a stunner to vince mcmahon the villlain or whatever. Or if you like villains maybe you can switch things up. Its a lot easier to break these things down answering someone else, than it is figuring it out on our own, huh?

#36 Mister Blastman

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Posted 23 September 2015 - 07:58 AM

Does anyone here experience the "Writer's Pendulum?"

I made the phrase up but I think it is apropos. I'm about eighty percent done with my third draft of my first novel. It has been a grueling journey that I started back at the beginning of July. I have a lot of words to edit. Over this time my prose has shrunk from about 137k words down to close to 123k words. My goal was to get it under 125k as that is the upper limit for agents/publishers on sci-fi/fantasy novels for first time publication.

Somehow I've gotten it down this far--which is nice, because it gives me some leeway to go back and add even more stuff in. My book has evolved tremendously. I cut out a bunch of repetition, streamlined my style, engaged literary compression and it is (to me at least) fun to read versus my first and second draft, which were a chore.

But as I plod on I've been experiencing something that I did not so much in the four years it took me to write my first draft--the Writer's Pendulum. What is this pendulum I speak of? It is a curious thing that can best be described as such: I write one day and I feel happy, I write the next and I feel like crap, I write the third and I feel ambivalent to the words sputtering from my fingers, I write a fourth and feel like congealed garbage is better than the stack of drivel I have spewed and then I write a fifth and am excited!

I go back and forth, highs and lows. At times I curse myself and a voice inside says, "This is impossible!" While other days it sings to me hymns of praise, "Your story is great!"

But as an author, I never know. I listen to these voices and they have been a fantastic guide. I've gone back and made additions/subtractions that have bettered the story. But I have not forgotten one important lesson I learned...

Whenever I sit down for a daily session (I write six days a week for a minimum of two hours and as long as five--typically three to four), I spend the first hour or two proofing what I wrote the day before. I never proof the same day I write something--ever. When I'm done--I'm done, I put my laptop away for the next session. And as I proof I've found that many times when I worried all night long the prose I wrote was awful--it isn't so bad! Sometimes it is great. On a rare occasion it really was bad. Last week I re-wrote the same chapter twice in three days. Both times they were radically different. I might re-write it a third (will be the fourth version)--I'm not sure yet.

I have a couple of beta readers and they give me feedback and that will soon expand to a third. Their input so far has been invaluable--good or bad as it gives me a fluid picture of the story from an outsider's perspective--a look into their mind which helps me gauge how effective parts of the story are or aren't. But it doesn't stop the swing of the ghastly arm.

I proof at the start of every single session. And sometimes I'll go back and read part of the chapter before that. It gets my creative juices flowing (who said writing a third draft isn't creative--it IS!) and renews a spark inside of me to plow ahead, despite where the pendulum is in its swing at that moment in time.

So who else experiences the pendulum?

Edited by Mister Blastman, 23 September 2015 - 08:09 AM.


#37 Mister Blastman

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Posted 12 October 2015 - 06:04 PM

Finishing the third draft of a novel that I've worked on for over five years is supposed to be happy and thrilling. Instead it is nothing but an anxious sick feeling deep within my bowels.

But here I am, looking at it after all these years.

Tomorrow I will edit what I wrote today... then a few more small little edits here and there and then... I almost can't believe I'm writing this...

#38 Mister Blastman

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Posted 21 October 2015 - 06:01 PM

Six hours later I've done it... I re-wrote Chapter Four for the fourth time! Holy crap. I finished my third draft of the entire Novel a week ago but Chapter Four has been screaming at me. It was an expository brick wall of word vomit. Granted, it sets up the entire universe and tackles complex topics such as quantum entanglement and space-time... it just felt... like... word overload every time I thought about it.

So I chopped it apart, injected a ton of narrative, condensed the exposition and tomorrow I'll read what I wrote and see if it makes sense.

When I wrote my first version of the Chapter it scored something like a 51 on the flesch-kincaid readability scale. It was... horrible. Now it is up to a 71. The subject matter is difficult to simplify but important to know to understand and to immerse into the universe I have created.

I'm still not happy. Seventy one is really low when the bulk of my novel scores a eighty to eighty five on the scale. I'm tearing myself apart holding the book to such a high standard but I want folks to read it, not think it is a textbook. But today, when I went to read Chapter Four one more time, I found myself yawning and nodding off four pages in--that was all I needed. It had to be gutted and done again. Now it has some excitement and wonder to it... I hope.

I'm tired. And I'm hungry.

#39 Hex Pallett

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Posted 21 October 2015 - 06:56 PM

View PostMister Blastman, on 21 October 2015 - 06:01 PM, said:

I'm tired. And I'm hungry.


I believe you sir have entered the "never-ending end" phase where everything is done, looks about right but not quite right.

Gotta let it roll someday. Maybe find a publisher/editor?

#40 Mister Blastman

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Posted 21 October 2015 - 06:59 PM

View PostHelmstif, on 21 October 2015 - 06:56 PM, said:


I believe you sir have entered the "never-ending end" phase where everything is done, looks about right but not quite right.

Gotta let it roll someday. Maybe find a publisher/editor?


Yes. It is time. I need to adverb prune one more chapter and it is agent submission time.





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