Becoming a better writer - the questions to ask...
Khiem Tran
full of questions from beginners about lenses and flash modes and
formats and digital effects - and yet no-one in recorded memory has
ever asked "How do I capture the soul of the moment, the twinkle in
her eye, the dream in his heart, the rending, aching decay of the city
(as the instants slip by with glacial slowness)?"
So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there any
question that you wish new writers would ask? Are there any questions
that you'd like to see, even if it was just once? Are there any
questions that would help a beginner improve, but which no beginner
ever seems to think of asking?
Khiem.
Pat Bowne
"Khiem Tran" <nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote
>
> So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there any
> question that you wish new writers would ask? Are there any questions
> that you'd like to see, even if it was just once? Are there any
> questions that would help a beginner improve, but which no beginner
> ever seems to think of asking?
What's the difference between the framework, or 'hard landscaping' of a
story and the decorative details? How do they play off each other?
If someone asked this question, maybe I'd get an answer to it. :-) That
assumes I've phrased it in a way anybody else can understand.
Pat
Zeborah
> What's the difference between the framework, or 'hard landscaping' of a
> story and the decorative details? How do they play off each other?
>
> If someone asked this question, maybe I'd get an answer to it. :-) That
> assumes I've phrased it in a way anybody else can understand.
Hmm. I understand it; whether I understand it in the way you understand
it is another question...
Sort of like the difference between a plot outline (of whatever sort)
and the rest of the stuff that makes up the actual story? (If so, I
think there's also a third thing, which is the rest of the stuff that
doesn't get into the story but which the author knows about anyway, and
which does make its presence felt in some hard-to-quantify way.)
Or -- this is not quite the same but not quite different -- the
difference between the framework which could be part of a story set in
modern times or historical or future or fantastical, and the details
which set it into one place and time and genre? A framework which could
be done humourously or tragically depending on the angle you take?
Zeborah
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> In my photography circle, there's a running joke about the FAQs being
> full of questions from beginners about lenses and flash modes and
> formats and digital effects - and yet no-one in recorded memory has
> ever asked "How do I capture the soul of the moment, the twinkle in
> her eye, the dream in his heart, the rending, aching decay of the city
> (as the instants slip by with glacial slowness)?"
I would be very much surprised, though, if anybody had the answer to
that.
>
> So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there any
> question that you wish new writers would ask? Are there any questions
> that you'd like to see, even if it was just once? Are there any
> questions that would help a beginner improve, but which no beginner
> ever seems to think of asking?
For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?" and "How do you keep
them reading?" (Well, right now the real question is "How do you sell
them?")
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan - ada...@spamcop.net - this is a valid address
homepage: http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
English blog: http://annafdd.blogspot.com/
LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/annafdd/
Khiem Tran
"Anna Feruglio Dal Dan" <ada...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:1ggwqre.5xogrx9cnyyhN%ada...@spamcop.net...
> I would be very much surprised, though, if anybody had the answer to
> that.
:) Who knows if no-one's ever asked?
> For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?" and "How do you keep
> them reading?" (Well, right now the real question is "How do you sell
> them?")
Hmm... "How do you keep them reading?" is a good one. It's something that's
pretty basic to the business and yet people only seem to talk about it after
something goes wrong. I probably should have asked that question myself
about a year (and two revisions) ago.
Khiem.
Khiem Tran
"Zeborah" <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1ggx22t.4xsq0m97swcoN%zeb...@gmail.com...
Or the story archetype versus the story itself? Or is it the story versus
what I'd call "everything else which is not the story", the side details and
cameos and vignettes?
Khiem.
Nicola Browne
news:1ggwqre.5xogrx9cnyyhN%ada...@spamcop.net
> > For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?" and "How do you keep
> them reading?" (Well, right now the real question is "How do you sell
> them?")
It's a joke among children's writers who go into schools at lot that
your first question is the most commonly asked by kids followed
closely by 'Have you met JK Rowling?'
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Nicola Browne
news:2lk907F...@uni-berlin.de
Why do you think there is an answer? I think that you work out the
answer in the course of writing each book and it's a slightly different
answer each time. I don't think there is an all purpose solution
unless it's of the ' by making it gripping' variety. Even then there
are a lot of books I like which I'd never call 'gripping' which have
kept me reading because I care about the characters or I'm intrigued
by the situation or the atmosphere etc etc.
I've been battling with answering that question for my current
WIR and the answer, if I have now found it,is long and tedious
and has to do with quite a few things I would struggle to articulate.
If you have completed a novel which people want to finish reading you
probably have as much idea as anyone else.
Jonathan L Cunningham
Dal Dan) wrote:
>Khiem Tran <nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>> So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there any
>> question that you wish new writers would ask? Are there any questions
>> that you'd like to see, even if it was just once? Are there any
>> questions that would help a beginner improve, but which no beginner
>> ever seems to think of asking?
>
>For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?" and "How do you keep
>them reading?" (Well, right now the real question is "How do you sell
>them?")
I'm sure some variant of "How do you get ideas?" has come up and been
discussed here, but I can't remember the subject line to google for
it.
The answers ranged from "they just come -- I get too many ideas" to
things like "reading <some popular science title>". Sometimes people
get ideas from reading other stories where they say "but the
characters wouldn't *do* that!" particularly with unsatisfactory
endings. You don't have to turn that into fanfic: you can take
the *idea* and use that in a completely original story.
I prefer the Douglas Adams approach myself: a nice, long hot bath ;-).
Jonathan
--
Use jlc1 at address, not spam.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> "Anna Feruglio Dal Dan" <ada...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
> news:1ggwqre.5xogrx9cnyyhN%ada...@spamcop.net
>
> > > For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?" and "How do you keep
> > them reading?" (Well, right now the real question is "How do you sell
> > them?")
>
>
> It's a joke among children's writers who go into schools at lot that
> your first question is the most commonly asked by kids followed
> closely by 'Have you met JK Rowling?'
I know it's a cliche question - but when writers say "Oh, that's the
easiest part of the business, we get ideas all the time", well, that's
not true for me. Ideas are hard to come by and much treasured.
Khiem Tran
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:1542505d8c8b1ae057...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> Why do you think there is an answer?
Oh, I'm sure there's an answer. In fact, I'm sure there are thousands - all
different, of course, and some contradictory...
I guess I'm intrigued mainly by the thought that there might be questions
that people don't ask because they assume they're unanswerable. Or questions
that won't even occur to people until they've crossed a certain threshold of
understanding.
> I think that you work out the
> answer in the course of writing each book and it's a slightly different
> answer each time. I don't think there is an all purpose solution
> unless it's of the ' by making it gripping' variety. Even then there
> are a lot of books I like which I'd never call 'gripping' which have
> kept me reading because I care about the characters or I'm intrigued
> by the situation or the atmosphere etc etc.
I started out my current story with the idea of putting one "killer scene"
in every chapter and at least one "gem" on every page. That idea didn't
quite work, because my test readers didn't get the sense that the story was
moving anywhere. I think I'm closer to an answer now, because I've got a
better feel for how the readers perceive each scene - and I've closed the
feedback loop by talking to my test readers on a chapter-by-chapter basis.
Of course, I could be spectacularly wrong again.
Khiem.
Nicola Browne
>
>
> I know it's a cliche question - but when writers say "Oh, that's the
> easiest part of the business, we get ideas all the time", well, that's
> not true for me. Ideas are hard to come by and much treasured.
I don't find idea generation easy either. I don't usually have
an idea before writing. I just sit at my pc and write until something
happens that makes something else happen until eventually I have a
plot and some characters. No, I wouldn't call it easy : (
Nicky ( my pink book for happy fluffy ideas - got chewed up by the dog-
it was empty anyway...)
Catja Pafort
> For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?"
Billy's Word Store, bargain bin, somewhere in the corner. A few might be
a bit dusty, but they'll do for now. Have a dozen.
>and "How do you keep them reading?"
I don't think you can force them, you can just make the story as good as
possible. Some people love cliffhangers, some people hate them, some
people get drawn into a story by tension or by the orphan waif in
danger, other people are turned off by the same things.
Catja
Catja Pafort
(I think this post should win the rasfc award for the most innovative
new thread)
I think mine would be
- "what's the difference between a cool idea, a basic plot, and a
story?"
- "how do I turn a story seed into a proper story? How do I find what it
needs?"
Those two go hand in hand. I was lucky with my first book, and now I
realise *how* lucky I was, because it happened to have all the right
ingredients of interesting characters playing off each other, a
situation where the world could concievably be changed by my protag, and
the development of tension in the plot with slow beginning, ups and
downs in the middle and a crescendo at the end (with fireworks) - I
might not have written it well, but it was a good story, and most of it
was not intentional.
After that, I started at least ten stories in chunks of up to 20K that
just didn't go anywhere. Some are shorts. A lot are story seeds but not
stories yet, and I never could tell the differnce.
Lately, I would add 'how do I know when the book has ended' to that;
because the answer was so *simple* - it's over when the questions you've
asked at the beginning are answered satisfactorily; which doesn't mean
that the events have ended or the characters have all died/lived ever
after.
- "how can I work out why I just got stuck and what can I try to get
unstuck again?" These days, I get stuck for a week maximum, because I
can prod the story or take the characters for lunch or have them write
events down in their own words or play what-if and see what feels right
or analyze: if I get stuck, it usually means that the scene before the
stuckness is wrong; and the more I force the story forward, the more
wrong it will be, so I need to backtrack to rightness.
On some of the older stuff, I got stuck for years at a time. Which was
frustrating and meant that I wasn't working as hard at things as I could
have been - it was too much hit and miss, and so I thought of myself as
a spurt writer and I waited for inspiration instead of helping myself.
Oh, and I wish that writers new and old would try to understand the
importance of revision, that writing patchy first drafts is nothing to
be ashamed off, that nothing is written in stone (particularly not when
you can archive old versions easily and cut-n-paste to your heart's
delight) and that you can use circular diagrams, spreadsheets and visual
representations of the balance between dialogue and description to make
your story a better one instead of having to read it all, flag the
sentences you're not happy with, and trying to cram a whole book into
your head and see, intuitively, that the first chapter would work better
if it was half as long. If I'd known how to analyse my own writing (as
opposed to proper literary analysis) I might have worked out earlier
what was wrong with the Ruins of Elechan, and I wouldn't have wasted so
much time polishing its prose. On the whole, the twentieth revision of
the first chapter is better than the first, but only a marginal
improvement over the fourth and, since the whole thing needs to be
either cut and compressed without mercy or made more relevant and earn
its keep, it has been pretty pointless. Particularly as I am now a
better writer and want to polish it again *anyway*.
Catja
Nicola Browne
news:1ggx02d.8kjsz477e95uN%green...@cix.co.uk.invalid
> >
> I think mine would be
> - "what's the difference between a cool idea, a basic plot, and a
> story?"
Time and lots of work?
> - "how do I turn a story seed into a proper story? How do I find what it
> needs?"
Write it and see?
I have no theories, so I'd like to hear other peoples'. The only way
I find out how to do something in a story is to try to do it and then
struggle with it until I think it works.
As a planner, if I can't get round my circle with enough plot ideas
I don't proceed. If I can, then it stands a good chance of making it
as a story, though whether its 'proper' or completely crap is not
always obvious.
Nicky
Catja Pafort
> I know it's a cliche question - but when writers say "Oh, that's the
> easiest part of the business, we get ideas all the time", well, that's
> not true for me. Ideas are hard to come by and much treasured.
I think the difficulty is having 'story-worthy ideas.' I used to think
I didn't have ideas. I've come to the conclusion that I simply didn't
know how to treat my ideas well.
Some things that work for me:
- go through the world with open ears and eyes. Notice anything that
nudges your curiousity - how a man and his wife manage to completely
talk past each other, the image of an ill man on a stretcher stood
upright, helpless, while militia search the ambulance he was travelling
in, how you felt when you saw a photo of your mum as a toddler for the
first time [1], seeing a slug and finding it cute: throw into a big
cauldron, let it stir. Sometimes they'll spark something off.
- play 'what-if' with both the ordinary and the extraordinary in your
life and in your mind. What if you could feel the emotions of plants?
what if you could change your past by writing it down as you wish it had
happened? What if teleportation really worked?
- take those what-ifs and twist them further; going beyond the first
idea you had, and the second, and try coming up with the most
extraordinary explanation that could still concievably be true. (This is
the bit where I tend to wail 'everybody else has such wonderful ideas.
Why can't *I* come up with them?')
- if I have a character, I try to figure out what kind of environment he
would live in; if I have an event, I try to work out what kind of people
are involved in it, until I have a whole cluster of ideas. Which then
gets expanded from the vast story in #1 by virtue of 'this feels right
for this world' or 'this could never happen' and sometimes I might only
take the _essence_ of the initial situation and completely transform it
- instead of the picture that my mother scanned I might end up with a
locket of a brother the character had never known existed, and the
feelings are different and instead of the instandt recognition I felt
(she looks much cuter than I was as a kid) it's all about family
dynamics, but I'd still be able to guess where it came from. Cramming my
mind full of human interest stories and anecdotes and pieces of history
works when I need something to draw _on_.
And then I have a story seed, and will need to apply another process to
turn it into the scaffolding for a story proper; but I don't expect a
story to just 'come to me' finished. I don't think it could happen. Even
'what if you have Romeo and Juliet with werewolves and vampires' needs a
lot of setting up and deciding just who the members of the werewolf clan
*are* and what ideosynchrasies and habits they posess and is it a dark
or a funny story (very funny, as it happens [2]) and...
There may be writers who never need to work those things out, neither as
outline or revision or by writing down what happens; but I can't
envision them.
Catja
[1] Incredibly protective. I want to pick her up and hug her and tell
her that all will be well; but, sadly, it was not. Nor does she look
particularly happy. Which, hopefully is only because it looks like a
professional photo rather than a random snap and she might have been
sitting still for too long. I should not worry for the little girl in
the picture, but I do.
[2] Lisa Williams, better known as CCA, Family Bites.
Pat Bowne
>
> > What's the difference between the framework, or 'hard landscaping' of a
> > story and the decorative details? How do they play off each other?
> >
> > If someone asked this question, maybe I'd get an answer to it. :-) That
> > assumes I've phrased it in a way anybody else can understand.
>
> Hmm. I understand it; whether I understand it in the way you understand
> it is another question...
>
> Sort of like the difference between a plot outline (of whatever sort)
> and the rest of the stuff that makes up the actual story?
I would include plot outline and theme. Not just what happens in the story,
but what is its significance?
Pat
Eric Jarvis
>
> I think the difficulty is having 'story-worthy ideas.' I used to think
> I didn't have ideas. I've come to the conclusion that I simply didn't
> know how to treat my ideas well.
>
> Some things that work for me:
>
It's sort of different for me since I've spent nearly 30 years learning to
have ideas and remembering them, but like Catja I think it's something you
can work at and develop.
Everything that ever happens anywhere is potentially an idea that can be
incorporated into a story, as is everything that didn't actually happen
but might have, and even the things that couldn't possibly happen. What
you have to do is develop a part of your memory that collects it all and
sifts and sorts all the interesting stuff. That takes practise.
An exercise I used to do for songwriting was to write down at least three
odd things I'd heard people say during the day. One of the things I used
to do for directing was to spend the day collecting new ways to stand
waiting, or new ways to sit talking, and so on. I suppose the writing
equivalent would need to be more complex incidents. Anyway the point is to
get used to observing, memorising, and pulling stuff out from the soup
bubbling away in one's unconscious.
Story structure and research I still find to be hard work, but when it
comes to ideas the difficulty is getting them to stop so I can get on with
what I'm already writing.
That's largely learned and not entirely my natural state.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"
Brian Pickrell
>
> So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there any
> question that you wish new writers would ask?
It's rarely asked, but people volunteer the answer fairly frequently:
"By planting your butt in the chair and DOING IT."
> Are there any questions
> that you'd like to see, even if it was just once? Are there any
> questions that would help a beginner improve, but which no beginner
> ever seems to think of asking?
>
> Khiem.
The question that I myself would like to see a good answer to (which
I'm not sure anyone here could give) is "How can I tell if my story's
any good or not?"
Rob Kerr
news:eed75299.04071...@posting.google.com...
>
> The question that I myself would like to see a good answer to (which
> I'm not sure anyone here could give) is "How can I tell if my story's
> any good or not?"
I would tend to append to that, "...before I've written it?" I have ideas
for stories, and before I actually waste any time fleshing them out, I'd
like some way to know if they are actually any good. What works for you
as a quality indicator? I think that after a story is written, it is
easier to gauge its worth -- simply allow people to read it and tell you
what they think.
The question I, as a beginning writer, often most want to ask is, "How do
I motivate myself to finish anything when the next cool idea is beckoning
me from around the corner?"
Anyone?
Rob Kerr
Tina Hall
> Anna FDD wrote:
>> I know it's a cliche question - but when writers say "Oh, that's
>> the easiest part of the business, we get ideas all the time",
>> well, that's not true for me. Ideas are hard to come by and much
>> treasured.
> I think the difficulty is having 'story-worthy ideas.' I used to
> think I didn't have ideas. I've come to the conclusion that I
> simply didn't know how to treat my ideas well.
> Some things that work for me:
<snip good elaboration on individual steps to 'story/idea-making'>
> There may be writers who never need to work those things out,
> neither as outline or revision or by writing down what happens;
> but I can't envision them.
This is rather useful to contemplate, because none of it seems to
happen deliberately with me - thoughts just pop in and I follow
along, or find the path that leads to what did pop in - but it
sounds a good way to develope and train this thing, get it into
shape rather than it all being flobby pudding. (Not the ideas
themselves, but the making of ideas.)
Whether the ideas I do have are story-worthy is an entirely
different matter. :)
But I find gripping an idea and dissecting it makes it flee and
produce a blank, at least on some days (when my thoughts feel like a
flobby pudding). All I deliberately thought of so far is when two
things seem to contradict each other, and I tried to find the path
between them that made them match. But those solutions also seem to
have come wandering in instead of being figured out, or it still
doesn't quite smell right.
--
Tina - spinning gorilla on the grand piano of words.
Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of an insane mind!!!!
(Apologies to Terry Pratchett.) CrossPoint/FreeXP v3.40 RC3
Using a Usenet->Fidonet gateway; no internet access.
Tina Hall
> nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au (Khiem Tran) wrote in message
> news:
>> So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there
>> any question that you wish new writers would ask?
> It's rarely asked, but people volunteer the answer fairly
> frequently: "By planting your butt in the chair and DOING IT."
The question to which is... "What do you get if you multiply six by
nine?"? ;)
>> Are there any questions that you'd like to see, even if it was
>> just once? Are there any questions that would help a beginner
>> improve, but which no beginner ever seems to think of asking?
> The question that I myself would like to see a good answer to
> (which I'm not sure anyone here could give) is "How can I tell if
> my story's any good or not?"
Yes!
Eh, sorry. I'd really like to know that, too. The answer I
understood so far is 'by beta-readers', but the way you phrase the
actual question points out that that doesn't tell you (or me) how to
see on our own whether it is any good. (The 'drawing blindfolded'
stuff, again.)
Shelly
>"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
>> Why do you think there is an answer?
>
>Oh, I'm sure there's an answer. In fact, I'm sure there are thousands - all
>different, of course, and some contradictory...
>
>I guess I'm intrigued mainly by the thought that there might be questions
>that people don't ask because they assume they're unanswerable. Or questions
>that won't even occur to people until they've crossed a certain threshold of
>understanding.
That might be, but when I was starting to write seriously, about 20 or so years
ago and bought how-to-write books, I was looking for answers to questions like
How do you maintain suspense, how do you keep people reading, how to you make
characters believable, and so on, and the books had answers. Lots of answers.
Lots of contradictory answers. They even had examples. But I'm not good at
extrapolating from examples in creative endeavors like writing and art, so my
problem was getting an answer like: you build tension by having more seriously
bad things happen to the good guys, and I'd think, well, duh, sure, but HOW?
Around the same time, I took that class/workshop from hell and got even more
confused by the conflicting suggestions of HOW to the point of making a total
mess of something I didn't really want to write anyway (a romance). At least,
with my fan fic, I could just write and not worry about all those HOWs. And
over the years, I've come to realize that I know most of it, anyway. I absorbed
it somehow by reading actual novels.
So my questions mutated into How do I know I'm achieving what I intend? How do
I know the tension is really there? How do I know readers will keep reading
this? Which brings me to critique and submitting and getting answers to the
specific pieces of writing.
I've been on writers boards where practical writing questions have been asked.
Not all that long ago, Patricia (and I sure miss seeing her here lately) did a
mini-clinic for me re: plotting and building suspense (working with the fact
that I apparently do most of this subconsciously). It was amazing, the sort of
thing I really love when someone works with your process while explaining
things.
But that kind of response is hard to find and hard to give. I don't know that I
could give those kinds of really practical, helpful answers, even if it's to
only help the person eliminate what won't work for them. And I've realized most
of those types of answers, for me at any rate, have to come from me, by doing.
And I think a lot of people think they know the answers even if they don't, so
see no reason to ask. Or, as I've seen, they're such beginners that they start
with the broadest possible question: I want to write. How do I get started? Or
the other end of things: I wrote a novel, how do I get it published? Never mind
that it's probably just a first draft by someone without a clue re: what makes
a ms publishable.
> > I think that you work out the
>> answer in the course of writing each book and it's a slightly different
>> answer each time. I don't think there is an all purpose solution
>> unless it's of the ' by making it gripping' variety. Even then there
>> are a lot of books I like which I'd never call 'gripping' which have
>> kept me reading because I care about the characters or I'm intrigued
>> by the situation or the atmosphere etc etc.
I agree with that. Tho characters on their own can be emotionally gripping, I
think. And there is no one answer for how to make something gripping, cuz your
way might not work for me and vice versa.
>I started out my current story with the idea of putting one "killer scene"
>in every chapter and at least one "gem" on every page. That idea didn't
>quite work, because my test readers didn't get the sense that the story was
>moving anywhere. I think I'm closer to an answer now, because I've got a
>better feel for how the readers perceive each scene - and I've closed the
>feedback loop by talking to my test readers on a chapter-by-chapter basis.
>Of course, I could be spectacularly wrong again.
>
And something like that would never occur to me. I realized midway thru the
first draft of my WIP that I was alternating short chapters with long and
thought, hey, why not keep doing that. Except it didn't quite work out that
way.
All that really matters to me after each writing session is Did I move things
forward? And with that comes Does it all fit together?
It will be so much easier when it's done to ask the practical, What next? type
of questions: how to format? Who to critique? Where to submit? How to write the
query? Tho I've got some nice printouts of advice for most of that already.
Sheesh. I didn't mean to ramble on like this. :)
Shelly
http://journals.aol.com/shellys555/CyberChocolate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/prestoimp/
Shelly
>Anna FDD wrote:
>
>> I know it's a cliche question - but when writers say "Oh, that's the
>> easiest part of the business, we get ideas all the time", well, that's
>> not true for me. Ideas are hard to come by and much treasured
>I think the difficulty is having 'story-worthy ideas.' I used to think
>I didn't have ideas. I've come to the conclusion that I simply didn't
>know how to treat my ideas well.
>
>Some things that work for me:
>
(snip)
I get ideas from the news, from the media--I've reused many a plot, with my
characters, easily done since for me, the characters come first.
I start with characters that intrigue me, ones I want to write about. I have a
few prototypes (and most go back to a TV character I've reworked over the years
to someone I can then rework for various stories). I have, for ex, Brion. He
was based on a TV character and then used in an interactive SF writing group. I
later reworked that version for another interactive SF writing group, and
finally, once more for a novel currently on-hold (to be written with the
collaborator in the Mars series that I'm currently writing a solo book for).
Which brings me to a timeline with events that give me ideas for stories in
that universe.The current WIP is set 100 years before the on-hold WIP cuz I
found something on the history we'd created that intrigued me.
>There may be writers who never need to work those things out, neither as
>outline or revision or by writing down what happens; but I can't
>envision them.
I don't work it out at the start, but at some point, things get complicated to
the point that I need to make charts and notes and do some mental figuring out,
if only to eliminate some of the possibilities that come to mind. The problem
with the WIP and why I'm doing a full revision before I finished the first
draft is cuz I had 3 or maybe 4 possible outcomes and couldn't narrow things
down to one. I'm hoping I changed things sufficiently that one ending will seem
better than the others.
Shelly
(much snipping re: ideas)
> What
>you have to do is develop a part of your memory that collects it all and
>sifts and sorts all the interesting stuff. That takes practise.
>
>An exercise I used to do for songwriting was to write down at least three
>odd things I'd heard people say during the day. One of the things I used
>to do for directing was to spend the day collecting new ways to stand
>waiting, or new ways to sit talking, and so on. I suppose the writing
>equivalent would need to be more complex incidents.
That sounds like fun. And if the things overheard are odd enough--and in NYC,
that's not much of a problem--it could be sufficient. I might just try that.
Just to see what I come up with.
(snip)
Shelly
>"Brian Pickrell" <bobth...@brandx.net> wrote in message
>news:eed75299.04071...@posting.google.com...
>>
>> The question that I myself would like to see a good answer to (which
>> I'm not sure anyone here could give) is "How can I tell if my story's
>> any good or not?"
>
>I would tend to append to that, "...before I've written it?" I have ideas
>for stories, and before I actually waste any time fleshing them out, I'd
>like some way to know if they are actually any good. What works for you
>as a quality indicator? I think that after a story is written, it is
>easier to gauge its worth -- simply allow people to read it and tell you
>what they think.
I don't know if an idea is good or not until I write it. Any idea on its own,
as I see it, is neutral. In one writer's hands, it could be gold. In anothers,
pure crap. If you can't see your way to work with it, then it probably isn't a
good idea, for you. Which is why I can't write from other people's ideas,
usually. They're not mine. I don't "see" where to go with them.
>The question I, as a beginning writer, often most want to ask is, "How do
>I motivate myself to finish anything when the next cool idea is beckoning
>me from around the corner?"
>
>Anyone?
For me, that's easy. Since I write mostly as I go, I really need to write a
story to find out how it ends. So that's my motivation. I solve the plotting
problems in the writing. And until I finish the WIP, I won't know how it really
ends, which of the 3-4 possible endings (that I now see, tho I didn't see even
that at the onset) will work best.
And just this morning an idea popped into my head that would give me a whole
new look at any of the endings, if I go with it. It's intriguing. I might have
to use it and see what happens. :)
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> That's largely learned and not entirely my natural state.
That's very hopeful. :-)
Eric Jarvis
> > Eric Jarvis w...@ericjarvis.co.uk wrote:
>
> (much snipping re: ideas)
>
> > What
> >you have to do is develop a part of your memory that collects it all and
> >sifts and sorts all the interesting stuff. That takes practise.
> >
> >An exercise I used to do for songwriting was to write down at least three
> >odd things I'd heard people say during the day. One of the things I used
> >to do for directing was to spend the day collecting new ways to stand
> >waiting, or new ways to sit talking, and so on. I suppose the writing
> >equivalent would need to be more complex incidents.
>
> That sounds like fun. And if the things overheard are odd enough--and in NYC,
> that's not much of a problem--it could be sufficient. I might just try that.
> Just to see what I come up with.
>
My all time favourite's so far are...
"I've been <hawk> smoking <cough> for over <splutter> fifty years <cough,
wheeze> and it hasn't <hawk, splutter> done me any harm."
And from two middle aged women on a bus...
"I says to her I says, 'that's what she says'"
"That telled her."
"Yes, and I says, 'you says she says that, but she says she didn't, that's
what she says', I says."
Khiem Tran
"Eric Jarvis" <w...@ericjarvis.co.uk> wrote in message
news:MPG.1b5fa8182...@news.individual.net...
> My all time favourite's so far are...
>
> "I've been <hawk> smoking <cough> for over <splutter> fifty years <cough,
> wheeze> and it hasn't <hawk, splutter> done me any harm."
>
> And from two middle aged women on a bus...
>
> "I says to her I says, 'that's what she says'"
>
> "That telled her."
>
> "Yes, and I says, 'you says she says that, but she says she didn't, that's
> what she says', I says."
Which then leads on to the next question... "how do I make all this
believable?" (And then: "how do I make myself believable?)
On looking for new ideas: one brainstorming technique I quite like is to
think of them not as new "things" but as new connections between existing
things. So, you might randomly pick a few things and then look for
connections between them. (Say you took "vampires" from one thread and
"viruses" from another... There's an obvious connection there straight
away - vampirism is like a disease, but what if there were other
connections? What if vampirism was a cure for a virus? What if a killer flu
is sweeping the world and only the vampires are safe? A vampire offers to
convert you - what do you do? Is it a trick? Is it selling your soul? Is
there something about vampires that we've had wrong all this time? And then
you're off...)
Khiem.
David Friedman
"Khiem Tran" <nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Hmm... "How do you keep them reading?" is a good one. It's something that's
> pretty basic to the business and yet people only seem to talk about it after
> something goes wrong. I probably should have asked that question myself
> about a year (and two revisions) ago.
>
On a non-fiction tangent... .
A long time ago I wrote a price theory textbook. Later I rewrote it as a
book aimed at the intelligent layman. One of the reasons the rewrite is,
in my opinion, better than the original is that it occurred to me that
my hypothetical reader, unlike a student with an assigned text, would be
free to stop anytime he wanted. So I made a point of starting each
chapter with something intended to get the reader's interest and keep it
long enough to get him to the start of the next chapter.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
Catja Pafort
> nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au (Khiem Tran) wrote in message news:
>
> >
> > So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there any
> > question that you wish new writers would ask?
>
> It's rarely asked, but people volunteer the answer fairly frequently:
> "By planting your butt in the chair and DOING IT."
That's working harder - what I needed was to work smarter! Butt in chair
didn't work (I tried it) because I had no idea how to develop a story,
how to revise one, or how to get unstuck when I'd written myself into a
corner. All it got me was a lot of frustration because despite best
intentions I didn't get anything done and I was going over the same
ground again and again without seeming to make progress.
The single most important insight was 'nine and sixty ways' - there are
MANY ROADS to Rome, and I needn't travel any particular one, and just
because something was perfect for one person it needn't work for me and
I could happily abandon it.
> The question that I myself would like to see a good answer to (which
> I'm not sure anyone here could give) is "How can I tell if my story's
> any good or not?"
I think George Scithers has attempted to answer it in his guidelines for
Weird Tales.
Catja
Shelly
Sounds like kids talking here. Sheesh. Actually, I heard something bizarre the
other day, but didn't think to jot it down and now I'm kicking myself cuz I
can't recall it.
Zeborah
> "Zeborah" <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1ggx22t.4xsq0m97swcoN%zeb...@gmail.com...
> > Pat Bowne <pbo...@execpc.com> wrote:
> >
> > > What's the difference between the framework, or 'hard landscaping' of a
> > > story and the decorative details? How do they play off each other?
> >
> > Sort of like the difference between a plot outline (of whatever sort)
> > and the rest of the stuff that makes up the actual story?
>
> I would include plot outline and theme. Not just what happens in the story,
> but what is its significance?
Right. I try to outline the theme in my plot outlines anyway, if only
because last time I did this the plot would make little sense without
the theme...
Hmm. I think part of it is like the relationship between the abstract
of a scientific paper and the paper itself: the abstract says the
important things, but the paper expands on it all and makes you believe
it.
I also have this idea of it being fractal in nature. Like a mandelbrot
diagram: the zoomed out view is the plot/theme outline, but when you
start reading it it's like zooming in so that you can see only one
chapter (frex) at a time. You see more detail that way. --And those
details have to be echoed in other chapters (as you work your way
through neighbouring screens of the mandelbrot); this is continuity, and
it's also (especially if you zoom in even more) symbolism, and sometimes
how things connect to or resonate with the real world.
I think that the best books, the ones that will be called classics, are
the ones where you can zoom in three or four times and you can still see
all this detail: varying in detail, but also consistent in mode across
the whole book.
And the books that you read once and then forget are the ones where you
can only zoom in the once, and even there things are already kind of
pixellated.
Zeborah
Zeborah
> The question I, as a beginning writer, often most want to ask is, "How do
> I motivate myself to finish anything when the next cool idea is beckoning
> me from around the corner?"
From long experience, I know that if I abandon a story half-written for
the next cool idea, I'll get locked into a cycle of writing many many
beginnings-of-stories, and never finishing any.
I want to finish some stories so I can submit and maybe publish them, so
I make a rule: no starting something new until the first draft of this
is finished. (There's one exception: I'm allowed to pause in a novel's
progress for an attack short story. Can't pause in the middle of a
novel for an attack novel, and I can't pause in the middle of a short
for another short.)
The rule plus my desire to submit things is my motivation.
Zeborah
Shelly
>
>Brian Pickrell wrote:
>
>> nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au (Khiem Tran) wrote in message news:
>>
>> >
>> > So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there any
>> > question that you wish new writers would ask?
>>
>> It's rarely asked, but people volunteer the answer fairly frequently:
>> "By planting your butt in the chair and DOING IT."
>
>That's working harder - what I needed was to work smarter! Butt in chair
>didn't work (I tried it) because I had no idea how to develop a story,
>how to revise one, or how to get unstuck when I'd written myself into a
>corner. All it got me was a lot of frustration because despite best
>intentions I didn't get anything done and I was going over the same
>ground again and again without seeming to make progress.
For me, butt in chair usually means a lot of FreeCell gets played. Or nowadays,
I end up blogging. Or anything but writing. I really need to get my head into
the book first. Sometimes, it's a matter of reaching critical mass--I haven't
written anything for a while and I'm ready to burst. Or I reread what I've
written so far so I can get my head into that realm. Or to sit around watching
TV and thinking about the characters, letting them talk in my head until the
buzzing gets loud enough and I have to write the conversation. Or some other
such weirdness.
(snip)
e...@drizzle.com
> For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?"
I'm pretty brutal to people who ask this question. My answer is
simple: "If you're not drowning in ideas, you're not fit to write." It
is not about finding ideas-- the world is full of ideas. It's about
finding a story within those ideas.
Elf
Elizabeth Shack
<news:87wu16y...@drizzle.com>:
It's about finding ideas that are worth writing, ideas that are actually a
story. At least that's how I've decided to interpret the question.
--
Elizabeth Shack eashack at gmail dot com
Writing updates at http://www.livejournal.com/users/eashack/
Elizabeth Shack
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in
<news:0de5abdcd975123a39...@mygate.mailgate.org>:
> "Catja Pafort" <green...@cix.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> news:1ggx02d.8kjsz477e95uN%green...@cix.co.uk.invalid
>
>
>> - "how do I turn a story seed into a proper story? How do I find what it
>> needs?"
>
> Write it and see?
Wait until it sprouts all by itself?
John Ringo
"Elizabeth Shack" <eas...@NOgmailSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:hZlJc.2969$mL5....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 12:53:00 +0000 (UTC), "Nicola Browne"
> <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in
> <news:0de5abdcd975123a39...@mygate.mailgate.org>:
>
> > "Catja Pafort" <green...@cix.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:1ggx02d.8kjsz477e95uN%green...@cix.co.uk.invalid
> >
> >
> >> - "how do I turn a story seed into a proper story? How do I find what
it
> >> needs?"
> >
> > Write it and see?
>
> Wait until it sprouts all by itself?
>
>
Would be my answer as well. If the story ain't talkin, ain't no use to
writin.
The alternative is to do: "What if?" And "What next?" in a structured form.
That is, story seed (WARNING, WARNING, BAD SCIENCE): What if: A cosmic
thingamajigger (micro black hole, rogue neutron star, etc) shifts the orbit
of the moon and it's going to crash into earth.
What's the logical actions that derive from this?
Well, in my opinion, drink all the booze, screw as many women as you can
then take the pill; there's bugger all we can do about it. We can't even
_get_ to the damned moon.
But, we have to come up with a story, no matter how likely it is. So, we
have a super-scientist who has been working on graviticunobtaniuminum for
his entire life who is ridiculed by all the scientific community but he
convinces people that it's possible to shift the moon back into orbit, etc,
etc, etc, etc. With exploding spaceships and beautiful (insert hair color
here) females who have something functional to do if you're targeting Baen.
Amanda Tapping is the ultimate Baen Babe. Also, if you want a career, you'd
better "win" in some way shape or form. Greg Bear had a track record when he
wrote "Forge of the Gods." And he had a sort of win in it.
Come up with a what if, then figure out the logical consequences. Not hard.
John
--
------
John Ringo
www.johnringo.com
Emerald Sea July 2004
http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200407/0743488334.htm?blurb
******************************
"Things are looking up for us here. In fact, Papua-New
Guinea is thinking of offering two platoons: one of
Infantry (headhunters) and one of engineers
(hut builders). They want to eat any Iraqis they kill.
We've got no issues with that, but State is being
anal about it." LTC (JS) on OIF coalition-building
"Cynicism is the smoke that rises from the ashes of
burned out dreams." Maj (CENTCOM) on the daily
thrashings delivered to AOs at his Command
Mary Gentle
> ada...@spamcop.net (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) writes:
>
> > For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?"
>
> I'm pretty brutal to people who ask this question. My answer is
> simple: "If you're not drowning in ideas, you're not fit to write."
Oh good, I can finally quit . . . <g>
I don't think I've ever been 'drowning' in ideas in my life. Maybe
paddling. On a good day.
>It
> is not about finding ideas-- the world is full of ideas. It's about
> finding a story within those ideas.
There again, that sounds like the difference between 'story-seed' and
'story' again (at least in the way I think about it).
Or between 'idea' and 'good idea' . . . There's a million books you
_could_ write: deciding whether it's worth the author's slog to write a
given book and the reader's time to read it is another thing altogether.
That's one reason I prefer attack stories -- no worries about the why, or
the what; just follow the compulsion. :)
Mary
Most recently published:
1610: A SUNDIAL IN A GRAVE, novel, Orion UK, hc & tpb
CARTOMANCY, short story collection, Orion UK, pb
Mary Gentle
eas...@NOgmailSPAM.com (Elizabeth Shack) wrote:
> On 14 Jul 2004 16:06:35 -0700, e...@drizzle.com wrote in
> <news:87wu16y...@drizzle.com>:
>
> > ada...@spamcop.net (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) writes:
> >
> >> For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?"
> >
> > I'm pretty brutal to people who ask this question. My answer
> > is
> > simple: "If you're not drowning in ideas, you're not fit to write."
> > It
> > is not about finding ideas-- the world is full of ideas. It's about
> > finding a story within those ideas.
>
> It's about finding ideas that are worth writing, ideas that are
> actually a
> story. At least that's how I've decided to interpret the question.
OK: great frightening thoughts of our time - calculate how long you think
it will take you to write a novel (or has done, the last time you did one)
in hours. Calculate the number of hours in a year you have that you can
reasonable spend writing. A bit of counting on your fingers will give you
the number of novels[1] you can expect to write in your lifetime . . .
If the thought 'should this idea be one of those few[2] novels?' seems
completely irrelevant, because by God you just want to _write_ the thing,
then that's probably the idea that's actually a story. <g>
The rest of it is execution. Good ideas can be screwed as easily as
anything else . . .
There again, I picked up a bestseller last week that I'm reading by
sequential effort -- it keeps whapping me around the head like a baseball
bat and I have to stop for a while and recover -- and which is _so_ bad
that it has the horrific fascination of a motorway pile-up. But it's
apparently shifting in truckloads. So we're probably all wasting our
time. Convincing premise, good idea, fair-handed treatment of ideologies,
non-cardboard characters, smooth plotting, non-clunky dialogue, surprising
plot-twists -- it has none of them.
I suspect it was bought and published because you can see the film being
made even as you read the pages. <sigh> It won't hang together any better
as a film, but sufficient amounts of loud noise in a darkened cinema and
nobody will notice.[3]
Mary
Most recently published:
1610: A SUNDIAL IN A GRAVE, novel, Orion UK, hc & tpb
CARTOMANCY, short story collection, Orion UK, pb
[1] Novels are more easily predictable than short fiction, in my case; I
couldn't _begin_ to work out how many short stories I could do, or how
long it would take.
[2] Even if you're Stross or Dumas, your output will be few compared to
the total number of books published in any given year. <g>
[3] Jealous? Good lord, whatever gave you an idea like that . . .
Khiem Tran
> Hmm. I think part of it is like the relationship between the abstract
> of a scientific paper and the paper itself: the abstract says the
> important things, but the paper expands on it all and makes you believe
> it.
So, by that logic... if your outline is flawed, then your entire story will
be?
What do you do as you revise? Do you ever change your outline as the story
twists?
Khiem.
Nicola Browne
Ah well that's my career over. I make stories up out of scraps and
fragments and most of the time I'm an idea free zone.
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
Ah well, I guess I'll better be quitting then. Thanks for the input,
Elf. So much more helpful than Eric's suggestions as to how to generate
ideas.
Khiem Tran
"Rob Kerr" <rober...@bbc.co.uk> wrote in message
news:cd3qnq$rjf$1...@nntp0.reith.bbc.co.uk...
> "Brian Pickrell" <bobth...@brandx.net> wrote in message
> news:eed75299.04071...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > The question that I myself would like to see a good answer to (which
> > I'm not sure anyone here could give) is "How can I tell if my story's
> > any good or not?"
>
> I would tend to append to that, "...before I've written it?" I have ideas
> for stories, and before I actually waste any time fleshing them out, I'd
> like some way to know if they are actually any good. What works for you
> as a quality indicator? I think that after a story is written, it is
> easier to gauge its worth -- simply allow people to read it and tell you
> what they think.
Hmm. I'd love to hear an answer to that one. The zeroth draft, maybe?
> The question I, as a beginning writer, often most want to ask is, "How do
> I motivate myself to finish anything when the next cool idea is beckoning
> me from around the corner?"
>
> Anyone?
"Test readers" again for that one I think... Because once you've got them
hooked on the first few chapters, they start getting all uppity when you
tell you them that there's been a slight change of plan. And of course, if
they don't get hooked, then maybe it wasn't working after all...
Khiem.
John Ringo
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:3a4a565d48476ee751...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> "elf" <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in message news:87wu16y...@drizzle.com
>
> > ada...@spamcop.net (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) writes:
> >
> > > For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?"
> >
> > I'm pretty brutal to people who ask this question. My answer is
> > simple: "If you're not drowning in ideas, you're not fit to write." It
> > is not about finding ideas-- the world is full of ideas. It's about
> > finding a story within those ideas.
> >
> Ah well that's my career over. I make stories up out of scraps and
> fragments and most of the time I'm an idea free zone.
>
Welcome to the club, honey.
(Said the guy with his 11th novel out.)
Admittedly, I can "find ideas." "Oooo, what if staple pullers were alien
lifeforms?" (looking at my desk for inspiration) But finding ideas that grab
me, that's something different.
Catja Pafort
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 12:53:00 +0000 (UTC), "Nicola Browne"
>
> > "Catja Pafort" <green...@cix.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> >
> >
> >> - "how do I turn a story seed into a proper story? How do I find what it
> >> needs?"
> >
> > Write it and see?
>
> Wait until it sprouts all by itself?
That's how I've ended up with twenty-odd fragments on my hard disk and
it took ten years to finish the first 100K novel.
A different approach was needed.
I tend to call it prodding a story, when I've got this neat idea and the
characters I care about and I get a scene or five, and then it peters
out.
Mary helped me with the Entling on this group, and it's been enourmously
helpful to see how a neat idea can turn into a story proper; and I've
managed to kickstart one that fascinated me, but that just would not
grow on its own. (And I tried, boy did I try, I waited for inspiration
to hit for two years, which it never did. Unsurprisingly, as what I had
was the end, so it refused to move forward)
Catja
Sea Wasp
> Welcome to the club, honey.
>
> (Said the guy with his 11th novel out.)
>
> Admittedly, I can "find ideas." "Oooo, what if staple pullers were alien
> lifeforms?" (looking at my desk for inspiration) But finding ideas that grab
> me, that's something different.
>
I have about 30 novels up here in my head right now. I get ideas for
new ones all the time, often by fiddling with other stories, doing
fanfic, running RPGs, and similar activities.
I never used to outline, but I've become convinced it's necessary for
anything larger than a very short novel.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Jonathan L Cunningham
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>"elf" <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in message news:87wu16y...@drizzle.com
>
>> ada...@spamcop.net (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) writes:
>>
>> > For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?"
>>
>> I'm pretty brutal to people who ask this question. My answer is
>> simple: "If you're not drowning in ideas, you're not fit to write." It
>> is not about finding ideas-- the world is full of ideas. It's about
>> finding a story within those ideas.
>>
>Ah well that's my career over. I make stories up out of scraps and
>fragments and most of the time I'm an idea free zone.
From Douglas Adams's foreword to the book of the original radio
scripts for "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy":
I sat and stared out of the window for a while, trying to think of a
good name for a character. I told myself that, as a reward, I would
let myself go and make a Bovril sandwich once I'd thought of it.
I stared out of the window some more and thought that probably what
I really needed to get the creative juices going was to have a
Bovril sandwich now, which presented me with a problem that I could
only successfully resolve by thinking it over in the bath.
An hour, a bath, three Bovril sandwiches, another bath and a cup of
coffee later, I realised that I still hadn't thought of a good name
for a character, and decided that I would try calling him Zaphod
Beeblebrox and see if that worked.
I sat and stared out of the window for a while, trying to think of
something for him to say ...
Jonathan
--
Use jlc1 at address, not spam.
Pat Bowne
> There again, I picked up a bestseller last week that I'm reading by
> sequential effort -- it keeps whapping me around the head like a baseball
> bat and I have to stop for a while and recover -- and which is _so_ bad
> that it has the horrific fascination of a motorway pile-up. But it's
> apparently shifting in truckloads. So we're probably all wasting our
> time. Convincing premise, good idea, fair-handed treatment of ideologies,
> non-cardboard characters, smooth plotting, non-clunky dialogue, surprising
> plot-twists -- it has none of them.
>
I just dumped a book that we could use to add 'proper grammar' to the list.
I never read anything that had been published with so many grammatical
errors -- but it was a Jane Austin pastiche, and I bet whoever edited it
didn't feel really comfortable with that idiom, and just let the author get
away with anything that sounded right.
Pat
e...@drizzle.com
> <e...@drizzle.com> wrote:
>
> > ada...@spamcop.net (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) writes:
> >
> > > For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?"
> >
> > I'm pretty brutal to people who ask this question. My answer is
> > simple: "If you're not drowning in ideas, you're not fit to write." It
> > is not about finding ideas-- the world is full of ideas. It's about
> > finding a story within those ideas.
>
> Ah well, I guess I'll better be quitting then. Thanks for the input,
> Elf. So much more helpful than Eric's suggestions as to how to generate
> ideas.
Well, I never argued that I was a *nice* person.
The questions I always want answered are things like, "How often
should a subplot surface within the thread of a main plot?" and "How
will I know when I'm boring the reader?"
Elf
Peter Knutsen
Khiem Tran wrote:
> In my photography circle, there's a running joke about the FAQs being
> full of questions from beginners about lenses and flash modes and
> formats and digital effects - and yet no-one in recorded memory has
> ever asked "How do I capture the soul of the moment, the twinkle in
> her eye, the dream in his heart, the rending, aching decay of the city
> (as the instants slip by with glacial slowness)?"
>
> So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there any
> that you'd like to see, even if it was just once? Are there any
> questions that would help a beginner improve, but which no beginner
> ever seems to think of asking?
"Why do people read stories?"
--
Peter Knutsen
Nicola Browne
news:gvtJc.10916$kK.1...@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net
>
>
> > > Ah well that's my career over. I make stories up out of scraps and
> > fragments and most of the time I'm an idea free zone.
> >
>
> Welcome to the club, honey.
>
> (Said the guy with his 11th novel out.)
I'm some way behind, but I just agreed another two book deal with my
publisher today (yay!) so I'll have to start sticking some scraps
together!
I must have ideas I suppose, they just tend to evolve as I work rather
than strike in the bolt-from-the blue kind of way. I almost think
the hardest stage for me is the idea/plot generation phase, because
it's the most conscious. It's a case of - OK - what if A were true and
what if x wants y - and maybe z wants y too and because of A they can't
get it then what? etc etc lots and lots of times.
Tim S
wrote:
> Nicky ( my pink book for happy fluffy ideas - got chewed up by the dog-
> it was empty anyway...)
The Short, Empty Life
and Violent Death
of a
Happy Fluffy Pink Book
by
NM Browne
Tim
Well, I enjoyed it.
Tim S
[Getting ideas]
> One of the things I used
> to do for directing was to spend the day collecting new ways to stand
> waiting, or new ways to sit talking, and so on. I suppose the writing
> equivalent would need to be more complex incidents.
I don't think so; I do this a lot for my own writing, and although I
wouldn't describe these things as 'ideas', I do sometimes build scenes
around them which then spawn ideas.
> Anyway the point is to
> get used to observing, memorising, and pulling stuff out from the soup
> bubbling away in one's unconscious.
>
Yes, I'd agree with that.
Tim
Nicola Browne
news:BD1B4427.E838%T...@timsilverman.demon.co.uk
>> Well, I enjoyed it.
and I enjoyed your version : )
Suzanne A Blom
Khiem Tran <nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:6115c740.04071...@posting.google.com...
>
> So, my question to the collective wisdom of rasfc is, is there any
> question that you wish new writers would ask? Are there any questions
> that you'd like to see, even if it was just once? Are there any
> questions that would help a beginner improve, but which no beginner
> ever seems to think of asking?
>
beginners don't ask is, "Okay, I'm getting this critique. Just what exactly
should I do with it?"
Most beginners don't seem to say, 'Okay, I don't know whether this person is
my target audience, knows more or less about writing than I do, got in an
argument with their SO this morning, sees my piece as a hot-button issue"
whatever.
I have heard experienced writers say that the one thing they pay attention
to is a critiquer saying, "I don't understand what..."
For myself, if everybody jumps on one place, there's something there that I
need to think about, work on, something. If almost everybody says, "I don't
like this," either I've screwed up...or I should make that my focus(tho
actually this hasn't happened yet).
Like that.
Suzanne A Blom
Tina Hall <Tina...@kruemel.org> wrote in message
news:MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet...@fidonet.org...
> Catja Pafort <green...@cix.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
> > Anna FDD wrote:
>
> >> I know it's a cliche question - but when writers say "Oh, that's
> >> the easiest part of the business, we get ideas all the time",
> >> well, that's not true for me. Ideas are hard to come by and much
> >> treasured.
>
> > I think the difficulty is having 'story-worthy ideas.' I used to
> > think I didn't have ideas. I've come to the conclusion that I
> > simply didn't know how to treat my ideas well.
>
> > Some things that work for me:
>
> <snip good elaboration on individual steps to 'story/idea-making'>
>
> > There may be writers who never need to work those things out,
> > neither as outline or revision or by writing down what happens;
> > but I can't envision them.
>
> This is rather useful to contemplate, because none of it seems to
> happen deliberately with me - thoughts just pop in and I follow
> along, or find the path that leads to what did pop in - but it
> sounds a good way to develope and train this thing, get it into
> shape rather than it all being flobby pudding. (Not the ideas
> themselves, but the making of ideas.)
>
> Whether the ideas I do have are story-worthy is an entirely
> different matter. :)
>
> But I find gripping an idea and dissecting it makes it flee and
> produce a blank, at least on some days (when my thoughts feel like a
> flobby pudding). All I deliberately thought of so far is when two
> things seem to contradict each other, and I tried to find the path
> between them that made them match. But those solutions also seem to
> have come wandering in instead of being figured out, or it still
> doesn't quite smell right.
>
Yeah, a lot of us work like that. I wrote a trilogy without an outline,
except somewhere in the back recesses of my brain. Made for a lot of
rewriting, but I got it done.
Suzanne A Blom
> Rob Kerr <rober...@bbc.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > The question I, as a beginning writer, often most want to ask is, "How
do
> > I motivate myself to finish anything when the next cool idea is
beckoning
> > me from around the corner?"
>
> the next cool idea, I'll get locked into a cycle of writing many many
> beginnings-of-stories, and never finishing any.
>
> I want to finish some stories so I can submit and maybe publish them, so
> I make a rule: no starting something new until the first draft of this
> is finished.
My amendment to this is: Until the first draft of something is finished. It
may be that what I'm working on now isn't ripe yet. But there's got to be
something on the hard drive that's ready to go.
(There's one exception: I'm allowed to pause in a novel's
> progress for an attack short story. Can't pause in the middle of a
> novel for an attack novel, and I can't pause in the middle of a short
> for another short.)
>
Now that doesn't work for me. I have short stories I've been working on for
over a decade as well as novels.
R. L.
Tran) wrote:
/snip/
>Are there any
>questions that would help a beginner improve, but which no beginner
>ever seems to think of asking?
"May I see your earlier drafts and outline?" At least that's what I
needed while learning. To see examples of a project as it goes through
stages, instead of just the published version.
Stephen King gave a small sample of two drafts of the same passage, iirc
in ON WRITING, and there was a how-to book that compared outlines and
some passsages from THE MAN FROM ST. PETERSBURG. The how-to's title
might have been something about "the blockbuster novel."
Haven't seen any other such examples. That's one good use of online
crits.
R.L.
--
RL at houseboatonthestyx
R. L.
Cunningham) wrote:
>On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 07:53:56 +0000 (UTC), "Nicola Browne"
><nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>>"elf" <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in message news:87wu16y...@drizzle.com
>>
>>> ada...@spamcop.net (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) writes:
>>>
>>> > For me, it's two questions: "How do you get ideas?"
/snip/
>>> It
>>> is not about finding ideas-- the world is full of ideas. It's about
>>> finding a story within those ideas.
>>>
>>Ah well that's my career over. I make stories up out of scraps and
>>fragments and most of the time I'm an idea free zone.
There's been a lot of good discussion about how _many_ ideas it takes
for a book -- and whether that's a question about different definitions
of 'idea' or about different processes for writing books. In a good post
at http://tinyurl.com/5gw47, Patricia discusses it as a process issue.
Other good threads are at http://tinyurl.com/54tec.
>From Douglas Adams's foreword to the book of the original radio
>scripts for "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy":
>
> I sat and stared out of the window for a while, trying to think of a
> good name for a character.
/snip/
> An hour, a bath, three Bovril sandwiches, another bath and a cup of
> coffee later, I realised that I still hadn't thought of a good name
> for a character, and decided that I would try calling him Zaphod
> Beeblebrox and see if that worked.
>
> I sat and stared out of the window for a while, trying to think of
> something for him to say ...
But this doesn't tell *how* he was thinking[1].
If he was just sort of randomly looking over notes and waiting for some
bright idea to strike, that would be 'idea'.
If he thinks "Ok, this character's culture uses two names and roots from
X langauge and does not use the things like 'Johnsmithsdaughter' and his
family came from Beebleland...." and works out a plausible name, it
wouldn't be an 'idea' (tho one might strike him along the way).
If the resulting name struck a reader as being very clever, the reader
might say, "Where did you get the idea for Beeblebrox?"
R.L.
[*] not to get into definitions of 'thinking'....
--
RL at houseboatonthestyx
Brian Pickrell
> "Rob Kerr" <rober...@bbc.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:cd3qnq$rjf$1...@nntp0.reith.bbc.co.uk...
> > "Brian Pickrell" <bobth...@brandx.net> wrote in message
> > news:eed75299.04071...@posting.google.com...
> > >
> > > The question that I myself would like to see a good answer to (which
> > > I'm not sure anyone here could give) is "How can I tell if my story's
> > > any good or not?"
> >
> > I would tend to append to that, "...before I've written it?" I have ideas
> > for stories, and before I actually waste any time fleshing them out, I'd
> > like some way to know if they are actually any good.
The first thing to note is that that isn't the same question. Don't
assume that a good story has to come from a good idea or that a good
idea necessarily leads to a good story. I don't think that fleshing
out stories is ever a waste of time because it's a skill you need to
cultivate and have ready when a truly great idea comes down the pike.
> > What works for you
> > as a quality indicator?
Editors have a lot of objective criteria that can be appplied before
it comes down to matters of personal taste: are the characters
well-drawn, is the pacing okay, is there anything for the reader to
care about, does the plot proceed in a comprehensible way from
beginning to middle to end (or follow an acceptable alternative path),
etc? Us novices may not be too good at applying these ourselves, and
we're completely lost when it comes to seeing them in a story that
isn't finished yet.
> > I think that after a story is written, it is
> > easier to gauge its worth -- simply allow people to read it and tell you
> > what they think.
>
I don't agree with that one, because I don't trust most people's
judgement. Unless I really know they'll give me good feedback, I'd
rather watch their reactions and judge for myself. If story A causes
20 people to get into a raging argument about why the story sucks and
why they don't like Character X, and story B causes 20 people to tell
me they like the first ten pages just fine and they'll finish it when
they get a chance--which is the better story?
> Hmm. I'd love to hear an answer to that one. The zeroth draft, maybe?
>
> > The question I, as a beginning writer, often most want to ask is, "How do
> > I motivate myself to finish anything when the next cool idea is beckoning
> > me from around the corner?"
> >
> > Anyone?
Tell yourself that the ability to finish a story is a skill you have
to work to learn, even when it's not fun. How do football players
motivate themselves to do road work?
>
> "Test readers" again for that one I think... Because once you've got them
> hooked on the first few chapters, they start getting all uppity when you
> tell you them that there's been a slight change of plan. And of course, if
> they don't get hooked, then maybe it wasn't working after all...
>
> Khiem.
I'd be wary of that...writing to please the test readers sounds as
likely to cause problems as solve them. What if the story NEEDS to
have some popular stuff changed round, or if you feel pressured to
hand over a half-assed chapter just to meet a deadline?
Pat Bowne
"Pat Bowne" <pbo...@execpc.com> wrote
>it was a Jane Austin pastiche,
No I didn't, I wrote 'Austen' and the computer corrected my spelling. Grnch.
Pat
Helen
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes
>
>I'm some way behind, but I just agreed another two book deal with my
>publisher today (yay!) so I'll have to start sticking some scraps
>together!
>
suppose it would be worth buying a black one with frightening pictures
on the front in the hope of tricking your brain into being perverse and
coming up with something fluffy?
>I must have ideas I suppose, they just tend to evolve as I work rather
>than strike in the bolt-from-the blue kind of way. I almost think
>the hardest stage for me is the idea/plot generation phase, because
>it's the most conscious. It's a case of - OK - what if A were true and
>what if x wants y - and maybe z wants y too and because of A they can't
>get it then what? etc etc lots and lots of times.
>
My idea generating is a mixture of the two. Ideas will spontaneously
pop into my head, but it takes a lot of wrestling to decide which order
they go in and how to get from A to Z via M and R and X. Especially
when two scenes both appear to need to happen before the other to make
logical sense. (I seem to remember Mary reporting that problem too.)
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
Nicola Browne
news:C6pMLhAB...@baradel.demon.co.uk
> In article <dbb60ba9c7e67c4f07...@mygate.mailgate.org>,
> Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> writes
> >
> >I'm some way behind, but I just agreed another two book deal with my
> >publisher today (yay!) so I'll have to start sticking some scraps
> >together!
> >
> Yay! Congratulations! So you'll need to buy a new notebook then? I don't
> suppose it would be worth buying a black one with frightening pictures
> on the front in the hope of tricking your brain into being perverse and
> coming up with something fluffy?
>
Luckily I have a plot and a diagram ( on the back of a paperbag)
and the first few chapters of book one so I'll probably just do my notes
on scraps of paper and lose them as usual...
One thing I find really weird is that although I can be quite methodical
and organised, I never can begin a note book and use every page in
order.
I have several beautiful notebooks that are all mostly empty except
for fragments of crazed meanderings and mutterings scattered
randomly throughout, so, even when I do put notes in a book,
I can never find them when I need them. So what's that all about then?
Is this a personal quirk or do others have to work with this kind of
deliberate confusion?
Nicky (I'd like to think it stimulates creativity but actually I find it
quite irritating.)
> > My idea generating is a mixture of the two. Ideas will spontaneously
> pop into my head, but it takes a lot of wrestling to decide which order
> they go in and how to get from A to Z via M and R and X. Especially
> when two scenes both appear to need to happen before the other to make
> logical sense. (I seem to remember Mary reporting that problem too.)
>
I don't usually have that problem because I kind of stretch them out
into a particular shape like rolling out dough.
Marilee J. Layman
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>I'm some way behind, but I just agreed another two book deal with my
>publisher today (yay!) so I'll have to start sticking some scraps
>together!
Yaaaay!
--
Marilee J. Layman
Marilee J. Layman
Cunningham) wrote:
> An hour, a bath, three Bovril sandwiches, another bath and a cup of
> coffee later, I realised that I still hadn't thought of a good name
> for a character, and decided that I would try calling him Zaphod
> Beeblebrox and see if that worked.
The new US animated TV show "Fatherhood" has the Bindlebeep family,
and I always wonder if Cosby read HHG.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
Because it makes my brain stop thinking so I can go to sleep.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Mary K. Kuhner
Helen <ken...@baradel.demon.co.uk.please.delete.this> wrote:
>My idea generating is a mixture of the two. Ideas will spontaneously
>pop into my head, but it takes a lot of wrestling to decide which order
>they go in and how to get from A to Z via M and R and X. Especially
>when two scenes both appear to need to happen before the other to make
>logical sense. (I seem to remember Mary reporting that problem too.)
*Oh* yeah.
You'd think that having an existing roleplaying game as plot-source
would help keep things chronologically consistent, but I often need
to move an event around chronologically, and it's easy to end up
with a written scene that depends logically both on happening before
X (because it was before X when written) and on happening after X
(because that's why I moved X in the first place!)
The question I'd like to ask, though, is "How do you get it closing
in toward an ending without feeling that you're forcing events?"
I am stuck on the WIP and have been for quite a while; I get a
few scenes further along, but the basic problem of convergence
remains.
I know that at the end, Chernoi and Markus and Honor are at First
Landing, and Aaron and Valentine are not (where are they? I don't
know. But not there.) I know that they have a piece of information
which allows them to neutralize Henry. I know that they defeat
Kethr; I even know how, having written *that* scene two years ago.
But there is some essential connective tissue missing and I don't
seem to be able to find it. I've done a *lot* of brainstorming
but I keep coming up short.
It may just be that this problem will take extensive, continuous
focused effort and I just don't have that right now. Some
programming problems are like that--I simply cannot work on them
in snatches. Maybe during the upcoming long plane flights....
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Tina Hall
The advantage of a software that doesn't do that. ;) My mistakes are
all my own.
--
Tina - spinning gorilla on the grand piano of words.
Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of an insane mind!!!!
(Apologies to Terry Pratchett.) CrossPoint/FreeXP v3.40 RC3
Using a Usenet->Fidonet gateway; no internet access.
Tina Hall
>> Nicky ( my pink book for happy fluffy ideas - got chewed up by
>> the dog- it was empty anyway...)
> The Short, Empty Life
> and Violent Death
> of a
> Happy Fluffy Pink Book
> by
> NM Browne
:) This reminds me of the pink ball that the cat never wanted to
play with, which got chewed up by a visiting dog so only the rope
that had been wound around (and glued to) the ball survived, which
then was happily played with by the cat.
Similar 'something that isn't used is destroyed and the result has
actually some use'. :)
The happy fluffy pink book sounds like a character out of a
children's story.
R. L.
wrote:
/snip/
>I suspect it was bought and published because you can see the film being
>made even as you read the pages. <sigh>
Lots of eye candy, elaborate visual descriptions? Seems that would make
it read slow. Tho Pullman's HDM shows me a movie shot quite often, or
several frames in a vintage comic book. As did Stephen's scene of a
zombie army on a mountain.
Dan Goodman
That kind of thing is why I have automatic spelling correction turned off,
off, off! in every program which has that "helpful" feature.
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://dsgood.blogspot.com or
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Suzanne A Blom
<o...@uniserve.com> wrote in message
news:slrncfdi0...@grithr.uniserve.com...
> In <10fdhho...@corp.supernews.com>,
> Suzanne A Blom <sue...@execpc.com> onsendan:
> > I have heard experienced writers say that the one thing they pay
> > attention to is a critiquer saying, "I don't understand what..."
> >
> > For myself, if everybody jumps on one place, there's something there
that I
> > need to think about, work on, something. If almost everybody says, "I
don't
> > like this," either I've screwed up...or I should make that my focus(tho
> > actually this hasn't happened yet).
> >
> > Like that.
>
> necessarily happen where the reader expresses it.
>
> If an early piece of characterization fails to work, some later action
> which depends on that characterization for its emotional reality can go
> *splat* for the reader, and the problem isn't there, it's back with the
> initial establishment of the character.
>
Oh, yeah, & in a critique group, learning to ask questions to figure out
exactly what the problem is is a skill to be cultivated. (helps in writing
diplomacy, later, as well.)
sharkey
>
> One thing I find really weird is that although I can be quite methodical
> and organised, I never can begin a note book and use every page in
> order.
Oh, I do that on purpose. Otherwise I go to write some dumb thing
on page 3 and get stuck because it isn't _worthy_ of following
the slightly less dumb thing on page 2 ... the only one of those
ideas notebooks I've ever written on more than four pages of is
slowly filling up that way, random page at a time. As it fills
up, some interesting juxtapositions are coming out too.
> Nicky (I'd like to think it stimulates creativity but actually I find it
> quite irritating.)
Well, it's not like I'm any evidence that it's a good idea either!
-----sharks
Sea Wasp
> "May I see your earlier drafts and outline?" At least that's what I
> needed while learning. To see examples of a project as it goes through
> stages, instead of just the published version.
"You're reading it. In the book. The only earlier versions are in my
head."
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Jacey Bedford
<shell...@aol.com> writes
>> Eric Jarvis w...@ericjarvis.co.uk wrote:
>
>>Shelly shell...@aol.com wrote:
>>> > Eric Jarvis w...@ericjarvis.co.uk wrote:
>>
>>And from two middle aged women on a bus...
>>
>>"I says to her I says, 'that's what she says'"
>>
>>"That telled her."
>>
>>"Yes, and I says, 'you says she says that, but she says she didn't, that's
>>what she says', I says."
>>
>
>Sounds like kids talking here. Sheesh. Actually, I heard something bizarre the
>other day, but didn't think to jot it down and now I'm kicking myself cuz I
>can't recall it.
The one I always remember being told was of two Barnsley women on a bus.
Their conversation was overheard by a visiting southern professor who
was much impressed that two pretty average looking housewives spoke
Chinese.
He overheard one ask the other:
'Oo washi wi? Washi wi ersen?'
And the other replied:
'Shi wan't wi ersen. Shi wa wi'im.'
Translation:
'Who was she with? Was she by herself?'
'She wasn't by herself. She was with him.'
Cheers
Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford
jacey at artisan hyphen harmony dot com
David Friedman
writing?"--with the followup of "since you are writing for reason X,
what do you have to do to achieve X?"
In my case, I was writing primarily because I enjoyed doing so. By
asking the question, Patricia pushed me into seeing that the problem
with the sequel I wasn't writing was that I had a plot which required a
villain as a central character and I wouldn't enjoy writing a villain as
a central character. So I revised the character into someone I
liked--even though, at this point, I still intend for him to end up
doing the things the plot requites (although that might change too).
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
David Friedman
wrote:
> John Ringo wrote:
>
> > Welcome to the club, honey.
> >
> > (Said the guy with his 11th novel out.)
> >
> > Admittedly, I can "find ideas." "Oooo, what if staple pullers were alien
> > lifeforms?" (looking at my desk for inspiration) But finding ideas that grab
> > me, that's something different.
> >
>
> I have about 30 novels up here in my head right now. I get ideas for
> new ones all the time, often by fiddling with other stories, doing
> fanfic, running RPGs, and similar activities.
Ideas are what I do for a living. Writing a novel is storytelling. Ideas
show up in it, sometimes deliberately, sometimes in retrospect, but I
don't think in terms of "what is the idea to write this novel around."
I do think up ideas to write short stories around--I have a page of them
on my web site, and recently got an email from someone who wanted to use
one and was making sure I didn't mind. They are up on my web site
because I have no particular interest in writing short stories around
ideas.
Elizabeth Shack
<news:40F73F5B...@wizvax.net>:
> R. L. wrote:
>
>> "May I see your earlier drafts and outline?" At least that's what I
>> needed while learning. To see examples of a project as it goes through
>> stages, instead of just the published version.
>
> "You're reading it. In the book. The only earlier versions are in my
> head."
I stopped writing for two years because my first drafts weren't any good.
I knew I could revise, like writing papers for school, I just didn't know I
could revise *that much*.
So a variety of answers to that question might be a good thing.
--
Elizabeth Shack eashack at gmail dot com
Writing updates at http://www.livejournal.com/users/eashack/
Elizabeth Shack
> OK: great frightening thoughts of our time - calculate how long you think
> it will take you to write a novel (or has done, the last time you did one)
> in hours. Calculate the number of hours in a year you have that you can
> reasonable spend writing. A bit of counting on your fingers will give you
> the number of novels[1] you can expect to write in your lifetime . . .
No. It's far too depressing.
Peter Knutsen
You've misunderstood the question.
--
Peter Knutsen
Elizabeth Shack
<nguyen_k...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in
<news:2ln675F...@uni-berlin.de>:
["How can I tell if my story's any good or not before I've written it?"]
> Hmm. I'd love to hear an answer to that one. The zeroth draft, maybe?
That might work. Though for my one finished book, at least, the changes I
made between the first and second drafts were so huge that I'm not sure it
answered the question correctly.
"Instinct" is not a particularly satisfactory answer, but it's all i've got
right now.
[someone else wrote:]
>> The question I, as a beginning writer, often most want to ask is, "How do
>> I motivate myself to finish anything when the next cool idea is beckoning
>> me from around the corner?"
>
> "Test readers" again for that one I think... Because once you've got them
> hooked on the first few chapters, they start getting all uppity when you
> tell you them that there's been a slight change of plan. And of course, if
> they don't get hooked, then maybe it wasn't working after all...
What if the next cool idea is beckoning before the book's in a state that
you can show it to test readers?
--
Elizabeth Shack eashack at gmail dot com
http://home.earthlink.net/~eashack
http://www.livejournal.com/users/eashack/
Kevin Gotheborg
> "Brian Pickrell" <bobth...@brandx.net> wrote in message
> news:eed75299.04071...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > The question that I myself would like to see a good answer to (which
> > I'm not sure anyone here could give) is "How can I tell if my story's
> > any good or not?"
>
> I would tend to append to that, "...before I've written it?" I have ideas
> for stories, and before I actually waste any time fleshing them out, I'd
> as a quality indicator? I think that after a story is written, it is
> easier to gauge its worth -- simply allow people to read it and tell you
> what they think.
>
> I motivate myself to finish anything when the next cool idea is beckoning
> me from around the corner?"
>
>
>
> Rob Kerr
Don't identify yourself as a "beginning writer." You'll avoid flames,
but end up with patronizing responses.
Everybody has this problem. The way I deal with it now is to rewrite
-- just throw out all your first drafts and start over. After several
months, the story will take form. It's hard, and I'd like to know a
better way, but that's just the way it is.
There's a post about fractals that connected some dots for me. I
think that's a seriously killer metaphor for the perfect story, but
how do you get there? For me, rewriting from the beginning is the
way...but that doesn't work so good for novels. (Short stories are
also important, but aren't they really just a way of establishing
marketability for novels?)
I would say to write everything. Jot down all your ideas. Write all
your stories. If a story comes to you -- just write it. Just start
writing and don't stop.
So what if your "next idea" goes nowhere? Write it anyway. Write all
your ideas. Write 20 pages a day.
Catja Pafort
> One thing I find really weird is that although I can be quite methodical
> and organised, I never can begin a note book and use every page in
> order.
I can't, either, but that's partly because if I do, I inevitably end up
with a total jumble of topics, so I *try* and keep similar things
together in blocks.
Sigh. If someone invents the time machine, can I please borrow it to go
back to 1990 or thereabouts and buy a lifetime's supply of my
beautifully bound, A7, unlined!!!!! high quality notebooks which I used
to carry all the time and had to give up because they were discontinued?
Anything larger than A7 won't fit into all imaginable pockets easily
enough. Anything less durable than hardback (with optional tearing out
of pages to give to other people or discard which don't ruin the
notebook as such) will very quickly lead to a stained, crmpled mess. Any
page that isn't completely blank cannot be sensibly written upon. I
really really REALLY regret not having hoarded a few.
Well, I had, and then I went and used them up, and now I haven't got any
more.
Waaaagh.
Sorry. We return you to your regular writing whinge.
Catja
Catja Pafort
> "May I see your earlier drafts and outline?" At least that's what I
> needed while learning. To see examples of a project as it goes through
> stages, instead of just the published version.
What you want is David Michael Kaplan's book on revision (called
'Rewriting') where he gives, in greatest detail, the evolution of
several short stories.
Google for 'how the other half writes' (around May 2003) where I've
described it in a bit more detail.
Catja
Zeborah
> "Zeborah" <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1ggyjeb.19ww2z14cf7leN%zeb...@gmail.com...
>
> > Hmm. I think part of it is like the relationship between the abstract
> > of a scientific paper and the paper itself: the abstract says the
> > important things, but the paper expands on it all and makes you believe
> > it.
>
> So, by that logic... if your outline is flawed, then your entire story will
> be?
You're assuming that it goes:
1) write outline
2) write story
3) submit story to publisher
... which for some authors it is, of course.
But for scientific papers it goes:
1) write paper
2) submit paper to publisher
3) someone else writes an abstract
(depending on the publisher, anyway)
And for my stories it goes:
1) write novel
2) write outline
3) submit story to publisher
(The beauty of combinatorics is that
1) submit story to publisher
2) write novel
3) write outline
is also possible, but of course I'm not famous enough for this yet.)
What was the question again? Oh yeah. Um, it also depends on what you
mean by 'outline'. By the usual definition, the outline's a completely
separate entity from the story; the outline and the story are two
different instances of putting the story-in-my-head into words.
But if you define it as... well, perhaps the outline-in-my-head, then
yes. If the outline-in-my-head is flawed, then I can't get the
story-in-my-head right, and then I don't stand a chance in heck of
getting the story-in-words right.
> What do you do as you revise? Do you ever change your outline as the story
> twists?
As described above, I don't really outline-in-words until after the
story's finished; it's three uses, in chronological order, are
a) trying to figure out what went wrong
b) reminding my crit group what we're up to this month
c) trying to figure out how to fix everything
d) sending to publishers.
But the outline-in-my-head changes all the time as the story twists and
turns. On the WIP, I'm maintaining a backwards-outline of all the
things I did wrong. "Chapter 43.5: turn her into a good guy", that
sort of thing.
Zeborah
Zeborah
> Ideas are what I do for a living. Writing a novel is storytelling. Ideas
> show up in it, sometimes deliberately, sometimes in retrospect, but I
> don't think in terms of "what is the idea to write this novel around."
>
> I do think up ideas to write short stories around--I have a page of them
> on my web site, and recently got an email from someone who wanted to use
> one and was making sure I didn't mind. They are up on my web site
> because I have no particular interest in writing short stories around
> ideas.
Your "Childhood Innocence" has been done as "Prelude to a Nocturne" by
Rowena Cory Lindquist, published in _Dreaming Down-Under_ volume two.
Probably done elsewhere too. "Extended Childcare" sort of got done by
Bujold, I think, but I can't remember the title or the name of the
collection it was in.
But... those are concept ideas. You don't have on that page any
character ideas -- one of my character ideas a few years ago(1) was "An
ambitious second-in-command who *isn't* jealous of his new rising-star
CO, because he realises that this kind of CO is the type to either a)
succeed spectacularly, and it never hurts to ride on someone's
coat-tails, or b) fail spectacularly, and then there'll be more room in
the ranks above for the second-in-command."
You don't have any plot ideas on that page, either (though "Home Sweet
Home" comes closest) -- nothing where you know right at its conception
that these events will happen in roughly this order, even though you may
not know all the details of character, setting, or genre.
The idea that really sparked the WIP was a scene, and the things that
the scene implied. The idea that sparked the Darn Book was "I can write
better than Star Trek!" (which of course is a bad idea, however true; I
spent years filing off mirror-image serial numbers). The idea that
sparked a novel I want to write one day is "Ooh, *I* want to write _La
Princesse de Cleves_." The idea that sparked the only thing I've been
paid for was a sentence that I got while riding the bus.
Concept ideas are only the thin end of the wedge.
Zeborah
(1) I'd just read _Basilisk Station_.
Zeborah
> Don't identify yourself as a "beginning writer." You'll avoid flames,
> but end up with patronizing responses.
Actually, neither of those is true in this group. We don't flame a lot,
but given enough provocation, being a beginning writer isn't going to
worth a fig leaf as a shield. And there isn't much in the way of
patronising comments here, either.
> There's a post about fractals that connected some dots for me. I
> think that's a seriously killer metaphor for the perfect story, but
> how do you get there? For me, rewriting from the beginning is the
> way...but that doesn't work so good for novels.
I've rewritten a novel from the beginning. <sigh>
This novel, I hope, will merely be severely revised from the beginning.
>(Short stories are
> also important, but aren't they really just a way of establishing
> marketability for novels?)
No, a thousand times not. Some people are natural short story writers
and can't write novels for beans. Some people are natural novelists and
can't write short stories for beans. Some people can naturally do both,
and they annoys us, yes they does. :-)
Most people can do one better than the other, but can learn to do the
other. Patricia Wrede published ?a couple/few? novels before she
managed to write any short stories, frex.
> I would say to write everything. Jot down all your ideas. Write all
> your stories. If a story comes to you -- just write it. Just start
> writing and don't stop.
>
> So what if your "next idea" goes nowhere? Write it anyway. Write all
> your ideas. Write 20 pages a day.
This is worth trying because if you can do it it's a great way to
progress. But if you can't do it, you should in no way despair; it's
not normal to be able to do it.
In ideal conditions, I can write 1000 words a day; last November I
averaged 1667 words a day. (It's possibly I've written 20 pages on some
day in my life, but I couldn't do it every day; that's not how my
process works.) But I had no other employment then; and now I'm
studying part-time and working part-time and have other stresses, and
when I try to write several hundred words a day I can't. And when I
can't find time to write several hundred words, I write nothing; and
when I write nothing I get depressed, and when I get depressed I'm less
likely to be able to write the next day.
So my current goal is 50 words a day. That's like a paragraph, or a few
lines of dialogue. I *know* I can write 50 words a day; and once I
start I'll often (not always) write a few hundred words more. For me,
slow and steady wins the race.
Different strokes for different folks; everyone's process is different.
Some people write fast, yes, and that's good; but some people write slow
too, and that's also good. Some people write novels, and some people
write short stories.
There are nine and sixty ways
Of writing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!
Acknowledging this fact, now, *that's* how to avoid getting flamed. :-)
Zeborah
Khiem Tran
"Suzanne A Blom" <sue...@execpc.com> wrote in message
news:10fdhho...@corp.supernews.com...
> Having thought about this overnight, I think the most important question
> beginners don't ask is, "Okay, I'm getting this critique. Just what
exactly
> should I do with it?"
Hmm. That sounds important enough to put in the FAQ actually. If only
someone would ask it...
Khiem.
Mary Gentle
eas...@NOgmailSPAM.com (Elizabeth Shack) wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 07:51:06 GMT, mary_...@cix.co.uk (Mary Gentle)
> wrote
> in <news:memo.2004071...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>:
>
> > OK: great frightening thoughts of our time - calculate how long you
> > think it will take you to write a novel (or has done, the last time
> > you did one) in hours. Calculate the number of hours in a year you
> > have that you can reasonable spend writing. A bit of counting on
> > your fingers will give you the number of novels[1] you can expect to
> > write in your lifetime . . .
>
> No. It's far too depressing.
Salutary, I would have said, rather than depressing - it's just the
corollary to calculating the number of reading-hours you have left, when
working out whether to start/finish whatever book is sitting on top of the
To-Read pile.
The really _depressing_ one, for working out whether it's a story idea or
not, is "Do I want to be found slumped dead over the keyboard with this on
the monitor - or would I prefer it to be something else?" <g>
Mary
Most recently published:
1610: A SUNDIAL IN A GRAVE, novel, Orion UK, hc & tpb
CARTOMANCY, short story collection, Orion UK, pb
Mary Gentle
Bowne) wrote:
>
> > There again, I picked up a bestseller last week that I'm reading by
> > sequential effort -- it keeps whapping me around the head like a
> > baseball
> > bat and I have to stop for a while and recover -- and which is _so_
> > bad
> > that it has the horrific fascination of a motorway pile-up. But it's
> > apparently shifting in truckloads. So we're probably all wasting our
> > time. Convincing premise, good idea, fair-handed treatment of
> > ideologies,
> > non-cardboard characters, smooth plotting, non-clunky dialogue,
> > surprising
> > plot-twists -- it has none of them.
> >
>
> I just dumped a book that we could use to add 'proper grammar' to the
> list.
> I never read anything that had been published with so many grammatical
> errors -- but it was a Jane Austin pastiche, and I bet whoever edited it
> didn't feel really comfortable with that idiom, and just let the author
> get
> away with anything that sounded right.
:-(
Presumably they didn't have an editor on hand who was qualified (or at
least enthusiastic) in the period. Shame; I like Austen pastiches.
This particular bestseller doesn't have more than the usual amount of
grammatical screw-ups . . . But I have realised it's serious in having
(a) an ethnic minority character as on-screen bad guy, who is a
murderer/torturer/rapist, _and_ the only non-white character in the book
so far . . . And, (b) Switzerland's CERN as the anti-Christ -- with '666'
hidden in its logo, yet! -- which does at least account for the completely
messed-up presentation of a secular worldview earlier on in the book, even
if it doesn't excuse it . . .
Unfortunately, I probably need to read one of this writer's 'mainstream'
bestsellers, just to see whether he _is_ an appalling writer, plain and
simple, or whether he's just one of those mainstream writers who falls
victim to Suddenly Crap Writing syndrome whenever they touch
modern-fantasy/SF stories.
I'm not quite sure whether it's fortunate or unfortunate that the books
were on a BOGOF offer (and never was an acronym so apt); so I've got his
most famous bestseller and _can_ read it.
And if it turns out that plot, character, dialogue, description,
credibility, common sense, and the rest are equally missing from that one
-- eh . . . It doesn't surprise me when bad books sell; it surprises me
that _illiterate_ books sell.
So, ah, what are we doing here, again?
(Ah, and my spoolchuckler wants to 'correct' Austen too - ha! Since you
pointed it out, I caught the bugger. :)
Mary Gentle
(Dan Goodman) wrote:
> "Pat Bowne" <pbo...@execpc.com> wrote in
>
> > "Pat Bowne" <pbo...@execpc.com> wrote
> >>it was a Jane Austin pastiche,
> >
> > No I didn't, I wrote 'Austen' and the computer corrected my spelling.
> > Grnch.
>
> That kind of thing is why I have automatic spelling correction turned
> off, off, off! in every program which has that "helpful" feature.
Damn right.
Not that I don't want help with my spelling, but I'll _ask_ for it,
thanks... :)
Mary Gentle
mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
[...]
> The question I'd like to ask, though, is "How do you get it closing
> in toward an ending without feeling that you're forcing events?"
Um -- if it isn't closing towards an ending naturally, you _are_ forcing
events? No, that isn't what you wanted to hear. <g>
There's two versions of that, I think. One is where events are forcing
the characters (or whatever) into actions which bring about the climax,
and that's not usually a problem. Then there's the 'I feel the hand of
the author prodding these guys towards their appointed end', which often
_is_ a problem.
> I am stuck on the WIP and have been for quite a while; I get a
> few scenes further along, but the basic problem of convergence
> remains.
>
> I know that at the end, Chernoi and Markus and Honor are at First
> Landing, and Aaron and Valentine are not (where are they? I don't
> know. But not there.) I know that they have a piece of information
> which allows them to neutralize Henry. I know that they defeat
> Kethr; I even know how, having written *that* scene two years ago.
> But there is some essential connective tissue missing and I don't
> seem to be able to find it. I've done a *lot* of brainstorming
> but I keep coming up short.
>
> It may just be that this problem will take extensive, continuous
> focused effort and I just don't have that right now. Some
> programming problems are like that--I simply cannot work on them
> in snatches. Maybe during the upcoming long plane flights....
I'd be inclined to wonder about a couple of questions - in what way do you
feel you're forcing events? If you weren't 'forcing' things, what would
these people naturally do now? And, is the scene that you wrote two years
ago still valid - is it 'what happens'? Are you still on track for the
original ending, or have the characters switched endings on you while you
weren't looking?
And stuff like that. Always good for plane journeys. :)
Nicola Browne
news:2lphnbF...@uni-berlin.de
I think I would suggest:
1)Get any irritation/defensiveness you might feel out of the way
in whatever way works for you. I don't think its a good idea to
respond to a critique while angry or upset
(or if you do respond don't let anyone hear/read it)
If you are naturally good at accepting criticism take one house point
and move straight to 2)
2) Try to see where the critiquer is coming from. Often it can be hard
to connect critical comments with what you think you've done.
Sometimes this is because the critiquer wants to read something
other than the piece you've written and may be out of sympathy with
what you're trying to achieve. Sometimes the critiquer understands
something you don't and trying to work out what this is can be very,
very useful. It is easier to dismiss a comment as coming from the first
kind of critic than it is to appreciate that it is, in fact, coming
from the second.
3)Think about each comment you receive and where they are contradictory
don't necessarily believe the nice one (or the critical one if you tend
to be masochistic) evaluate the criticism - i)in terms of the source
(do you tend to agree with their evaluations of other people's work
are they knowledgeable or particularly perceptive?)
-ii) in terms of its suitability for your needs. If their comments
are about grammar when you want to know about character building, they
may be right but unhelpful.
iii) in terms of what they can teach you about looking at your work from
a different angle.
I think it is sometimes better to be critiqued/edited by
someone who has a slightly different take on stories because it
obliges you to look at your work through a different lens.
Often when someone says 'why don't you do X? ' you suddenly know why
not and if it helps clarify your own thought processes and ideas on
a story - that is helpful. It may lead you to change other things
because the core of the story becomes clearer. Light bulb moments
often occur when you force yourself to be open minded.
4) Thank everyone generally, if not specifically, for their input - make
use of the helpful insights and mentally discard the rest. Don't
angst if it seems you have a lot of negative comments - in asking for
a critque you have asked for a critical response. As we have discussed
here before, you kind of hammer out your own personal aesthetic from
such
things and taste as well as skill varies widely.
(You don't have to tell people when their comments are unhelpful or when
you disagree, unless the ensuing discussion is likely to be interesting
and helpful in its turn.)
Sorry this is a bit long and as ever YMMV
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Eric Jarvis
The thing to learn from this is that in reality people have a way of going
all around the houses in conversation in order to precisely establish
trivial and irrelevant details.
The thing I've always taught playwrights to do is to have the start of any
conversation (and you DON'T have to start a scene with the start of the
conversation) involve the characters "feeling out" what the others are
trying to convey. This is a great place to slip in little telling
character details and to drop in clues for later and red herrings. Too
much fictional conversation is far too "smooth" to be realistic. It's
written as if the characters are partly telepathic.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"
Helen
The magazine Mslexia (http://www.mslexia.co.uk/) has a regular feature
where they take a first draft of a scene and then show you the
published version, along with comments from the writer on how/why they
changed things. Can be quite illuminating. Of course this is more
lit fic than SF, but most of the principles apply to any kind of
writing. Unfortunately, though they have some extracts from the
magazine online, they don't make this feature available.
If you're interested though, Catja, I can pass on my back issues to
you.
Helen
Khiem Tran
"Peter Knutsen" <pe...@knutsen.dk> wrote in message
news:cd7jmr$2q1d$3...@news.cybercity.dk...
So, do you mean why do people read particular stories? What makes them read
one and not another?
Khiem.
Sea Wasp
> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 02:37:09 GMT, Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> wrote in
> <news:40F73F5B...@wizvax.net>:
>
>
>>R. L. wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"May I see your earlier drafts and outline?" At least that's what I
>>>needed while learning. To see examples of a project as it goes through
>>>stages, instead of just the published version.
>>
>> "You're reading it. In the book. The only earlier versions are in my
>>head."
>
>
> I stopped writing for two years because my first drafts weren't any good.
> I knew I could revise, like writing papers for school, I just didn't know I
> could revise *that much*.
>
> So a variety of answers to that question might be a good thing.
>
Exactly. For me, except in one case, asking to see prior drafts would
be pointless; there are not, and never were, any such. For other
people, there are a LOT of prior drafts, and the changes between them
are extreme.