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The Workshop - Tips, Tricks, and Theory
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I don't know how you get your work critiqued elsewhere. You could join a short story class at a community college or a workshop, but writing communities (this place) on the internet are very helpful. It's important to give crits as well as receive, even if you're not totally confident in the value of your perspective, or if you think you're misunderstanding something. It's very helpful to a writer to see a number of observations, it helps identify problem areas and also see what seems to be working.
But yeah. Post a story you've worked on here, one that you've put some thought and effort into, and help others with their stories, and everyone is giddy. A blog doesn't sound too promising for getting honest, thorough criticism, unless you can somehow get a bunch of people reading it.
Post 3 crits in other people's threads and then post one piece of your own work for critique, or one question in the chat thread.
This times one hundred. I used to get discouraged about how godawful my writing was, but still I kept it around as a constant reminder that I know I can do better than that. Best piece of advice I can give is that don't stop writing. The more you write, the more comfortable you become with the language and mechanics of writing itself, which just leads to more skill development and therefore satisfaction.
Best teacher I ever had in high school told me once that early on, your writing is going to be shit. Most of it won't be reparable. Get it out of your system by continuing to flush it with new ideas and refined skill. Start with the cliches and don't expect to be profound, because it just comes across like that's your goal. And personally, profundity should not be a goal kept in mind, but simply a side-effect of a well written piece.
I agree that you should never strive to be profound, even after years and years of practice because the second you try to say something amazing you're going to overcompensate and the message is either going to end up poorly articulated or just plain phony.
As for starting with clichés, I think there's always merit in starting out with familiar structures (not just in writing but in music, painting, etc.) so that you have all the fundamentals down pat before you decide to branch off into unfamiliar and experimental forms. To use music, you have to learn the scales before you can become the avante-garde equivalent of a virtuoso. That said, for writing, I don't think you should feel as if you need to start within a certain easily-approachable genre and then perfect that genre before you move on to work you might find more interesting. You definitely should start out using conventional grammar and style (don't try to be José Saramago), but I think you should feel free to write about what you want as long as it makes you feel good and somehow helps contribute to your mastery of the craft. There are a lot of people who would disagree with me and say that it's crucial for beginning writers to master the fundamentals before trying anything too fancy, like the three act structure and the closed ending, and while I certainly agree that understanding these things are important, if it's going to impede someone from finding their voice and, dare I say, enjoy writing, well, it's fair to through some guidelines out the window.
That said, I do think that it's critical that a writer masters the short story before writing the novel. Short stories are great because they're plentiful and well, short. You get a lot of opportunities to hop around narratives, trying out new things, finding your voice and your style. Hopefully by the time you're done writing a few hundred (or however many it takes) you'll have settled on a set of guidelines that work for you and be able to transpose those guidelines onto a much larger work. Short stories are like the shallow end of a pool: get comfortable before you get too deep.
Take a sententence, and then break it down, each letter into a new word.
It becomes almost a habit, and it can become annoying... and the context in which you first read your sample sentence often flavors your overall interpretation.
The comas break the sentences up from the word spaces.
Yes, that quoted spoiler is indeed, that previous sentenced done in the same style... I do this too often, and it has become a habit to do it while walking around.
The only problem is it creates a vicious cycle... you break one sentence, and now you have an even longer sentence that you can further break down... and it seemingly never ends. I've had to mentally slap myself some times (other times physically) to break the pattern and clear my mind.
But it can be fun.
Especially if you want to create some oddball sentences without fear of punctuation or clarity.
I wonder if an entire book could be done this way...
DirtyNeuron
You missed two letters. The n from the ing at the end of mentioning, and the o in about.
Oh the HORROR! Thank you for pointing this out. I shall fix it right now!
"And you mentioning dreams about me probably ..."
"A nude drawing, youthful offerings undisclosed, my eyes narrowed tightly in offered nightly intimately nourishing gifts, divesting redundant efforts alas moaning softly, almost buffeting overt unbridled thoughts, misty eves, pushing rigidly onto buxom ample breasts laying yonder...."
I know, it feels a bit chunky, like it might not flow properly, but that is what I deserve for missing those two important letters, to my shame. (And it was indeed a pain for trying to think up an appropriate word to squeeze between Intimate and Gifts.
*scratches head in confusion*
Bonus points if they do.
Generally speaking, stringing nonsense words together always makes me smile, but getting the words from the task to flow together in a structured sentence works out better. For (if you are not prone to excitement over linguistic confusion) random words can lead to strange thoughts. Which I hear tell scares some people.
To which I would reply: "Well, what's a reader going to do with the universe, eh?"
An interesting read nonetheless, and hopefully a little inspiration in a thread that isn't much used for its original purpose.
Excellent read! That very much sums up my own thoughts about writing and how terribly overwhelming it is to attempt to write a novel. I think I've probably made at least five semi-serious attempt at novel-writing, but I somehow always give up and take up writing short stories instead.
Perhaps when I've grown a bit more, I shall write that first monstrous novel.
Soon, you will know...
Soon, you will know...
Soon
Blog | Ficly | Email | Zine
What do you think?
there are three two's in the english language?
there are three too's in the english language?
there are three to's in the english language?
which one do you use?
Your teacher sounds like an ideologue of some sort. Use what works, and let the lexicographers sort it out later.
edit: Ask him/her how to resolve this situation. He/she will either offer a reasonable alternative, or his/her brain will explode.
This isn't my advice, but advice from a professor I had recently, so I'd like to pass it on.
When trying to write a story, chase a sentence and see where it leads; say you have an image or idea or line of dialog. It turns in to a story when you ask it questions: who said you? What made them do it? Are they talking to anybody in particular? From there, you ask those details questions and soon you have a story opening itself up to you.
For instance, a line that occurred to me today: "The insides of the almonds, displayed in cross-section at the bitten end of her chocolate bar, looked like maggots burrowing into fertile soil." Who thinks the almonds look like maggots? A young girl. Why is she thinking of maggots? Perhaps death is on her mind; maybe somebody died. Who died? Someone close to her? No. A distant uncle. Why is she thinking about him? She's questioning that distance and wondering why his death means little to her, but a lot to somebody else. She spoke on the phone to her cousins and they were grieving, and she can sympathize but not empathize. Why would this matter to her?
Maybe you can go back and revise the answers. No, it wasn't her distant uncle, but her father. *She* was grieving and everything reminded her of death, even a bar of chocolate. But we'll keep the notions of death and distance and sympathy versus empathy; in her grief, she feels that others can't understand the depth of her feelings. Is the story about how she connects with others in grief and gains solidarity, or how she tries to distance herself from her own experience? How is her grief manifesting? Does she shut in, or lash out? Does she hide it?
Keep going, and ask about the people and the situations they're in, and soon you have a setting and people to populate it and conflicts between them.
Well, it's one method. I like it, since it lets the story flow organically from your brain.
Absolutely! Conflicts are key. Unless you're writing a mood piece that exists solely for the sake of saying, "Hey look, I can write," your characters need a reason to be doing what they're doing. Conflict is sometimes mistaken as merely person vs. person/organization, but it need not be. Surviving in a desert wasteland is a conflict. Trying to find a job is a conflict. Anything a person has to overcome is conflict.
The key is giving your folks a natural, believable motivation. A reason to be in your story that goes beyond being a chess piece. When you've got a clear motvation for them, even the secondary characters will come to life. It will information their actions and make the reader believe and give you, the writer, a well from which to draw. Sometimes they'll even do things you don't expect.
Flat characters with no reason to be there are death.
Putting yourself out there is not easy. It's HARD. Allowing strangers -- not friends and family, who will always offer kind or at least diplomatic words, but strangers -- to read your work is one of the first major steps for every aspiring writer.
Okay, most aspiring writers. I've known people who think they're wonderful because their mommy told them so, shove their work at anyone they can find, and who get indignant when it's not met with glowing praise.
But that's another issue.
Anyone who wants to improve as a writer has to face the fear of rejection and of not being good. They need to realize that they WON'T be good right away and that even the best writing will not be loved by all. They need to recognize when criticism is empty and when it's honest and helpful and to the point. But most of all, they need to muster up the courage to put their work in front of people and then listen to what they have to say.
That's HARD. It's not easy. Sometimes it SUCKS. But it's soooo worth doing in the long term.
In terms of showing work to people im always worried about a few things
a) The fact i cant copyright my work, or have no idea how to stop people stealing from it, thats not to say the work is intrinsically good, but the subject ive chosen, the backdrop and the set ups are an area which hasnt been explored to any great depth before, possibly for obvious reasons but i believe i have found a way to do it well.
b) The criticism thing is a bit hard to take, mainly because the story in itself was written to begin with for me, not for anyone else, and that makes the notion of changing the story or parts of it a very hard decision.
Do you guys post scripts on here? Its a tv comedy script btw, was considering sending into the bbc (they have a programme where they read scripts from unattached writers for potential, of both the concept and the writer. I was actually considering shooting it myself, as the locations, set ups and style is relatively cheap to procur and use, and i can get the equipment/people for free.
That's fine. Just don't expect anyone to ever want to read or watch it.
If you write for yourself then keep it to yourself. If you ever want other people to enjoy your work in any format then grow a pair and accept both criticism and changes.
Its a fine line indeed, lets be friends
Need to get a few more to see it first methinks
I am mostly familar with the science fiction genre such as Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, Douglas Adams, Gordon R. Dickson being my main influences. I dabble with the fantasy genre a bit but that is it really.
Do you guys think that guns are a necessary or even probable invention? Suppose that I was writing a somewhat modern or even somewhat futuristic story and did not include firearms or similar ranged weapons in the setting.
Would that strike you as odd?
What if the world was one where, in war, the melee combat abilities of the people was more than enough to settle conflicts. I'm not talking super-hero levels, but like...I dunno. The average level of strength you might see in an anime or something. Are we crawling into stupid territory there? I'm just curious.
Not a Star Trek dork, so I don't know, but did the Klingons just flat-out not have guns, or did they just prefer melee weapons? I would find the idea of an advanced race who never even bother to come up with the idea of a projectile weapon to be pretty implausible, though I can come up with all manner of reasons why the general public might eschew such weapons.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
I find it difficult to believe in a world without projectile weapons. Basically, they'd have to have never discovered any explosive materials, which is unlikely. The only way to do a world without that kind of technology is to go the Final Fantasy route, and make your reader know it's all going to be completely absurd anyways.
1) Ubiquitous personal energy shields that are velocity based (Dune, Stargate: SG-1, and Mass Effect all use this for their shield logic), so that the reaction strength is keyed to and tied to the speed of incoming attacks -- a knife can get through, but a bullet gets deflected.
2) Setting the story on a starship in which the risk of a hull breach has people sticking with melee weapons, which are unlikely to punch a hole in anything important. (Side fun note: according to a buddy with a military history, submarine personnel used shotguns as a standard sidearm, since the shot couldn't punch through the hull -- I think he was more specific about which people had them, but that's an error on my part, not his, if other people want to correct me.)
3) A worldwide outbreak of a chemical pollutant in a far-future society that screws up some chemical necessary for an easy firing chemical reaction (and requires the far-future society to modify human nutrition or use breath filters to, you know, not die from whatever that is). Yes, this is absurd, but ten years ago, who would have believed in bugs that ate microchips, and now we have those.
Going on that you could set it in any controlled environment where piercing the "shell" would disrupt the atmosphere and kill humanity. Like a space station or an encapsulated planetary society. Basically, if you want people to NOT have guns, there better be a damn good reason.
Piggybacking off of takyris's ideas
1. Advancement of technology that makes projectile weapons (anything from a rock to the .357 magnum) irrelevant or ineffective. In the alternative, the failure of technology to advance to a degree that projectile weapons on par with melee weapons could be produced.
2. Changes in basic physics (gravity, aerodynamics, etc.) that would make a projectile weapon impossible to create/operate. In addition, a key material to be able to produce projectile weapons could be missing/in short supply/undiscovered.
3. Cultural settings that would make it "bad" in whatever form you choose (a sin; a faux pas, against the established rules) to use projectile weapons that would influence the characters to forego projectile weapons.
Melee weapons were restricted to the aristocracy, leaving the peasants to use simple or improvised weapons.
Some of the normal folk got to use bows, but there is a considerable training time to get an uneducated individual to use one in a group to maximum effect. Skill training and muscle training, as they didn't have modern compound bows back then and those suckers were hard to draw.
Once guns were introduced and it was discovered that they were cheaper to produce than quality swords and armor, cheaper and faster to train in than pretty much ANYTHING else out there, could kill easily with even a moderate-low skilled user even against cavalry (previously the bane of infantry everywhere); the only people that so much as looked back were the nobles who could afford to ride in the cavalry.
If guns are available in any numbers or reliability whatsoever then to use melee weapons is suicidal.
Guns are the Jackhammer in a game of Rock-paper-scissors.
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
This reply might need to be in brainstorming, and if so I apologize.
To explore this idea I think you should check out histories that focus on the concepts of "Limited" war versus "Total" war. A simple way to explain such a society would seem to me to would be use the natural history of earth up to World War I, which was often referred to as "The War to end all wars." I like the idea of using actual history in fiction when possible. Especially since major would events offer possibilities for divergence into a completely new and complex world just because things worked out a little differently.
Thanks for contributing to this thread everyone. It's been insightful and interesting, even the tips I've disagreed with. I'll have to post something in the near-future for critique as "grabbing a pair" seems like solid advice.