Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I find it impossible to summarise what my story is about beyond "a bunch of people do stuff" which is what makes me think I need to replan from scratch.
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Quoththe RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered Userregular
A few days before Nano started, I wasn't even aware it was about to start (I knew Nano was a thing and always intended to look further into it, but hadn't yet so had no idea what month it took place in) but I was in the mood for writing. In the "Ask Antimatter" thread I asked what I should write about and she suggested a mystery. Then I pitched 6-7 short story mystery ideas. Then a few days after that I found out about Nano and so I decided to work on those for Nano.
#1: A werewolf hunter tracks a werewolf aboard a transcontinental train, but does not know which passenger is the werewolf and it's going to be a full moon tonight. Now the hunter only has a few hours before sunset when the train will basically become a rolling coffin for everyone aboard.
#2: A retired professor sees a report about a grisly murder on television. At the scene of the crime there is a strange vehicle, which the professor recognizes as the completed form of the nearly-finished time machine he currently is building in his basement.
#3: A space cruiser is taking a 250 year journey across the stars to it's destination, and all of it's crew is in cold sleep. One crew member's paranoia caused him to set his cold sleep chamber to awaken him every ten years so that he could check the ship and make sure everything was okay instead of just letting the computers handle everything. However, about 140 years into the trip, he awakens to find the dead body of another crew member. All other crew members are currently frozen in their sleep chambers, but which of them awoke sometime in the last ten years to commit this murder, and why?
#4: It's the 1930s in San Fransisco, and a private investigator is looking into the death of a victim who was drained of all their blood. His investigation leads him to a dancer who goes by the name Mira Call. Unfortunately for him, during the course of his investigation he is fatally shot. As he lays in the alley dying, Mira approaches him and bears her fangs, offering him the opportunity to solve his own murder.
Mira Call is an anagram of Carmilla (famous vampire who rearranges the letters of her name when she assumes a new identity).
#5: A group of pirates are making their way back to Port Royal to spend their newly-acquired booty from a successful plunder. However, in the middle of the night they are awaken from their drunken slumber to find the cook dead on the deck and the valuable jeweled necklace missing from their acquired treasures. Will they discover the true culprit before tearing each other apart?
#6: A powerful wizard and his apprentice arrive at a local tavern, filled with various lowlifes. To the barkeep, all money is the same, so he even serves the likes of orcs and trolls. The wizard has come here as he has tracked a magical tome stolen from his library. He finds it, but turns up murdered before he can reveal the thief. Can the apprentice figure out the culprit in time to escape with her life?
#7: A bad storm knocks out the power at an island nudist resort. Unfortunately for the guests, someone also turns up shot to death that very night. Now they are trapped on the island with a murderer and unable to contact help until the storm passes and they can reach the mainland. But who is the murderer? More importantly, where did they hide the murder weapon? (Okay, this one is just a joke my friends and I used to bring up when talking about mystery story ideas)
Should I focus on one of these or keep brainstorming?
I finished #3 (space) and #5 (pirates), and got over halfway done with #1 (werewolf) and #6 (wizards). A random scene was also written for #4 (vampire) and I also spent some days writing random scenes from other novel-length ideas I want to get to eventually.
Some things ended up differently from their pitches (for example, the captain is the corpse in the pirate story instead of the cook, and the train in the werewolf story is traveling from San Francisco to Chicago instead of through Europe).
My current plan is to finish the werewolf and wizard stories, then go back and revise the space and pirate stories to make them more presentable to show to someone and then I'll continue on from there.
I think the werewolf one is going to need a massive overhaul once I finish it, because right now it's just a bunch of pages of the hunter just going through the train cars and observing people without trying to raise suspicion of what he's investigating so nothing has really happened (the suspect list is also way too long so I need to introduce some details to cut it down to just five or six). I figured that logically someone who does what he does would be extremely cautious about going about it, but narratively that makes things a bit boring, so in the rewrite I might make him a bit more confrontational.
I have this unfair assumption that we're dealing with a lot of dragon books here and I want that to disspell that.
I understand not everyone wants to get into the nitty-gritty of their thing (lord knows I don't), but I am curious what drives you folks. I gotsta know.
mine is biomechanical space pirates and mercenaries dealing with archaic/mythical technology
there's more to it than that but that's the most basic assessment
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Pulp action-adventure sci-fi featuring the crew of a small interplanetary privateer and an escelating number of people trying to kill them for the information they unwittingly possess, and their attempts to find out what that is before someone succeeds.
That's unbelievably cool. Your new name is cool guy. Let's have sex.
+1
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited December 2013
@Lars I fucking love all those ideas. You have a good idea brain. If I lived in your country I would track you down and kill you to take your power a la Sylar.
I have an urge to try and do something myself with that werewolf train idea, if you don't mind me stealing it?
It'll probably be months before I'll be finished with my version, and since that's just a basic premise I'm sure our finer details won't be very similar.
Also, I'll be sure to watch my back the next time I'm in the UK.
Full disclosure: I am writing a story about a person who has committed infanticide. And I just realized that the entire arc of the main character is that X-Files episode with Bruce Campbell.
Oh well. Time to move on. Time to rip off that episode with Jack Black and Giovanni Ribisi.
After finishing Nano, I took a day off to catch up on some stuff and reward myself with some video games.
Then one day off became three. Then five.
Fortunately, today I sat myself down and actually wrote nearly 2k words in one sitting so I'm feeling a bit better. My daily goal now is still 1,200 words or three pages edited a day, but I'm not going to be too focused on catching up for days I miss like I was with Nano. Hopefully it works out.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I have written 4 days out of 7 since December started, which isn't as good as writing every day but is infinity% more writing than I did in October so I call that a win.
I am scared that when I get to the end of this story I won't be able to come up with an idea for the next one though.
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Quoththe RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered Userregular
I used to get worried about that, so I practiced doing it. It gets less intimidating the more you do it. Then you get to the opposite problem where you have to many ideas and not enough time.
It's more that I could work the idea to fit a flash fiction piece, a short story, or a novella/novel depending on how I want to deal with all the parts of it.
Plus I'd rather write something short now so it's easier to edit once I'm done.
Dystopian lit is: “what if the government got so powerful that all the bad stuff that’s already happening ALSO HAPPENED TO WHITE PEOPLE?”
That's funny and sad.
In other funny and sad related matters, I am going to slam my summer short story into my novel attempt, and figure out a way to make them fit together. I have no idea how to do transition to a different scene or a different character. I guess I could relate the two scenarios. The novel attempt has a protagonist attempting to sort of break out of a bank robbery. He is a fugitive who chooses the wrong time to duck into a bank to dodge a guy tailing him. The short story has the same character thinking about settling down a post-apoc town and trying to convince the sheriff he's a good being who did some bad things rather than a bad being who did some good things.
In a post-apocalyptic terra-formed Mars, a brooding loner stumbles across a talking fish, which spurs him into conflict with an army led by a sadist and a profit-obsessed corporation with the help of a leather-clad tomboy-ish female mechanic in shades and her wacky pet, culminating in a philosophical argument punctuated by violence. My title is The Aeronaut, or: A reprobate searches for humanity.
I think I shook a plot out of my connected half-finished short stories from the past year or so! I don't really care the for the term tomboy because it is sort of awkward with the presumption of gender roles and whatnot. I'm hoping this thing turns out to be a fun adventure thing rather than a grim dreary thing.
I don't have a lot of thoughts on gender, race, class and privilege and things, being WASP cis scum from the middle class in the fuck yeah USA, but I am attempting to be aware of those things. I'm happily married and although I brood quite a bit, I think I am getting by OK and have a few friends, but I'm not particularly social, so writing multiple characters is sort of a challenge. I hope I don't crib too obviously from stereotypes and characters I am familiar with, but I guess you to try a thing to learn it.
I'm not sure why you would have to be something other than what you are to take a couple minutes to think about those things and then write about them.
Or why writing necessarily requires the examination of those themes and issues.
If you want to write about those things, or want to include any of the many, many viewpoints regarding those issues in whatever you're writing, go for it.
You ain't need anybody's permission to write, man.
You ain't need to apologize for how it comes out either. People are going to love and hate your shit for a whole host of reasons way beyond your control. If you're uncomfortable with something you've written in retrospect, go back and change it until you're happy with it.
Thanks @sarukun I had never really thought about a lot of stuff before I started coming to these forums. I grew up in a small rural town and blah and blah
any i'm sort of anxious about writing characters that aren't middle-class WASP cis scum, i guess
Like, the term "middle-class WASP cis scum" is in absurd all by itself.
It is fine and important and good to be aware of the world outside of yourself and what you are familiar with, but you are not under some obligation to write anything other than what you want to write.
Not ever piece of writing must be "socially responsible" by default. It is fine and good and worthwhile that you are interested in writing that, but the idea that you are either obligated or somehow a lesser person for choosing not to write in that fashion is preposterous nonsense.
Not only that, if you read what you've written and then find it falls short of some ideal that you are aspiring to, just fucking rewrite it so that it's more in line with what you want out of it. Putting that kind of pressure on yourself up front is wholly counter-productive and can get in the way of your writing!
Case in point: I just flipped the gender of one of my protagonists because I decided the current party was too much of a boy's club and it made for a much more interesting relationship with one of my main characters considering her history. It seemed like the "right" thing to do! But I didn't start out going "how can I make this piece of writing the most social responsible, inclusive piece of literature possible?". The writing evolved once I started getting it onto paper and I had the opportunity to examine it and decide what I wanted for it!
Case in point: I just flipped the gender of one of my protagonists because I decided the current party was too much of a boy's club and it made for a much more interesting relationship with one of my main characters considering her history. It seemed like the "right" thing to do! But I didn't start out going "how can I make this piece of writing the most social responsible, inclusive piece of literature possible?". The writing evolved once I started getting it onto paper and I had the opportunity to examine it and decide what I wanted for it!
this so much!
I just did the same thing with the book I'm working on this past month and it opened up thousands of interesting things, but I would never have known I needed this character to be who she was until I realized she had to be a she because reasons. It made find/replace a little more necessary to keep from confusing myself, but that's part of the fun. I had to just write the characters as I needed them and figure out their identities as I went along. This is what helps make my cast a lot more organic than just picking them out of the preordained catalog.
One thing I will point out about that whole privilege thing:
it's fine to be a privileged person and write about people who are in any way privileged
what it's not okay to do is to use extreme or ignorant (and usually inaccurate) stereotypes to fill out the rest of your cast and plot
recently @quoth and @zenpotato and I were in a writing class online where one of the stories submitted by one of our classmates was so full of negative subtexts regarding race and culture that even the framework of the story was pretty toxic. (basically "white man rescues white woman from dark-skinned "natives" who call her a "white demon" or something-- at best, a bad and incredibly dated and awful adventure story theme circa 50 years ago, but in 2013? come on, dude)
It was like an object lesson in "how not to do things."
In general I don't think you should sweat what you're writing about as long as you write it well. When it comes to comedy Louis CK gets away with the things he says because there's an excellent joke constructed around it.
And if you're worrying about writing something that's "socially responsible" and inclusive as possible write a pamphlet. Or a kid's book. Whenever I see or hear the advice or real writers and real artists on that subject they all seem to be aware of the fact that the surest way to make a piece of shit is to try and please everyone. I mean, there are people who hate To Kill a Mockingbird for Christ's sake. What chance do any of us stand?
If it ends up being shit, then work on it again. That's why God gave us copy-edtiors. That's the only thing that has ever made sense to me.
Posts
I mean I don't have a ton to talk about
I got my rejection from Strange Horizons, though
Kind of wears on you a little
Here's my original pitch from that thread:
I finished #3 (space) and #5 (pirates), and got over halfway done with #1 (werewolf) and #6 (wizards). A random scene was also written for #4 (vampire) and I also spent some days writing random scenes from other novel-length ideas I want to get to eventually.
Some things ended up differently from their pitches (for example, the captain is the corpse in the pirate story instead of the cook, and the train in the werewolf story is traveling from San Francisco to Chicago instead of through Europe).
My current plan is to finish the werewolf and wizard stories, then go back and revise the space and pirate stories to make them more presentable to show to someone and then I'll continue on from there.
I think the werewolf one is going to need a massive overhaul once I finish it, because right now it's just a bunch of pages of the hunter just going through the train cars and observing people without trying to raise suspicion of what he's investigating so nothing has really happened (the suspect list is also way too long so I need to introduce some details to cut it down to just five or six). I figured that logically someone who does what he does would be extremely cautious about going about it, but narratively that makes things a bit boring, so in the rewrite I might make him a bit more confrontational.
mine is biomechanical space pirates and mercenaries dealing with archaic/mythical technology
there's more to it than that but that's the most basic assessment
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
I have an urge to try and do something myself with that werewolf train idea, if you don't mind me stealing it?
It'll probably be months before I'll be finished with my version, and since that's just a basic premise I'm sure our finer details won't be very similar.
Also, I'll be sure to watch my back the next time I'm in the UK.
Oh well. Time to move on. Time to rip off that episode with Jack Black and Giovanni Ribisi.
Only all is not as it seems!!
Less of a heist and more of a Zelda/Adventure Time kind of thing, which is normally hard to do but by Christ I believe in me
I think I have a problem. Every time I try to write something it always naturally slides towards grimdark. I need to learn to write some happy stuff.
I'm going to try and see if anyone will publish it by president's day
in the meantime I've gotta do some research to make sure it's accurate
Then one day off became three. Then five.
Fortunately, today I sat myself down and actually wrote nearly 2k words in one sitting so I'm feeling a bit better. My daily goal now is still 1,200 words or three pages edited a day, but I'm not going to be too focused on catching up for days I miss like I was with Nano. Hopefully it works out.
I am scared that when I get to the end of this story I won't be able to come up with an idea for the next one though.
And thought 'yeah, November was pretty fun'.
I have my next idea and now need to figure out how the plot will work in a 2-2.5k word short story.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Plus I'd rather write something short now so it's easier to edit once I'm done.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Here's an example from my favorite author
http://magell2.blogspot.com/2013/06/my-gal-scout.html
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
That's funny and sad.
In other funny and sad related matters, I am going to slam my summer short story into my novel attempt, and figure out a way to make them fit together. I have no idea how to do transition to a different scene or a different character. I guess I could relate the two scenarios. The novel attempt has a protagonist attempting to sort of break out of a bank robbery. He is a fugitive who chooses the wrong time to duck into a bank to dodge a guy tailing him. The short story has the same character thinking about settling down a post-apoc town and trying to convince the sheriff he's a good being who did some bad things rather than a bad being who did some good things.
In a post-apocalyptic terra-formed Mars, a brooding loner stumbles across a talking fish, which spurs him into conflict with an army led by a sadist and a profit-obsessed corporation with the help of a leather-clad tomboy-ish female mechanic in shades and her wacky pet, culminating in a philosophical argument punctuated by violence. My title is The Aeronaut, or: A reprobate searches for humanity.
I think I shook a plot out of my connected half-finished short stories from the past year or so! I don't really care the for the term tomboy because it is sort of awkward with the presumption of gender roles and whatnot. I'm hoping this thing turns out to be a fun adventure thing rather than a grim dreary thing.
Or why writing necessarily requires the examination of those themes and issues.
If you want to write about those things, or want to include any of the many, many viewpoints regarding those issues in whatever you're writing, go for it.
You ain't need anybody's permission to write, man.
You ain't need to apologize for how it comes out either. People are going to love and hate your shit for a whole host of reasons way beyond your control. If you're uncomfortable with something you've written in retrospect, go back and change it until you're happy with it.
any i'm sort of anxious about writing characters that aren't middle-class WASP cis scum, i guess
It is fine and important and good to be aware of the world outside of yourself and what you are familiar with, but you are not under some obligation to write anything other than what you want to write.
Not ever piece of writing must be "socially responsible" by default. It is fine and good and worthwhile that you are interested in writing that, but the idea that you are either obligated or somehow a lesser person for choosing not to write in that fashion is preposterous nonsense.
Not only that, if you read what you've written and then find it falls short of some ideal that you are aspiring to, just fucking rewrite it so that it's more in line with what you want out of it. Putting that kind of pressure on yourself up front is wholly counter-productive and can get in the way of your writing!
Case in point: I just flipped the gender of one of my protagonists because I decided the current party was too much of a boy's club and it made for a much more interesting relationship with one of my main characters considering her history. It seemed like the "right" thing to do! But I didn't start out going "how can I make this piece of writing the most social responsible, inclusive piece of literature possible?". The writing evolved once I started getting it onto paper and I had the opportunity to examine it and decide what I wanted for it!
this so much!
I just did the same thing with the book I'm working on this past month and it opened up thousands of interesting things, but I would never have known I needed this character to be who she was until I realized she had to be a she because reasons. It made find/replace a little more necessary to keep from confusing myself, but that's part of the fun. I had to just write the characters as I needed them and figure out their identities as I went along. This is what helps make my cast a lot more organic than just picking them out of the preordained catalog.
One thing I will point out about that whole privilege thing:
it's fine to be a privileged person and write about people who are in any way privileged
what it's not okay to do is to use extreme or ignorant (and usually inaccurate) stereotypes to fill out the rest of your cast and plot
recently @quoth and @zenpotato and I were in a writing class online where one of the stories submitted by one of our classmates was so full of negative subtexts regarding race and culture that even the framework of the story was pretty toxic. (basically "white man rescues white woman from dark-skinned "natives" who call her a "white demon" or something-- at best, a bad and incredibly dated and awful adventure story theme circa 50 years ago, but in 2013? come on, dude)
It was like an object lesson in "how not to do things."
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
And if you're worrying about writing something that's "socially responsible" and inclusive as possible write a pamphlet. Or a kid's book. Whenever I see or hear the advice or real writers and real artists on that subject they all seem to be aware of the fact that the surest way to make a piece of shit is to try and please everyone. I mean, there are people who hate To Kill a Mockingbird for Christ's sake. What chance do any of us stand?
If it ends up being shit, then work on it again. That's why God gave us copy-edtiors. That's the only thing that has ever made sense to me.
Also vampires help. People love vampires.
I just
want
the
damn
movie
to
end