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| When you write your next piece what is the worst experience you might have to slog through? And what makes that worthwhile? What is the best part of a writing session? Do you feel the increase of motivation that these questions brought to you? When is your next chance to write? |
| Correction and story writing lesson? Just letting everyone know that I didn't announce that I was in the hospital, so you didn't miss the chance to respond. I decided I didn't want people to worry so I kept it to myself, then decided you might want the good news. But the good news presupposes the bad news. That's the story writing lesson: if you give a result, people can interpret the cause. Start at the beginning, but imply that we're in the course of action. Because we are. Even the Big Bang wasn't necessarily the beginning. |
So this is the companion to my last posted story, actually the real story. I love the characters I featured in the Charlatan's spell, but it's not their story. If you're curious, this takes a look at Althus' visit from Relek's nightmare. [#2362023] "Charlatan's Spell (Joto-Kai Saga)" |
| And Yoda should have said "Slippery is the dark path, and treacherous. Gain you may gather, still more it will cost. Swallow you it will. And thank it you will." And why didn't he? Not because Lucas didn't know that, but because that is the whole point of the story and you'd know it without watching his movie. Or maybe he didn't know what he was saying yet, but if Yoda made it that clear, would all this have happened? and if it hadn't would we have learned? Or even watched? But seriously. One step on the light side , opt to do one thing right and good, and it will lead you. Even if they're only half right. And back to Norse Myth, Odin promises: "From a word to a word I was led to a word, from a deed to another deed." For characters and for ourselves, a tiny step in the right or wrong direction will make all the difference. |
| Just got a review for one of my latest pieces. A 3 star. The first natural one from a regular reader. It means that I have kept my promise in part to keep those characters alive. Sure it was a placid story, a story in which those characters don't belong. The language is painfully expository. All of which is actually not as nice as the review.
I think the characters are brainy and a little oblique if a bit intellectual. So I don't know that it needs editing I think it needs... a prequel and a sequel and maybe drop this one. Still very dear to me. Thank you Writing.com |
| Recommend giving Prowritingaid a wide berth. They offered me a "free credit." All I got was a synopsis and some paywalled comments. After an hour I went back, looked at it to inquire what the price would be. As soon as I did the website (they don't even have an app) dissolved every word I'd written and every word they had answered. And my 'credit' was gone. Sure, I could probably get another one with another email address... but... $36.00 a month is too much if they were competent. For anticompetent, sabotaging Doctors of Moronicism? Who don't have a "submit a ticket" that I can find, or a space on Google Play to give reviews on? I had to come here. |
| I'm sorry you had that experience. I bought them on Black Friday for a lifetime special. IDK if they still offer it or offer it only on Black Friday, but I do still have to pay extra for some services. I don't use them a ton, but that's mostly because I'm working on my dissertation, not any fiction work (and haven't since buying it), so I can't say my experience is vast. But it definitely hasn't been as negative as yours. Yikes! That really sucks! Now I want to go play around more. Did it change for the worse? Have I just been lucky? Does it simply work well for my thought processes? Do I just need to use it more to become frustrated? IDK. But I was just informed today that I have to totally start my literature review for my dissertation over again, so instead of having fun writing fiction, I'll be crying in a corner. Eek! lol Anyway, good luck finding whatever you were hoping to get from them. Maybe it's elsewhere on the web.  |
Schnujo  - I don't know, I've barely touched it. Thought I'd put in my latest Novella that I'm really working on. Probably not as big of a problem as I'm having, if you're using a laptop or such. I'm stuck on my phone. It did flag two things as concerns, one of which might be deliberate. (I put in the obligatory philosophical discussion, which might not be obligatory since it's no longer a Star Trek Fanfic but my own universe. The other one might be fixed in my later draft.) Basically just don't rely on mobile? |
| Oh, yikes! Yeah, I hate doing things on mobile, even if they have a "mobile-friendly" website. Nope. I only use my phone for non-calls/non-texts in emergencies -- you know, like to prove a friend wrong. Hahahahaha!!! If you're writing a whole novella on mobile, I'm super impressed! I know people who won NaNoWriMo on their phones. Incredible! Good for you for not letting a lack of a computer (if that's the case) stop you. It would probably stop me, but I'm old like that. Hahaha! You're doing great! |
| I'm a little nervous to advertise my latest, a Joto-Kai story. (My writing.com handle is named after a D&D character that was deeply beloved.) My stories have evolved in the twenty years since I played him, and gotten far less violent. There is some deep thought around the edges. It's the story of a hero summoned to destroy a king, who does the exact opposite. |
| How I made a powerful scene seem boring. My heroine Sigrun had run from the slaughter of her aunt and uncle by family friends until she collapsed and fell asleep under a bush. She wakes up to the sound of hoofbeats and wagon wheels on stone. Rescued! But these are not human. The man is shorter than she is even with his stovepipe hat, and the woman is too beautiful to be human, with emerald eyes and ears barbed like thorns. They might be elves, gentle people, but her uncle told her the stories of nasty spirits who take the form of kindly folk and spirit children away to their rightful punishment. What could be more nasty than a young warrior who ran from the death of her family? But that's not how I told it. I simply related how they looked like storybook characters, too short, too sharp of ears, and prattled on wondering what was going on. The key is that if your character is relaxed they can prattle on about horse color and ear shape and height with no sense of what that night mean to their safety. Do that when the character calms down and you'll get the right tone. But a frightened character will measure every detail against safety. If she notices that the person on the battlefield is a redhead she'll try to figure out whether that means the character will be more impetuous. That rambling focus is fine for a character who is safe. It's called the default mode network. An endangered character–one during the core of a scene–will have task focused consciousness. The reader will tend to think that nothing is happening you you're sitting there describing random scenery, but if you connect the dots they'll know the difference. Crossposted to my blog, Thoughts of a Mad Man" : "Narrative tension Dial"  |
| Thoughts of a Mad Man "Narrative tension Dial" Since the copy and paste above wasn't apparently in the mood to do what it was supposed to. |
I've added a new item to my portfolio:
A quickie story written Off the Cuff, with an easily solved problem involving an implied character arc... (the basic answer, stop refusing to do what needs to be done) A feel good fantasy with magic that does what it does because that's what Grandma intended. I feel like this is still good despite having less than six hundred words--and I'm likely to reward a decent read just as handsomely |
| Okay, guys, here is the ultimate productivity hack that I know of. It's for people who are comfortable rattling out text but aren't as comfortable with stories, and that's their goal. The thing that caught me is that sometimes it was so effective that I found myself afraid to do it. And it is simple. You take the simple Dwight Swain style MRU pattern, and just fill it out like a madlib in relation to your story. Something the POV observes in the first paragraph. Something the POV does about it in the next. Usually that's in this order: what (s)he feels, thinks, reflex, deliberate action, and says. So long as the last sentence causes the next one, the order is less important. Then what results the POV observes. And start no matter how boring a moment, just one after another cause and effect. In fact if you have cause and effect including interiority, it is likely that sooner or later this character will catch your interest. That's great, that's the real story. The thing that keeps me away is that I got so excited by how effective this was that I am afraid to do it. Once I overcome that, I'll have a lot more material to work with, and it'll all be better material in the sense that it will have the things that trigger dopamine. Work Cited Swain, D. V. (1981). Techniques of the selling writer. University of Oklahoma Press. |
| Think about mini goals and mini habits. A mini goal is putting sway one of the seventy things that need placement. A mini habit is a recurring mini goal. You put away one thing and then you do whatever you want after that. The mini goal is a mini success if you do it and success breeds success. So maybe write every day is open the file once a day at 2 pm or as soon after as possible. .And one day you write 3000 words and another day just stare at the cursor. You learned to crank the starter. It doesn't fill the tank or overhaul the engine but it helps. You have to open the file so you might as well reward that with a feeling of success. That is how you sneak in and start to condition the habit, set up the dominoes so they knock over the one you want. |
un: 
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Also, the ten stories are all 1st person, but so far only one of them has any kind of distinctive voice. The others sound like the same guy over and over...
But the thing is that if you give yourself the credit for every step looking at the document--not the progress, but the opening the file--that begins to soften
Of course everybody has their own way to navigate this. Some people just do a minigoal where they celebrate vctory whether they stared at the cursor or they wrote ten thousand brilliant words. Other people might make an agreement to have something nice, a little indulgence, after every time they start in a session. Still others track their streaks. You too can find a way to get yourself starting sooner, easier, and more reliably.