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| I just read a Facebook post that pushed the envelope of confusing amusing. He said the solution to being akward with wrong eye contact is to use the fifty seventy rule. ***Quick Fix*** So calculate about half the time while talking to do eye contact. Seventy while listening. So when am I supposed to be talking? Because it ain't gonna be while Not while I am counting to five. I suppose if you hade a team of coaches to help you with special drugs and biofeedback. ...? That's not a quick fix It is space program stuff. 1940s mission to Mars. Sure this was a clickbait listicle that succeeded when the page downloaded the ads.Nevermind that. Ethical writing means putting some thought into it. I suppose there might be peope who can follow this advice because they already do it. So if your advceplaces something as easy because you already do it maybe try breaking it down a bit. Consider if it might be harder. Even a note might get the reader going. Note that I immediately clicked off and therefore did not get the page 2 ads. How much did that cost him? |
| Siggy is a little girl raised as a warrior. Her family friends brought in a sorcerer who bewitched them to off her family. Running barefoot into the night, she is so overwhelmed that she feels she became a monster.That anybody would think her having a knife while wandering in a wood was odd. While the odd bit is being alone and unarmored. She conceals her weapon and behaves as if even having it might be contamination from Korog's curse. This is why we need literary analysis as writers. So that we can help the reader see what is in the story. Don't just put it out there for the reader, dig in and make sure you feel it... analize, empathize and feel your way in. |
| I had no idea why these things got put in my story. Now I'm working over it and associating in... damn. The people who pick up my refugee heroine are flirting. It wasn't just "ooh, they're nice and warm" but "That was not nothing. Seeing that love and play survived the apocalypse fed something deep inside me." IDK maybe Siggy would be turned off a little by kissing--and one of the rescuers asked whether human kids should see it--but that's not where I went. Anyhow, Another Robert Frost victory--from "No tears in the writer" to "So many tears in this writer." Hope that it translates! |
| Language can do so much. The heroine calls the corrupting new member of her father's friends a "false urgan" because his evil is a huge departure from the innocent thuggishness of the urgans. Then, broken in running from the scene of her family's murder, she calls herself a 'false human.' It reflects the change in herself, her similarity to the 'false urgan' since they both listen to their spirit guides (even though Korog's are evil and hers are angelic). But at a deeper level it also foreshadows her ability to shake off the temptation when the demons offer her another chance at joining them (in the form of a cute boy who only wants her to help him make the world safe for humans. It's not illegal.) She doesn't understand, but she can see, that the war isn't between the pigmen and the humans but huma and urga against the forces of hate. |
| Woo woo time. So I used to be a Method writer. That's not what I called it, but I basically wrote one kind of piece over and over for a period of months. It became my identity, my lens. In essence, I never broke character and spoke off the cuff. This worked pretty well until I got tired of all the moody, depressing life that came with that. I get that phrase, "No tears in the reader, no tears in the writer." Some truth in that. However I don't think it's one hundred percent even. You see, your conscious mind is just the CEO of You, Inc. Everything you consciously know is just a report made for you. Your people may know hundreds of thousands of times as much as you are aware of. That said, what gets in the report gets done. Yes, your people will do what they care about. They will also do what they report to you. You don't need to actually feel or know how they do it, you just need them to reliably report when it is done. The woo woo here is not "Folky religions or ancient weapons" (as Han Solo put it) but a bit unconventional approach to human psychology. You don't have to do the work, you just need to know when it's done. "A good blaster at your side" is no match for knowing when to shoot or when to duck. Solo used the force as much as Luke, he just didn't know that's what it was. So if you want, be a Solo-type writer, (that would be a Plotter in my metaphor) just ask yourself what else it needs to go with what you've plotted out. |
| Taking a moment to really absorb the next scene I am going to rewrite... maybe I need to go back and do the same to the previous scene. Here's the rundown: The heroine has chosen not to sell her soul; the murderers that re orphaned her a day ago offered "on a silver platter" and all she has to do to get justice is ignore the fact that it's the murderer's (demonic) boss making the offer. She doesn't really understand any of this intellectually and yet makes the right decision. Not really believing the counsel of her angelic advisor, she turns her back on the 'sleeping' murderers. Her mother and father think she's dead; her aunt and uncle are dead--and their priest said it would be her fault for working with the angels; she has narrowly rejected the patronage of the cacodemons and lost trust in her "imaginary friends" --the angels that brought her to the murderer's attention. An eleven year old, stunted girl she runs barefoot into the wilderness armed only with a meat cleaver. No wonder this story wasn't everything it could be. How in the nine pits of perdition can I resonate with that kind of abject horror? Far from "nothing happening" this went off the scale. And the narrator got a bit distracted I think. |
I've added a new entry to my book, "Thoughts of a Mad Man"  : "Emotional Control: Am I a fraud" Guess who has impostor syndrome? |
| How to be a better writer? (Reflective piece) When you read note down anything that you find of value. Put things in your writing that match those. It is okay to specialize and to branch out. Just make the things you would like. When editing consider how the writing is different for the reader. Look for ways to create the same value in the reader that you experience with the content. When getting feedback listen to see if they're seeing what you're showing. |
| I've added a new entry to my book, "Thoughts of a Mad Man" : "Emotional Control: put the best part at the end" This one has powerful ideas that might be a little vague and hard to put into practice. |
| Finns det livet är aldrig for sent. (Where there is life, it is never too late.) Lyric, in Swedish, from Flickan och Kråkan (the girl and the crow), by Timbuktu. A song about a girl running desperately for help to save an injured crow. Somehow in my 3rd language, one I barely know, lyrics hit a bit harder. I think that extra focus really brings it home. I also think that some of my own stories need that same focus--as I go for a new revision that there is emotional resonance to the story. I didn't really feel it, and so I didn't put it on the page, but the story was there. Only a few of my readers caught on... |
| I've added a new entry to my book, "Thoughts of a Mad Man" : "Emotional Control: Be careful with this one." One word mantras can help you filter your awareness so that you can get different things done. |
| Whole cloth rewrites of old stories have bedeviled me. I left out important bits. How could I forget to write that Aunt Myrrha says, "Love you" (even though Sigrun should be too far away to hear it, without the help of her 'Imaginary friends') as Sigrun is ordered to hide from the rambunctious humanoid neighbors. And how can I skip the entire bit of the broom sparring session--that introduces the "Chekov's gun" of the weapon's grade pitchfork just sitting in the kitchen. Worse than having a gun that doesn't go off is having a gun go off that was never put in the setting. But the biggest thing I am learning is that it's fairly easy to identify and hammer these things in. Basically the reason I don't like to plot or redo something is that I don't like to play chess with it--get it all right in the sequential way. Instead, I enjoy that flow of consciousness. The primary value of the rewrite is that many of the things I forgot are better left out. Secondary is that other things crop up. And if you already have a successful run through you can readily pick up the missing bits. So breathe easily and just retell your story if that's what you're doing. Rest assured that the other copy still has all the details you need, and that you can tinker at length. |
| I was able to let go so much anxiety when I just started keeping a giant document of anything I cut out of the manuscript. It lets you save beautiful pieces for later, or maybe just for your own enjoyment, without keeping them in a place in the story they might not really belong. And the more comfortable you can get with moving things around, the more the muse and your subconscious will arrange cascading improvements. The story *wants* to be told, it's there if you can relax enough to find it. |
Gosh, Joto, I'm in the middle of doing the same thing with one of my stories. I half feel like sending you the draft of how it's coming along. It's "Virus" , and what I'm coming up with now is something entirely different... The one here is 85% lush botanical descriptions, descriptions of appearances, and weird conversations that were supposed to elucidate character  |
| I've added a new entry to my book, "Thoughts of a Mad Man" : "Emotional Control: Negotiation with Overwhelm" Sort of First aid for a freak out. When the pressure mounts and it should be obvious what to do, but it just... somehow, isn't. |
| I've added a new entry to my book, "Thoughts of a Mad Man" : "Emotional Control: Emotional Vocabulary" |
| So I'm getting into some really fun times in my rewrite, making a totally altered scene in the same slot. I'm a little confuzzled however, since my character is a little kid (Eleven). She's destined to be the 'emotionally intelligent' one, but she's been the victim of a lot of benevolent gaslighting. (You know, calling her legitimate visions 'imaginary friends' so that she doesn't piss off the neighbors.*) And I'm thinking that the parts where the kid is accurately describing the feelings of the adults might be too much. Or it might not. I mean, she's telling me stuff I didn't know and I might have to adjust it. E.G.Her voice had the growl of anger but the vibe in my belly was one of fear. My fuzzy head told me I was safe with the pixies, and Myrrha–she couldn't stand knowing I had been out of her reach. I wished someone could teach her how to live with that kind of fear–the kind that you couldn't fend off with a sword. Anyhow, so I'm wondering if that's too much precocious or, if it is exactly the kind of thought that a kid would have in that situation? I mean if she were the kind that could read the room. Not being all that good at reading the room it's hard to tell. *I just realized where this storyline came from... |
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Seriously, I have found this a useful metric. People who are actually tricking the people around them into thinking they're competent/faking an illness/whatever don't worry about whether they're doing it.
So in a weird backwards way, feeling nervous about your progress is...progress itself.