Watcha Writin'?

[Thorvald of Lym]

It's an easy misassumption that you write the book, when really the book writes you.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

But I'm not in Soviet Russia!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I found another memo on my phone. And this time it was not only readable, but...actually a decent idea. I'll see if I can fit it in.

 

[Zkribbler]

I'm trying to get moving again on the ending of my Count of Monte Banco. My sword-fighting scene is too brief. So I popped a swashbuckler into my DVD and took notes. After the third time my main character got stabbed in the "armchair" I figured out how to disable the word completion feature. I'll try folding this new scene into my already-written scene, and see if its enough.

I'm now mindful of the advice of writing guru Jenna Moreci https://www.jennamoreci.com to delve into your own emotional reaction to scenes and include them. E.g. How would I feel if my sword-wielding mortal enemy forces me backwards over a railing, only saving myself by grabbing a rope and swinging away: Hear my pulse pounding in my ears, feel my sweating palm slip on the rope, feel my heart break with the sure knowledge that I lack the skills necessary to defeat this man.

Later: Ahhh! 200 words in, and things are going better than expected.

 

[Hamilton321]

I have written a few stories, though I haven't tried to get anything published, its all history of alternate/sci fi/fantasy worlds.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

In my fanfic things are got clearer and I was actually able to divide up some scenes in advance. I gave them very bare-bone descriptions though so if I need to add/remove or rearrange them I can do that.

I must be doing something right

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Something else interesting is happening when I rewrite too. For example, something happens. The "what happens" sometimes stays the same, but the "how did it happen?" and "why did it happen?" sometimes changes around. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this good.

 

[Synobun]

You drove to a destination.

When driving to that same destination in the future, you realize there is a better route, so you drive that way instead.

Perhaps from there you find even better routes, but you've still improved upon that first initial drive. All despite the destination remaining the same.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Sometimes it feels like I pick the roads that have all the potholes.

 

[Synobun]

Sometimes it feels like I pick the roads that have all the potholes.

plotholes*

C'mon. It was right there, Aimee.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

...oof

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Cannons and canons both sink ships.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

something something ship-to-ship combat

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

(rather amusingly, my fanfic is actually gen...)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

While revising my third chapter, I accidentally managed to double the wordcount of a certain part. I thought that editing was supposed to be cutting things out.

Editing is cutting out what doesn't need to be there, and putting in what does need to be there. It's a process of change, not subtraction. Overall I'm going to have to cut a fair bit of stuff from my story since some of it is the same scene from different characters' perspectives (I'm trying to figure out which one is the best approach), but there are some scenes and conversations that are going to be expanded. When I'm adapting a game that skips over things like how characters got from one place to another so fast, some extra material is necessary (and I refuse to explain it away by saying, "Oh, they teleported" or "Oh, Griffinvale has wormholes" - a facile explanation used by General Hospital fans to explain how the characters get around Port Charles and neighboring towns so fast).

It's an easy misassumption that you write the book, when really the book writes you.

The book (and your subconscious) tell you what to write. I learned about this when I first read Marion Zimmer Bradley's account of an experience like this when she was writing The Spell Sword. She had intended one character to rescue the Keeper from the evil creatures that had kidnapped her, but as she said, "Damon Ridenow walked into the story and took it over." (paraphrase) She improved the story that way, since I liked the character of Damon and was still trying to figure out if I liked the character who was supposed to do the rescuing (Andrew Carr). Damon was a competent swordsman, but still needed some help to pull off a heroic rescue. Andrew would have been sliced and diced inside of three minutes, and no amount of writing would have made him into a believable rescuer.

I'm trying to get moving again on the ending of my Count of Monte Banco. My sword-fighting scene is too brief. So I popped a swashbuckler into my DVD and took notes. After the third time my main character got stabbed in the "armchair" I figured out how to disable the word completion feature. I'll try folding this new scene into my already-written scene, and see if its enough.

I'm now mindful of the advice of writing guru Jenna Moreci https://www.jennamoreci.com to delve into your own emotional reaction to scenes and include them. E.g. How would I feel if my sword-wielding mortal enemy forces me backwards over a railing, only saving myself by grabbing a rope and swinging away: Hear my pulse pounding in my ears, feel my sweating palm slip on the rope, feel my heart break with the sure knowledge that I lack the skills necessary to defeat this man.

Later: Ahhh! 200 words in, and things are going better than expected.

Emotions are why I'm looking forward to writing the funeral for one of the characters. I've mentioned this before - I sometimes listen to Enya's "Only Time" and suddenly it all came together - music and words supporting and reinforcing each other, and my feelings about the character (a duke who was a loving father juxtapositioned with my feelings about my own dad who died not long before this whole scene popped into my head). Since I have a reliably emotional reaction to Enya's song, this is one scene that I didn't worry about delaying writing about. There are other things that need to be written first (I have to create the rituals associated with noble and royal funerals, and even before that, I have to devise the ritual for crowning the king who's going to preside at the funerals; it's not enough to just plop a crown onto someone's head, there's more involved).

I have written a few stories, though I haven't tried to get anything published, its all history of alternate/sci fi/fantasy worlds.

Have you posted any of your writing anywhere?

Something else interesting is happening when I rewrite too. For example, something happens. The "what happens" sometimes stays the same, but the "how did it happen?" and "why did it happen?" sometimes changes around. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this good.

You're explaining it fine. This is something we all experience. This is why I'm doing two different versions of the story, because it seemed to me that some things in the original version that's closely based on the source game just didn't make sense for some reason. I wanted to see if I could improve it, so that's when I decided that a major event in the story wasn't going to happen.

The basic ones are still the same: The main characters escort the king on a hunting trip, the king is murdered, the protagonists are framed, one is hanged, the other is captured and tortured... and that's where the story splits off. From that point, the two versions of the story are very different. But eventually it all comes back to getting the king's heir on the throne. It just takes 2-3 years longer in one version.

 

[Hamilton321]

Have you posted any of your writing anywhere?

No, but I have shared some with my friends, they liked it but I do not think that it would be very commercially successful because it is mostly world building without well structured or easy to understand plot, moral conflicts (most battles are between morally ambiguous characters or races rather than between good and evil), dialogue, or interesting characters, the countries I create. I could post some small piece of my writing here perhaps.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

No, but I have shared some with my friends, they liked it but I do not think that it would be very commercially successful because it is mostly world building without well structured or easy to understand plot, moral conflicts (most battles are between morally ambiguous characters or races rather than between good and evil), dialogue, or interesting characters, the countries I create. I could post some small piece of my writing here perhaps.

Some of the best writing I've read is non-commercial. As for world-building, one of my Camp NaNoWriMo projects a few years ago involved dissecting the 8-volume Hulzein Saga series by F.M. Busby, to create a timeline of events, lists of characters, ships, planets, and how they all intersected. That would form the basis of a "Hulzein wiki" and from there I planned to write fanfic stories to fill in the gaps in the series, exploring events that were only hinted at or mentioned but never shown. I also wanted to take the series beyond the point where Busby left off (he quit writing commercial fiction in the '90s and died a decade or so later), since there's a hell of a plot hook he just casually mentioned in one of the early novels and never picked it up again.

 

[aelf]

My story didn't place at all in the contest, which I guess is not unexpected, since I made edits after submitting that I think made it better. Somehow, I still feel kinda disappointed, though. Maybe this is a sign that there isn't any hope for the story.

Didn't get anything again in the Writers of the Future Contest. I think my submission is much better this time, but I guess it's really hard to get anywhere.

I'd say I won't bother anymore, but it's a free competition, so I'll probably bash my head against the wall again in the future.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I got a little stuck on the current scene that I'm editing (it's not writer's block, just...I can't really explain what I mean) so I decided to jump ahead and write another scene that's been rolling around in my head.

 

[Hamilton321]

Some of the best writing I've read is non-commercial. As for world-building, one of my Camp NaNoWriMo projects a few years ago involved dissecting the 8-volume Hulzein Saga series by F.M. Busby, to create a timeline of events, lists of characters, ships, planets, and how they all intersected. That would form the basis of a "Hulzein wiki" and from there I planned to write fanfic stories to fill in the gaps in the series, exploring events that were only hinted at or mentioned but never shown. I also wanted to take the series beyond the point where Busby left off (he quit writing commercial fiction in the '90s and died a decade or so later), since there's a hell of a plot hook he just casually mentioned in one of the early novels and never picked it up again.

That is quite interesting, personally I really have no idea where to post my writing where people can and will read it, I tried to create my own website, but I could not find a format I liked so I just decided against it. I do not really know what a good place to post my writing would be or how to find it. This is only my second year I have been writing significant amounts of content.