I have the same problem. I've been trying to get around it by relating it to the characters somehow. Unlike Anne Rice, I would rather not have paragraph upon paragraph of description, so I've been attempting to relate what the characters would notice about certain scenes. Nothing hamfisted like 'Juri always marveled at the sheer size and colorlessness of the city' coming out of nowhere, something more like 'Juri's eyes narrowed in determination, her mood as grey and icy as the forbidding city around her.'

Lotte, I'm absolutely thrilled to hear that you're no J.D. Salinger. If I read a fic in which Utena started whining to the extent that Holden does in Catcher in the Rye, I'd probably try to gouge my eyes out, then sent an incredibly irritated email to the author (thank God for touch-typing and sending emails with no eyes!)

ShatteredMirror wrote:

Lotte, I'm absolutely thrilled to hear that you're no J.D. Salinger. If I read a fic in which Utena started whining to the extent that Holden does in Catcher in the Rye, I'd probably try to gouge my eyes out, then sent an incredibly irritated email to the author (thank God for touch-typing and sending emails with no eyes!)

*Giggles,*

Aw, now I thought Catcher in the Rye had it's redeeming qualities when I was twelve. xDD;; I mostly prefer his short stories, anyhow.

And I agree with Hinotori. 'Flowing Thought' pieces or whatever the hell the fancy name is for them, are probably the best way to actually just -write- something. Editting doesn't need to enter into it until the piece is really ready for it.

A very close friend of mine has a huge problem with this. She self-edits to an extreme, and has thus stifled a lot of the imagination and creativity she used to have in spades. She's figuring it out though, and things are looking up for her.

homogenized wrote:

Word to that. My AP English teacher always quotes...er...someone (yay education it's late) who says "thought kills action." I wholeheartedly agree. So, I've started to just write out little chunks of stories if I don't quite feel like writing in order and sew them into the story later on if they still fit in and sound good.

I tend to do the same thing, seeing as I'll often get really inspired to write one certain scene because I've finally had a good idea for it, or because I just -need- to write a certain character then. I'm much better at playing link-the-scene later on than right when I'm writing. Do you find that you write better that way?

Clarice wrote:

It's just when the most painfully plotted piece of grammar-less crap on ff.net gets two hundred reviews and you get maybe three, you start thinking: "...oh, why do I even bother?"

That couldn't possibly be because 197 of those 200 reviews are saying "your grammar sucks," could it?    Amazon customers haven't left 79 reviews of "A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates" because it's a compelling read.  (The reviews, on the other hand, are compelling reads: see http://www.amazon.com/o/tg/detail/-/0833030477 )

Advice to writers.  Hm.  Personally, I try to keep a balance between "thought kills action" and "thought complements action."  I hate having to spend as much time editing something as I did writing it, so I proofread as I go.  But I do go.  "Just get it down!" is excellent advice; there are just various ways of applying it.

Clarice wrote:

Only in my most wistful of dreams. [bangs head against wall for a long, long time]

Don't be sad

You probably use words too big for those 200 commenters to understand anyway

Hinotori wrote:

General advice to all writers out there:

It doesn't matter as long as you get it down, for crissakes. You can sort out the details later.

Amen to that. I'm currently writing a novel I hope to one day publish and you know what? I ended up erasing a fifteen pages from the manuscript because the action I wanted to describe (an assassiantion attempt and the immediate scene after) was getting far too long and plodding and had way too many plot holes in it to make it work. So I ended up moving the scene to later in the story under different circumstances. That's what's lovely about computers, its so easy to delete and re-write without affecting the whole thing along with possibly pasting and cutting a scene to place it elsewhere in the draft.

This goes for characters too, they tend to reveal more and more about themselves as you write them and often I find myself changing dialogue and motives often in earlier scenes because they strike me as "out of character" when they have more depth to them.

As for people with problems with background I too have problems in remembering to write down what is actually in my head without going overboard (like Anne Rice). So I say brush up on architectural terms, facial and body types, and clothing terms to convey your point concisely and eloquently instead of relying on general description. It'll probably make you seem more educated too as long as you don't go overboard.

It can also depend on your setting too, if you're writing in a time and place your intended audience is going to be familiar with, like a midwesterm town in America, don't worry about being overly descriptive because most people already have an idea of what one looks like. If you're writing abotu a future civilization on Mars, then I go more with metaphors and similies to convey your point like:

"The colony loomed on the horizon like a sleeping giant made of metal and plastic with a clear dome covering it like a blanket."

So you've made a point of the colony is large with probably high buildings, made of modern materials, and is encased in a dome all in one sentence.

Sorry to babble on like that, I guess the fact I edited my school's lit magazine in highschool for three years is showing.

Last edited by skewed_tartan (10-29-2006 06:34:40 PM)

I've finished two manscripts, writing another, laying out two more.  I belong a Novelist's Group - we have mostly published writers and one editor.   Have yet to get the "balls" to polish a manuscript and submit for publishing.  Here are some things I've learned or that are common mistakes -

1 - Avoid -ly words - adverbs are useless.
2 - Use ALL your senses - not just sight, but don't over-describe in one block.  When describing - work within your character's POV - pick the thing *they'd* notice - not what you want to use.
3 - Avoid "like" - their kiss was like the meeting of two lovers - ick!  Go deeper, as our pink haired boy would say - I want to live, feel, "be" in the story
4 - Read out loud!  You'll catch bad phrasing, word repititions, alliterations . . .
5 - Watch tags - "I love you Utena,"said Touga.  "And I love you Touga," said Utena.  ick!
6 - Watch out for name overusage - but use names periodically - even in a two-person scene - but add something to the scene.  "Touga leaned in and brushed a tear from her eye.  'I have always loved you.' "What are we learning in each and every moment?  So what if Touga likes menage a trois?  Does it serve a purpose to your story on Mikage? 
7 - Avoid florrid description - His soft, silky, rose-pink, shoulder-length hair brushed his delicate, well-dressed shoulders.  ick!!!
8 - Avoid Alliteration Always.  heh - sorry.
9 - Avoid author intrusion - don't tell your reader, *show* your reader.
10 - that's all that I can recall.

If you want to know what to avoid - read my fanfics - I purposely write them as the epitome of bad fanfic writing.  They're the best stress reducers in the world.

Love, love, love! to discuss writing!  Please, let's discuss writing!  Yippee!!  And, yes, write!  Write, write, write, *then* look it over.  Don't get so hung up on it all being perfect - it can't be.  It's your story, your voice - let it be heard.

As to fanfic writing - I think one needs to know their target audience - that will determine a lot of things.  Anj's "I, Planetarium" is fantastic, but it's definitely for the SKU viewer.

My stories tend to either have too little detail, or too much detail. I occasionally ramble on in my stories every now and then, and so I have to go back and correct it later. As for apologizing, it's one of my bad habits in real life. I tend to apologize very frequently, which is often pointed out to me by my friends. Apologizing for apologizing is awkward. Whenever I start publishing my work, I'll have to keep that in mind.

The best advice I can offer to writers is to never, ever use random Japanese, especially if all you can say is "kawaii" or "baka." Honorifics are okay, but saying things such as, "You silly baka," or, "____ smiled kawaii-ly" is not a good idea. While we're reading, we're assuming that they're speaking Japanese anyway, so there's no need to throw in any random Japanese phrase into your story.

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

And, lastly, nicked from Nabokov, "A good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense."  Anyone who is missing those elements, or complains in a way that reveals them to be unwilling to utilise those elements, those are the readers/commenters you don't need to listen to at all.

You're awesome.

OMG I can't believe this got necro'd!!

Here's some new advice (Aka RANT ON ANTHIENA!): Write out your feelings and when in doubt, do what you know. Sometimes a cry story works, but be aware that 90% of the time it doesn't. Douglass Adams things the government in little British towns is horrid. How do I know? Because he lampoons it in 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. I also have it on authority that S. M. Stirling thinks highly of Wiccans-he made two societies of them for his book series that starts with Dies the Fire. He also realizes the saying "Wiccans are wierd." He puts the statement into the mouth of his character.

....however, this can go too far. 'There will be Dragons' suffered because of the writer pounding his unusual (if well informed) believe about carbon monoxide. The Sword of Truth could have been a witty deconstruction of heroic fantasy if it weren't for his extreme social beliefs and his tendancies to use it as a bible rather than a form of fiction. (....and the fact that he cannot write fiction well) To be honest, "I am Legend" (The novella, not the movie) suffers from the writers obsession over describing every action/thought to the reader rather than simplify it and leave it to the imagination. I almost stopped reading that excellent piece of work because the beginning was rather boring.

Mindscrew territory is rare ground. It's easy to descend into "Crack fic" stew, which in a measure is good, but you have to keep in mind what you are aiming for. Take this fanfiction for example. There is a chapter where a character has a very surreal kind of dream, but made both a long and short version of it, the long for clarity, but decided to ditch it when the beta understood the short version completely.

Wordiness, as maybe you gathered off my bit on "I am Legend" is almost a story killer. If you are writing simply just to get the creative juices going, work off the dry periods on yor lesser works. There are stories I will never share with anyone because I know exactly what they were: wordy drivels. Words can tell a story, but they can lead in circles to nowhere, just ask the Akio car and it's children. Just learn to word things wisely.

Last edited by Anthiena (07-10-2008 03:27:03 PM)

...okay, so this link is probably only amusing to me because of who wrote it and for whom he wrote it, but I still think it holds valid advice for writers of all stories: AN INQUIRY INTO THE CONSTRUCTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF THE NEW ZEALAND SHORT STORY. I'm in a writing class at the moment dealing principally with short stories, which is not my bag, but by god am I learning something.

I particularly like definition three, which might as well be eighty-five percent of fanfiction ever written:

(3) Then if you think you're depressed already just wait till you read this but it may help me to make some sense of my breakdown short story...

This type of short story is directly related to the confessional poetry of Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. The creative impetus behind it more commonly finds its expression in the form of a novel rather than a short story. However short stories of this type do appear. I shall not give an example of one because I am feeling quite cheerful, a frail mood and one easily dispelled by contemplation of the type of short story I am refusing to contemplate.

I always knew there was a reason why I never read Sylvia Plath.