@Harper186
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: I’m having a rough time starting my second book in my series. Is this normal? I am a young author writing a fantasy series. When I was writing the first book, it was easy and words literally
I am a young author writing a fantasy series. When I was writing the first book, it was easy and words literally flew onto the page. Now that I’m starting the second book (even though I know what it’s about) it’s a lot harder. Its like my writing’s constipated or something. I just can’t get the words out.
It’s not writers block, I know what I’m writing about. And I have written some. It’s just harder. I don’t really know how to explain it. Is this normal or is it just me? If it’s normal, how can I get over it?
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: Starting my second book. Would this be considered an info dump? I’m trying to open up the second book with the impact of the last book on my MC, but it looks more like an info dump. I
I’m trying to open up the second book with the impact of the last book on my MC, but it looks more like an info dump.
I was slowly beginning to cope with the fact that my world was completely shattered, I had no way back home, and my brother was dead. It isn’t easy. Every morning when I get out of bed, I have to remind myself I’m doing this for a reason. The reason?
So everyone else never has to feel the pain that I felt now.
A nearly impossible goal, but I’d quickly learned that nothing, and I mean nothing is impossible here. Besides my personal issues, I still had one major problem. More like two, actually. I’m supposed to lead a rebellion and kill a millennia old psycho who can’t even be killed.
I was still working on figuring out how that was going to work. I was sitting in my chair in the Hall of Ancestors,(stupid name, I know. I’m working on it.) starring blankly at the ceiling, torchlight dancing across the walls.
names and faces of the dead crossed my mind as I fingered the white bandanna securing my braid. It was the only possession I had left of my home. I thought of my dead parents, my brother Matt, Lleaud, Christy, Lua... and the hundreds of others who had given their lives in the battle of Blood-Field. That is what we’d decided to name it, because more than half of us had died in the fight. There were scarcely a hundred rebels living within these trees. You might be asking what we’re rebelling against.
All of Epslan. The entire planet.
We don’t have a choice. All of us were forced from our homes, ruthlessly pursued and slaughtered by the one who calls herself The Huntress. The one who destroyed everything. She came to power on the wings of death, forcing people to obey her will. And if not? She killed them, slowly gaining control over everything and everyone. During the last thousand years, Epslan has become a horrible, violent, bloodthirsty kingdom.
And somehow, me and my friends were supposed to bring it back from the brink of destruction. But I feared we had only made it worse. And that it was my fault.
Is this an info dump, or does it make you feel stressed out, insignificant and sad, because that’s exactly what I’m going for. It’s how my characters feel.
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: How to have a character speak pidgin without inducing cringes? The character Lee in Steinbeck's East of Eden is a Chinese-American who speaks in pidgin — until he explains to his boss, in
The character Lee in Steinbeck's East of Eden is a Chinese-American who speaks in pidgin — until he explains to his boss, in very articulate English, that he does so for reasons of his own.
In my Gold Rush story, the protagonist employs a Chinese man who — he will discover — does the same thing in order to remain inconspicuous. I have two problems that Steinbeck didn't have:
I'm no John Steinbeck.
Some modern readers will cringe at the character's pidgin. If asked his name, the character would say something like:
"Lee. Got more name. Lee papa family name. Call Lee."
Even if such talk is "accurate" — he's deliberately playing an early-20th-century stereotype, after all — I'd hate for any readers to be pulled out of the story by its "unrealtiy", or worse, decide to stop reading before the reveal.
What's a good way to handle this?
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: Re: Do publishers really need to translate between UK and US English? Is there really a need for a book to be translated from UK to US English? I'm nearing completion on my own great work, and
Rather than translating from UK to US English, I think a glossary would be a better idea. It would clarify things for non-UK readers, and also give them insight into our culture, just like we get insight into US culture.
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: Re: Switching Between First and Third Person So I've started writing a book. It's set in present time, but is going to be interwoven with flashbacks to a few years ago to explain how the character(s)
There's no reason you can't do this. I have an (unpublished) essay that follows a similar format which garnered a number of personalized rejections and the only comments on mixing first/third person were positive. As with anything artistic, the key question is how well you manage the execution.
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: Re: Am I bringing my character back to life too much? This story is about a person in a sort of technologically advanced secret government organization that is basically SCP. The organization is
Bit of a world building answer, but in a world with fictional aspects it is best to create some ground rules the characters have to abide by (in my opinion it's always better to first create the world, then the characters and at last the story).
Make it imperfect.
Each time a character is resurrected, the character sustains unfixable (mental) damage, that way you can justify restrictions on how many times a person can (legally) be resurrected seeing they will eventually become dangerous. Or damage to the heart that eventually becomes too much to be resurrected.
Scarcity in resources.
The resources are so hard to get that it becomes too expensive to keep doing it without good (financial) reasons. Or make it a trade issue, you require somebody else to die to bring somebody back...this would make it harder to do so (and when it comes to moral implications you can justify it by using criminals as sacrifice).
By having such rules in place it would become easier for you to decide when it becomes too much. Be it due to the moral conflicts or financial restraints the main character has to deal with.
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: Re: What are some potential problems you can have if you happen to share similar names with an author? I am a freelance author consultant and have ran into a unique problem. My customer happens
I don’t know much about laws on that, but you shouldn’t get into any trouble just for sharing someone’s name. Honestly, what can you do about it? You can’t do anything about it.
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: Re: Should my main character make a ginormous mistake? I'm rereading my draft, and there is a part in the book where when the main character is helping others escape prison, she accidentally reveals
Yes. It’s fine to have someone die. Just make sure that you don’t only kill side Characters, because then it makes the main characters seem immortal, and the reader expects them to turn out okay.
The way I avoided this in my book is creating a main character who’s sole purpose is to get really important, draw a lot of empathy from the reader, and then be killed in a horrific tragic way that was the main characters fault.
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: As a young author, how do you make people listen? I am an extremely young author. I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging, but I think I am very good. They say the best readers are
I am an extremely young author. I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging, but I think I am very good. They say the best readers are the best writers, in a single day I once read a 700 page book. I read every book in the house. Twice. I got bored. I was staying up late because I couldn’t sleep the night before seventh grade. I walked to the other side of the room, pulled a random book off the shelf, and started to read.
The book I had randomly selected was an old leather bound classic,
Peter Pan. About a hundred pages in, I came across the list boys of never land. I read about how they were tromping through the woods, alone and scared, gripping daggers and wearing animal skins.
The light bulb above my head exploded with a book idea.
At least, at first it was a single book. Now it’s an eleven book series.
I finished my first book, and no one (by this I mean agents, editors, and publishers) is taking me seriously.
When I call them on the phone, they say they can help me out. But when they realize how young I am, they simply refuse.
What do I do?
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: Re: protagonist knows things which the reader doesn't know/story starts in the middle. How do I tell them? when I say "reader", in the context of my particular scenario, I actually mean
Never ever tell unless it is absolutely necessary. Nobody wants to read a chapter that's talking about history or backstory.
Instead, try to show your reader. For example:
If for a thousand years there has been a war going on between dragons and humans, then let the reader know this information by having people talk about a battle plan, how one has failed a long time ago, open up to a fight scene, have someone watch the battle from a distance, etc.
Never start a book saying:
For a thousand years there has been war with dragons and humans, it started when blah blah blah.
No one wants to read that.
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: How to write in an academic way and sound professional? For example, how could I write the following sentences in an academic way? After I have contacted Dr. .., he has accepted to be on
For example, how could I write the following sentences in an academic way?
After I have contacted Dr. .., he has accepted to be on my supervision panel, he told me that he can contact you and ask you if you are interesting in being on my supervision panel. Then, he informed me that you have you are interested. Thus, I would like to thank you for accepting to be on my supervisor panel.
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: Re: Publishing of Collection of Short Stories I have a collection of short stories--48 in total, a word count of 80,000 and 156 pages. Regarding publication, is such a collection likely to be too
Publishing a collection of short stories is a difficult matter in general. Usually, if a collection is published all, or almost all of the stories will have been previously published and at least one in some top-tier publication such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, Granta or Virginia Quarterly Review. The only recent instance I know of where a collection of previously unpublished short stories was published by a major publisher was Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Rafael Bob-Waksberg who had the advantage of a significant platform courtesy of being the creator of BoJack Horseman.
So step one is to get the individual stories published. Then, once that's happened, you can maybe find a publisher. Even that's difficult. Most debut short story collections come out from smaller presses and often through contest submissions. The good news is that if you can publish all or most of the 48 stories, it would put you in a good position for submitting.
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: Writing for 2-3 different audiences at the same time - Approach? For a non-fiction book ... Inside every chapter, I need to address 3 separate "audiences" (sort of)... and I am having
For a non-fiction book ... Inside every chapter, I need to address 3 separate "audiences" (sort of)... and I am having trouble organizing this in a way that makes sense.
Here's an example : Let's say I was writing a book about providing (and receiving) the best cancer treatment in the 21st century. So I need to write for a) patients, b) doctors (and its important that they understand each other's issues and then c) for hospitals - that deal with many patients and doctors and broader issues. So in each chapter/topic, I need to write 3 separate sections.
Well this approach is vexing. Now then - putting aside the knee jerk advice about either writing 3 different books, or just writing to one audience - what would be some approaches to organizing the book, each chapter, so this works for the 3 audiences?
Right now, I just introduce the chapter subject, and then break it up into 3 sections for the same topic- but for each of the 3 "audiences". It feels a little clunky, so I am looking for alternative techniques.
Ideas? Suggestions?
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: Re: Do I have to start my story with my main characters? What I mean is, does my story have to start with my main character being introduced, or can I start with their parents and then ease
In order to demonstrate that it is not necessary, we can see that some very successful pieces of screen-writing did not introduce all of their main characters straight away.
For example, in the 1996 film Fargo, IMDB Trivia notes
Although Frances McDormand's character is the film's central role, she does not appear on the screen until over 33 minutes (or 1/3) into the film.
In the 2012 film Django Unchained, Calvin Candie (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) appears even later:
Leonardo DiCaprio does not appear until one hour and three minutes in.
These are just two examples of many that demonstrate there is no hard-and-fast rule that you must introduce all of your main characters immediately.
Where the author deliberately tricks the audience into mistaking who the protagonist is, it is called a False protagonist:
In fiction, a false protagonist is a literary technique, often used to make the plot more jarring or more memorable by defying the audience's preconceptions, whereby a character who the audience assumes is the protagonist is later revealed not to be.
A false protagonist is presented at the start of the fictional work as the main character, but is then removed from the role, often killed (usually for shock value or as a plot twist) or relegated to a different role in the story (i.e. making them a lesser character, a character who leaves the story, or revealing the character to actually be the antagonist).
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: Re: How to make my evil genius, evil and likeable? I am working on a story from an 'Igor'/lab assistants' point of view. They work for a modern day 'Evil scientist', Dr Levo. Igor has a good
Depends on what route you want to follow.
The Pre-Emptive bad guy route for example.
Take X-Men's Magneto, a popular and well liked character who is Evil (seeing he wants to commit genocide on the human race). But he does get a lot of sympathy from the reader because in a way his actions are understandable and one can see why he would deem them necessary. As an holocaust survivor he sees the same events happen with mutants as when he was growing up as a boy of Jewish faith.
Perhaps your character does what he does out of a sense of pre-emptive strike, either he attacks them now or they will attack him later, perhaps because of their misplaced fear of him?....self defense and nothing else?
The ends justify the means...
I am staying in the comic world for now, let's take DC's Mr.Freeze. He isn't truly evil but he has no problem with doing evil deeds for a simple reason, it's his only hope to save his wife. And another character would be Thanos, who want's to sacrifice half the universe to save the remainder. Both characters are clearly evil in their way, but again understandable because Freeze is motivated by love and Thanos by a sense of greater good. Both might have logical flaws but both are understandable in their actions.
Perhaps your character has lost faith in humanities ability to save itself/the world and so he takes it upon himself to do it no matter what cost. Or a bit more selfish...he wants to save a person and is willing to pay whatever price there is.
Lawful Evil
Again with the comics, The Fantastic 4's main villain(and probably the best villain Marvel has ever created!) Dr.Doom. He is evil but still plays by a rule book/code of honor. For example, at a time he was able to kill Reed Richards, which is pretty much his life goal but instead saved him...why? Richards was wounded by a other foe, there would be no honor/satisfaction in killing him. And another point is, he does not see himself as evil...and he isn't. In the Spider-Man secret wars series (Animated show version) he ruled as a dictator on an alien world divided in several kingdoms split between several Marvel villains. His kingdom is rather distinct seeing it's an utopia, an utopia under a dictatorship but still an utopia.
Having your character have a code of honor goes a long way in likeability, for example doesn't hurt kids/dogs.
Flamboyant D-Bag.
Some bad guys are liked more for their style then substance, take Damon from The Vampire Diaries or Klaus from The Originals. Both are ruthless killers without any regard for human life but they are like both in and off the show because they sell it. Why are cool people generally liked in high-school? because they are cool. Damon sells it with the rebel without a cause attitude while Klaus has a puppeteer attitude displaying his strategic intelligence whenever he can and giving speeches on how everybody sucks compared to him...sure you hate him but you also do love to hate him.
Edit for OP:
Neutral Evil, Boring unless they are a puppet master.
Personally I find Neutral Evil to be hard to like because they aren't that compelling. They are often one dimensional characters motivated by nothing other then greed or power. This is because bad guy are often defined by their motivations. But this can be remedied by the way they obtain it.
An example would be Emperor Palpatine, he's a simple man with a simple plan...to rule the galaxy. But his methods is where it gets interesting. (The pre-Dinsey version that is) One of his greatest manipulations was the hatred he created towards the Jedi from their clones. He as the leader of the republic and secret enemy of the Jedi ensured that the Jedi got high-ranking militarily positions in the clone army. And in first glance it would be stupid to appoint the enemy as high ranking officers in your own army, but it was genius in two simple ways.
1: The Jedi were arrogant, by hiding in plane sight (as the head of the Democratic government he wanted to overthrow) he was able to direct the attention away from him towards people like Count Dooku. And appointing the Jedi in charge of the clone armies made them ignore the fact that such a massive army was a threat.
2: The Jedi were peacekeepers, negotiators, and self righteous hippies. They viewed the clones as little more then machines because they were unnatural. And their total lack of military experience or passion made sure that a lot of clones died for next to nothing. And although they were brainwashed/bread to be loyal to the Republic this wasn't full proof. In fact a few clones deserted the Republic to side with the Jedi but most didn't because Palpatines plan. Most of the clones were so used to being mistreated by the Jedi that they didn't have a second thought when the order came to kill them all.
If your bad guy can be like that, a master manipulator he would not be likeable but he will be respectable due to his sheer level of skill.
Chaotic Evil, insanity justified
2 characters I mentioned as Flamboyant D-Bag's are Klaus Mikaelson and Damon Salvator. They aren't fully Chaotic Evil but had their periods. Klaus, a creature that has lived for hundreds of years always had one thing that defined him, his family. It was his obsession but at a time he could no longer be close to them. It drove him mad and violent randomly killing people for no reason. And same goes for Damon who did his malice because he was heartbroken.
But they were still likeable to the audience because they were acting out due to emotional pain, something most people can relate to.
Chaotic characters (Good, neutral or evil) are defined by their unpredictable nature and their disregard/inability to see the long term consequences of their actions. Or how it would effect a third party. And here comes the motivation, there must be a reason to why they became chaotic, a form of trauma that made them depressed or lose faith in others which caused them to no longer care about anyone or anything. If your character is evil because he has no reasons left to be good (Lost loved ones, or a other form of defeat) can generate sympathy form the reader to him.
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: Re: Will a copyeditor refine both dialogue and plot? I am a big-picture kinda guy. I have ideas and I love details, but I hate to get stuck up in the microscopic level grunt work - managing
Generally, no.
The traditional editing process has three layers. In order, there's the substantive edit, the line edit, and the proofread. All three require a different set of skills.
The substantive edit (this process goes by a number of different names) aims to address 'big-picture' elements such as plot holes, character arcs, pacing, etcetera. When the substantive editor is done, your manuscript will be returned with a whole lot of red lines suggesting you cut out the car ride to work and the protagonist's extensive ten-page morning ritual. Annotations written in comment bubbles will point out where your characters come off as unfeeling wooden blocks or as reptiles in human skinsuits.
The line editor is, as the name suggests, concerned about your story at the sentence level. Expect a returned manuscript in which all clichés like the phrase "like a knife through butter" are highlighted, as well as suggestions on where to break up run-on sentences and where to improve sections written in passive voice.
Finally there's the proofreader, who has your manuscript open on one side and Strunk and White on the other. The proofreader catches grammatical errors, like sentences in which you forgot to modify the verb for the subjunctive mood, and similar subjects such as punctuation. Of the three, this is the most 'objective' form of editing.
You might find an editor who will do all three. But not as a 'package deal,' for the simple reason it makes little sense to correct a misspelling on page three if it's uncertain whether the encapsulating scene will make it through to the next draft.
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: Re: Is There a Term or Description For When the Narrator Inserts their Own Personal Perspective Into a Third Person POV? Occasionally I have read stories where the third person Omniscient/Limited
It's a subtle form of the literary device called 'authorial intrusion,' in which the author 'intrudes' on the story and draws attention to him- or herself. For instance, to provide an opinion.
The device has broader reach than sharing opinions. If an author takes time in between chapters to explain in textbook fashion the migratory patterns of whales, that, too, would be authorial intrusion.
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: Re: What is the literary form or style of a story with no heroes? I have a piece of non-fiction to write that I'll be doing by telling a story. It's somewhere between a news report, op-ed,
I believe the term you're looking for may be 'Creative Non-Fiction'.
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: Re: How to make "new apprentice" type info-dump less boring I'm writing a story wherein a teenager X gets suddenly and involuntarily enlisted in an sci-fi army. I need to explain certain technology
There are a few things you can do:
Consider if it is absolutely necessary - if not omit it.
Spread the information out, intersperse it amongst the narrative as much as possible.
Use action - instead of a lecture, have your character figure it out for themselves or through discussion with other characters.
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: Re: How to write a character with an accent One of my characters is Russian and speaks English as a second language. I know that people with Russian accents tend to leave out words like “theâ€
It's not annoying, no. Like Ram Pillai said in the comments, a Russian should talk like a Russian. However, don't try to convey the accent phonetically. That will get annoying pretty quickly and may come across as hurtful or mocking to some readers.
I suggest you look into common issues faced by Russian ESL students. This web site covers some common grammatical issues. I won't copy the website's contents as a whole, but other than dropping articles Russian students tend to struggle with tenses and auxiliary verbs (which they often drop), and also with prepositions.
As for qualities of voice, see point ten on this web site. Russian intonation tends to be flat with sudden jumps in pitch, which may carry over when the character speaks English.
English has vastly more vovel sounds than Russian does. If the character is self-conscious about his or her pronunciation, he/she may (not necessarily as a deliberate action) avoid words with difficult vowel sounds and replace them with words with more natural vowel sounds. Perhaps even choose words which are a suboptimal fit for the sentence (example: "I stroke kitty" instead of "I pet the kitty" -- 'pet' tends to come out as 'pat' whereas the 'o' in stroke sounds the same in both Russian and English.)
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: Re: Can a novel chapter have a suspenseful flashforward opening? Like in the TV serials, can we have the opening section of the novel relate the ending or some part in between of the chapter (as
My Sister's Keeper starts with a prologue a few hundred words long. A nameless girl writes how, when she was three years old, tried to smother her sister with a pillow. However, her dad stopped her from going through with it. She writes how later in life she kept fantasizing about killing her sister, but the prologue ends with this statement:
In the end, though, I did not kill my sister. She did it all on her own. Or at least this is what I tell myself.
As a reader we don't even know any of the characters' names yet, but the author already spoils the ending. Somebody will die by the end of the book, either a murder or a suicide.
In chapter one we are introduced to Anna, who seeks the help of a lawyer to sue her parents. Anna's sister Kate has a rare form of cancer and her kidneys are failing and their parents want Anna to give up one of hers.
Throughout the story we learn Anna was born with a purpose. A genetically-screened test tube baby, the blood in her umbillical cord was used in an experimental therapy to extend Kate's life. Extend, not cure. And what started as a one-time sacrifice quickly becomes a regular occurrence. She's forced to give up blood and bone marrow, and has to take growth hormones even though she's not sick. Meanwhile she can't live a life of her own, and we, the reader, realize this circle of pain will keep going on until Kate dies.
The lawsuit unfolds, and we learn something new. Anna sued her parents on Kate's behalf. Instinctively we understand the events of the prologue are approaching rapidly. We will catch up with the here and now soon enough, the consequence chiseled in stone. Anna will win, gaining a life of her own at a terrible cost.
Except...
On the way to the hospital with her lawyer, they are rammed by a car and Anna dies. Kate gets both of Anna's kidneys, and in the epilogue we learn it's Kate who wrote the prologue.
The twist ending is maybe ten pages long, and although the story would suffer thematically, you could cut off the end and still have a functioning book. In fact, the author could have signed the prologue with Kate's name and it wouldn't have mattered. Why? Because we don't read to get to the conclusion. Rather than the suspense of 'how will this end,' the book's true strength is the palpable tension which exists between all of the characters.
Anna struggles against her parents for bodily independence, for the right to have her concerns be heard. She struggles against herself, torn between not wanting Kate to die and respecting her wishes. Between doing what's right and keeping the family from burning down. Her parents struggle with feelings of powerlessness, of clinging to false hope, the realization they've neglected their other children. The book's conclusion has no influence on any of these sources of tension.
Yes. You can start a story by giving away the ending, given you substitute mystery with tension. I think My Sister's Keeper is still a compelling read, if you can't tell by my screenname.
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: Re: How to add various social themes in the story? I'm working on my first novel, which revolves around revenge and violent cycles of human nature for more than 1.5 years. While working on some
I propose a two-pronged approach.
The first prong is research. To understand what makes your characters tick, research what violence does to real-life people. You haven't specified what sort of violence you write about, but let's take domestic abuse as an example. You could read scientific literature on the subject, talk to survivors (if they're willing), or perhaps find a support group on the internet.
The book is hardly comprehensive on the subject of how experiencing violence shapes people (there's probably not enough paper in the world), but as an introduction and useful point of reference I can recommend The Emotional Wound Thesaurus.
The second prong is to have an honest conversation with your characters. You've been writing for well over a year. I imagine you know the events of your plot by heart, and also where character actions feel contrived and emotions fake. Print your work and highlight the suspect bits, then ask your characters why they acted or felt the way they did.
You'll likely learn something about their backstory you didn't know yet. Why did the girl not run away from her abusive boyfriend? Maybe when she grew up, her father was exactly like him and she doesn't know any better relationships aren't supposed to be like that. Or perhaps your character snaps back at you. No, I did run away. You must have misheard when writing the first draft.
Either way, depending on the answer you can correct the story by adding in relevant backstory or by changing the flow of events.
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: Re: How do I put forward an optimistic conclusion from the narrative? I am writing a self-help book. In one of the chapters, I have argued that academic success is dependent on IQ and IQ is hereditary
Fed up with being on the hook for a three-digit bill one too many times, I recently bought a book on car maintenance hoping to learn simple repairs by myself. The mechanic on the cover looked like a trustworthy figure; his long gray beard attested to decades of experience. When the book arrived the next day I immediately removed the foil and read the preface, copied below in its entirety:
You fool. You rube. Nobody has ever become a car mechanic by studying a book; true gearheads can trace their lineage back to Henry Ford and have motor oil coursing through their veins. And if you don't, you'll never so much as replace a spark plug, ever. Live with it. In lieu of practical advice, the rest of this book is filled with pictures of the author's most recent family vacation to Fiji.
Needless to say, I did not actually buy a book like this. I'm proving a point by putting the fundamental problem in front of a funhouse mirror. Self-help books exist for the reader to become better at something, be it car repairs, processing emotional hurt, whatever. If your overarching conclusion is 'all is futile; the die was cast nine months before your birth,' you have utterly failed to fulfill that singular purpose. Quite simply put, you don't have a book.
Another thing about self-help books. The author is essentially a teacher to an audience of one. As such it is expected you possess a certain expertise*, and precludes a belief reading the book does nothing to make the reader better at some skill. If I genuinely believe car mechanics are born, not raised, would I ever write a book on car maintenance? Would you?
Two strategies exist to alter both tone and message of your book. One for the bread writer, the other for the brain writer.
Brain writers are students as much as they are teachers, and possess a strong academic spine. Their work might be popular and earn big royalty paychecks, but they primarily write for the love of sharing their skills, insight, and the love of teaching itself. Re-examine your research. Apply basic scientific literacy. Did you fall for common biases? Spot any confounding factors? Make flawed assumptions? Read and reread your work. Have someone else critique you. After all of this, determine if your expert opinion has changed. If it has, rewrite where necessary. If not, don't publish.
The bread writer's main concern is earning a paycheck. If you are one, simply delete the offending chapter and replace it with the mushiest pablum in your pantry.
* You'd be surprised how many bread writers exist.
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: Re: Inhibitions when writing personal experiences I write for myself and have no intention of publishing anything. However, I still become uncomfortable writing about events in my life because I think
Any tips for getting over this hurdle and either skipping over autobiographical writing or making it mentally/emotionally easier?
If writing about your life is therapeutic, do it. Buy a small notebook, write with a pencil and keep an eraser nearby in case you need to walk back your words. Keep it locked away in a safe or drawer when you're not writing so nobody will find your book by accident.
Overcoming what others might think is, ultimately, your own psychological mountain to climb. The knowledge your notebook is nothing more than a collection of pages bound between two covers and cannot talk or draw attention to itself might help.
Or I need to change my approach to all of this?
To write is to bleed emotion. But bleeding emotion is not the same as writing. What you put on the page has to ring true; a reader must intuit why a character feels the way he or she does and why these feelings and resulting actions are believable and appropriate to the character's personality.
People have probably hurt you before. You may have hurt others, intentionally or by accident. Yes, you can write about those experiences. Change names, locations and dates. Or, you could change the events which transpired entirely but keep the emotions intact.
I've never been a wizard's apprentice. I've never accidentally blown a hole in the wall of my mentor's study while practicing magic. But as a kid I once scratched the door of a lady's car when I lost control of the shopping cart I was pushing too fast. My father was disappointed in me and I was ashamed. The actual events differ, but if I were a wizard's apprentice, that's how I'd probably feel after the magic mishap. Different events, same emotions.
Life experiences and emotions are like clay; the stories you craft are vases. From one batch of clay you can make two completely different vases, or even a vase and a statue.
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: Re: Inhibitions when writing personal experiences I write for myself and have no intention of publishing anything. However, I still become uncomfortable writing about events in my life because I think
Everyone has regrets. Try writing how your life would have changed if you had taken a different choice, such as telling someone you had a crush on them. Would your life be happier, or you could even try what if I did this and my life got messed up. So while you are still writing about yourself, you are not writing what really happened.
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: Inhibitions when writing personal experiences I write for myself and have no intention of publishing anything. However, I still become uncomfortable writing about events in my life because I think
I write for myself and have no intention of publishing anything.
However, I still become uncomfortable writing about events in my life because I think about how people who are involved or who know me would react if they ever got the chance to read it. I also feel bad for recording the flaws of myself and others on paper.
My eventual goal is to move into more creative writing, and I hope I can obscure (not remove) the autobiographical elements of my writing to have some more anonymity and creativity. I try to think of a story with invented characters and settings that I can use as a vehicle to talk about some personal event, for example, but I struggle to do this right now.
In the mean time, I find it easiest to write directly about my own experiences, and I believe that it is productive and perhaps therapeutic to do so, but I can't get around the mental block I describe above.
Any tips for getting over this hurdle and either skipping over autobiographical writing or making it mentally/emotionally easier? Or I need to change my approach to all of this?
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: Re: seeking advice - screenwriter looking to write novel All. I'm looking for some advice. I'm interested in writing a young adult mystery novel, but I don't believe I'm a good writer in the traditional
Should I story board/outline the novel and hand it over to a ghost writer directly to write from scratch?
Or should I write a "bad" first draft and hire an editor to rewrite it, ideally in a more compelling manner.
That rumble in the distance is the sound of a thousand plotters and pantsers, marching towards this thread to wage war on each other.
The answer as to whether you should outline first (i.e. plot) or dive into the deep end (i.e. pants) is a matter of personal preference. I strongly prefer the former, others prefer the latter. Either option is valid.
However.
That said, I don't believe I write prose well enough to be commercially viable (e.g., descriptions, grammar, etc.).
If commercial viability drives your desire to write a novel, the kindest advice I can provide is to give up now and find joy in delivering pizzas instead. You'll be considerably better off financially.
A first-time author will typically sell north of a couple thousand books†and will be lucky to ever outearn his or her advance. That advance might only be five thousand dollars, before your agent takes his/her 15% cut.
Ghostwriters do not come cheap. Expect a cost somewhere in the tens of thousands of dollars. There's also no guarantee the work they provide is precisely what you had in mind.
Editors, who come in two distinct flavors, aren't cheap either. There's your developmental editors who figure out whether the story follows a logical progression and point out where your characters behave inconsistently, and line editors who suggest better alternatives to misused words. If you intend to hand in a bad first draft, you're going to need both types of editor. Factor in another two- to four grand to the total bill, unless a traditional publisher will cover those costs for you. Traditional publishers are flooded with countless manuscripts each day. They will not invest time and money in a poor first draft.
Also, editors are not rewriters. Typically they'll return your Word document with a list of annotations pointing out where your story can be improved or where its flaws are. You're on the hook to solve those problems yourself.
Then there's proofreaders. If grammar isn't your strong suit, they'll fix any such problems they spot. For a price. Tack on another cool grand.
I realize I may come off as brash, but I don't intend to. I'm simply providing an honest assessment of why both proposed methods of writing a book are likely not economically viable. If you want to write a book you can be proud of and turn a profit, you'll have to put in a good effort in all aspects of writing. Even the ones you don't like.
†A first time traditionally published author. Self-publish without a plan and your book will become undiscoverable on Amazon precisely 90 days after release.
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: Re: Is there any word or phrases that can replace greed and greedy? Apparently, greed and greedy are weak words in poetry, so you can't use them, but what other words would you use? The pirate
Many.
Consider consulting a thesaurus: www.thesaurus.com/browse/greed https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/greedy
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: Re: Enjoying my writing vs. maintaining writing habit How do I resolve the conflict between: Being interested in what I write about Ignoring my inner critic, pushing past writer's block, starting writing,
Not all advice is equally helpful to all writers. Some pieces of advice aren't even equally helpful to the same writer during different stages of the writing process. Like using a satnav, always exercise judgment before blindly yanking the wheel and driving into the nearest lake because a disembodied voice told you to.
That said, I think both bullet points are useful. Complementary, even. While writing the first draft of my current WIP, at no point did I dwell long on whether my specific ideas had been done before, whether my plot dragged in places, what various people I know would think of my book, etcetera, etcetera.
Did I have doubts while writing? Constantly. From the antagonist's vague motivation and inconsistent behavior to major worldbuilding issues and the flatness of my prose, every problem seemed like a monster and I was armed with a stubby pencil and an eraser. But I did not let my doubts hold me back. I scribbled a circle around the scariest monsters for later review and moved on.
A couple of months later, I finished the first draft and was left with a story spread across three notebooks. Many scenes were confusing, cliché, or plain boring, but other scenes were surprisingly salvageable. If you squinted you could see a real story hiding behind the bad parts. The story I wanted to tell all along.
For my second draft I rewrote my entire story from scratch, using the events of the ten to fifteen or so scenes from my first draft I liked as a skeleton. I filled in the gaps with a newly made outline and paid special attention to avoid the traps in the first draft.
My advice, for you to ignore or accept as you see fit, is to write that first draft. You'll end up with half or maybe even a quarter of a story, but you can build on that foundation.
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: You could write arrogance into her dialogue in many different ways. You can go with what you have in your example, which is basically that she just pours all the information she knows onto
You could write arrogance into her dialogue in many different ways.
You can go with what you have in your example, which is basically that she just pours all the information she knows onto the person she is talking with.
You could also make her dismiss all the ideas and suggestions the people she talks with are giving to her because "she knows it all."
There are many ways, but hopefully, you'll find the one that works for you!
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