@RJPawlick285
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: How should I structure a small non-fiction book/paper about a groundbreaking product/invention? I want to write a book/paper about an invention I have thought and developed conceptually. But I'm
I want to write a book/paper about an invention I have thought and developed conceptually.
But I'm really struggling on what I should include in it and how to structure the information.
Any suggestions or examples of similar books or papers will be much appreciated.
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: Re: Does the main character have to be likable? I am often hearing / reading that the main character of your story should be likable or even if flawed should be something about them to get the
"He's selfish, arrogant and grumpy, and tries to find blame in others for everything wrong with his life." Other than the blame, he sounds like Dr Gregory House and Dr House managed to engage people enough to survive 8 seasons on TV.
I would argue that the main character doesn't have to be "likeable" as much as "relatable". If people recognize their own traits or those of someone they know then they are interested in them, whether they like / approve of those traits or not. You say the character is selfish - we all have the impulse to be selfish at times, and can even secretly wish we were more inclined to say no when we end up helping a friend-of-a-friend move for the third time in 6 months.
You clearly find something interesting enough about this character to want to spend your time writing about them. Consider why you are interested and be sure that those aspects are the ones that come across. Adding somewhat more "likeable" characters like your secondary character and showing why they are interested / friendly with the main character will also help.
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: What are some signs of a chosen one nebulous enough that they can be mistaken? The setup: We have a fantasy world. A while back (like, 30-100 years; not really sure yet) a prophecy was given
The setup:
We have a fantasy world. A while back (like, 30-100 years; not really sure yet) a prophecy was given that basically outlined a chosen one. More specifically it outlines a reincarnate of a god who would do an important thing.
One of the characters in my story believes that he is the chosen one (he's wrong), and so do various groups and people around him (they are wrong). He later gets conclusive proof from another character that he is not the chosen one.
The problem:
I have no idea how or why anyone else would begin to believe that he is the chosen one in the first place. Obviously, if the evidence for him being the chosen one is too strong, it will call into question the legitimacy of the debunking. Reincarnating gods are also not a particularly uncommon occurrence in this world, but not everyone believes that it actually happens, so any signals can't be so obvious that everyone in the kingdom would know the signs.
The question:
What are some common signs of chosen ones that could plausibly be found in someone other than the real chosen one?
If it helps at all, I don't really need to fool the reader, or at least not for long, since another character POV already knows he isn't really the chosen one. Also, it might not be hard to get him on board initially, since he quite likes the idea of being the chosen one.
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: Describe the combination of eye shadow and tear In this picture, the woman's tear has turned black because it was mixed with her eye shadow. How would you describe it in a dramatic way?
In this picture, the woman's tear has turned black because it was mixed with her eye shadow. How would you describe it in a dramatic way?
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: Re: How do I define smells I have never experienced? I am a lifelong writer, who was also born without an ability to smell. I have been trained to engage the reader by applying the five senses,
What can I do, beyond just using words like "good, bad, strong," or "sweet," words that carry over into other senses, to give readers an experience like they are there?
Some great answers already given, but I just wanted to add a couple tidbits. First, even those who can smell fine often have a hard time describing smells. Smells are much more abstract than sights, physical feelings, even sounds. So it wouldn't be a stretch for your characters to sometimes have a hard time describing a smell beyond abstractions (which Amai gave some great examples for, like "metallic", "earthy", etc.).
In addition to that, I think one of the most fundamental aspects of smell is that it's a very emotional sense. It's often tied to nostalgia, yes, but even a smell you've never smelled before can elicit an emotional response. Disgust, pleasure, intrigue... in a way, I would almost say that smell is emotion. Like emotion, it's intangible (almost ethereal), often fleeting, and you don't always have control over how and when it affects you.
I think the closest sense to smell is actually hearing, not taste. Just like a song can lift you up into euphoria or plunge you into despair by playing on memories, hopes, fears, etc., smell can do the same.
That's not to say smell is always heavily emotional. But I do think it's almost always somewhat emotional. I very rarely notice a smell without attaching some response to it -- ranging from "That smells nice" to euphoric nostalgia on the good side, and from "That smells odd" to immediate repulsion on the bad side.
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: Re: I can't get out of the research phase out of fear of missing out One of the aspects I love about fiction writing is doing research. When I settle on an idea, I tend to go look for similar
Do your research, but only after the first draft
The first draft is usually written to be butchered anyway. A big problem in writing is being too precious with your first draft, and not changing major problems because you don't want to redo the work. Kill two birds with one stone, and do the research specifically to poke holes in your first draft.
This stops you from never getting anything on the page because now you're writing without the constraints of research, and afterwards it helps you to deconstruct the first draft in a structural way by doing research. It also makes the research more targeted, and more efficient. You're not just researching the domain of your story in general, you're checking whether specific aspects of your story are realistic, and working around that.
Finally, since you're already rewriting to fix the problems that the research uncovers, you might as well fix any larger problems with the story structure.
Some research may be necessary before you put pen to paper, but restrict yourself here to research that inspires you. Look for little ideas, facts and characters that help you put the story together. Anything that worries you, put it aside until after the first draft has been written.
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: Re: Multiple superimposed supers I'm trying to figure out the correct formatting for multiple supers for the intro of my film. I imagine four separate superimposed lines, one appears, then fades
I'm not sure it's in your best interest to specify that the movie should use multiple supers. Remember, a screenplay is just the blueprint for a movie. You only need to include the details the rest of the crew need to agree on to tell the story. Everything else can and should be left to the director and the rest of the filmmakers so that the final movie is the collaborative result of many people's creativity.
From this principle, you rarely specify how scenes should be shot, exactly how characters are dressed, or what music should be playing. Along the same lines, you can trust your fellow filmmakers to decide the best way to format your super. The only exception is if you have a strong justification for why showing each super one at a time is essential to the story, but it is exceedingly rare for a story to paint the medium to that degree.
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: Re: How exactly can a writer write a horror story without making it so scary to the point where it's actually hard to read or watch? I've recently started getting into horror lately and trying
The key to horror is that fear comes from knowing that something is wrong but not knowing what it is or what you can do about it. You don't need to gross out or shock your reader. But you do what them to be nervous that you'll do just that at any moment.
The Saw franchise is one of the most overtly grotesque horror franchises out there. But the horror doesn't come from watching the victims get chewed up by the traps, it comes from knowing that they're about to die painfully but have nothing they can do about it. In stark contrast, the movie Signs hardly has a single drop of blood spilled throughout the entire film but still has scenes that build up oppressive senses of dread and panic.
Here are some techniques I've noticed come up consistently in excellent horror stories:
Tying the horror to the story's meaning
This is the most important rule. I'm putting it first for a reason.
A good story is more than just a series of events that happen. It's a series of decisions made by characters to overcome conflict in a way that sheds light on thoughtful themes. And so, following these core principles of good writing, it should come as no surprise that good horror is more than a parade of unfortunate situations. Make it clear to us why the protagonist must go through with the horrible situations they find themselves in, even as everything in their mind and body is telling them to get away and save themselves. Make it clear to us how truly severe the consequences will be if the villains are not stopped. And make everything that happens tie back to this central conflict.
You don't have to get to creative to do this. In the movie Alien, the poor main characters are trapped on the spaceship with nowhere to escape. Their options are to fight back or die.
But you can absolutely get creative if you want to. In the game The Evil Within, the main character is a detective who gets sucked into the mind of a serial killer because of sci-fi brain technology. Like Alien, the reason he goes on his journey is largely because he has no choice. But in the sequel, he willingly goes into another nightmare brain world powered by the same technology, knowing exactly how wrong it can go before he does so! The reason he makes this decision is because he discovers his daughter, who he assumed has been dead for years, is actually trapped in this nightmarescape, and this is his chance to save her. The entire game revolves around this. The horror isn't palpable just because the main character goes through hell. It's made much worse by the knowledge that his poor little girl, wherever she is, is certainly going through far worse.
And in Resident Evil 2, one of the protagonists is a policeman who gets caught in a zombie apocolypse. In his bad luck, this happens on his first day officially on the job, and he's too determined to save his city to back away just when he's getting started. What's more, as he learns more about the zombies, he discovers that they were knowingly created by an evil corporation that has plans to take over the world. We realize that he's not fighting just for his own survival, or even the city's. The consequences if he fails are too terrible to contemplate. And so of course, we find ourselves imagining just that, and the horror is elevated beyond "zombies are scary."
A lack of safety
Throughout your story, rarely give your protagonist a chance to be completely safe and let their guard down. Consistently put them in places where they're in danger, but not imminently. You want it to be very possible for them to suddenly be in a immediate trouble at any moment, even though most of the time things are tensely quiet.
And you can set the tone for the entire story by letting the protagonist finally get somewhere they believe they're safe, then having something happen to them when they least expect it.
The movie Alien: Covenant has some problems, but it nails this aspect of horror. It's about the crew of a spaceship looking for a planet to build a colony on. They find a planet that seems perfect, but when they land, crew members start getting strangely ill. When one of the sick crew members suddenly has a violent alien burst out of their body and kill several other, still-healthy crew members before finally being killed, the threat is visceral: Any of the sick crew members can turn into a monster at any time. For most of the rest of the movie, the remaining crew members aren't actively turning, but the threat that it could happen at any time keeps the rest of the story tense.
And at the end of the movie, the few survivors escape back onto their ship and fly away from the planet. To celebrate, a husband and wife take a shower together, relieved to finally be safe enough to just enjoy each other's company. But then a spiked tail curls its way up behind the stall door... We thought we were safe and past the climax already, but there's a monster in our spaceship, the one safe place we could rely on the entire film.
Slow buildups with plenty of foreshadowing
Each major act or chapter of a most horror stories revolve around one major, in-your-face scare. This scare happens at the end of the chapter, but everything else builds up to inexorably. The pattern looks like this:
The chapter starts after the hero has barely escaped the last threat. They finally have a chance to catch their breath and consider their next steps.
They head off into the next part of their adventure with some sort of goal. But as they find the trail to their goal, something is off.
We find out how this next part of the story is scary. Maybe something is following us. Maybe a character we had trusted up to now is acting strangely. Maybe we realize we're trapped somewhere we thought was safe. But we do not find out what it is we're scared of or why we should be scared of it. We only see the effects it has.
As the threat gets closer and closer to us, we get a drip-feed of clues about what the thing we should be scared of is. We see how a previous victim was killed, we hear its bone-chilling howl, we get a taunting call from another character telling us to watch our backs.
At the same time the character reaches their goal, the antagonist that's been haunting us comes out in full view. This is when you get a few pages of in-your-face, grotesque monstrousity. We see the psycho chasing the hero with an axe, we hold our breath with the hero as they struggle with the lock as the room fills up with sewage, we are disgusted as the hyponitzed victims are fed into a meat grinder.
But our hero escapes, whether the goal is accomplished or not. And now, the build begins again...
You might be looking at this and thinking it's formulaic. If you do this every time, then your readers will know to expect something coming at the end of each section of your story. This is exactly the point. Again, horror comes from knowing something is wrong, but not knowing what it is or how to deal with it. So make damn sure your readers know something is wrong. And follow through on your promises that something will happen every single time so that your readers can't rely on the hope that maybe you'll back off this time. They know it will be terrifying when they reach the chapter's climax. Lean into this foreshadowing and structure so that your poor readers can only squirm in suspense as you build up over and over again.
Besides, this formula comes from a very sensible place. It's just the common pattern of rising action leading to a climax and denoument that shows up in all good storytelling. The only difference is that it's applied specifically to the conventions of horror.
The game Silent Hill 3 leans into this formula unapologetically and heavily. The game is about a young woman, Heather, who finds out a deranged preistess is using her to complete a cultic ritual to summon a demon. She has to travel to the titular Silent Hill, a cursed town that causes people's worst fears to appear as monsters, and confront the preistess before the ritual is completed.
The game is split into 5 major dungeons: A shopping mall, a subway, a hospital, an amusement park, and a chapel. Each of these chapters follows the formula I described above. Each area starts out relatively normal, but is gradually overwhelmed by Silent Hill's curse. More and more monsters appear, the environments become increasingly inhospitable, and characters gradually reveal more about the cultic ritual Heather's mother is trying to complete. Then, when Heather finally accomplishes each of her goals at the end of each chapter, she finds herself cornered in a fight to the death against the dungeon boss, which are consistently grotesque and overwraught even by the game's already disgusting standards.
The entire game follows this structure, as well! At the beginning of the game, all we know is that the priestess wants to find Heather. The further we get into the story, the more we find out about the connection between Heather and the priestess, the twisted religion, and how the ritual works with Heather at the heart of it. At the climax, the ritual is completed, and Heather has to kill the summoned demon immediately before it can damn the world.
Gaslighting the reader
This is a bit of a strange one, to be honest. It's not about building up your story, but rather about keeping your reader on edge.
To get inside your reader's head, you can feed them details that are contradictory, nonsensical, or unhelpful. For example, you can describe a wall as having a picture with a happy woman by herself on it. Then a while later, without any way for the picture to have plausibly been modified, nonchalantly mention the baby in her arms crying blood. Or repeatedly mention a bloody handkercheif that the hero notices in strange places, but it never ends up relating to anything or being explained. You can allow your hero to notice and respond to this strangeness or keep it a secret between you and the reader. And maybe there's a rational or even plot relevant explanation for the surreal things that happen, but maybe not. Either way, you'll keep the reader off-balance, and that will heighten the fear that they feel.
The game Layers of Fear is about an artist who is deep in mental illness. The game's story is about what his emotional experience is like, so its setup lets it quickly detach itself from any semblance of rational cause-and-effect. Instead, to capture how out of his mind the artist is, it yanks the player's chain around all the time. You'll look at something, turn around, and by the time you've looked back again, it will have disappeared. Rooms are connected in impossible ways; down a hallway, reaching a dead end, and returning to the entrance will often take you to a different room altogether. By the end of the game, you're climbing up a towering library that gets taller and more precarious every time you scramble onto another bookshelf, and there isn't enough space to swing your arms in other rooms without hitting an object that becomes possessed or is part of a psychedelic blood sacrifice, all without any explanation other than you're insane.
It's not horror, but the story I've found with the best examples of gaslighting is The Stanely Parable. The game has a narrator who tries to narrate your decisions through the game for you, and you're free to ignore his narration whenver you want to. The harder you disobey his suggestions, the more frustrated he becomes and the more surreally he attempts to reassert control over the story. He'll force you to play games that are deliberately awful in an attempt to teach you a lesson, try to kill the main character only to be replaced by a different narrator begging you to restart the game moments before the protagonist dies, and give Stanely entire lectures about the importance of making the right decisions.
You don't need to gaslight the reader if you don't think it would fit your story. The Alien franchise is both horror and hard sci-fi, so it avoids anything that can't be explained entirely within the show's universe. But if you're writing looser or more experiential horror, this is a tool in your pocket.
Inhuman, but not necessarily gory, imagery
You do want to make your reader to feel uncomfortable with the imagery you're using. But as other answers have noted, this doesn't necessarily mean splatter porn. Vicera and gore are definitely disquieting. But so are claustrophobic spaces, filth, ordinary objects that don't work quite the way we expect them to, spaces that connect up in nonsensical ways, endless industrial areas, and grime and decay. You have an enormous palette of uncomfortable imagery to use. With skill, you can make completely family-friendly settings and scenarios still leave your readers sweating.
Again, Silent Hill 3 is an excellent example of this. When the Silent Hill curse takes over an area, it is twisted into something inhospitable by using some specific imagery. To be honest, there is a lot of blood and gore; decaying bodies and puddles of blood are scattered around everywhere. But it uses other imagery at least as often. It likes to create mazes using chain-link fences, an off-putting choice for indoor spaces. Every surface is either bare concrete or metal, and it's all stained, rusted, or covered in grime. There's barely a single carpet, wood floor, or wallpapered room in the game. Lighting is unnaturally dark, like there's a low ceiling without many lights, even when you're outside. And hallways are lined with rows upon rows of doors, most of which are impossible to open - but you can't know which ones work until you try all of them.
It's a lesser known game, but Infra is a horror game that uses some very unique imagery. You play as a government engineer for a second-world country sent out to inspect its infrastructure. As you explore power plants, sewage systems, dams, and the like, you discover two things: The government is crawling with corruption, and as a result, the infrastructure is utterly dilapidated. This means that as you make your inspections, you consistently find yourself in very dangerous situations, and there's no one to rescue you if - when - things go wrong. One memorable scene has you trapped on an underground bridge as flood gates are opening, forcing you to scramble to unlock the escape doors before you're washed away and killed. All of this game's imagery is completely grounded. There are no spirits, monsters, hallucinations, insane visions, or even gore. But it's nevertheless very tense.
Don't answer all of the story's secondary questions
Remember, in horror, your goal is to leave your readers feeling that something bad can happen at any time. This is a decidedly different goal than in other genres. In a mystery, it's to give your readers the satisfaction of solving a puzzle. In sci-fi, it's to fully explore the implications of technological changes that might come to pass. These genres require you to fully answer most or all of the questions your story asks.
Horror does not have the same expectations! By deliberately leaving some central questions unanswered, you can make it unclear to the reader whether the hero is truly safe even when the story is finished, allowing the sense of horror to persist beyond the point your reader closes your book.
The movie Silent Hill, based off the video games, is about the main character looking for her daughter after she is lost in the epynomous town. At the end of the story, the mom and her child make it home. But even when they're in the same room as the protagonist's husband, he can't see them. They escaped Silent Hill, but did they escape the town's curse?
Inception isn't horror, but the top that doesn't quite stop spinning before the time the credits roll is famous.
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: Re: Should I avoid "big words" when writing to a younger audience? I was writing the other day and I used the word "ubiquitous". While I don't think "ubiquitous" is the most egregious example
Klippy, your intuition is correct.
Your audience comes first. It’s the reason why you write the book. It doesn’t matter who else reads it, its only important that it pleases your audience. A pleased audience then tells others about your book via word of mouth (i.e. those outside of your audience). Your audience grows and you earn authorship recognition.
It may be a great learning opportunity to learn a new 25 cent word, but that such writing belongs to a textbook author whose target audience are students, not a fiction writer whose audience seeks a moment of time where the your reader escapes reality in your story world.
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: Is it acceptable to include articles written for assignments in one's portfolio? Background: I'm coming from science and will start trying my luck at science journalism. I already have clips
Background: I'm coming from science and will start trying my luck at science journalism.
I already have clips from unpaid work on online media and my own blog posts. However, a few articles that I've written as assignments for science journalism courses have two advantages: They are more "journalistically written" and they are news stories, unlike the already published ones.
Is it considered acceptable to include them in my portfolio or in pitches? (Indicating what they are, of course.)
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: Re: How do I sound like Thanos when I write? This is really a dumb question but as a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I have watched Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame so many
I'd like to add to Thing-um-a-jig's answer.
The written "voice" of a character has at least three components.
The character's lexicon. This is the unique way a person/character uses words. This is what Thing-um-a-jig is talking about.
The character's sound. This is narrative description that gives the reader an idea of what the character's voice sounds like. Is it gravelly? musical? flat? hoarse? or any of a thousand other words. Thanos might sound "booming," but it also is (to me, anyway) a baritone sound with rich depth, like it was spoken in a Cathedral.
The character's basic mood. This is separate from the immediate emotion of the scene. Is your character naturally angry? happy? cheerful? sardonic? Thanos has remarkable self-confidence, combined with an odd amount of compassion. He believes what he's doing is right, but understands the pain it causes. While many fans might disagree, I suggest his basic mood is humble. Like the character's sound, this is something you need to provide in narrative description. However, to give you an idea of the difference, the basic mood could be thought of as something that affects others. In other words, a character may sound like they constantly inhale helium, but their basic mood may make you nervous. Very, very nervous. In the case of Thanos, I would feel a sense of awe standing in his presence, but unless I'm challenging him, I would feel at ease, almost at peace (even while getting zapped by his cohorts, who never seem to be on the half-who-need-to-die list).
Unfortunately, writing a character is quite a bit more complex than this. Those three are the basics, but they are consistently modified scene-to-scene to accommodate how the character reacts to different stimulus. If I recall correctly, George Lucas had entire folders describing the principle characters in Star Wars, and the script/story had to be written according to the descriptions (aka "rules") found therein. In short, he wrote books to produce the foundation for writing the book he actually wanted to write.
Developing a complete character voice is an important part of writing fiction. Doing it well takes practice, like any other skill. But in your case, let's start with the basics: lexicon, sound, and basic mood.
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: Re: Is it offensive for a mixed raced American of no Japanese descent to use a Japanese pseudonym, merely just because they like it? I’ve grown up on anime, and with unrelated Japanese family.
I am Japanese by blood. I am not a native of Japan and it does not offend me. I think you should be good, but also you have to discuss these things with a lawyer. They will help you find the best way to do what you want to do. Like others say, it will offend some, and some are gonna be fine with it (like me). And I do not, or would not antagonize those who disagree with you. They have own opinions and beliefs. At end of the day, you respect them and I'm sure they respect you and all will be good. Agree to disagree!
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: Re: From reactive to proactive; When should the protagonist change tack? In my exploration of story structure, I have encountered some conflicting advice. In some instances, it has been suggested that
Formulaic writing is a crutch.
I can't tell you what works better, because that depends on the story you're trying to tell. But make no mistake, I don't follow those formulas to tell my stories.
So let's look at this from two perspectives, and hopefully that will show what I mean.
Let's take an Indiana Jones approach. Your protagonist is an archaeologist, a dungeon delver of a sorts. They can't be proactive all the time, because they NEED to react to the traps. But, they can be proactive in the sense that they try to predict the traps and come up with ways in advance, or on the fly, to get around the traps.
It depends on the story you're trying to tell. Do you want a cerebral rogue who shows off their intellect by doing research and using that research to be as prepared as possible? The your character is, by definition, proactive. Do you want them to grow into the cerebral rogue? Let them do research and make mistakes, but take notes to actively learn from said mistakes. Again, proactive.
But if you have a character that is so smug about their skill, about their research, that they 'just can't be wrong', then they'll be reactive when they inevitably trigger every trap in there, and have a lot of shenanigans to stay alive or get the sweet, sweet treasure they're going through all this trouble for.
All three stories could be interesting to tell. One is not necessarily superior to the other. It depends on the story you're telling.
But. What (I believe) you're really talking about is character agency. That is to say, is the plot happening to the character, or is the character deciding the plot--so to speak.
And this can be changed, tweaked, after the fact so that they are far better agents in the world, as opposed to pawns being jerked around for the sake of plot.
For example. If your plot demands the protag to be in Egypt, when they live in England? Give them a logical reason to want to go to Egypt. The character therefore chooses the plot, not the plot choosing the character. Maybe they find a clue in a dusty old tome. Maybe they overhear a colleague talking about some legend and it sets them on a path of discovery. They choose the plot.
Another way, and perhaps an interesting way, is to have them start off being 'led'. So they're an intern helping at an archaeological site in Egypt. They don't know much other than the general knowledge, and they're learning from their mentor about things as they go. Maybe the hieroglyphs hint there's a deeper secret than they were led to believe. Maybe their mentor points out clues to teach them to look past the sand-covered stones to find the living history splayed out before them.
Then you get your point of no return (inciting incident, or what have you). Maybe the mentor is killed (poor mentors tend to get deep-sixed a lot). Maybe they (protag, mentor, some idiot that doesn't know what they're doing) activate a curse. Whatever happens, your protagonist now needs to become agents in the plot, to take charge. If they fail, they die--that's the 'fate' handed to them. They don't want to die, so they, by necessity, must reclaim their agency in the plot or they die.
The key to remember: is the character a pawn to the plot, or are they the agent that pushes the plot along. That's the difference between 'active' and 'reactive'. So even if you give them a 'choice', it doesn't make them active if the only choice they have is the plot. Only if they choose the plot, and that choice makes sense to their character, then, and I'd argue only then, are they 'real people' that move the plot forward.
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: Re: How to deal with moral/legal subjects in writing? More specifically, how can one write a novel that examines or even argues against cultural moral values and laws without... dealing with legal
Since you’re explicitly asking about legal fallout, rest reassured you that you’re most likely going to be fine, even if your book may rub readers (and/or authorities) the wrong way.
Short of inciting actual violence or libelling actually living people/corporations, you are unlikely to face any legal repercussions for arguing against a law. This is what freedom of speech is literally all about.1
In fact, even some books that have actively incited illegal actions have gotten away with it, notably Steal This Book and The Anarchist Cookbook (the latter being an extreme example, since it contains descriptions of how to make explosives
1 Despite the rather long list in that article, the exceptions to this rule are really rather few. The most notable restriction on freedom of speech in the UK that is not incitement or libel is probably the blasphemy law, and most of that was abolished in 2008, and further weakened in 2013.
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: Term for a character that only exists to be talked to I just saw a two-person play where one character did the majority of the talking and the other seemed to exist only to give the other
I just saw a two-person play where one character did the majority of the talking and the other seemed to exist only to give the other character someone to talk to. I've seen this happen in books and TV as well, and sometimes a normally strong character will take this role temporarily. Usually the conversation plays out something like this:
A: < Talks for 3 minutes about ducks >
B: Oh, interesting, so you're saying that ducks can fly and swim?
A: Exactly! < Talks for 3 more minutes >
B: So what about geese? I've heard about them too.
A: Oh, those are similar, but there are some differences. < Talks about geese >
And so on and so forth. Character B never really contributes anything meaningful to the conversation and seems to only be there so it's not a 90-minute monologue. I would certainly view this as Bad Writing, and something that would be more appropriate in an children's educational video.
Is there a term or trope for this type of character or scene?
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: Re: How crucial is a waifu game storyline? So, with the recent craze in waifu games, I've decided to try my hand at making one. I have a semi-intricate plot with twists, and some events planned
Being a writing forum, you'll no doubt get a lot of answers here saying "of course story is important." You might get a more balanced point about how much story work you need on Game Development. (But this is still probably a good place to ask about how to work on the story, once you've decided how much you need and how you're going to present it.)
That said, I'll expand a bit further here anyway.
There are a lot of different motivations for playing a video game of which enjoying a good story is only one. Further, most players will have a mix of these motivations in various proportions. Components of your game such as "the story" can work for or against various groups of these motivations, and how they do so will also depend on their implementation. (E.g., whether the player is forced to read the story or whether he can easily ignore it.)
The Gamer Motivation Model developed by Quantic Foundry might help you with analyzing how much work you want to put into story versus other parts of the game and how you want to present what story you have. (I have no connection with Quantic Foundry beyond following their blog.)
Their model offers six basic motivations, each with two sub-motivations:
Action ("Boom!"): destruction; excitement.
Social ("Let's play together"): competition; community/co-op.
Mastery ("Let me think"): challenge (requiring practice); strategy (requiring planning).
Achievement ("I want more"): completion; power.
Immersion ("Once upon a time"): fantasy; story.
Creativity ("What if?"): design; discovery.
If you look at things in this light; you can ask yourself what combination of these you're aiming for in your game and how story (and the other elements) can support this. (You may find it helpful to take their survey to see which of these are emphasized in your own gaming motivational profile.) While "immersion" is obviously related directly to story, most of the others can be supported by story too, if not in as obvious a way.
For example, the "discovery" part of creativity might involve piecing together the story from various clues. One of the things I loved about Fallout 3 was reading through the messages, notes and diaries left behind in abandoned shelters to piece together what had happened there; even the junk left behind in a single room might tell a story with no words at all, if I could figure out what it was. This also might involve the "completion" part of "achievement." And telling that particular story this way, as opposed to making all players sit though cutscenes, let less story-oriented players simply enjoy the environment and get on with whatever else they were looking for.
There are of course other models too you might wish to find and look at, too.
Also remember that, as with any writing, it's normal to have large amounts of your writing work not appear in the final result. Especially for stories set in different worlds from the one we live in it's normal for authors to do extensive development and writing-up of the world's background, and even stories set firmly in the current world such as many television shows still have a large "bible" documenting much more about the characters and stories than ever goes into the scripts. It could well be the case that the story your developing is necessary to give coherence and structure to the world you're creating even if none of what you write it is ever read by the person who plays your game.
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: Re: What matters more when it comes to book covers? Is it ‘professional quality’ or relevancy? This is a sort of follow up to my previous question. It is generally understood that covers matter
There are two issues at play here, which I believe you are conflating. The first is the themes or "hook" which is conveyed by the imagery on the cover; the second is the professionalism of the cover. In my experience, I have found that both elements are necessary to earn a click.
A professional cover which conveys no information, such as a plain text one, will likely not get clicked on. However, a book with an interesting concept on the cover which has clearly been created with little skill will still not likely earn many clicks.
An unprofessional cover brings up many concerns about the book: How much effort might the writer have put into their actual writing, if they care so little about the cover? Is it possible that the writer is just young and unaware of conventions?
If someone happens to be skilled not just in writing, but in editing, photography, graphic design, etc, they may as well create their own cover-- assuming that they can produce something of professional quality. Why create a book that is not of high quality all the way from cover to cover?
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: Re: Too soon for a plot twist? In my story, I will have a hero begin a journey. It will be the underdog story as well as good-vs-evil story. Think Frodo vs Sauron for massive oversimplification.
One option is to move the twist even earlier in your story! If you want to focus primarily on Hero 2, compress Hero 1's journey into just the prologue. Not necessarily literally the first chapter, but the part of the story to set up your world before the inciting incident on Hero 2's journey.
The risk with waiting until a third of the way through the story to drop your twist is that your readers will become emotionally invested in Hero 1 and expect to go through the entire story with them. Then, well after your story is underway, you're taking Hero 1 away from your readers and suddenly asking them to follow along with an entirely different character. Pulling this switch off in the middle of a story is difficult and can easily alienate your readers.
However, dropping the twist at the beginning of your work avoids this problem. Your readers will still be looking for the main thread and won't feel betrayed by a short story to set up the main arc before meeting the main character. And a twist like Hero 1 becoming corrupted works well for this kind of short vignette. The best short stories have a twist ending, and in the context of a broader story, a prologue needs to ask a compelling question. Going on a short journey with a heroic character only for them to turn out to be evil accomplishes both of those goals wonderfully.
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: How do I write different factions with ideologies, philosophies, and symbolism? This may sound like a complex question, so let me explain what I mean. I'm inspired by Harry Potter, Avatar The
This may sound like a complex question, so let me explain what I mean. I'm inspired by Harry Potter, Avatar The Last Airbender, Homestuck (it exists), and all of those things have different houses / nations / classes / etc that have their own philosophy, ideology, and symbolism to them.
For example: Ravenclaw (my house) has the ideology of thinking outside the box, it has the symbol of a raven which shows intelligence, it's colors are bronze and blue which shows 3rd place and "once in a blue moon", etc.
I'm using this kind of storytelling to have readers project themselves onto the world, I.E. Through fanfiction (don't laugh) and personality quizzes. I'm using it to give an amount of depth to the world. They would also (as you guessed) have some symbolism and motifs to them.
How can I incorporate these things into my story?
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: Re: How does a person go about describing a place/experience that they never personally experienced before, like a circus? I've never been to a circus, and all the shows and videos I've seen about
If you have any sort of way to ask a bunch of people about their experiences and impressions of circuses, you might get a lot of useful answers.
I remember a circus used to visit Cape May, New Jersey, each summer. I remember one time wandering through the menagerie and watching a few rather small elephants eating. Elephants have to eat almost constantly. I'm sure that each of the elephants would have had a chain around an ankle attached to a stake in the ground.
I don't remember what I was thinking about at the time. But another childhood experience I had was going to some party at a place in the country. There was sheep with a chain around its neck attached to a stake in the ground and the sheep was probably used as a living lawn mower.
The sheep pulled on the chain and pulled it off the stake or pulled the stake out of the ground. My sister and I ran to the man of the house and told him and he went and pulled on the chain to pull the sheep back where it belonged. And I was surprised by what a struggle it was for the man to pull the sheep.
So I suppose that a child like me, watching the circus elephants placidly eating, could have remembered a sheep that got loose and imaged how much stronger the elephants were than the sheep, and thought that if the circus elephants wanted to they could probably pull up their stakes with ease and wander off.
I think that many people constantly compare present situations with past ones.
For example, in a circus, a customer could remember being scratched by a kitten and compare the claws of the big cats to those of the kitten.
Or they could wonder how similar the personalities of the big cats are to those of house cats they knew.
Or they could compare their own klutziness to the skills of the acrobats.
And if people go to the circus together with friends and family, they might discuss such things.
And if your story involves mistreated circus animals, the characters might wonder how content they are and if they might try to escape today and how easy would it be for them.
And maybe if you ask a hundred people or so for their memories of the circus you can get enough information for your story.
And there are no doubt many websites about circuses.
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: Re: Is no religion a bad thing? (I believe I've asked about a half dozen questions pertaining to this post-apocalyptic novel, including my "is this story too diverse" question. This sort of pertains
No religion is not a bad thing - it is just a matter of how some people think. For example, many people who do have a religion, could think that the people who don't have a religion should be part of their religion. I, for one, don't believe in any religion, and don't think that it is bad to not be part of a religion. It is all just what people were raised to believe.
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: How to write in a more conversational tone? I come from an academic background. Writing has always been an easy thing to me, but almost all of my practice outside of poetry has been in academic
I come from an academic background. Writing has always been an easy thing to me, but almost all of my practice outside of poetry has been in academic writing.
I'll find myself writing in the way that I think, with all of the hedges for the sake of completeness, and realize that what I've written would be very understandable, but would not give you the impression that I'm talking to you.
Perhaps I'm giving myself a harder time than I need to, but I feel that it is a worthy rebuke of my writing.
Edit: I write philosophical non-fiction papers on all sorts of things like religion, culture, politics, etc.
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: Re: Writing as a hobby, where do you learn the basics and go further? Sorry if I use the wrong terms or make a wrong assumption. I consider myself a beginner, and I know that I still have to
I want to share a piece of advice I found very helpful from author Beverly Cleary (author of The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Henry and Ribsy, and many others).
It comes in the form of a comment in her Newberry Medal winning book Dear Mr. Henshaw. To put it in context, the main character, sixth grader Leigh Botts, has just won honorable mention in the Young Writer's Yearbook and is meeting a real (fictional) author. (Bolding added.)
"Oh!" said Mrs. Badger. "So you're the author of A Day on Dad's Rig!"
Everyone was quiet. None of us had known the real live author would have read what we had written, but she had and she remembered my title.
"I just got honorable mention," I said, but I was thinking, She called me an author. A real live author called me an author.
"What difference does that make?" asked Mrs. Badger. "Judges never agree. I happened to like A Day on Dad's Rig because it was written by a boy who wrote honestly about something he knew and had strong feelings about. You made me feel what it was like to ride down a steep grade with tons of grapes behind me."
"But I couldn't make it into a story," I said, feeling a whole lot braver.
"Who cares?" said Mrs. Badger with a wave of her hand. She's the kind of person who wears rings on her forefingers. "What do you expect? The ability to write stories comes later, when you have lived longer and have more understanding. A Day on Dad's Rig was splendid work for a boy your age. You wrote like you, and you did not try to imitate someone else. This is one mark of a good writer. Keep it up."
Now, you have lived longer than a sixth grader, and hopefully you have more understanding. But the advice still applies.
What I learned from this was that it's more important to write than to write a story.
Another author, from the era of the pulps, commented that no writer knows whether or not he has a style until he has sat down and written a couple of hundred thousand words. And then from that writing, a style would probably emerge or be detectable.
That couple of hundred thousand words was intended as a couple months' worth of work, not years, to give you an idea of the quantity that is meant by the oft-heard advice, "If you want to be a writer, you should WRITE."
Remember also that the writers in the days of the pulps wrote their manuscripts on typewriters. That meant if you wanted to revise a section of your story, you would have to retype the whole page.
My advice to you is: Stop worrying about drafts, stop worrying about revising, stop worrying about what people online think or how other people write, and write enough quantity to find out how you write.
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: Re: Can fanfics be bestsellers? Fanfiction is somewhat of an uncharted territory, which few actual writers/critics take serious note of or are very enthusiastic about. It has been long asked and established
Star Trek Strange New Worlds was a yearly publication of a book of short stories of fan fiction sanctioned by Paramount Licensing. Considering at least some of the prize-winners within these books went on to publish individual Star trek books and the vast number of Star Trek-related books by previously unknown authors, I would say these count as "fan-fic" writers.
Of course, whether any of these can be classified as "best-selling" is dependent on your definition, but they are certainly professionally published and endorsed.
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: How to avoid repeating myself while writing in the third person I'm writing a fantasy story in third person and I'm not that confident if I'm doing it right. I noticed I'm using the word
I'm writing a fantasy story in third person and I'm not that confident if I'm doing it right.
I noticed I'm using the word "he" so often (the character's guy by the way) and I'm afraid that I'm "telling" more than "showing."
Here is a sample from my first chapter:
Cold drops of water falling from the ceiling prevented Ian from
falling asleep. Each time his eyes were to droop, a single drop of
water would fall on his nape, the shivers pulling him back to reality.
And each time this happened, his eyes would always meet with the oil
lamp on top of a wooden table a good two meters away, its red-orange
and yellow flame casting funny looking shadows all around the dark and
damp cellar he was in.
He would’ve done something about it—but with his hands bound to a
chair and his mouth gagged with a cloth, he couldn't do anything much.
It might have been hours already since he was brought here; he
couldn’t tell exactly. But judging on how soaked his tunic was, it
could have been more. The room had no windows; he could've used
sunlight to tell the time.
Speaking of time, he had a pocket watch with him. Where could it be?
Did he dropped it? Or was it taken?
No windows. No sunlight. No watch. Great. At least the faint,
festive-like merriment from the outside passed through the thick
walls, making him feel he had some company.
How did I end up in this place again? He squinted at the flame of the oil lamp, as if it would spout some answers. He wanted to scream
for his captors to come down and answer his question—and demand for
his release; the cloth was doing its job properly.
So, no other choice but to rely on good old memory—even if it was
currently a dud.
He closed his eyes and rummaged his memories for any possible clues.
Nothing—still. What came about was a faint yet sharp throbbing pain
from the back of his head.
Maybe Ian should stop; he'd been doing the same thing since earlier
but always got the same result . . .
The pain made him wince. A concussion? Aside from the memory loss,
there was confusion. He also felt he was out for a swim in the ocean .
. .
Hope it’s mild. He was urgent to remember everything—and fast. He closed his eyes and focused on sleeping instead, ignoring the water
falling water on his nape, the sensation of his shirt sticking to his
skin. Maybe if he slept—maybe if he rested his mind—everything would
come back.
But his plans of some shut-eye and relaxation got scrapped when the
door flew open.
“Damn it,†he cursed through gritted teeth after nearly falling off
the chair.
Am I abusing the "he" in this? Is it too filter-y?
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: Re: First draft Word count. Do you find your first draft is longer or shorter than your completed work? I understand that I will be cutting alot of unnessary words, but I also have a list of
Many professional writers and editors report that there is about a 25% loss between the first finished (!) draft and the final draft.
Depending on your approach (e.g. either outlining or pantsing) and your experience as a writer (is this the first book you write and you have to find out how to do it as you go along, or do you know the next steps?), your very first draft may be very different from the first finished draft, or it may be the first finished draft.
Since you plan to add in material, it seems to me that you are both inexperienced and didn't plan your story beforehand (at least not in detail), which makes guessing the final wordcount rather impossible.
Please not the difference between "first draft" (which is the first version of your story that you write) and "first finished draft" (which is what you send in to your editor or agent).
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: Re: Avoiding Slang whilst Writing I sometime express my personality too much in my more creative fiction. When I get going, I include slang words and phrases that sound fascinating and are comprehensible
I don't think you should worry about it. Anthony Burgess's novel, "A Clockwork Orange", which was written entirely in a fictional language called 'Nadsat' was the apotheosis of home-made slang.
Stanley Kubrick made that book into a movie, so it can not have been a total failure.
And I must admit, I'd love to have people being all over the internet to ask questions of my book, since everybody would get aware of it then. Marketing is not my prime super-power, and this could hopefully increase sales...!
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: Re: On what basis can existing writings be analyzed? On what basis can I analyze the piece of writing? Like, what are the things that tells me writers state of mind, or certain effects that a
On what basis can I analyze the piece of writing?
Well, that's complicated. And it depends on whether the writer is aware of these effects before and during writing. Let's get to some examples. (Sorry @LameZeldaPun , but yours is the perfect example)
You should concentrate on the effect not the cause. Sometimes I screw up so badly I get downvotes to my questions weeks later, but sometimes I don't. And I have NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING.
What we have here is, first, a piece of heartfelt advice. "Focus on the why, not the what." This is true, because our emotions can have us select words we're not consciously aware we're picking, or write about topics we normally wouldn't.
We then slip into something the commenter was just grappling with (another question), where this exact subject comes up. This is the up and downvotes.
Then comes the frustration. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!"
Having said all that. Let's look at my writing now (it's only fair, since I don't want anyone to think I'm picking on them).
When I'm in a dark mood, I use different language that when I'm in a light and airy mood. So word choice. Compare:
Sigh. You'd think after being Jounin Commander for over ten years, people would get used to the notion that I know what I'm doing. You know what, it's too troublesome to go over those last three meetings. I just need to get home, have a few beers, and figure out a way to show Aya I'm trying to help her in any way I can.
(taken from Butterflies: Solidarity, a Naruto FanFic I wrote) With:
"Go away, Ginny. I can't do this, not today." I tell her honestly. Hearing the crackling voice bleeding out of my vocal chords only summons more tears... I don't want to think about school, meeting new people, having to deal with the stupidity, the idiocy and the constant questions. Any of it! I just...
(taken from Exordium: Freedom, a Harry Potter Fanfic I wrote).
I am overly aware of my word choice. So look at the difference here. The first comes from Shikaku Nara, a lazy genius that is more exasperated than anything.
The sighing, the analysis, the catchphrase 'troublesome'. It's meant to really capture someone that is used to thinking about things, but often is just annoyed because he's too used to thinking about things.
The second comes from an original character of mine, in the throes of depression. Her 'crackling voice bleeds'. This is super specific to this fic, to this situation, because she is a trans girl at the cusp of male puberty, and she's suicidally depressed because she feels like there's no happy ending anymore.
At the end of the chapter that snippet comes from, the character jumps off a literal cliff, to commit suicide. By using visceral words, I hope to subconsciously alert the reader before more direct clues pop up.
Instead of only looking at word choice, why not take the bigger picture, and let's look at choice of subject matter?
In this let's look at not just what is being written about, but what is being purposely avoided. Again, we'll use my work, though you're just going to have to trust me on this.
Years ago, I avoided anything LGBT related. Because I was too deep in the closet, so it was forbidden. This ties in perfectly with the two snippets I offered up earlier, because Butterflies: Solidarity is an f/f romance. And Exordium: Freedom is in fact a trans lesbian's tale.
But here's the major difference between them. Butterflies is more recent, so while it deals with heavy themes like depression and suicidal ideation and sexuality (as is the case with Exordium), when I started writing Butterflies, it was coming from a better place mentally. I was already out of the closet, and life (while hard) is worth living. Exordium was written in the throes of my own struggle with suicidal ideation and attempts.
So there was always a happy ending in mind for one, and there was only a dark journey for the other. Where I was mentally at the time of plotting and writing had (has) a supreme and almost devastating effect on subject and where the protagonist's journey would lead them.
So, you can parse where I was/am just by reading what I write. With word choice, with subject matter, and with the direction I want it to take. It says something about the writer, all you need to do is look hard enough, and the clues will be there for you.
Look at "Lie to me", it has a lot of those little tells you can pick up (while being entertaining).
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: Re: Difference between Writing Song-Lyrics and Writing Poetry Not sure how to jazz this question up other than to say that I've tried putting my poems to music and found it to be somewhat challenging.
That depends on the poetry genre, the song genre, and the message the writer is trying to give.
Let's look at some examples.
Kesha's This is me. Lyrics:
[Verse 1] I'm not a stranger to the dark "Hide away," they say "Cause
we don't want your broken parts" I've learned to be ashamed of all my
scars "Run away," they say "No one will love you as you are"
[Pre-Chorus] But I won't let them break me down to dust I know that
there's a place for us For we are glorious
[Chorus] When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I'm gonna send a
flood, gonna drown them out I am brave, I am bruised I am who I'm
meant to be, this is me Look out 'cause here I come And I'm marching
on to the beat I drum I'm not scared to be seen I make no apologies,
this is me
[Post-Chorus] Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh, oh
So what are we looking at here? Essentially lyrical poetry. Let's take some examples of rhyming.
From Verse 1. 'stranger to the dark', comes back to 'want your broken parts'
There you have lines rhyming. Then you can double down and have internal rhyming.
From Verse 1. 'hide away', and 'they say'.
This is poetry. Rhyming to a rhythm. Nothing more.
Let's look at an example where this isn't the case with songs.
Evenesance's Good enough:
"Good Enough"
Under your spell again I can't say no to you Crave my heart and it's
bleeding in your hand I can't say no to you
Shouldn't let you torture me so sweetly Now I can't let go of this
dream I can't breathe but I feel
Good enough I feel good enough for you
Drink up sweet decadence I can't say no to you And I've completely
lost myself, and I don't mind I can't say no to you
Shouldn't let you conquer me completely Now I can't let go of this
dream Can't believe that I feel
Good enough I feel good enough Its been such a long time coming, but I
feel good
Notice the lack of rhyming? And yet this is poetry, just more free-form. The thing is, the definition of poetry has changed with time. In Shakespeare's time, there was the more of a rule. See this link for details.
Nowadays? Look at Poetry Slams. It's free-form, sometimes it's lyrical, sometimes it's not. The point is the message, what's being said.
Look at Hip Hop music. Not the crap coming out these days, mind you. Look at the word play of Biggie Smalls, look at the poetic flow of Tupac Shakur.
Music is just the rhythm and flow of poetry. Sometimes the musical backdrop of a song has meaning, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the words are deep and meaningful and poetic, often times it isn't.
But music and poetry are one and the same.
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: Re: Does everything have to be accurate? Do I have to make everything apply to logic, physics, science, etc? The Harry Potter series has been a major hit, and it is nowhere near to being scientifically
One bit of your posting stuck out to me
"... and that means I have to research some crazy things."
What are you researching and where are you going to find the information? Are you for example feeling that you need to research aviation in order to talk about flying cars? Is it important to your story that they work in the same way as the real world?
You can just "black box" how the cars fly if that fits your story (as given in other answers), but if they correlate to real world objects then you can just make that connection without going into detail either.
"First came the Wright Brothers proving heavier than air flight was possible, then came passenger airliners and finally George Wrighter and his "personal flying vehicle". Within 10 years the skies were full and everyone was showing off their latest flying car."
That way your items have a bedrock of something everyone knows, and yet you can still quickly move on with the story.
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