Current Events > CE Writing topic -- This Time It Won't Purge? Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

DuranOfForcena posted...

i could take a look at it too, if you want. i've been so drained these last few days because it's been so hot out, and i've been working on my Morrowind housemod fervently trying to get it done by the end of the May Modathon, and then there was Memorial Day weekend where if i wasn't barbecuing, i was prepping for barbecue lol. but now it's nice and cool today, the barbecuing is all done, and my housemod.... well, i've accepted i'm not gonna get it done in time lol. so i'm refreshed and don't have so much on my plate anymore.

Okay... Just a warning though, even the reworked version is turning out to be pretty bad... Almost done though.

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I'm officially at 60k words out of 80k now. I think for the first time I'm guessing I might be going a little over my limit. But that's okay if the ending is longer than I thought. My last book, it was the beginning that was bloated and the ending went by real quick. This book should have a brisker beginning and have a climax that is more comparable in length.

It's not anything like my last book, where I hit 80k and was just halfway through, to my horror. >_>

This one is already at the final act.

Not bad for just about two months of writing or so. It took me 13 months to write my last book.
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I'm pulling the plug on this. Not even a reboot can save it. x_x

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Hey guys/gals just found this topic.

I am working on a super hero story. It is going to be a team of heroes. I have a guy who controls electricity and is also the tech guy, a girl who is a like a skunk person. The Electric guy and her have a thing going on. A strong person, and a (hero with power to be named later), and lastly a teleporter however s/he can only open portals twice a day so they stay at the base since that all is they can do. I have issues with writing in general so I know it is going to be hard but I want to give it a try.

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Tagging for @cjsdowg I'll post thoughts shortly

cjsdowg posted...

Hey guys/gals just found this topic.

I am working on a super hero story. It is going to be a team of heroes. I have a guy who controls electricity and is also the tech guy, a girl who is a like a skunk person. The Electric guy and her have a thing going on. A strong person, and a (hero with power to be named later), and lastly a teleporter however s/he can only open portals twice a day so they stay at the base since that all is they can do. I have issues with writing in general so I know it is going to be hard but I want to give it a try.

you can always edit later, just get the story down and enjoy the process :)

cjsdowg posted...

guy who controls electricity and is also the tech guy

Good synergy! Is he good at both these things, one of them or neither? If he's good at both, rather than the usual of being a genius, why not have him be experienced (for example, an older hero that perhaps lost his old team, is mentoring the younger ones and survived due to being in a support role). Or if he's young, perhaps you could save that for a future story.
If he's good at one, you could use that to help his character grow in the other (for example maybe he's very computer literate, struggles with his ability but eventually learns to control it by visualizing concepts from his technical knowledge. Or vice versa, he might get shoehorned into the tech role due to having electric powers, and learns to use them to understand and interface with electronics in a way regular people can't). Similarly if he's good at neither, his arc could involve taking strides in both, and using each to become a more well-rounded person.

a girl who is a like a skunk person.

My main question about this is her origin. Was she a human who gained animal powers, or an animal who became more human (thru forced evolution/magic/what-have-you)? This could lead to some good emotional moments especially with her connection to the electric guy; if she's human with animal characteristics, she might feel left out or different even from her peers, and that would only be doubly so if she's an animal turned human (put yourself in her shoes; imagine not being able to live with your species, not being able to fully mesh with humanity, yet having an entire universe of new language, thoughts, artwork, senses opened up to you).

A strong person

Looking back to the idea of a mentor/experienced hero, perhaps the heavy could be the right one for the role. Maybe their strength helped them survive some awful event that lead to the death of their friends, and they're reluctant to assist the up-and-comers due to survivor's guilt. From the other thread, I like the idea of this character being a woman; it'd go against the usual trend of having a Super Man-type as the "team leader," and if she acted in a motherly manner instead of being a jerk that'd be pretty neat too.

hero with power to be named later

I look forward to it! You could try to cover the gaps in the team, you could give them a completely useless ability but while having human strengths, you could do basically anything!

a teleporter however s/he can only open portals twice a day so they stay at the base since that all is they can do.

There's a whole world of possibilities with teleportation! I love this power. If they stay at the base, this one could even be the survivor. Or perhaps they could have teleported and unexpectedly ended up at the base, if they're new to their ability and a former group had already established it. If they stay at the base, they could rile against that necessity and leave the team trapped for a few chapters, or if they're (too) comfortable with their place, they could gain the courage to teleport out and save the day when all hope looks lost (the villain(s) might not expect a teleporter to be their main form of transportation--perhaps they believe the tech guy is responsible, for example).

I think that's the sum of it. IMO the key thing about writing is testing different ideas against your inspiration, seeing what breaks and what becomes more solid. Don't think that what I wrote is the "right" way to do it, though; everyone has their own lens and voice, but having someone to bounce ideas off of can lead to the original vision becoming even better.

@Juhanor

WOW thank you for the notes. I will take then into account. I never really talked alot about it around here and first day I get such great help. Honestly I have been really down and that helped me out.

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cjsdowg posted...

WOW thank you for the notes. I will take then into account. I never really talked alot about it around here and first day I get such great help. Honestly I have been really down and that helped me out.

No problem!! Anytime, I am more than happy to help. Writing isn't always easy but you can do it if you put your mind to it!

Got 3k words done today, up to 67k words total. :)
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I've been invited to write a 500-600 word article for a local magazine. $100 stipend! I'm excited

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Balrog0 posted...

I've been invited to write a 500-600 word article for a local magazine. $100 stipend! I'm excited

Man that's a pretty good pay for that short an article, good going! What's the article about?
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spanky1 posted...

Man that's a pretty good pay for that short an article, good going! What's the article about?

Thanks man! The crazy part is it fell in my lap, the (guest) editor emailed me out of the blue just because we've worked together on urban policy issues in the past.

It's a magazine about 'new urbanism' and the issue is about how cities should respond to recovering from covid. My article topic is 'the need for cities to look at root causes'

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For you Guys and gals who have started . How did you pick between 1st and 3rd person.

1st seems easier to do and get a connection with the reader, but 3rd I can hide things about my lead character.

My lead character is a goody two shoes, type person. However inside he is holding back a lot of rage. And when it comes out I want it to be a shock but yet foreshadowed

I hated in Heavy Rain how the one of the character you played as was the kill, and that meant things he did while you played him didn't add up.

I want to avoid that.

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how Many povs will you have? My project has about 7 so its pushing the high end For a thriller but some are single chapter oooh I get to see in their head deals

and its as you say - you can use it to hide certain things but 1st person can too with an unreliable narrator

Any advice for somebody interested in starting? I feel like you need to start small to actually start.

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Jabodie posted...

Any advice for somebody interested in starting? I feel like you need to start small to actually start.

my first attempt at a full novel was 80k words. Start with what you want to write for best results

cjsdowg posted...

For you Guys and gals who have started . How did you pick between 1st and 3rd person.

1st seems easier to do and get a connection with the reader, but 3rd I can hide things about my lead character.

My lead character is a goody two shoes, type person. However inside he is holding back a lot of rage. And when it comes out I want it to be a shock but yet foreshadowed

I hated in Heavy Rain how the one of the character you played as was the kill, and that meant things he did while you played him didn't add up.

I want to avoid that.

Third person is easier and more liked imo. Just do a close third person.
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Jabodie posted...

Any advice for somebody interested in starting? I feel like you need to start small to actually start.

I would recommend NaNoWriMo! It worked for me.

Romes187 posted... how Many povs will you have? My project has about 7 so its pushing the high end For a thriller but some are single chapter oooh I get to see in their head deals

and its as you say - you can use it to hide certain things but 1st person can too with an unreliable narrator

I was just thinking about one. I really don't have to skills to do 7 POVs lol.

spanky1 posted...

Third person is easier and more liked imo. Just do a close third person.

Thanks for the advice.


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Romes187 posted...

my first attempt at a full novel was 80k words. Start with what you want to write for best results

*rubs chin*

I suppose you gotta do things kinda shitty at first then improve. Just gotta tune out "man this is garbage" for while.

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cjsdowg posted...

I was just thinking about one. I really don't have to skills to do 7 POVs lol.

It gets hard but you can really do some fun stuff with it. You just have to reread it a billion times to make sure you catch all of the "oh wait they don't know that" or "Why would they say it like that?" things. Oh and it was only 5 POVs after counting...and tbf 1 POV makes up about 70% (MC), 20% for the antagonist, and 10% for the other 3.

The hardest part of 3rd for me was to really make sure the POV wasn't filtered...usually thats a language choice. So getting rid of words like "looked", "saw", "felt", "noticed", "remembered"....those all take away from the moment.

He noticed a blue bird fly by the building. "What's that?"

vs

A blue bird flew by the building. "What's that?"

That second one is a bit more 'in the moment' and the word "noticed" acts as a filter between what is happening and your character. If you remove them, you feel more like you are viewing the situation from the character's eyes.

Jabodie posted...

*rubs chin*

I suppose you gotta do things kinda shitty at first then improve. Just gotta tune out "man this is garbage" for while.

Everything you write is garbage at first. The first go around, you are telling the story to yourself. On the revisions, that is when you tell the story for others. Really simple rule but very effective at pushing out the negativity. Just get the story down. That is what matters. You can always go over and revise until its dialed in but that initial moment of creation...just ride the wave and type whatever comes to your mind. Don't edit, don't stop, just keep writing and get the story down.

Then take your chainsaw to your creation and destroy nearly all of it! What's left will be prime.

ill also add - when I say my first novel was 80k...that was my first successful "finishing" of a project.

Have many duds around 10k that didn't take. and a non fiction piece that's about 50k.

Well I've written nothing this week. Too busy and distracted with other stuff. :(
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If anyone is up for it, can someone read this excerpt from my upcoming novel, and tell me if the protagonist, Isaac, was able to persuade his co-protagonist to his point of view too quickly? It felt like a long, heartfelt conversation while I was writing it, but upon re-reading it, maybe it's too quick for Brylena's mind to have been changed so quickly? idk. It's a little over 1800 words.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1puIi0MxLv7AyksVWZfFdEFJDEokwTUirxXeCsA7Xjtg/edit?usp=sharing

A little context, for those who don't know, this is a Dryad. They're plant people, and always female. Their lives are connected to the tree that brought life to them, so when their tree dies, so do they. I didn't make them up. They have appeared in fantasy stories long before any modern stories.


There's a lot of context missing in this excerpt about how Isaac and Brylena (the Dryad) met, and what Isaac is doing in the forest in the first place, but I don't feel it's necessary to know that stuff in order to understand the important bits of this excerpt.

Anyway, if anyone is willing to take a look, I'll be happy to do the same for you!

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I'll be happy to take a look at someone else's material and provide some criticism/feedback, if one or more of you are willing to take a look at this 1800~ word excerpt from my novel in progress.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1puIi0MxLv7AyksVWZfFdEFJDEokwTUirxXeCsA7Xjtg/edit?usp=sharing

I feel like the co-protagonist in my story, Brylena, was able to be persuaded too quickly to the protagonist's (Isaac) point view. And after that, she was able to be led into his branch house too easily. The latter of these problems will probably have to be reconstructed entirely. What I need help with for now is the problem of Brylena being persuaded too quickly. I feel like with the disconnect between their cultures, a longer conversation is needed before she will fully understand and conform to his desire against an open relationship with her. I feel like everything is pretty spot-on up until the part that I hilighted in red. Does anyone know any hat-tricks I can use to make her willingness to conform to his desire a bit more plausible? Like, maybe they need to briefly change the subject in order to make matters more clear, or maybe something else. I'm open to suggestions.

In case the context is needed, this is a Dryad, for those who don't already know. They are plant people, and always female. Their lives are tied to their tree, so when their tree dies, so do they.


I feel like most of the other missing context (how Isaac met Brylena, what he was doing in the forest in the first place) isn't necessary to fully understand the gravity of the situation in this particular excerpt.

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*Casts resurrection spell*

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Oh man we've been lazy. :(
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I also have slowed down in my writing the past couple weeks, but it's because I've been busy and distracted with other life stuff.
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Maybe this isn't the right place, but does anyone have any tips on how to actually get started? I've written before, but I just so rarely have the motivation even though I want to be writing. Sorry if this isn't the right topic

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When I get home from work I'm going to start writing an epic tale about an internet nerd getting transported to an alien habitat that's been stealing animal specimens from earth and other planets for thousands of years. Think alien birds with a mix of dinosaurs and mammals like the sabre tooth tiger and mammoths.

For computer users, what word processors do you use? I tried a bunch last year but never found anything to my liking. IIRC Jarte was the last one that felt "OK"
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Juhanor posted...

For computer users, what word processors do you use? I tried a bunch last year but never found anything to my liking. IIRC Jarte was the last one that felt "OK"

Normally I always like to use Word, but apparently I went and bought a computer that didn't have it. -_- So now I use Apache Open Office. It's free and it works pretty much just like word, and it can convert into a word file if you ever need one for later.

In good news, I finally got some work done. Wrote over 2K words today. I'm now at about 76K words total. Hitting the home stretch!
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I'll look into Apache. I've just been using a Google Doc and it doesn't seem to have a normal spell check and I constantly have to go back and fix little things like I's not auto capitalizing. It's got a few other annoyances too.

I wrote for the first time today in, like, a month. Got to the "3/4s Oh shit" point a while back and kind of dropped my story. Felt good to get another chapter out today. I've been watching the Sanderson lectures and they are extremely helpful.

DuranOfForcena posted... Nice, I'll give that video a watch. I felt similarly to WordPad as you do to Word/Notepad, switched to Jarte cuz it's WordPad+bells and whistles but I thought I'd better check out the options before going ahead again <_<

spanky1 posted... Thanks for the rec and good work on your word count!
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Crapped out 2K words today, which happened to be the climax of the book. Now nothing but falling action, probably just a couple more chapters.
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