I'm always looking for new and innovative wasy to excuse my book hoarding.
I hadn't realised I could use the 'I'll die someday so nothing matters' angle...😜😂
#PennedPossibilities 294 — What, to you, are the most important elements of good writing?
I'll keep it simple and singular: /Transparency./ Good writing fades into the background and lets the story flow into the reader's mind with a minimum of friction. Anything that makes the reader aware of the words on the page instead of the story interferes with getting your message across, and should be avoided. All good writing stems from this principle. How you implement it is up to you.
#WordWeavers 2401.7 — Excluding common most used words, which word do you use too much in your writing? Why?
I was just going to skip this one, then I had a thought: Today I was syndicating a chapter and I stopped when I spotted "just." I think "just" probably has more synonyms than any other word. Feels like it. Am I right? It's also my first hunt and destroy word during revision. Not sure how I missed it, them...
I found 4 instances of "just" in the chapter.
Just => Barely
Just => Simply
Just => Only
Just => A moment ago
I could have just left the last "just," but after 10 seconds fighting in a hallway of a frigate, 15 paragraphs worth, "a moment ago" felt better than just "just."
As an #author I often assume knowledge that I should ask about. So, here's the ask: As an average person, if you saw a woman in an urban situation with a #wolf (it is a wolf but nobody is saying it is a wolf), would you assume it was a #dog?
Please boost for maximum sample size.
Feel free to comment if you have experience with telling the difference or studying #wolves.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 3 Nbr 21 — What things make a good book cover design?
Something that will intrigue readers into buying the book. I'm no designer and suspect I'll seek professional advise if I self-publish. If I conventionally publish, the publisher will consider such a thing advertising and I will consider myself lucky if they ask for suggestions.
Once I was asked. Two main characters got on the cover, a Japanese teenager and a sheepdog/human chimera. What was drawn were a caucasian vogue model and a wookie. The book sold out the printing, so I guess I can't complain.
#WordWeavers 2405.01 — Introduce your setting as if it’s a character in your story.
[/Well, I decided to jump ahead in the WiP and write what might be the start of the next chapter. The title may be named:You Have Mail. Pardon the Dickensian texture; this is a first draft. —RS/]
I never expected a human habitation to feel as protective as my dorm room did. Sure, my lodgepole tent protected me through the blizzardy winters in the Fell Wood, as it did the wolf pack that had adopted me. I provided the tent, though. I repaired it, stored it, and raised it year after year. I maintained the cooking fire for all the wolves and cubs. It was I who was being protective, not it—or so it felt.
My dorm room wanted me to know that for the next few years, at least, it existed solely to protect /me,/ to comfort /me./ Increasingly, it did so as I added memories. Mother Wolf and I used one of the two small beds, the left one, piled with fuzzy brown blankets as needed or clothed with luxurious white cotton sheets that felt cool against cheek or jowl. Since I was tasked with the cleaning instead of the dorm servants, my room smelled of us, faintly of yeast, sweat, and a wolf that occasionally hunted rabbits but favored the cafeteria's pasture-beast stew.
The little red iron stove kept us warm through winter; the room's wood panel walls kept us shaded from the hot summer sun. It lovingly provided a rare enclosure—almost like walking within the orange and white rock walls of the slot canyons of the south woods—creating a remarkable silence in a land of noisy humans and huffing machines. This and its soft radiant cloud-light ceiling made me feel... what? Swaddled? Like being /home,/ as my parents would have used the word back on the farm when I was a child. My spirit books, fashion magazines, and papers cluttered the worn ink-stained blond pine desk. I ran my bare feet over the oval tapestry rug letting the patterns of wands and dryad trees caress my toes. My skin stuck to the cushy tan leather chair as I stood, but I knew that was it hugging me.
Situated to the rear of the building on the first floor, the casement window at the end of the rectangular space opened to the clay roof of a shed. Crisp autumn breezes fluttered the gauzy drapes as I looked out at the barrier forest beyond the stables, lit by the setting sun. The window conveniently allowed Mother Wolf to jump up, as she did right now, and clatter into the room as she pleased. She greeted me with an ever-wet red tongue on my face and backside. (A white wolf opening the front door of the women's dorm, with a key in her mouth, and walking in always frightened at least one student or professor. People called me their Wild Woman, but still never got used to the implications of the name.)
Best of all, as the special guest of Her Highness, nobody dared inspect my room. Everyone knocked, no exceptions. Wolf inside, right? Framed pictures of my boyfriend hung suspended by single powder blue silk ribbons, and they were /very/ inappropriate. Looking at him warmed me deeply, reminding me of being /us,/ together—so I didn't care that my foolish "civilized" human brethren might think. People existed to enjoy themselves, regardless of what nosy people might say. This room supported me as I lived here, trapped in the Townships because circumstance required me to learn to be "more human" as Her Highness was fond of saying. My little supportive enclave encouraged me to be me, and allowed me to dress or not dress as I pleased behind its closed oaken door.
When the House Mother knocked, I simply threw on a dressing gown. I turned the pictures around before answering—to be respectful. It tickled me that she never asked why I always smiled when I opened the door.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 8 Nbr 29 — Do you share your name with other writers?
Now, in publications or on the Internet, no. People do call me R.S. I first used this pen name when I went to Clarion. I used it to obfuscate my gender in email before the workshop for reasons of what I write. The gender of the author adds subtext to gender fiction. Statistically, most people guess wrong. In person, and when money is involved, it's inescapable and I share my name. I use a different name in photography and a different ungendered pen name when writing non-speculative fiction. Who I am isn't hidden, but I'd ask you not to investigate or reveal it for the reasons stated above.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 12 — When does AI cross the line between helpful tool and problematic tech for writing and publishing? CW: Some sarcasm and cynicism.
When? That happened a few years ago. All over the web. Whether you realize it or not, writers are being supplanted in most all minor writing jobs on lots of lesser and not so minor websites. Have you noticed that some stories are circular, seem to be written by authors of questionable fluency, miss a glaring argument or get a fact wrong, and in the end really make no good points or teach you anything? They seem to regurgitate what you've seen elsewhere?
Yep. AI written.
AI's a free tool! Managers love free. Let those freelancers go; just write some good prompts. So many good articles (likely AI written) to teach you how! All we need is good clickbait headlines, anyway. Feed the search engines! Serve up those display ads nobody clicks. Get us those micro-cents per page view.
Riiiight.
Sheesh. This Rubicon... Has... Been crossed. Mostly. Some have tripped. Many have drowned.
What I'd really like is for AI enhanced software to notice little things like misusing led and lead, finding missing words, pointing out when I leave out the 'nt in wouldn't changing the meaning of everything I wrote, even capitalizing based on context when dictating... thus and such. Yeah. Too difficult.
I won't repeat what everyone else is saying. Yep. True all that. It's all wrong headed at the moment and if you don't know how to write OR you could do it yourself if you weren't soooo lazy, #AI's just going to make you into a fool.
You get to make yourself into a fool in front of a publisher only once.
#WordWeavers 2405.19 — How did you settle on your MC’s appearance?
Historically, I wrote my characters such that I found them attractive. I don't do that anymore.
Sometimes I don't have control, except for hair styles and clothes, or the lack thereof. The story or character may have certain in-the-moment requirement, like when the MC needed to train in an almost all-male fight gym as a prizefighter (she'd later win a championship). Of course she had tailored pink and black gym wear made of technical fabric that outlined every curve—which proved interesting.
These days I do the best not to assign an appearance at all, instead keeping things vague and sticking to describing only what's absolutely necessary. My experiences with publishers is that'll they'll ignore your descriptions for cover art and promotion anyway. In any case, doing this allows the reader to imagine someone they would find attractive(†). The MC in the current WiP is described physically only as tall, shy, so beautiful that both sexes fall for her, and that she has "winter eyes," whatever that is. In the other story, the only thing I'm settled on is described by the devil-girl something like this:
"Take two finger length pieces of rusty rebar, sharpen one end, bend it ninety degree, and stick one above each temple, pointing backwards. Makes wearing hats problematic. Yeah. Gets messy when they try to grab you by the head in a fight, especially if it sticks in..."
She's also describes her very olive complexion; she's mentioned green eyes in a mirror and red hair everywhere. It could easily change in revision.
(†) A recent writer's prompt asked about my target audience. Can I say "imaginative?"
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 18 — Have you written sections where the action occurs against the clock? How did you do it?
My current story segment in serialization takes place over a very short time period, after the last third of the previous story taking place between dusk and dawn. The other story I am working on is a three act story, each act taking place over very few hours.
Writing stories in compressed time isn't much different than writing stories that take place more episodically over longer periods of time. In both cases, I write about what is important for the character and how they deal with events. An example may help.
In the serialization (obviously spoilers if you know which story I'm referring to), the MC realizes that though the leader has left on a military adventure to handle a "guerrilla insurgency," she sees evidence that same foe may attack the capital city. In theory, she's politically second in command. In practice, she has no real power. How she spends that day scheming and conniving with only a title to get a single frigate on patrol drives the story and the clock. It starts with a PTSD episode where she realizes she may be responsible again for innumerable deaths without the power to prevent them, then her working every contact she knows, butting heads with the generals who discount her experience running a crime syndicate (briefly), convincing a discriminated against officer who wants to accept discharge to instead command a museum-piece frigate, getting into a bloody fight with the XO, avoiding what the reader will see as assassination attempts, and it just gets worse with her love interests (plural!) pulling at her heart.
All in 12 hours. Tick-tock! That's one day of three days of escalating existential threats. The fourth day's events take place over one hour, which is about the time it would take to read.
This is a very good comic, and it describes every author (or #artist) who is unsure of themself. Don't let this be you!
Complete stories (your vision) regardless of the merit you see in them.
Start a next one. Full stop. Then another.
Complete and send out more stories even if some editor (or commenter) doesn't buy or like them.
It's all practice, every single failure or not-good-enough. Practice makes you better, whatever they think, or you think. Keep practicing.
Take from criticism only whatever helps you identify or fix problems; reject being put in your place or ridiculed. It's practice. Your art is unique to you. Be truthful with yourself, though.
Keep starting and completing stories. Statistically, some will be good—and you will start to recognize the wheat in the chaff.
Their first stories weren't fabulous. Neither may be yours. The difference? They kept on starting, completing, sending (or posting), until they found success. Let that be you.
Please remember: #boostingIsSharing and boost to give others a moral boost.