#writips

[jameswrites]

Writip that got me started writing my huge, messy, complicated, scary fiction universe after a hiatus:

Start writing notes from a non-fiction (or fiction if you wanna I suppose) book that you own. Synopsis that baby, write favorite quotes, write parts that moved you. If it’s a book on writing, write down your favorite tips and try to implement one of two.

Whenever you start to get tired of doing this, instantly switch over while still in writing mode into writing your story. Suddenly it is life, it all makes sense. Get stuck?

Oops, time to read and write about this book I am reading. I guess there’s nothing to be done about it. It’s out of my hands, brain.

Note: If you are manic and this makes you tend to overwork, don’t be like me and write for like 19 hours, that sure is productive, but it isn’t sustainable.

YMMV, but it was a good tip for me and has worked pretty flawlessly (maybe worked too flawlessly...one flaw?) so far.

[jenroses]

Dear Good Omens Fandom *

*And others.

It’s time to talk about footnotes.

Okay, so there are a number of different ways to augment text in a print book to provide more information. When expanding on an idea, on a page, one often puts a footnote to a SHORT paragraph that appears on the same page. In digital versions, all the footnotes are often at the back of the text and linked to via some variant of a hyperlink. 

Functionally, in a print book, most people will read the paragraph or sentence the footnote is in, drop their glance to the bottom of the page, and look up again. Grade: B+, perfectly serviceable.

Functionally, in a properly coded digital document such as an Ebook or web page, one clicks the footnote symbol or number, reads, and then either clicks it again or hits the back button to get back to where they were. Grade: C-, if you exit on the bookmark you may never get back to where you started, if you hit a back button, the document may reload if your browser is being techy, but if it is coded right, you probably can usually get back to where you need to be. 

If it is not coded properly or at all, F-, not functional, will not read.

When providing references or receipts, one uses references, often a numerical list or alphabetical list at the back of the book, chapter or article. The point is that if someone wants more information, they can get it. In a nonfiction article, this works well. 

You provide your reference in whatever style is appropriate to the publication, people can find what they need, the document is rarely long enough to care about flipping back and forth. Online, even easier. People can click through, open in a new window, whatever.  Grade for nonfiction: A+. Provides extra information in an accessible way. 

Grade for fiction... eh. Just use an appendix in a print book, author’s note, end note, whatever. Footnotes for receipts pull me out of the story. Grade: B- (or C+)

And online? Use an end note or chapter note. You rarely need to provide links in the text in fiction, just use an end note and say, “By the way, if you were wondering about such and such, here’s where it came from and what it’s about.” Easy peasy, flow is fine. Grade: A

So in a fandom which grew up with a fully footnoted actual physical book such as Good Omens? The temptation is to stick with the original for style, but please, my darlings, I beg you, do not do this. YES, you can absolutely provide snarky asides, quips and expanded information. You can do it without interrupting yourself mid sentence. 

But it will be more functional in a digital environment, ESPECIALLY for people who use “whole work” viewing rather than chapters, people who download for reading later, and people who are visually impaired who need screen readers... if you use another method.* You do not have to send people on a wild goose chase to find footnotes, which many will simply give up on and ignore, and in which case, why did you bother? *It works like this. Put an asterisk in where you want your aside. Finish your paragraph. Break your paragraph. Add another asterisk and italicize your text. Voila.

Using this alternate method has multiple benefits. Your quip, witticism, background note or digression does not interrupt the flow of the writing. People read the footnote just about precisely where they need to. They do not get lost. They don’t have to follow links. Screen readers are 100% fluent with this method. And it copies from Google Docs to AO3 (if you use rich text paste and not html) seamlessly with nothing getting lost in the transition. 

The eye sees the asterisk,* scans down for another asterisk, finds it, reads, and scans back up a very short distance. 

*Like this.

Since pagination doesn’t happen in AO3 or google docs or websites or screen readers set on “scroll”... you simply do not have one of the components required for proper footnoting. Footnotes go at the foot of the page. And a 100,000 word fanfic doesn’t have pages. It has chapters.

And that’s a problem on Archive of Our Own. You see, people tend to upload one chapter at a time. Footnotes are often numbered within chapters starting from 1. But if you do that, and someone has loaded your entire story, the minute they get to chapter 2, those careful footnote links you crafted bounce them up to chapter 1′s footnotes. 

The Asterisk method completely avoids that. It removes the coding stage. It removes all bouncing around. It works no matter how people load your work. And that, mes anges,* is functional. And it looks fine. It’s intuitive. And it doesn’t make me want to throw my phone out of the window of a moving car because we’re out of cell range** and I’m having to follow hundreds of footnotes back and forth and I couldn’t load the whole document because the footnotes wouldn’t work that way and now I can’t get the next chapter of your fucking amazing writing.

*my angels, French **true story, happened today Nov. 24, 2019. The wanting. I didn’t actually do it because I’m a goddamn grownup.

Grade for using the asterisk method? Five huge sighs of relief, and an A+ from every single person who uses a screen reader or can just about manage a scroll but can’t deal with finding the back button in the dark for whatever reason*.

*rheumatoid arthritis, stiff hands, lotsa lying down reading here.    

The show did not have footnotes. It had occasional voiceovers. It’s okay to adapt your technique to the needs of the technology. 

Bless everyone who has painstakingly gone through and linked to footnotes and back again. I know you worked really hard on it. Please stop doing it. This method is so much easier. 

If you want to see how this works in a full fic, I happen to have one here. Mitzvah

End note

There is no real correlation between the quality of the story and the quality of the footnote method. I see a wide variety of methods in many stories throughout the fandom. You’re not wrong per se, if you don’t do it my way. But you’re doing more work than you need to, and wasting time you could be doing literally anything else. This is probably best taken as a “going forward” recommendation, because no one, literally no one expects you to go back and redo hundreds of footnotes. 

If you reread your own work, and you have a lot of footnotes, it is wise to read it on multiple devices and in multiple ways. Does it make sense without footnotes? Some people will never look at a single one. If someone tries to use the footnotes, do they work in subsequent chapters if they’re not in chapter by chapter mode? If someone just reads in order, text first, footnotes last, are they going to have any idea what the footnotes are referring to? I have done literally all of these things in different fics in the fandom.  

[jameswrites]

As a tutor at a college I can absolutely agree with this statement with the addition that it's a skill that can be cultivated and absolutely sometimes needs extra assistance from outside sources. I work with many students who struggle and a lot of it is fear but there's also a lack of a foundation in those skills and the best way I've found to tutor is to help them by asking questions about what they want to write, taking notes where I write the gist of everything they're saying. Then I hand the notes to them and say, I wrote this but you created this. It's your map. You can write and I am here to support you.

I edit as well. If I see a lot of errors that persist, instead of just correcting them, I add a note and also hold a conversation with them about how they can remember in the future. This is especially true with students with disabilities that are similar to my own which are autism dyslexia and more. I also like to be very encouraging with learners of English, those who grew up with other languages as their first language. It's so so important as an editor to be honest but encouraging in my opinion.

Anyway this isn't arguing with OP it's confirming that yes it is a big skill to be a writer who, well, writes well. But it's also one we can share with others through encouragement and positive teaching methods if that's something that a writer is capable of. Anyone can learn to write but some people have more barriers.

Tl;dr writing is hard for most people even those who are very skilled but it's a skill we can share knowledge of and help others build a foundation and it starts with being positive and encouraging while being honest and also open to the creative integrity the other person has over their own writing.

You never appreciate how much of a skill writing well is until you have to edit things written by someone who can’t.

[jameswrites]

I just can't write, there's too much I have to do first!

“But I can’t think of a name for this character, so how can I write them?”

I literally had [MC] in brackets as the name for a main character for 6 months. Got an entire novella done that way, then searched for all brackets and adjusted things to fit the name in.

“But there is a ton of history I need to know!”

Then write it. Get a word doc, a Scrivener, a notepad, whatever, and just make it about history. Start writing the fun bits down, the sad bits, the bits you think of when you look at our world history, our national history, our cultural history. Write it down.

“But I don’t know how this [group that is not a group the author is from] really is!”

Start doing research from the people in that group themselves, if that group is still alive, and if not, then look into as many diverse sources as you can. There are almost certainly resources online, in libraries, and more.

“But I don’t know where to start”

Just start writing the scene that niggles at your mind. Oh, you need to go back to have that scene make sense? Oh you need backstory? Cool, do that after you write the fun one that can help you with that forward momentum. You want to be gaining momentum and then running with it.

Not all of this may work for you, and it may work for some stories and not others. But it works for me and if it works for you, I am happy for you.

[jameswrites]

DONE EDITING! NOW I CAN JUST RELAX. Gonna start reading it all for pleasure (and a final round of edits) tomorrow afternoon. I am so stoked I can do it all in a month. And this was, ultimately, 305 pages, with 119,280 words. I added like 7,000 words or something like that to my original.

Some rules of thumb in editing say that 10% needs cut, but I write exactly what I want, and it is rough, but then I smooth it by adding. I don't sand it away until I have added clay over a wireform first.

Others sculpt words like marble, take an unfinished piece of marble and cut into it to get what is inside. Neither is more valid than the other. Find your way to write and that is the valid way for you.

[jenroses]

Organization?

This is for @thehausghosts and @ishxallxgood I guess, lol.

First of all, most of the things I write start out as one idea, and usually something that comes out in under 5k. Plot bunnies happen, and that’s where it’s really easy to wander off into distraction land, and honestly? I don’t fight it all that much.

Google docs and Chrome make it pretty easy to keep things from getting lost. 

I wish I could give a steady answer for “I outline things and then I write the first part, the second part, etc.” but that is simply not how my brain works or how I work best.

The muse is fickle, but is most responsive to consistent attention.

So what I’m describing below is not “the” method, but “some methods” that have worked for a couple of different pieces.

For me writing comes first and foremost from ideas. In Check Please, the idea that sparked the Rules series was simply this idea that Bitty told the Internet his parents didn’t know they’d met his boyfriend, and I’ve had a little experience on both sides of the coming out thing, and so I let my inner Mama Bittle flow. That’s the short thing. Someone said they wanted to see Coach’s response. That provoked a longer story. I’d hinted at something in both stories that readers wanted to see, that got the next part. None of this required much planning. 

Then Rule Number Two’s plot bunny hit, and hit hard. I wrote it quickly. Like, I think it was a couple of days? The idea was cohesive--someone figures out what’s going on between Jack and Bitty and they decide to come out. Everything around that just followed logically. Organizing it was simply a matter of breaking things at “breathing points”. Breathing points are the places in the narrative where either everyone’s gone to sleep or there’s so much drama that the reader needs a moment to deal. (or a week, in serial television.) 

I don’t do chapter breaks “because I’ve hit my writing goal” or “because I’m tired of it and want it posted.”

I have a lot of little scene breaks throughout any piece longer than 5k, usually, and while I might choose to turn one of those into a chapter break for length, I want my chapter breaks to make sense.

Some stories get chapter breaks by the day, or by the week. Some get them by the emotional milestone. 

I think it’s kind of like a sculptor, staring at a block of marble and chipping things away to find the art that is already there. As writers, we are presented with an idea, that is this formless block of thought, and we have to shape it and push it and paint it with words until the idea is realized in a form that the reader can resonate with. Chapter breaks and chapter lengths are a byproduct of the story being told. So in my YOI fic, some of the stories are about a single night, or a single week. Some cover a longer span. Two of the earlier stories are almost exactly the same length and one of them has 7 chapters and the other has none, only scene breaks, because that’s how the story went. 

And that brings in the series. Here are my long things: Facing Janus (X-files), 250k, 3 “acts”, 30 chapters (including the prologue). It is not a series. The action covers a month or so, IIRC, but is one story from start to finish. It took me 10 years to write (but the first 6 chapters took a few months and the last 200,000 words took 6 weeks). I knew when I started what the gist was, and it changed dramatically once I picked it back up again, but I had in my head several of the scenes SO clearly and was mostly writing my way from one to the next so that they would hang together. (Scully walking over the border and how she did it was HUGE in my mind through the whole thing. I legit thought that would be the end of it.) (finished 2008)

Symbolon. Doctor who. So the two little stories up front were written pretty much last. Symbolon was the beginning for me, and the bookends for the series were “Even RTD says there’s no way Rose would have stayed with the clone” and “The Eye of Harmony must be restored”. And I knew there were a lot of upsetting canon things that would change if Rose stayed, so I explored that, and Jack’s arc had pissed me the fuck off so I wanted to write some resolution to his pain and grief, and and and and next thing I knew I’d written 250k in about 10 weeks. The main thing that kept me going was that I did NOT allow myself to publish before it was done, and I really wanted to share it. Chapter breaks happened when they happened. The story breaks were obvious within what I knew was going to happen. I spent a lot of time during those months curled up under a shower in the bathtub with my mind on another planet and I’m not even kidding, it was the single most immersive experience I’d ever had as a writer. IIRC I wrote it almost entirely in Open Office, which was great because I could turn on the UK dictionary and not look incompetent for the most part, but HORRIBLE for proofreading. Dear god. It got proofed in email. 2010 seems a long time ago right now. But it was the happy ending for the tenth doctor that would NEVER happen on air. 

I published Therapy (90k, perpetual WIP but not a terrible ending point) in the Castle fandom during the summer of 2011, while pregnant, as a throwaway “I’m writing this between now and the season premiere” and I had a lot of ideas but didn’t track them well, the thing was a disorganized mess and I swore off publishing WIPs for a long time.

Somewhere in there I rewatched JAG, wrote 90k, abandoned it, never published it anywhere because there was no one interested in JAG fanfic and I couldn’t bring myself to finish.  I also wrote a few one-offs for Stargate, IDK when, that might have ended up being a huge thing but then I decided I hated my OC a lot and that it was not really all that interesting once I’d taken care of the annoying plot holes the series had left around Moebius and Egypt... Those I posted and got practically no feedback and so didn’t really continue. 

So then I got bit by a bug and was really pondering this original concept and just let it percolate for a few years. I wasn’t going to write fanfic. I wasn’t. I had this idea. But I was also very busy and knew my kid would start kindergarten in 2017, and so I wasn’t going to write fiction until then. (yes, you can start laughing at me now.)

Fastforward to early 2016. Here’s me, struggling with depression and undiagnosed and diagnosed health issues, and I was looking for something to watch on Netflix, and there was Merlin, and the ratings were good. 

And I watched. And I watched. And I got angrier and angrier. I nearly turned it off. I kept going because, and this was literally my mantra, “The fanfic is going to be amazing.” And it was. And I read... god, so much fanfic in the Merlin fandom. It’s a pretty large fandom, with a lot of fics, and I sorted by kudos and read and read and read until the quality dropped. 

And I got involved in the fandom and there was a rewatch and after seeing the whole series and getting mad at it, I reluctantly started it again, got to episode 8, and went, “Well, if Merlin could go back in time, THIS is where he’d go back to to fix everything.”

THAT, folks, is how Plot Vorpal Bunnies are born. I started writing, and wrote feverishly, and signed up for a Big Bang, and was like 50k into this thing....

When someone (*cough* @ayantiel *cough*) in the Merlin Chat said, “I love that my fandom can generate a fic called, “Exeunt, Pursued by Heteronormativity”. 

There was a record screech in there as I scrambled to go find Check Please and that fanfic, and then I was lost in Check Please for a while. I wasn’t going to do a big fic. I WASN’T. I did a few little throw-away one offs. And then Mama Bittle happened, and next thing I knew I’d written something like 70k for the fandom, and I was seriously in danger of not getting my big bang thing finished for Merlin, so I dragged myself back to that, got an artist, got inspired, finished that, and then came back to Check Please to work on Healing Rules (which is still not finished but because Google Docs never forgets, I actually have worked on it.) Right around then I hit my late-year lag and my no-fucking-way-am-I-writing-NaNoWriMo stubborn streak, and fandom started talking YOI, and we know how that went.

THIS IS ALL incredibly long and roundabout and I’m going to post it under a cut and then reply to my own thing to talk about the organizational systems I have now, because I actually do, and they help.

[jameswrites]

On Saying Authors Should Not Write Dark Themes

Very disingenuous when authors giving writing advice (or God help me, those who are not authors doing this) say that you can just CHOOSE to not include any themes of racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia in general because it is FICTION, COME ON! And if you DON’T choose to do this, that it must be because you actually really like those things.

I’m not saying you SHOULD include these things in all your stories or even any of them! But it is always this like “seems pretty sus, you must just hate [women/minorities etc] if you CHOOSE to include this! Conflict isn’t a good enough reason, you’re making a CHOICE to show something [that reflects things that we have in our own world and therefore you are a monster”

This is a ridiculous take. Especially coupled with the idea that if you argue at all, you are in fact, a horrible person.

If I see this, I am blocking. I might not LIKE seeing some themes in fiction, and I don’t. I can’t even watch Justice League and Justice League Unlimited because they take on some really intense themes in a way that sets off my OCD thoughts.

But I then do use those things in my own fiction at times. I am exploring things MYSELF in fiction, but also this intense society we live in, and in turn provoking thoughts about things that in reality make my skin crawl.

I think it is natural to explore the human condition in some absolutely deplorable fantasy (and sometimes very related to reality) ways.

If someone believes that this is a ‘sus’ or ‘evil’ thing, then Get that shit outta here. I’m not saying it is GOOD that bigotries exist in REALITY. It is not! But they do exist! To limit these things to not being allowed to be presented in fiction is absolutely wild to me.

(Still absolutely despise when people say shit like, ‘in medieval Europe black people didn’t exist therefore they shouldn’t in this fantasy world’ i will ABSOLUTELY side eye the hell outta that nonsense take. They did exist! In our world! In Europe! In roles of prominence as well! Traders! Crafters! Farmers! People moved and migrated, albeit not with the ease of today, but it happened! Christ, y’all!

OR! “Women never did any of these roles in this time period, THEREFORE in my world they cannot because it isn’t logical” or w/e And! Women did have more roles than you think! Were they different in a lot of ways to modern roles? Sure! Most modern roles are different from the exact manner of roles back then, regardless of gender!

 And it wasn’t as ‘dark’ a time everywhere as you think it was there! History is not how you likely think it is. If you ACTUALLY want to do an alternate history type of Medieval time, get your stuff right so you don’t look like a doink. Racism and sexism existed, but in very different ways than our modern eyes know.)

I can believe that an author is allowed to explore themes of darkness within and outside of our societies, while still looking at ‘justifications’ like how in our world it wouldn’t happen (often incorrect assumptions of our histories anyway) and so why in this fantasy world it shouldn’t either with a big old side eye. Turns out, humans are pretty seemingly contradictory sometimes.

[jenroses]

Nuanced functionalism in writing

I’ve been pondering some of the rules we are taught about writing. They’re often phrased as absolutes, and sometimes you’ll get two lists that are in direct opposition to one another. 

For example, many of us have been taught in school that it is important to avoid repetition. We’re given broad lists of “words to use instead of” and encouraged to use a thesaurus with wanton abandon. And then we get into more grown-up writing environments where people say, “All adverbs should be burned and we can take out some of those pesky adjectives while we’re at it. And don’t you dare use anything BUT ‘said.’”

I’m a functionalist. And as a functionalist, I find both of those positions foolish and limiting. As a functionalist, my primary goal is to make my writing convey story effectively, smoothly, and transparently. If people stop and stare at the pretty words for too long, wondering what they mean, for me, I feel like I’ve failed, unless my goal with that particular section was to slow people down and make them think. 

I do not, generally, write flowery passages of description unless they’re necessary to evoke mood or help the reader create enough of a mental picture to immerse themselves in the story. It’s like painting the sets on a stage... I want you to have a sense of where they are and what they’re doing, but unless the place or the action is the story, I won’t dwell. 

Likewise for describing people. It is one thing to describe your character or drop details about their appearance into your story as it goes along. It is another thing entirely to consistently refer to them by epithets rather than a name. In speech tags, especially, repetition of a character’s name is really okay, because like the words “said”, “the,” “asked”... names tend to be transparent to the reader. They gloss over the words but internalize the meaning. You actually can refer to a character’s name multiple times in a single sentence without it being as jarring as using a minimizing epithet to reduce your world-class figure skating romantic down to “the silver-haired man” or “The Japanese.” Their names are fine. We just need to know who’s speaking or doing.  I don’t hold to the “never use epithets” rule list, however. There’s a time for it! An epithet emphasizes something. And whoever has the point of view, the epithets you use in the writing tend to imply to the reader that that’s how they think of that character. Something written with my husband as the POV character might well refer to me as “the Redhead” because (despite the fact that we’ve been married for long enough that my hair is now occasionally white and mostly blue and purple) there is a long funny story about why he calls me “the Redhead” and I don’t knee him for it.  But when you’re writing a sex scene and you describe one of your characters as “the blonde”...  it reduces that person to a generic. They could be any blonde. 

The time for referring to a character that way is when the POV character (or the reader) knows nothing else about the character than that they are blonde. Referring to them by their race or nationality can be profoundly othering and problematic, and referring to them by slurs (reclaimed or otherwise) slides rapidly into making your writing jarring for a significant subset of your readers and can get downright bigoted. Relying on epithets to “mix it up” and introduce variety (that you usually don’t need, names are fine) makes it way too easy to create a caricature rather than a character. 

When you’re writing main characters, reducing them to their body parts (eyes, hair, boobs, skin color, whatever) diminishes them. Yes, you can describe them. No, you don’t need to dwell. These things come up naturally when they make an impact on other characters. The way the sun hits their hair. The way their eyes change in candlelight. Those things matter to setting the scene. We don’t need to hear about their turquoise eyes more than once. 

Think about your own life. As a writer I look for details, try to put visuals into words all the time, and I still can count on one hand the number of times I’ve marveled at the color of my husband’s eyes. Our son’s eyes, probably a few more times, but that’s postpartum for you. The time for description of eye color is when someone’s really looking at a character, not when they’re in the middle of a fight scene (unless, of course, their eyes have just flashed like a goa’uld, turned a demonic red, started glowing green, or been bloodied, in which case, have at.) Writing is EASIER when you let yourself strip it down. When I’m getting bogged down by nuance, sometimes I’ll write like an accordion fold, first, the barest structure. He said. She did. They went. Just enough detail to carry through the scene. 

Then I go back and think, “Okay, now how did he say it? Does it matter? Do the words imply tone without needing more? Is it in character? Is the voice right?” And I edit. 

Then I look at it again, and I think, “Where are they? Is it familiar or unfamiliar? Is it a place I’ve described before? Does the reader need a reminder? What details do we need to set the tone without getting down to the crumbs on the sidewalk?” I pull the accordion folds open, filling them in. It’s surprising sometimes how little expansion it needs if the dialogue is solid or you’ve explained well what they’re doing. 

This isn’t to say that it’s bad to use clever writing. But clever isn’t about using the biggest words in the most complex ways. Clever is about making your meaning clear. Elegant. Unexpected.  

A flowery, complex passage slows the reader down. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes when the action is fast and you want the reader to rush, simplifying your language can help convey that “rush” by letting your reader “rush” through it. 

Inserting unfamiliar words or untranslated words from another language is most useful to help convey the difficulty one of your characters may be having with the languages around them, but it can also slow things down. 

Long story short, whenever you read writing advice (even mine,) take it with a grain of salt and use it to inform, but not overwhelm your work. Seasoning, not substance.

[shadowtearling]

Hi quick question! I'm currently writing a story about two friends; one is lesbian and the other isn't. I don't want to queer bait my story; do you have any suggestions on how to avoid doing this? I have absolutely nothing against having my MC's lesbian, but it's not how I want to lead my story (it focuses mainly on friendships). I never want to offend the community, and you don't have to answer this, but I've often seen you respond to problematic stories so I would love to know your opinion!

i’m so glad you’re taking the time to critically think about the story/characters you’re writing.

Firstly, the most important thing you need to think about is your characters as individuals. If you want to write about a lesbian MC, you need to make sure she’s her own person. She has to be well-developed and has interests. Make her real, human. You should talk about her identity beyond being a lesbian because while sexuality plays a large role in our lives, sometimes LGBT+ folks don’t always want a story that deals only with sexualities. 

You also want to keep in mind how the interactions between your characters are. Don’t promise your readers anything that goes beyond friendship if you don’t plan on taking it farther. Remember that not all LGBT+ folks are alike, and each person is their own with their story and their identity. 

For some extra reading for you, I’ve got a list of links here with articles that could help you further your research. Remember, though, that Google is a great place to look for any info you need!

Queerbaiting: What is it?

Writing about lesbians when you’re not a lesbian

Avoiding LGBT+ Stereotypes in YA Fiction

Overused Gay Stereotypes

How do we solve a problem like “queerbaiting”? On TV’s not-so-gay subtext

This is a blog dedicated solely to queerbaiting

[jameswrites]

I've seen a chapter that had two words. Those two words devastated me.

Like, I knew it was coming. I knew it from all the context in the previous chapters, but this fucking nothing teenage vampire drama had me sobbing because.

"He died."

And I'm trying not to tear up right now.

reminder that it’s okay for writers to have chapters that are ten pages long

reminder that it’s okay if your chapter is only one page long

reminder that it’s okay if your chapter is only one sentence long

as long as you can get across the point of your chapter, be it with ten thousand words, or just ten, then you do it. 

your book is yours to write. there is no set formula.

[robinbiewijaya]

Kenapa Mesti Takut Menulis?

tulisan ini diposting untuk kegiatan Cafe Writing bersama @KertasMedan Saya menekuni dunia literasi sejak pertengahan 2010, memulainya dengan mengikuti berbagai macam lomba baik yang digelar secara on-line melalui facebook atau blog, sampai yang diadakan oleh penerbit-penerbit di Indonesia. Satu tahun kemudian buku-buku antologi saya mulai terbit satu persatu, sampai akhirnya saya mencoba menerbitkan buku secara self-publishing, baru kemudian novel-novel saya diterbitkan melalui major label dan beredar di seluruh Indonesia. Sampai saat ini, saya sudah menerbitkan 3 novel: Before Us, Menunggu, Roma (menyusul novel ke-empat: VERSUS), 2 buah kumpulan cerpen, 1 omnibus bersama penulis-penulis GagasMedia, dan beberapa antologi dari event keroyokan. Well, melihat dari jumlah karya yang dipublikasikan, mungkin teman-teman berpikir: darimana ide saya bermunculan, bagaimana proses saya menulis hingga bisa menghasilkan sejumlah karya, bagaimana memulainya, resep khusus untuk menembus penerbit, dan berbagai pertanyaan lainnya. Tapi sebelum kita masuk ke sana, saya selalu tertarik dengan sebuah mula. Bagaimana dan darimana segalanya berawal. Karena bagaimana pun juga, buat saya pribadi (dan mungkin sebagian orang lainnya), menjejak langkah awal adalah perkara yang tak selalu mudah. Di samping modal dasar kemampuan menulis kita, keyakinan dan rasa percaya diri adalah salah satu bagian penting lainnya. Dan hal itulah yang akan saya sharing-kan kali ini. Saya tidak memulai tulisan saya dengan sebuah magic 'bim salabim' lalu terciptalah sebuah tulisan utuh. Saya menekuni kata demi kata, kalimat demi kalimat sampai tulisan tersebut menjadi utuh. Dan seringkali selama proses menulis tersebut saya pun dihantui dengan rasa takut akan menghasilkan sebuah karya yang kurang bagus atau bahkan jauh dari yang saya harapkan. Dan saya yakin sekali, teman-teman juga mengalami hal serupa. Kalau seperti itu, apakah sebaiknya kita mempersiapkan segalanya lebih dulu agar saat menulis kita bisa menghasilkan karya yang benar-benar bagus? Mungkin menunggu waktu yang tepat lebih dulu sehingga saat menulis nanti karyanya akan sesuai dengan yang kita harapkan? Percayalah, sepanjang saya menulis, tidak pernah benar-benar ada waktu yang tepat. Waktu terbaik untuk menulis, mungkin saja. Atau saya seringkali menyebutnya sebagai jam produktif. Tapi tidak ada penulis yang benar-benar langsung menghasilkan sebuah karya tanpa cela dalam proses menulis pertamanya. Karya yang baik adalah karya yang melalui proses pengeditan yang baik. Dipoles, dibaca ulang, diperbaiki kembali, dan lainnya. Jadi kalau begitu, kenapa harus takut menulis buruk? Seringkali ketakutan kita saat akan memulai menulis adalah penyebab utama kita tidak menghasilkan satu tulisan pun. Kita berpikir kalau tulisan yang buruk adalah sebuah celaan, momok, bahkan kegagalan yang menyedihkan. Tapi dari apa yang saya pelajari dari mentor-mentor menulis saya, tulisan yang buruk sekalipun jauh lebih baik daripada tidak ada tulisan sama sekali. Setidaknya, tulisan yang buruk masih bisa dipoles menjadi lebih baik. Tapi coba bayangkan kalau tidak ada tulisan? Apa yang mau dipoles? Apa yang mau diperbaiki. Belajar dari penulis-penulis besar seperti JK. Rowling, Dan Brown, Nicholas Spakrs, Andrea Hirata, Dewi Lestari. Mereka memulai tulisan mereka dari sebuah draft, mengembangkannya kalimat demi kalimat, bab demi bab. Sampai akhirnya menjadi sebuah cerita utuh. Bagaimana dengan kekurangan-kekurangan yang ada dalam cerita tersebut? Mungkin logika yang lepas, plot yang bolong, penokohan yang tidak kuat, penceritaan yang tidak runut dan lain sebagainya? Itulah sebabnya kita membutuhkan proses editing. Editing bisa dilakukan oleh si penulis sendiri (self editing) maupun dengan bantuan editor. Jika kita menerbitkan naskah kita melalui sebuah publishing house (penerbit), akan ada editor yang membantu kita untuk memperbaiki kekurangan-kekurangan tersebut. Saat itulah kita juga bisa sambil belajar untuk memeriksa kembali naskah kita dan mempelajari kesalahan-kesalahan yang kita lakukan pada cerita yang ditulis. Selain itu, saya sendiri biasanya memiliki beberapa orang teman yang menjadi first reader untuk naskah-naskah saya. Mereka yang memang saya cari bukan untuk memuji tulisan saya, tapi sebaliknya mengoreksi dan mencari kesalahan dalam tulisan-tulisan saya. Karena saat menulis, biasanya kita menjadi subjektif sehingga melewati bagian-bagian yang sebetulnya mungkin kurang tepat. Nah, bagaimana menumbuhkan rasa percaya diri, sehingga kita berani memulai untuk menulis? Mulailah lakukan, dan mulailah menunjukkan karya kalian. Draft tulisan yang bagus sekalipun akan tetap menjadi draft jika tidak diselesaikan. Lakukan dari step kecil. Mungkin menulis sesuatu yang ringkas dan pendek. Bertahap kemudian menjadi lebih panjang. Yang terpenting, jangan berhenti sampai mencapai kata TAMAT. Well, pada intinya, menulis sendiri adalah sebuah proses berlatih. Trial dan error wajar terjadi. Tapi apakah hanya karena kita takut melakukan kesalahan lalu kita berhenti mencobanya? Some people ever said that I am stupid doing writing. But if I quit, it confirms that I am stupid. Ketakutan hanya akan menjauhkan kita dari keberhasilan. Semoga bermanfaat.

[jameswrites]

Found this at my school. Thought it could help out.

[jenroses]

Short program pitfalls for writers

Writing figure skating routines isn’t easy, but there are a couple of easy pitfalls to avoid. These are things that will throw readers out of their suspension of disbelief pretty hard. 

Too many, wrong kind of jumps in the short program Short programs are going to have four jumps. 1. Triple (or double axel). Won’t be a quad, they can’t get credit for it even if they can jump it in your fictional reality. 2. A triple or quad  3. A combo of two jumps (no more, no less) where the first is a triple or quad and the second is a triple or double.  So no, it’s not going to be 4 quads in the short program. It’s not even going to be three quads in the short program, the rules don’t accommodate (yet) a quad-quad combo. If you’re writing a story set a few years in the future, it is remotely possible that they might change the short program rules to allow a quad axel or a quad/quad. They’re not likely to allow longer combos. Rules do change, but it looks to me like the short program rules change after things happen in the free skate enough that it’s not “making room for one guy who already scores ridiculous points to score even higher”. The short program is a more “even playing field” where points discrepancies among the top skaters might be as many as 15 points for the top 10, where the free skate might have a split of 30-50 points.

Too high a score Assuming absolute maximum jump values and plausible combos, the highest possible score (but not likely), with a quad lutz-triple loop, triple axel and quad flip all performed in the back half of the routine, plus maximum value on GOE, spins, PCS, etc... you’d be looking at 122 points and change. But the best, highest scoring routines EVER have not had perfect PCS. The most breathtaking programs ever seen, someone looked at it and said, “Hm, that could be better.” They always assume it could be better. MAYBE someone will hit everything so perfectly that every judge on the panel says, “Yes, this one is perfect” but even in Evgenia’s world record performance one judge rated her at 8.75 for skating skills, I’m not even kidding, wtf. Highest technical difficulty in the past 11 years and the judge goes, “eh” (that score wasn’t counted, but STILL.) Yurio’s 118 was bananas. 

Wrong length music Current rules state that the short program music must be 2:40 +/- 10 seconds. Lots of music gets edited (or mashed up even) to make that length. That’s plenty of time for the required elements. Don’t base your guess of length on the show’s track lengths, a real figure skater would have to tweak those to make them work. There are a ton of techniques for adjusting a piece of music. (And it used to be that 2:50 was a maximum, but they changed that. And it was 2:40 before, and 2:30 before that. These things change a lot.)

[jameswrites]

THANK YOU this is like how "passive voice" should not be seen as a totally bad always weak never works thing. It has a purpose and in language where passive voice is present it's practically innate in kids.

"Who broke the lamp?"

Kid, surrounded by lamp bits. "The lamp was broken (by me)."

That kid wants that distance. That kid knows lying won't work but gosh here comes the distance man.

It's the Same with adverbs. They have a time and a place and it's good to experiment with them and focus on making your story or essay work in a way that suits you and your story or essay or whatever.

I ignore the advice that says _never_ when it comes to writing. Because usually that advice isn't enough nuance for what I want my language to do.

I know adverbs are Controversial, but “said softly” means something different than “whispered” and this is the hill I will die on.

[jameswrites]

Hey friends!

https://twitter.com/Ferbalerb/status/1154933755674603520

They do cool ref sheets, if anyone would like them, feel free to contact them!

[jenroses]

storytelling and writing

aka: why I don’t always stop reading fic that’s spelled badly, uses poor grammar or has a less-than-fluent presentation

So, I think people get these things confused a lot. Storytelling comes in many flavors and forms, and some of the best storytellers who ever lived were completely illiterate. The oral tradition was created before writing existed. We’ve been telling each other stories probably as long as we’ve been using spoken language. Longer, maybe. Bees tell stories. Many of the best stories are told in the vernacular, their rough linguistic edges making them that much more relevant.

Writing is something else. Good writing has a lot of moving parts. From a functionalist perspective, writing is good if it conveys a story well, in ways that are evocative to the reader, without slip-ups that make the reader have to stop and try to figure out meaning. I’ve seen extremely well written stories that were done entirely in text-chat format, but they worked because they echoed the format so closely that the grammar being “wrong” (for formal written English) didn’t matter. The grammar was consistent for text chat. 

From a reader’s comfort perspective, things like punctuation, grammar, spelling and fluidity are important mainly because the more skillfully those things are used, the more transparent the writing becomes, letting the story, and the storytelling, shine through.

Complex language for the sake of complex language is nearly as problematic as incorrectly used homophones. Or, in simpler terms, when you use words people have to go look up, it trips them up even more than someone using the wrong they’re/there/their/der/dare.

I’m much more likely to stop reading a story if the story is not to my liking than if the language doesn’t flow. But language that doesn’t flow makes it a lot harder for me to see the story and know if I like it for its own sake. 

I’ve heard people say that storytelling is a gift and writing is learned, but in reality, gifts are possible in either area and proficiency in both can be trained. For some people, writing well comes from reading voraciously and paying attention to the “rules” of the game. Others work harder at it, and have to lean more heavily on editors. Some people have a knack for storytelling, but like all things, it can be improved through practice and observation. 

There are ways of getting better, faster.

Ask for help, pay attention to the help offered, and work to understand the rules behind the mistakes you make the most often. 

Use Google Docs collaboration tools, let your editors suggest, ask questions when you don’t understand why a suggestion is being made.

Read and listen to stories being told. Pay attention to what you like and what you don’t. Try to figure out why you like it, or what doesn’t work for you. Think about HOW the story works. I’m 45 years old and about a year ago an artist blew my goddamn mind by turning storytelling tropes on their head and saying, “nope” and everything I’ve written since then has been better than everything I wrote before.

Re-read your stuff with a critical eye and with your voice. Say things out loud to see if they make sense. 

If you’re writing in a language or dialect not your own, if you can, run it by a native speaker first, preferably someone from the area the story is set in or the area most of your readers are from. Even for English speakers in the US, if you’re writing British characters or shows, it is probably worth having someone British eyeball what you’re reading before you post it. (We call it Britpicking). Or be prepared for people to say, “Yeah, but...” if you’re lucky, and just sigh and move on if you’re not. 

Read aloud for pacing. If you have a little break or pause, there’s probably supposed to be a comma there. Don’t read pauses you haven’t written in, and it will become very obvious where the commas need to be. (And no one is perfect with them. I get missing or misplaced commas flagged in every fic I write because I have too many systems swimming around in my head.)

If you don’t know the rules or are guessing at spelling, look it up. Just type the word in your browser and look it up. You can get grammar rules, too. Don’t know if it’s peak, peek or pique? Peer or pier? Phase, faze, fey’s or Fay’s?  Look up all the spellings you can remember and get the definition. Google’s pretty smart about misspellings, too.  Fast paced or fast paste can be significant. If it doesn’t make sense to me as a reader, I read it aloud, but if I have to read it twice, the story is obscured. I still have to look up pore/poor/pour every once in a while. Wonder if the comma goes inside or outside the quotation marks? (Hint: It’s different in Britain and the US and I’m American and the US way is just wrong and my poor editor fixes it for me often.)

But the best way to get better? Keep writing. Keep storytelling. Keep doing it. Keep rereading your own stuff and improving it.  Keep making your shitty pots, and eventually they won’t be shitty.

Anne McCaffrey was an amazing storyteller. Kind of a mediocre writer in places, which may be a function of editing (or not editing... some pros get less edited as time goes on, which is often a shame.) But her writing was mostly transparent enough that her stories shone through, especially when I was 10 and desperately wanted to be far from everything having to do with real life, which sucked. 

Jean Auel was an amazing storyteller at one point. Then they stopped editing her, but her writing was not fantastic in and of itself. She did a ton of research, and it showed, and her storytelling was engaging enough, especially in her earlier books, but  her quality decreased greatly over time. I don’t want to be that sort of writer.

Lois McMaster Bujold is an amazing storyteller and one of the best writers I’ve ever had the privilege of reading. I’ve read probably 90% of what she’s written, and she started out high and it’s really hard to measure improvement when you start out that good. 

Tamora Pierce’s works have steadily improved over the years. This is GOOD. The farther into her works you get, the more interesting and beautifully written they get. When I’ve gone back to her earliest stuff on a series reread, I’ve been thrown by the quality difference, and when I tell people to read her, I give a caveat, that every book will be better than the last, but this is not a smooth line, but a more of a steep upward slope that flattens out over time but keeps climbing slowly.  The improvement is most dramatic in her first 4-8 books, IIRC.

If you look for ways to improve, you probably will.

If you don’t look for ways to improve, you probably won’t.

If your story is engaging enough, I’m willing to overlook a whole lot. 

Even the best writers have typos, spelling errors, homophone substitutions, misplaced punctuation and the occasional howler. (I once misspelled “proofreader” as “proofreeder,” and said proofreader did not catch it before publication. It was in the masthead of a magazine. Next to her name.)

Anymore, I send a link to stories I’m writing to 4-5 people who know my writing and/or the fandom in question and let them read in Google Docs before I go public. This might slow down updates, but it vastly improves the end result. I never regret doing this. Some just read and cheerlead, some question plot points and several will pick apart the grammar, etc. 

And even so, literally every time I reread my stuff I make minor changes. A comma here, a word there.