kippurbird | Entries tagged with writing group

I think I'm a writing snob.

Had the writing group last night and I was talking to Mr. Formulaic. He irked me so badly. We were talking about problems we were having with our writing and things like that. First I brought up the question of why he was afraid of people copying his ideas. He said it was his life's work and that there were seventy people on the site. (There isn't, they're on a different site than the one we use to post up our stories.) Anyway, as he said, he was afraid people would copy it. He's also afraid that people are going to compare him to things like Narnia and Redwall because of his fuzzy talking animal races and the Centaurs. Trying to dissuade him that it doesn't mater, he just wanted to get the publishers interested in it.

I started talking about this one particular problem I was having with two characters (one absolutely refuses to be anywhere near this other one) and he mentioned that he had a problem too. He solved it by giving the character's amnesia. I said, "Well, that's cheating isn't it?"

"Yeah, I know, but I don't care."

I swear my jaw must of dropped, but I didn't have any time to say anything because the phone rang. I would have liked to say your readers aren't going to be happy with that. As they'll feel cheated and no one likes that. Amnesia is such an easy way out.

When we were actually critiquing his story we mentioned that a lot of the setting was unclear and so was this large wagon. His response was, "Well I'm planning to put in a picture there."

"But it would be easy just to put in a few words of description."

"Yeah, but it would be easier to put in a picture."

"You're writing a novel, they're not going to put in the pictures."

"Well, I don't care."

See, it turns out he's only writing the book so that it can be turned into a movie. He figures that he'll have a better chance of it getting turned into a movie by having the movie people pick up the book, like they're doing with Eragon and Twilight because fantasy is In right now. Of course, it's highly unlikely that they'll do that. His style is completely wrong to get a large audience and the Executives wouldn't get past the first page. I'm not saying it's a bad book. From what I've read it's rather good. (He refuses to give us the complete novel so it's hard to critique it so it's hard to know what's happening.) His style is good and it works for what he's trying to do. But it's not going to make it as a movie.

And I guess, and this is where the snobbery comes in, I don't like the fact that he's only writing the novel so that it can be turned into a movie. The movie part, for me, would be icing on the cake. But I write because I have a great love of writing and I'd love to see it published. That would make me happy.

The other stuff? Doesn't matter. Like I said, icing on the cake.

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On another note all together, me ears are being evil. I got an ear infection and now they're refusing to drain. The doctor is putting me on steroids. If that doesn't work I have to go see a specialist. They hurt, a lot.

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: Library

Paranoia is a strange thing.

Mr. Formulaic from my writing group didn't want to put his file up onto our Yahoo group site because, "Lots of elements-names-stunts in there that could be copied and inserted into other stories quite easily... you know." But that seems sort of silly to me, because what's stopping me from doing the same exact thing? Or really, (I haven't actually started reading it yet) what makes him think that his is so original that it hasn't been done before? I should trope it. I think I will.

Now the question is, should I hand it to him?

TVtropes really does ruin your life.

I went to Disneyland yesterday and I'm going on rides and keeping on thinking well, that doesn't work and gee, that's a such and such. Like for example I'm going on Snow White, and I start thinking, well geeze she gets married to the Prince and they don't even know each other. Oh, sure, it's supposed to be True Love's kiss, but really, he's just kissing some random mostly dead girl. And that's kind creepy. It reminds me of the Snow White story that Neil Gaiman wrote whose title escapes me. The Prince liked her because he could have sex with a dead person. So I started wondering well, how could I rewrite it so that it made more sense.

And then there was Star Tours. We were going to Endor, but get captured by the Empire before going on a Death Star run. Endor wasn't going to be a tourist destination during the rule of the Empire since they're building the Death Star there. Also, R2-D2 wouldn't be driving the shuttle in the first place. And you can't land right after coming in from light speed.

Finally, on a different topic all together, I noticed there are those "guild things" on Gaia and was wondering if maybe I should make them for Sporky type people.

Also, I lost my contact lens, so I'm half blind. Whee!

Current Mood: contemplative

Another interesting thing from the writers group.

The new guy wanted to know why Alec was doing what he was doing. He assumed it was a Quest. Because he was the Chosen One. After all he had the title "Champion of the Fey" had a special sword and a tattoo on his face. He must be a Chosen One.

He kinda deflated when I said, no he's not.

Then he wanted to know, well, why was Alec doing what he was doing.

He got told to do it. By his bosses.

No heroic intentions at all.

I found his expression amusing.

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Rereading "Call of the Champion" to summarize. Found an interesting bit of continuity error. It's funny. Most of my continuity errors happen after I write the next parts. I don't try and make the new stuff fit the old stuff, but the other way around. It always seems to work better that way.

Anyway, in Champion, I say that Orion, Alex and Mir (the king's consort)came through a rift into Lancoon. Which is actually contradicted in the book itself, as the rift has been shut tight. In "Into the Rifts" I've given the three of them world bound origins. Their motives and places are still the same, but they come from the world itself. Alex and Orion being angels from across the sea and Mir a bard from the city.

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Also, I think I found another TVTrope that could have been attributed to me.

From the All Animals Are Dogs Trope:

Newcomb's The Fifth Sorceress has an example. Now, the main character is a human prince named Tristan. Being royalty, he understandably has a horse...which he taught to play fetch.

That's two now. =D

Got comments back on the story. More comments. From Mr. Formulaic, who is the one with the agent. And really isn't formulaic so much as purple.

Anyway, continuing on the people not getting that just because it's fantasy doesn't mean he's a hero line of thought. For fun/boredom I've decided to answer his comments here.

Got right into the story and it flowed right along, especially the
part at the end!

I have no qualms with that one. ^_^

Don't know if we'll ever agree about using earthly historical names
for fantasy characters, but you might have fun with this page...
http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/ I know I do!

Now, I have a two fold reason for this one. (Using names like Alexander, Rufus, Orion etc.) One being that Alec (Alexander) and Orion had that name before I "transplanted" them into the story. The second being, well, why wouldn't such names show up? I mean, it's not like I'm doing a Paolini naming convention where all the NPCs have normal names and the heroes have "fantasy" names. I've interspersed it fairly evenly through out the story. Names are, when you get down to it, a combination of letters and sounds. And eventually you're going to get overlap. In Hebrew, for example לו
sounds like "low". Two different languages, two different alphabets, but still the same sounding word. My characters don't speak English, except for the fact that I'm writing what they say in English. So, it's logical to suppose that eventually, similar sounding names will show up.

Name generators are addictive. (especially the bad name one: Phstfrd)

I know characters are the most important thing in fiction, but I really want to see more texture about the world. More stuff like "Selina's eyes"... which melikes...

Eh, I suppose. It's a hard balance for me. I mean, Selina's eyes refer to the two moons. And most of the time when you look up at the moon you don't think, "Luna, named after the Roman Goddess of the moon", you just go "moon". In being in a third person limited POV, most of the times the characters are going to go "moons". In this particular case, Orion was feeling rather introspective at the time, and so it felt more appropriate to call the moons "Selina's eyes". Alec, the main POV character, is not at all a introspective sort. He's kinda shallow that way. He's a teenager. Teenagers aren't given to introspection unless they're being emo and writing goth poetry. So, it's hard to give texture to the world when you have a character who looks at the world superficially.

Characters maybe be more tough?

... Why? Honestly speaking, the only tough character that I have would be Orion. Alex (Orion's slave) would be second, but only because he's utterly insane. Orion is a seasoned fighter and has rightly earned the title of General. He's been in several wars and fought a lot of battles. Alex has been driven insane in such a way that he's a down right little sadist. (Orion likes him that way). On the other hand, Alec is new to the adventuring gig. He's never killed anyone. The only fights he's been in are school boy scraps with his sister and other kids, and he hasn't done that in ages. He grew up in the city in comfort and has never faced a real challenge in his life. He's never had a reason to be "tough".

Alec at the moment is very changeable - going from having his butt
kicked by Orion to sticking his tongue out at his sister... be more of
a single-minded hero, Alec!

I fail to see how one has anything to do with the other. You tend to act differently with family than you do with people you don't like. Usually with siblings you tend to act younger or less mature than you do with others. Alec and Laruna have known each other their entire life. They're twins. They've developed their own idiosyncrasies in how they act and respond to each other. Of course Alec isn't going to stick his tongue out at Orion, that would be childish and immature, which would make Orion take him less seriously. He doesn't want Orion to treat him like a child, but an adult. Thus he acts like an adult with him. He doesn't have to worry about such things with his sister. He knows his sister has a set opinion about him and can be how he wants.

Also, Alec is not a hero. He's a protagonist.

If Orion is trying to grab power, I saw him thinking about it, but not
actively doing anything except hanging out with Alixx... Then again,
this is only 2 chapters -- so maybe it is a lull in his plotting?...

Um... long term planning anyone? If he actively tries to grab power, people are going to notice it. His trick is to do it slowly until people suddenly realize "Well fuck, how did that happen?" He's three hundred years old. He's got plenty of time to work his wiles. Hell, he could even wait until Phelps is no longer on the throne. Plus, he likes Alex. Good sex.

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Also, Twilight for my next venture?

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I took kitty to the vet yesterday. It took three people to get him from under the bed and that included lifting up the mattress. He scratched mom so badly that her hand's swollen up. She's going to the doctor later today. Kitty is fine. He just had a really nasty scratch under his chin from where his nails were to long and cut him. Got his nails trimmed too.

For some reason, when ever we get a writer who has an agent, or nearly has an agent, they really don't like what I do to their stories. They always seem to say, "Well my agent says..." Which always makes me want to say, "Well if your agent likes it so much, why are you bringing it to me (the group) to go over.

*sighs*

Two of my eggs have started to hatch!!

This is the scene I was talking about here. The interaction between Alec and Alex has been passively antagonistic up to this point, with Alex always showing up and annoying the Hell our of our ~~Hero~~ protagonist. The scene starts just after Alec's had a series of really shitty luck in trying to find transportation.

( Scene in question. )

I had my writer's group last night. It had some interesting things happen.

In the part of the story I submitted, Alec was rather cruel to a slave. He hit the slave so hard that the boy fell. Alec really doesn't like the slave. On of my readers said that he shouldn't have done that because it made him unsympathetic and he was the hero. He need to be sympathetic. She rooted more for the slave and his master than she did for the hero.

I'm not going to change the scene. Alec is not the hero of the story, he's he protagonist. Which is rather different than hero. If anything it gives you more lee way in how they can act. It lets them be more human. He can have more flaws as a protagonist. He doesn't have to live up to a hero's expectations. To a hero's morality.

Heroes are supposed to be Good.

Eragon is supposed to be a hero. He dislikes slavery. He fights for the down trodden. He's against tyranny. He does this because its the Right Thing To Do. He never has any second thoughts or wishing that he was doing something else. Tristan from the Fifth Sorceress is also like this. And we all know how they turned out to be.

Alec on the other hand, doesn't want to doing what he's doing. He's not a reluctant hero, he's just doing a job for his bosses. He'd rather be home with his boyfriend. Slavery is just the way things are. Sure, he wouldn't necssarily want to be a slave, but then again, I wouldn't necesarily want to be a burger flipper, but that's just how things are. Now I'm not saying that slavery is right. Of course it's not. But in the sort of society that Alec lives in, it would be there. There are laws (in most places)regarding the treatment of slaves. After all they are property and an underfed beaten slave is useless because they can't work.

I suppose the fact that I'm trying to get at here is that yes, maybe he shouldn't have hit the slave like he did (or anyone else for that matter), but for him not to have would have been out of character for him. He has a temper and the slave was there for him to take it out on. It may not make him sympathetic at the time, but I'm sure in the long run it'll make people empathize with him more. Because he's more human. Just like the rest of us.

Wheee! More writing group shtuff.

This is a synopsis for a novel, one of three, I believe she said. She's -the author- is giving us the synopsis so that when she actually gives us the third novel we'll know what's going on etc. I was confused at such a thing, because I've always thought that you should be able to pick up a book and read it no matter what's happened before or after. I've done that for numerous series that I didn't realize were series and have been content enough to seek out the other books. And I've been feeding people my novel, which is a second novel and they have no idea what's happened in the first one at all. (Which is probably a good think since I have to rewrite and all >>) Anyway, I took a look at the synopsis and decided to share my thoughts and garner opinions on if I'm crazy or not.

( I believe this is horribly snarky and bitchy. Forgive me. )

Current Mood: awake

I have a gap in structure.

It's a new term I've just made up. It means that my structured schedule, my daily autistic routine, has been disrupted. Not in an anxiety producing way, because I knew that the disruption was coming. But now I have a gap of time that is normally taken up by something else and I don't know what to do with myself until the next thing in the routine. To make a clearer example:

Fridays, I don't go to work until 11:30. Either I go to my shrink at ten and then go to work or I clean house and then go to work. Each time leaving at eleven and each time having a Something to occupy my time. Today, however, workers are coming in to replace our windows. So, I got up at my normal time, cleaned up some and let them in at nine thirty. I wasn't going to stick around with all the construction noise, so I left.

It's nine thirty. My next scheduled activity is a eleven. I haven't a fucking clue as to what to do to fill up that time gap. So, I have a gap in structure.

I don't think non autistic people have this problem. I'm not sure though. I'm pretty sure they'd just figure out something to do without even thinking about it. While I just sort of went so um.... now what do I do?

I had my writing group over last night. We held it at my place instead of at the coffee shop because the coffee shop has been getting a bit too small. A guy came, he doesn't write fantasy/Sci-Fi but is apparently working on a screen play that's turning into a Sci-Fi story so he wanted our help on somethings like working out the Time Travel gimmick and stuff. It went okay, it took him a bit to understand somethings that I guess we sci-fi'ers take for granted. That was interesting in itself.

At one point he asked if there was a "Book" or something that we go to to get information on... like, On the Planet "Grebex" the aliens have to be called, "Zenians" or something like that. Which got a few confused stares. And we told him, no we just make it up as we go along and we have to follow the same conventions that other writers do (you know plot, characters, setting etc) as well as a few others that you get by reading other Sci-Fi novels and stories or there are books on those sort of conventions.

It was just sort of amusing that he thought there was a secret book that we fantasy/sci-fi writers use to come up with the stuff we do.

Current Mood: worried

Another piece from my writing group.

I have no idea what to make of this one...

It's called Goggles for Lulu

( First three pages )

What do you think of it?