Happy Halloween from Writing About Writing

We're still on emergency toddler duty and then there's OMFG-cute trick or treating later, so I guess we'll just hit the ground running on Monday.

Tomorrow?

For those following closely enough to miss our regularly scheduled post, The Toddler Factor™needs to be invoked today. We had a bit of an emergency.

The kid's fine, but I had to watch him while others scrambled, and so FAR it's been about five extra hours today.

I'm hoping to get today's post up tomorrow.

Random Creative Writing Terms Beginning With the Letter N

Random Creative Writing Terms Beginning With the Letter M

Narration/Narrator- Not just the disembodied voice that ham-handedly adds exposition in some movies. Writing that tells a story. Most fiction is narration, although some types of stylized fiction are not. (Like fictional travel books or fictional dictionaries.) Narration happens through the "focus" of a narrator, be it a character in a story or the omniscient voice. It is the story. This can make "narrative" (the story and point of view through which we filter our facts) very important. Les Misérables told through the narrative voice of Javert, for example, would be very different. (And in fact, in the book, these chapters are very different.)

New Criticism- What happens when someone comes back after you think a fight is over and says "And another thing...." ~rimshot~

Literary criticism used to be pretty much 100% fellatio of the dead white guys of the past. (Now it's only 90% because we are totally enlightened from the past unenlightened days of unenlightenedment.) In the forties, a new kind of criticism emerged that considered a work as a discrete and self-referential package, not subject to being good or not only by the test of time and/or its moral lessons, and concentrated more on whether the elements of its craft like setting or tone worked to reinforce its themes.

These days, it is the premier way to analyze and criticize written work, even outside of the literary world. Writers who give a flip about their reviews would do well to understand at least the basics.

Nonfiction- This is writing that "really" happened. Ostensibly it is simply NOT fiction. However, after creative writers who deigned to dramatize their biographies with composite characters or a dramatic flair got fact checked and "exposed" back in the 90's, they took their ball and went over to "Creative Nonfiction." The line between "truth" and "fact" has never been so well-patrolled as in the Internet era. We don't talk about non-fiction much here at Writing About Writing, but some of the conventions dovetail, and much of the writing process is similar.

Novel- *coughnotsomethingyouwriteinamonthcough* Defining a novel is tough. Not like overcooked ribeye tough; I mean like last week's teriyaki beef jerky tough. A novel is fiction, but also truth. It has maybe one or more or many characters, but usually sticks with a single narrative arc. Usually. It is longer, but no one knows exactly how long. Some bellwethers go as low as 40,000 words but I've talked to several publishers and no publishing house would publish a book that small as a standalone. They would call it a novella, and put it in an anthology. In fact 50,000 words would be too short for a novel to be published these days. Most print publishers will balk at anything under 70,000 for an author who isn't a household name. And will likely try to package multiple shorter works into an omnibus even then.  Similarly the point at which it is broken up into a trilogy appears to be controlled chiefly by gnarled knuckled mystics who chant at the event horizon of a temporal rift they mistakenly think is the god of books.

Creative Writing Terms Beginning With the Letter O

Fortune Cookie Wisdom XI

The longer I do art, the more I think that JUST after hard work and persistence, the next most valuable trait an artist can have is the ability to crash right through their own imposter syndrome like the Kool-Aid pitcher.    

Oh yeah!

More people need to learn the formula of plot, actually. Most people's problems isn't that their plots are formulaic. It's that their plots don't exist. 

Mental illness is not homologous to evil. Before you have an antagonist simply be "crazy" consider who that stereotype hurts to be perpetuated and reinforced one more time and how lazy the writing is that doesn't come up with a more compelling motivation for villainy.

When you fall–and you will fall–get back up. 

Little advice? If you're in this for money, fame, or groupies, you really need to do something else. This just isn't the way.

Your role in fiction is to tell the starkest truth possible by weaving a tapestry of lies.

If I had one random, non-writerly bit advice to give to writers trying to cut their teeth in the digital age, it would be this: read the article/book/whatever before you reply to it. Read the book. Read the thing you're criticizing. I can't even tell you how foolish that makes people look. If you haven't read it, shut your sound tube, and have a fucking taco. (Or stop moving your phalanges, whatever.)

Look you do you, but every writer who has a career arc one might emulate has written daily and encouraged would-be writers to do so. And I've never once had someone give me feedback that they tried writing daily and it "destroyed their creativity." (Actually the opposite.) That's only something you hear from people who haven't done it yet. So you do you...but maybe also do the math while you're at it.

Don't take it too hard if someone tells you your Nano draft is steaming shit. It's not like that's somehow vastly different from every other first draft.

Your inspiration is basically a muscle. If you sit around waiting for it to work, it will pretty much only twitch from time to time as an involuntary reaction to stimulus. If you put that thing through the paces every day, it will be Herculean and move mountains at your whim. 

You're going to develop a voice as you write. It will be as unique as your actual voice, and those who've read you will recognize you as easily and quickly as they would if they picked up the phone and heard you speaking.Let that voice come out, and don't let too many people insist that they know better what your voice should be or to shape it to their own vision.

Grammar is the Matrix. You exist inside it, it's everywhere, you breath it, and you have to know what it is and how it works to be a writer, but some of its rules can be bent and others can be broken, and if you want to jump across the building and make someone say "Woah..." when they read you, you're going to have to know exactly when to ignore its physics.

A lot of writers like writing, even for its own sake. And they want to be Writers (capital W). But here's where things get tricky. The work between those two points is phenomenal, painful, and at times down right humiliating, and if you don't slog into the horror of it, you're just masturbating with the keyboard. Masturbating isn't a bad thing (don't get me wrong, I'm sex positive here–we should all be having a good wank far more often), but it's definitely just for oneself. But the thing is is perfectly plausible to spend a lifetime writing and never be published. (Or self-published but never bought outside of close circles.) You have to do the right kind of work too.

Caffeine and writers have a sordid, tangled history, and it's possible you can jump start some creativity with some, but too much burns you out in a game where slow and steady wins the race, so don't make it a big fun one-upmanship to prove how badass you are.

If you only write when you're inspired, your muse is in control of you (and not the other way around). And your muse abandons anything that starts to look a little too much like work. 

The worst writing in the world comes from thinking the readers need to be told what to feel.

Shhhhhh. Come here. No, no closer. Closer!  Do what ever works. Always.


NOT ENOUGH!!! NEED MORE FORTUNE COOKIES!

VLOGS

[The text in the brackets will disappear in a couple of weeks....

Well now you know.

I am, and always will be, primarily a writer, but I've begun to dabble in a few different projects just to see how it goes. Vlogs are easier for some to engage in, may extend my audience base, and have a different energy than writing, so they may help me to have a bit more time for other writing. (Here's hoping.) W.A.W. isn't going to change format or anything. I just might put one post a week up as a vlog, and if I don't like it, I'll stop.

I'm also vlogging for Ace of Geeks. This will only be every other week, and not strictly related to writing. However since Writing About Writing is your one stop shop for any project I'm doing, be it other blogs, fiction, or anything hosted elsewhere, I will start a new menu for The Reliquary, and keep all of my vlogs in one space. If one of my AoG vlogs has something (even obliquely) to do with writing, I'll make a small post about it here.]

All of my vlogs in one place.   

Writing About Writing Vlogs

Did you forget the monthly polls?

Tenacity

Ace of Geeks Vlogs

10/26 Boycott Starwars 7 was "Just" a Troll

Who is the BEST Written Villain (Poll: Semifinal 2)

Who is the best villain in a written work?

Now that we have our survivors from poll 1 (Annie Wilkes, Pennywise, General Woundwort, and Croup and Vandemar) we now need to cull down the second half of the list to see who goes on to the final round. Please remember that you are voting for the written versions of these villains, not their on-screen counterparts.

This poll will be up only for one week so don't delay in voting.


Everyone will get four votes (4). The top four names will go on to the finals. Before you simply vote for your favorite four, consider that, as there is no ranking of those four votes; each vote beyond one dilutes the power of your choices a little more. So if you have a genuine favorite--or pair of favorites--it's better to use as few votes as possible.

The poll itself is on the left side, at the bottom of the side menus.

Best Villain (Semifinal 1 Results)

The results are in!

The top four will move on to the final round. Since this semifinal went a week, the next one will too in order to be fair. It looks like we'll run into November after all.

There's not much commentary to be had here. The spread between "moving-on-to-the-finals" and "thanks-for-playing" is nice and big (how I like it) and the ones that made it took and held an early lead. The only interesting bit is the three way tie for first place. It should make the final round pretty exciting.