Working against yourself

[jtaylor]

Yes, If you use contractions you must be Lore in disguise. I am afraid we will have to deactivate you.

[WonderandAwe]

Interesting.  Not using contractions was something I did on my own.  Well, in dialogue and stuff I'd use contractions, but in the rest of my writing I try not to. 

[Tasmin21]

It depends.  *puts English major hat on*  Technically...no.  But for character speech, and for things that are written in first person (which is really just more character speech), it's more acceptable.  Pretty sure you could probably get away with it some, I doubt there's any contraction police that are gonna come around and bust you for it (except the people that do my editing for me. Oi.)

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

It depends.  *puts English major hat on*  Technically...no.  But for character speech, and for things that are written in first person (which is really just more character speech), it's more acceptable.  Pretty sure you could probably get away with it some, I doubt there's any contraction police that are gonna come around and bust you for it (except the people that do my editing for me. Oi.)

Voice is character.  Sam Spade and d'Artagnan will use contractions in very different ways. Do what's right for the character.

[terioncalling]

I continually work against myself.  Working on one story and get an idea for another, end up abandoning Story A to work on Story B and then - lo and behold! - here comes idea for Story C.

I just get too many ideas and want to work on them all but don't have the ability to.  Very frustrating.  And the cause of many old stories sitting idle on my harddrive for years.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I continually work against myself.  Working on one story and get an idea for another, end up abandoning Story A to work on Story B and then - lo and behold! - here comes idea for Story C.

Trick is to find something you really should be doing, and then with that firmly fixed in your mind, be productive on something else.  It works for me in writing and day job alike. And even if it doesn't work, getting something done on any story is certainly more productive than sitting around playing Civilization II all night, and that's temptation enough that I can feel all happy when I manage not to do it.

[Dom]

What neurovore said earlier--character is voice.  That's how I write, so I use all sorts of odd things in my narration that wouldn't fly if I were, say, writing an article for a newspaper.  Fiction is fiction...doesn't need to follow the Chicago Manual of Style in every way.  I choose my words for effect, and if breaking a rule gets me the effect I want, I break the rule.

It makes for good fiction writing, but I've found out that it's ruined my objective writing...I tend to sound far, far more opinionated/hot-tempered/etc then I really am when I am discussing theories of things.  I just automatically word things with "oomph" and it can rub people the wrong way.

[blgarver]

Trick is to find something you really should be doing, and then with that firmly fixed in your mind, be productive on something else.  It works for me in writing and day job alike. And even if it doesn't work, getting something done on any story is certainly more productive than sitting around playing Civilization II all night, and that's temptation enough that I can feel all happy when I manage not to do it.
[/quote]

Civilization II is awesome!  I spend my writing breaks on Civ 4, though.  You should check that one out if you haven't yet.  It's the best one so far.

[waywardclam]

Oddly, Civilization III is the one that keeps me up at night when I should be writing instead... 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Oddly, Civilization III is the one that keeps me up at night when I should be writing instead... 

Civilization II is awesome!  I spend my writing breaks on Civ 4, though.  You should check that one out if you haven't yet.  It's the best one so far.

Pfft.  Civ III completely broke the trade system, which was one of the best things about Civ II, and messed with the diplomacy, and I'm not enamoured of its changes to combat, though I like the way it handles culture.  Civ 4 is very pretty but that's not a substitute for gameplay, and the new combat system with all the promotions is to my mind even further from fun.

Mind you, I speak as a player who most enjoys building globe-spanning empires mostly peacefully, and there are lots of other ways people enjoy playing Civ-type games for which I'm entirely willing to concede that other iterations may be better.  [ The freeware Civ-clone communities seem to attract an awful lot of people whose primary interest is in the games as wargames. ]

[blgarver]

Yeah, My favorite one is still probably Call to Power, because of the combat system.  I liked the way you could stack units in one tile and attack as a force.  In 4 you can stack them, but they still only attack as one.  I do like that it's much more difficult to take over a city, however.  I find 4 a lot more challenging.


Erm...so anyway, about writing...

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Erm...so anyway, about writing...

Got a thousand words done last night, in the course of which I realised a) that I was writing the protagonist worrisomely young for his actual age, b) that something I thought went in this bit actually goes in the next bit, which unfortunately means c) that this bit will be pretty much unmitigated adolescent doom and gloom. Which is necessary for the story but is going to be bloody depressing to write. Think that counts as having been working against myself enough to bring this back to pretty tightly on topic.