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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: library lasciel on February 03, 2011, 09:51:38 PM
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So I know asking for input on basic storyline ideas on the web is pretty dumb.
However, I have a very hard time telling potentially interesting plot/story ideas from the rest of the random crap that my brain continually spews forth when I'm not actively working.
So, my esteemed writer-peoples, where do you find your most constructive feedback comes when trying out the quality of basic storyline and plot ideas?
I feel embarrassed to talk about my ideas with my friends. In the meantime I've been bouncing off my husband, and while he's generally pretty sound-minded, I have a feeling that his responses are a little tainted by the thought that if he doesn't say he likes my ideas, I may bash him with a frying pan for lack of spousal support. ;D
Links appreciated, actual groups of people also appreciated, general advice also totally welcome.
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Hey LL, I suspect that you're probably right about your hubby. Large cast iron frying pans can be an ENORMOUS deterrent when it comes to telling your spouse something you think she might not want to hear.
I'm afraid that I don't know any groups but I have bounced ideas off a couple of people on the forum.
Just remember that we've been asked not to post any of our writing on the forum, not fan fic I believe, because if there's an idea that we have that Jim also has - he now can't use it because he can't prove he came up with it first.
But that doesn't stop you from PMing someone and talking off forum to them. This forum is way cool for the way everybody encourages new writers. Talk to people and after a bit you'll probably find someone or several someone's more than willing to bounce ideas with you. Particularly if they're trying to write too - then you can help each other.
I hope that's of some assistance.
SL
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I don't, honestly. Once I discuss an idea, I lose interest in writing it. I usually just assume that if it's an idea that lingers for days in my head while I play around with it, daydream scenes/characters/dialogue, then it's a good enough idea to at least start writing.
I usually start writing when I've been daydreaming, and I've cooked up a scene that's just *too* good to let slide. :D
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I do it with my friends; after approximately twenty years of being drawn to people and connecting to them primarily online through their words, the process of time passing has left me with plenty of very literate friends who are good at this kind of thing.
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It really depends on what writing project I need advice on. However my primary fountain of ideas comes from my gaming group from when I was in collage. I also had a few classes that I used to throw my ideas out in.
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My best friend is my creative partner. So, I ask him. We don't fear or resent each other for calling one another idea shit. Which, is most of the time.
Occasionally, I'll throw something at my mom.
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My best friend is my creative partner. So, I ask him. We don't fear or resent each other for calling one another idea shit. Which, is most of the time.
Occasionally, I'll throw something at my mom.
You have a very, good friend. Most people don't have this kind of friend - one they can disagree with without messing up the friendship - also one they can be totally honest with. Congrats.
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You have a very, good friend. Most people don't have this kind of friend - one they can disagree with without messing up the friendship - also one they can be totally honest with. Congrats.
We grew to understand, that by rejecting an idea, is not rejecting the person. You are not your idea. From my experience, most folks don't understand this. And most folks, from my experience, take criticism of their idea, and criticism of them personally. I find this very silly.
But yea, Nintaku and I are pretty strong friends.
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We grew to understand, that by rejecting an idea, is not rejecting the person. You are not your idea. From my experience, most folks don't understand this. And most folks, from my experience, take criticism of their idea, and criticism of them personally. I find this very silly.
But yea, Nintaku and I are pretty strong friends.
I think that's one of the hardest lessons for a young writer to learn. How to take criticism. As you say, they view it as a personal attack and not an over view of their work. On top of which - this is their 'baby' someone is talking about and they get highly defensive. It may be silly but it is very much a fact of life, I suspect, for new writers in whatever genre.
Heck, I've heard a budding mystery writer getting all defensive with an established author in that situation.
My attitude is - honey, he's sold books you haven't - time to stop and listen.
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I agree it is rather silly to get offended by criticism. That was one of my biggest issues I faced in my writing classes is that very few people were willing to give criticism, I suspect that they didn't want to hurt feelings but it kind of dulled the point of the entire class.
However on the other hand you have to be careful who you ask for opinions because some people don't know how to give constructive criticism. I have had people tell me something I wrote sucks but they didn't give me any ideas on how to correct it. Now that I find to be very irksome.
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I agree it is rather silly to get offended by criticism. That was one of my biggest issues I faced in my writing classes is that very few people were willing to give criticism, I suspect that they didn't want to hurt feelings but it kind of dulled the point of the entire class.
However on the other hand you have to be careful who you ask for opinions because some people don't know how to give constructive criticism. I have had people tell me something I wrote sucks but they didn't give me any ideas on how to correct it. Now that I find to be very irksome.
There is that too. You have family members who think that telling you that everything you do (even if flaming monkey poo is better) is terrific is the way to help you. You have those who give criticism but they are nit picking and not addressing the important points in your writing. Then you have, unfortunately, those who deliberately will put you down. Along with learning to accept criticism you also need to learn to filter the criticism you get - weeding out the well meaning and the nasty and getting to the ones who have valid points.
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On writing.com, there this seemingly growing trend to only give positive reviews. I find this very irritating. I want to get better, giving me fluff warm feelings doesn't make me a better author. I need to know where I am weak, and hopefully suggestions on how to improve.
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On writing.com, there this seemingly growing trend to only give positive reviews. I find this very irritating. I want to get better, giving me fluff warm feelings doesn't make me a better author. I need to know where I am weak, and hopefully suggestions on how to improve.
Yeah, warm fuzzies will not improve your writing. As I tell my friends - I want to know where I can improve, where I'm hopelessly wrong - and what are the holes in the plot that you can drive a star cruiser through.
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Yeah, warm fuzzies will not improve your writing. As I tell my friends - I want to know where I can improve, where I'm hopelessly wrong - and what are the holes in the plot that you can drive a star cruiser through.
See, this is what I want, and while I love my friends dearly and have great fun with them, they're really not the people for that type of feedback.
It's irksome. :-\
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See, this is what I want, and while I love my friends dearly and have great fun with them, they're really not the people for that type of feedback.
It's irksome. :-\
Yeah, verily yeah. Maybe you need to make it clear to them what you really want. Some people aren't sure whether you want the truth or 'warm fuzzies" and don't want to make a mistake.
I'm fortunate to have several friends who will give me the plain unvarnished truth as they say.
I also have a friend who makes her living as a writer and she pulls no punches if I give her some of my work to look over.
I'm afraid I have a sometimes tenuous grasp of tenses which tends to irk her (heck it irks me). And my grammar and punctuation can be shaky too.
If you stay on the forum any length of time you'll probably find someone more than willing to listen to your ideas. And I think most of the consistent posters are good people who'll give you good feedback.
Heck, I've seen people asking for beta readers in the author's section of the forum.
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I leave it a week then read it back to myself.
So far most of what I've written ended up in the bin. I'm a harsh critic.
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I leave it a week then read it back to myself.
So far most of what I've written ended up in the bin. I'm a harsh critic.
Hmmm, perhaps you're being too hard on yourself SoG.
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Or perhaps my day job is juuuust fine. ;D
I do occasionally keep what I write, it's a fine tuned process.
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I have one friend who loves everything I come up with... I tend not to bounce things off him much. And my sister who always looks at me sceptically and like I've lost my mind. I try not to bug her too much.
I really need more people to chat with but as it is I'm just not comfortable telling all my weirdness to my other friends.
That combined with laziness and lack of time to work is why the idea that I've been refining in my head for the last 5 years or so (I seriously can't stop thinking about it) only has about 60 pages written.
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It creeps up on you doesn't it.
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it sure does, i only got about thirty pages written and i have been thinking about this idea for almost five years.
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I have two so far, and a very detailed story arc.
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i bounce them off myself on the bus ride to school while listening to music, often the same or similar ideas, thinking of how to make it flow better, remove overused or unneccesarry thoughts and spiffing them up
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I have about a gazillon of chapter one's lying around. And just as many story ideas.
I've just recently discovered my mistake. While I had the characters and the story arc planned, I often neglected to flesh out the rest of the world in sufficient detail.
My solution, which I kinda stumbled upon, was PlayByPost roleplaying in online forums. I'm currently DMing a game and I quickly found that I had to work a lot more on the details of the world than in my regular fiction. With that and the constant feedback from my players I was able to write roughly 25000 words in one month. I almost fell off my chair when I did the word-count. (I'm SO signing up for NaNoWriMo this year.)
So to stay on topic; what I've found to work best is to select a few good critiquers on web forums and let them tear your work to shreds. Friends and family often have a misguided sense of loyalty, and tend to prioritise your feelings over giving you actionable feedback.
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i love fleshing out my worlds in excruciating detail, even if i don't include all of that in the actual story. my biggest problem is connecting my scenes togeather.
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When I have problems connecting scenes, I always try to find out what is causing the disconnect.
Sometimes I find that there should be one or more scenes between the scenes I'm trying to tie together, other times it's because a character would have to behave out of character to get to the next scene.
The story I'm currently working on came to a screeching halt a few days ago, because of a disconnect that requires deus ex machina for it to work out, and now I'm agonising over which plot element to change or cut to get the story moving again.
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i hate it when my characters argue with me.
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Better than chasing after them after they've lit out in an entirely unexpected direction. ::)
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Better than chasing after them after they've lit out in an entirely unexpected direction. ::)
I'm not sure I understand that; characters grow from stories for me such that the most absolutely core thing about any character is knowing they will do X and Y that the story needs, because that's who they are and where they started from. Secondary characters may do this to me, but that's copable with.
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There are things I know my characters will or won't do but
sometimes the story and the characters go off in unexpected directions.
I have no problem with that. For some people they know everything about their
characters for others it's sort of a journey of discovery. You're the former, I'm the latter.
Both are valid and both work.
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I know the basics of my characters, but I don't predict every single thing that's going to happen before I sit down to write. I love the discovery, the "Whoa, where'd *that* come from?" moments. I may know the major plot points, but I don't know what happens between them. And even the plot points can change while I write.
So I have Rachel and Dean in a scene together and I have hours to fill before Brendan comes to pick something up. I know the two characters, I have them in a specific place after specific events, and I basically say, "Ok... go." The two of them talk about what's going on, the specifics of their oddball relationship get dug up, there's some posturing, some up-in-mah-grill-ing, and then Dean says something completely in character that makes me realize, "Oh crap, he's going to kill Brendan." And suddenly, new plot point! Hadn't planned on it, but there it is.
Now, sometimes these things won't work with the rest of the plot and I have to backtrack and find a new path to take the conversation while still staying completely true to both characters, but I just love those moments. *happy sigh*
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I know the main characters every move for a while. It might change to be more interesting but I don't think it'll alter much. The other "mains" the ones most featured but not the main goal I even have some rough guidelines. But I have completely hollow characters they interact with. I've been trying to flesh them out but I keep tossing out lame ideas.
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I know the basics of my characters, but I don't predict every single thing that's going to happen before I sit down to write. I love the discovery, the "Whoa, where'd *that* come from?" moments. I may know the major plot points, but I don't know what happens between them. And even the plot points can change while I write.
So I have Rachel and Dean in a scene together and I have hours to fill before Brendan comes to pick something up. I know the two characters, I have them in a specific place after specific events, and I basically say, "Ok... go." The two of them talk about what's going on, the specifics of their oddball relationship get dug up, there's some posturing, some up-in-mah-grill-ing, and then Dean says something completely in character that makes me realize, "Oh crap, he's going to kill Brendan." And suddenly, new plot point! Hadn't planned on it, but there it is.
Now, sometimes these things won't work with the rest of the plot and I have to backtrack and find a new path to take the conversation while still staying completely true to both characters, but I just love those moments. *happy sigh*
Pretty much this. As for bouncing ideas, I go to my fiance. Mostly just give him one or two elements that have me stuck, and he stews on it for a while, and gives me whatever he comes up with. Or I just give him a few elements to see how much interest there is. If he doesn't like them, chances are they won't work as well as I thought.
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I'm also more thinking about earlier in the writing process - I get these mental strafing run kindof episodes, where two or three or six or twelve vastly different plots and settings and sets of characters will sear themselves into my brains and demand that I acknowledge them before they release my hostage-brain.
Then I'm left with my sets of hastily scribbled character and plot and scene notes from trying to get it all down - and I don't know which ones are the good ones.
Which one should I spend my time fleshing out? Which one is trite and overdone (one example that I know I have to wait on is a vampire story - those are DOA right now, so it's going to have to sit for a few decades), which one is full of inconsistencies, which ones are so out-there that I can't get other people to follow me, which ones am I not good enough to handle yet....
That sort of thing is where I have the most trouble. I've only got so much time, and I am splitting it between all these different (many dozens) of potentially viable baby plotlings, and to be truthful, I think it would be more productive to pick one or two or three and focus on them - but how do I know which ones to pick when they're all equally interesting and real in my head?
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Really great discussion thread and I ditto everything said, still I'm not sure we've addressed what lasciel is asking.
I've been fortunate to take some online classes with editors, authors, copyeditors, journalists etc--the hardest, absolutely hardest assignment I faced was--"Post your premise. I (senior editor at major house) will decide which one has legs." You see I'd come with this lovely little plot and three characters that I loved. Scrap that baby. It wasn't even on her 'maybe' list of okay. Somewhere in this forum section was my plea for assistance. I ended up with six decent premises that I thought had staying power with my attention and marketability for a result that might be of interest to a house.
I didn't hear anything from the instructor for sometime. I like to think she was running it past either her personal agent or her companions at work. Bottomline? We ended up combining the 4th and 5th premise, and before I was done writing it I had actually encompassed a 3rd premise.
I truly believe that our initial thoughts are too common and we have to dig much deeper, painfully deep, for a marketable, workable idea--especially as hopeful debut authors. I'm speaking premise here NOT HIGH CONCEPT BITE LINES of less than 25 words as Colleen Lindsay shared at DFWCon.
Feel free to PM me, but start with a few simple questions first:
How many subplots and threads can I work into this idea that are, or can be weaved together?
How many characters can I manage and still produce the best work I can do at this point in my craft?
What would be likely tension points on my story plot curve?
Then isolate the tension points and judge how you are going to escalate the tension to drive the plot to the climax.
If your tension points (at a minimum: opening, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 9/10th marks) seem lacking, then don't toss out the premise, but start the layering process to bring in more subplots, more character conflict, more whatever is needed.
I truly believe that 'nodes of contact' as Donald Maass discusses are crucial to a well fleshed out, decent book. Our premises can be fantastic, but if we don't figure out those contact points along with a two sentence premise fairly soon in the process, then we probably will only stumble across a great story idea. Planning for that great story idea before wasting hours of your valuable writing time is essential.
Best writing Library Lasciel - love your tag name by the way.
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First off, apologies for the hugely ginormous point-by-point below.
Also apologies for leaving this thread alone for so long - I've been doing a lot of thinking about it, but it wasn't making sense. I try to stay away from the keyboard when mentally babbling.
Finally, instead of asking these by PM, I hope it's ok to continue in this thread, in the hopes someone else might have advice or elaborations, or that someone might find the information useful to them as well.
Righto - into the fray!
Really great discussion thread and I ditto everything said, still I'm not sure we've addressed what lasciel is asking.
I've been fortunate to take some online classes with editors, authors, copyeditors, journalists etc--the hardest, absolutely hardest assignment I faced was--"Post your premise. I (senior editor at major house) will decide which one has legs." You see I'd come with this lovely little plot and three characters that I loved. Scrap that baby. It wasn't even on her 'maybe' list of okay. Somewhere in this forum section was my plea for assistance. I ended up with six decent premises that I thought had staying power with my attention and marketability for a result that might be of interest to a house.
Did any of the editors ever say what criteria they're using to decide what premisi (premises... premae?) were good together, or why certain ones of them were not workable at all? I've been thinking about this the most, and I have no idea how to proceed.
My baby plotlings are all over the bloody place - I've got traditional 'swords and horses' adventures, several far-future Sci-Fi stories (all in different far-futures, of course), a recent-history vampire story, urban fantasies... about the only thing they all have in common is that they're not set in the 'vanilla world.' How can those get smushed together?
I didn't hear anything from the instructor for sometime. I like to think she was running it past either her personal agent or her companions at work. Bottomline? We ended up combining the 4th and 5th premise, and before I was done writing it I had actually encompassed a 3rd premise.
Was that a collaborative process, or more organic - to be blunt, did the editor come out and say 'well, that's too simple, you need to put x in' or did it just end up "feeling like it fit" in with the rest as you were writing and charting out the plot and the tension points?
I truly believe that our initial thoughts are too common and we have to dig much deeper, painfully deep, for a marketable, workable idea--especially as hopeful debut authors. I'm speaking premise here NOT HIGH CONCEPT BITE LINES of less than 25 words as Colleen Lindsay shared at DFWCon.
Feel free to PM me, but start with a few simple questions first:
How many subplots and threads can I work into this idea that are, or can be weaved together?
Here is where I've been having my weeks-long existential crisis. Let me preface this by saying that I am not trying to insult or make any sideways comments about any authors who may seem to be targeted below - I love READING their works.
I've come to the realization that I manifestly do not want to write epics or trilogies or long huge staggeringly complicated tomes of dense reading stuff. I feel really bad for saying this, and I almost feel like admitting it means I have no chance to be published or have anyone interested in my work. I have ideas, I think they're fun - at least worth looking into, and I am committed to trying to write them as fully and complex-ly as they need to be (and that I'm capable of)... but I don't think any of my ideas NEED to be epics. I LIKE simple one-shot stories, and worlds where a baseline is set, a book or two is written, the interesting idea is finished and solidly done, and then the reader is free to go wandering off on tangents because there's wide open mental space left.
Is that totally awful?
How many characters can I manage and still produce the best work I can do at this point in my craft?
This one I'm ok with - I have the opposite problem, actually. I get a little character happy and have LOTS of them. Still, I feel this is related to the above point. There's this trend where every character in an epic is vitally important to the overall plot at some point, and so the same people keep circling back into the story at different times and places. I don't necessarily mind that, but I also like the thought of just having mostly ... you know... people. Moving scenery. Not plot-vital troves of information and subtext to be teased out and used to further the plot. Again, I feel a bit of a bad person for saying that.
What would be likely tension points on my story plot curve?
Then isolate the tension points and judge how you are going to escalate the tension to drive the plot to the climax.
If your tension points (at a minimum: opening, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 9/10th marks) seem lacking, then don't toss out the premise, but start the layering process to bring in more subplots, more character conflict, more whatever is needed.
I truly believe that 'nodes of contact' as Donald Maass discusses are crucial to a well fleshed out, decent book. Our premises can be fantastic, but if we don't figure out those contact points along with a two sentence premise fairly soon in the process, then we probably will only stumble across a great story idea. Planning for that great story idea before wasting hours of your valuable writing time is essential.
As a technical writing point, this one's hard for me, because I'm still working out the kinks of the basic ideas. I've basically memorized Jim's writing blog, and that method seems to work well mentally for me.
I'm not yet to the point of wanting to nail down specific plot activities for all of my plotlings tho - I was hoping for a method of weeding them down BEFORE I get to that point, to save mental effort for a hopefully more likely to be successful payoff.
Best writing Library Lasciel - love your tag name by the way.
Thanks - I'm a sucker for a fallen angel and a fine alliteration. ;D