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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Paynesgrey on July 21, 2012, 04:21:00 PM
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http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/02/15/the-writers-survival-guide/
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THIS! LOL!! Loved it! It's now on my "favorites" bar so I can go back and re-read when I'm taking myself too seriously or setting an unrealistic goal for myself.
Writing should be FUN, for crying out loud, and if you don't take time to relax, smell the proverbial roses and join the human race once in a while, you've missed the point of being alive.
Your story/book will still be there when you get back from actual live human contact and/or cavorting with nature...and it might be all the better for those few moments you spent interacting with The Outside Word, getting your batteries recharged. At least that's what I've heard. ;)
I've sat here for an unreasonably long period today, perusing my usual forums, drinking a lot of coffee and only thinking about getting dressed - which is why I love the weekends when I can become that NetZombie who feeds off the minds of others. It can be inspirational or at the very least it reminds me that I'm not the worst writer out there. And then my muse thumps me on the head and points out I should be working on my own stories and projects. As it's doing right now. Dressing is optional.
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Chuck's got some fine brainstuffs. The key is that he's offering his own personal experiences; writing is ultimately an individual thing, so you're the one who has to decide what parts do and don't work for you.
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I've found heading out to a local coffee shop helps. Gets me out of the house where there's light and people, and away from the distractions and excuses to not write.
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Plus, interacting with real, actual other human beings is the only way you will ever learn to write good dialogue.
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That, madam, depends entirely on the real live humans you've available for interaction.
My area? The dialogue is limited to "Let's go Stillers let's go!" "and Dude, youns wanna git some beer?" I think I gravitated to the Whedonverse simply because the way they talked was more interesting... and closer to how I always talked.
Then again, the sarcastic things my brain generates could count as dialogue...
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A little bit ruder than I'd like. And a little rotated from where I'm coming from. But there are some nuggets and jewels in there.
I think you're better off following that advice than neurotically holed up in a cave.
The Deposed King
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Payne, you live around Pittsburgh? I'm 35 minutes north of the city.
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A little bit ruder than I'd like. And a little rotated from where I'm coming from. But there are some nuggets and jewels in there.
I think you're better off following that advice than neurotically holed up in a cave.
The Deposed King
That's Chuck's schtick, the faux rudeness and the crudeness. Those are tools he uses to punch through and get some people's attention. Doesn't work for everyone, but it works for some, which is a good thing in the end.
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Payne, you live around Pittsburgh? I'm 35 minutes north of the city.
About 45 SE of pittsburgh myself, over in Westmoreland County. We'll have to grab a beer or coffee sometime.
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That's Chuck's schtick, the faux rudeness and the crudeness. Those are tools he uses to punch through and get some people's attention. Doesn't work for everyone, but it works for some, which is a good thing in the end.
So long as it works, and in this case I think it does.
Personally, and maybe this is from my attempt to write a PG/PG13 book, I think you can use alternate words like. If you are getting so frustrated you want to take a two-by-four and pound someones melon like head until juices start coming out..., or you can go straight to Hades if that's your path but I suggest. Or sweet crying...
I agree the F-bombs and H's can get through to some that can't be reached otherwise. But if you are a word smith.... Like with my Amazon E-book helper post. You can hold them by the jacket and kick them in the pants at the appropriate moments until they get motivated, without necessarily crawling into the verbal gutter and rolling around.
That said, perhaps I am creating a mountain=molehill situation. Since I honestly wasn't offended or upset or anything by what I read, which from looking at my response so far I can see how I might come across as. Let me just finish by saying, I hope his post helped some people. It takes all types and all types of messages and communication formats.
If even one prospective author was helped and winds up putting out a book I will read and enjoy then his work is worthy and should be out there.
Just come on man, your a word smith, so smith some alternates language already! Show us some of those skills!
The Deposed King
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So long as it works, and in this case I think it does.
Personally, and maybe this is from my attempt to write a PG/PG13 book, I think you can use alternate words like. If you are getting so frustrated you want to take a two-by-four and pound someones melon like head until juices start coming out..., or you can go straight to Hades if that's your path but I suggest. Or sweet crying...
I agree the F-bombs and H's can get through to some that can't be reached otherwise. But if you are a word smith.... Like with my Amazon E-book helper post. You can hold them by the jacket and kick them in the pants at the appropriate moments until they get motivated, without necessarily crawling into the verbal gutter and rolling around.
That said, perhaps I am creating a mountain=molehill situation. Since I honestly wasn't offended or upset or anything by what I read, which from looking at my response so far I can see how I might come across as. Let me just finish by saying, I hope his post helped some people. It takes all types and all types of messages and communication formats.
If even one prospective author was helped and winds up putting out a book I will read and enjoy then his work is worthy and should be out there.
Just come on man, your a word smith, so smith some alternates language already! Show us some of those skills!
The Deposed King
The "keep it clean" stuff is a purely artificial stricture, one that actually limits a writer unnecessarily if they're targeting the audience who wouldn't be fauxffended by that language anyway. I've read Chuck's writing, and there's a verisimilitude in it that is vastly different from that of writers who force themselves to stay away from the blue.
In some ways, writing blue is even more difficult, as the basic vocabulary pool is actually kind of limited (if you're sticking to the blue as much as possible, that is). It takes a skilled writer to find precisely the right blue phrasing every time.
In the end, one thing I've seen from Chuck is that you find your own balance between audience and writing what you want to write. He's found his, and it works: much of his audience has commented on social media that his vocabulary is very un-limiting and visceral.
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I have the hardest time coming up with alternatives to explatives given that generally speaking my characters only swear when frustrated. Thus the curses should be short and sharp. I could mack up words. Say Krug or things like that, but it feels childish. I could make up phrases like Robert Jordan. Blood and Bloody Ashes is great, but I lack the ability to find things that work. Especially seeing ninety percent of swearwords are about things from below the waist or from a god. I tend to mix those. By Peroxial's (god from my world's) nethers is always fun, but the context is gone half the time.
As for the article. Good advice given very very colorfully.
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I have the hardest time coming up with alternatives to explatives given that generally speaking my characters only swear when frustrated. Thus the curses should be short and sharp. I could mack up words. Say Krug or things like that, but it feels childish. I could make up phrases like Robert Jordan. Blood and Bloody Ashes is great, but I lack the ability to find things that work. Especially seeing ninety percent of swearwords are about things from below the waist or from a god. I tend to mix those. By Peroxial's (god from my world's) nethers is always fun, but the context is gone half the time.
As for the article. Good advice given very very colorfully.
Huh I never really had a problem with that. For instance in my book. I took the Greek version of Hell. Hades and when it fit into a sentance that could use that instead of hell. I made Murphy and Murphy's Laws into a Saint Murphy and promptly started taking his name in vain. Sweet Crying Murphy, What the Murphy to you think your doing, In Murphy's name, alternatively Murphy was a demon, kind of like some of those two sided gods. Demon Murphy but you've done it now, etc.
Battestar used the word Speck. Farscape used Frell.
The Deposed King
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I have the hardest time coming up with alternatives to explatives given that generally speaking my characters only swear when frustrated. Thus the curses should be short and sharp. I could mack up words. Say Krug or things like that, but it feels childish. I could make up phrases like Robert Jordan. Blood and Bloody Ashes is great, but I lack the ability to find things that work. Especially seeing ninety percent of swearwords are about things from below the waist or from a god. I tend to mix those. By Peroxial's (god from my world's) nethers is always fun, but the context is gone half the time.
As for the article. Good advice given very very colorfully.
The best advice I can think of is to juxtapose two wildly opposite things, like something mythically awesome and hopelessly mundane.
Something like: "How in the name of Zeus's Butthole-" Nick Cage, The Rock. The best one I think Ive come up with personally was "Christ on a stick!" because it is both literally true by the crucifixion, but also conjures a more "corndog" image than you usually see with religion.
Another interesting example was the Dragonrders of Pern books, which didnt have much in the way of religion, so they pulled from teh distant history that was on its way to becoming myth. They'd say "By the shell of the First Egg" or similar (a reference to the genetic creation of dragons as protectors from a unique and repetitive natural disaster), but often just shorten it to "Shells"
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The best advice I can think of is to juxtapose two wildly opposite things, like something mythically awesome and hopelessly mundane.
Something like: "How in the name of Zeus's Butthole-" Nick Cage, The Rock. The best one I think Ive come up with personally was "Christ on a stick!" because it is both literally true by the crucifixion, but also conjures a more "corndog" image than you usually see with religion.
Another interesting example was the Dragonrders of Pern books, which didnt have much in the way of religion, so they pulled from teh distant history that was on its way to becoming myth. They'd say "By the shell of the First Egg" or similar (a reference to the genetic creation of dragons as protectors from a unique and repetitive natural disaster), but often just shorten it to "Shells"
Yeah. I like the juxtaposition thing. The bigger issue is that I've made my own world to write in. That removes alot of our own evident symbolism. I always felt "Shells" was silly sounding. I know within the world it has meaning, but that meaning had to be declared. Having to buildup all of the needed profanity for an uncouth character would take chapters of backstory with meaningless dialogue and It's frustrating...
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Yeah. I like the juxtaposition thing. The bigger issue is that I've made my own world to write in. That removes alot of our own evident symbolism. I always felt "Shells" was silly sounding. I know within the world it has meaning, but that meaning had to be declared. Having to buildup all of the needed profanity for an uncouth character would take chapters of backstory with meaningless dialogue and It's frustrating...
I can see that. On the other hand, my Chief engineer started using my color language from the first or second time we saw him and continued to light up a blue streak every time he entered the stage. I think its all in how you sell it.
But again everyone is different, do what works for you.
You know now that I'm thinking about it, I had this other book, half written and not finished where they were always talking about 'putting down' slothful dishonorable people. And by putting down I mean kill. Connotations of putting down a wild animal or rabid dog etc.
It was really fun to write.
The Deposed King
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Profanity depends on the context you're writing in, like most other things - one of the things that struck me when I lived in Heidelberg was how much less severe scatological swearing appeared to be, compared to my defaults in England and Ireland, and how much more shocking religious swearing was to people. One of the more impressive fictional examples I've read is Ira Levin's This Perfect Day, in which contemporary sexual swearwords are totally lacking in shock-significance in context, but "fight" and "hate" count as truly foul language, and Levin makes it work. Not an easy thing to build up the right sort of context for something fictional to have impact, but sometimes you can leverage that the other way around - have what people use as an expletive be a clue as to what is most taboo or repellent to that culture when it's not the same as the reader's.
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Yeah. I like the juxtaposition thing. The bigger issue is that I've made my own world to write in. That removes alot of our own evident symbolism. I always felt "Shells" was silly sounding. I know within the world it has meaning, but that meaning had to be declared. Having to buildup all of the needed profanity for an uncouth character would take chapters of backstory with meaningless dialogue and It's frustrating...
It doesnt necessarily have to be too specific, depending on how different your world is from common models. "By the Queen's Chamberpot" could work, or "Son of a ____" fits with nearly anything that is contextually unflattering, regardless of whether it is something the reader new of (insert jabberwok or similar and it still works by the context). Heck, "Crows!" from CA worked fine, and it appeared long before the cultural significant of crows predicting battlefield locations was introduced. Its like Neuro said, using it as the curse word can actually give it the impact it needs by the context, rather than having to have it established ahead of time.