Fic Talk > General Discussion
The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
RokofAges75:
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 01:56:51 PM ---Glad I wasn't the only one. I wondered if it made me a terrible person!
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If I was more religious, I'd probably buy it, but it would just look sacrilegious on me LOL. It reminded me of these funny Jesus condiment shirts Rose and I saw in Tennessee a few years ago.
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 01:56:51 PM ---Ooh, hallucinations . Fun! I was reading about hallucinations today too, not for any specific reasons, just kind of ended up there, lol. There's apparently theories about old religious rites involving the use of fungi, molds, parasites, etcetera to induce hallucinogenic effects for immersion in the rites, but we can't be sure since ancient mystery cults don't really write down their rituals being... well mystery cults and all. Things like that have only become more fascinating to me after being in a sorority; not sure if it's the "I get it" factor or what.
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Yeah, I came across multiple anecdotes by different people about having hallucinations as a side effect of certain medications, so I decided that would be fun to include.
There's a theory that the Salem Witch Trials were perpetuated by the effects of a type of fungus that grows in bread and can cause hallucinations, paranoia, spasms, and so on. I wrote a paper about it once in college. It was an interesting theory.
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 01:56:51 PM ---I did know that about the lemmings! It's so sad! Early Hollywood is wild! The other one that's really fascinating is all the crazy behind-the-scenes stuff from Wizard of Oz.
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I have heard some of the Wizard of Oz stuff, like the guy supposedly hanging from the tree. I love that behind-the-scenes stuff in movies; it's so interesting!
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 01:56:51 PM ---Ten tabs would drive me crazy! I try to keep my tabs as clean as possible, but it's near impossible when researching. Case reports are great! I remember enjoying them a lot when I was getting my licensure. I always love things written for other professionals because it gets into the nitty gritty rather than broad overviews, like you said.
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It drove me crazy once I looked up and realized how many there were! I like to keep my tabs clean too. My students drive me crazy cause they'll have like 20 tabs open at the same time. I'm like, "No wonder your Chromebook is slow! Close all those tabs!"
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 01:56:51 PM ---I love mythology. I think it's fascinating how religion, science, culture, etcetera all get woven together into interesting stories. I think it speaks to the part of me that loves writing. And you're correct, it definitely helps create something a little more unique. Though PBox as is definitely leans heavily into Asiatic aesthetics. I've been working on the more well-roundedness of it as I delve into OF territory. Including just going full-Tolkien and creating a language. I'm a little worried about it, to be honest.
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It really is interesting. I also think it's cool how many connections you can make between mythology and religion from different cultures and time periods in history. It just goes to show how much humans have in common. If only we could focus more on our similarities than our differences.
I came across a cool-looking tool this weekend called the Fantasy Language Generator: https://www.vulgarlang.com/ I didn't delve into it much, so don't know if this would be helpful to you or not, but it looked interesting.
I think creating your own language would be complicated, but really cool if you could pull it off. How much do you think you would actually use it in the story? I wonder because, as a reader, I would probably just skim right over anything not written in English. I remember reading the "Redwall" books as a kid and skimming through the heavy dialect some of the characters spoke with because it took so much effort to figure out what their dialogue was actually saying LOL.
nicksgal:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---I think it's a comfort thing. The longer you write a story, the more comfortable you feel with it. Once you finish it and are facing starting a brand new project, there's the fear of, "Can I pull this off? Will it be as good as my last story?" I feel that way even when I'm excited about the idea. At least with my medical drama, I've gotten to the point where I trust in my own ability to do it justice, even when I know it's going to take a lot of research. I look forward to the challenge. That's probably why I went with My Brother's Keeper over Fallen Angel - they're both ideas that will challenge me, but in different ways. MBK is still solidly in my wheelhouse, whereas Fallen Angel is totally new territory for me.
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That's true! There is a level of uncertainty when starting something new, no matter how much research or planning has gone into it. I always worry about how things will go further down the line.
I think it's great that you relish in the challenge and continue to challenge yourself, whether they're wheelhouse challenges or otherwise!
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---I probably say I'm ready to take a break from medical drama every time I finish writing a particularly intense one, but I always go right back to it within a few months LOL. I finished A Heart That Isn't Mine (medical drama) in November 2019, took a break to write The Year Without a Pandaskunk (not medical drama), and then went back to Heroic Measures (medical drama) in April 2020. Road to Bethlehem started out being a break from medical drama and then kind of turned into a medical drama, which is why I thought I was ready for another break from it. But here I am, back at it again. LOL
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Bethlehem was a little bit of a break, it was mostly a survival story, lol. I get this too. When something feels like an undertaking, looking at any other thing like it just feels like yet another undertaking. But it all seems to be going well for you, so maybe Bethlehem was enough of a break! :)
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---Only a couple that I can think of offhand, but yes, those are probably my two least favorite stories of all time LOL. I obviously liked the ideas enough at the time to try writing them, but I just wasn't as committed to them as I am with most of my own ideas. With Silent Desperation, I just didn't really know what I was doing. The other one like this was my first AU, a long-lost sibling story called The Other Child, and that one I just ran out of steam on and wrapped it up too quickly so I could be done writing it.
LOL I think addiction was too scandalous for Lurlene. Her books were all pretty wholesome.
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Commitment to the idea probably makes a big difference. lol, addiction is scandalous. You've become so scandalous since expanding from Lurlene for research. ;D
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---#TeamKevin! I just never had a good idea for a Kevin novel. The closest I've come is with Guilty Roads, which feels like a Nick/Kevin story because a lot of the focus is on Kevin... but since Kevin gets shot in the head in Chapter 3 and has been in a coma ever since, he doesn't really do enough for me to consider him a main character LOL.
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I don't know if you can be a main character if you're in a coma... More like an inciting incident or a macguffin? Unless there was anything paranormal going on?
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---I think I actually discovered the brunet/brunette thing at the same time as blond/blonde. (I obviously did not take French LOL.) I don't tend to use that word to describe men with brown hair though the way I use "blond" for men... mainly Nick LOL. Like you said, "brown hair" sounds a lot better than "yellow hair."
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I figured you did, actually; writing it that way just made me laugh. It's men! Brian's fairly blond also, especially compared to AJ, Kevin, and Howie. I wonder why "yellow hair" sounds weird, but "brown hair," "black hair," and "red hair" all seem fine. To be fair, French for the last two would be "hair of x color" instead of having a widely used term. And technically, black is lumped in with brown in practice.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---I don't think I would ever get bored enough to go back and fix stuff like that in anything pre-Broken. I did get bored enough during quarantine last year to go back and fix typos in some of my post-BMS novels. I had highlighted every mistake I came across when reading them on my Kindle as I was working on my 20th anniversary blogs, so when I decided to start putting some of my stories on AO3, I thought I better go back through them and fix that stuff before I posted them. I have not gotten bored enough to go back to Broken and BMS because the number of highlights is overwhelming LOL.
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So basically, you need a quarantine round two to even think about Broken or BMS, lol! Maybe for your thirtieth anniversary. ;)
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---Well, good! Then I have more hobbies than I thought LOL.
Writing is definitely personal. I don't have any non-fandom friends who write for fun that I'm aware of, but maybe some of them have secret hobbies too LOL.
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According to the authority on hobbies that is me, lol. I say take it and run with it.
I've been so curious on other peoples' hobbies that they don't talk about since this has come up a few times. But just asking people "what's a hobby you have that you don't talk about" seems like a great way to open up a can of worms. Maybe if it's prefaced with "I won't ask additional questions"...
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---A copy of the winning Young Author's books would be put in the school library so other kids could check them out, and the winners would get a trophy or plaque. In 8th grade, I won first place for the whole district, and my grandparents had my book professionally bound as a hardback as a gift for me. That was the last piece of fiction I wrote before I started writing fanfic, and it was the perfect bridge into what I'm best known for now - it was a cancer story LOL. Another girl in my class had won first place the year before for a story about drunk driving, which gave me the idea that if I also wrote a tearjerker about a serious topic, I would have a better shot at winning. Well, sure enough... my plan totally worked LOL. That was the start of me writing medical drama.
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I love that you pandered to the audience for glory, lol! What made you pick cancer specifically for that one other than "tearjerker about a serious topic"? Did writing Broken feel like going back to that at all?
It's sweet that your grandparents had it bound for you. :) That whole thing sounds fun! Did only one person get picked for each grade? And were the district-wide prizes by grade or just overall for all submissions?
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---The Broken era is when I really got into listening to music while I wrote, so I started with what I had, which was the Titanic soundtracks and apparently Braveheart. I don't remember if I actually owned the Braveheart soundtrack before Broken or if I bought it while I was writing Broken for that purpose, but I have always loved that score. James Horner is one of my favorite movie composers. I needed something sad and dramatic to listen to while I angsted my way through that story, and it fit that mood well.
I've always loved Linkin Park. But yes, very emo! I listened to a lot of LP and Evanescence while writing Broken too LOL.
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That all makes sense to me! It's a pretty sad and dramatic soundtrack! I would love it even more if you bought it specifically for Broken and didn't already have it, lol.
The summer I liked Blink 182 and Linkin Park was my teenage emo phase, haha. Angsty Nick needs emo inspiration, of course.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---LOL I call them "focus fails." But being able to focus fail and go back to actually writing when I feel like it is part of what makes it fun for me and not something that feels like word. I don't ever want it to feel like work.
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Aw, a "focus fail" sounds way more productive than "time suck." I'm going to start calling them that. Except sometimes I focus fail and sometimes I focus BSOD. Like that time a couple of weeks ago when I spent my time determining differing diversity in different boy band fanfic circles, lol.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---Yes, it's crazy! Writing a story set in 2008 has been interesting because, to me, 2008 doesn't feel that long ago... and yet, I find myself having to fact check so many little details to make sure I'm not writing about things that didn't exist yet then. Questions I've looked up include: Did people have smartphones then? (The first iPhone came out in 2007, so yes.) Did most households still have a landline phone then? (Yes.) Did TMZ exist? (Yes. I had fun browsing TMZ's website from 2008 via the Wayback Machine yesterday. It was actually way more user friendly than TMZ's current site because there weren't a ton of ads slowing it down!)
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1990 doesn't feel that long ago to me and yesterday someone told me they were born in 1995 and I just... felt so old. I also had to fact check things like that for my little holiday story. What cell phone would Nick reasonably had in 1999? A Nokia brick? (Technically the model before the infamous brick.) Great. Oh man, TMZ back in the day... I miss when websites didn't have a million ads. Does the Wayback Machine cut out ads too or if there were ads, would it have had ads?
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 02:39:35 PM ---I love the Kids React videos. I'm assuming you've seen the Kids React to BSB one? And BSB reacts to Kids React to BSB? LOL
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I have! It's one of my favorites when I need a quick BSB laugh. Brian's singing commentary ("I could be your dad..."), the whole "why are we in a tube?" bit, and how excited Howie was when the one teenager said "Howie had the great hair?" LOL!
RokofAges75:
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 07:01:52 PM ---I don't know if you can be a main character if you're in a coma... More like an inciting incident or a macguffin? Unless there was anything paranormal going on?
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Only if the whole story is a coma dream or there's something paranormal going on, which is not the case. Kevin is not irrelevant enough to be a MacGuffin, but I agree, he's not a main character either. He's more like... a carrot. Poor Koma Kevin, stuck in limbo for the last decade because I stopped updating that story LOL.
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 07:01:52 PM ---I love that you pandered to the audience for glory, lol! What made you pick cancer specifically for that one other than "tearjerker about a serious topic"? Did writing Broken feel like going back to that at all?
It's sweet that your grandparents had it bound for you. :) That whole thing sounds fun! Did only one person get picked for each grade? And were the district-wide prizes by grade or just overall for all submissions?
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That was all because of Lurlene again! LOL My favorite book in middle school was "Don't Die, My Love," which was a tearjerker romance about a high school football player who dies of cancer. I was inspired by that story, but I made my main character a basketball player instead and let him live at the end. Broken didn't really remind me of that because it was a lot different and because I had already written a bad Brian cancer story called Don't Wanna Lose You Now LOL.
It was really fun, one of my favorite parts of grade school! There was one winner from each classroom in grades 2-8 and then an overall winner for the whole district. I won for my classroom every year from grades 4-8 and then got the overall in 8th grade, so I went out on a high note. That's really the only fiction writing I remember doing in school, so it was good practice for my future fanfics.
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 07:01:52 PM ---That all makes sense to me! It's a pretty sad and dramatic soundtrack! I would love it even more if you bought it specifically for Broken and didn't already have it, lol.
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I very well may have! LOL I don't remember.
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 07:01:52 PM ---The summer I liked Blink 182 and Linkin Park was my teenage emo phase, haha. Angsty Nick needs emo inspiration, of course.
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Did we all have a teenage emo summer? LOL Mine was when I was 15. My dad got into a car accident and couldn't sleep on the waterbed my parents still had at that time because he had broken ribs and a busted knee and needed more support, so he moved into my bedroom, and I spent the summer living in the cold, spider-infested basement. I started listening to Papa Roach, Linkin Park, and other early 2000s emo-rock bands and writing stories about suicide. It was an angsty summer. LOL But yes, perfect inspiration for emo Nick. I listened to a lot of angry Eminem music around the Broken era too.
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 28, 2021, 07:01:52 PM ---Does the Wayback Machine cut out ads too or if there were ads, would it have had ads?
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I'm not sure if it cut out the ads or if there were just significantly fewer ads. All I know is that it scrolled much faster than the current site, which I could hardly stand trying to navigate.
nicksgal:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 03:12:15 PM ---If I was more religious, I'd probably buy it, but it would just look sacrilegious on me LOL. It reminded me of these funny Jesus condiment shirts Rose and I saw in Tennessee a few years ago.
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Same, I won't say that I don't buy things that make me laugh, because that's a driving factor in me buying lots of things. But it just feels like crossing a line. Those condiment shirts are also hilarious!
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 03:12:15 PM ---Yeah, I came across multiple anecdotes by different people about having hallucinations as a side effect of certain medications, so I decided that would be fun to include.
There's a theory that the Salem Witch Trials were perpetuated by the effects of a type of fungus that grows in bread and can cause hallucinations, paranoia, spasms, and so on. I wrote a paper about it once in college. It was an interesting theory.
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I believe that! What an interesting thing to include.
I'd heard that theory too; it seems pretty plausible to me. Grains in general are really susceptible to all kinds of fungi, bacteria, infections, infestations, and so on. I wonder if these things happen less because society has gotten better about recognizing that these things happen before it gets into cooked food or if everything is so processed that it doesn't matter.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 03:12:15 PM ---I have heard some of the Wizard of Oz stuff, like the guy supposedly hanging from the tree. I love that behind-the-scenes stuff in movies; it's so interesting!
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The stunts gone wrong ones are interesting too! Like Isla Fisher almost drowning for real in the "trick gone wrong" that's in the script for Now You See Me.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 03:12:15 PM ---It drove me crazy once I looked up and realized how many there were! I like to keep my tabs clean too. My students drive me crazy cause they'll have like 20 tabs open at the same time. I'm like, "No wonder your Chromebook is slow! Close all those tabs!"
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Since we were talking about it, I've been closing some of the tabs I'm not actively using, haha.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 03:12:15 PM ---It really is interesting. I also think it's cool how many connections you can make between mythology and religion from different cultures and time periods in history. It just goes to show how much humans have in common. If only we could focus more on our similarities than our differences.
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Yes! So many cultures have similar myths about creation and similar legends surrounding various gods or goddesses and their roles. And then that leads to whether there's common ancestry or how myths move. It's all so neat. And I agree, there's so many similarities even in modern monotheistic religions. I wish we could all reframe how we look at the differences.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 03:12:15 PM ---I came across a cool-looking tool this weekend called the Fantasy Language Generator: https://www.vulgarlang.com/ I didn't delve into it much, so don't know if this would be helpful to you or not, but it looked interesting.
I think creating your own language would be complicated, but really cool if you could pull it off. How much do you think you would actually use it in the story? I wonder because, as a reader, I would probably just skim right over anything not written in English. I remember reading the "Redwall" books as a kid and skimming through the heavy dialect some of the characters spoke with because it took so much effort to figure out what their dialogue was actually saying LOL.
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Vulgar is cool! I also found Zompist when I started looking into this, which is root word building, and The International Phonic Alphabet, which is interesting to hear sounds and distinguish how they're formed (which is what Vulgar uses for the basis of their generator). I've also read that The Art of Language Invention by David J. Peterson (the guy who created Dothraki for GOT, among other things) is an interesting read. I've always found linguistics fascinating and wish it had been part of my major or I'd actually looked into it for fun. I did take a class in college that was part of my minor that focused on how culture influenced the Japanese language and it was so fascinating.
I don't know how much time I would spend on it, since how much slower can I get in my actual writing? lol! But I do think that I need to get away from using real languages in an otherwise non-explicitly "x country" setting ("inspired by" is more appropriate), especially when representation, but not appropriation, is something that's been on my mind. It would probably be similar to all it is now, for the reason you mentioned: names, places, landmarks. And even character names are English anyway, but I did come up with an in-universe reason for that, so that's all good. I think there's one point where something is mentioned as being written in an older text, but what's written there is just summarized in English by our crew. I remember having similar issues with the heavy dialect in Redwall as a kid; that's part of why I try not to use dialects. But then there's fun instances like the rabbit language in Watership Down where it's mostly noted in footnotes until the end of the story where a sentence is made up of words in the footnotes. The only other reasoning I could think of for mentioning it in the text and not just in my head and plans would be something for rites and rituals, maybe swears of some sort (the Boys swear way more than I ever have them do, but I wouldn't mind writing it as much if I made them up), and possibly a few other specific places just based on the age of the characters in question.
nicksgal:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 07:41:41 PM ---Only if the whole story is a coma dream or there's something paranormal going on, which is not the case. Kevin is not irrelevant enough to be a MacGuffin, but I agree, he's not a main character either. He's more like... a carrot. Poor Koma Kevin, stuck in limbo for the last decade because I stopped updating that story LOL.
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Aww, I would never consider Kevin irrelevant. #TeamKevin! LMAO! A carrot! Poor Koma Karrot Kevin in limbo.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 07:41:41 PM ---That was all because of Lurlene again! LOL My favorite book in middle school was "Don't Die, My Love," which was a tearjerker romance about a high school football player who dies of cancer. I was inspired by that story, but I made my main character a basketball player instead and let him live at the end. Broken didn't really remind me of that because it was a lot different and because I had already written a bad Brian cancer story called Don't Wanna Lose You Now LOL.
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LOL! Lurlene strikes again! I'm glad you let your high school basketball player live. Now I know why when you poked around making Broken OF that Nick was a high school basketball player (well that, and Nick is more basketball oriented). Did your Brian cancer story remind you of it? lol
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 07:41:41 PM ---It was really fun, one of my favorite parts of grade school! There was one winner from each classroom in grades 2-8 and then an overall winner for the whole district. I won for my classroom every year from grades 4-8 and then got the overall in 8th grade, so I went out on a high note. That's really the only fiction writing I remember doing in school, so it was good practice for my future fanfics.
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I love things like that! It sounds awesome! And such a great way to get students excited about writing. I'm glad it helped you in your career as a fanfic writer. You should look into the NaNo Young Writer's Program for your students. I always wanted to do it with a classroom, but I ended up teaching too young. Unless the district you're in now does that Young Authors thing too.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 28, 2021, 07:41:41 PM ---Did we all have a teenage emo summer? LOL Mine was when I was 15. My dad got into a car accident and couldn't sleep on the waterbed my parents still had at that time because he had broken ribs and a busted knee and needed more support, so he moved into my bedroom, and I spent the summer living in the cold, spider-infested basement. I started listening to Papa Roach, Linkin Park, and other early 2000s emo-rock bands and writing stories about suicide. It was an angsty summer. LOL But yes, perfect inspiration for emo Nick. I listened to a lot of angry Eminem music around the Broken era too.
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At least! From what I can tell, it was "teenage emo years" if said teenagers were not firmly in team boyband (specific or general). I feel like it's hard to be super emo when the Backstreet Boys exist.
A cold spider-infested basement sounds like my nightmare, that would have made me want to be emo. Mine was... Eighth grade? Seventh grade? Eighth grade sounds right. I'm mostly glad I got it out of the way before high school so I could go back to "happy sunshine Backstreet joy" full time. I can't remember what was the catalyst for it? Peer pressure of some sort, probably.
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