Fic Talk > General Discussion
The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
RokofAges75:
--- Quote from: mare on April 23, 2021, 06:54:57 PM ---Ugh! I know what you mean about The Resident. I mean, I get why they did that for plot purposes but even still. In real life, she’d go back to the hospital and the doctor would be like “Well.. are tests showed she was fine so it must be something she ate.”
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nicksgal:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 11:59:23 AM ---It's probably good to keep it intentionally vague about the time period; that gives the story a more timeless feel. That's interesting that the guys all read younger than they were meant to be. It could be because you were also younger when you originally wrote them. I used to worry about that when I was a teenager writing about them in their twenties. I would wonder if their way of thinking seemed too immature. There's a big difference between a sixteen-year-old and a twenty-six-year-old. Now that we're adults too, the age difference doesn't seem to matter as much. I don't feel like I'm that different at thirty-six than I was at twenty-six, not compared to sixteen.
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PNecklace as a whole is more vague. I'm trying to be more concrete to my fantasy timeline than to Backstreet time. The beginning and end of PBox is solidly "it's spring of 2005," but the rest of it, I took out hard references to "it's been x years" or "this happened x years ago" just because the timeline doesn't make sense. Mainly a twenty-five year old dating an eighteen-year-old. Maybe that's the real fantasy in the story, lol.
It's easier to be more concrete and less vague in the OF version, which I do like. And it's easier to adjust "reads eighteen Nick" a year or two down. Plus it makes everything slightly less horrible, lol. Like poor twenty-five year old Nick was stuck in that cave for ten to twelve years going slowly insane if the timeline remains accurate. A sixteen-year-old Nick would be like three years. Still horrible, but not as extreme. Realistically fanfic PBox Nick should not be as well adjusted as he is. Who fed him? Was there water? If it was that terrible, why didn't he just leave even if he was scared and thought he deserved it? I have so many questions for seventeen-year-old me, lol. Also, why did seventeen-year-old me want to psychologicall y torture her beloved Nick in such a gruesome way?
I know when I was younger, "do the Boys read believably older than me?" and "do the Boys read believably as... well boys?" were questions I often asked myself. But I didn't really stress about it. Now when I look back, it's pretty noticeable. At least "don't read older," the jury is still out on "believably as boys," so I guess they read believably as male?
Twenty-six year old me and thirty-three year old me are pretty much the same, though thirty-three year old me has her life together a little better. She's not trying to be involved in love triangles anymore, lol. On the contrary, twenty-three year old me is still pretty different from thirty-three year old me. Not at the core or anything, but definitely confidence in who I am as a person. Twenty-three year old me cared way too much about comparing her life to everyone else and worrying that she was "behind her friends getting married" or "too mature for her friends still acting like college sophomores." On a whole, present me is a lot better about keeping feelings about life centered on myself, and possibly the hubs, lol.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 11:59:23 AM ---LOL I remember having a similar moment when I was wanting to rewrite Broken as an OF YA novel. Lurlene McDaniel published a new novel about a male high school swimming star who loses his leg to bone cancer, which sounded so similar to my plot of Nick as a high school basketball player. I was like, "Are you serious??" Her books never featured male protagonists before, so I thought at least the fact that my main character was a boy made it somewhat unique in that genre. I bought the book and read it; it wasn't really that similar to Broken or very good. (I realized I had grown out of her books by then.) I guess the lesson there is there's always going to be something similar out there, even in the world of fantasy, but don't let it derail you because no one else writes like you. As long as you're not outright copying someone else, you're fine. I get the point you made earlier about being a sponge, too, and worrying you're going to inadvertently copy if you read too many books in the same genre. That's another reason I'm liking memoirs lately, because drawing on real life experiences isn't the same as copying someone else's made-up ideas.
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No, Lurlene! It's like she sensed someone was coming into her niche market on "crying and dying" besides Nicholas Sparks, lol. Do any of his books feature male protagonists being sick either? I can't think of one. I'm bummed you read it and have a more mature view of Lurlene instead of looking back with nostalgia and joy, but it's good you read it just to see how similar they were.
It definitely ruined my joy at seeing books about demons for half a day, lol. I was too focused on whether I would have to change Nick's name. My one non-negotiable outside of, you know, the non-fanfic elements I made up myself, lol.
I think memoirs are great for that, especially because you can take different accounts and weave them together with your own ideas to create a unique experience, like "this seems pretty standard, but these things vary."
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 11:59:23 AM ---Yeah, maybe. Although reading them as a kid is what created that fear LOL. At least as an adult, I can talk myself down from hypochondriac thoughts better than I could as a kid, when I would read a book about a girl who got leukemia and then cry myself to sleep, convinced that I also had leukemia. Now I'm just like, "Eh, I haven't died yet, so it's probably no big deal."
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Bridge to Terabitha was my big adult fear book, lol. I think my melt down about it also turned into a meltdown about The Last Unicorn. Such a melodramatic special snowflake as a child, lol. I'm a bit of a hypochondirac myself, but I blame my mother for that. It's more like "leaping to the worst possible conclusion first" for everything, it's just easy to do that with medical things because of Web MD always saying "and I guess it could be cancer."
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 11:59:23 AM ---No.
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Hard no, lol. I was joking. It didn't fit what your story sounds like, but I just wanted to ask for fun.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 11:59:23 AM ---Absolutely. Memoirs are super helpful because you can never really know what something is like unless you've gone through it yourself. Reading the experience of someone who has gone through it in their own words is a good way to understand that perspective. Both of the memoirs I've read or am reading are fairly short, I think, probably under 300 pages, although I have the Kindle versions so it's hard to tell.
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It's good that they're short so that the research doesn't detract from writing too much. I'm glad there's resources out there to help get perspective. I wouldn't want anything we all write in our stories to befall any of us in our day-to-day lives just to provide perspective.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 11:59:23 AM ---Yes, I think writing a pitch sounds like an intimidating part of the publishing process. You have to summarize and pitch your book just right so that it sounds like something that will sell, but also something different enough from what's already out there on the shelves.
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Yes! And summarize it to its bare bones instead of getting caught up in the tiny details that are important to you, but not necessary in a summary. I would probably have to rewrite that more than the actual novel, lol.
nicksgal:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 12:08:49 PM ---That's not bad at all!! I think trying to write an entire novel in a month - even a first draft - is overly ambitious. Looking at you, NaNoWriMo. If I locked myself in a room for a month with nowhere else to be and nothing else to do, I could maybe churn out 50,000 words, which would be a short novel, but that is not realistic.
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Yeah, my 60,000 words is not working out and that's only a third of this novel, lol. I think it was easier in the beginning because everything was fresh and new and even if I wrote ahead, it was still coming up soon. Now there's nothing I want to write ahead in it. And there's more to do outside of novel writing than I had in November. Maybe I need to rewatch last season's Masked Singer and/or DWTS. Get some of the early magic back.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 12:08:49 PM ---Ten chapters is still a lot when you're posting one a week; that's still a solid two months of updates you have hoarded. But I know what you mean. I start to feel that way when I haven't finished a chapter in a while.
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I keep telling myself that too! Every time I freak out a little, I say "You have until June/July to figure this out. It's going to be fine." But it still makes me a little anxious, lol. I think it's because I enjoying knowing the chapters are there whereas when I wasn't hoarding, they just weren't available to lean on so I had to force myself through things a lot more.
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 12:08:49 PM ---Yes!! And why do they always involve two guys lusting after the same girl? It's usually not two girls and a guy. And the girls at the center are infuriating. Stop playing with these boys' emotions and just choose!
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I wonder if stories with more LGBTQ representation vary it a little more. I was also thinking that two girls and a guy is rare, but I can't even think of one that's a girl and a guy lusting over the same girl/guy or even three folks of the same gender. Maybe I'd mind it less if the dynamics switched up a bit.
Yes!! It's crazy that everyone involved knows it's going on and no one ever goes, "You know what, I'm out. This is too much drama for me." Like they all just go along with it until the girl at the center chooses! Outside of fictionland, I feel like it's more common with casual dating to see multiple people at once, but that's too exhausting to get to the point where you'd be equally stringing two people along. I get exhausted just reading it in fiction knowing that it's exhausting. And why does the girl at the center never end up deciding "I guess it was neither of you. I pick myself, I've got stuff to do." instead?
I get the inherent appeal of "so many people like me at once, I'm so lucky," but I just hate it so much.
--- Quote from: mare on April 23, 2021, 06:54:57 PM ---As far as trying to find things to watch that is in your favored genre, I’ve been pretty lucky finding stuff, but I do find myself always comparing things to either Supernatural, Alias or Battlestar Gallactica and nothing has ever surpassed any of them.
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I think I'm lucky that tv-wise, the shows I like best are ensemble sitcoms or dramedies, so it's lot easier to enjoy them without comparing them to each other. If I don't like the ensemble, I won't watch it.
--- Quote from: mare on April 23, 2021, 06:54:57 PM ---Reading wise, I’m really not picky. The book just isn’t allowed to suck. lol
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lmao! This is so quintessential ly Mare. How often do you decide a book sucks? If you decide it sucks, do you stop reading and never look at it again or do you still finish the book?
nicksgal:
I was exhausted yesterday, I even took a nap, so I woke up around 8am feeling so refreshed and thinking it would be a productive day. Then I went to make my coffee...
I suspected my coffee maker was on its last legs because it was doing about half the coffee I had prepared it for yesterday and sure enough, there was still water that hadn't drained, but the drip tray was full of water that wasn't there yesterday. Sigh... Thankfully, I had another keurig coffee maker in the garage that was brand new because it was a gift to use in my classroom, but I never took it to work because coffee maker and pre-Ks sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. But then it took half an hour to set up after digging it out of the garage. And this was on top of the half hour I'd already spent washing dishes because I'd wanted coffee and my Backstreet Boys mug was dirty.
I'm now on my second cup of coffee and still haven't written a thing, but I for sure earned my coffee today. The streak still lives from yesterday and I think I'm finally ready to get started. Hope everyone else's writing is going more smoothly!
mare:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on April 24, 2021, 12:13:26 PM ---Yeah, it's all for the drama. By the way, Mina better not really be leaving that show because she's the best and most unique character on it.
I hope do get a chance to watch the ER reunion! It was so good!
That's me with medical drama shows; I compare everything to ER, and no show has ever even come close.
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She did leave the show
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