It did feel nice, although I think there's a glitch because it still says that I finished posting it in 2021 even though I changed it, so who knows! I would be very sad if I truly had started PBox in 2005 and finished it in 2021, lol. The series, fine. The one book, eek, lol. So far, no increased readership; will continue to provide updates.
I was able to push through it yesterday, but not the first time it happened this week. It was just a line with a lot of alliteration, so it felt almost lyrical. I would have shared it because I enjoyed it that much, but it would have been spoilery. You're right, we've just got to keep on stringing words and sentences together! I'm glad I'm not the only one that happens to; I wonder why our brains do that.
You probably missed a chapter. The same thing happened to me, and that's what it was. I had to go back and check chapters until I found the one I had apparently skipped over, and that fixed it.
LOL That will be 00Carter, except we'll probably never actually finish it. 2007-???
I adore alliteration!! Probably too much - sometimes I overuse it to the point of sounding cheesy, but I love that lyrical flow.
I feel like a lot of new writers get bogged down by the "right" way to do things. And browsing r/writing or r/fanfic has only made me feel more that way. And I think that's disheartening that people are so paralyzed by the thought of doing something "wrong" in a creative medium that they're afraid to try.
Yes, that makes me sad, too. I also cringe every time I see someone talk about the lessons they learned in school, like "show not tell" or "said is dead," confusing them or leading to overwriting/purple prose. Personally, I don't remember ever really being taught how to write fiction in school. The focus was on persuasive and expository writing, and the instruction was very formulaic. We responded to writing prompts, and we used graphic organizers like the hamburger or the house, and we wrote five-paragraph essays. It wasn't until high school that a teacher finally told us, "You know, an essay can be longer than five paragraphs." Mind blown. LOL So I get how kids/newbies can be so rigid in their thinking that they assume the way they were taught is the only way to do it. Maybe it's a good thing, then, that I was never explicitly taught how to write fiction and learned it on my own by reading and emulating what other writers did.
I do teach fiction writing, and while I definitely teach "show don't tell" and have taught lessons on varying word choice instead of overusing certain words (more so words like "good" and "bad" than "said"), I try to show my students that there are multiple ways to do it. I write in front of them to model what I'm teaching, but we also study mentor texts to see different ways published authors write. They have a lot more freedom as far as what they write about and how they write it. Some of them still tell far more than show, while others over-show by including every mundane detail, but I'm always impressed by how creative they are and how well some of them write. Hopefully I've helped spark that creativity and not stifled. I wonder if any of them have discovered fanfic over the years. That would be cool!
And I get wanting to help people avoid the pain of rejection for something simple like "use strong verbs instead of weak verbs paired with adverbs," but I also think that if anyone's seriously pursuing publishing that they would find people to read their drafts before sending them out to agents or publishers. And those beta readers would say "have you considered 'sprinted' instead of 'quickly ran'?" or whatever. And fanfic, even more so, I can't imagine anyone's going to pop into a review unprompted to talk about the use of adverbs or plot holes or whatever unless it was a clarity/format issue that made it hard to read/understand.
Yeah, beta readers are good for that. That seems like a good first step for anyone seriously considering publishing. Because you're right, most reviewers aren't going to point out something like that. It seems too nitpicky. I would only give that kind of feedback if asked to beta read.
I can't remember if we talked about this back when we discussed "breakout" stories or not, but do you remember actively thinking "Oh, x is a "writing rule" I am breaking, what can I do to make my story better?" Or "I feel like I'm not doing x well enough, what can I do to fix that?" Anyone else can answer too, as always.
I know I had a PDF I'd lovingly saved to a floppy disk at my mom's work so I could bring it home to my internet-less computer because it talked about story structure and character arcs, but had a section specifically focused on villains. And this would have been when I was working on that 2003 OF because I think I some point I realized the villain was just evil for the sake of being evil and it was kind of boring. So I went on this whole research project to figure out what I was "doing wrong" with my boring villain (who shouldn't have been boring, they were a literal god and awesome in theory). Anyway, long story short, the answer was something to the effect of "because they're evil isn't a good motivation for a villain to do the things they do, so they should have a reason just like the heroes have a reason, which probably isn't 'because they're good'." Anyway, the point of this story related to BSB fanfic was that I got it figured out for that story and took it to heart when I was crafting Justin and Renee in PBox, and I like to think they're better for it. But I wouldn't have gotten to that point without reading other villains that were good and writing a bunch of BSB fanfics where the "villains" ("rivals" is probably a better term) were ho hum.
I realize this particular example isn't directly applicable to many BSB fanfics, it's not like cancer has a tragic backstory where it was shunned by the regular cells for being a little different, so it decided to make other cells like it and destroy the world. (Or maybe that is the backstory for every cancer cell, lol.)
That is a good question and a good example with the villain thing. I can actually relate to that. I used to write more suspense stories in my early days of fanfic because that is one of my favorite genres. But I wasn't good at it. My villains were too cliched - mostly evil NSYNC members out for revenge or evil, gold-digging girlfriends - and my plots were too predictable. I tried writing a mystery once, and my readers figured out who the real killer was early on in the story, so I tried the Scream trick of adding a second villain, but then the second villain's motive didn't really make sense - not that the original villain's motive was great to begin with. It was a mess. I also wrote the Scooby Doo-style villain monologues where they explain how and why they did what they did. ("And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling Backstreet Boys!") The best suspense story I wrote in the pre-Broken era was inspired by a Lifetime Original Movie, which says a lot LOL.
At some point I realized I sucked at writing suspense and villains and shied away from that type of story for years. I did enjoy writing Dr. Rough in 00Carter, but he is such a parody that he doesn't really count as a serious villain. I finally gave suspense another try with Guilty Roads, and we all know how well that went. But the next time I tried tackling that kind of story, I put a lot more effort into developing the villains as well-rounded characters rather than cliched caricatures. I worked on the characters first, before plotting the full story. I did a ton of research into why real people like them do what they do and wrote detailed back stories for them to make their motives believable. Like other psychopaths, they were charismatic and even likeable characters before their callous nature came out, rather than pure evil. And no one fully predicted where the story was going, although points to Tracy for being suspicious about one of the villains early on. I still was able to pull off a twist and get the reader reaction I was hoping for, instead of having people figure out everything in advance. So that experience gave me back some confidence when it comes to writing suspense and villains. With the right idea, I would write another one.
But I still prefer cancer as a villain. Poor little cancer cells, shunned by the regular ones for being mutants. Of course they want to take over the world! They're just like Dr. Rough! LOL
Going back to your original question, I do remember actively thinking before I started Broken, "If I'm going to write another cancer story, I have to write it well. I have to research and write it realistically and try to make it at least as good as Swollen Issues II." I knew my writing wasn't as good as some of the stories I read, and I think it was the challenge of trying to live up to Swollen Issues II, the story that inspired Broken, that forced me to up my game and strive for greatness. Once I got into my groove on that one, my writing just got better and better. I'm sure part of that was just maturity and the natural progression of my writing up to that point, but I really did try to step it up with my descriptions and characters' emotions and of course the medical research. Swollen Issues II is far from the best written piece of fanfic of all time, but it packs an emotional punch and gets the medical stuff right. Those were the two things I was going for above all, and I think I succeeded the most I could at that point in my life.
2008 was a big year for me learning how to write a setting. I think setting sometimes gets neglected in fanfic, at least in our fandom, because we use a lot of the same basic settings - cities like LA or Orlando, Backstreet Boys' houses, tour buses, concert venues, hospitals, etc. I wrote a lot of AU in 2008, between 00Carter, Secrets of the Heart, and Song for the Undead, and that is how I learned to develop more detailed settings. I remember putting a lot of effort into researching the geography of Antarctica to write the opening scene of the Ice Ice Baby episode of 00Carter. I also read a lot of Stephen King that year and remember being inspired by 'Salem's Lot as I described the settings in Secrets of the Heart. Granted, setting plays a more important role in 'Salem's Lot than it did in my story, but at least it got me to put more thought into my settings than I had previously. I do a lot more Google-mapping while writing these days than I ever did before then.
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Topic: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4) (Read 349717 times)