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Author Topic: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)  (Read 334379 times)

RokofAges75

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #180 on: July 10, 2021, 10:56:38 PM »

I don't think I'm googling the right thing... Anyone know off hand which of the Boys were still living in Florida circa Millennium? Mostly Kevin's living arrangements at the time. It's honestly just a "what Kevin was doing prior to this scene" type throw away line and I thought "on a date with Kristin" might be good whereabouts.

Edited to Add: Nevermind, I finally found an old article referencing Kevin and Brian's engagements that said that Kevin was still living in Florida, but Kristin was living in LA around that time. Think she would have happened to pop by Florida to hang out before the Boys officially left on tour? lol

Glad you found what you were looking for!  All I know is that Kevin and Kristin bought a house in L.A. in March 2001.  https://variety.com/2009/dirt/real-estalker/backstreet-boy-kevin-richardson-moving-on-1201229329/  This is the house I made the terrible blueprint for for my story LOL.

All my stories set that far back in time have taken place when they were on tour, so I've never really researched where they were all living then.  I know Brian and Leighanne bought their current house in 2000 before they got married, but I'm not sure where they lived before that.  AJ bought a house in L.A. in August 2001 (https://variety.com/2011/dirt/real-estalker/backstreet-boy-a-j-mclean-wants-to-move-1201231580/), so he may still have been living in Florida before that.  I'm assuming Howie and Nick also still lived in Florida then.

In summary, I think you can realistically write them all living in Florida in your story, just not in the same house by the beach in Orlando. ;)
« Last Edit: July 10, 2021, 10:58:10 PM by RokofAges75 »
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~Julie

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nicksgal

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #181 on: July 10, 2021, 11:41:48 PM »

Yay for 1000 words and a title!  That is huge!  And yes, anticipating the readers' reaction can be a great motivator.  Can't wait till you're far enough to start posting!

It's definitely getting somewhere, just slowly lurching along. It helps that the chapters feel more like 2500 word ones than 3000 word ones. So all in all, it'll only be about 40,000 words or so. If I can pick up some steam on it, I can be done with that near the end of August, hopefully. Yeah, unless y'all don't find it nearly as funny as I do. Then you'll be like "why did Dee write this weird story that isn't funny at all?" lol I hope you do enjoy it. I've been listening to the Boys all evening while shredding papers, so I'm hoping it puts me in a more BSB writing mood than chores.


Yep, I definitely deleted that line when I went back to it last night LOL.  I finally made it up to my writing room and got over 100 words written in a sitting for the first time in a week, which is... something.  I did not stay up there and write for long, though.  I dunno; I just wasn't feeling it.  I haven't had caffeine in like three days, so that could be part of my problem.  After another lazy day, I am drinking coffee at 10 p.m. in hopes it will fuel me to either have a productive writing night or go paint my bathroom LOL.

I figured you would. I always have too. I had kind of a blah writing day today too. I ended up doing some chores around my house, reading a few more chapters in "Solutions and Other Problems" after like three months, and watching a few BBT episodes. I kept popping back to writing ever few hours or so, but only got a few dozen words here and there. No caffeine?! Oh dear. I had so much caffeine yesterday and then drank all evening. That could be part of my blahs, lol. Today I had a regular amount of caffeine, but felt very lazy all day. I hope your 10pm coffee gives you the energy to do something productive! We have a clear idea of how your neighbors would feel about night lawn mowing. How would they feel about night painting? lol


I also started Schitt's Creek a few years ago and only watched the first episode.  I thought it was okay, but not great enough to keep going.  Well, my mom is obsessed with it now, so she convinced me to give it another try.  It's definitely one of those shows that gets better after a couple of episodes, when you get to know the characters.  It's not usually laugh out loud funny, but it is entertaining.  I'm not really a sitcom person; I binge-watched all of The Office a few years ago and loved that one, but that's probably the only one I've seen every episode of, besides South Park if that counts.

I've been on more of a documentary kick this weekend.  I watched two documentaries about the Olympics/gymnastics - "Golden" and "The 96 Effect" on Peacock - and am working my way through "This is Pop" on Netflix.  Brian is interviewed in the Stockholm Syndrome episode about Swedish songwriters.

Good to know. I mentioned it yesterday when we started talking about shows worth bingeing and was told it's great, so maybe I'll have to give it a rewatch if you had the same initial opinion that I did. I'm surprised I didn't like it because everyone keeps telling me it's good and I do like sitcoms.

Ooh, fun! I've been meaning to watch "This is Pop." Hubs and I were watching the "Dark Side of Football" the other day and apparently the same channel is starting "Dark Side of the 90s" and I am intrigued. But I said that to the hubs and he said "It's probably Kurt Cobain and stuff like that." He seemed skeptical when I said being in a boyband wasn't all sunshine and rainbows either (for the actual boybands, I had a great time in boyband land in the 90s). Lance made that Boyband Con film, I bet he'd go on and talk about ponzi schemes.
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

nicksgal

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #182 on: July 11, 2021, 12:01:25 AM »

I know, it sucks.  I guess it's my fault for not logging into my old Yahoo account more often, but damn.  I wish I had copied and pasted them all into a Word document or something because I would still have that saved.  I wish there was a way to mass-save reviews from AC in case the site goes down permanently someday.  That's a lot of copy-pasting to do LOL.

I had not looked at the main site this week until you said that, but wow, how weird to see Lenni post a story out of nowhere!  That has happened over the years; old regulars will pop on and say hi or update something, then disappear again.  I'm glad you stuck around!

Right? I'm thinking of all the old emails I had that I would have loved to keep if I had known the internet wasn't forever. Not review related, but I probably emailed myself the early version of PBox at one point too -- I wish I knew what the first eight chapters were originally like back in 2005. I wouldn't have any of that saved now though, since it would have been on my various laptops that died. Oh well. Saving your AC reviews sounds like your next fanfic adjacent project when you're done posting SAMS on AO3, lol.

I like to check on Wednesday when I update, just to see what everyone else is doing. Or if anyone else is doing something besides you and Tracy, but only because I know when you both update because you say so. I wonder why it's pops and not sticks. But of course! My point in saying hi was to catch back up. :)

For Lenni specifically, I wondered if she had an AO3 account. There's a lot of turtle love over there that I think would appreciate her stories too (I looked it up). Lenni, if you're lurking and you're not on AO3, you should be. You can log on and confirm or deny. :)


Aww, I wish you had come back in 2011 and cruised with us!  But maybe that wasn't enough time away for you to miss fanfic enough to stage a successful comeback like you did last year.  I do believe everything happens for a reason.  And I hope there will be more cruises in the future!  My bank account and credit card are happy they've had plenty of time to recover since the last one I went on, though.

I feel the same way about that question.  I don't think I would go back and do anything differently because everything I've done up to this point has made me the writer and person I am today.  Maybe I would go back and tell myself not to post some of the stories that still sit unfinished, but even that was a valuable learning experience that taught me to hoard chapters and not post until I'm reasonably sure I can finish the story.  Maybe I would think longer and harder about the name of my site if I knew it was going to be around 21+ years later.  I don't necessarily dislike the name Dreamer's Sanctuary, but sometimes I wish I'd come up with something a little more clever or Backstreet-related.  Fun fact:  I strongly considered changing the name to "Sadness is Beautiful" sometime around 2001, but ultimately decided it would be too much work to rebrand everything and change URLs.  I'm glad I stuck with the original name just for continuity's sake.

I will be honest. I did not set myself to "hidden" to lurk while logged in and someone came on and looked at my profile and I chickened out, lol. It might have been Rose if memory serves me correctly. I was also still not writing fanfic at the time, so I doubt my comeback would have been successful. But maybe being here would have made me want to write again too, so who knows! :shrug: I hear there's another potential Vegas residency and roulette in a casino is almost the same as roulette on a boat, lol. The pools are closed (or very limited) in December though, I think. And yes, cruises are expensive! But worth it.

Exactly. I agree, it's even worth it to make a mistake. None of us can be sure anything we do will have good or bad outcomes until we do them. That's interesting that you thought about changing the name, but you're totally right, rebranding is a headache! What made you pick Dreamer's Sanctuary to start?
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

nicksgal

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #183 on: July 11, 2021, 12:16:22 AM »

Glad you found what you were looking for!  All I know is that Kevin and Kristin bought a house in L.A. in March 2001.  https://variety.com/2009/dirt/real-estalker/backstreet-boy-kevin-richardson-moving-on-1201229329/  This is the house I made the terrible blueprint for for my story LOL.

All my stories set that far back in time have taken place when they were on tour, so I've never really researched where they were all living then.  I know Brian and Leighanne bought their current house in 2000 before they got married, but I'm not sure where they lived before that.  AJ bought a house in L.A. in August 2001 (https://variety.com/2011/dirt/real-estalker/backstreet-boy-a-j-mclean-wants-to-move-1201231580/), so he may still have been living in Florida before that.  I'm assuming Howie and Nick also still lived in Florida then.

In summary, I think you can realistically write them all living in Florida in your story, just not in the same house by the beach in Orlando. ;)

This is now the second time you've talked about this terrible blue print. I want to see it so much, lol.

For once, I have an answer to Brian and Leighanne! (I think.) That same article said Brian proposed at "their home in Atlanta," so I'm guessing they had some other home in Atlanta prior to their current home if they didn't buy that one until 2000. (https://people.com/archive/goin-to-the-chapel-vol-53-no-9/)

LMAO! They are all staying in the same hotel suite in the story, which is almost like living in a beach house in Orlando together except more likely to be accurate (especially without the beach), and more so if Brian was living in Atlanta at the time and couldn't just be at home during tour rehearsals.

Also, once again, I am amazed at y'all keeping track of timelines, because this is literally the timeline I'm trying to keep track of and it is exhausting:

A tiny BSB timeline:

  • April 12, 1999 -- IWITW released
  • May 11, 1999 -- filmed Disney Channel concert special in New York City
  • May 18, 1999 -- Millennium released
  • June 2, 1999 -- Into the Millennium tour kicks off in Ghent, Belgium
« Last Edit: July 11, 2021, 12:30:39 AM by nicksgal »
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

RokofAges75

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #184 on: July 11, 2021, 12:41:48 AM »

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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RokofAges75

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #185 on: July 11, 2021, 12:55:34 AM »

It's definitely getting somewhere, just slowly lurching along. It helps that the chapters feel more like 2500 word ones than 3000 word ones. So all in all, it'll only be about 40,000 words or so. If I can pick up some steam on it, I can be done with that near the end of August, hopefully. Yeah, unless y'all don't find it nearly as funny as I do. Then you'll be like "why did Dee write this weird story that isn't funny at all?" lol I hope you do enjoy it. I've been listening to the Boys all evening while shredding papers, so I'm hoping it puts me in a more BSB writing mood than chores.

I figured you would. I always have too. I had kind of a blah writing day today too. I ended up doing some chores around my house, reading a few more chapters in "Solutions and Other Problems" after like three months, and watching a few BBT episodes. I kept popping back to writing ever few hours or so, but only got a few dozen words here and there. No caffeine?! Oh dear. I had so much caffeine yesterday and then drank all evening. That could be part of my blahs, lol. Today I had a regular amount of caffeine, but felt very lazy all day. I hope your 10pm coffee gives you the energy to do something productive! We have a clear idea of how your neighbors would feel about night lawn mowing. How would they feel about night painting? lol

That sounds like a perfect length for a story like this!  I'm excited to read it.  And ooh, shredding paper - so satisfying!  Except I usually try to cram too much paper into the shredder at once and overheat it. :(

I think drinking/being hungover was part of my problem yesterday too.  I should have consumed caffeine, but I just lay around and did nothing but watch TV and play on my phone instead.

I finished my coffee and am at least enjoying discussing fanfic more than I felt like the last few days.  Maybe writing will follow.  Or painting.  I haven't decided yet. LOL  My bathroom is upstairs and has no windows, so the neighbors never need know about my night painting.  I don't even think they'll hear my music - because of course I can't paint without blasting music.


Ooh, fun! I've been meaning to watch "This is Pop." Hubs and I were watching the "Dark Side of Football" the other day and apparently the same channel is starting "Dark Side of the 90s" and I am intrigued. But I said that to the hubs and he said "It's probably Kurt Cobain and stuff like that." He seemed skeptical when I said being in a boyband wasn't all sunshine and rainbows either (for the actual boybands, I had a great time in boyband land in the 90s). Lance made that Boyband Con film, I bet he'd go on and talk about ponzi schemes.

This is Pop is good!  I started with the two episodes I thought would contain BSB (they are mentioned in the first episode, but it really focuses more on Boys II Men than boybands in general), but I've since started watching the other episodes, and they are interesting too.

Ooh, what channel is that with "Dark Side of the 90s"?  That does sound interesting.

Yeah, I don't think people outside the fandom and media have any idea how much drama the Boys have been through in their careers.
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~Julie

"Sometimes writers and sociopaths are hard to tell apart." -J.K. Rowling

RokofAges75

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #186 on: July 11, 2021, 01:09:38 AM »

Right? I'm thinking of all the old emails I had that I would have loved to keep if I had known the internet wasn't forever. Not review related, but I probably emailed myself the early version of PBox at one point too -- I wish I knew what the first eight chapters were originally like back in 2005. I wouldn't have any of that saved now though, since it would have been on my various laptops that died. Oh well. Saving your AC reviews sounds like your next fanfic adjacent project when you're done posting SAMS on AO3, lol.

I like to check on Wednesday when I update, just to see what everyone else is doing. Or if anyone else is doing something besides you and Tracy, but only because I know when you both update because you say so. I wonder why it's pops and not sticks. But of course! My point in saying hi was to catch back up. :)

For Lenni specifically, I wondered if she had an AO3 account. There's a lot of turtle love over there that I think would appreciate her stories too (I looked it up). Lenni, if you're lurking and you're not on AO3, you should be. You can log on and confirm or deny. :)

Oh man, that would be a big undertaking.  We'll see LOL.  It's not like I go back and look at old reviews often, but it's just nice to know I can if I'm feeling nostalgic.

Lenni should totally post her TMNT stories on AO3 if she's not already!  That's the downside to writing for other fandoms on AC; most of us only read BSB fic, so there's not a big audience for anything else.


I will be honest. I did not set myself to "hidden" to lurk while logged in and someone came on and looked at my profile and I chickened out, lol. It might have been Rose if memory serves me correctly. I was also still not writing fanfic at the time, so I doubt my comeback would have been successful. But maybe being here would have made me want to write again too, so who knows!

Aww, sorry one of us spooked you!


That's interesting that you thought about changing the name, but you're totally right, rebranding is a headache! What made you pick Dreamer's Sanctuary to start?

I don't even really remember.  I guess I was just going for something that sounded pretty and represented what fanfic was to me, which it still does - it's always been my secret safe space.  A lot of the fanfic sites I frequented back then had similar type names - Total Fantasy, Escape from Reality, Dreamer's Reality - so I went with the same vibe.  For as much time and thought as I put into thinking up titles for my stories now, I don't remember spending a lot of time coming up with it or what other names I may have had in mind.  I don't even know what I would change it to now if I decided to change it (which I wouldn't), so I guess it's good enough for me!
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~Julie

"Sometimes writers and sociopaths are hard to tell apart." -J.K. Rowling

RokofAges75

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #187 on: July 11, 2021, 01:42:19 AM »

This is now the second time you've talked about this terrible blue print. I want to see it so much, lol.

LMAO!  Fine... but only because I'm downstairs with both said blueprint and my phone readily available to take a pic of it.  Prepare to be amazed by my architectural skills: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pRSqyD5zQZx_WW9ihLgoErqFL_er88Q9/view?usp=sharing


For once, I have an answer to Brian and Leighanne! (I think.) That same article said Brian proposed at "their home in Atlanta," so I'm guessing they had some other home in Atlanta prior to their current home if they didn't buy that one until 2000. (https://people.com/archive/goin-to-the-chapel-vol-53-no-9/)

That makes sense!  They probably did live in Atlanta before they got engaged because she's from Georgia and seems to get her way, so of course she would convince him to live close to her family and friends and not his.  Their current home is technically in Alpharetta, which is a suburb of Atlanta.


LMAO! They are all staying in the same hotel suite in the story, which is almost like living in a beach house in Orlando together except more likely to be accurate (especially without the beach), and more so if Brian was living in Atlanta at the time and couldn't just be at home during tour rehearsals.

Love it!!


Also, once again, I am amazed at y'all keeping track of timelines, because this is literally the timeline I'm trying to keep track of and it is exhausting:

A tiny BSB timeline:

  • April 12, 1999 -- IWITW released
  • May 11, 1999 -- filmed Disney Channel concert special in New York City
  • May 18, 1999 -- Millennium released
  • June 2, 1999 -- Into the Millennium tour kicks off in Ghent, Belgium

LOL!  What do you find most exhausting about it?  I've written a couple of stories (both unfinished) that take place during the Millennium tour, but Guilty Roads diverts from the real timeline pretty quickly in the beginning.  My Harry Potter crossover has only covered a couple of days so far, so once I figured out when to set it, I didn't have to worry much about the timeline.

The closest I've ever followed a real life timeline was with Curtain Call, and that did take a lot of outlining and fact-checking, but I had fun with it.  In some ways, it was easier to write a story set in 2010 because there were so many more resources around to find information - LD was still around, and there was Twitter and YouTube.  If I was writing about a specific show or soundcheck, I could look up videos or threads about that date.  That was actually helpful for giving me ideas and figuring out how to piece everything together.   I was also only writing a few months behind real time, so everything was pretty fresh in my mind.  Not like going back 22 years!  But the downside of that was that if I didn't get something right, readers were more likely to notice than they would be with a story set in 1999.  I don't think anyone's going to call you out if you mix something up.

But aww... looking at that timeline makes me smile.  That was such a magical time in the fandom.  IWITW is what took me from a casual fan to an obsessed fangirl, so everything was so fresh and fun back then.  I remember putting on MTV late at night in hopes they would play the IWITW video and dropping everything when I heard that plane roar in at the beginning. Preordering my copy of Millennium at Sam Goody at the mall.  Listening to it on repeat on my Discman all the way to Six Flags and back for my 8th grade field trip the week it came out. Taping the Disney concert on TV.  Talking my parents into taking me to my first concert and then crying all day when the tickets sold out in a matter of seconds, even though my mom and I were online and my dad was in line at a physical box office when they were released.  Heartbreaking!  We did eventually get tickets for the second leg, though, so it all worked out in the end.
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nicksgal

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #188 on: July 11, 2021, 05:35:20 PM »

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 looked and I didn't skip any. So, not sure what's going on there. Short of readjusting dates, I'm not sure how to fix it.

Did 00Carter actually have a planed definitive end? Maybe it does and I missed that. I think it's fine if it never ends. Let's update it when we're sixty, lol.

Same. It had six couplets in there total, but two of my favorites were "benign and brilliant" and "horrifyingly hellish." There, no spoilers! lol


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!

We had a bit more creative writing, but it was really minimal compared to essays with the organizers. I remember writing some fiction pieces in middle school and definitely in elementary school, but almost nothing in high school. There was a poetry elective we could take and I took that, but I don't remember any on fiction. I would have definitely signed up if there had been. I wonder if there's less creative writing in higher grades because the teachers don't feel equipped to teach or model it effectively. Like maybe they don't consider themselves creative types. As you know, I have a BA in English and took a few courses in the BFA track, but none of those other students said they were also in the School of Ed. I don't want to generalize here and say no teachers anywhere explore creative writing pursuits, but that would make sense why fiction instruction dwindles as time goes. I will also say, it's probably easier to teach someone else conventions, format, word choice, etcetera than deep diving into plot structure, character arcs, and so on. Like you could spend weeks alone talking about Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" without ever writing a single thing down. And if you're really wanting to teach a fiction class, I would think the focus would need to be about output more than analysis, but there also needs to be a good background to provide a foundation. That's probably a lot of why creative writing gets pushed off until the university level. There's also that and the assessment piece. It's way easier to assess "understands how to write dialogue and use creative verbs" versus "tells a compelling story," which is more subjective.

Also, right? The minute I learned that essay paragraphs, like chapters, were as many as the essay needed (and each one was as long as it needed to be), my life changed forever, lol.

I'm sure you're doing a great job teaching them creative pursuits! :) I think as long as you're giving them space to practice and try it out, that's what matters. I don't really think fourth graders are at a place where they're ready for concrit yet (again, on a story telling level, not on a conventions level), but maybe you've inspired the future fanfic writers of the next generation who will one day look up Campbell or whoever to further their writing. :) Let's just hope they stay in the BTS fandom or whoever the next boyband craze is rather than becoming BSB fans and finding you, lol.


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.

Living life without a beta reader is living life on the edge of disaster, lol. These days y'all are getting author as alpha and beta reader from me. Hope everyone enjoys it! ;) I think the one type of beta reader I'm missing in my OF pursuit is someone in the fandom who will tell me what still screams "Backstreet Boys," 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

I think that's part of why I never really wrote suspense either. So much of it depends on a villain you don't expect, which can be a real challenge. I think like you said, the way to go about it is to figure out the characters before going into the full story so they aren't caricatures and I appreciate the attention to detail in researching it. That makes it all the more realistic and a great way to recognize what may be underlying traits in certain types of "real life villains" (I'm assuming we're talking about serial killers here).

Tracy is a wizard.

I am dying at "You meddling Backstreet Boys"! lmao The world's hottest boyband is now the world's craftiest team of crime solvers! lol (Or "hottest team of crime solvers" might still work, lol.)

LMAO! They are just like Dr. Rough! Alas, poor misunderstood cancer cells.


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.

I get wanting to do the idea justice. I think for as much as I whined about wishing people read PBox, I think I knew even back then that it really had to be compelling if they weren't "the Boys" 98% of the time. So one of my goals was always to make sure readers "got lost" in it, that it felt real and purposeful rather than just "fantasy Backstreet Boys."

Here's a loaded question for you: Is Broken at least as good as Swollen Issues II or did it surpass it? Feel free to skip if it's too loaded, lol. I've said it before, but I think the care and attention to detail speaks volumes about the growth you made and is shown in the writing. :)

Yeah setting is tough! Especially when a lot of our stories use the same settings that can be really generic if needed. I'd argue that as a fandom, description (at least in terms of establishing characters and places) is not our strong point. Probably for the reason that we just assume the blanks will get filled in. Like sure, use some words to give perfect grounding in this blond-haired, blue-eyed kid's routine when he wakes up on the road again... like how the water sloshes in the sink when he brushes his teeth... or just say "Nick was on his tour bus and then it crashed." Done. Easy. lol This is probably how the misconception "all of Florida = beachfront" started. At least with a little research, we could have had the Boys buy a house together in Miami where that would be more likely to be true, lol. I'm mad that I know so many vocabulary words about features in a desert, but it's worth it to avoid "it was a desert." lol
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

nicksgal

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #189 on: July 11, 2021, 05:41:34 PM »

That sounds like a perfect length for a story like this!  I'm excited to read it.  And ooh, shredding paper - so satisfying!  Except I usually try to cram too much paper into the shredder at once and overheat it. :(

I'm trying to use your excitement to motivate myself, lol. It is, but I also cram too many papers in and it overheats. It got so bad that it just turned itself off then whirred to life an hour later to eat the jammed paper, lol.


I think drinking/being hungover was part of my problem yesterday too.  I should have consumed caffeine, but I just lay around and did nothing but watch TV and play on my phone instead.

I finished my coffee and am at least enjoying discussing fanfic more than I felt like the last few days.  Maybe writing will follow.  Or painting.  I haven't decided yet. LOL  My bathroom is upstairs and has no windows, so the neighbors never need know about my night painting.  I don't even think they'll hear my music - because of course I can't paint without blasting music.

People laugh when I say I went semi-sober for my novel, but it's true! It makes me way more productive.

Well, welcome back! Glad to have you around again. I'm glad the neighbors will be undisturbed by your night painting. What did you end up doing yesterday? Painting or writing?


This is Pop is good!  I started with the two episodes I thought would contain BSB (they are mentioned in the first episode, but it really focuses more on Boys II Men than boybands in general), but I've since started watching the other episodes, and they are interesting too.

Ooh, what channel is that with "Dark Side of the 90s"?  That does sound interesting.

Yeah, I don't think people outside the fandom and media have any idea how much drama the Boys have been through in their careers.

Awesome! I'll have to check it out. It's premiering on Thursday on Vice TV. They really don't. I think it's because of the "squeaky clean" persona of boybands.
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

nicksgal

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #190 on: July 11, 2021, 05:53:29 PM »

Oh man, that would be a big undertaking.  We'll see LOL.  It's not like I go back and look at old reviews often, but it's just nice to know I can if I'm feeling nostalgic.

Lenni should totally post her TMNT stories on AO3 if she's not already!  That's the downside to writing for other fandoms on AC; most of us only read BSB fic, so there's not a big audience for anything else.

Well what's the next fanfic adjacent project you're planning?

Except for crossover fanfics where NSYNC is the villain. Like I'm pretty sure that is the only reason NSYNC and other boybands became categories on AC, lol. I looked it up. I was wrong. At least half of the 33 NSYNC stories are actually about NSYNC doing NSYNC things.

Aww, sorry one of us spooked you!

I'm like a baby deer, lol!


I don't even really remember.  I guess I was just going for something that sounded pretty and represented what fanfic was to me, which it still does - it's always been my secret safe space.  A lot of the fanfic sites I frequented back then had similar type names - Total Fantasy, Escape from Reality, Dreamer's Reality - so I went with the same vibe.  For as much time and thought as I put into thinking up titles for my stories now, I don't remember spending a lot of time coming up with it or what other names I may have had in mind.  I don't even know what I would change it to now if I decided to change it (which I wouldn't), so I guess it's good enough for me!

That makes sense if many of the other sites you visited had a similar vibe you wanted to capture for yourself. I think it's a fitting website title, so it hasn't aged terribly or anything. :) But you're right, it would be fun if it was more Backstreet-y after all this time.
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

nicksgal

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #191 on: July 11, 2021, 06:15:57 PM »

LMAO!  Fine... but only because I'm downstairs with both said blueprint and my phone readily available to take a pic of it.  Prepare to be amazed by my architectural skills: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pRSqyD5zQZx_WW9ihLgoErqFL_er88Q9/view?usp=sharing

Yes! I love it! However, I see a road leading straight to the pool. Does that mean I could drive to Kevin's pool and swim in it? lol


That makes sense!  They probably did live in Atlanta before they got engaged because she's from Georgia and seems to get her way, so of course she would convince him to live close to her family and friends and not his.  Their current home is technically in Alpharetta, which is a suburb of Atlanta.

LMAO at "and seems to get her way."


LOL!  What do you find most exhausting about it?  I've written a couple of stories (both unfinished) that take place during the Millennium tour, but Guilty Roads diverts from the real timeline pretty quickly in the beginning.  My Harry Potter crossover has only covered a couple of days so far, so once I figured out when to set it, I didn't have to worry much about the timeline.

The closest I've ever followed a real life timeline was with Curtain Call, and that did take a lot of outlining and fact-checking, but I had fun with it.  In some ways, it was easier to write a story set in 2010 because there were so many more resources around to find information - LD was still around, and there was Twitter and YouTube.  If I was writing about a specific show or soundcheck, I could look up videos or threads about that date.  That was actually helpful for giving me ideas and figuring out how to piece everything together.   I was also only writing a few months behind real time, so everything was pretty fresh in my mind.  Not like going back 22 years!  But the downside of that was that if I didn't get something right, readers were more likely to notice than they would be with a story set in 1999.  I don't think anyone's going to call you out if you mix something up.

First, I hadn't written it down until I was typing this post yesterday, so I had to keep looking things up and that was annoying. This is a fatal flaw I suffer from, lol! (See: "Oh yeah, I lied, I did pick gemstones for a reason; I'd forgotten.") I have now written it down and you're right to laugh because four things doesn't seem that daunting to keep track of. Second, I think because I'm betting there are a bunch of media appearances (radio or television) in various places during that time that I can't remember, which might skew my version of events. That being said, if I don't remember them and Nick clearly thinks he was 16 when they recorded IWITW, then maybe no one else will be able to call me out on my four item detailed timeline being off, lol. Finding out that they recorded the Disney Concert before the tour was actually a load off of those worries, because then I knew they had to have rehearsed before the album was actually released, which gives a bigger chunk of time to do that in during the month of April, rather than stressing about how they rehearsed and promoted Millennium in the same two week time frame between Millennium's release and starting the tour at the beginning of June overseas. And you're honestly right, I'm not sure why I'm so worried about it because the story takes place over maybe a week... if even.

I can see why it would be a blessing and a curse to write something much closer to real time. You have all the resources at your finger tips, but so does everyone else. And because of that, why you'd need to be more meticulous. PBox&Co does have a timeline that I am fairly meticulous about, but the nice thing is that I made it up, so I don't have to go digging up specific footage or anything.

But aww... looking at that timeline makes me smile.  That was such a magical time in the fandom.  IWITW is what took me from a casual fan to an obsessed fangirl, so everything was so fresh and fun back then.  I remember putting on MTV late at night in hopes they would play the IWITW video and dropping everything when I heard that plane roar in at the beginning. Preordering my copy of Millennium at Sam Goody at the mall.  Listening to it on repeat on my Discman all the way to Six Flags and back for my 8th grade field trip the week it came out. Taping the Disney concert on TV.  Talking my parents into taking me to my first concert and then crying all day when the tickets sold out in a matter of seconds, even though my mom and I were online and my dad was in line at a physical box office when they were released.  Heartbreaking!  We did eventually get tickets for the second leg, though, so it all worked out in the end.

Such a magical time! The plane roar, AJ's laugh in LTL. Any of it, I'd drop whatever. To this day, hubs and I like to play a game at bars where we see who can name the song and the artist the quickest and my IWITW record is two notes; I'm fairly quick at other BSB songs too, but I am a savant at recognizing IWITW. I didn't actually own the CD until Christmas because my mother was a present saver when I was a child. She quickly learned that that would not be allowable in a Backstreet Boys household. (Also I miss Sam Goody.) Confession: I have actually purchased Millennium three times on CD because I played it so much that it scratched beyond repair.

Are you me? That was my same ITM Tour experience except we didn't get a second leg here (and we were only online). :( I eventually won tickets, but I was sooo heartbroken at first. I blame a new arena blocking off hoards of tickets for their investors for it being so bad. B&B was much easier to get tickets for.

On a side note, thank goodness physically waiting for tickets isn't a thing anymore, lol. I think the last time I did it was the KIISMAS Snowball in 2003.
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

RokofAges75

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #192 on: July 11, 2021, 11:08:30 PM »

I looked and I didn't skip any. So, not sure what's going on there. Short of readjusting dates, I'm not sure how to fix it.

Did 00Carter actually have a planed definitive end? Maybe it does and I missed that. I think it's fine if it never ends. Let's update it when we're sixty, lol.

Same. It had six couplets in there total, but two of my favorites were "benign and brilliant" and "horrifyingly hellish." There, no spoilers! lol

Hm... I would check again if I were you.  Double check the year especially.  I'm not sure what else it would be.  Mine all reflected the right dates once I made sure I had every chapter backdated correctly.

Nope, 00Carter had plans for "Season 2 and beyond," so it could theoretically go on forever LOL.  I'm fine with that too.

Love those alliterations!


We had a bit more creative writing, but it was really minimal compared to essays with the organizers. I remember writing some fiction pieces in middle school and definitely in elementary school, but almost nothing in high school. There was a poetry elective we could take and I took that, but I don't remember any on fiction. I would have definitely signed up if there had been. I wonder if there's less creative writing in higher grades because the teachers don't feel equipped to teach or model it effectively. Like maybe they don't consider themselves creative types. As you know, I have a BA in English and took a few courses in the BFA track, but none of those other students said they were also in the School of Ed. I don't want to generalize here and say no teachers anywhere explore creative writing pursuits, but that would make sense why fiction instruction dwindles as time goes. I will also say, it's probably easier to teach someone else conventions, format, word choice, etcetera than deep diving into plot structure, character arcs, and so on. Like you could spend weeks alone talking about Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" without ever writing a single thing down. And if you're really wanting to teach a fiction class, I would think the focus would need to be about output more than analysis, but there also needs to be a good background to provide a foundation. That's probably a lot of why creative writing gets pushed off until the university level. There's also that and the assessment piece. It's way easier to assess "understands how to write dialogue and use creative verbs" versus "tells a compelling story," which is more subjective.

Also, right? The minute I learned that essay paragraphs, like chapters, were as many as the essay needed (and each one was as long as it needed to be), my life changed forever, lol.

I'm sure you're doing a great job teaching them creative pursuits! :) I think as long as you're giving them space to practice and try it out, that's what matters. I don't really think fourth graders are at a place where they're ready for concrit yet (again, on a story telling level, not on a conventions level), but maybe you've inspired the future fanfic writers of the next generation who will one day look up Campbell or whoever to further their writing. :) Let's just hope they stay in the BTS fandom or whoever the next boyband craze is rather than becoming BSB fans and finding you, lol.

I think writing fiction isn't emphasized in higher grades because it's less important as far as college and career readiness goes.  It's more important to be able to write to inform, persuade, or analyze than to entertain.  But kids who enjoy creative writing can take whatever basics they learn in elementary school and grow from there the same way we did - by reading and writing for fun and learning from experience.

Thanks! :)  LOL This is why I write under a pen name, just in case.  Even on the off chance one of them did become a BSB fan and stumbled onto one of my stories, they would never know who really wrote it.


I am dying at "You meddling Backstreet Boys"! lmao The world's hottest boyband is now the world's craftiest team of crime solvers! lol (Or "hottest team of crime solvers" might still work, lol.)

LOL I would read a story about the Boys driving around in a groovy van, fighting crime and solving mysteries.  Zoinks!


Here's a loaded question for you: Is Broken at least as good as Swollen Issues II or did it surpass it? Feel free to skip if it's too loaded, lol. I've said it before, but I think the care and attention to detail speaks volumes about the growth you made and is shown in the writing. :)

That's such a hard question to answer because I feel like I'm biased either way.  Broken is my baby, and I love it, but I didn't experience it as a reader the same way I did Swollen Issues.  From a grammatical standpoint, I think Broken is better-written, but that has a lot to do with one of the authors of Swollen speaking English as a second language.  From an emotional standpoint, Broken never made me cry the way Swollen did, but that probably has a lot to do with the writer vs. reader thing.  As we've discussed, it's rare for me to make myself cry with my own stories.  Beyond that, I can't really compare.  I haven't read Swollen in its entirety since the Broken era, so I would need to reread it as a full-fledged adult and try to compare the experience to rereading Broken without my writer hat on.


Yeah setting is tough! Especially when a lot of our stories use the same settings that can be really generic if needed. I'd argue that as a fandom, description (at least in terms of establishing characters and places) is not our strong point. Probably for the reason that we just assume the blanks will get filled in. Like sure, use some words to give perfect grounding in this blond-haired, blue-eyed kid's routine when he wakes up on the road again... like how the water sloshes in the sink when he brushes his teeth... or just say "Nick was on his tour bus and then it crashed." Done. Easy. lol This is probably how the misconception "all of Florida = beachfront" started. At least with a little research, we could have had the Boys buy a house together in Miami where that would be more likely to be true, lol. I'm mad that I know so many vocabulary words about features in a desert, but it's worth it to avoid "it was a desert." lol

That's probably true for most fanfic; we spend less time on character development and description than OF authors because we assume our readers already know who our main characters are and what they look like, so it seems like a waste of time to spend too many words describing them.  It's kinda like those middle grade series we talked about recently, where the first or second chapter gives a recap of the characters and what happened in the previous book(s).  I usually skimmed through that section with series that I read in order because I didn't need to be reminded.  But it came in handy if I accidentally started a series out of order.  (For example, the first Lurlene McDaniel book I ever read was one I ordered out of the book order in 4th grade, not knowing it one of the later books in her One Last Wish series.  That back story and character description was super important in filling in the gaps until I got the other books to read.)  I tend to use more description of characters and settings in AU because it feels more like OF.

LOL I think the "Florida = all beachfront" thing just stemmed from the naivety of most of us being kids at the time.  Most of us weren't familiar with Florida geography, and since the internet was still a newer thing, the concept of just googling a map of Florida to see where Orlando was compared to the ocean probably didn't even occur to us.  A beach house in Miami or even Tampa would have made much more sense.  It's definitely easier to write about a place when you've been there or at least researched it thoroughly, like you have with the desert.
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"Sometimes writers and sociopaths are hard to tell apart." -J.K. Rowling

nicksgal

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #193 on: July 11, 2021, 11:31:23 PM »

Hm... I would check again if I were you.  Double check the year especially.  I'm not sure what else it would be.  Mine all reflected the right dates once I made sure I had every chapter backdated correctly.

Nope, 00Carter had plans for "Season 2 and beyond," so it could theoretically go on forever LOL.  I'm fine with that too.

Love those alliterations!

Next fanfic adjacent project, lol. Did I backdate correctly? I had nightmares about accidentally clicking the "orphan work" button while trying to backdate, so maybe that did it.

Is Season One even finished? Will we ever get to Season Two, let alone finish the whole story?

Thanks!


I think writing fiction isn't emphasized in higher grades because it's less important as far as college and career readiness goes.  It's more important to be able to write to inform, persuade, or analyze than to entertain.  But kids who enjoy creative writing can take whatever basics they learn in elementary school and grow from there the same way we did - by reading and writing for fun and learning from experience.

Thanks! :)  LOL This is why I write under a pen name, just in case.  Even on the off chance one of them did become a BSB fan and stumbled onto one of my stories, they would never know who really wrote it.

It's a shame it isn't. I feel like more of high school should allow for elective selection rather than just focusing on graduation requirements to prepare for college and career. I only say this knowing I finished 90% of my requirements by Junior Year, so I was really taking things like calculus as an elective because my mom wanted me to or AP Physics because my friends said we should all do it together... We should not have done it all together, lol.

Maybe it's better to do it for fun anyway. I think I would have hated it more if it was an assignment.

I think you've hidden yourself pretty well on the interwebs. In that case, I hope it happens for you, but never for me! lol


LOL I would read a story about the Boys driving around in a groovy van, fighting crime and solving mysteries.  Zoinks!

LMFAO!


That's such a hard question to answer because I feel like I'm biased either way.  Broken is my baby, and I love it, but I didn't experience it as a reader the same way I did Swollen Issues.  From a grammatical standpoint, I think Broken is better-written, but that has a lot to do with one of the authors of Swollen speaking English as a second language.  From an emotional standpoint, Broken never made me cry the way Swollen did, but that probably has a lot to do with the writer vs. reader thing.  As we've discussed, it's rare for me to make myself cry with my own stories.  Beyond that, I can't really compare.  I haven't read Swollen in its entirety since the Broken era, so I would need to reread it as a full-fledged adult and try to compare the experience to rereading Broken without my writer hat on.

Fair. Like you said, I can see both sides. Have you ever talked with anyone who read both? Either, they found you from Swollen Issues or you led them to it from Broken?


That's probably true for most fanfic; we spend less time on character development and description than OF authors because we assume our readers already know who our main characters are and what they look like, so it seems like a waste of time to spend too many words describing them.  It's kinda like those middle grade series we talked about recently, where the first or second chapter gives a recap of the characters and what happened in the previous book(s).  I usually skimmed through that section with series that I read in order because I didn't need to be reminded.  But it came in handy if I accidentally started a series out of order.  (For example, the first Lurlene McDaniel book I ever read was one I ordered out of the book order in 4th grade, not knowing it one of the later books in her One Last Wish series.  That back story and character description was super important in filling in the gaps until I got the other books to read.)  I tend to use more description of characters and settings in AU because it feels more like OF.

LOL I think the "Florida = all beachfront" thing just stemmed from the naivety of most of us being kids at the time.  Most of us weren't familiar with Florida geography, and since the internet was still a newer thing, the concept of just googling a map of Florida to see where Orlando was compared to the ocean probably didn't even occur to us.  A beach house in Miami or even Tampa would have made much more sense.  It's definitely easier to write about a place when you've been there or at least researched it thoroughly, like you have with the desert.

Yeah, I think I usually ended up skipping the first few chapters of every Babysitters Club book now that you mention it. Why would I need to be reminded of something I loved? lol I guess it does feel like a little of a waste in a BSB fanfic, but then part of me thinks "Would I really mind someone waxing poetic on Nick's smile or Kevin's eyebrows or Brian's curls or Howie's wink or AJ's eyes when he just so slightly pulls down his sunglasses because it's the 90s again?" Probably not. Go ahead and replace Nick's smile with literally any part of his face while we're at it, lol. I'm pretty sure I never ordered a series out of order specifically to avoid having to read the backstory chapters, lol.

I don't think I ever considered using the internet to look up a map until I was writing PBox and needed a vague idea of New York City, lol. So you're right, "Florida is surrounded by ocean and Orlando is a city in Florida, therefore, Orlando is beachfront" is a pretty logical leap, lol. See, I thought about saying Tampa, but I figured if the Boys really did all live in a beach house together, Nick would want to be as far away from his family as possible. Isn't that why he likes the Keys so much? Obviously it has nothing to do with them being islands and islands being awesome, lol.

This is really off topic, but speaking of Nick's family... I was thinking the other day about how his mom made Brian his legal guardian in Germany. First of all, how crazy is that to look at some 18-year-old and say "yes, you can be my 13-year-old's legal guardian." I'm guessing Brian didn't just volunteer. lol. Was it because Brian's Christian values seemed more wholesome than Kevin who had been a legal adult for a few years at that point? I have so many questions.
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RokofAges75

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Re: Writing & Thread (aka The Writing Thread 4)
« Reply #194 on: July 11, 2021, 11:56:44 PM »

People laugh when I say I went semi-sober for my novel, but it's true! It makes me way more productive.

Same!  Sometimes I'll have one drink while I write, but any more than that and it usually just makes me sleepy.  I am definitely more of a social drinker.


Well, welcome back! Glad to have you around again. I'm glad the neighbors will be undisturbed by your night painting. What did you end up doing yesterday? Painting or writing?

Thanks!

Um, technically neither, but I did get the bathroom all prepped for painting.  I wiped down the walls, put down painter's tape, and took all my painting supplies upstairs.  It's all ready for me to go up there, pour some paint in the tray, and go for it.  Maybe tonight, unless I get on a writing kick.  I finally had a good writing session after waking up this afternoon LOL.  I forced myself to make coffee and take it back to bed, and voila!  I stayed there three hours and wrote over 700 words, which is by far the most productive writing session I've had this month.  I'm now nearing the middle of my chapter, so I hope the rest will be easier.


Awesome! I'll have to check it out. It's premiering on Thursday on Vice TV. They really don't. I think it's because of the "squeaky clean" persona of boybands.

Oh cool, I'll have to look that up!  I think I have that channel.


Well what's the next fanfic adjacent project you're planning?

I need to finish my editing-all-the-mistakes-Google-Docs-found project first, and once I finish that, I'm going to make new ebook versions with the new covers I made earlier in the summer.  I haven't felt like working on that in a while either though.  Why did I write such long stories?! LOL


That makes sense if many of the other sites you visited had a similar vibe you wanted to capture for yourself. I think it's a fitting website title, so it hasn't aged terribly or anything. :) But you're right, it would be fun if it was more Backstreet-y after all this time.

If only Safest Place to Hide existed in April 2000!  I had that song playing in the background of my site for quite a while after NG came out because I felt it perfectly fit the theme.  It even has the word "sanctuary" in it LOL.  But at least I didn't call it something like "jOoLiEe'Z kEwL bSb FaNfIcZ!"  That would have aged much worse.


Yes! I love it! However, I see a road leading straight to the pool. Does that mean I could drive to Kevin's pool and swim in it? lol

LOL Those are just walkways.  The driveway is off the garage, and you can't even see the house from the road down below/Google Street View.  Gotta use the satellite view and zoom in on 3D to see anything LOL.  Since he doesn't live there anymore, here is the realtor.com listing that has the address if you want to look it up on Google Maps: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1377-Miller-Dr_Los-Angeles_CA_90069_M29784-27493

Yeah, I'm a stalker.  All in the name of accuracy! LOL


First, I hadn't written it down until I was typing this post yesterday, so I had to keep looking things up and that was annoying. This is a fatal flaw I suffer from, lol! (See: "Oh yeah, I lied, I did pick gemstones for a reason; I'd forgotten.") I have now written it down and you're right to laugh because four things doesn't seem that daunting to keep track of.

I get this.  I typically keep track of timelines in my outlines for stories like this, but putting in every tour date or whatever is so time-consuming!  I did it for Curtain Call because there's a good chunk of chapters that follows the first leg of the TIU tour from city to city, so I needed to know every date.  But for MBK, I just put in the start and end dates of each leg of the Unbreakable tour.  I can't tell you how many times I've had to look up the full list of tour dates in Wikipedia to find out where they were on specific dates in between, and they were only on tour for a few chapters LOL.  I guess even if I did write them down, I would have still had to look them up on my outline, so I'm not sure it would have saved me much time.


Second, I think because I'm betting there are a bunch of media appearances (radio or television) in various places during that time that I can't remember, which might skew my version of events. That being said, if I don't remember them and Nick clearly thinks he was 16 when they recorded IWITW, then maybe no one else will be able to call me out on my four item detailed timeline being off, lol. Finding out that they recorded the Disney Concert before the tour was actually a load off of those worries, because then I knew they had to have rehearsed before the album was actually released, which gives a bigger chunk of time to do that in during the month of April, rather than stressing about how they rehearsed and promoted Millennium in the same two week time frame between Millennium's release and starting the tour at the beginning of June overseas. And you're honestly right, I'm not sure why I'm so worried about it because the story takes place over maybe a week... if even.

I can see why it would be a blessing and a curse to write something much closer to real time. You have all the resources at your finger tips, but so does everyone else. And because of that, why you'd need to be more meticulous. PBox&Co does have a timeline that I am fairly meticulous about, but the nice thing is that I made it up, so I don't have to go digging up specific footage or anything.

Yeah, I think that's the advantage to you writing so far in the past.  I doubt anyone's going to remember what specific media appearances they did when.  I am pretty sure they did that two-hour live MTV special on the Sunday before Millennium came out and then a shorter live special on release day.  I still have both of those on a VHS tape somehow and used to watch the two-hour one a lot.  Beyond that, I don't remember.

It's definitely easier when you make up the timeline yourself, as long as you keep track of it so you can stay consistent.


Such a magical time! The plane roar, AJ's laugh in LTL. Any of it, I'd drop whatever. To this day, hubs and I like to play a game at bars where we see who can name the song and the artist the quickest and my IWITW record is two notes; I'm fairly quick at other BSB songs too, but I am a savant at recognizing IWITW. I didn't actually own the CD until Christmas because my mother was a present saver when I was a child. She quickly learned that that would not be allowable in a Backstreet Boys household. (Also I miss Sam Goody.) Confession: I have actually purchased Millennium three times on CD because I played it so much that it scratched beyond repair.

Are you me? That was my same ITM Tour experience except we didn't get a second leg here (and we were only online). :( I eventually won tickets, but I was sooo heartbroken at first. I blame a new arena blocking off hoards of tickets for their investors for it being so bad. B&B was much easier to get tickets for.

On a side note, thank goodness physically waiting for tickets isn't a thing anymore, lol. I think the last time I did it was the KIISMAS Snowball in 2003.

IWITW is so iconic!  Seriously one of the best pop songs of all time, even if it makes no sense LOL.  OMG, I would have been so mad at my mom for doing that!  That's a long time to hang on to a present!  My dad worked at the mall where Sam Goody was, so I had him pick up my reserved copy and was waiting at the door for him like a dog when he got home from work that day LOL.  Of course he messed with me and acted like he forgot to pick it up, but he didn't forget.  My original copy still works, surprisingly!  I can't remember the last time I played one of the physical CDs because I have everything digital now, but I still have them all.

Aww, the heartbreak is real!  That's the only tour that happened to me to as well.  We didn't have any trouble with B&B or anything since, but I think it's a big reason why so many of us get so much anxiety over buying tickets.  We have PTSD! LOL.  I'm glad you eventually won tickets!  We relied on the radio station to get tickets for the second leg; they offered a charter bus trip to the St. Louis show that guaranteed tickets, so we jumped on that opportunity.  God bless my saint of a mother for taking me, my sister, and my best friend on a bus full of BSB fans for six hours round trip LOL.

I'm also a big fan of having instant digital tickets, although I do miss having paper tickets to put in my BSB concert scrapbook.
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~Julie

"Sometimes writers and sociopaths are hard to tell apart." -J.K. Rowling
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