Story Decisions

[Anonymous No.4263723]

Going to start a thread for all of us write-fags.

I know I get stumped or indecisive about story ideas and need help, so I'm assuming this is a common thing among other 'writers' and dedicating this thread to giving that kind of help.

Rules.
Keep it simple, state the part your stuck on with brevity.
All genre is welcome.
No shit posting
Be accepting of advice.

Lets do this /lit/ Lets have an awesome thread and get some road cleared for writing.

[Anonymous No.4263845]

>>4263723

I am stuck at dialogues, how could I improve it, weird thing is i know about what the conversation is gonna be about and how is going to end, but sounds too monologuish on my head and simply sucks when i type it, waiting advice..

[Anonymous No.4263853]

>>4263845

It's often said to speak it out loud. Steinbeck was a big proponant of this.

Use short hand words, contractions. This is what real people do. No one says.

"I have waited for hours upon hours in the study with my heart burning with fright" (maybe centuries ago)

They say

"Where the hell were you? I've worrying my brains out!"

And if the person gets to long winded, have the other character interject, have him/her point out the problems in what they're saying or even that they are monologuing.

[Anonymous No.4263858]

Be careful when taking advice from strangers. If you let yourself go by the idea of others on how to do a good story, you'll lose exactly that which makes your story worth reading: the fact that it is yours. Ask people who are close to you, people you trust. And even at that, keep your heart alert for the implications of what you'll be saying. When you are blocked at writing you are blocked yourself. The solution is not in the path of the story, but in yourself.

[Anonymous No.4263860]

>>4263853
interesting ideas, worst part tho, it's casual chat is even worse, I would prefer everyone speaking of greatness or so, anyway..

>>4263858

I don't care where the advice come from as long as I consider it a good one.

[Anonymous No.4263863]

>>4263858

Man I created this thread because family and friends are useless and never want to talk about things like this.

[Anonymous No.4263866]

>>4263860

Long winded is a political and religious mode of speech. Not of common people. Even in shakespeare they're quick with the tongue.

[Anonymous No.4263869]

>>4263866
unlike the other poster here, I appreciate a lot your advice and idea foe this thread... but maybe because of the time it's a little lonely eh, anyway, I doubt i could give any advice I jsut started writing, I talked a lot of how much i want to write but never do it, a freind of me calls what i do oral literature, cause i can tell him the whole book but never type anything.... maybe it was like this on cavern times?

back on topic I am trying it right now.

[Anonymous No.4263871]

>>4263869

Why not do that? Do audio recordings of your stories and sell them as oral stories. Just make sure the recording is good and devoid of jumping around or personal BS.

[Anonymous No.4263872]

>>4263871
you know, interesting idea.... have anyone trie dthis before?

[Anonymous No.4263875]

>>4263872

There's seems to be resurgence in audio drama. Night Vale comes to mind. It's written, but there's nothing saying you just can't talk into a mic and ad some ambient sound or music cues to create mood and emphasis.

Then break it up into parts and sell it as an audio book or album. Then if you want to make it a book, just transcribe what you said.

[Anonymous No.4263896]

If people want to excel as writers, one of the best things they can do is practice the language they write in. Proper composition helps you get your message across more easily, and it makes your editor's job easier. If you've written something that uses the wrong word, for example, it's entirely possible that only /you/ actually know what you meant to say. If you leave it up to interpretation for your editor and proofer, you run the risk of having your message altered.

I'm not saying that everyone is going to use perfect grammar and spelling 100% of the time, especially when you're on the internet. However, knowing your language's rules makes the writing process easier on you, the writer, as well as everyone else involved.

Some examples in the first posts of those thread:

you're* genres* are* Let's* Let's* dialogue* how (it) is going* in* awaiting* proponent* shorthand* (though shorthand is something other than what you mean) and* says:* say:* I've (been) worrying* too* long-winded* interject;* its* "a good one"? good*

"quick with the tongue" means of sharp wit, which is true for many Shakespeare characters, but what you mean is that they're succint in their descriptions. Brevity works, as long as you get the message across.

To the person who suggested having a character point out that another one is taking too long or is monologuing, this is only valid if the character itself is prone to do so. You can't use this method as an excuse to leave in a writer's ramblings, even if it might seem difficult to shorten it and maintain the same meaning.

And finally, just to cover the topic at hand: Whenever I've gotten stuck at a particular fork in the road, I treat it as such. Either by writing it out in full, or simply "walking the path" in my head, I work out what would happen with every possible decision I can think of. Sometimes it ends up taking up hours of my time, but more often than not, I come away with a solution. Not to mention a number of new ideas and discoveries about my characters and story that I wouldn't have come across otherwise.

My apologies if anyone found my Grammar Nazi corrections to be dickish. If you want, you can point out I missed a few lowercase i's, hyphenated words, and that I mispelled misspelled a second ago.

Nobody's perfect, but what's important is that we actually try to better our mastery of the written word, including its rules.

Captcha screenshot attached for quality.

[Anonymous No.4263903]

>>4263896
You know what.

You're supposed to write everything first. Corrections are THE LAST THING YOU DO.

You killed this fucking thread. You killed it. Know one gave two shits about your grammer fuck. IThis thread was about content, NOT FUCKING GRAMMAR AND SPELLING.

I'm done. I'm out. /lit/ has been dying for a while but you've just proved why its so fucking dumb. All you did was completely achidmeic man child shit that bares next to NO CONTENT ON HOW A STORY IS MADE RIGHT BRAIN FIRST FUCKTARD RIGHT BRAIN!

[Anonymous No.4263907]

I'm writing a story about two hit-men who chase their man through a busy city district (square, plaza, streets, alleys, church). It's divided in three parts (I'm going through a weird temporal-divisions phase):
> afternoon, chase, the young hit-man gets killed
>years earlier, the older hit-man gets a job for a high-positioned official, set inside a bar/cabaret
>same as before, set in house of said target, older hitman is blinded after he kills official (a theme throughout the story), the official's son becomes the young hitman from before out for revenge

Right now, I'm trying to write the chase scene as a sort of action-montage using surrealist techniques, blending sights-sounds-actions into one stream-lined paragraph.

[Anonymous No.4263910]

Or just be right from the very beginning.

It's right brain first, not right brain first.

This is now my thread, and the new topic is MLP/TMNT fanfiction. Non-erotic please, let's keep this clean guys.

[Anonymous No.4263915]

>>4263910
>Or just be right from the very beginning.

Said no author ever.

[Anonymous No.4263929]

>>4263915
Grammatically honey. When it comes to the creative content, the only "right" is when you decide to stop rewriting it, and even then, it's rare.

Oh, though that isn't to say that sometimes incorrect grammar "sounds" better in what you're writing. A specific weakness of mine is the use of "You and I." It's wrong, but I think it adds something when one character is speaking to another, generally when they're involved, or it seems like it's inevitable.

[Anonymous No.4263930]

>>4263903
what the fuck is this post

[Anonymous No.4263934]

>>4263930
Pure rage.

I hope he uses it to fuel his writing later. Or masturbation session. Whatever works for him.

[Anonymous No.4263935]

Caring about grammar is like telling a musician to care about not playing sloppily while composing the core of a tune. Stupid.

[Anonymous No.4263937]

>>4263929

You correct people in conversations don't you.

Likely friends and family don't want to be around you because you're constantly telling them how things are to be said or done.

Enjoy your loneliness. Enjoy being right all the time and no one liking you.

Also enjoy having a grammatically perfect book, but being boring as fuck.

[Anonymous No.4263939]

I'm writing a story which is set on a single street in rural England. It starts with the death of one of the members of the street and follows the lives of seven different characters afterwards.

The story is that they all promise to help support the widow overcome her grief, but then get tied up in their own larger than life magical realism lives. So one of them is an artist-espionage who designs paintings to hang at conferences and trade fairs to subliminally influence people, working for an agency. One storyline follows a group of neighborhood children who witness the man dying and are convinced that its related to an old urban legend about buried treasure, so set off on a Secret Seven style mystery hunt. All characters have these weird and almost surreal lives, set against a boring rural background.

There are themes of subterfuge and espionage running throughout a bunch of characters as their lives tangle together without their being aware of it, and I'm wondering whether it's going to end up rather schlocky. Whether all these subplots will detract from the emotional hit that the ending ought to have, where the widow takes her own life, due to their failure to help her in any way. Should I cut back on the subplots' weirdness in order to try and regain some focus on the main plot?

[Anonymous No.4263956]

I'm writing a short story in a very different style to my usual. A sort of tragic romantic magical realism thing. I'm very happy with the set pieces I plan to use with it, nice images, locations and characters drawn from real life but what I'm struggling with is that I'm very lonely I miss my family, I miss the family cat, I miss having human physical contact, I'm up to 12 cans of beer a night and though I don't feel hungry, I can't remember the last time I had a proper meal.

[Anonymous No.4263966]

>>4263939
>>4263956
Just when you thought the height (and depth) of popularity for magical realism came and went with Isabel Allende, a whole generation is gearing up to try to use surrealist tendencies in a generic setting.

[Anonymous No.4263972]

So I'm writing a story that has a romance subplot with the protagonist. The issue is, I have no idea how the hell to go about that. I have a decent enough sense of the character, but before writing it out I'm kind of worried that I won't be able to detail the female portion of it out well. Any tips? In an extremely summarized way:
>Soldier saves girl
>They're kind of stuck together through shitty circumstances
>While all this other shit is going on, they are the only thing either one has left of their lives

[Anonymous No.4263975]

>>4263937
Spoken errors and written errors differ greatly, and generally speaking, spoken errors are accepted as a "dialect." Though if it helps you understand me, it hurts me inside when people say something is ironic when it clearly isn't, though I don't correct them, because there's no point. If you want to be a wordsmith, however, you should want to be corrected when you make a mistake.

Being right about something doesn't make you controlling, and being controlling doesn't make you right. Abusive spouses can be controlling, but that doesn't make what they deem to be the "right way" of doing things (or more often than not, their family's "wrong way" of doing things) objectively right.

I enjoy solidarity, as do many people on these boards, though I have a fairly tightly knit group of friends. Enjoy making assumptions just because you're upset about the rules of grammar.

Everything I said above is just a clever ruse to mask the anguish of my supposed desired solidarity. My family hasn't bothered making any contact with me since I moved out years ago, and I haven't had any actual friends outside of the net since I was 15.

It's not because I correct people or I'm unlikeable, but you hit the nail right on the head. I'm just boring. On the internet, I can use dickishness to seem "cool" by using very specific knowledge gained from Wiki articles in order to feign being an intellectual. By making other people feel bad, I boost my own ego and stave off melancholy from devouring me from within yet another day.

But it isn't enough anymore. I don't want to just correct people's spelling, quote Freud, discuss Jazz fusion, and debate the merits of the Oxford Comma. I want to create like you do. I want to have that unique spark that only you and a precious few others possess.

I've seen a lot of books that go through (or more frequently, don't manage to get accepted or get past editing) online publishing companies. Even ignoring that most of them read as though they've been written by a tweenage girl while texting on her phone, the actual content of said books is just... depressing.

Now taste is always going to differ from person to person, and there are some "great classics" that I've never been fond of, yet so many others swear them to be great works of literature. That said, most of these books just lack creativity. The story never draws me in, the characters don't engage me, and it just feels like I'm reading something I've written, y'know?

[Anonymous No.4263977]

>>4263937
And that's why I want to be like you. I want to apprentice under you and see if I can glean some hidden stroke of genius that might let me emulate your unending creativity with the English language. I mean, you have to have at least what, 500? 1,000? Twitter follows, Facebook friends, books sold? And before we start actually talking numbers, I know, I know, it isn't about how many hundreds of people you've touched with your work, it's that you got your story out there and that it's distinguished itself from the thousands and thousands of /other/ books out there just like it.

You have the gift my friend, and if you'll be willing to accept my humble apology, I'd like to try to put my past behind me and move on to becoming a great storyteller.

The bards are not dead my friend, for they are we.

Oh gosh, I can feel your creative juices rubbing off all over my body already.

[Anonymous No.4263978]

>>4263966
I'm not writing for you.

[Anonymous No.4263991]

>>4263966
It's more original than being a dick. Let us write what we want.

[Anonymous No.4264000]

>>4263978
>>4263991
Yeah, I'm being too cynical. Besides, it's not like I can write anything better.

[Anonymous No.4264009]

>>4263975
>>4263977

Please go die in a fire you pompous cunt.

[Anonymous No.4264015]

>>4264000
Have you tried?

[Anonymous No.4264018]

>>4264015
Yeah I have, but it never comes out like I want it to. I'm missing the right words, and so I'll go read another book or dip into the dictionary and read 5, 10, 20 pages to see if I can pick anything up.

[Anonymous No.4264021]

Here's my story idea, it's basically about a man who comes to this village to work as a mediator but he realizes something is very strange with the village, the person who escorts him tells the MC that no one in the village is allowed to speak with one another and the villagers all wear something covering they're mouths, they are only allowed to pass notes or use sign language. Of course the escort is the only one in the village who is allowed to talk because he works as a mediator between the village and outsiders. What more could I expand on this?

[Anonymous No.4264029]

>>4264021
Sounds more like the beginning of a thought experiment in philosophy of language than anything else.

I don't know, what do you want to do with the plot, and do you have any philosophy agenda to push by writing this? And why does this village need a mediator?

[Anonymous No.4264030]

>>4264018
It'll never come out quite as you want it to, especially when you're new to it. You have to give the story some free reign to do what it wants.
Put it aside and redraft it a month or two later, when you do that you'll be able to see how to make it do more what you want it to.

[Anonymous No.4264037]

>>4264029

I just thought it would be interesting to try my hand at surrealism a little, the village needs a mediator for contacting the outside world because they themselves can't do it since they are wearing something that covers they're mouths.

I might completely change the MC's occupation. No real sense in having two mediators in the story.

[Anonymous No.4264780]

>>4264018
I've thought that by now everyone has heard at least one of the variations of "your taste is great" speech. I'm sick of seeing it everywhere I look, but you know what? It's true.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/22/ira-glass-on-the-secret-of-success/
Just keep going man.