I would point out that not everybody is the audience for everything. There are people who like what I write, and people who don't, and both are OK. There are things I like to read here, and things I choose not to, and I think that is all right to do in a civil manner. I wouldn't say, for the record, that I copy Dostoyevsky or either of my other influences but I know that it is there. It is all right to me if some preferences in writing aren't as common as others, as long as we all treat each other with respect. We each offer something different, and that's not a bad thing.
So I write both for myself and to an audience--but IMO an audience has the right to self-select. Frankly, I would be surprised if you could find me a person who likes every style and everything written. If for example you are not a fan, that is completely OK.
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"Writing for yourself" is a wonderful idea if you don't care about anyone actually reading your story (keep a diary), but if you want a readership, then you are writing for an audience, not necessarily yourself.
The audience is important, but I was saying write for yourself first You're writing in STO's world, you're writing for fun, not because you're seeking a publishing deal somewhere. There's always the large container sites for writing too, which have an overall readersihp much larger than the forums.
People are going to have different tastes, and that's perfectly normal. There's people who won't like what you write on its conceptual level, and that's going to happen. But there's plenty of venues for writing on the Internet, so don't feel constrained.
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Before reading through TVTropes.com and trying to assimilate everything there, be sure to read their homepage. Tropes are not a bad thing in and of themselves. They're storytelling shorthand - which can be used to tell a story cheaply, or can be used to avoid having to reinvent the wheel every time you write.
So if you publish a story on this forum, for example, and someone immediately points out everything in your story that can be linked to a TVTropes entry, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem with your writing - in many cases, it merely indicates that you've been writing in coherent English.
The time I did publish, I certainly paid attention to the submission rules. When it comes to doing things formally, I completely agree--I don't feel the need to defy submission requirements. If I didn't want to go with that I would need to be prepared to market and develop the audience myself, get an agent, etc. That is a ton of hard work and risk that is not for the faint of heart.
The forum being the far more informal venue that it is, I think letting the audience have a variety of work to choose from, from different authors, and self-select according to preference, is a perfectly fine way of handling things. Some people will enjoy what I do and I'm glad for that. Others won't, and as long as basic civility is observed, that's fine.
There is a difference IMO between the professional and nonprofessional worlds. Part of why I mainly do fanfic is that I do recognize the difference and at least personally I am not willing to stake a career on my writing. Doesn't mean a lack of confidence, just a recognition of what I personally am and am not interested in doing. Writing as my after-work fun activity, at this stage in my life, and not my livelihood, is totally cool.
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That's what I mean by writing for the reader. Making sure you are generous enough with your words to make connections for the reader so they aren't scratching their heads. It applies to fanfic, fiction, journalism, etc
That's fair - sorry, it wasn't what was being conveyed earlier, but my main point is that it should be writing something the writer enjoys about, I wasn't making comments about structural components on writing for oneself, just it should be fun.
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Again -- and this is what the other poster is saying -- you are putting your opinion of literary merit on a pedestal of absolutes. You like Dostoyevsky more than Nabokov or Tolstoy? Great, that's you. There are plenty of people in the world that would rate Harry Potter higher than Dostoyevsky. I wouldn't, but that's where readers are at, and there's no point in critiquing their tastes, as they are just as valid as yours, regardless of what your mom studied in college.
As I said previously: to write for now is to look at what's being written for now. Walt Whitman and Tolstoy and Faulkner and Austen are great reads that deserve their places in literature's hall of fame, but the game's changed.
There is a distinction to make here: 1. "Literary" writing - more focused on craft, the musicality of language, figurative language and rhetorical devices, imagery.
2. Popular fiction/nonfiction: more focus on telling a story, less on prose style and rhythm.
Can the two overlap? Absolutely. But, what's going to help the OP here? He's talking about fanfic. Waxing nostalgic over a dead Russian author isn't helpful to a guy who wants to write sci fi fanfic for an internet audience.
I dunno, Nabreeki. While I do agree that a lot of literary criticism is subjective, I feel that Dostoevsky is the best. Not because of any specific skill with words--he's no better and no worse than, say, Shakespeare--but because he's just a damn good storyteller. He tells a beautiful, compelling story, and it's lasted through the ages because it's just that good.
Further, while I agree that the authors you mentioned were talented and (Austin especially) are excellent reads, the "game" has not changed. Authors are still writing for an audience--and it should be noted that popular writing is what we now consider literary writing; Shakespeare wasn't writing for the craft or the musicality or to make some grand sweeping point about humanity, he was writing a sex farce involving a love dodecahedron and fairies for consumption by the mass populace.
Basically, modern "literary" authors try too hard to either ape their predecessors or be hilariously avant-garde. Sort of like the artists that Bill Watterson ruthlessly parodies with "Calvin and Hobbes". It's not going to be some literary-magazine poem that gets remembered forever, it's going to be a Brandon Sanderson epic fantasy or a David Foster Wallace snarky article.
On your final point: Granted. I would, however, advise the OP to read certain popular fanfictions, such as "The Dragon King's Temple", "Harry Potter and the Natural 20", and maybe "Embers", since these all provide good examples of SFF fanfic done incredibly right.
Before reading through TVTropes.com and trying to assimilate everything there, be sure to read their homepage. Tropes are not a bad thing in and of themselves. They're storytelling shorthand - which can be used to tell a story cheaply, or can be used to avoid having to reinvent the wheel every time you write.
So if you publish a story on this forum, for example, and someone immediately points out everything in your story that can be linked to a TVTropes entry, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem with your writing - in many cases, it merely indicates that you've been writing in coherent English.
Yeah the most important thing is for your audience to understand what you're trying to convey.
One of the worst things I've ever seen a writer do is to make up a new definition for a dictionary word and simply not bother explaining it, and worse... doing it for no reason whatsoever. Yeah it was some swords-and-sorcery book and for some weird reason the author kept using the word "wand" when it was clear from how he used it that he really meant "sword". It took me a few chapters to make sense of it and was so annoying that I never bought a book from that author again.
Like Jon said, tropes exist as a form of literary shorthand, and attempting to not use them(which is largely futile) often means either spending a stupid amount of time explaining things, or confusing the reader.
Not going to get into your first paragraph because I'm not going to argue about your opinions of good literature.
And the reason why no one writes like Shakespeare or Tolstoy anymore is because the game has changed, and it's constantly changing. I don't like purple prose for the sake of purple prose, I find it tiresome annoying to read, thus my own writing reflects that. I write clearly, using the simplest words to convey what I want to say. I don't enjoy literary work just for the sake of being literary, but now there is a distinction made between the two, which is a shame. And I never disputed your point that the world won't remember literary writers - thus why I said many people are right to put Harry Potter on the pedestal with Brothers Karamazov -- it appeals to them and the time they're living in, so who is to say that they are wrong? Not you, not me.
I don't really know what you're trying to do besides debate for the sake of debating, and I've seen your constant need to be an authority of everything and anything, even bringing your mom's Harvard education into this when it clearly wasn't necessary.
I'm about reader-based storytelling. I haven't told the OP to be more literary, and I haven't pushed mimicking "literary" forms. If you've read my posts, I've actually tried steering him away from that. Modern writing conventions are very different from 100 years ago, which are very different from 600 years ago. In that sense, the game has changed.
Also -- DFW is not "popular" reading. He is a literary darling, and infinite jest will be remembered as a masterpiece, but only by the niche group of readers who have gotten through it. Harry Potter will have much more longevity with the public, not DFW. Sorry.
I can't really tell why you're arguing because you seem to be making the exact same points in different ways--just with a few personal attacks thrown in because you're adorable that way.
Furthermore, I didn't say that OP should strive to be "literary". That would make OP no better than the buffoons who talk about profound destiny and metaphysics in literary magazines.
My point, in the simplest possible terms, is this: Don't write a great literary work. Write a good story and let history judge it to be great.
Shakespeare didn't wax eloquent about the futility of the human condition or whatever, he wrote the equivalent of Borat and The Great Dictator. And some damn fine propaganda pieces (i.e. Henry V). And yet he's the gold standard for literary merit. Why? Because he was just that f***ing good of a writer.
(P.S.: Having read DFW, especially his piece on taking a Caribbean cruise, I have to place my chips on him being remembered simply because he writes a good, readable story.)
Oh wow, I didn't expect this many replies. Until I get to reading them all I'm thinking about the different pitfalls I came across when I used to write more actively. I would over think, over analyze, and possibly focus on the wrong aspects. I also wonder if my focus was on getting a good story out or just showing off my ideas for whatever concept I had at the time. Hindsight says I may have been guilty of the second. So I think that I need to learn to better balance those aspects.
I was also a perfectionist so I never actually got very far with most projects. Free writing might come in handy if I start noticing myself going through those old habits again.
I have other things to do right now so I'll get to reading and responding later.
Shipping Out, At the Fair, Consider the Lobster, etc. Are all good, very good, essays, but DFW is hardly a popular favorite. I am repeating my point because I am consistent. What I've been saying has in no way opposed your point of "don't write literary," because that was exactly what I had previously said when I wrote not to simply mimic the styles of past famous writers. You are repackaging points I've already made and are using them to argue with me, for some reason.
...funny, because that's basically what you're doing with me.
You remind me vaguely of an RL friend of mine. She's not quite as sociopathic or hypocritical, though, she just thinks it's funny to get System Lord Ba'al elected president of the student government.
Yes, it happened.
tl;dr: You're an adorable sociopath, and you should look in your mirror.
Personal attacks are fun, because who brings their mom into a debate of "I like these books?"
I dunno, maybe because she has a degree in Russian lit, and therefore the authority to speak on such matters?
Lemme put it this way. If I were a close relative of, say, Nate Silver, would it be so bad to bring his judgement into a debate on statistics? If you were the son of Sun Tzu, would it be so bad for you to use his judgement in a debate on military tactics?
Anyway. You're an adorable little troll, and I'm bored with you.
...funny, because that's basically what you're doing with me.
You remind me vaguely of an RL friend of mine. She's not quite as sociopathic or hypocritical, though, she just thinks it's funny to get System Lord Ba'al elected president of the student government.
Yes, it happened.
tl;dr: You're an adorable sociopath, and you should look in your mirror.
I dunno, maybe because she has a degree in Russian lit, and therefore the authority to speak on such matters?
Lemme put it this way. If I were a close relative of, say, Nate Silver, would it be so bad to bring his judgement into a debate on statistics? If you were the son of Sun Tzu, would it be so bad for you to use his judgement in a debate on military tactics?
Anyway. You're an adorable little troll, and I'm bored with you.
Just because your Mom has a degree in Russian literature, that doesn't mean that you do, or that you can wave her degree in people's faces to be taken seriously... PS before calling someone a sociopath, you might want to check just how many of the criteria (as well as for psychopathy) could be applied to yourself from your posting behaviours...
But you didn't post advice, worffan. You posted your opinion on Russian literature as if it were Absolute Truth (something which, as I've noted before, you've an issue with - an issue you had best resolve before trying to become a trained scientist), then tried to offer a psychiatric diagnosis of someone with absolutely no qualifications and without ever having met your subject in person (a diagnosis, by the way, which seems to have no basis in anything except your fit of pique - "sociopathy" is rather more than just "occasional trolling").
Now, if I were to offer an exemplar for someone who wanted to learn how to write by reading, I'd suggest older Heinlein, from back when he had an editor he respected. (Stranger In a Strange Land was TRIBBLE apart by someone who kept all the sex but tossed a lot of the character development; after that folks were reluctant to edit the Grand Master, and it shows. The Puppet Masters, though? Starship Troopers? Hell, even The Rolling Stones, purportedly a juvenile, is in my opinion an excellent read - and other than the old sci-fi visions of Mars, and I think a mention of the old swampy Venus idea, the science in it was rock-hard.)
Following up - if you're looking for the advantage of having a pre-reader to go through and help out your drafts, look at great authors.
Specifically, look at the books of great authors that got them acknowledged as good authors. Then, look at the book after that. It's not always the case, but when one is a Great Author, editors often (not always, this is a broad, sweeping generality) find it difficult to make changes to the Great Author, so the quality begins to decline.
But generally, read a lot, write a lot. Practice makes perfect.
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
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Antonine, an interesting point: even in Star Trek literature, the progressing lack of editorial control over Peter David appears to have resulted in a decline in an author who previously wrote great things like Vendetta.
(And to be clear, the decline I refer to occurred well before and has absolutely zero to do with the serious illness he had in later years, which I was sorry to hear about regardless of any literary opinion I hold.)
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Might as well stick an oar in here, but can't do much more than agree with most of what's already been said.
Read lots of other people's stuff, and you'll probably absorb a lot of the elements of their styles without necessarily even noticing (something it might pay to watch out for actually).
It can help to have someone to run it by quickly before posting anything, at least to make sure there are no major foul-ups.
Also, having some idea of where you'll end up and how you'll get there before starting out can help quite a bit if its going to be a release over time kind of story rather than a one off short.
Would also advise looking up Kurt Vonnegut's 'The Shape of a Story' and 'Eight Rules for Writing Fiction' (only a short video, probably easy enough to find online).
Comments
So I write both for myself and to an audience--but IMO an audience has the right to self-select. Frankly, I would be surprised if you could find me a person who likes every style and everything written.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
The audience is important, but I was saying write for yourself first You're writing in STO's world, you're writing for fun, not because you're seeking a publishing deal somewhere. There's always the large container sites for writing too, which have an overall readersihp much larger than the forums.
People are going to have different tastes, and that's perfectly normal. There's people who won't like what you write on its conceptual level, and that's going to happen. But there's plenty of venues for writing on the Internet, so don't feel constrained.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Before reading through TVTropes.com and trying to assimilate everything there, be sure to read their homepage. Tropes are not a bad thing in and of themselves. They're storytelling shorthand - which can be used to tell a story cheaply, or can be used to avoid having to reinvent the wheel every time you write.
So if you publish a story on this forum, for example, and someone immediately points out everything in your story that can be linked to a TVTropes entry, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem with your writing - in many cases, it merely indicates that you've been writing in coherent English.
The forum being the far more informal venue that it is, I think letting the audience have a variety of work to choose from, from different authors, and self-select according to preference, is a perfectly fine way of handling things. Some people will enjoy what I do and I'm glad for that. Others won't, and as long as basic civility is observed, that's fine.
There is a difference IMO between the professional and nonprofessional worlds. Part of why I mainly do fanfic is that I do recognize the difference and at least personally I am not willing to stake a career on my writing. Doesn't mean a lack of confidence, just a recognition of what I personally am and am not interested in doing. Writing as my after-work fun activity, at this stage in my life, and not my livelihood, is totally cool.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I wanna write a story aswell it will the greatest epic ever penned it will have
Pretty scantly clad women
there will be shock
there will be awe
there will be some of the greatest action sequences ever put within an short story
Be ready for my epic of epic short stories of all time
Coming soon
That's fair - sorry, it wasn't what was being conveyed earlier, but my main point is that it should be writing something the writer enjoys about, I wasn't making comments about structural components on writing for oneself, just it should be fun.
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I dunno, Nabreeki. While I do agree that a lot of literary criticism is subjective, I feel that Dostoevsky is the best. Not because of any specific skill with words--he's no better and no worse than, say, Shakespeare--but because he's just a damn good storyteller. He tells a beautiful, compelling story, and it's lasted through the ages because it's just that good.
Further, while I agree that the authors you mentioned were talented and (Austin especially) are excellent reads, the "game" has not changed. Authors are still writing for an audience--and it should be noted that popular writing is what we now consider literary writing; Shakespeare wasn't writing for the craft or the musicality or to make some grand sweeping point about humanity, he was writing a sex farce involving a love dodecahedron and fairies for consumption by the mass populace.
Basically, modern "literary" authors try too hard to either ape their predecessors or be hilariously avant-garde. Sort of like the artists that Bill Watterson ruthlessly parodies with "Calvin and Hobbes". It's not going to be some literary-magazine poem that gets remembered forever, it's going to be a Brandon Sanderson epic fantasy or a David Foster Wallace snarky article.
On your final point: Granted. I would, however, advise the OP to read certain popular fanfictions, such as "The Dragon King's Temple", "Harry Potter and the Natural 20", and maybe "Embers", since these all provide good examples of SFF fanfic done incredibly right.
One of the worst things I've ever seen a writer do is to make up a new definition for a dictionary word and simply not bother explaining it, and worse... doing it for no reason whatsoever. Yeah it was some swords-and-sorcery book and for some weird reason the author kept using the word "wand" when it was clear from how he used it that he really meant "sword". It took me a few chapters to make sense of it and was so annoying that I never bought a book from that author again.
Like Jon said, tropes exist as a form of literary shorthand, and attempting to not use them(which is largely futile) often means either spending a stupid amount of time explaining things, or confusing the reader.
My character Tsin'xing
I can't really tell why you're arguing because you seem to be making the exact same points in different ways--just with a few personal attacks thrown in because you're adorable that way.
Furthermore, I didn't say that OP should strive to be "literary". That would make OP no better than the buffoons who talk about profound destiny and metaphysics in literary magazines.
My point, in the simplest possible terms, is this: Don't write a great literary work. Write a good story and let history judge it to be great.
Shakespeare didn't wax eloquent about the futility of the human condition or whatever, he wrote the equivalent of Borat and The Great Dictator. And some damn fine propaganda pieces (i.e. Henry V). And yet he's the gold standard for literary merit. Why? Because he was just that f***ing good of a writer.
(P.S.: Having read DFW, especially his piece on taking a Caribbean cruise, I have to place my chips on him being remembered simply because he writes a good, readable story.)
I was also a perfectionist so I never actually got very far with most projects. Free writing might come in handy if I start noticing myself going through those old habits again.
I have other things to do right now so I'll get to reading and responding later.
You remind me vaguely of an RL friend of mine. She's not quite as sociopathic or hypocritical, though, she just thinks it's funny to get System Lord Ba'al elected president of the student government.
Yes, it happened.
tl;dr: You're an adorable sociopath, and you should look in your mirror.
I dunno, maybe because she has a degree in Russian lit, and therefore the authority to speak on such matters?
Lemme put it this way. If I were a close relative of, say, Nate Silver, would it be so bad to bring his judgement into a debate on statistics? If you were the son of Sun Tzu, would it be so bad for you to use his judgement in a debate on military tactics?
Anyway. You're an adorable little troll, and I'm bored with you.
Yeah, I'm done here.
Sheesh, take the time out of your day to actually think and post some advice and everything goes to hell...
Now, if I were to offer an exemplar for someone who wanted to learn how to write by reading, I'd suggest older Heinlein, from back when he had an editor he respected. (Stranger In a Strange Land was TRIBBLE apart by someone who kept all the sex but tossed a lot of the character development; after that folks were reluctant to edit the Grand Master, and it shows. The Puppet Masters, though? Starship Troopers? Hell, even The Rolling Stones, purportedly a juvenile, is in my opinion an excellent read - and other than the old sci-fi visions of Mars, and I think a mention of the old swampy Venus idea, the science in it was rock-hard.)
Specifically, look at the books of great authors that got them acknowledged as good authors. Then, look at the book after that. It's not always the case, but when one is a Great Author, editors often (not always, this is a broad, sweeping generality) find it difficult to make changes to the Great Author, so the quality begins to decline.
But generally, read a lot, write a lot. Practice makes perfect.
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(And to be clear, the decline I refer to occurred well before and has absolutely zero to do with the serious illness he had in later years, which I was sorry to hear about regardless of any literary opinion I hold.)
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I appreciate what you posted. I think people have overreacted just a little...
Read lots of other people's stuff, and you'll probably absorb a lot of the elements of their styles without necessarily even noticing (something it might pay to watch out for actually).
It can help to have someone to run it by quickly before posting anything, at least to make sure there are no major foul-ups.
Also, having some idea of where you'll end up and how you'll get there before starting out can help quite a bit if its going to be a release over time kind of story rather than a one off short.
Would also advise looking up Kurt Vonnegut's 'The Shape of a Story' and 'Eight Rules for Writing Fiction' (only a short video, probably easy enough to find online).