Forum Home Forum Home > Topics not related to music > General discussions
  New Posts New Posts RSS Feed - Writers' Bloc
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Events   Register Register  Login Login

Topic ClosedWriters' Bloc

 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <1234 5>
Author
Message
Sean Trane View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator

Prog Folk

Joined: April 29 2004
Location: Heart of Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 20240
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 01:38
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

Didn't realize.  Yes of course you're right.  It was largely 'Rubbish Advice'  LOL .





you, sir, owe me a new kb!! Angry

I can send the old one filled with my morning teaBig smile

Back to Top
Kati View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: September 10 2010
Location: Earth
Status: Offline
Points: 6253
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 01:45
Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:

Of course I can rebuild it - I still have it in mind...

But it was really refined - and some of the expressions I used had people rolling on the floor - and I doubt I can do better than what was lost.


But it's more than that really. With that theft, I lost the envy/will to write

Though I had some issues prior to that (father's succession and arsehole at work), this was the first event that start a downwards spiral that ended (or culminated) in the loss of my car in a pile up early March. I kind of lost the plot and it started a period of heavy doubt.
Actually while the traffic accident was handled catastrophically by the Dutch emergency services - thankfully no-oner was hurt - it also served as an electro-shock after a depression bout and can be maybe the start of a "new start".

I've closed a fair amount of problematic files (including just yesterday the eviction the neighbour woman sexually pursuing me from around the time of my computer theft>> well not for that reason, she wasn't paying her rent either).

Just to put it this way: I haven't written a single review for anyone since the theft: though I had a copy of my review file on a memory stick to post the reviews at coffee break at work  - so I hardly lost a thing in that direction.

But on top of my "novel" (to be pompous >> I generally tend to qualify it as "scribbling"), just as importantly (if not more), I lost a scientific exploratory research project (for the research institute I work) I was developping at home (too busy at work to take time at work to do so there) and I wasn't able to submit it at deadline time (in March). but I've recently found approval to develop this at work, but I'll need some engineers to help out developing the exploratory research call: hopefully, if one day, humanity will drive air-compressed cars, it will be (partly) because of the (my) project to investigate the future compressed air tanking stations. (I've been driving on non-polluting LPG/GPL for almost a quarter century, BTW)

I also had started to work on two climatic projects: stop glacier melting (and avoid some typhoons from developping (solution could be just that easy >> 500 m away). Needless to say, I will have to rebuild from scratch there as well.


well, I bought a hard drive back up system nowLOL


 
Sean, you have a blunt but also very intriguing way expressing yourself. You say things in an honest and uncanny manner.      
You certainly have the knack for writing, I have noticed this over and over in the things you write when you post.
You interest me very much, you need to write, you need to go back to writing/finishing your novel and let us enjoy some of that too!  Smile
Back to Top
Sean Trane View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator

Prog Folk

Joined: April 29 2004
Location: Heart of Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 20240
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 01:51
Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

  you need to go back to writing/finishing your novel and let us enjoy some of that too!  Smile


well it's in french... and likely to ruffle a few feathers the wrong way
(especially the straight-thinkers )

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

 Sean, you have a blunt but also very intriguing way expressing yourself. You say things in an honest and uncanny manner.      


yeah, it's raw, straight from the cask and just like uncoffered concrete

the rare persons who read my scribblings said that it was totally "moi"




Edited by Sean Trane - November 07 2015 at 01:55
Back to Top
Kati View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: September 10 2010
Location: Earth
Status: Offline
Points: 6253
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 01:55
Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

  you need to go back to writing/finishing your novel and let us enjoy some of that too!  Smile


well it's in french... and likely to ruffle a few feathers the wrong way
(especially the straight-thinkers )
 
hahaha! the whistle smiley LOL
Uhm French, I am rusty in French Unhappy 
You can easily write in bi-language, thus voila Big smile problem solved! Thumbs Up 
 
Now I really want to read that!!! Evil Smile
Back to Top
Sean Trane View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator

Prog Folk

Joined: April 29 2004
Location: Heart of Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 20240
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 02:29
Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

  you need to go back to writing/finishing your novel and let us enjoy some of that too!  Smile


well it's in french... and likely to ruffle a few feathers the wrong way
(especially the straight-thinkers )
 
hahaha! the whistle smiley LOL
Uhm French, I am rusty in French Unhappy 
You can easily write in bi-language, thus voila Big smile problem solved! Thumbs Up 
 
Now I really want to read that!!! Evil Smile


Not sure it's up everyone's alley: it's kind of brutal and un-apologetic

Though the main character (a feminine version of yours truly >> I told you i was a lesbianLOL) talks constantly, there are no dialogues at all


anyway, it will be on the back-burner for a while, coz I will give my exploratory research project the priority



Back to Top
Kati View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: September 10 2010
Location: Earth
Status: Offline
Points: 6253
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 02:35
Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

  you need to go back to writing/finishing your novel and let us enjoy some of that too!  Smile


well it's in french... and likely to ruffle a few feathers the wrong way
(especially the straight-thinkers )
 
hahaha! the whistle smiley LOL
Uhm French, I am rusty in French Unhappy 
You can easily write in bi-language, thus voila Big smile problem solved! Thumbs Up 
 
Now I really want to read that!!! Evil Smile


Not sure it's up everyone's alley: it's kind of brutal and un-apologetic

Though the main character (a feminine version of yours truly >> I told you i was a lesbianLOL) talks constantly, there are no dialogues at all


anyway, it will be on the back-burner for a while, coz I will give my exploratory research project the priority



 
Aha! We need more Stieg Larsson kind of novels Big smile 
Back to Top
Kati View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: September 10 2010
Location: Earth
Status: Offline
Points: 6253
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 02:39
Silver Linings Playbook is a good movie, great dialogue  Big smile I love interesting and tortured characters.
Back to Top
Dean View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout

Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 02:40
Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:


well, I bought a hard drive back up system nowLOL
The next step is to use it regularly... that sounds like a redundant piece of advice but I've seen too many cases of people recovering lost data from out of date backups. 

Before I change something I've been working on I make a compressed archive of the original and save it to another harddrive, then after making the changes take a back-up and save that elsewhere. When I'm writing a novel I'll backup the whole folder, complete with any sundry notes I have on plot and character synopsis, and all the research material I've collected along the way. I'll also make backups of any artwork I've created for the book cover, title page and any illustrations, plus the .docx and .pdf layouts for the e-novel version. 

I don't have a harddrive backup system, I have several... at last count I have 7 external USB hardrives, one networked NAS drive and more memory sticks than I care to count, plus a networked PC that is fitted with four harddrives to act as a file-server. I don't use "the cloud" because I don't trust it and because I can access my home-network remotely so don't need it.

...and still I manage to lose data occasionally Ouch


Edited by Dean - November 07 2015 at 02:41
What?
Back to Top
Sean Trane View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator

Prog Folk

Joined: April 29 2004
Location: Heart of Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 20240
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 03:57
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by Sean Trane Sean Trane wrote:


well, I bought a hard drive back up system nowLOL
The next step is to use it regularly... that sounds like a redundant piece of advice but I've seen too many cases of people recovering lost data from out of date backups. 


yup, no kidding... Bought in March and I will use first time...  this w-eEmbarrassedLOL...
 if I can figure out how that thing works.... AngrySmile (can't find a user manual in that bloody box)Ouch
I guess than I could've used a memory stick as a back up, since the My Passport thing I bought will not be doing anything systematic, since it won't be connected permanently to my laptop (do I make sense??)

Actually the laptop I'd bought back last December didn't do the weekly communting Belg-Neth for the first seven months (so it stayed in my Brussels pad), but since August, I've started to bring it with my once in a while and now it's almost every week, so it stays again in my car trunk too often to my liking

I'm not really concerned of losing the data in my computer (I'm not gifted or computer-literate enough to scram a computerLOL), more than actually losing the computer itself with what's on it

Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

 
Aha! We need more Stieg Larsson kind of novels Big smile 


one of my main influence (I guess) would be Claude Courchay's Avril Est Un Mois Cruel (April is cruel month)


Edited by Sean Trane - November 07 2015 at 04:02
Back to Top
Dean View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout

Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 04:38
Originally posted by Polymorphia Polymorphia wrote:


And, obviously, knowing how your characters would talk is important.
Absolutely. I often write short character profiles for each character as an aide-mémoire so that my writing is consistent for each. It frustrates the hell out of me when I read a piece of dialogue that is "out of character"
Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Originally posted by Polymorphia Polymorphia wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

So... my question is: How do you all go about writing dialog? 

...

With dialogue tags, I usually use them sparingly. Only if I need to. Previously, I have used them needlessly. Also, coming up with more creative ones than "said/replied/uttered/asked." There's also "muttered," "mumbled," "coughed," "rasped," "taunted," etc. Words that are more specific and colorful. Dialogue tags are not the only way you can attribute dialogue either. Here's an example: "The sergeant moved around in his seat. 'How can you expect me to believe you?'" 

I occasionally even use verbs that are not used for sound utterances. Two examples:

„You first“, gestured Friede. „You are the taller one“.

„Old woman“, grinned Friede.

That way I can communicate actions, like a gesture or a grin here, with spoken words quite elegantly.
Yup, using body-language, facial expressions and non-vocal actions to tag dialogue are useful techniques that I use frequently too. I called it 'the descriptive narrative' in my earlier post and it is fairly difficult to write convincing dialogue without it. The "struggle" I spoke of was two-fold: avoiding tedious repetition and disrupting the natural flow of the conversation. Of course true natural flow is nigh-on impossible to write in linear text because tempo and rhythm is difficult to convey and people sometimes talk over each other.


Originally posted by Polymorphia Polymorphia wrote:

With the excerpt, I noticed that my first tendency was to read it as a discussion between two characters rather than five. I noticed the lines where a third character may have chimed in, and others where a character might have disagreed with another that implied there was a fourth and fifth.
That's pretty much how it was intended, it started as a conversation between two characters then a third, fourth and fifth joined in later, pretty much as it would do in reality. In context, telling which character could have spoke each line is easier to discern because the reader will know of the events that preceded the scene. For example they would known which of the two Lacy characters was washing their hair in the shower when the portal opened. I wrote that passage as an experiment and deliberately set it in a darkened room so I could not use visual narrative, I could have left it at that but since anyone listening to the conversation would not be able to tell which of the two Lacys were speaking I challenged myself not to use any aural narrative for the entire scene. Where it doesn't work, and I admit there are several lines that are completely ambiguous, I realised that it didn't actually matter a great deal who said those lines.


Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

I agree dialog is tricky.   One thing I've begun to notice about good film scripts is that the dialog is lean, economic and to-the-point;  it tends to contain vivid, brief descriptions and clear symbology that communicates an idea quickly instead of lingering over things and words.   Though books are a bit different I still notice brevity of speech moves the story along.

Yes and no. The problem is that with little speech you are apt to create either cardboard characters or caricatures. People are not always to the point; they are often long-winded, beat around the bush or deliberately talk about something else.  If you reduce dialog too much you wind up on sit-com level.
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

^ Maybe if you want to convey that kind of story, but if your characters and setting are not so literal or familiar, realistic talking can be dull and not very helpful to the readers.
Verbosity vs. Brevity is something I first noticed in comics and graphic novels. Comic strips demand brevity and you rarely see long lines of speech or long rallies of dialogue, graphic novels tend to be more 'literary' so while keeping to the brevity limitation they are not as restrictive and longer monologues and dialogues are not uncommon. Also because they are visual mediums changing fonts can be used as narrative descriptives and that is something I have sort of used in two of my text novels though only as style and not a necessary part of the narrative. 

The next level of brevity is of course tv, radio, film and stage scripting, and now time is the limiting factor. Scripting a story that would occupy a 400+ page novel into a 90 minute film demands that long tracts of dialogue are trimmed and redundant conversations are cut. On screen conversations are rarely as long as they are in a print book, even when they seem long to the viewer.

Both of my 'published' novels were originally written as e-novels and were published episodically as a series of short chapters. Because they were written to be read on-screen and not in printed form I deliberately imposed length restrictions on each chapter. I realised early on that no one reads long passages of electronic text, that necessitated writing shorter narratives and dialogues than I would normally write. The need to write concisely is something that requires adapting ones natural style into something more disciplined, and for me that involves some small amount of planning and a lot of editing. I prefer to let the words flow onto the page naturally, and then go back and revise what I have written into something that has the pace and energy the scene requires. [Ironic then that I write long verbose posts here LOL]. This does not mean that my stories are short, when I converted my last e-novel to a print book it ran for 486 pages and contains over 120,000 words... 

...the next challenge would be to publish an episodic novel on Twitter. Wink

So, to summarise, I agree with everything everyone has said.


Edited by Dean - November 07 2015 at 04:40
What?
Back to Top
Kati View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: September 10 2010
Location: Earth
Status: Offline
Points: 6253
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 04:49
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by Polymorphia Polymorphia wrote:


And, obviously, knowing how your characters would talk is important.
Absolutely. I often write short character profiles for each character as an aide-mémoire so that my writing is consistent for each. It frustrates the hell out of me when I read a piece of dialogue that is "out of character"
Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Originally posted by Polymorphia Polymorphia wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

So... my question is: How do you all go about writing dialog? 

...

With dialogue tags, I usually use them sparingly. Only if I need to. Previously, I have used them needlessly. Also, coming up with more creative ones than "said/replied/uttered/asked." There's also "muttered," "mumbled," "coughed," "rasped," "taunted," etc. Words that are more specific and colorful. Dialogue tags are not the only way you can attribute dialogue either. Here's an example: "The sergeant moved around in his seat. 'How can you expect me to believe you?'" 

I occasionally even use verbs that are not used for sound utterances. Two examples:

„You first“, gestured Friede. „You are the taller one“.

„Old woman“, grinned Friede.

That way I can communicate actions, like a gesture or a grin here, with spoken words quite elegantly.
Yup, using body-language, facial expressions and non-vocal actions to tag dialogue are useful techniques that I use frequently too. I called it 'the descriptive narrative' in my earlier post and it is fairly difficult to write convincing dialogue without it. The "struggle" I spoke of was two-fold: avoiding tedious repetition and disrupting the natural flow of the conversation. Of course true natural flow is nigh-on impossible to write in linear text because tempo and rhythm is difficult to convey and people sometimes talk over each other.


Originally posted by Polymorphia Polymorphia wrote:

With the excerpt, I noticed that my first tendency was to read it as a discussion between two characters rather than five. I noticed the lines where a third character may have chimed in, and others where a character might have disagreed with another that implied there was a fourth and fifth.
That's pretty much how it was intended, it started as a conversation between two characters then a third, fourth and fifth joined in later, pretty much as it would do in reality. In context, telling which character could have spoke each line is easier to discern because the reader will know of the events that preceded the scene. For example they would known which of the two Lacy characters was washing their hair in the shower when the portal opened. I wrote that passage as an experiment and deliberately set it in a darkened room so I could not use visual narrative, I could have left it at that but since anyone listening to the conversation would not be able to tell which of the two Lacys were speaking I challenged myself not to use any aural narrative for the entire scene. Where it doesn't work, and I admit there are several lines that are completely ambiguous, I realised that it didn't actually matter a great deal who said those lines.


Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

I agree dialog is tricky.   One thing I've begun to notice about good film scripts is that the dialog is lean, economic and to-the-point;  it tends to contain vivid, brief descriptions and clear symbology that communicates an idea quickly instead of lingering over things and words.   Though books are a bit different I still notice brevity of speech moves the story along.

Yes and no. The problem is that with little speech you are apt to create either cardboard characters or caricatures. People are not always to the point; they are often long-winded, beat around the bush or deliberately talk about something else.  If you reduce dialog too much you wind up on sit-com level.
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

^ Maybe if you want to convey that kind of story, but if your characters and setting are not so literal or familiar, realistic talking can be dull and not very helpful to the readers.
Verbosity vs. Brevity is something I first noticed in comics and graphic novels. Comic strips demand brevity and you rarely see long lines of speech or long rallies of dialogue, graphic novels tend to be more 'literary' so while keeping to the brevity limitation they are not as restrictive and longer monologues and dialogues are not uncommon. Also because they are visual mediums changing fonts can be used as narrative descriptives and that is something I have sort of used in two of my text novels though only as style and not a necessary part of the narrative. 

The next level of brevity is of course tv, radio, film and stage scripting, and now time is the limiting factor. Scripting a story that would occupy a 400+ page novel into a 90 minute film demands that long tracts of dialogue are trimmed and redundant conversations are cut. On screen conversations are rarely as long as they are in a print book, even when they seem long to the viewer.

Both of my 'published' novels were originally written as e-novels and were published episodically as a series of short chapters. Because they were written to be read on-screen and not in printed form I deliberately imposed length restrictions on each chapter. I realised early on that no one reads long passages of electronic text, that necessitated writing shorter narratives and dialogues than I would normally write. The need to write concisely is something that requires adapting ones natural style into something more disciplined, and for me that involves some small amount of planning and a lot of editing. I prefer to let the words flow onto the page naturally, and then go back and revise what I have written into something that has the pace and energy the scene requires. [Ironic then that I write long verbose posts here LOL]. This does not mean that my stories are short, when I converted my last e-novel to a print book it ran for 486 pages and contains over 120,000 words... 

...the next challenge would be to publish an episodic novel on Twitter. Wink

So, to summarise, I agree with everything everyone has said.
 
I was not aware that you have written novels too, Dean! Stern Smile Wow. you are a dark horse, I said this before.
What kind of novels do you write, your subjects? What interests you to write?
Back to Top
Atavachron View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator

Joined: September 30 2006
Location: Pearland
Status: Online
Points: 65261
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 04:53
Dean's MO when he first arrived was DarqDean
"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
Back to Top
Kati View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: September 10 2010
Location: Earth
Status: Offline
Points: 6253
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 04:54
BTW to me a good book, when it's really good, when t is coming to an end and the pages are becoming less and less I start to get sad and I do not want it to end. I can read a thick book within 4 days and nooooo... not those supermarket over the counter romances, arghhh.... I hate those things, I don't even want to touch that with my hands. The Michel Bolton lookalike guy on those book covers looks so creepy ewwww Pinch brrrrr....
Back to Top
Atavachron View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator

Joined: September 30 2006
Location: Pearland
Status: Online
Points: 65261
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 05:10
^ I get sad too when a good'n is coming to an end
"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
Back to Top
Angelo View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Joined: May 07 2006
Location: Italy
Status: Offline
Points: 13244
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 05:20
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

As there are so many here who write ~ reviews, articles, interviews, blogs, even their own books ~ I thought we could discuss writing itself.  

Why do we write and what makes good writing?   Must we be only inspired and passionate about a topic, or is informed experience and savvy language just as important?  

Good idea, David!

I write reviews, obviously, but also poetry and song lyrics, and many moons ago I got good grades in school for my fiction assignments. Writing fiction I dropped straight out of school, something I regret now so it may change in the future.
At the moment, I mostly write reviews and short blog articles, and I notice that my ever too large list of activities has a negative impact on the quality of my writing sometimes. From next year on, I'll be limiting myself to 26 reviews per year, to improve the quality and free up time for other things.

You may actually have started a topic here that may get me back into posting more often op PA :)
ISKC Rock Radio
I stopped blogging and reviewing - so won't be handling requests. Promo's for ariplay can be sent to [email protected]
Back to Top
Atavachron View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator

Joined: September 30 2006
Location: Pearland
Status: Online
Points: 65261
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 05:25
^ I too enjoyed doing fiction when I was younger--  though I admit I took a lot from the authors I was reading (Poe, Doyle, Juster, etc).  In hindsight, stealing was  good exercise and a way to understand style.
"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
Back to Top
Dean View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout

Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 05:40
Originally posted by Kati Kati wrote:

I was not aware that you have written novels too, Dean! Stern Smile Wow. you are a dark horse, I said this before.
What kind of novels do you write, your subjects? What interests you to write?
I write what is somewhere between Low Fantasy Fiction and Speculative Fiction. You can read an adequate description of Low Fantasy on wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy. Essentially my stories are set in the real world at some unspecified time in the near future where weird, often supernatural, events happen. I don't offer any explanation for these other than they may or may not be about dream-states, they just happen and the characters have to deal with the consequences, hopefully in witty or humorous ways. Essentially the first, 'Darqlands', was about immortality and the second, 'A Leaf In Freefall', concerned with travelling between alternate realities but the plots are somewhat secondary to the writing. The one I am currently writing, 'The Mundane Adventure' series, (which may or may not see its completion on Nervous Horse) has a sub-plot about superheroes but is probably more of a follow-up to my first as some of the characters (or their descendants) are common to both.

However, mostly they are experiments in different modes of writing as that interests me more than simple story-telling. For example the first was based upon the number seven as that number appears a lot in myth and works fiction - so has seven main characters, seven "side-kicks" and the story cycles through each character sequentially over seven parts divided into seven chapters. I have refined that further in 'The Mundane Adventure' series by having each character relate a different part of the story from their perspective in a way that each part connects to another to tell the whole story. The restriction I have placed upon myself there is that this only happens once for each character, which forces me to be creative in how I continue narrative from scene to scene. 'A Leaf In Freefall' was just a means to have fun with different ways of writing without imposing rules (or following existing story-telling conventions), and I wanted to have a story that linked Alice in Wonderland with Valhalla, the Planes of Nazca, Ancient Egypt and Milton Keynes.




You can download free copies of 'Darqlands' and 'A Leaf in Freefall' here: www.lulu.com/spotlight/darqdean. (Please don't buy the print books, they are stupidly expensive and not worth the money). The first four instalments of 'The Mundane Adventures' can be found in Vompati's Nervous Horse ezine at nervoushorse.com starting in the 1/2014 edition.


Edited by Dean - November 07 2015 at 05:40
What?
Back to Top
Angelo View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Joined: May 07 2006
Location: Italy
Status: Offline
Points: 13244
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 05:57
That's a small step beyond what my favourite modern writer Neal Stephenson does, Dean. I started reading Darqlands a long time ago, I'd have to go back and read if fully now.

Actually, I forgot to add to my post (in response to the books David posted) to list Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon' and the 'Baroque Cycle trilogy' as my favourite books, together with Hugh Howey's Silo series.


Edited by Angelo - November 07 2015 at 05:58
ISKC Rock Radio
I stopped blogging and reviewing - so won't be handling requests. Promo's for ariplay can be sent to [email protected]
Back to Top
rogerthat View Drop Down
Prog Reviewer
Prog Reviewer


Joined: September 03 2006
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 9869
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 06:24
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

 

Why do we write and what makes good writing?  

I write because the act of doing so gives me pleasure.  That's the main purpose.  That being said, I would like to provoke thought through my writing.  If somebody remembered my writing a long while after reading it, I would consider it a good job done regardless of whether they remembered it in a good way or not.  The idea is to cut through the clutter and get to them (the readers).  I remember showing a W-I-P manuscript to my cousin sis.  As it happened, a movie came out with a plot similar in a superficial sense to my book even as I was wrapping it up.  Not wanting to take a chance, I dumped the manuscript.  My cousin then met me a year after our previous meeting and she said something to the effect that it was too bad that this movie came out when I told her I had ditched the book (without yet mentioning the reason).  I was surprised she had remembered the plot that well and told her as much.  Sorry for an anecdotal comment, but basically impact is what I look for.  


Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

 

 Must we be only inspired and passionate about a topic, or is informed experience and savvy language just as important?  

IMHO both are indispensable and a good balance of both is ideal.  

Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

 What truly draws you into another author's work;

If it's fiction, I read purely for the style because there may be something stylistically that I could absorb and internalise too.  e.g Arthur Hailey researches his novels a lot but the characterisation is not imo as good as it could be.  I could imagine a Le Carre or even Forsyth taking In High Places to a different level.  Hailey was too keen to show the main man as an essentially good guy and that's hard to believe since the main man is a politician.
 
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

  And what of the process itself-- how does that mysterious cerebral alchemy occur to cause a flow of words that allows one to express ideas, feelings, images and observations?  

When the inspiration is something close to your heart, the words come thick and fast.  It can be difficult to control the flow.  A famous actor in these parts said the really good actors look at a character and then search within themselves to see what part of themselves they can relate to the character. I.e. their inspiration comes from within.  This need not apply to ALL good writing, but it's certainly one highly effective way.  The writer must then use his/her imagination and creativity, though, to disguise these internal influences so that they don't rub somebody near and dear the wrong way, ha ha.

Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

Member's work may be posted in small portions though mainly this is a discussion on writing for writers and non-writers alike.  

Presently have a novel in the works but now is not the appropriate time to share it.  Going to share a blog post but the writing style I use for my non fiction writing is very different.  Kind of dry and meticulous.



Edited by rogerthat - November 07 2015 at 06:26
Back to Top
Kati View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: September 10 2010
Location: Earth
Status: Offline
Points: 6253
Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 07 2015 at 07:16
Thank you Dean, I have downloaded Darqlands and a_leaf_in_freefall ApproveClap
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <1234 5>

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down



This page was generated in 0.255 seconds.
Donate monthly and keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.