RikWriter
Banned
My weakness is what I call "the middle stuff." I'm great at beginnings, great at endings...but the interstitial stuff that gets you from here to there takes a lot more effort for me.
-
Basic Writing questions is not a crit forum. All crits belong in Share Your Work
Your weak spot?
- Thread starter tylermarab1987
- Start date
- Status
I've always had a similar problem when writing a story except for me, its some of the middle and the end. I can create a beginning, and like the climax of the story but the ending I have to write a few times because it never seems right.
Throwing ish into a story that I have no idea what to do with. I used to think that I was a really strong plotter who never had characters just run off and do whatever they like. Well, not quite.
I wonder if this is the problem I'm having with my first story, the one I've got on hold. I have it rather rigidly planned out, but when I open up the document I just freeze and I can't get any words down. With my more recent project, I threw in a bunch of random things, not knowing where they'd go, and they actually turned into a pretty interesting story (in my very biased opinion).
You know, with my current WIP, I wanted to make it fun so I gave myself permission to go off track. And it turns out some of those off track scenes are important and useful to the story! Sometimes it takes a while to think through the connections my subconscious is making, and sometimes the meandering is just that and has to be cut, but in general I think there's value to creative wandering.
Not to say that my capricious characters never leave me scratching my head, wondering "WTF am I supposed to do with that?"
This may be my weakness, if I understand NRoach--no mean
It may be a syndrome known as deaf blunt or a reaction to strongly suggesting again and again and again the first two words will suffice when editing: She nodded her head yes.
I tend to under-explain.
I have a tendency towards low levels of description, but I feel it teeters on the border between weakness and style. My personal taste as a reader favours less description over more-- I don't think I've ever read a book I felt suffered from lack of description, but I've definitely put down books for over-describing.
I think my biggest weakness is perfectionism. I think it's important to strive to be the best you can be, but if you're a self-aware perfectionist, you also have to accept you are never going to feel you've done the absolute best you can. Finding the balance between those two things is difficult.
I think my biggest weakness is perfectionism. I think it's important to strive to be the best you can be, but if you're a self-aware perfectionist, you also have to accept you are never going to feel you've done the absolute best you can. Finding the balance between those two things is difficult.
Atm, being tight-lipped. I never want to explain or give too much information away, even when I should. It's why I'm having trouble with my query. I much prefer to give hints than the whole story.
Eh, I'm sure I'll get better at it with practice.
Eh, I'm sure I'll get better at it with practice.
For some reason the forums don't allow me to quote. It says I need one more character to post. That's a lie, tried still wouldn't...anyway
@Ian Nathaniel Cohen
This times eleventy!
* Not trusting my judgment on who to listen to when I get contradictory feedback - for example, one person says to add something, one person says to take it out after I've added it, that sort of thing.
We need like buttons.
@Ian Nathaniel Cohen
This times eleventy!
* Not trusting my judgment on who to listen to when I get contradictory feedback - for example, one person says to add something, one person says to take it out after I've added it, that sort of thing.
We need like buttons.
Last edited:
I know, but sometimes I describe too much in the wrong scenes and kill the tension and flow. Adjectives are good, I just have to learn how/when to use them properly without slowing things down.
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2011
- Messages
- 23,124
- Reaction score
- 10,887
- Location
- Where faults collide
- Website
- doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
Getting published.
Ha! For me, it's having enough confidence to put my stuff out there so it can be rejected even. I know I'm never going to be published if I don't rack up a pile of rejections first, but form rejections put me into a "who in the hell am I fooling if I can't even get past the first cut?" tailspin.
Last edited:
I know what you mean, sweetheart. It's one of the writing "rules." I wasn't trying to cavil (<<<did I use that right?) I was saying I don't see anything wrong with breaking this rule/convention/theory. I see what you're saying, though. It's easy to use them in succession and abundance because they seem to pretty up the prose. In a lot of cases they don't, and just slows the pace like you said.
Overthinking.
In my zeal to avoid or eradicate plot holes, I'll grind to a halt because I simply must justify (at least in my own mind) such important issues as why my characters go to McDonald's instead of Burger King.
In my zeal to avoid or eradicate plot holes, I'll grind to a halt because I simply must justify (at least in my own mind) such important issues as why my characters go to McDonald's instead of Burger King.
Paying too much attention to what other people want and forgetting to tell the kind of story I want to tell. Or stopping myself from beginning a story in the first place.
I have so many. When I first started getting things accepted, I was on a high about my writing. Edits and R and Rs have made me more realistic about my abilities.
I really struggle with pacing and plot structure. I used to struggle with balancing dialogue and description but now I get far less editorial comments about that, so there's hope yet.
I really struggle with pacing and plot structure. I used to struggle with balancing dialogue and description but now I get far less editorial comments about that, so there's hope yet.
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2010
- Messages
- 4,226
- Reaction score
- 525
Being a really slow writer. And it's not because I don't put the time into it. But the number of words I can write or edit in an hour is pitiful.
Oh, and write novel-length works. Most things I write turn out <30k. Which is not the end of the world because there are e-pubs to sell novellas to, but it would be nice to write novels as well...
Oh, and write novel-length works. Most things I write turn out <30k. Which is not the end of the world because there are e-pubs to sell novellas to, but it would be nice to write novels as well...
I think my weak spot more than anything is deciding how much active description I need vs. just normal description to lay the scene. Because gosh I love showing the reader what I see as the writer about surroundings but everything I come across online says 'No, you've suppose to only show details about things when a character is interacting with it' Like, in place of taking in the scope of a tree in front of them that looks odd slowly, I should have the character climb the tree and notice things. But what if the character is naturally thoughtful and/or careful and not as active? Troubles, troubles ...*sigh*
What's the area in your writing you need to work more on? For me it's spelling. Those damn homonyms piss me off! I had "peaked around the corner" instead of "peeked around the corner" in the first few paragraphs of my WIP. I think little things like that can't be avoided 100% though.
Here's a cool article. I don't feel so bad about confusing homonyms anymore. If you feel bad about grammar, spelling, and other simple elements of your writing you should work hard to correct them, but take a look at the article.
http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2012/01/24/15-famous-thinkers-who-couldnt-spell/
Now here's a bonus question: Was Hemingway, Austen, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, etc. bad writers because they couldn't spell, or perhaps everyone makes mistakes?
Softball
Homonyms aren't spelling mistakes, they're word choice mistakes. Reading enough should prevent this. Homonyms are a problem when you don't know which word means what, not because you don't know how to spell the word.
We all make mistakes, of course, but there is no reason at all not to correct our mistakes before we let people see what we write. In a first draft, mistakes are fine. On a forum, typos and mistakes aren't too bad. But when you submit or publish, fix these mistakes ahead of time. Those older writers had dictionaries, and usually looked up the correct spelling when it came time for final drafts.
We have all sorts of dictionaries and spell check programs, so we have no excuse.
Unfortunately, I can't just use a dictionary to fix my weak spot. My writing weak spot, or so editors tell me, is that I don't do average male characters nearly as well as I do female characters. You'd think it would be the other way around, but it isn't.
We must be related, though it's my fingers on my laptop that move so fast. I'll look back on what I've written and see missing words that were in my head, but didn't make it to the keyboard. It has made for quite a few laughs, I admit. A favorite that comes to mind: '...[FONT="]Jack said, thinking he’d get on his knees if necessary.'
The missing words were, '...get on his knees and beg if necessary.'
Hey, maybe that would make the best new thread...Funny Typos.
[/FONT]
"I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!”
Well, you can post as many as you like. I have a temptation to speed through novels; my first draft usually reads like action movies than books.
Thanks, but another poster was kind enough to clear that up earlier. I must have used a bad source.
http://www.abcteach.com/free/l/list_homonyms.pdf
Another weakness of mine: Believing everything I read on the internet.
I agree with everything you said, but it is impossible to submit a final draft to an agent free of errors. If you can write a 80,000 word manuscript without a single error I will worship the ground you walk on. That would be something else. I can't write a 10 page research paper without the English professor marking it up before giving me an A-.
Yes, of course, Hemingway and others relied on using dictionaries whereas we have state of the art word processors, but back in his day people couldn't fathom the tech we'd have today. You can print off a MS in seconds, then make flyers that says your new book is done. Back in Hem's day the dictionary was the state of the art tech. That's why his editors were irked; I imagined they said: You can't pic up a darn dictionary? Hemi replied of course,"That's what the hell I'm paying you for."
I can imagine a critique partner of Hemi right now saying: This isn't well written, and for once I'd probably agree with such an abstract statement.
And yes, we have less excuses. Spell check is awesome but it's no substitute for a good critique partner. I accidentally changed unholstered to upholstered. "Hank upholstered his gun." This mistake was caused by the word processor and caught by people in the SYW forum.
I'm not trying to excuse anything, just saying we all make mistakes in some form or another, yes some make more mistakes than others. And yes, please polish your MS before you submit. Even my 7 year old niece knows to make sure her homework is done properly before giving it to the teacher. That's what critique groups are for. Helping others find mistakes in their writing to make it better.
Last edited:
Another problem of mine is I love to write long sentences. I can never tell when something is too long, and should be broken into two parts. Add the fact that there are some famous writers that get away with it, and I'm not sure what to do. How much is too much?
- Status