Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 2

James D. Macdonald

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Silver-Midnight, I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what your problem actually is; what you're really asking.

Let me see if this helps: It's seldom a good idea to not write something that's demanding to be written. You could just write this thing that's eating your brain and justify it on the grounds that no writing is wasted, even if it's not publishable.

It's also possible that your Saboteur Self has come up with a really good way of preventing you from writing at all with this fear that anything you turn your hand to will become fan fiction.

Is it wise to write a story that may or may not fall into a genre that you haven't really read? I don't know about wise, but I do know that people do it all the time (with varying degrees of success).
 

Silver-Midnight

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Silver-Midnight, I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what your problem actually is; what you're really asking.

Let me see if this helps: It's seldom a good idea to not write something that's demanding to be written. You could just write this thing that's eating your brain and justify it on the grounds that no writing is wasted, even if it's not publishable.

It's also possible that your Saboteur Self has come up with a really good way of preventing you from writing at all with this fear that anything you turn your hand to will become fan fiction.

Sorry my question sounded confusing. It's just, in short, I'm trying to ask how to get over that without necessarily writing fan fiction for this one thing. I don't mind writing fan fiction. I just don't want to write this type of fan fiction. If that makes sense. However, all I think about is that type of fan fiction or whatever you want to say. Basically, I want to still like this thing and be able to write without necessarily writing fan fiction for this thing. And I'm having trouble doing that because when I don't have a certain element in a story, it's starts becoming more and more inspired and influenced by that thing. I hope that clears it up better.

Is it wise to write a story that may or may not fall into a genre that you haven't really read? I don't know about wise, but I do know that people do it all the time (with varying degrees of success).
It's the varying degrees of success part that scares me.
 

James D. Macdonald

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It's the varying degrees of success part that scares me.

That's life in the creative arts....

I'm still thinking about your problem, and I think I may have a possible solution for you: Do what others have done, write the fan fiction, then file the serial numbers off. We can all name a recent best-seller that did just that.

If something is demanding that it be written, I don't know how to tell you not to write it in a way that doesn't involve quitting writing. Deny your subconscious at your very great risk.
 

Silver-Midnight

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If something is demanding that it be written, I don't know how to tell you not to write it in a way that doesn't involve quitting writing. Deny your subconscious at your very great risk.

Is it possible to make the idea more original fiction rather fan fiction? I mean I tried it before, and it did fail. But that might have been more poor planning on my part than anything.

Do you think I should try to make it or write it as original fiction again?

While I do get some bad ideas and I don't write every single idea I have, I worry that I won't be able to get anymore.
 

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Do you think I should try to make it or write it as original fiction again?

I really can't answer that. You know your own heart, and your own abilities, best.

We've been dancing around naming the fandom. Is it so singular that you can't find dozens of examples of the same setup from widely scattered spots over the past couple of thousand years?

If you break things down to their tropes everything is fan fiction. At the symbolic level there isn't much difference between Horatio Hornblower and Star Trek.
 

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Is it possible to make the idea more original fiction rather fan fiction? I mean I tried it before, and it did fail. But that might have been more poor planning on my part than anything.

Do you think I should try to make it or write it as original fiction again?

While I do get some bad ideas and I don't write every single idea I have, I worry that I won't be able to get anymore.

I'd do what Uncle Jim first suggested - write it and worry about filing the serial numbers off later.

Seriously. My first novel started out as virtual fan fiction, but quickly evolved into something entirely different. So different you probably couldn't pinpoint the points of intersection today.

Frankly, a great deal of fiction might have intersecting ponts with previously-published or televised stuff. I've seen SyFy Channel movies and other movies on the tHis Channel which were obviously patent ripoffs of some other movie or book. The producers and writers didn't get sued for those.

Just write it. I'm sure you'll find your own ideas quickly come to the front of the story and soon enough it will take on its own life as its own stand-alone story.

And, if not, well you still wrote it and probably learned something from doing it. That's payoff enough.
 

Silver-Midnight

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I'd do what Uncle Jim first suggested - write it and worry about filing the serial numbers off later.

Seriously. My first novel started out as virtual fan fiction, but quickly evolved into something entirely different. So different you probably couldn't pinpoint the points of intersection today.

Frankly, a great deal of fiction might have intersecting ponts with previously-published or televised stuff. I've seen SyFy Channel movies and other movies on the tHis Channel which were obviously patent ripoffs of some other movie or book. The producers and writers didn't get sued for those.

Just write it. I'm sure you'll find your own ideas quickly come to the front of the story and soon enough it will take on its own life as its own stand-alone story.

And, if not, well you still wrote it and probably learned something from doing it. That's payoff enough.

Yeah, I suppose so.

Honestly, I think my issue is I just have issues sitting down and writing now. I don't know if it's because I'm nervous or I have no motivation or what. I just can't sit down and put words on the (virtual) page for anything. And I just....I can't figure out how to make myself write. I think that's the biggest thing. Figuring out how to make myself write. Even if it's just 500 words.
 

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Honestly, I think my issue is I just have issues sitting down and writing now. I don't know if it's because I'm nervous or I have no motivation or what. I just can't sit down and put words on the (virtual) page for anything. And I just....I can't figure out how to make myself write. I think that's the biggest thing. Figuring out how to make myself write. Even if it's just 500 words.
Sounds like you have a bit of perfectionism creeping in.

You can't go in expecting to make perfect writing BEFORE you sit down. It's necessary to just get the story fleshed out, then let the real 'craft' work come later. You gotta go in with the mindset that what you write will be flawed at the beginning but that you can polish it to perfection later. You should TRY to just bust out what you can, then promise yourself to look at it later. Don't carry the 'editor' mindset into your writing sessions or else you'll never get anything written to begin with. Just start busting out words with reckless abandon, and tell yourself you'll 'fix' what's wrong with it later. (we gotta crack eggs to make an omelette!)

"The psychology of a thing is 80% of it" ---Tony Robbins

Also, I think it's important to know where you are going before hand. That takes a lot of pressure off the table. A bit of outlining helps with that, for me, but everyone's different.

:)
 

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Uncle Jim and dirtroadfilms have good suggestions.

Also, maybe try writing a synopsis version of your idea. Just a casual conversation kind of telling of your idea, like you're telling a friend over coffee/tea. "And then this happens, oh and there's this girl in the story who..." Nothing fancy, nothing prose-y about it.
 

Chris P

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Uncle Jim and dirtroadfilms have good suggestions.

Also, maybe try writing a synopsis version of your idea. Just a casual conversation kind of telling of your idea, like you're telling a friend over coffee/tea. "And then this happens, oh and there's this girl in the story who..." Nothing fancy, nothing prose-y about it.

I've lately tried writing the query letter while still writing, answering the three questions of 1) what does the MC want? 2) what must he do to get it and 3) what happens if he fails?

It's helped me focus sometimes, especially on the stakes (question 3).
 

bearilou

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Uncle Jim,

You said something in another thread that I thought would be a good question to ask, so I'm pulling it over here.

I've actually written movie tie-in books. (The book based on the first Mortal Kombat movie? That was me.) One thing you can't do if you're basing your book on a movie that's really going to be on the screen is add a character or a sub-plot even if the novel really, really needs it. If you're working from an unproduced screenplay to which you own all the rights ... if you need to change things to make it a better novel, you can.

Novels and screenplays are both forms of storytelling, but they do have their differences.

Would you consider it good practice to take a screenplay and write a novelization? Obviously, it wouldn't be something that can be sold but I'm thinking more along the lines of something similar to Silver Midnight's questions. Try to write a novelization on a script to help shake the cobwebs off or clear out the buffer when we feel like we're stuck?

Just curious. :)
 

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No, bearilou, I wouldn't suggest it. It's (at least I find it so) fiendishly difficult. Harder than writing your own.

But, you can try it. Maybe it'll work for you?

It removes a lot of potential excuses. You have the whole story in front of you, dialogue and all. You know what everything looks like, what the key plot points are. There's much less room for waffling and wavering and endlessly worrying about things that don't involve actually writing. And as a "force yourself to just write something" exercise there's no obligations of quality or completion.

If the problem is overthinking a story to the point of never writing it, a "novelization" from another medium might help build the habit of putting words on the page.

If the problem is premature editing and perfectionism about prose it won't help at all. The time-tested cure for that is a looming deadline with a word count minimum, which is why NaNoWriMo exists.
 

Silver-Midnight

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500 words? That's just two pages. Look, write 500 words right now. Even if it's All Work and No Play Make Jack A Dull Boy fifty times.

True. I mean I can do it. I know I can. Yesterday, I actually wrote 1147 words into my first draft.

Sounds like you have a bit of perfectionism creeping in.

You can't go in expecting to make perfect writing BEFORE you sit down. It's necessary to just get the story fleshed out, then let the real 'craft' work come later. You gotta go in with the mindset that what you write will be flawed at the beginning but that you can polish it to perfection later. You should TRY to just bust out what you can, then promise yourself to look at it later. Don't carry the 'editor' mindset into your writing sessions or else you'll never get anything written to begin with. Just start busting out words with reckless abandon, and tell yourself you'll 'fix' what's wrong with it later. (we gotta crack eggs to make an omelette!)

"The psychology of a thing is 80% of it" ---Tony Robbins

Also, I think it's important to know where you are going before hand. That takes a lot of pressure off the table. A bit of outlining helps with that, for me, but everyone's different.

:)

Yeah, I do have a bit of perfectionist type mindset; however, I'm trying harder and harder to fix that. It's still tough sometimes, ignoring that little voice in the back of your head. I'm trying playing music or listening to RainyMood(or ForestMood) while I write. Those things tend to distract me enough to write without the voice but not enough to stop writing completely, if that makes sense. However, I really need to get better at ignoring that voice and just writing. But I really don't want to feel like I'm just churning stuff out.

Uncle Jim and dirtroadfilms have good suggestions.

Also, maybe try writing a synopsis version of your idea. Just a casual conversation kind of telling of your idea, like you're telling a friend over coffee/tea. "And then this happens, oh and there's this girl in the story who..." Nothing fancy, nothing prose-y about it.
I used to do that. I still kind of do that. I haven't done it with the two stories that I have now. I probably should. I mean I sort of have an idea of what's going on. I still don't have it all connected and fleshed out though as say I would if I wrote a summary. However, even with the summary I still left some stuff unanswered I think. Should it be like a summary of the full story, like everything that happens, or should it be more like a synopsis/summary, like something that you'd find on the back of a book/movie cover?

I've lately tried writing the query letter while still writing, answering the three questions of 1) what does the MC want? 2) what must he do to get it and 3) what happens if he fails?

It's helped me focus sometimes, especially on the stakes (question 3).

Those are probably three questions I really need to look at answering I think. It will probably help with the focus of the story.


Thanks all. :)
 

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Silver,

One more thing.

Maybe it's too much to wrap your mind around to try and "see" the whole thing at once. You can try what I call 'entry points' which is to take just one single scene or event i am REALLY feeling at the moment, and go write that, as a stand alone. Next time, pick another one that you are burning to write.

(today I was a bit unmotivated so I dug through my outline until I found one that excites me, now, at the moment.)

Another thought. I wrote an essay on this some time ago: in MY mind I separate the "inventing of a story" from the "writing" of it (ordering it into polished sentences). This frees me up from having to think about both all at once. As they say, save the editing for later. I first focus on busting out story info, scenes, etc then later take that material and mold it for the reader.

Maybe take some small bits of an idea of yours, and begin from there.

(with NOOOOOO pressure)

:)
 

Silver-Midnight

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Silver,

One more thing.

Maybe it's too much to wrap your mind around to try and "see" the whole thing at once. You can try what I call 'entry points' which is to take just one single scene or event i am REALLY feeling at the moment, and go write that, as a stand alone. Next time, pick another one that you are burning to write.

(today I was a bit unmotivated so I dug through my outline until I found one that excites me, now, at the moment.)

Another thought. I wrote an essay on this some time ago: in MY mind I separate the "inventing of a story" from the "writing" of it (ordering it into polished sentences). This frees me up from having to think about both all at once. As they say, save the editing for later. I first focus on busting out story info, scenes, etc then later take that material and mold it for the reader.

Maybe take some small bits of an idea of yours, and begin from there.

(with NOOOOOO pressure)

:)

Well, I'm kind of, sort of already doing that. I'm writing my current thing as scenes; I'm not even breaking them up into chapters. Granted, they still logically flow. However, I'm not forcing myself to meet a certain word count (for a chapter) or saying that a chapter is XYZ length or anything like that. I mean so I do write individual scenes, but I really haven't skipped around too much, not yet anyway.
 

MumblingSage

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I really can't answer that. You know your own heart, and your own abilities, best.

We've been dancing around naming the fandom. Is it so singular that you can't find dozens of examples of the same setup from widely scattered spots over the past couple of thousand years?

If you break things down to their tropes everything is fan fiction. At the symbolic level there isn't much difference between Horatio Hornblower and Star Trek.

Hornblower is always what I think of when file-the-serial-numbers-off fan/original fiction comes up. I can name 2 successful romance series off the top of my head that either started as outright fanfiction or were at the beginning heavily inspired by particular characters. Plus a novel by a friend of mine that was just accepted by a small press. All of them wonderful reads, and very distinct from the source material (the 'romance' part will do that).
 

James D. Macdonald

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Originally posted elsewhere at AW (How do you decide how many scenes should be in a chapter?) :

------------------

Rule 482(c)(iii) of The Writers' Manual; or, A Compendium of The Rules of the Art of Literature, (I'm quoting from the third edition here, but you should be aware that some major publishers still use the second edition) states quite clearly that women's fiction must have 4.6 scenes per chapter.

On the other hand, the eminent Professor Nior Osocoix, PhD, MLA, CMOS, has stated that women's fiction belongs to the class of novels in which, "a profligacy of scenes, many short, is an infallible marker of the sub-genre denoted women's fiction, which some hold to be identical with the so-called 'chick-lit' marketing category[SUP]1[/SUP]; twenty scenes are not too many in those chapters where the first, third, and fifth plot complications are to be encountered."

1. Although I myself do not hold that opinion.

These two seemingly contradictory rules can be reconciled if the remaining chapters of the book have only one or two scenes, lowering the over-all average.

When asked for comment, noted women's fiction author Imogene Sweetbreath (who writes under a wide variety of pseudonyms), looked up blearily from her word-processor and muttered, "How long is a piece of string?"
 

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Hornblower is always what I think of when file-the-serial-numbers-off fan/original fiction comes up. I can name 2 successful romance series off the top of my head that either started as outright fanfiction or were at the beginning heavily inspired by particular characters. Plus a novel by a friend of mine that was just accepted by a small press. All of them wonderful reads, and very distinct from the source material (the 'romance' part will do that).

Hmm....Something to think about I guess. For at least future reference anyway.
 

Silver-Midnight

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Silver,

One more thing.

Maybe it's too much to wrap your mind around to try and "see" the whole thing at once. You can try what I call 'entry points' which is to take just one single scene or event i am REALLY feeling at the moment, and go write that, as a stand alone. Next time, pick another one that you are burning to write.

(today I was a bit unmotivated so I dug through my outline until I found one that excites me, now, at the moment.)

Another thought. I wrote an essay on this some time ago: in MY mind I separate the "inventing of a story" from the "writing" of it (ordering it into polished sentences). This frees me up from having to think about both all at once. As they say, save the editing for later. I first focus on busting out story info, scenes, etc then later take that material and mold it for the reader.

Maybe take some small bits of an idea of yours, and begin from there.

(with NOOOOOO pressure)

:)

I do have one thing to add that I didn't say earlier.

How would suggest writing in scenes in say a Word processor? (Like Open Office, MS Word, LibreOffice, etc.) I typically write in yWriter and Scrivener. However, I also would like to develop a method I can use for a document in a processor. And I know the really obvious answer is just to write it out. However, that somewhat seems daunting and could possibly lead to confusion. Is there a best way or better way to write it out? Would it be a good idea between each or at the end of a scene do a "scene break symbol" of my choice ( ***, ~~, ~, ###, #, etc.)? What would you suggest?
 

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How would suggest writing in scenes in say a Word processor? (Like Open Office, MS Word, LibreOffice, etc.) I typically write in yWriter and Scrivener. However, I also would like to develop a method I can use for a document in a processor. And I know the really obvious answer is just to write it out. However, that somewhat seems daunting and could possibly lead to confusion. Is there a best way or better way to write it out? Would it be a good idea between each or at the end of a scene do a "scene break symbol" of my choice ( ***, ~~, ~, ###, #, etc.)? What would you suggest?
I think writing in a word processor works well. Remember, not long ago everyone had to use paper and typewriters. :)

When I am writing in Word I simply separate different sequences/scenes/chapters by skipping three blank lines then I give the next passage a quick temp title in all caps, and put it in bold/underlined. The heading may be CAR CRASH, PARAMEDICS ARRIVE. The next one could be SHE ARRIVES AT E.R. This way I can scan through the file later to find a specific place in a hurry.

But this is the way *I* do it, and since I began by doing screenplays sluglines are a habit for me. Maybe someone more sophisticated can offer a better way? :)
 

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I use * * * for scene breaks because then it's easy to use the 'find' dialog to skim through scenes.

Any non-word sequence of characters would work just as well.

(It's also handy for 'import and split' in several different programs and for the scene list sidebar in FocusWriter :))