Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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ChunkyC

Re: Your character

So, Uncle Jim, let's see if I'm getting this....

Just saying 'he longed for a smoke', coupled (lets say) with the fact said character never actually smokes during the story, should be enough to let the reader fill in the rest for themselves. Everyone who reads the story who has quit should superimpose their own struggle onto the character. Saying it took 5 years might distance the character, ever so slightly, from those readers who took 2 or 10 years to quit. The fewer of these kinds of tiny 'distancings' you have, the better for your story.

??
 

HConn

Re: small details of the past

Mac, that's exactly what happened with me. I hated getting up in the morning and finally tried it because evenings and afternoons simply weren't productive.

Now I wouldn't write any other way.

I'm not a morning person. I don't expect I ever will be one. But I still get up at 4 am.
 

qatz

hconn

i did that for one or two of my books. i was so darn dopey, but there was time to write. only trouble was, it was the worst writing i ever did! well, it was pretty bad, anyway.
 

Karen Ranney

The House Analogy/Practice

I think that a book is the purest form of Virtual Reality. The writer provides one half of the experience, and the reader brings the other half.

If a writer says: The room was square - that's not enough information. But if a writer goes on and on and on with an intrusively detailed description, the writer is removing the need for the reader to participate in the Virtual Reality s/he has set up for him.

There's a happy medium, a way to put in just enough detail (or that one wall Jim discusses) to stimulate memory and recall. The room was dim, with a musty odor that reminded him of his grandmother's house. I know EXACTLY what that smells like - my grandfather's house in Missouri. Tell me about a rose, and I'll recall a rose I saw. Hint at a starry night and I'll remember last night staring up at the clear cool sky.

Tell me too much and you're wasting one of your greatest assets, my investment in your work.

It is my belief that a lot of writers overlook that second part of the writing equation - the reader's participation. Dare them to enter into your world, to join in on this great adventure you've created. Use their memories and their pasts. Each reader will bring different something different to the experience. Why else would some people love a certain book and others hate it?
 

maestrowork

Re: small details of the past

It depends on your genre though. If you write fantasy or sci-fi, you tend to have to describe the settings, people, etc. in great details because you're putting the readers in a strange world. A rose is not a rose until you say it's a normal rose (it could have been a man-eating rose with chainsaw for teeth). Other than that, I agree.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: small details of the past

If you write fantasy or sci-fi, you tend to have to describe the settings, people, etc. in great details because you're putting the readers in a strange world.

I dunno about that. I've written a series of SF books that includes faster-than-light spaceships.

All we know about the way those spaceships work is this:

They have engines.
The engines have tubes.
They need fuel.
A hyperspacial reference block is a neccesary part.
That reference block can get out of alignment.
When it gets out of alignment, you need a synchmeter to fix it.

That's plenty, don't you think?

Remember this: books are about people, and people are people no matter where or when.
 

PixelFish

Re: The House Analogy/Practice

I broke my synchmeter last Tuesday and I kept meaning to repair it, but the parts I needed were mysteriously missing. Why would that be, do you think?

(I blame it on Nelson over in Engineering--he's always borrowing my tools and parts, and he returns them with this hunched, hangdog expression that says he knows he does wrong and he really will do better next time, but he never does.)
 

Prometheus76

Re: Empty Nest

I wrote that little story (Empty Nest was the working title. Should be called something else that I can't think of right now) the other night when I checked the board and noticed no one had entered anything for awhile. That situation reminded me of sitting in an IRC chat room and people coming in and saying, "Hello? Anybody here?" and when that person is you it can feel lonely. I went with that loneliness and whipped up that little story. I am still working on my novel, but that sadness/loneliness feeling over an abandoned blog or empty chat room led to my little story. Anyway, I am disappointed that I didn't get one comment on it, good or bad.

*sigh*
 

James D Macdonald

Re: The House Analogy/Practice

Right on, Karen.

Writing/reading is an act of co-creation. (That's one reason writers want readers....)

We don't give folks an experience, we give them the blueprint with which they build their own experience. We give them two points; they construct the rest of the line.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: At the risk of bringing up "Jane Austen Doe" a

You don't know how much this lady annoys me. She isn't a mid-list writer. I'm a mid-list writer. She's a wannabe front-list writer who's discovering that she might be a mid-list writer (Sob! Horror! Woe!).

Here are a couple more responses to that thing:

This one has <a href="http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2004_03.php#001776" target="_new">some very good advice</a> for all writers.

Here's a dead-on accurate <a href="http://www.teevee.org/archive/2004/04/01/arts-fanfic.html" target="_new">parody</a> of the original weepy article.
 

ChunkyC

Re: Empty Nest

Prometheus --

It is a nice piece of writing, actually. Some of us (I for one)were involved in some pretty intense threads right around that time. Why don't you post it over in 'share your work' and I'm sure some of us will have a go at it. Just add the info from your follow up post about why you wrote it so anyone who hasn't seen it will get the context.

By the way, did you note how quickly things picked up after you posted it? :)
 

nemron2004

Re: The House Analogy/Practice

Writing thoughs, I have seen these wrote normally, bold, and italics. Which is the correct way?


Are you too replace the italics with underlined in your anuscript?


thanks :grin
 

nemron2004

Re: At the risk of bringing up "Jane Austen Doe" a

ooooooops, just found another post that answers this question

nemron :grin
 

James D Macdonald

Thoughts

You can indicate these with italics (which are indicated by underlines in your manuscript), or by saying "Bill thought," or by some combination of the two.

Entire paragraphs of italics are hard to read. If your book includes entire paragraphs of thought, consider writing it another way, or indicating thoughts in some other way.

Don't worry about it. House style is going to rule in any case.

Oh, yes, another link:

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/school_idiot/hp.htm" target="_new">This piece</a> has many insights on writing and the writing life. It's all true, too.
 

Kate Nepveu

Re: The House Analogy/Practice

"Every book is three books, after all; the one the writer intended, the one the reader expected, and the one that casts its shadow when the first two meet by moonlight."
--John M. Ford, "Rules of Engagement," in _From the End of the Twentieth Century_
 

James D Macdonald

Slush

<a href="http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html" target="_new">Why 98% of the slushpile is unpublishable.</a>
 

maestrowork

Re: Thoughts

That's why you need betas, crit group, etc. etc. to give you an honest opinion.... I always tell my readers with sincerity that "if I suck, please tell me -- no feelings hurt! I need to know so that I don't continue to waste my time thinking I'm a good writer." I'd rather my readers be honest and critical (I can always veto their opinions, but I need to know them) than giving me false compliments in order not to hurt my feelings.
 

ChunkyC

Re: Thoughts

"if I suck, please tell me -- no feelings hurt! I need to know so that I don't continue to waste my time thinking I'm a good writer."
Exactly right, Maestro. Ever since I started hanging out here, I've been discovering why my novel bounced back like a superball the two times I sent it out.

My first readers are also friends, and not publishing industry professionals. As eager as they were to be honest with me, I can't discount the possibility they held back to spare my feelings. Add to that their amateur skills at whipping a manuscript into publishable shape, and all I really got from them (valuable as it was) is that they liked the story. This was enough to encourage me to seek a higher level of expertise in the form of this forum.

It is a shock to suddenly get feedback far more incisive and critical than any received before, but it's value is equally great. I'm learning to take it on the chin, :blackeye and then come back for more. 8o
 

Dancre

i agree `

i have to agree with you two. i've had my doubts about my writing abilities. i'd rather have someone say, i suck, than to have someone pat me on the back and lie to my face.

Hey, U.Jim, can you send that article on why 98% of slushpile never makes it to the PA boards? maybe that'll help em. never know.
kim
 

Thekherham

Re: Slush

I hope this is the right place for this. If not, I'm sure you'll let me know.

Is there a difference between these sentences:

Billy was kind to animals.
Billy was not unkind to animals.

In other words, I'm wondering about the not un____ phrase.

Thanks.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Slush

Is there a difference between these sentences:

Billy was kind to animals.
Billy was not unkind to animals.


In the first, Billy is kind to animals. In the second, Billy could be kind to animals, or he could be indifferent to them. He could be anything at all in relation to animals except unkind to them. The second sentence is more ambiguous.

I'll overlook the obvious differences in sentence rhythm and complexity, though those might take more importance when you're figuring out which sentence to use in a given paragraph.
 

maestrowork

Re: i agree `

Of course there's also:

Billy is nothing but kind to animals.

and

Billy is anything but kind to animals.

and

Billy is only kind to animals.

Three different meanings, the third being the most provocative.
 
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