|
Post by weirdraptor on Jun 23, 2012 17:30:06 GMT -8
Looking at my writing, I definitely notice several quirks that I have that show up in almost everything I do. For example, I find female characters more interesting to write for than dudes. I also tend to make run-on sentences that have to reworked and simplified and split up.
When I start out a new story, I also only partially plan things out. My outlines are very loose in the beginning, so while I know what I'm going to do with a story, I'm partially making it up as I go along. Then after establishing my world and characters for a few chapters, I begin to grow a more concrete idea of what I'm going to do. The outline becomes more detailed and then I begin to write up summeries of my entire story from start to finish.
So what are some of your writing quirks and processes?
|
|
|
Post by weirdraptor on Nov 1, 2012 13:38:40 GMT -8
How come no one ever replied to this? Seriously, there have to be quirks in your writing that you noticed. Come on, let's share about and from each other a little.
|
|
|
Post by mranonymous on Nov 2, 2012 22:46:59 GMT -8
Ok. I haven't done much work on MLP yet but I did write Monster Wars, a three-part Godzilla trilogy. From what I saw and from my plans for my MLP story Til All Generations are One, I do have my tics. Firstly, I have a tendency to go overboard. One idea turns into another, I think of new things and what was meant to be one page turns into several chapters. For example, when I was scripting King Ghidorah's arrival on Earth, I remember that on the first attempt, I worked out a nice outline and as an afterthought, a scribbled in the margins, he attacks Egpyt and fights a snake monster. It turned into the multi chapter opening for the second book "Dogs of War!" Apophis the snake monster has ruled Egypt with an iron fist for decades but when Ghidorah arrives he finds himself forced to ally with the humans. Even beyond that, we see his family, mostly the good brother Quetzal and their father Manda. Case in point... www.fanfiction.net/u/1625555/Mr-Anonymous-2000Book One is 77,999 words. Book Two is 107,512. Book Three is 98,315. Altogether 283,826 words... I never planned for this to happen. I just keep adding things as I go along making it longer and longer... and that leads to the second part. Secondly, I tend to be very meticulous and organic. I have everything worked out and planned out before I get the story in. First I write a rough outline and I just keep polishing it adding more words. I don't do rough draft, then second draft, I just keep going back and revising. Really, for me its hard to tell where a one page outline ends and the final published version starts. Related to the first is my everything but the kitchen sink way of writing. I am a Godzilla fan and I also like other sci fi anf fantasy. When I originally wrote Monster Wars for my very first website, Kaijuphile.com, I was writing the Godzilla story that I had wanted to tell since I saw my first film and so I put everything I had into it. Below is my bibliography. www.fanfiction.net/s/6441321/13/The-Age-of-MonstersFor my pony stories, Til All Generations are One, I'm thinking of incorporating the five generations into one timeline, G0/ My Pretty Pony, G1/ MLP and Friends, "G2"/ MLP Tales, G3, and G4/ MLP: FiM. On top of this taking advantage of the greater Hasbro universe to cannon meld with - GI Joe
- Transformers
- Inhumanoids
- Jem
- Moon Dreamers
- Glo Friends
- Though I don't particularly like it... I keep wanting to include Potato Head Kids, just to complete it.
Not to mention brief mentions, cameos, and cannon melding with - Lord of the Rings
- Wizard of Oz
- Jim Henson's Labyrinth
- Dark Crystal
- The Last Unicorn
- Flight of Dragons
- Dragonheart
- King Arthur
- Charlemagne
- Clash of the Titans (original)
- The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
- and more...
Go overboard indeed... Fourthly, in Godzilla and in my pony ideas, religion just keeps popping up. Its not deliberate, I'm not trying to write a catechism... its just that I love my faith very much and before I know it I have my characters engaging in theology and the stories they live in imbued with a Catholic worldview. Again, I don't try to do that... its just so second nature to me that I do it automatically. I mean, when one guy reviewed it on TV Tropes, he invoked the "What do you mean its symbolic?" trope concerning a scene where I had Godzilla crucified by Steel Girders, resurrected by the Great Dragon and finally kill King Ghidorah whom I had compared to Satan (multi-headed dragon of evil). When I read that my jaw dropped. I was, "I... I really did write that!" Catholicism and ponies... just check my Father Crucifix Rosary idea I have on the brainstorm section. ;D Well, that's all for me. Any ideas from everyone else?
|
|
|
Post by weirdraptor on Nov 2, 2012 23:18:05 GMT -8
It looks like you take inspiration and a runs whole miles with it! At least you get more material out of it.
Oh, boy, I have done that a few times, myself. I get a good idea and expand on it like you.
Another tic I have is that I like to call on elements of Norse mythology for material. Those legends just fascinate me.
|
|
|
Post by weirdraptor on May 31, 2013 15:03:24 GMT -8
I think it's high time I resurrected this. This was an interesting topic that just didn't take off. So how about it, guys? What are some of your writing tics?
One quirk is my writing that is a conscious choice is that I don't like my chapters to exceed 10,000 words or 30 pages, which ever comes first. I don't like to make my writing too unwieldy for readers. After a certain point, you're just asking too much for one chapter, I think.
|
|
|
Post by sunstar on Jun 2, 2013 19:14:18 GMT -8
My biggest quirk is that I can't have any spelling mistakes. I also do not describe like I should, and when I do, I get graphic. Here is an example from my Startrek commission, Ghost in the Machine.
Kaya stepped around the corner from the turbo lift. She stopped suddenly, her highly sensitive nose up. Was that blood? There was no mistaking the coppery scent in the air. She looked down the hall. Up ahead, a body lay up against the wall. Kaya saw the blood around the body first. It soaked into the carpet, splashed up the wall, and soaked into the gold uniform worn by the body. Kaya darted toward the body and knelt. Carefully, she turned the head toward her, and managed to bite off a scream. There was no mistaking who it was. Kaya reached for the com as her medical training kicked in.
"Sickbay, come in. I have an emergency on Deck B. It's the Captain, and it is pretty bad." Kaya waited for confirmation.
"McCoy here, I have a med unit in route, and I'm with the unit." McCoy answered, "ETA 3 minutes."
"Acknowledged, Kaya out."
Kirk's face was in tatters, one eye hanging from its socket by a shred of tissue. His lower jaw was gone, pieces of bone glinting through the remains of what had once been his nose. Skin dangled in strips from what was left of his face. Blood poured in rivulets from many places, and Kaya placed her fingers over the spots with the worst of the bleeding. She felt Kirk moan and whimper under her gentle touch. "Shh, easy. I know it hurts. Help is coming."
I focus more on the action too, but I feel that I have gotten better.
|
|
|
Post by Sassaflash on Jun 3, 2013 5:03:30 GMT -8
Ahh someone else remembers what Flight of Dragons is. <3 I sometimes have difficulty making the speech of different characters sound different unless I have a particularly strong idea of what they're like. And occasionally I have issues with run-on sentences. But that seems to mostly happen when I'm writing non-fiction. My biggest problem though is noise. The room has to be practically silent for me to be able to focus, and the tiniest little noise becomes incredibly irritating. Sometimes I can drown it out with music. But my family is particularly loud. Especially my dad, who likes to give running commentaries on whatever he's doing at the time. He sings out of tune, does this weird breathing noise thing when he's concentrating himself, and constantly complains out loud about his computer. It probably doesn't seem like much written out like this. But he also hardly ever leaves the house and it's near constant, so I've become somewhat hyper-sensitive to it. I used to be able to concentrate with a little general background noise. But not anymore.
|
|
|
Post by weirdraptor on Jun 4, 2013 14:22:36 GMT -8
I also remember Flight of Dragons. *nostalgia kicks in and WR and suddenly compelled to either read the book or the watch the highly flawed but still entertaining movie* I also strive for perfect grammar, sunstar, but I am a terrible editor. I always need someone else to help me sort out all the errors before I can post. I'm kinda the opposite of you in that regard, but not totally, Sassaflash. Sometimes if I turn music on, it helps me to think while writing, but other times, I wil require silence. I'm just odd that way. Here are some more of mine: When I start out a new story, I have a very loose idea of what I want to do. My outlines are very open-ended in the beginning, so while I know what I'm generally going to do with a story, I'm still in the process of planning it out after I've actually started writing. I have a reason for doing it this way, instead of planning out every little thing before I start. You see, if I spend too much time creating a writing "bible", so to speak, I probably won't ever get around to actually writing the story. So I'll write the gist of what I want to do, which will start off as a few paragraphs, and then Chapter 1 writing begins. Early on, I will be partially making it up as I go along, but that soon changes. After spending a little time on the early chapters and establishing the basics of the world and characters, the ideas begin to come more naturally for me and as they come, I write them down and organize them so that they fit into my plan and the outline becomes more concrete, usually by the time of Chapter 2. Now, my outlines are not typical ones where you have it laid out in bullets points of numbers and letters. They're like this: Chapter (X):(Summery) Chapter (X):(Summery) For me, that's just easier to organize. Ordinary outlines with bullet points and the like just look too stiff and inorganic for my thought processes to work off of. I'm not condemning the standard way of doing it, I'm just saying it doesn't work me and it doesn't help me think out what I'm trying to do. And the outline is constantly changing. Scenes and dialogue will take up or less space than I anticipated so moments that were intended to be saved for next chapter will brought be in early or things I wanted to do in a current chapter will have to pushed back. This happens all the time. Some scenes will get cut, but I don't delete them, especially if they're plot relevant or if I think they were particularly well-written. I have a Word Doc simply titled, "Celestial Warrior Moon Deleted Scenes", where everything that doesn't get used right away gets compiled for possible later use. I have already reinserted numerous scenes that just couldn't get worked in earlier. Oh, and mild spoiler, if you'll recall in the Author's Note at the end of Chapter 6: Bejeweled, where I mentioned that I had to rewrite the fight scene because of the original was too big for that early in the story, well... The "too big" version is going to become one of the Great Youma fights. I also have a huge Word Doc, "Sailor Moon Fanfic Information", which is outlines how the setting of Celestial Warrior Moon works and has everyone's backstories written out, and has how I will be handling future plot devices like Crystal Tokyo written out. I also have a list of ideas compiled that I want to use. Here's one that I was going to use, but ultimately abandoned because I just couldn't work it in without interfering with the main plot: "Shingo will fall under Candle Cove's spell and have to be saved by the Warriors." On top of that, I'd also have to come up with an explanation of what Candle Cove IS in order for Usagi and the others to fight it, and the part of the fun of that particular creepypasta was not knowing for sure what was going on. Moving on, I will take inspiration and just run with it. Things that I thought might take one page might become 30. I also like to draw from classic mythologies. They fascinate me. I tend to write for female characters even though I am a guy. I'm sure why, but I find women more interesting to write than men.
|
|
Al1701
Series
Starving Meteorologist
Posts: 2,073
|
Post by Al1701 on Jun 4, 2013 17:41:29 GMT -8
I'm a compulsive planner. I probably spend ten times as much time planning my writing out than actually writing it and I typically have a general idea of the story from beginning to end by the time I start typing. I work the details and tweaks out as I write. Although many writers warn against it, I edit as I go as new ideas of how previously written parts can go (but again I have the general story written out in my head already.)
Along with the story itself, my computer is littered random info about the story, setting, and characters that probably won't be in the story but is there for my personal reference.
As for what I write, I will admit I'm a bit sick-minded when it comes to my brand of humor. Witty dialogue, character-driven gags, and the universe just deciding someone is its Imbicile are hallmark of my humor. I typically avoid bathroom and sexual humor in my writing.
Outside of humor, I prefer the science fiction and fantasy genres. I like adventures on various scales and particularly female leads. Maybe it's just some fatigue of male leads in almost everything.
|
|
|
Post by weirdraptor on Jun 4, 2013 18:23:08 GMT -8
I never thought of my own interest in female leads as "fatique" of male leads, and that is a very good point. In most of all fiction, it's dude leads (not that there's anything wrong with a male lead, but more writers seriously need to start to diversifying over to the other gender part of the time and they need to just write them as people instead of letting political leanings concerning feminism get in the way. "Having" to have a female character be a certain way has ruined more than one female character that had a lot of potential).
|
|
Al1701
Series
Starving Meteorologist
Posts: 2,073
|
Post by Al1701 on Jun 4, 2013 18:38:49 GMT -8
It's probably more complicated than that for me too. For one thing, I like getting out of the ordinary and being male, trying to write from the perspective of a female is about as far from ordinary as you can get.
|
|
|
Post by weirdraptor on Jun 4, 2013 19:39:25 GMT -8
Very true. I usually get around the harder aspects of writing females characters by drawing from my understanding of people in general.
|
|
|
Post by sunstar on Jun 4, 2013 20:22:14 GMT -8
My other big quirk is that I hate Mary sue characters. It is part of the reason why I lost interest in Sailor Moon. I hate it when the focus is all one character all the time. I also hated how only Sailor Moon could kill the bad guys.
I start out with a general idea. I'll use Sick Mind as an example. From Hasbro I got one line of text. Megatron has something the Autobots need. I started out by listing what Megatron could have that the Autobots need. My list was short. I came up with part, and cure. The Decepticons having a part needed by the Autobots has been done before. I chose to go with cure. My next step was cure for what? Sickness has been touched upon, and after some research, I found that there were very few known TF sicknesses. The well known ones are Hate Plague, Cosmic Rust, and Combat Fatigue. I crossed out Combat Fatigue and Hate Plague. Cosmic Rust has a cure known as Corrostop and it has been done before. That led to me crossing it off, although I did file away a plot idea where the kids find themselves watching their guardians fade from Cosmic Rust. My next step was researching known human diseases to transformerfy. I considered Cybola, (Ebola) but Hasbro felt it was too graphic. The main writer came up with Cybonic Plague and I ran with it. Next, decide who gets infected. Hasbro didn't want all autobots infected, only one. Ratchet was a no go as he was needed to diagnose the plague, and he had Stronger, Faster, coming up. Bulkhead had TMI coming up which made him a no go. I considered Bumblebee, but since he was selected to have Megatron inside his head, he was a no go. I decided my strike team was going to be Arcee and Bumblebee. That left Optimus Prime. The next step, how does Optimus get infected? I considered several angles for this. I ruled out infected vehicon due to it creating more questions then solving. I chose plague ship, which was where we originally planned to bring in Smokescreen, but I cut Smokescreen out. The bodies seen are those of Brawn and Perceptor, whose names Optimus was originally going to call out. The final step was to write it all out.
|
|
|
Post by weirdraptor on Jun 4, 2013 22:27:07 GMT -8
I guess it's a good thing that my villain kills are spread across the board in my Sailor Moon fanfic, then huh?
|
|
Al1701
Series
Starving Meteorologist
Posts: 2,073
|
Post by Al1701 on Jun 5, 2013 2:59:18 GMT -8
It's kind of the reason I never liked the first Pretty Cure series (along with Mepple being a total asshole.) Everyone praised it for its fighting and action scenes, but I sat there and said to myself "but they're never going to kill an enemy by punching and kicking it." They always had to call upon their magical attack deliver the finishing blow. Add to the fact the characters were either bland or irritating and show seemed to actively hunt down all traces of joy and brutally murder it, I find the original Pretty Cure massively overrated and a chore to watch (I stop after episode 34.)
I also tend to start with a single line of an idea. Everything just grows from there.
|
|