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 Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:16 am
Ah, actually, you bring up a good point, too. I got my roommate into writing, which I'm excited about, but omg. The mistakes she makes are horrible. There are so many writing errors and character/plot errors that if I tried to point all of them out she'd probably never want to write again.
Actually, the first thing I had to point out she brought up to me first. She had some really boring, pointless scenes, you know, the kind where the characters ramble on and on about nothing to do with the plot, and their conversation goes nowhere... Well, she came up to me and said she had a problem - that she had to write this dinner scene with her character's family and she was bored and didn't know what to write about. I told her to skip it and end the scene before dinner even started, then start again after dinner.
She gave me the weirdest look like I was completely out of my mind and told me she couldn't do that because she was writing in present tense.
....I was like: "What?"
She was literally under the impression that because she was writing present tense she had to write out every single thing her character was doing every time of the day. She didn't understand that she could 'skim' over certain scenes. I was so weird. She argued with me about it for a long time, too, until I wrote out an example of how to skim a scene over.
And that was just one problem.
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 9:11 am
Wow. I'm lucky that my friends are competent writers, in that case. xD My friends are better than me at writing, but one of them has issues with plot holes, while the other is bad with spelling. I've never run across anything to that extent, though.
Let's see, really good bad plots… erm. I think my last Nano would count, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head. (If I had my laptop, I could probably find something in an instant. sweatdrop What happens when you write down every single idea that comes to mind.) Although, I can't even list out the plot of that, purely because it's so long and tangled that I don't even remember all of it. Revising's going to be fun.
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 11:16 am
Haha, SugarRos, thats hilarious. I think I would die if I had to write out every moment of my character's day. Can you even imagine how long my book would have to be to cover three years? It makes me cringe.
Four of my five writing friends insist, "I'm writing over 30 stories right now!"
First of all, its a lie, because really all they've done is abandon 30 stories with the slim hope of getting back to them one day.
Secondly, all 30 stories are so similar, you could combine them into 2 or 3 stories.
I don't know why they don't realize this.
Chezire, you are lucky to be surrounded by good writers. I have to come here if I want that. One of my friends is actually dislexic, so I don't judge her, but she spells so bad it boggles my mind.
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 11:37 am
I have one or two friends who are good writers. And I have a few who do not write, but are honest with me about things they think suck. It is my mother that I have to worry about when it comes to writing...I hate her work.
I can sum down the two "books" she is writing as "a girl and her horse." And the one she said was supposed to be a bit darker is really not. It is about a girl who (normally a troublemaker) is unjustly punished by her older brother (their parents are dead, big brother stepped up) and runs away. With her horse. Yes, she basically does Stephanie Meyer's version of "darker and edgier." It does not help that we are Mormon. XP
This is not touching on (luckily, she is learning to break this habit) info-dumping on characters who are not even relevant to the plot at that point, and do not have any relevancy later on. I mean, I have my own family tree that expands four or five generations, but we do not need to know about every single one of them. And this is still spread over three books, not jammed into one.
My dad actually asked her where the plot is (long before she finally got the hint and basically re-wrote the book). The following is an actual conversation:
Mom: That is the plot.
Dad: No, that's a hundred and fifty pages of set-up. Where's the plot?
Mom: Well, something exciting is about to happen!
Me: Protip, Mom. You do not wait a hundred and fifty pages in a two-hundred page book for "something exciting" to happen.
Mom: *basically tells me that I am just rude*
Dad: *agrees with me and says such*
Mom: *sulks and thinks we are against her*
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 12:29 pm
Neuschwanstein Princess Haha, SugarRos, thats hilarious. I think I would die if I had to write out every moment of my character's day. Can you even imagine how long my book would have to be to cover three years? It makes me cringe. Lol, you should have seen the look on her face once she got it. She started panicking because she had to get rid of a LOT of pointless stuff she'd written. It took her a while to calm down, lol. Quote: Four of my five writing friends insist, "I'm writing over 30 stories right now!" First of all, its a lie, because really all they've done is abandon 30 stories with the slim hope of getting back to them one day. Secondly, all 30 stories are so similar, you could combine them into 2 or 3 stories. I don't know why they don't realize this. Actually the story I'm writing now is a combination of two seperate stories I had started. They seemed lacking, horribly so, so I had the idea to put them together and I came up with somthing great. Your friends should totally put the best parts of those stories together to get something bigger. ...Of course, the two stories I had weren't similar in any way, which maybe is why they're working so well together? @Nightmare: I asked my mom once what she would write about if she were to write a novel. She told me it would be about a peace-living alien species and it would have beaches and dolphins in it. sweatdrop
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 12:37 pm
So, some segments of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, probably without the dry, witty humor.
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DesertRoseFallen Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 12:38 pm
Nightmare1 Not always. Mine are based on the concept of Greek daemons that could be used for a good (agathodaemon) or evil (kakodaemon/cacodaemon) spirit. Of course, being as I like shades of gray, I mix it up. Have you read the Dark Hunter series by Sherrilyn Kenyons, she has the Greek daemons smile
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 12:54 pm
No, but I will look for it on my next trip to the library. ^^
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 1:05 pm
SugarRos, I was writing a series that I had set out into 6 books. They were also lacking, and so I condensed them down to 3 books. That is maybe the single best thing I've done since I started writing the series.
Goodluck to your friend. Haha.
I will definitely give your suggestion to my friends. I would just love it if they had one story to tell me, rather than a muddle of repetitive wishes.
Nightmare, between my parents, my dad is the writer. As far as my mom goes, books are useless unless they are religious or true stories with a very relevant moral. We're Mormons too, go figure.
I can't correctly criticize my dad's work because I pretty much worship him. Alot of his stuff would fit right in with Lord of the Rings. I pretend not to notice his mary-sue characters.
What happened between you and your parents is really kind of funny. Your poor mom- it always sucks when you realize your readers missed the point, due to your own inadequacies. I hope for all of your sakes that she can get a good plotline pulled together.
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 2:11 pm
My dad could probably write a good book if he put his mind to it.
I actually sat down with my mother and showed why her book was not working. I pulled out Night of the Living Dummy III, and showed her the first four chapters (about twenty pages), and wrote on slips of paper the relevant information that came up and slipped them between the pages.
In twenty pages, we had the protagonists introduced, a scene-set-up, their goal, two conflicts, a little bit of relevant family history, and the kick-off to the plot. She, in the same amount of pages, just had a long, winding description of family tree (I wish I was kidding) through her main character's thoughts with almost nothing else going on.
It was my nice way of saying, "this is why he is published, and you are not." I think she got the hint. XP
I mentioned this elsewhere, but my mother is a lot like yours in that she wants everything to be wholesome. She once looked over my shoulder as I was writing and saw a character called another one a b*****d, and pretty much threw a fit over it. I tried to explain that my character =/= me or my values, and "b*****d" is on the milder end of the scale (I could have easily put "********," "shithead," or some other nastier term, and no, something like "jerk" or "idiot" would not have had the same impact in this situation as "b*****d." ). She basically lectured me that I should know better than that. Thank goodness she did not see literally two paragraphs down where I started to describe a rape scene...
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 2:54 pm
Nightmare, I save everything I write on the internet for two reasons:
I can access it from anywhere
My mom will never find it.
(She doesn't actually read over my shoulder, ever. Although she roots for my success, she takes little to no interest in my writing.)
Geez, I'm craving some constructive critique now. I have to actually write something worthwhile first though (I have this whole list of things I need to do before I actually start writing. Its bogging me down).
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:43 pm
That incident in question was when I was visiting at home and doing some work on my laptop. Normally, I work at home or at school where she cannot see. She just happened to be passing and looked over to see what I was writing.
Send some of your work my way. I would be willing to look it over for you.
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 10:00 pm
Ooo, thankyou. I do actually have a bit of something I need revised, which is kind of unusual for me.
In most of my writing, I can already see alot of mistakes and holes I need to fix, and I want to polish it off best I can before I send it to someone else.
But I've written this little piece that has left me a little stumped... I know it needs work, but I can't tell where. I'll post it up in the original works section.
My family doesn't own a desktop computer, instead, we have a laptop, cause we can connect to free internet! Yes! And, conveniently, the best internet is in my room. I purposely arranged the desk to face away from the door, cause sometimes I need the extra three seconds to minimize the browser when someone comes in.
Its not like I'm that bad... but you know what its like to grow up religiously. Some things are better left in the shadows (yaoi fangirl)
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 10:49 pm
All right. I will read it then. ^^ I can join you in that "my family would never approve of this" boat. While I do not ship it specifically, I have found a new guilty pleasure in that Nite Owl and Rorschach make an amusing couple. Yes, I could read those comics all night, because I did. My stomach hurt so much from laughing. Also, macros like this have a similar tendency to prevent N from ignoring her better judgment to sleep in lieu of entertainment. My mothers needs not know about some of my other guilty pleasures. She knows about Sweeney Todd. She does not need to know about my secret love for Repo! The Genetic Opera or 30 Days of Night, or that Watchmen is really starting to grow on me (read the novel, want to see the movie. The clips I found have made this a forbidden fruit, and I WILL locate someone to mooch a copy off of. [/poor] Damn you, Rorschach!). And yes, they all have sadistic badasses that I go head over heels for. Not nearly as bad as Crane, but oh, be still my heart! [/bad Mormon]
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Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 11:06 pm
I checked your links. Even though I had nearly no idea who Rorschach was, I still kind of laughed. I'm very guilty of staying up late to read/watch hilarous things I've found online. Its even happening right now.
Geez, I have to get up for school tomorrow. Going to bed, now.
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