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Writers! Come and Talk About Writing!

Discussion in 'Entertainment and Technology' started by 101DeadRoses, Mar 5, 2015.

  1. 101DeadRoses

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    Hello there my fellow writers! I've been sniffing around on this site for other writers, and I've found quite a few, so I've decided to create a thread to bring as many as I can together!
    So, I write a sort of cross between horror, drama and romance, with a decent amount of humor, and I'd really like to find others who write within at least one of those genres, but even if you don't, post what you like to write about and we can talk about writing.

    Need help?
    If anyone would like to hear them, I have innumerable tips, tricks and techniques for character development, plotting, idea generation and other things. I can usually help other writers with practically anything, or at least direct them to people and websites that can! Just give me a message and I can probably help you out. :icon_bigg

    So anyway, hope you find other writers to talk to as well, and chatter away about your books/stories if you want, but remember to play it safe and don't give away the full names or specifics of your work! Plagiarism sucks, and the names of your characters and books can give away your true identity, so please be careful!



    Write on! :smilewave
     
  2. thesharkamander

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    I get a lot of cool ideas but then I either don't know how to write them or I'm too lazy and one of my friends said I should sell my ideas but I'm also super possessive about them because they're mine.

    Sometimes I draw the characters though. I also write songs, or sometimes short stories (usually less than a page).
     
  3. Kaiser

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    Satire, Horror, Fantasy, Alternative History, and Young Adult, are typically the areas I excel in. I'm not bad when it comes to essays or reviews.

    Most of the works I write, tend to focus on a growing awareness. It can be that life is this, or the individual is that, or the building up in general. I like to keep things interesting, and avoid that stale and drawn out rambling, so many authors fall victim to. But I do my best to respect the reader, and not talk down to them, like they're some trashy reprobate.

    At the moment, these are very basic summaries of the stories I am working on:

    Story #1
    Instead of World War II in Europe ending with the defeat of Nazi Germany, Joseph Stalin decides to betray the Allies, believing there will never be a better chance to take all of Europe, for the glory of the Soviet Union. While there is third-person to it, there is also first-person letters, news broadcasts, and military attachments woven in, to give more perspectives. Humanity -- the good, the bad, the ugly, the silly, the grim, the victories, the losses, and so on -- is at the core of this.

    Story #2
    In a fantasy world, three siblings deal with their father's indecisiveness. The kingdom is newly formed, but outside forces watch eagerly, awaiting to see what will happen. Each sibling has their own attitude and ruling style, which is of particular interest to everyone. Magic and conflict is involved. Sexism, political and social power, and maintaining balance, are all key elements here.

    Story #3
    A serious attempt at fan fiction, with A Nightmare on Elm Street. Basically, Freddy Krueger tries a new tactic. Instead of targeting specific individuals, he plagues significant business and political leaders, causing them to go into a forced insomnia. The decline in health of these individuals, contributes to questionable actions, all of which trickle down into society. The ultimate goal is to secure a plethora of souls, for Freddy to become, not only more powerful, but to blend consciousness with slumber.

    Story #4
    Zombies besiege a high school. The various cliques, barricaded inside, gradually have their world fall apart around them, which results in many of them dropping their facades. Even the administration is not safe, and it becomes a students vs zombies vs adults scenario. Social rules and etiquette are addressed and challenged, while true colors are revealed. It's a satirically-laced Young Adult Horror, basically.

    Story #5
    Satan successfully takes over Heaven. Unable to destroy God, he is only able to imprison him. The two exchange banter, wit, and philosophy, as Satan begins to reign over the universe, and takes a special liking to a little planet called Earth. This is satire, mixed with philosophy, ethics, and societal foundations covered, as well as the role of religion and free will.
     
  4. Argentwing

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    Please tell me some about your horror. It's one genre I am interested in, but I have honestly no clue how to write it. I've read "The Amityville Horror" and thought it was interesting, but it didn't give me the feelings of dread that a good movie does. What do you put in a horror story to give it maximum scariness?

    EDIT: Will post with my own work's synopsis when I have a bit more time.
     
    #4 Argentwing, Mar 5, 2015
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  5. DougTheBicycle

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    I write a significant amount of sci-fi, fantasy, and I also write scripts for a webseries me and a friend (film major) will be producing this summer. I'm actually enrolled in online classes for a creative writing major.

    If you check out my blog on here, I've just posted a flashfic I wrote.

    I write flashfic.

    Currently working on a sci-fi, based on the Halo video game series, and a series I watch called Red Vs. Blue, from RoosterTeeth. Details to follow!
     
  6. XenaxGabby

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    I do a mix of original writing and fanfiction. Though fanfic has become more prominent as of late. I only write romance.
     
  7. Elendil

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    I tend to write historical dramas and science fiction. Currently I've been working off and on on a screenplay that I started in a screenwriting class I took last year. It's an historical drama that centers around Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and the build up to the beginning of World War I.
     
  8. NingyoBroken

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    I write. Mostly erotic stories. I'm also a songwriter, but I assume of course we are speaking of stories and such.

    Let me list the stories I've written..

    "The Wind's Whisper"
    Crazy twisted erotic love story between two gay transvestites, one of whom is severely mentally ill. The lunatic one day attacks his lover, attempting to cannibalize him. But he is interrupted when their friend finds them, and victim survives.
    Despite this, the previous victim is still entranced with the lovely psychopath, and continues to see him although he is now in a mental hospital.
    It contains bondage and sadomasochism, blood drinking, weird mental hospital love story, and other crazy shit.

    "Decadent Night"
    Smut. Just pure crossdresser orgy porno.

    "Inside of him"
    Vore story.


    Then I have two that are unfinished.

    "愛の風 (Love's Wind)"
    This one is all in Japanese. It's a fanfiction of my J-rock OTP, and is the most innocent story I've ever written (though it WILL have a sex scene!). It's actually based on real life events and contains accurate scenes of when they met and such.

    "Doll"
    A vampire lives in a western-style mansion in a Japanese suburb. Not fancying the taste of the country folk, he lures young men from the city. He keeps these slaves and never lets them out, referring to them as his Dolls, dressing them like women and using them as sex slaves, as well as feeding from their blood.
    One day he lures a boy who is more twisted than the rest. This one has a strange twist for the macabre, enjoys his creepy surroundings and the frightening thing his master is. And is generally psycho enough to freak out even the cold creature of the night (who is used to regular, weak minded humans).

    I think I'm gonna have him end up rebelling and tricking the vampire into either being killed or turning him into a vampire as well..
     
    #8 NingyoBroken, Mar 5, 2015
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  9. Jellal

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    I've been working on a fantasy series for two years now, I had some drafts of early chapters that I got peer reviewed and it sent me right back to the drawing board to see how I could make it stronger, more effective.

    Basically it's a story inspired by the shonen manga/anime I love so much: One Piece, Fullmetal Alchemist, Fairy Tail, Hunter x Hunter, Gurren Lagaan. I like determined characters with big dreams and I like battles with physics defying magical powers and combat abilities. I like hierarchies of villains to grapple with and I like characters with discernible power levels that make for some more interesting match-ups. This is the kind of thing I want to work on more than anything else in the world; right now I want to simply write it out as a story with a 3rd person narrator, but one day, I'd love to see it in a graphic novel/manga-esque format, or even animated! I guess only time will tell...

    Anyway, the basic premise of the story goes like this. A "Battlefield Earth" type setting where humanity lives in fear of a monster army, and civilization survives by scavenging leftover technology from ancient ruins. The legendary warrior who took the first strike against those monsters has vanished from the pages of history. A brave idiot will swear an oath to finish the job started by that lost warrior, to destroy the immortal monster army.

    Hehe, I could give specifics that would make the scenario a lot more detailed and juicy, but I take super precautions against plagiarism. :grin: So at present, this story probably sounds like a lot of stuff you've heard about before. I ain't going for originality, I'm going for simplicity, in making something with lots of action, some humor, some fridge horror, and buckets upon buckets of hot-blooded fighting spirit!

    I guess some more details couldn't hurt; I LOVE talking about my story. Quite a few of the supporting heroes of the tale I designed with "villain" aesthetics in mind, to make them appear more outwardly intimidating. As much as I hate zombies, I'm definitely planning on having zombies—but they'll have magic powers, so they won't be quite so simple to beat. Like any good shonen tale, there will be a tournament arc. The main villain has been oodles of fun to create ... oh yeah, and I crafted some really handsome douchebags to serve as minor antagonists. I'm also really good with naming characters, I've gotten that from my peer reviewers, as I was confident I would. I think the big strength of a story like this is that it is very easy to follow and figure out what's going on at the surface level, and you don't need to pry any deeper to enjoy it. Any religious/philosophical themes are very take it or leave it, it'll all be there, but it won't be necessary to understand. I think it'll add to the experience and get you more invested if you do, though—I want to make it clear that the further the story goes, the more it becomes a spiritual journey for the protagonist.
     
  10. Argentwing

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    My magnum opus* (I use that term with maximum lightness :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:) is a sci-fi called Paper Castle. It is based on the Arthurian myth of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on a backdrop of an interstellar civil war.

    It started off as a simple message of government corruption/overreach and popular overreaction so that neither side is truly "the good guys" but it picked up chivalrous undercurrents and sort of morphed into something with a more complex scope. Writing such a bizarre kind of story has proved quite the challenge, but among other things I am greatly enjoying describing the technology in it. I was mostly inspired by the aesthetic of Mass Effect, but I try to extrapolate everything in it as something that's possible. IMO science fiction is much more fun and imaginative when you give yourself limits, and even more so when you pay close attention to what happens to people when that tech shows up. That's when you get taken to another world, and I hope to capture that essence in a form that alludes to the source material's fantastical/legendary roots. :slight_smile:
     
    #10 Argentwing, Mar 6, 2015
    Last edited: Mar 6, 2015
  11. Gen

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    I've spoken about working on a dark fantasy on this site for awhile now. It is the only project that I am working on because in the very near future (2016), I will be contractually obligated to produce a novel every one or two years until the series is complete. Not to mention, epic fantasy is easily the single most tedious genre to do justice in. I tend to not go into detail about the plot or world because it is my child and I must protect it until it is documented under my name. It honestly is my child at this point; I have been working on it for four years as of this summer. Which I just realized as I was writing this and can't even fathom.
    Traditional horror was primary characterized as fiction that was psychologically thrilling and almost always included supernatural elements. The bulk of what the genre included became split by the introduction of psychological thrillers as a sub-genre of mystery and supernatural stories as sub-genres of fantasy and mystery.

    Modern horror is very different, as the concept of horror in fiction will always change. Horror is written with the intention of captivating and disturbing the reader. What potential readers in society find horrifying and unsettling is constantly changing. This is why we read Poe to elementary school students and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein might as well be a bedtime story. In the conservative and heavy religious European world of the nineteenth century, there were few topics that most people feared as much as the unknown; both in the sense of the supernatural and the future of science. That is why almost all horror from the nineteenth and early twentieth can just as easily be classified as science fiction or supernatural thrillers.

    But as we know, society changes. The majority of society no longer views science as something foreign or frightening, nor do we often believe in the possibility of being confronted by supernatural beings, regardless of religious or atheistic views. Ultimately, those who write modern horror are going to have to capitalize on the greatest fears of the modern individual. Sexual predation, sadism, psychiatric disorder, etc. These are topics that might come up in crime or supernatural mystery; however, mystery concerns itself with the catching of predators. Horror dives into the emotional turmoil of the victim and the predator, whether they be human or supernatural. Horror must be written in a way that the readers imagine themselves as the victims of disturbing events.

    So, that is some food for thought.
     
  12. Lawrence

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    I'm writing about the problem of desensitisation. Basically a deranged sadist gets their hands on somebody that likes to talk about watching surgical procedures for fun and has apparently never been scared by horror films and thinks it could never happen to them. It's not terribly original but I find it amusing. Like most of my projects, it'll probably end up forgotten. Sometimes I think the research is more fun.
     
  13. 101DeadRoses

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    That honestly sounds very impressive. Hope to get some updates on it!

    ---------- Post added 6th Mar 2015 at 05:35 PM ----------

    I have a tip on how to stick with a project until it's done. Basically, set a daily goal for yourself, and make it a big deal to GET TO THAT GOAL.
    Don't even focus on the main project as a whole yet, just GET TO THAT GOAL.
    I would recommend that, if you are working on a word program that shows the word count, do a certain amount of words per day. Or, if you aren't working on a word program of that sort or want more wiggle room, you could do a paragraph, or a page, or just a scene a day.
    I have a daily goal of 300 words. It took me a while, because I started out just writing on my household's main computer (which I still have the main copy of my book on), and some days I couldn't get the computer. Some days my mom or dad were using it. Some days I was busy. Some days, everything all piled on me meant that I was too stressed to do anything. But, eventually, I got my tablet and a USB keyboard, so I can write from my room, then send it to the main computer once a week. It was then that I started being really focused on that goal, and now I can finish a chapter of about 10,000 words within five weeks. It's easy if you set a goal, and then reward yourself when you acheive it.
    My reward is sleep, because I usually write before bed, and I don't let myself sleep until I get it done. :lol:
    But you don't have to do that. In fact, I recommend that you stick to something like having a cup of coffee after you write, because it can take a while to get to your goal.
    Also, if you kind of punish yourself when you skip (not necessarily if you can't finish it) by doubling the next day's goal, then it will also help to ensure that you don't forget about your project.

    Another way to ensure that you don't forget about the project is to be really in-depth with your characters. Don't be afraid to get attached to them, or to hate the antagonist. Just make sure that you feel strongly about them, and that they're well developed. If you don't care about these characters, you'll be more likely to drop the story, and any and all readers will probably be completely unattached to them.
    And if you need any help with character development, or want to talk some more about other things, just come and post again. :slight_smile:

    Hope that very long post helped with SOMETHING. :lol:
     
  14. 101DeadRoses

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    Well, like Gen said in another post, the definition of "horror" changes with society, so it is something to think long and hard about. In the end it's probably just best to go with what scares you as a reader and focus on channeling that into what scares you as a writer.
    What that means is that you need to think about what scares you in detail. What scared you about the last scary thing you read, watched, or played? Was it atmosphere, gore, characters, the possibility of the events happening to you? What elements of the overall thing scared you?
    Think about that, and infuse that into your work.

    Also, just a general tip for horror writers: try not to overdo the gore. It can turn pretty much everyone off your work. Try to go more for the things that mess with your brain, like characters hallucenating and attacking their family, then realizing their mistake once the hallucenogen wears off. Try that instead of zombies or mutant killer bears.
     
  15. Lawrence

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    Thank you. It's great advice! Planning was never a great strength of mine. I could write 10,000 words one day and nothing for weeks. Sometimes I need to get as much of it out as I can when ideas or experiences are fresh in my mind.

    A few years ago my friend challenged introduced me to NaNoWriMo and that helped a lot.
     
  16. tommycee

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    I'd like to write a trilogy. I've already (kind of) started the first story. It is action, adventure, and romance. It takes place in the future and is about a teenage girl and her boyfriend, who try to take down an evil dictator and restore peace to the country. It's called Liberation.
     
  17. Depressedperson

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    I need a co-writer for a novel. here is the plot.

    There is no plot yet. :frowning2:
     
  18. RainDreamer

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    I have been writing since 12 years old, starting out as a semi-professional love letters ghostwriter for other kids (they were horribly cheesy), before I start using my trained skill for other things. Fast forward to now, and several years of writing random things under my belt, taking professional writing classes and going with a major in communication study, doing PR writing, I have a few experiences I think I can share:

    1. The hardest part of any kind of writing is to actually sit down, facing with a blank nothingness and from there, create life. You can have all the amazing ideas, thoughts, and plots, but they means nothing until you write them into reality. Take Twilight, for example - it is not what I would call a good story, but the author actually was actually able to bring her whole story to reality, and that is something I can respect.

    2. Will power is a limited resource. I know many of us here dream of writing epics and serial novels, but remember that writing is an exhausting task. One of the reasons famous writers are famous is because they got an impressive reserves of willpower to burn through until they finish their story.
    If you have it in you, go for it. If you constantly find yourself burning out from writing too much, take your time replenish your willpower. Read books, write other stuff, take your mind of things. If you push yourself too hard you will grow to hate what you once love.
    Be realistic of what you can achieve for the same reason. Start out with short stories. Then collections of short stories. Then a narrative that connects those short stories to make a greater whole story. Take it in small chunks and it will be better for your confidence. The completion of a piece of writing always feel better than the existence of unfinished, abandoned pieces.

    3. Keep everything you wrote. Even if it is horrible, you never know that one day you might be able to take a piece of what you wrote before, frame it in a different context, changing out some syntax, and suddenly you got an amazing phrase/sentence that works perfectly in your current writing. And with the advance of technology, there is no reason not to do that. I keep a google drive account for all my writing and it is so convenient. My old notebooks are gone after a few times moving and I lost all the drafts I wrote when I was young...

    4. There is no shame in stealing. "Good artist copy; Great artists steal" or so Picasso allegedly said. "There is nothing new under the sun" after all, and we must "stand on the shoulders of giants" if we were to see further.
    What differentiate this concept from blatant plagiarism is whether you put effort into creating something new from what you stole or not. You shouldn't take something in writing and just reprint it as it was; You must take it, make it yours, put in your own flavours, personalize it, reprocess it in your writing style, adding on to it, and you will have something uniquely new.
    (Disclaimer: Don't try this in academic or journalistic writing, though.)

    5. Read critiques, learn from them, but don't bother responding to them. You don't have to justify your own writing as an author. The story should stand on its own. Learn what you can from critics, see how you can do better, but don't bother with either praises or hate. Neither of them will do you good for your writing skills.
     
    #18 RainDreamer, Mar 7, 2015
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2015
  19. Lazuri

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    You and me, Jellal, we have.... A lot to talk about.

    I've a couple of stories in my head, but pre-dominantly there's the low fantasy story in a modern setting about vampires. Yeah, vampires are overdone, but I've loved vampires since I was younger than ten years old and I really don't give a crap about how overdone they are.

    The gist of the story is that two sister goddesses created the earth and humanity and they were goddesses of day and night. Somewhere along the line, the goddess of the night got jealous and ambitious and decided to stage a coup, but it failed. So she escaped to earth and used a human as a host body, creating the first vampire and hiding herself from her sister as well as enabling her to spread her darkness to more people until she has an army strong enough to conquer the celestial plane. She spreads her darkness by taking people's blood--the currency of one's soul--and replacing it with her own darkness, granting them power and creating a dark voice that constantly whispers in the ear of the new vampire that manipulates them and keeps them on the right path. The new vampire then has the ability and drive to spread their darkness to more people and so on. The Goddess of the day is tirelessly trying to find her sister, though--burning every single vampire that enters her gaze with the power of the sun in the hopes that she'll one day catch her sister.

    Things didn't go as planned though and as the darkness spread from person to person, it mutated and started to gain a mind of its own until a hierarchy was formed with the Queen at the top and the original vampire possessing the strength of the goddess of the night was left on her own, betrayed by her own creation. The hierarchy is reshaped every couple of hundred years when the darkness let's go of their mind for one night and the vampires are allowed to think for themselves, causing a mad battle royale to use their own strength to climb higher in the hierarchy or die trying.

    The story starts about a year before one such night. The vampires realize that during this modern information age, they are incapable of hiding the battle royale and so they decide to broadcast their existence to the world by attacking a city to increase their numbers and then infesting it to its core until it is time. The US government responds first by trying to claim it back only to be decimated, at which point they decide to quarantine the city instead, sealing the people left inside with the vampires. The government thinks the quarantine can keep the vampires in because none of them ever tries to escape, so they keep it up.

    Our heroine is a new vampire, turned on that first night when the vampires invaded the city. The story follows her at first struggling to be a new and weak vampire, then being affected by a rare occurrence where the dark voice that manipulates her is destroyed and she becomes a free vampire. The story then follows her struggling with her regained conscience until she encounters a faction of free vampires that are planning to topple the hierarchy by assassinating the queen and our heroine is recruited. The story then focuses on this faction's preparations to the assassination and the character interactions between the members of the faction, its allies and its opponents, culminating in the battle royale and our heroine's swift rise from a newly born vampire to one of the strongest in existence.

    I originally planned it to be a book and wrote a few chapters and drafts until a friend of mine who draws really well took interest in it and since we both love comics, we decided to turn it into a webcomic. I always felt it would make itself better as a comic anyways. So as soon as I've learned web development so we don't have to use one of those "post your webcomic here" sites and she's done with her application to art school, we're ready to go.
     
  20. Lyana

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    Oh, this thread is awesome. I love reading about all you guys' stories and ideas. Thanks, OP!

    I started writing when I was in elementary school, around ten years ago. I almost only write novels, and my preferred genre is fantasy. I have about five works-in-progress at the moment:
    1) high fantasy, set in another world, and has its hopelessly magic-free heroine on a quest to kill a murderous dragon she accidentally set loose;
    2) contemporary YA, about two high-school girls with a history slowly falling in love and dealing with their own definitions of their sexuality, and others' perception of it;
    3) more contemp, realistic YA. A guy and a girl in high school cope in the aftermath of their boyfriend's death, and learn to accept that he was a bit of a bastard;
    4) Fantasy/Romance. One saved the other's life, and now the latter is determined to find out why, since they've always hated each other;
    5) High fantasy, a man on a quest to bring his sister back from the dead by any means possible -- even if it means sacrificing a whole city, including the only girl he's ever loved.

    Anyway, I have a question for you all: How often, if ever, do you incorporate LGBT themes/characters in what you write? I've written lots of stories without a hint of LGBT-ness, but in 5 I've presented above, only one never mentions a single LGBT issue. I guess it was never essential to the story.