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Post by James on Mar 24, 2015 22:35:36 GMT -5
Not that I can remember. I was in the "top band" English class, which did the Cambridge International Examinations on top of New Zealand's own internal exams, so it may have been a requirement from Cambridge. The people who just did the New Zealand exams didn't even do plays, not even Shakespeare. Disgraceful. Huh. I imagine my expectations are colored by the American education requirements--it's all very American-centric. It's always seems like when they can, they prefer to teach American literature in higher level English courses. Oh, it's similar everywhere, I think. In England, we did a lot of Dickens and so on. New Zealand did Kiwi writers (thankfully we didn't). All countries probably concentrate on their own literature. I think the international nature of the Cambridge exams made it better, for instance A Level was: Plays - Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) and A View from the Bridge (Miller) Novel - Anthills of the Savannah (Achebe), which I appreciate far more as an adult than teenage me did. Poetry - An anthology containing writers from England, US, Commonwealth countries and I think a translated Japenese poem too. It was a really wide reading list, which was great. |
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Post by Jenny (Reffy) on Mar 25, 2015 12:13:59 GMT -5
Here's a new thing to discuss since we have a few members right now struggling with it (myself included):
... unless we've done this before?
Writer's Block & people who believe the story is dog shit before the first word has reached the page killing all enthusiasm! Thoughts and how to stop it and feel better. What about confidence boosts?
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Mar 25, 2015 13:08:37 GMT -5
Here's a new thing to discuss since we have a few members right now struggling with it (myself included):
... unless we've done this before?Writer's Block & people who believe the story is dog shit before the first word has reached the page killing all enthusiasm! Thoughts and how to stop it and feel better. What about confidence boosts? Usually, I find the thing which kills a story before it gets going is pressure; self-induced, typically. I'm usually too concerned with the story being "really good" before I even begin to put it on paper, and if it's not there yet, I simply won't write it. What I've been doing, lately, to mitigate this is to write summaries. I mentioned in the past that I haven't been really in a writing mood for a long time, but what got me back there was simply the act of writing. And sometimes that's what I need to do... Sit and write. So, instead of sitting down and writing the story itself, I'll sit down and write -about- the story. A sort of pre-synopsis; here is what the story is about, here is the rough flow of events, here is where I want to end up. This gets the pencil moving, this allows me to see the words on paper, identify themes, inconsistencies, come up with names, that sort of thing.... But the -most- important part (for story construction) is that it lets me get ideas out of my head. I find that one of the reasons I can never seem to get a story started is because I'm sitting and rethinking the same potential part of the as-yet-unwritten story over and over and over so I get fixated and can't move past it. But if I just crap out a quick, "Here's hows it's gonna look (roughly)" into a notebook or something, then it's out of my brain and I can move on to other things; like an opening sentence, for instance. Ultimately, the act of sitting and writing, anything, seems to beget more writing. You can start to connect ideas and create a cohesive narrative where, before, you simply had a jumble of ideas that weren't going anywhere. Yeah, writing summaries is working for me. |
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Orombur
Senior Scribe
Especially Mushu.
Posts: 2,417
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Post by Orombur on Mar 25, 2015 13:43:17 GMT -5
Here's a new thing to discuss since we have a few members right now struggling with it (myself included):
... unless we've done this before?Writer's Block & people who believe the story is dog shit before the first word has reached the page killing all enthusiasm! Thoughts and how to stop it and feel better. What about confidence boosts? What I've been doing with the story I'm working on right now is just writing it. I'm actively policing myself and forcing myself to just continue writing, and once I'm done with it I can be concerned about the quality. It's been difficult for me to do so this far, since as I finish every paragraph I keep thinking about how poorly worded something is, or how I could describe something better here, or how poor quality that last one was. But I keep going. Some parts are written better than others, some parts flat out suck, but I'm not letting myself edit it yet. It's been very effective so far. |
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Post by Jenny (Reffy) on Mar 25, 2015 15:16:31 GMT -5
What I've been doing with the story I'm working on right now is just writing it. I'm actively policing myself and forcing myself to just continue writing, and once I'm done with it I can be concerned about the quality. It's been difficult for me to do so this far, since as I finish every paragraph I keep thinking about how poorly worded something is, or how I could describe something better here, or how poor quality that last one was. But I keep going. Some parts are written better than others, some parts flat out suck, but I'm not letting myself edit it yet. It's been very effective so far. Sounds an awful lot like what I do for NaNoWriMo: cage the editor! ASGetty ((Zovo)): a summary is a good idea. For most stories I start I don't have a clear path ... and that may also be buggering me up! I get what you mean about the over-processing 100%. I probably do it more often than I believe I do. At the moment it's barely even processing though. Current process is: oh, idea but it won't work - scrap! Idea but it's shit - scrap! Scrabbling at hopeful ideas - give up. |
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Mar 25, 2015 15:23:29 GMT -5
What the shit is this? Edit: Another thing that helps, sometimes, is to tell the idea to another person. Basically anything that helps to get the idea out of your head-space seems to help me manipulate it a little differently. If you want to PM me a couple of your scrapped ideas, mayhaps I could help cobble them into something workable? Up to you. |
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Post by Matteo ((Taed)) on Mar 25, 2015 15:31:50 GMT -5
She wrote "@.Zovo," meaning "at Zovo," and Proboards took the opportunity to show us all how smart it is. We get it, Proboards, you have Like buttons and Twitter embeds now. Your Search feature is ... pretty great, actually. We're all very impressed. |
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Post by Kaez on Mar 25, 2015 16:09:26 GMT -5
And sometimes that's what I need to do... Sit and write. What I've been doing with the story I'm working on right now is just writing it.   Another thing that helps, sometimes, is to tell the idea to another person. Basically anything that helps to get the idea out of your head-space seems to help me manipulate it a little differently. Ideally, this would be one of the major uses of the writing thread. It's what I did when I brought you guys the idea of a collection of short stories last week. I think this thread could be a great place for, "Hey, here's an idea I've got, here's how I want it to feel... what do you think?" In part because feedback is useful, but also in large part because simply explaining the idea to someone else forces you to refine it and be -definitive- about it. Our minds are inclined toward uncertainty when we're not super confident. They don't want to make any firm commitments. But when you put something onto paper, or tell someone else, you have to actually -decide- stuff about it. And it's only once you decide what you're going to actually write, as opposed to think of all the various things you -could- write, that you're able to sit down and actually make it happen. |
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Post by Sekot on Mar 25, 2015 18:22:39 GMT -5
I'm not very nice to my characters.
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Post by Croswynd on Mar 25, 2015 19:00:35 GMT -5
I'm not very nice to my characters. That's a good thing. I'm too nice, sometimes, and that's just not interesting. |
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Post by Matteo ((Taed)) on Mar 25, 2015 19:04:10 GMT -5
I'm not very nice to my characters. That's a good thing. I'm too nice, sometimes, and that's just not interesting. I've been thinking about this for the book. I like the lighthearted tone I've been going for, and I like that my characters are capable, but I've still definitely been too nice to them so far. I don't really want to go too far in the other direction and just kick the shit out of them, but I figure I have to be at least a little meaner. |
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Post by Matteo ((Taed)) on Mar 25, 2015 19:46:38 GMT -5
I was sifting through a file where I jot down random notes, and I found something, I think it's a plot idea but I honestly don't remember. All I wrote was:
"Zoroaster Apocalypse Cult. Iranian Nuclear Program. Djinni. Stuxnet. International Space Station."
... So Past-Me was apparently some kind of insane genius.
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Post by The Counter Cultist(Sawyer) on Mar 25, 2015 21:13:44 GMT -5
Teenage girl, we'll say high school senior or junior, loner type, possibly a hipster. She has a bad dream one night where she sees a bunch of bad shit go down, stuff like a classmate's suicide, a shooting at her school, right up until the end of the world, then she's walking through this hellish landscape until someone calls her name and she wakes up.
The visions persist until one day where she sees one of her dreams become reality. A douchebag of a classmate selling drugs to a young child, and he threatens to kill her is she talks, even putting a gun to her head.
That night, the visions are even more intense, but instead of the hellish landscape she instead ends up in an empty blackness, except for a lone man who calls himself the guide, and claims to be there to help her stop the events she sees from occurring.
He then reveals to her that Earth and the universe it inhabits are just a small piece of a larger multiverse tied together by an entity known as the Requiem(working name) and that she is one of many people who are "Soulless", a type of person blessed by the Requiem to gather many individuals around them and form an interconnected bond. From these bonds they draw strength from the Requiem.
Earth is special in that the Soulless do not draw power while awake, but rather while they dream and wander through an entirely different world that intertwines with Earth.
Now she must form bonds and work with the Guide to prevent the end of the world, which the Guide believes will somehow lead to the death of The Requiem and the end of every world. The only clue they have is that the chain of events leading to the end is triggered by the classmates suicide. So now this girl must uncover who this person is(she only knows a classmate will do it by the uniform) and why they will, and then stop, them, while using the dream world to find the true masterminds behind the End.
So yeah, shifting gears from the fantasy novel to a piece that will actually explain the multiverse it inhabits, as well as introduce a few recurring characters. So far for setting I'm thinking a near future Chicago with a cyberpunk aesthetic(because reasons).
What do you guys think?
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Mar 25, 2015 21:33:08 GMT -5
I think it's bigger than it needs to be.
Does the entire multiverse really need to be involved in one teenagers drama?
Find the essentials, focus.
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Post by Matteo ((Taed)) on Mar 25, 2015 21:35:52 GMT -5
Yeah, the multiverse stuff is out of nowhere. What does it do that a more pared down plot doesn't?
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