McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
The I'm Writing Thread.... Celebrate your pages written etc
gatordave96:
Thanks for the insight. Damned if I do, and damned if I don't, it appears.
I guess I'm just going to let the story write itself. It's hard enough finishing the damn thing . . . without worrying about being a preachy panda pusher . . . or a techno-sloth apologist. Not that there's anything wrong with either, as Seinfeld would say.
Cheers.
Paynesgrey:
Good luck with it! And keep us posted on how things go. Write the story in the way that satisfies you, because we can never, ever, satisfy everyone. But a story you're proud to complete and share with others is something to treasure.
And the Haters?
Don't let their baggage be your problem. Jim, and most every other author I've read who had tips on writing all share one bit of advice... "have a thick skin." Be prepared for them, keep in perspective that most every asshole in the world has a keyboard and an opinion that leaves them thinking they know how to tell your story than you do.
You mine criticism for valid input in terms of storytelling, character development, plot, pacing, dialogue and suchlike... but really only focus on improving your storytelling and not worrying if you're satisfying every Entitlement Baby out there, or every assclown who is just looking to harsh on something to make themselves look smarter.
And, like everything else I say (when I'm not in Junior Moderaptor Mode, anyway) remember mileage very, because I'm just another asshole with a keyboard myself from where someone else might be sitting. 8)
Snowleopard:
The way to look at a critique is: Is the writer trying to pump themselves up or
give you advice/make you better. If the latter then good - if the former - well, there
are still people with outhouses around. ::) ::)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Paynesgrey on January 07, 2013, 06:31:13 PM ---If we micro-parse any conflict, it can eventually be considered "political."
--- End quote ---
Agreed entirely. Everything is political, even the personal. I'm not seeing any way for it not to be - outside of writing SF about a species for which the whole notion of factionalism doesn't parse, I have one of those pencilled in for a small role later on. Humans scare them.
--- Quote ---Unambitious to not try to engage with this or that faction? Personally, I'm interested in telling a story, building a world, and developing characters which will be engaging to people of opposing sociopolitical viewpoints, and to do so without relying on sociopolitical issues.
--- End quote ---
I am finding it as hard to imagine a story that does not somewhere, at some level, connect to some sociopolitical issues, as one about human beings that doesn't have, say, emotions in it.
--- Quote --- They're too often merely a marketing crutch, a cheap marketing checklist.
--- End quote ---
Possibly you're looking at a very different section of the genre from what I read, then, because I can think of very few things I've read in the past several years that struck me that way. (R.M. Meluch's Tour of the Merrimack books, maybe; or at least, for something supposedly set that far in the future, it breaks my suspension of disbelief that there will be a US so much like the contemporary US and issues so much like contemporary issues - if it doesn't match fifty or a hundred years ago I do not believe it will match four hundred years' time.)
--- Quote --- So I want to create an engaging story without pandering to any faction, without relying on being just another source of external validation for their views.
--- End quote ---
Right with you on that one. I would be surprised, and probably more disquieted than pleased, to find there was any faction out there that actually shared the views that my central characters hold and that I am interested in exploring. (Which do not overlap entirely with my own views at all.)
--- Quote --- It's easy to entertain someone you agree with, I want to entertain both people I agree, and disagree with.
--- End quote ---
I'm not seeing where "agree with" has any relevance here, though. I mean, in the recent past, I've been rereading Daniel Keys Moran's Tales of the Continuing Time, which are books where I disagree philosophically, politically, and largely aesthetically with pretty much every character who is intended to be sympathetic, and find the antagonists much more to my taste, and I enjoy them immensely; and at the same time have read and been a bit bemused by some Christopher Brookmyre satirical mysteries, in which I agree almost entirely with his supposedly sympathetic characters and the overall effect waves back and forth between somewhat guilty pleasure and "dude, you're waving your id around in public and it;'s enough like mine that you;re making me wince from embarrassment."
One of the things I admire about Heinlein is his ability to convincingly get into and really explore the old-style conservatism of Starship Troopers, the right-libertarianism of Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and the hippie groovitude of Stranger in a Strange Land - I don't think there's any plausible way of deriving Heinlein's actual beliefs from those three texts alone, and the ability to that is one I admire. Not many people can do that - Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution books are the only recent example I can think of on a similar scale - but it's definitely a thing I aspire to.
--- Quote --- And at the end of the day? Neither communityis entirely right or wrong, with good and noble people on both sides, as well as both sides having a few terrifying fiends.
--- End quote ---
I'm not seeing how "both sides of this conflict have good people and both have fiends" isn't itself a political position on the conflict in question.
--- Quote ---Take 1984. Long held up as a cautionary tale denouncing socilism, communism, marxism, and likely a good number of other isms... but George Orwell was in actuality a devout socialist/anarchist who was attacking totolitarianism.
--- End quote ---
Indeed, and he also thought the book was a comedy, in the Swiftian satire direction. Lots of people seem not to get that.
--- Quote ---That's if you don't know about Proto-Bamboo which not only nourishes them, but gives them the Mind Power to fend off the Nether-Koalas and their Anti-Eucolpytus Space Drives.
--- End quote ---
Your caps remind me of Flash Gordon. I've nothing against the existence of good stories that people enjoy that hang together at a Flash Gordon level of realism; as a reader they're for the most part not my thing, and as a writer, I'm a mildly obsessive-compulsive professional molecular biologist; for me personally, making it work only at the Flash Gordon level isn't enough, and I see no reason why I can't make a story be exciting and have the virtues of a Flash Gordon story, while also having aliens whose entire evolutionary history makes plausible, rational sense if you care to poke at it.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: gatordave96 on January 08, 2013, 03:02:38 AM ---I always thought Monty Python was brilliant for using the killer rabbit in "The Holy Grail." Pandas, sloths, banana slugs, whatever. All good.
--- End quote ---
If you give me spacefaring banana slugs, I am going to look for the older species that set them up, I am afraid.
--- Quote ---I like some of the stories where the good guys wear white, but not so much as those with varying shades of gray.
--- End quote ---
Oh, agreed entirely. Though people are really awfully willing to trust that a first-person protagonist is meant to be sympathetic, pretty much no matter how grey you make them.
--- Quote ---If anything, the theme would be that too much of any one thing can be dangerous, even organized labor when it results in hegemony.
--- End quote ---
Possibly it's unduly Canadian of me, but I am not at all convinced hegemony has to be a bad thing; semi-posthuman imperialist Space Canadians fighting crime may be not to some readers' tastes, but at least it won't be bland.
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