Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh

Pages: 1 ... 152 153 [154] 155 156 ... 158
2296
if a known series changes its coverart to something I don't like, I'll complain bitterly of course!   ;D

I will too, but that's not because I care about what the covers actually are, that's just perfectly normal obsessive-compulsive wanting things to match.

2297
Author Craft / Re: rewrites
« on: February 16, 2007, 04:09:40 PM »
Depends on the scale of the problem.

If you're six chapters down a hole because the plot took a drastically wrong direction, trying to push on rather than going back and fixing it can be a very bad idea. I tend to fix major things as soon as I find them, even if that means going back, and leave little things for later passes.

But then - it does appear that every writer gets a different set of things easily or for free - some are naturally great at character and have to work hard on plot, some the other way around and so on - and what I appear to have got more easily than many is the abiility to sit down and produce a few thousand words every week, come rain, snow, hail, of hyperactive sixteen-month-old.  If actually finsihing things is a problem for you, my example may not be a sensible one to follow.

2298
Author Craft / Re: Physical Strain of Writing/Reading
« on: February 16, 2007, 04:04:22 PM »
* Take a five minute break and stretch every hour that I'm at the computer.

+1 problem solved. I'm a software developer and spend TONS of time on a computer. Take periodic breaks or your body will make you regret it.

On the other hand, if you're the kind of person for whom four hours straight are about sixteen times as productive as four chunks of an hour each, there can be compelling reason not to take those breaks.

2299
Author Craft / Re: Character Names
« on: February 15, 2007, 08:25:31 PM »
Also, I wouldn't fret too much over how the meaning of names is going to impact the reader.

The problem with that is illustrated by such books as Diane Duane's Tale of the Fire series, in which a major character's name, an innocuous foreign-sounding monosyllable in English, turned out entirely accidentally to be an extremely rude word in Norwegian (I think it was).

2300
Author Craft / Re: Physical Strain of Writing/Reading
« on: February 15, 2007, 08:21:53 PM »
I've tried the bed thing before, and it almost works.  I think the energy is right because it's my room, my space, but then my back gets to hurting being propped up in bed like that.

Not meaning to get overly personal here, but what position are you lying in ?

2301
Author Craft / Re: Physical Strain of Writing/Reading
« on: February 14, 2007, 03:50:26 PM »
I spend pretty much the entirety of every working day sitting in front of a monitor, so I write on my laptop lying down in bed. It seems to work OK.

2302
Author Craft / Re: Ideas for town names?
« on: February 13, 2007, 04:06:07 PM »
Well, this is kind of like the issue of naming characters. 

When I name towns in my stories, I usually just start rambling off words until something sounds good.  Then I use that. 

It's also like the issue of naming characters in that people and towns from, or at least founded by, the same culture, should sound like it.

Quote
A bright, clean town with well mannered citizens probably wouldn't have a name that sounds foul and uninviting.  Can't think of any foul and uninviting examples at the moment, though, but you get the idea.  Unless, of course, there's some special circumstance that's part of the backstory/world that explains a nice city to have a nasty name, or vice versa. 

If it's of any age, it's had history, and is very unlikely not to have felt different at different times. If it's of any size, different parts of it will feel dfifferent.

Quote
Anyway, you could also simply name the cities for physical characteristics.  Cities in the real world do that.  Salt Lake City, for example. 

Start with something like that and distort it though the languages of everyone who's conquered it since....

Quote
I always thought Europe had cool names for things.

That comes from having lots and lots of different languages and culture and history.

2303
Author Craft / Re: Action Scenes / Fight Sequences
« on: February 09, 2007, 09:59:30 PM »
I'm in the middle of a big brawl right now where the main char is fighting a big group of people, and so far i'm just doing my best to write what happens.  But it's hard to write with much style when you're describing each move.  So it's like 80% a breakdown of the fight with about 20% storytelling and voice. 

Whose point of view is it ?

In main character POV, if the main character's good enough not to need to think about what they're actually doing in detail, stick with what they're thinking, and the results of the fight, with the description of what happens when background and only the bits that don't work, or work suprisingly well, really catching their attention.
 
[ If they're not that good, against a bunch of people, it's either going to be a short fight, or they need some trick advantage which you can foreground in their thoughts instead. Like Indiana Jones shooting the showy swordsman in Raiders. ]

If it's somebody else's POV, you have a pile of options, "Wow, look at that !", or "oh dear, it's going to be me next unless I'm careful", or "how did I get into this mess ?", or "Yeah, right, another boring Protagonist fighting insuperable odds, get it over with already, do I want pizza or Thai for dinner tonight... " would all fit plausible other character reactions there at least as well as  a technical breakdown of your main character's style.

What's the point of the fight ? What consequences has it for people you want the reader to care about, and for the plot ?  Communicate those, and the rest is secondary.

2304
Author Craft / Re: Wordcount!
« on: February 09, 2007, 09:49:06 PM »
If you mean What am I writing it with as in writing materials, it is my desktop.

That was what I meant, yes.

Quote
(Not really sure what RSI-like issues means though???)

Repetitive Strain Injury: not messing up your wrists.  Which may be more of an issue for me because I've spent thirteen years this year in day-jobs where I was sitting in front of computers typing much of or all day and trying to work that in ways that don't leave me unable to write in my spare time.

2305
Author Craft / Re: Wordcount!
« on: February 09, 2007, 05:06:27 AM »
Currently, the novel that I'm working on the most is at 23,405 after three days. I'm hoping that the storyline will be engaging enough for me to go for at least ten times that.

What are you writing that with ?

That wordcount in that many days is a) impressive and b) would make me worry slightly about possible RSI-like issues.

I've typed 10,500 words in a day, and it was a bad plan even though I spent a couple of hours not writing in the middle.  [ Seeing possibly the worst piece of theatre I ever saw in my life, which could well be part of why so creative. ]

2306
Author Craft / Re: Unrealism In Books
« on: February 08, 2007, 04:36:34 AM »
Of course, Harry would have a cool, smart-ass remark about it, or a bad pun, but you get the point.

"Taste Excalibutter, jerk."

"I can't believe it's not Waldo's."

2307
Difference between discussion and debate really seems to be in the eye of the beholder, and I'd prefer not to have lines laid down that curtailed the civilised expression of differences of opinion when they arose naturally out of conversation. The vast majority of what I've seen since joining in the conversation here as struck me as eminently civilised, and I would worry somewhat that being self-conscious about an additional distinction might make it hard to have conversations flow as naturally and appealingly as they often do.

I wonder whether part of the problem might not be something I've seen recur in other online fora in different places, which is people from different areas or brought up in different cultures within the English-speaking world having distinctly different basic notions of what is and is not civil conversation, or hearing things with subtext differently from what was meant in them - I've personally lived in five different countries for significant lengths of time as an adult, and had a number of such issues come up, for example "If you say so", which seems to read very dismissively some places in NorAm, whereas in my home part of Ireland it's a neutral or mildly complimentary way of acknowledging that somebody probably knows better and you don't have the information to judge.

I have withdrawn from a couple of threads recently where continued argument appeared to be generating more heat than light.  As a suggestion for how to counter this, what would people think of the notion that, when a book-related discussion appears to be getting heated, the participants be requested to [ or ideally undertake of their own responsibility ] construct whatever position they are suggesting in a more formal manner, identifying what of their particular argument is actually stated in the text of the books in so many words, and what is a deduction from there and by what logic ?  I suggest this because a number of the more heated threads recently appear to hinge on people having different perceptions on what can be regarded as "fact" within the Dresdenverse.

2308
I tip my hat to you, Ashton!  And now I'm really craving hummus...

Just so long as it does not become a requirement to drool over combining the concepts of "hummus" and "Angelina Jolie", because I'm very much on the "two great tastes that taste better separately" position there.

In theory. Not having met Ms. Jolie, and meaning her no disrespect either way.

2309
Author Craft / Re: How powerful should a protagionist be?
« on: February 07, 2007, 07:21:09 PM »
Hence why Superman has never been a good protagonist in my mind.  He's just too powerful and the only thing that can bring him down is kryptonite.

Superman's weakness is his moral rectitude. Convince him that not doing what you want endangers innocent lives and he'll do what you tell him.

2310
Author Craft / Re: How powerful should a protagonist be?
« on: February 07, 2007, 07:18:07 PM »
A very good point. No matter how powerful a character is, if everyone just expects him to do everything, his limitations will become evident. Also, he'll cross the moral line of letting people decide their fate for themselves.

To quote Luthor from Superman: Red Son: "Why don't you just put the whole WORLD in a BOTTLE, Superman?"

The biggest problem I have with Red Son, which other than that I pretty much love unreservedly, is that for a Superman brought up the way that one was, the in-character answer is "Why not ?", and for a classic pre-CoIE Superman who is genuinely both massively more intelligent than everyone else in the world and good to the very core, he sdoes know better than you and he is right to run the world his way.

Pages: 1 ... 152 153 [154] 155 156 ... 158