Writing Tips for Dummies Pt 2 by AidensBiggestFan, literature
Literature
Writing Tips for Dummies Pt 2
Writing Tips for Dummies
This is the second part to my Writing Tips for Dummies. I don't expect anyone to listen to it; as before, it mainly serves as a guide for myself.
Description
Description is an important role in any story. The key is to have exactly the correct amount, and to do it in the least obvious way possible.
Do not start your story by describing too much. Perhaps start with dialogue, or an action, or a few words to set the scene. Thrust your reader into what is happening, right away, into what the character is doing and how their story begins.
Never over-describe. Do not use the infamous 'purple prose.' Purple prose is wha
DISCLAIMER: Before anyone starts screaming about this article not emphasizing the Creative aspect of writing, please understand that this information was hammered into my head by my editors. This is what I had to learn to see my work published.
That doesn't mean you have to follow it! As with all advice, feel free to take what you can use and throw out the rest.
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Pesky Point of View
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What is Point of View (POV)?
-- It's the view of the person telling the story.
First Person: I am telling the story.
Second Person. I am telling the story to YOU. (Diaries and letters are commonly written this way.)
Third
"I was just wondering what you think about interior monologues, long passages of reflection?" -- Curious Kitty
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A note on:
-- Interior Monologues
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Whether you are considering adding a lengthy monologue to a story, or intend the monologue to be the story itself where the focus of the entire story is on one character's thoughts and feelings with very little action -- from my observations and experimentation, the readers either love them or hate them. There's no in-between.
However, it is notable that the internal monologue stories that are sought out most frequently tend to focus on a profound emotion of so
STUCK on a Short Story? by OokamiKasumi, literature
Literature
STUCK on a Short Story?
10 Second Tip:
Stuck on a SHORT Story?
Stuck on what to put in your story?
-- This is the list of things I check off when I create a story:
Do you have a Setting in mind?
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- Sci-fi
- Historical
- Modern day
- Fantasy
Do you have ONE big main event for the story to focus on?
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- A battle
- An escape
- A love scene
- An act of revenge
- A sacrifice
- A treasure to claim
- A magic spell
- A transformation
Do you know what you want to SAY with your story?
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- Love sucks.
- Friendship is forever.
- No good deed goes unpunished.
- A snake can only ever be a snake.
- Sometimes
Advanced Writing:
INTERNAL CONFLICT
Note: this is how the professional authors do it. That doesn't mean YOU have to. As with all advice, take what you can use and throw out the rest.
The scene
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His lips drifted across hers in a warm caress. His hand pressed at waist, the heat of his palm warming her flesh through her corset underlying the deep blood silk gown. His fingers drifted upward, toward her breast.
Desire pulsed within her core, in time with her heart. She wanted to let him tear the red silk from her body, and bury himself in her flesh, but set her palm over his to stop him just below her breast. He was a vampi
HOW do you make THE END? by OokamiKasumi, literature
Literature
HOW do you make THE END?
"When will you make an end?"
- The Pope on the painting of the Sistine Chapel
"When I'm finished."
- Michelangelo.
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Okay, so you got this GREAT Idea for a story!
- This Great Idea...that births chapter after chaper...
- This Great Idea... that you can't seem to finish. (WTF?)
Crap.
So what do you do now?
HOW do you make an End?
Fairytales and Myths were my foundational reading, so they became my base model for how a story should finish -- by ending where you began with a solution.
This doesn't mean ending a story in the location it started, or that full irrevocable transformations don't happen, bu
Advanced Plotting-The PREMISE by OokamiKasumi, literature
Literature
Advanced Plotting-The PREMISE
Advanced Plotting ~ the PREMISE
-----Original Message-----
Could you tell me more on plotting story points? I can get the big story idea well enough, but I run into a snag deciding the whole causality thing -- A leads to B, leads to C, etc."
-- Mad about Plotting
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Ah, so you wanna know how to put all the theories together to make a story, do you? (Gee, you couldn't pick the easy stuff could you?) Okay...
A story's Causes & Effects, the triggers that lead from one event to the next, comes from your Premise.
Just for the record...
A Premise is NOT a Concept!
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The Premise is the theoretical / e
Basic Plotting
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A plot is the pattern a story follows, the most common being:
-- Beginning
-- Middle
-- End
All successful (read: popular) stories have patterns. Sometimes it's simple, sometimes it's complex, but all of the stories read or told often enough to remain in the popular mind of any culture have a pattern, a plot.
Here are some examples of simple plot patterns
Traditional:
He came.
He saw.
He conquered.
American Dream Version:
He came.
He conquered.
He became very rich.
The Heroic version:
He conquered.
He became the leader of
Sentence Structure for FICTION by OokamiKasumi, literature
Literature
Sentence Structure for FICTION
On Basic Sentence Structure for Fiction
(Grammar Nazis BEWARE!)
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Everything I ever learned about writing Fiction DIDN'T come from school; not even college. In fact, the way one writes fiction is almost the complete opposite of everything I learned in school about writing.
In order to make my stories crystal clear in my readers' imaginations, I write in precise Chronological Order, in the order events actually happen, PLUS in the order that the eye sees it.
Case in point, when describing a character, I describe them from top to bottom, in the order that the eye notices them. Face, hair, upper body, arms, hands, then lower
Every genre has core elements that make that genre that genre. In order to Cross Genres properly, you need to know each of your genre's distinctive elements and make them Equally Important in the story.
Simple, no? However...
One of the most common mistakes I've seen in every genre of fiction: IGNORANCE.
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"Most of the common mistakes come with any writing that isn't so goodbad characters, bad plots, bad writing. The ones which are peculiar to alternate histories (fantasy and sci-fi) are bad research and bad extrapolation."
-- An Interview with Harry Turtledove --
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue298/interview.html
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