Writers Help Thread!

Chatterbox: Inkwell

Writers Help Thread!

Writers Help Thread!

I saw one of these on a different forum. Sadly, that forum no longer exists. :'( But that is why I am creating this!

This thread is for questions and advice. You can ask for help making your writing better, or how to reword things. You can post samples that you think need work (but no longer than two paragraphs.) You can not just ask for help and then not help anyone. Go!

I will start. What word do you use when there is only one person infiltrating something? My dad told me infiltrate was the wrong word. I can't think of a better one, though.

submitted by Emily L., age 16, WA
(May 11, 2012 - 11:21 pm)

Q: Is there any place online where you guys go to get writing tips and such?( I'm despearte for a constant-ish flow!)  Now that I say that; I realize that this thread is sorta like one in itself............

 

Yes, there are some very good writers here, and they're always willing to share writing tips and feedback.

Admin

submitted by Amelia C., age 12, my own little world
(May 19, 2012 - 10:16 am)

Thank you, Admin!  Amelia, we are writers that have problems and have solved problems in the past.  If you need a "constant-ish" flow of the sort of help you need, ask your problem and most likely, one of us will answer it.  I think we should have a sort of "this requires your immediate attention signal" so then questions for writing with due dates aren't left hanging.

Sealed is our signal for Qs requiring immediate attention.  You click on the smiley face and the subtitle is "sealed"*

If you can't get to a computer, just write!  When you go back over your writing and hopefully have a computer, you can post problems.

 

*I know this has nothing to do with the meaning, but it looks the closest to "I'm in a really big rush and need to know this ASAP!

submitted by Holmes
(May 22, 2012 - 7:10 pm)

That's cool. I'm not in need of anything that urgently right now. I've never really gotten a chance to use the "sealed" emote before. Now I'll have a reason!Laughing

submitted by Amelia C., age 12, my own little world
(May 25, 2012 - 10:37 am)

So that's what you call it!  An emote.  I just think of it as a "smiley face person."  The sealed emote should be kept in reserve for really important things, like ones that have due dates.

submitted by Holmes
(May 26, 2012 - 9:56 am)

I thought it was called an emoticon.

 

And I thought emoticom. Emote would be an abbreviation for either one, I suppose.

Admin

submitted by Emily L.
(May 26, 2012 - 1:51 pm)

It's "emoticon" (as in "emote" + "icon"), for whatever that's worth. 

 

Thanks, TNÖ. I was thinking com short for communication.

Admin

submitted by TNÖ, age 18, Deep Space
(May 26, 2012 - 5:03 pm)

Thank you for clearing that up, TNO (sorry about no umlaut.  Shouldn't umlaut have an umlaut in it in order to be self explanatory?)

submitted by Holmes
(May 27, 2012 - 8:15 am)

That would be a tad redundant. :)

And you get umlauts by pressing Alt + a series of numbers on the number pad. I always forget the codes, but they pretty much go in alphabetical order. The only one I really remember is the one for ï, ü and ä, because I take German. ï is Alt + 0239, ü is Alt + 0252, and ä is Alt + 0228. 

Let me try some experiments.... I believe TNÖ would be Alt + 0214.

As if this would help anybody in their writing -.-'' But it might. One never knows.

Garthwumpian Flopp says meor. No, you are DEFINITELY not a cat...

~Quintus!

submitted by Quintus, Calveicia
(June 7, 2012 - 3:01 pm)

@Amelia: There are sites that are writing-based i.e. wattpad, fictionpress, um, Absolute Write, and NaNoWriMo and they normally have forums where you can ask questions and get other people's opinions.

If you want professional advice and maybe opinions of published authors, some great blogs are those of Veronica Roth (writer of Divergent and Insurgent), Claire Legrand (Cavendish Home for Girls and Boys- or something like that), Jay Kristoff (Stormdancer) and Chuck Wendig/terribleminds (Double Dead, Blackbirds, and Mockingbird). Also, Peggy Blair's blog seems decent but not AMAZING.

submitted by Olive
(May 27, 2012 - 1:24 pm)

Actually, there is a really good thing that I use (it helped me stumble through Mechas&Masquerades - and I referenced it earlier on this thread) on FictionPress.

It's called "How to Successfully Complete a Successful Story" so you can google it just in case Admins don't like the link (I will warn you in advance, there is occasionally some unfortunate language).

I think it should help quite a bit. It addresses most of the questions on this thread.

--L

submitted by L
(June 6, 2012 - 3:25 pm)

GAAAH!Sealed

THIS IS NECESSARY. 

I have a semester project due next week, right before school gets out (fun, right?) and it's basically this: A science fiction story. We are being graded on length, character dimension, tone/mood, theme, suspense, and every other thing you could possibly think of.

Mine is about a middle-aged guy, Aster, whose colleague invents a weird machine that gives people superpowers (stupid and cheesy, right? At least we're NOT graded on plot). The machine explodes and kills most of the people in their office, except Aster, who is injected full of the energy given off by the machine. This does not give him any superpowers, per se, but now really weird things are happening. Things moving without him touching them, running really fast, et cetera, et cetera. Think young Voldemort talking to Dumbledore in book 6. 

So now, Aster is feeling pretty horrible, and getting some pretty serious press coverage (about being the only guy to survive - nobody knows about the weird machine yet; they all think it was a freak accident or something), and....

I am stuck on how to end it. In the words of a good friend of mine (but not necessarily a good author (SORRY)): Deus ex machina is not a good way to end anything. So that's not an option. (For all those who don't know, deus ex machina means "god in the machine" and is basically the way to categorize unexpected, improbable, and really really bad endings - like blowing up the world randomly.)

HOW TO END IT? I know I am a serial procrastinator, and I should have gotten my lazy butt working WEEKS ago to finish it up, but I AM a serial procrastinator, and I need an ending like NOW.

~Ash gone to put a bucket on her head and hit it repeatedly~

 

Admin: Tell Euripides deus ex machina isn't a good way to end anything!

submitted by Ash, age 14, A galaxy far away
(June 6, 2012 - 5:29 pm)

Euripides is dead. That could present a Problem.

submitted by Ash, age 14, A galaxy far away
(June 7, 2012 - 2:36 pm)

Maybe he shows someone about the machine, him/her doesn't believe it, but since it means so much to him him/her finds the blue prints for him,and looking at it he creates a reverse super power machin ethat helps him. 

I am stuck at this part in my book that i'm writing, basically one girl has a curse, the other has a blessing, the girl with a curse knows she has one, the girl blessing doesn't, and she needs to find out about it early, it's important to the plot,but I can't figure it out,how she should find out. In formation on how she got the blessing,a fairy in disguise came in their house and did it when she was a tiny baby. The blessing was everyone would like her,but she is extremely mean. 

submitted by Maple
(June 7, 2012 - 5:02 pm)

Hm... interesting but I don't even know where you were intending to go with it, really. Maybe the main guy could die when he finally gets his full powers. I'm not totally sure what that would prove, but...

submitted by Emily L.
(June 7, 2012 - 7:02 pm)

((BAH HAHAHAHAHAA Admin I love you.))

-Be open to the possibility of character death. Depending upon what exactly the machine did to him, if he's been pumped full of too much energy, death from a kind of burnout is a possibility that's plausible enough to not be a Deus ex Machina. Of course, if your story is light or comic, you might not want to go this route, although abrupt, unexpected Mood Whiplash at the end of a comic story can be really effective if you play it right. My instinct would be with this option, but that's obviously more a matter of personal taste.

-The full story could leak out, whether because Aster decides to tell people or because of some determined detective/reporter/miscellaneous other discovering evidence. From there, you could end it hopefully—with Aster finding or being given information about people who can help him somehow—or tragically—with Aster being imprisoned to prevent him from being a danger to himself and other people—depending on where you want the story to fall on the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism.

If you don't like either of the above suggestions, try asking yourself some questions about the story first: 

What, exactly, is the major conflict of the story? Is it the powers, or the press coverage, or something else? What does Aster want? What is Aster willing to do to get what he wants? What do the other characters want and what are they willing to do to get it? What do the other characters want from Aster? What does Aster want from the other characters? What is the best possible outcome of the situation? What's the worst? What is the most logical result of the sequence of events so far? How will that be influenced by what the characters want? And so on.

The simple act of asking yourself specific questions like these will get you thinking about different options. I know how hard it is to force writing, which can make writing to a deadline very difficult. Part of that trouble comes from trying too hard; you become so emotionally invested in succeeding (regardless of your actual feelings towards the story) that you self-sabotage.* The harder you try to force yourself to come up with an ending, the more difficult the wall will be to break through. The solution is to take a step back, allow yourself a little room to breath, and start thinking in the opposite direction: from what you have, to what you don't have, instead of trying to come up with what you don't have and then connect it back to what you do. (Think of your mind like a doorway with a door that only swings outward. In trying to force yourself through to the ending, you miss the "pull" sign entirely and end up pushing harder and harder against a door that is never going to give. In stepping away and questioning instead of just trying to push through, you can pull the door open and arrive at the end naturally.)

Put another way, the ending should be a logical consequence of everything that has happened in the story so far (this is why Deus ex Machinas are often looked down upon; they come from nowhere and have no apparent cause). If you try to come up with an ending without following the thread of the story to do it, you will fail.

Which is not to say that there is only one possible ending; there are a lot of possible endings, and you should keep asking questions about the story and questions about your answers and the ideas resulting from those answers until you think of something that you think is perfect.

Also, don't hit your head on a bucket. That never works, and it's really hard to write coherently if you have a concussion.

 

*I just had a moment of "now why does this sound so familiar?" and then realized that I'm paraphrasing one of my theatre professors at you. What can I say, writing and acting have very similar methodology. For me, at least.

submitted by TNÖ, age 18, Deep Space
(June 7, 2012 - 8:29 pm)