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| New Place for Writing Advice Check out a sudoku tutorial and do a few easy ones. Just enough so you get the same idea. Then go over your manuscript and fill in details. Notice how the details you add in scene one magically rhyme with the ones you added in scene four. Magically because you weren't thinking to match detail a with detail q but they do. If this doesn't connect consider this: in what ways do Sudoku players more fully understand the question "What would happen if?" |
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Tell me I'm Wrong Tuesday Subject: Prologues. Never skip a prologue. It can totally ruin a story's meaning. E.G. In my Trick Blade Engagement, I wrote a star crossed lovers story that was, originally, kind of suss. I had worked hard on the society of the Urgans, rather like Star Trek did with Klingons. But really, without the setup (a vignette about a civilized urgan teaching a confused half urgan boy) it reads a bit colonizer. The story isn't the human saving the barbarian girl, it's two mavericks barely escape the crulty of their idiotic families. Tell me that you'd be better off just getting the sleeping version, if you can.
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| My problem is that my prologue often turns into a prequel. |
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| Please note that I rarely award less than 3000 to any review. Maybe a short one on a 3 line poem. Also note it is bout 3700 words so kind of light for me |
Reply☘️ Richard ☘️ - Yeah, word count matters.  Hope you have enough space on the portfolio for the prequel. |
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Tell me I'm wrong Friday Take the following paragraph. The POV is 3rd Person Close to Kindy, the little girl watching from outside the room. Valtrip nodded and smiled over the treasure. After a few nods, the big man got a sour taste in his mouth and glared at Kindman. "Hey, wait. What?" Now as a fellow writer, I might blue-pencil it as a head hop, but as a reader I find it much more elegant than saying 'he got a sour look on his face.' In fact I feel like I know better what to visualize than 'a sour loo.' In point of fact his look isn't sour, or sweet, that's a metaphor. Now head hops are to be avoided, but the purpose is to create the experience of being in Kindy's head. So the question is, does this feel like we are looking into Valtrip's head FROM INSIDE of Kindy's head, rather than that of the narrator. To evaluate a suspected head hop: Does this maintain the illusion of being in the head we're supposed to be in? To make it clear: I don't care if your character is reading minds, I only care if it feels right that they should. |
| If the viewpoint is Kindy watching from outside the room, then yes, a headhop. You’re giving internalized information (a sour taste in the mouth) of one character and allowing another character to describe it to the reader. How would Kindy know there’s a sour taste in another character’s mouth? Are they telepathically linked? Or does she glean the information through inference—i.e. body language like a curling of the other character’s lips, quick puckering of the mouth, wincing, etc. The reader, through Kindy, can deduce the other character is experiencing a sour taste through Kindy’s observation of the other character’s externalized reactions to the taste. |
Jeremy  Correct. If you cut gray-area head hops like these, so long as you replace them with smooth language, you'll be on firm ground. (I could only find painfully drawn out alternatives.) My understanding looks at this as what is going on in the POV's head about the world. I feel like it's good to write what the POV knows or thinks he knows, at least so long as it doesn't make him or her less of a credible witness than I want! Meanwhile the real slips are when I'm describing the look on the face of the boy my heroine is effortlessly leaving in the dust. She doesn't look back--she knows his incredible bulk will not help him any more than it would have helped him in the fight. So my advice: never use a table leg to rob a junior swordsman of her dead aunt's meat cleaver, and follow the rules (like those against head hops) until you know whether it helps your work. Kindy's mind reading is good for my scene--she's weaponizing empathy--and Sigrun's rubber necking is not. And that's the real key: make sure that the amount of gray area you take actually portrays your POV the way you want. |
| So I wrote this over a year ago, and I learned a bit about one of the characters--he's a much better man than I thought, if mostly on the inside. At least, he wants to be. As a result he had a chance at a happy ending that the little girl's manipulations didn't look at. I mean, this is a little warlock who learned enough from her mother's mistakes to not sell--herself--short. Does Folly really have a choice?
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| If you need to improve yourself or your writing, consider these questions. Caution: read and participate only if you are willing to submit to your own suggestions, as there is a measure of hypnotic language in the following post. Possible effects include increased motivation and ease. What is the best thing you've done lately? Why did you do that? What did you feel like just before that? What things make you feel that way? For a moment, repeat these three questions: What reminds you of that feeling? How will you know when to do that? What is the most pleasant part of the task? Thoughts that fire together wire togerther; just thinking of the feeling and the proper moment together makes it easier to move toward the right action. Whatever is right just naturally works out, and that kind of success in practice makes permanent the habit you've got in mind. So the key is to just relax into these thoughts, and if the activity is important, reflect on these questions often. It can be a chance to take a break while the thoughts work deep in your neurology. I'm not saying that you have to get great results, because you may not ever notice how much easier things are. It just could be that others will notice the change long before you do, or even that you might feel the same. That works because at heart you are the same, it's just that the thoughts and feelings you need are going to be stored in a handy place so you can get them when you need. An orderly mind starts with just wondering what goes with what. An example would be a person who wants to clean her cabinets more often. She decides that the best time is before lunch when there is nothing to do. She finds that a crisp, calm sort of interest is the key. So she thinks about that time slot and crosswods. And the activity. She feels calm and interested. She thinks about organizing. She goes over that several times until her mind wanders to something else, maybe a minute or two. The next sunday she is busy and doesn't organize, but she does start thinking about her crossword puzzles. The next sunday she gets up from her puzzle and organizes the cupboard while meditating on a difficult word, which pops into her mind as she finishes the task. It's only the third sunday that she realizes the suggestion has stuck, although this time her cupboard is pretty much how she wants it already. Your unconscious mind knows how to install this, so let it know. |
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Don't Skip the Prologue I've been working over some old work with an eye to sensitivity. You see, I took some of the most sensitive and culturally advanced media I ever grokked and copied its character arc. The writers' character arc? The first story took my POV character and showed her rejecting the hate from her urgan (my take on orcs) society. Her new boyfriend came from just as bad a cesspit of human viciousness. But hearing the experience of marginalized people in media, I wanted to modify it. My answer is to show an urgan martial artist teaching his half urgan studient patience and care as key values. Kreesh's arc was always about learning higher truths that the ones taught by her family, but I wanted to prime that. The example I followed was how Star Trek eventually zoomed in on Klingons, to realize that they're an entire people who yes, have different values--that would bring us into conflict even if we all looked the same. All wthout devaluing the original conflict. Yes, Klingon aggression does validate harsh measures. Kreesh even thinks that the humans around her are too lenient--doesn't make things less troublesome. A good prologue changes the entire story. Skip it and you might be avoiding the antivenom that turns a deadly snack into a tasty meal. What do you think? |
| My latest image in this ambition, is to see myself as Emily Dickinson. I somehow doubt that anybody would make anything of my work after, but... then I also doubt that I'll get it while I am here. And I was... totally horrified by the image of a professional that is walled off and it feels like an even greater failure. Yet strangely the vision of being Emily Dickinson does *not* fill me with dread, even though it does mean laboring in obscurity and talking to the void. Or is it he abyss. Anyhow, that being said, this is not aspirational but comforting in a stark stoic way that is... also a gentle stoicism. So I don't know what the nine worlds I am describing. |
| I tell other poets I meet, “I’m a bit Emily.” Surround yourself with em dashes. I was using them quite a bit and surprised people didn’t get it, like. — from here to here — Being alone is great. Done it since I was five, closet reading comics, climbing tall trees, in the remotest regions of school playgrounds. Neurodivergence might have factored, as mama’s “odd little duck.” |
| Showing and telling emotions. aka why this is right Helplessness washed over me at the thought of my own family, murdered before my eyes in the name of some demon. I gritted my teeth and strapped my sword to my belt before rolling onto one knee. "Tell me everything." Sigrun is an action hero. She recognizes, names and resists helplessness. She is going to do something even if it is stupid. So because this is a small emotion you name it. The implicit emotions of the abject horror at the callosness of the universe are not named because if they were she would not rush headlong into saving an obvious undead monster because somebody asked her for help. |
| So if you write enough stories in the same thematic vein and the same world you might end up with some that should be read together. I have a cosy story about a young man learning to manage his moods by going out of his way to be kind to thise who havent earned it and another about a man who suddenly discovers that he cannot ballow the cruelty to those his order says deserve it. They are linked only in environment and the magic they use to clear their mind but read much deeper together. Just a 💭 thought. |
After a routine cleaning assignment--disposing of dark magic--student magician Oliver finds himself feeling disgruntled and cocky. Professor Jatham sees him coming. But really, Oliver is on track to become like his obnoxious brother Mollard, isn't he?
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| Three reflections: You can expect to feel awkward when you're doing a new genre. Practice makes familiar, so after a while you'll relax. Carelessness causes accidents, and in writing, some of those accidents are practice. Throw those back in the river until your sifter is full of pure nuggets of gold. Always write what you know in the first draft. And analogies to what you know. Then what you need to imagine to fit with that. Then by the third or fifth draft make sure that all those known things are completely in the subtext. Hang the fiction and the supposition on the truth but don't tell anybody that bit. There are interesting bits in every idea, but not every sentence. Sometimes you write about the boring part. The relief implies the anxiety, but the interesting part is watching your hero pretend to be calm while preparing to run. So if it's not gripping, maybe you've got the wrong side of the coin. A freebie: what about a fantasy world with assassins coins that are sandwiched with cast iron on the front and back, but the inner bit is pure gold. Because if you know you'll know. |
| Power of Gratitude Inside your brain is a machine called the RAS. This system curates your life experiences with an algorithm that brings you whatever it thinks you care about. Or, what ever your mind clicks on it gets more information about. So if you focus on the things your like you get more of that. Notice though, that when using this gratitude you have a lot of options. One that might not really pop out is, yourself. If there's money in the bank, who went to work so that it would get there? Food on the table, who put it in the fridge. The stories on your portfolio--you wrote them, and put time and energy into that. Now you can't pay it back. All you can do is enjoy it, thank them--and pay it forward. Your past self put these things there out of love: love for these things, and love for you, and love for your future self. As you look into their eyes, all your past selves, you can begin to think of ways you can pay it forward. Clean the fridge. Pay the bills. And write that story you were thinking about at 2:35 in the morning. You know the one, I don't know if it's a good lead but there's something there. Your past selves are your team, their hopes are pinned on you and what you do. |
| The roman Poet Horace has a bit of advice: "Well begun is half done." As quoted by the newsletter for Atomic Habits. Not as punchy as Odin, god of (among many things) war, magic and poetry: "From a word to a word I was led to a word; from a deed to another deed." Bringing it all together, I quote the book "Mini Habits." Basically the whole of the book is about how if you start something every day, in the same way, you get so much more. Continuing is down to luck or circumstance or biology or spoons, but actually starting is something you control. And by starting, that could mean putting on your shoes and stepping out the door for an athletic routine. For a writer it could be deciding which project and opening the file. The point is, if you did that first micro step you are one hundred percent successful. Even if that's where you stop you get the full credit for that step because it is the most crucial. And if you find you don't always succeed at this, pare down your first daily standard till you do crank that starter every day. Because Horace was kind of wrong: even badly begun is at least half of done. |
| I finally updated these two stories into the single, dual-point-of-view piece it should have been. This is a hard hiting domestic thriller about a wife and husband dealing with issues of mental health. I think it's greatly improved in this version, since we now get the full sense of what's going on in one timeline. I found the original so troublesome that I had to rewrite it in the villain's POV in order to finish it--learning that she was not a villain at all. The thing that drove her was the inability to accept that she had been innocent all those years ago. Although it needs a bit more especially in the epilogue, I think it rewards those who are willing to face the monster in the mirror. |
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