Topic: Could use some consultants for writing a novel
Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: You don't frequent Sakeriver right? Right, so you wouldn't know then that I I've been recently diagnosed with PDD-NOS, I'm incapable of having a normal social life.
I would speak ill of your doctor for giving you the impression that a developmental disorder can now be used as ammunition against suggestions of pursuing a normal social life, but I suspect you cooked that up on your own.
Tell me, did you get diagnosed for the express purpose of finding a reason to not alter the pattern of your life? Fine that you know, but not fine that your first response to me was to run back behind the big bad PDD label. It's a label, but in telling you anything about what the course of your life is supposed to be, it's not useful. And after all that, no publisher is going to accept a manuscript of yours with a note from your doctor explaining your condition- people will just laugh at you in a way far crueler than anything I've said.
And your jumping to conclusions to beat on me.
"And you know it, and everybody here knows it, and will try anyway. And that's sad, for everyone involved."
I think given enough time, research, and effort I can write something interesting to read and readable, your pessimism is not amusing. Also you and maybe 1 other person are the only people so far with this level of pessimism, other have given advice to improve the chance of success.
YOU just settled on "give up, you won't amount to anything".
If Tom Clancy can write a best seller without visiting China, then so can I, at least I'll be researching it.
Like what the **** is a "would be cool blayne moment" like wtf, can you come up with one and how I would somehow fit it in a book!?!
THIS "I state this only to encourage you not to write with this intention. Be pedantic, be precise, over-explain everything. Then, when you're done, look at all the stuff you have to over-explain, and go back and just cut it out- you will be cutting out the 1337-geek factor you have inserted into your writing because for some deep-seated reason, you believe it has to be there. This, by the way, is why I don't write novels. So I think I speak from some experience. "
Was sooooooorta okay advice but only relative to your other horrible worst examples of advice ever, "be overly precise and explain everything" (otherwise assume viewers are morons essentially) could sorta be construed as advice but after that its just shit.
Scott R doesn't seem to think this is a doomed endeavor, and I did take out like 8 different books for research, so I am putting the effort into this. Your being horrendously unfair.
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Blayne, to be fair, it's difficult to judge how fair they're being until you have written something.
I wish you luck. But you are doing the equivalent of asking the forum how to break into the gourmet catering segment and how to boil water -- in the same post.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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Whats a segment in this context?
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Tom, I don't really think that's a fair analogy. He's stating his intention to write a novel, but I don't think that's the equivalent to asking how to break into the gourmet catering segment.
I'd say he's... asking people for advice on how to make soup, and people are pointing out that just last week he was asking how to boil water.
Or something. I like needlessly complex analogies though.
That said, good luck, Blayne. Lots of people here have offered you some good advice. Try to disregard those that haven't.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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You are an idea man, and I like that about you. Your execution needs work, but no better way to learn that than experience. Good luck.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Syn, I think Rabbit is just approaching the nature of art from the perspective of an observer rather than a creator- she is a scientist after all.
Actually, I was approaching this as a writer and a person who has been heavily involved in teaching technical writing. Writing is a very significant fraction of the work of being a scientist. While I recognize the many significant differences between expository writing and creative writing, I would still argue that the similarities are greater than the differences, particularly when it comes to the actual mechanics of communication.
I also think that creative writing differs from music and the visual arts in several very significant ways.
1. With the possible exception of poetry, communication through the written word is far less abstract than communication through music or visual arts.
2. The effort required by the audience is significantly higher for writing than it is for music or visual arts. I'm not saying one can't put in an enormous effort studying a great piece of music or painting, you certainly can -- but it isn't required. Furthermore, I'm unlikely to put any effort into studying a piece of music without first having heard and enjoyed the piece of music.
3. There is a much wider range in peoples reading ability than in the hearing and seeing ability. Imagine how different composing would be if children couldn't hear any note below middle C and a significant fraction of the population couldn't hear the difference between notes that were closer together than a third.
Synesthesia, I think you misunderstood my original point. I'm not suggesting that a writer or any artist needs to pander to what is popular. I'm talking about the ethics of communication. If you are a writer (or a musician or a painter) no one (except perhaps your mother) has any ethical obligation to read your books (listen to your music, look at your paintings). No one has any obligation to understand what you are trying to say. If people can't understand your writing or don't enjoy your writing, its your fault. You have to recognize that and work work with it. If you want people to understand and enjoy your writing, its your responsibility to make that happen -- not the readers responsibility to figure out what you meant.
If you don't care whether anyone understands or enjoys your writing, fine. Write things the way you like them. But if your goal is to reach an audience, then you need to try to see your work from the audience perspective and make it accessible to your audience. Very often, that requires put aside your ego and listening to the critiques. Listening to the critiques is not the same a pandering to them. Listening to the critiques means stepping outside your role as the author and trying to see your work the way the audience sees it. Its the musical equivalent of walking to the back of the concert hall to see how things sound rather than merely adjusting things so they sound good on stage.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:You don't frequent Sakeriver right? Right, so you wouldn't know then that I I've been recently diagnosed with PDD-NOS, I'm incapable of having a normal social life.
If your therapist told you that you are incapable of having a normal social life because he diagnosed you with PDD-NOS, I would strongly recommend seeing a different therapist.
PDD-NOS is diagnosed primarily in childhood and even then is sort of a cath-all for things that don't fit elsewhere (which is why the NOS means Not Otherwise Specified). As I understand it, it may be inferred in adulthood, but this is less a full diagnosis and more and indication that this may be the case.
Regardless, the therapist's job would not be to slap a label on you and say "You can't have a normal social life." but instead to work with you, using the potential PDD-NOS as a guide for where your impairments might be, so that you can develop as normal a social life as possible.
PDD-NOS is often a mild condition and the social impairments that it introduces can, in many cases, be managed or even overcome.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Blayne, something occurred to me as I was reading the Ishmael part of the discussion that I think might be helpful to you. The reason for getting good,true information when writing fiction is not to be technically correct. The reason for having good information is so that out-of-place things don't interfere with the reader being pulled into the story. It doesn't matter whether or not you can justify something; what matters is some little tidbit strikes the reader as enough "off" the he starts wondering about it instead of your story.
An example: I was watching Highlander-Endgame on TV (a perfect minefield of historical inaccuracies*) thousands of anachronism pass by without causing a ripple but in one segment that was supposed to take place in 1712, they make a reference to the King. There wasn't a king of Great Britain in 1712; there was a queen. Now they could justify it any number of ways - maybe they meant some pretender or the queen's consort or that the Irish brigand wouldn't know anyway - but it didn't matter as I was already out of the story and googling british monarchs.
*Like a 16th century Scot would be named "Heather". Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Synthesia, how old are you again?
31... Why?
You make good Points The Rabbit. I just hope I can at least turn this chaotic stuff I have into something good. It's stressing me out. Especially since there's so many popular books that I just can't stand because they are so... BAD. Urg.
(Even a certain book that many folks here liked was terrible in my opinion. I tried to read a bit of it today at the library and I had to put it down in frustration. Why did he do such a thing to such a decent series? )
What if the book I want to write is not their cup of tea? I'm not sure if I'd want my mother to read this as she'd lecture me and quote the bible at me and I hate that.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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One writer whose blog I read talked about how in her fantasy world, she wanted to put a character in a cast. She researched it and looked at when and where the cast versus splint had been used historically. Historically, there were societies at the same level as her fantasy world that used casts. So, she included it. Everyone in her workshop group came back with the cast as throwing them out of the story. She was right and she showed the research, but she had to make a decision- did she want her readers stopping at that moment to wonder about the realism of casts? Because it didn't matter that she was right and that the readers google trips would show them that she was right and teach them more about that history. What mattered was that they were googling and not reading her story. Using a splint would not rip people out of the story- even people who know that casts were a historical possibility. Sometimes, being right is not worth the cost.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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quote: If people can't understand your writing or don't enjoy your writing, its your fault.
I wouldn't go quite that far. But otherwise, yep.
How far would you go?
I recognize that no writer will be understandable to everyone. The reader has to bring some tools to the table, but that's why I talked about a target audience in my first post. If some one is illiterate, they aren't going to understand your writing no matter what but then if your target audience is illiterate people you shouldn't be attempting written communication in the first place.
I'd also add that there is a significant difference between interactive written communication, like we do on this forum, where there are message being sent in both directions and non-interactive written communication, like a novel or an essay, where messages are being moving in only one direction.
Its the difference between a conversation and a speech. In a conversation, both the speaker and the listener have a responsibility toward clear communication. In a speech, (barring external motivating factors) the responsibility rests much more exclusively on the speaker.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: 3. There is a much wider range in peoples reading ability than in the hearing and seeing ability. Imagine how different composing would be if children couldn't hear any note below middle C and a significant fraction of the population couldn't hear the difference between notes that were closer together than a third.
Well, you're overstating your case on this point. What you have to consider is that the fact that children can *hear* the different pitches is no indication that they are understood. Children can also hear speech, but it takes time to understand it.
In fact if anything I might even argue that music is even more difficult to acquire than speech- given that we find in many modern cultures, where passive musical exposure is the only form of training children and many adults get, children find it impossible to replicate pitches, understand pitch value differences, or reproduce rhythms.
But I suppose the problem is that speech's utility and importance in all modern cultures is much more highly valued. I am not going to convince you that the ability to do these things is analogous to the ability to speak- you'll more likely argue that simply hearing music or detecting more general stylistic differences is sufficient.
The thing is, by the time a person is an adult, they have been exposed to a huge range of music- its so pervasive in our culture that despite the fact that so many people neglect actual training or participation in it, virtually everyone is something of an expert on music consumption. So I think we have this weird state where we know the genres of music that are widely practiced *really* well, but we don't develop the analytical tools to deal with that knowledge.
That being said, there *is* a wide range in listening ability. True experts, I believe, and I have had the phenomenon demonstrated to me, *hear more* than you or I do. Even I have had experiences of being able to hear things through training that were undetectable to others- such as persistent ambient noise frequencies and the timbers of various wind and string instruments in recordings, or even things like compression levels in studio recordings. In fact at one point, scarily enough, I could tell within two years when a particular CD was made by the compression techniques. That was *weird*. But I think just because people have this passive skill and experience with music, we tend to credit it as being easier than reading or other analytical tasks. But having studied both English and music, I found that the difficulty and training required to glean the same level of information from either writing or listening to music is comparable. Music is not more simple or more simply understood- it is only more universally understood at a basic level. Difficult to argue, granted, but that's my belief.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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A fundamentalist Christian did not like Harry Potter; that fact is not JK Rowling's "fault."
Nor is it really the fundie's "fault."
I think your terminology is wiggety-whack, Rabbit. But I think I agree with what seems to be your overall point.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:What if the book I want to write is not their cup of tea? I'm not sure if I'd want my mother to read this as she'd lecture me and quote the bible at me and I hate that.
This is what I meant by identifying your target audience. No book will appeal to everyone but presumably you want your book to appeal to someone. If you don't care whether or not anyone reads, enjoys and understands your story, write it the way you like. Nothing else matters. But if you want to connect with readers, you need to try to see things from the readers perspective.
Scholarette's example makes the point fairly well. If the target audience for the book was medical history experts, then the author should keep the cast. But if the audience is a broader spectrum of fantasy readers, seeming realistic to the typical reader is far more important than the actual facts.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: A fundamentalist Christian did not like Harry Potter; that fact is not JK Rowling's "fault."
Nor is it really the fundie's "fault."
I think your terminology is wiggety-whack, Rabbit. But I think I agree with what seems to be your overall point.
Could you recommend some other terminology? Fault is a loaded word, but I have no idea what a better one might be. How about "responsibility".
Rowling is responsible for the content that the fundie didn't like. If Rowling were trying to appeal to fundies, that would be a failing and it would be her responsibility. Rowling doesn't have to write stories that appeal to fundies any more that fundies need to try enjoy Harry Potter. But if Rowling or any other writer wanted their writing to appeal to fundies, it would be their "fault" if the fundies didn't like the story.
If I want you to read and enjoy my writing, its my responsibility to make that happen. If you don't understand it or enjoy it, I've failed to achieve my objective. That failure is my fault. Its pointless for me to argue that you were wrong, that you should have read more carefully or had a larger vocabulary or better knowledge of quantum theory. If I want you to read and enjoy my writing, it's my responsibility to make that happen not yours.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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I don't know... the actual facts would be a lot more interesting to me, and I'm not a medical student. I want to be good at communicating to folks and getting my point across, but if I worry too much about what an audience will think while I'm writing, I'll never get this book done at all and I've already been struggling with that for the last decade. I'll worry about whether or not gay men will like Isamu or hate him, and it will get in the way of me making him... him. Because I'll be too worried about what folks will think. I think I should write the novel, develop it, get through the rough drafts and THEN worry about the audience because the first thing I'm conserned with is making this book GOOD. And folks will want to read it and relate to it if it's good.
I think it's a two way street. If I don't like heavy hard core metal (I do like it) then I won't like the harder stuff Dir en grey makes. If I don't like vocals like Kyo does (i do like them) then I won't like any of his singing, the crooning or the growling. It won't be their fault, no one's fault really, unless I had a change of heart... I used to HATE rock and roll when I was younger, but now I love the stuff. Whether a person likes art is chemical... or perhaps, for example, I am not OSC's intended audience and I have fallen off of that wagon and on to another.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: One writer whose blog I read talked about how in her fantasy world, she wanted to put a character in a cast. She researched it and looked at when and where the cast versus splint had been used historically. Historically, there were societies at the same level as her fantasy world that used casts. So, she included it. Everyone in her workshop group came back with the cast as throwing them out of the story. She was right and she showed the research, but she had to make a decision- did she want her readers stopping at that moment to wonder about the realism of casts? Because it didn't matter that she was right and that the readers google trips would show them that she was right and teach them more about that history. What mattered was that they were googling and not reading her story. Using a splint would not rip people out of the story- even people who know that casts were a historical possibility. Sometimes, being right is not worth the cost.
quote:If I want you to read and enjoy my writing, its my responsibility to make that happen.
I think "responsibility" is also a loaded word, like "fault".
Let me try phrasing it differently. If I want you to read and enjoy my writing, I'm more likely to get what I want if I take into account what you're likely to enjoy reading. I'll be glad if I manage to write something that a lot of people will enjoy reading, and so it's a good idea to write with an audience in mind.
It doesn't have the same zing that way, I admit. Hmm.
"It's up to you to offer something that an audience will want to read."
Of course this pretty much goes without saying in the first place. Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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A writer should know their audience; they should write in a way that their audience will understand.
That's about as far as I'm prepared to go. I'm hesitant to use words like fault and responsibility because they just seem very...authoritarian. Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:I think I should write the novel, develop it, get through the rough drafts and THEN worry about the audience because the first thing I'm conserned with is making this book GOOD. And folks will want to read it and relate to it if it's good.
You are kind of begging the question. What do you think makes a novel "GOOD"? In my opinion, a good novel is one that connects with the audience and if you don't consider the audience, that is unlikely to happen. You could get lucky and write something that other people will relate to even though you've never thought about them, I just don't think it's very likely.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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It's all kinds of elements. A good plot that's engaging. Interesting characters. No dippiness factors, a writer wanting you to believe something that is utterly ridiculous. Good prose that flows off the page. Just enough humour to make the book extra enjoyable. A writer who is passionate about writing and doesn't just cater to the audience is a lot better. JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series mostly for herself, and I got to admit it makes it very enjoyable the way it is. It's not perfect, but I just love reading it. (Unlike, say, Ender in Exile, which I did not like at all... man, I'm still so annoyed with that book... arg ><)
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: A writer should know their audience; they should write in a way that their audience will understand.
That's about as far as I'm prepared to go. I'm hesitant to use words like fault and responsibility because they just seem very...authoritarian.
Perhaps I'm being to presumptuous, but I think the word you are looking for there is "judgemental" rather than "authoritarian".
My word choice in this is perhaps too influenced by discussions of the ethics of communication. I've spent to much time trying to teach students that writing a story or an essay is very different from a two way conversation. In a two way conversation, like the one we are having now, both the speaker and the listener should be working to avoid misunderstanding. But in a formal presentation, where the flow of information is in only one direction, the writer/speaker bares the full responsibility for clear communication. If your target audience doesn't get what your are trying to say, its your problem not theirs.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Couldn't it be a mixture of both? Sometimes I'll read something and go, huh? How does that make sense? I must say that some ways of thinking are a bit alien to me.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Do you know when you write it? Or is "good" in the eye of the reader.
To take the audience into consideration does not necessarily mean pandering to the least common denominator. There is a spectrum between making art that only a mother could love that is just for you and mushed-up commercial pap. The latter is not very satisfying, but don't expect to get paid for the former.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Nope. Authoritarian is the word I meant to use in this conversation.
OK, I think I understand you now. You were insulting me. Got it.
I doubt that, Rabbit.
I wondered if he meant to make a pun on the word "author" there. But that might be reading too much into it.
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I just want to write something good that folks can relate to and that I can be proud of. Or something that expands horizons a bit. I definitely don't want to write something that a lot of people consider good and praise that I think is terrible. I'd be so unhappy with myself. I'm too perfectionist with my writing to get anything DONE. Outside my head.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by Scott R:
quote:What do you think makes a novel "GOOD"?
I dunno, but I know it when I read it.
Do you know when you write it? Or is "good" in the eye of the reader.
To take the audience into consideration does not necessarily mean pandering to the least common denominator. There is a spectrum between making art that only a mother could love that is just for you and mushed-up commercial pap. The latter is not very satisfying, but don't expect to get paid for the former.
posted
As a side note, the idea that was floated earlier, that a scientist is an observer when it comes to creative stuff, is just wrong. There is a total asymmetry here: A scientist who cannot communicate effectively is a bad scientist; an artist who cannot do science is just par for the course. Communicating clearly what was done, and why, is more important than the actual figuring-out of stuff, which often devolves into just plain debugging of computer programs which, honestly, any moderately computer-literate person can do. (Well... perhaps I exaggerate a bit.)
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Wow -- that discussion got testy in a hurry. I might have missed something as I skimmed, but I did not see that coming.
Posts: 644 | Registered: Sep 2008
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quote:Originally posted by natural_mystic: Wow -- that discussion got testy in a hurry. I might have missed something as I skimmed, but I did not see that coming.
Not nearly as quickly as it would have had I not given Scott R the benefit of a doubt. There is a sort of irony in the fact that I was honestly trying to figure out where he was coming from, and he was just insulting me.
Its the sort of thing that has made hatrack a far less pleasant place to be.
At least he was honest about it this time and admitted that I had not in fact taken offense where none was intended.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: No, scifibum-- it was pointed pretty specifically at Rabbit.
:shrug:
I really don't know what I've done to make you feel justified in being nasty to me. It hurts and I wish you'd stop.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: What do you think went wrong here Captain?
Nope. This problem isn't caused by failure to communicate or misunderstanding, just the opposite. It took a bit, but Scott has made his point pretty clear to his intended audience.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:It's all kinds of elements. A good plot that's engaging. Interesting characters. No dippiness factors, a writer wanting you to believe something that is utterly ridiculous..
Synesthesia, Take a hard look at the list you've created. "Engaging, Interesting, believe". Everyone of them is about the reader, not the qualities of the text itself. How can you tell whether or not what you are writing will engage the reader unless you try to see your writing from the readers perspective?
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:It's all kinds of elements. A good plot that's engaging. Interesting characters. No dippiness factors, a writer wanting you to believe something that is utterly ridiculous..
Synesthesia, Take a hard look at the list you've created. "Engaging, Interesting, believe". Everyone of them is about the reader, not the qualities of the text itself. How can you tell whether or not what you are writing will engage the reader unless you try to see your writing from the readers perspective?
But isn't that part of the quality of the text itself? Being interesting, engaging the reader, making them not feel all miserable like throwing the book across the room or sitting on the toilet reading passages in disgust going, HOW CAN THIS PILE OF STEAMING DOG CRAP HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED WHEN IT'S SO BAD ON EVERY LEVEL! AUGH! To me it's like give and take, or some sort of mushy relationship where you want things to be mutually enjoyable for the reader AND the writer. Neil Gaiman comes to mind. We would all have a wonderful time and feel very sated at the end of the book. It wouldn't be me on a soapbox just preaching and stuff... but just... I don't know. hoping people will like it and nto be miserable at the end of the ride.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: I am very confused...
QFT. Did I miss something?
I dunno. Scott R pointed that The Rabbit's words seemed very authoritarian. The Rabbit seems to be taking offence to that.
There may be some kind of code we're missing. (Or subtext, shared history, whatever)
Something like that. Scott actively dislikes me. I'm sure it's something from our shared history but I really have no idea what or when. I have a short memory for such things, but evidently Scott R does not.
His use of the word "authoritarian" was his way of saying that although he agreed with me, he thought I was speaking as though I was an authority on a subject where I was not. It was his way of saying I was being a pompous jerk.
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