Tag Archives: writing in conceptuals

littlepuppyfromthefreezer:

iamthefirechild:

littlepuppyfromthefreezer:

iamthefirechild:

littlepuppyfromthefreezer replied to your post:you guys do realise you don’t have to follow me…
-shrug- its only polite. and i mean you write so theres at least one thing i can learn from you

practise makes perfect, and the only way to get better is to keep trying. I spent college learning that the most important opinion of my work was my own — and that nothing I ever did would seem good /enough/ to me. So if I can see the scene in my head, I don’t spend /hours/ trying to get it out exactly right. It’s not going to happen. I put it down as clearly as I can, and tweak words here and there, and let it go.

i find my writing style is different from that. its heavily based on emotion. even if another character isn’t involved. emotion affects how people perceive and i try to capture that. 

That’s a perfectly good way to do it — I just work pretty hard on not criticising myself a lot after I write it.

i just need to stop myself from filtering what i write. and finding the perfect word. that’s always hard.

Jesus christ yes. It helps to have a big vocabulary there. But I’ll admit, there’s times when I head off to thesaurus.com because I need just the right word. Then there’s times when I’m like, ‘bugger this’, and slap down whatever I can think of that’s closest. And if I’ve spent more than a couple minutes flailing for the word, it’s time to stop, because I’m not going to find it.

The other thing I constantly remind myself is that familiar words, ordinary words, like ‘said’ and ‘eyes’, are not BAD. These are the necessary building block words, the ones that call up immediate responses and pictures in people’s minds. Altering them makes readers stumble, they have to reparse the sentence because they aren’t sure they read that right. If I’m looking for just the right word, it better be about precision of description and not about flamboyancy for the sake of it.

littlepuppyfromthefreezer:

iamthefirechild:

littlepuppyfromthefreezer replied to your post:you guys do realise you don’t have to follow me…
-shrug- its only polite. and i mean you write so theres at least one thing i can learn from you

practise makes perfect, and the only way to get better is to keep trying. I spent college learning that the most important opinion of my work was my own — and that nothing I ever did would seem good /enough/ to me. So if I can see the scene in my head, I don’t spend /hours/ trying to get it out exactly right. It’s not going to happen. I put it down as clearly as I can, and tweak words here and there, and let it go.

i find my writing style is different from that. its heavily based on emotion. even if another character isn’t involved. emotion affects how people perceive and i try to capture that. 

That’s a perfectly good way to do it — I just work pretty hard on not criticising myself a lot after I write it.

littlepuppyfromthefreezer replied to your post:you guys do realise you don’t have to follow me…

-shrug- its only polite. and i mean you write so theres at least one thing i can learn from you

practise makes perfect, and the only way to get better is to keep trying. I spent college learning that the most important opinion of my work was my own — and that nothing I ever did would seem good /enough/ to me. So if I can see the scene in my head, I don’t spend /hours/ trying to get it out exactly right. It’s not going to happen. I put it down as clearly as I can, and tweak words here and there, and let it go.

Gallery

aparacium:

shadowstep-of-bast:

bekahboo2391:

Where has this been all my life!?

*SCREAMS IN ABJECT FURY*

SAID IS NOT DEAD. SAID IS NOT DEAD. SAID IS NOT FUCKING DEAD.

THESE WORDS ARE ALL VERY LOVELY AND USEFUL BUT ONLY IN SMALL DOSES!!!!

LIKE HOW MANY TIMES IN A STORY CAN YOU SAY THEY “STATED” OR “REMARKED” SOMETHING BEFORE THE STORY BECOMES BORING AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE?!?!?! GOOD GODS Y’ALL!

SAID IS A LOVELY ADORABLE LITTLE WORD THAT DOESN’T TAKE UP MUCH SPACE. IT CAN BE USED OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND IT WON’T TURN YOUR STORY INTO AN AWFUL PEICE OF PURPLE PROSE (BUT FUCK IF PURPLE PROSE IS WHAT YOU’RE AIMING FOR HAVE AT IT MY FRIEND) THAT MAKES LITERALLY ZERO SENSE TO THE READERS.

EXAMPLE: ‘“Oh Lizzy,” Clare said tiredly. “We don’t always get what we want.”’

I BET YOU BARELY NOTICED THE WORD SAID. YOU PROBABLY FOCUSED ON THE WORD TIREDLY BECAUSE THAT WAS HOW SHE SAID IT.

AS OPPOSED TO: ‘“Oh Lizzy,” Clare stated tiredly. “We don’t always get what we want.”’

DO YOU SEE HOW STILTED THAT IS???? IT’S AWKWARD AND DOESN’T FLOW RIGHT. NOW IMAGINE IF THE CONVERSATION WENT LIKE THIS:

‘“Oh Lizzy,” Clare stated tiredly. “We don’t always get what we want.”

“It’s just… It’s just so hard to let go.” Lizzy sobbed.’

DO YOU GET WHAT I’M SAYING? PUTTING THE WORD ‘SAID’ IN CLARE’S LINE ALLOWS YOU TO PUT MORE EMPHASIS ON LIZZY’S DISAPPOINTMENT AND EMOTIONAL TURMOIL. IMAGINE IF THE ENTIRE STORY INVOLVING LIZZY AND CLARE USED EVERY WORD BUT SAID. IT’D GET HARD TO READ, WOULDN’T IT???

IN CONCLUSION, TL;DR, ECT. ECT.: THE WORD SAID IS A GOOD WORD THAT LETS THE WRITING FLOW AND ALLOWS YOU TO PUT MORE EMPHASIS ON ANOTHER CHARACTER’S LINES WITHOUT CLUTTERING UP THE STORY. SAID IS NOT DEAD. PLEASE USE THE WORD SAID, DARLINGS. SAID LIKES TO BE USED, AND IT ISN’T PICKY ON HOW YOU USE IT.

YES THESE WORDS IN THE PICTURE ABOVE NEED TO BE PUT TO USE, BUT ONLY SPARINGLY. OTHERWISE YOU END UP WITH A STUTTERED MESS OF A MANUSCRIPT AND IF YOU WANT TO WRITE SUCCESSFUL STORIES YOU’RE GOING TO NEED TO UTILIZE A WORD THAT’S SHORT AND SWEET AND TO THE POINT. AKA THE WORD SAID.

THIS HAS BEEN A PSA

This person isn’t joking. My friend wrote a book and I asked about the publishing process and she said that the editors made her change a lot of the tags to just “said” because all the “requested” and “offered” and “smirked”s were distracting. My friend said her editor told her that most people don’t even read/notice the word said and they get stuck and stumble over words like “proposed” and “stated” and other such tags. So in conclusion, a real author told me all of this which means said is not dead and never will be. 

Yes, okay. Plot idea. For Merlinians. This is a silly idea, because I’ve been reading Howard Pyle.

What if Summer is under an enchantment, that forces her to be a knight in shape and looks and skills during the day, and she is forced to fight any knight that comes along the road where the tower she’s trapped in is, until one of them should defeat her three times? And either a knight can defeat her three times, or beg shelter in her tower at night — anyway the point is that a knight will see her in both guises and guess she’s under a spell and try to break it because adventure and this is what knights do. Like it’s not supposed to be a /romantic/ plot unless that’s what the other person wants.

This is a stupid idea now that I write it down.

Ahem.

eitrit:

So I’ve calmed down a bit from last night. (Thank you to those who offered words of love. I appreciate them, even if I seemed like I ignored them and didn’t reply.) And now I feel like I want to actually take a bit of time and tackle the thing about purple prose and why people may not want to roleplay with those who write it. Please keep in mind that I’m not attacking purple prose or anyone who writes it. I’m not bashing a writing style. I’m going to point out the problems that I (and likely many others) have with it.

Please don’t send me hate, or anyone else hate.

When I was a kid in elementary school, which was grades 2 through 5, we would get vocabulary lists, which were basically lists of words we had to learn for the week or month, usually week. It was our weekly homework to look up each word, write out the definition, and use it in a sentence correctly. In this way, we learned first, how to look words up in a dictionary, and two, how to use those words. We also learned grammar. Rule structure. Parts of speech. Consistently, every year. Nouns, verbs, adverbs, subjects, adjectives, conjunctions, punctuation, and how to use it.

I bring this up to sort of set the foundation for what I’m trying to say, I think, and to illustrate that I know what I’m talking about. I may not have a degree in creative writing, but I have written professionally for a company website or two, and I do know how to write.

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I fled, as I do, as I must. It’s a different world I have to go to, to run away from myself. They say, hell is other people.

It’s wrong.

Hell is always, endlessly, myself. Locked inside my own head, own voice searing across old wounds, ripping and prying and tearing.

I don’t cut with blades.

I cut with words, and you cannot see my scars.

I ran away, cutting my souls/soles on the sharp truth: I failed. To be sorry, to be kind, to be good.

To be wanted.

You see, I write because I have to. The words jostle in my mind like a thousand thousand razor blades, cutting and cutting. You cannot see my scars, though I lay them out in text, fine lines of script linking wound to pain to bruise. I write because the pixels, the ink is blood, sliding down my fingertips.

You say to me: it hurts too much, I can’t tonight. I hear you but I can’t hear you. Do you lock it inside, then? How do you do that? It writhes inside me, clinging with claws sharp as kittens’ teeth, pricking marks that only hurt later, when I’ve stopped running.

Do you understand? I’m asking, always asking, only ever asking you to help me heal. I thought I heard you say, No, so I fled. I ran away to find the words I shape around that pain, and I didn’t know my leaving would hurt you. I never want to hurt you.

I want to show you my scars, the ink that runs in my veins and spills out on the page, and say: we are alike. I can write you the path I walked before you, and maybe, just maybe, if the words shape themselves right you don’t have to hurt yourself on the same things.

I ask you to help me and what comes out is always ugly and wanting, greedy and selfish. Ragged-edged words with too-cruel edges.

The truth is that I say it wrong. The truth is that I love you, and I love you cannot say as you wish until after I say my wishes too. I wish you to come back. Let me try again.

I write and write and write; the words spill like blood across the screen and swirl away. They will never be enough; I want to peel open my cheat and show you the parts of my soul that are yours and always will be. This is a love letter to you.

I’m sorry. Please forgive me my mistake. Let me make it right. Let me try again. I give you the truth: I shape words, and the story bleeds my pain. Here are my scars, self-made. Will you help me, now, to carve out my pain?