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Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/19/2018 in all areas

  1. IT REALLY WORKS! Hi, I’m Kass and I like taking long walks on the beach I get most of my ideas while I’m out walking. I’ll actually go for a walk if I have a case of writer’s block or if I need to hammer out some story stuff. And of course, more cardio is good advice in general! I recently was able to attend a lecture by a writer studying the creative process, and he said that our best writing and creative work comes from our subconscious brain, not our conscious brain. I’m willing to bet it has something to do with that!
    3 points
  2. So, so true. What about the reverse of this? One time this other writer approached me to beta her fic with the promise of fan art for me. I accepted because hey, fan art, plus the plot was centered around a character I love. But then the more it progressed the more I began to dislike it due in part to how she approached the cast. I wasn’t sure if that was enough for me to critique, because it seemed to be a case of differing interpretations. She winds up not even finishing it and leaves for another site altogether without a word. I only discovered that she set up shop elsewhere when I happened to stumble across her account on the second site. Haven’t heard anything from her since. Anyways, I agree with a lot of things a bunch if people have said here already , but I have some of my own to add: Character bashing. I refuse to support stories that do this. What’s so bad is that the term character bashing itself is so misused now that people don’t even understand what it actually refers to. There are people who literally think if you do anything to a character that isn’t making life daises and sunshine for them, you must be bashing them. The character gets sick? You’re bashing them. Another character dislikes another character for perfectly valid reasons? That’s perfectly normal, happens all the time in real life. Nope! You’re a character basher. I remember this one girl who was trying to defend bashing Twilight characters by saying that critics bash characters all the time when they give negative film/book/etc reviews. That’s… no. I don’t even like Twilight and it’s clear to me you don’t understand what you’re talking about. Badly-written romance. And the funny thing is, when I once stated how awful many shipfics are (I’ll call them shipfics to differentiate them from a good romance story), this one person now thinks I hate romance. No, I hate stories where we get stuff like this: Mature grownups suddenly start behaving like dumb kids in middle school or characters in a CW show when it comes to love. People who write about children (when I say “children”, this character can only be 8-11 years old) having sex with adults and teens and having the older party be so impressed by their maturity/or physical attributes. Yeah, that’s realistic. Unhealthy relationships being treated like they’re normal. At least have the self-awareness to point out that one or both characters are bad for one another. There are romances that have made me tear up or feel joy that the couple’s finally gotten together. The crap I just described made me tear up, but not from happiness. Also it’s just annoying to see the exact same ships be written about the same basic way over and over again. Can we mix it up please? Writers who can’t make characters act like real people. This is a big issue with several canons I like. It’s not just OOCness, it straight-up feels like the cast exists purely to be the writer’s mouthpieces/tools. If it’s a character(s) the writer likes, then they’re always depicted as Good, Honest, and Noble, even though more though more often than not they act like complete turds instead. Any character who challenges the author’s pets (especially if they’ve clashed with them in the source material) exists to be an obstacle that must be demonized and humiliated at every turn. Whether it’s a villain or a good-aligned character who committed the crime of simply disagreeing with the pet character in the original material, under the fanboy/girl’s pen they’re transformed into vile monsters that do everything from abusing animals to committing rape. Look, I don’t care about what characters you wanna project yourself onto or date. I just want to read a normal story.
    2 points
  3. I totally fucking love you.
    1 point
  4. What?! No! Not as long as I have something to say about it! Okay… Content warning: I swear. I actually raged about epithets before. I don’t remember where. People just acted like it was just inane – like I just pulled a random, nonsensical pet peeve out of my ass. I get this reaction whenever I tell people that helper verbs are passive. Yes, I am still on a crusade against overuse of ING verbs. But one of my major pet peeves, and this I have developed recently, is something I see in a lot of writing tips articles. It never used to bother me, but I find I get pretty pissed off when I encounter it now. Professionals telling amateurs not to do something. The word lists apply to this. “Don’t use gimmicks”, “Don’t use intensifiers”, “Don’t put rape in there”, “Don’t chop your arm off and eat it” (I couldn’t remember any more...) Of course there are some things that are best avoided, but when you tell a budding, insecure writer not to do something, like BW said, they’ll twist themselves into a pretzel to avoid shit when maybe, just maybe, it would have been fine. There’s a time and a place for everything. To me, when I beta, it’s more important that you’re conscious of your word choice, and when you make iffy choices, like throwing in a ‘very’ (outside of dialogue) that you did it intentionally and well. Plus I really fucking hate it when someone tells me not to do something.
    1 point
  5. He was wasted when he wanted to waist holster his right to bear arms?
    1 point
  6. BW: He grabbed at her bare waste only to find a thick-waisted bear?
    1 point
  7. And anything can be overused. When I find such a word, I’ll try to avoid it for a while, it can help me weed it down to a better level. As to the comma, don’t forget to eat, shoot, and leave
    1 point
  8. I’m going to own up to abuse of epithets. My editors tend to want to beat me over the head, I think, and they are teaching me to stop that annoying habit. It started, quite frankly, when one person who was editing a novella of mine took the hard and fast rule that there could only be one “he” in a paragraph. Dude, I write slash, okay? It’s ALL he. If you are clear enough in the context of the sentence, a reasonably sober reader can figure out which male it is. I’m also coming out in support of the correct use of “that” because nothing grates more than seeing people go through contortions in writing to avoid a word someone put on a blog as a “bad” word. There are no bad words. Trust me on this. A good editor understands when you need “that” as opposed to “which” and certainly as opposed to the spate of verbiage required to avoid using either word. I do miss the Oxford comma, however. Apparently it’s going out of style again. ::sigh::
    1 point
  9. Wow, such an old topic, interesting find @Dirty Unicorn. In my stories, I want things to be realistic/plausible, so I excise anything that isn’t. Guess that’s a pet peeve of mine, unrealistic/highly-improbable. (Though, I’ll overlook it on a story/movie if it’s otherwise very, very, interesting.)
    1 point
  10. Makes sense. My job is very physical so I usually get a lot of ideas for progress in my fics while I’m neck deep in cat shit. Inopportune time to jot it down before I forget it tho… But still, it does help!
    1 point
  11. Fair enough! Most people seem to draw the line here.
    1 point
  12. So, my mum’s mini strokes can’t be made to go away permanently. Well that’s just fucking dandy. Anybody got a heart in good working order they don’t want anymore?
    0 points
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