CloverReef
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Everything posted by CloverReef
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Oh yes, I have this problem too! Especially in dialogue and action heavy scenes, way too many paragraphs starting with names or pronouns.
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Yeah can't say I've used that expression one much. I'm gonna try it. The one I've been leaning on the most in my current project is the thoughts via narration. Setting up the emotional atmosphere via exposition, And I am not a fan of exposition. So it's far from my preferred method, hence the frustration. For me it's the safe method, so it happens automatically, but it's clearly not the best option, so often gets the axe.
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Absolutely. I tend to fall into patterns more easily when I've been in a slump for awhile. Maybe it's the wanting things to work and playing it safe that does it. Of the start techniques you mentioned, the action one is my favorite. If I could start every scene with action I would, but then it would lose it's impact and not be as awesome.
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Ugh. Do you ever get the feeling you're starting too many scenes the same way? Or like the scene structures feel ruttish (2 points for neologisms!) I'm not asking for advice. I know I just need to reconstruct and shake things up, but let's talk about your habits and tricks for keeping the rythm of your story dynamic. (I'm on my phone so blame any typos on auto correct.)
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I want to say something witty and start a profound, fascinating discussion, but I’m lazy. Someone do it for me.
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At the same time? I approve.
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It’s called “Playing with your food”
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- JayDee, CloverReef and BronxWench
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Some days you play with your food, some days your food plays with you.
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I love tentacle stories! If the feet market is flooded, you can still carve your way into it. I bet they don’t have a lot of tentacle monsters with feet fetishes. I don’t know, I like to be kind of naive and believe the best way to get lots of readers is to write well, but I know that’s not always the case. Having a head for marketing and packaging helps, even in the free fiction world; sometimes just packaging the story well with a good summary and catchy title.
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Absolutely! Write your passion. Write what turns you on or what interests you. Best way to make your readers feel what you want them to feel is if you’re feeling it too. If it happens to coincide with shit you know lots about, that’s great.
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I’m supposed to be writing right now. Because I said so. But nobody tells me what to do! Not even me!
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- BronxWench, Desiderius Price and JayDee
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I’m supposed to be writing right now. Because I said so. But nobody tells me what to do! Not even me!
I sense conflict within you.
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@GeorgeGlass 100% love/hate sexual tension.
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100% love/hate sexual tension.
That’s the way to go. I mean, take Anakin, he embraced this and went on to take a prominent role in the galactic empire.
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I think it’s difficult to predict what the audience at any given site will devour and what they will ignore. Trends do tend to come and go. Last time I checked, werewolf and kidnapping stories were the most popular in the M/M original areas. I don’t know if that has shifted yet or not. The appeal of high school drama erotica seems to be an ongoing thing in general, but I have no idea if that is applicable here on AFF. If your priority is to focus on the trends, I’d suggest going through your chosen category (or similar categories if yours doesn’t have a lot of traffic in general) and look for patterns in dragon prints and review counts. I’d like to tell you which of my stories get the most attention, but I don’t actually post most of what I write, lol. I wish you luck!
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It is a lot of work, but for some of the people already creating original music, the extra work to make it audio and incorporate those extra senses is absolutely worth the extra headaches. It’s exciting; it opens up new creative avenues, and it doesn’t feel like extra work if you love what you’re doing. Of course, if you don’t, it absolutely will feel like too much work. So you just gotta do what’s right for you. My advice was meant for people who are already venturing into other mediums to consider alternative and creative ways to make it work for them. We’re not just limited to the words on the page if we don’t want to be.
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I used to write songfics. When I was in the fanfiction world, I wrote a number of them. I even wrote one original songfic. But that was years ago, and in retrospect, I think it was a mistake, disregarding the whole issue of whether or not the songs were original or quoted from existing music, I just don’t like the whole thing. Like BW and sinful, I find, and I have always found lyrics in fiction distracting. They take me out of the world, UNLESS, and that’s a big unless, the lyrics are integral to the plot. Like a verse is a clue to something. But if it’s not integral to the plot, to me, it feels too self-indulgent, and does more of a disservice to whatever emotional atmosphere has been built up thus far. If anyone reading this has a story and you wrote original music for it, I’m going to give you some crazy awesome advice: learn a programming language like Java or just get yourself a good video editor, and make yourself an immersive, visual novel complete with illustrations and music. I loooove those things. Or, if those things sound like too much work, make an audio book! That way the music won’t distract from the story, it’ll compliment it! See? I’m a genius. Edit: Seriously @GeorgeGlass, even though I just kinda shat all over your idea, there’s nothing wrong with doing shit your way. If I was your beta, I wouldn’t tell you not to; I’d ask you how important it is to the story, and to write a scene with and without the lyrics and decide for yourself which works for your style, pacing, and story best.
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Just said my goodbyes to three specialists because they’ve figured out whatever I have is not in their wheelhouses… They’re still not sure exactly what it is, but they’re pretty sure it’s in infectious disease territory now, so yay! Less trips to the big city hopefully! And by next week I should actually be receiving some treatment. Which will be nice. Been going downhill since March, and nobody wanted to treat me before they knew what they were dealing with.
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The worst bit is the doctors serving the sample up with fava beans and chianti.
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@JayDee I did find it a bit peculiar that they kept calling me Clarice.
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Or, if you want to give ‘em a memorable farewell, start reading some AFF to the doctors ….
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uuuugh 33C is still bad. We had a heatwave recently, I think it was around 38ish for a few days? I dunno. I just know a bunch of people died. As someone with a medical condition that makes my internal temperature impossible to self-regulate, anything above 25 is brutal, which is pretty much all summer. I need to move to the mountains. Or England. It rains there a lot, doesn’t it? I like rain.
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Absolutely. I think it depends on the story and the impact I’m going for too. I just touched on messy in response to the comment before mine. I like quick and clean just as much as messy; it always depends on what’s right for the particular story. Though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy writing the messy ones best.
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I personally think long, creative and messy doesn’t necessarily take away from the emotional impact. Gratuitousness miiight in some cases, depending on how it’s written. The most important thing to me, when I write a death scene where I want emotional impact, is if it’s breaking my heart to write it. I need it to break my heart if I want it to break the hearts of my readers. I tend to favour the messy stuff, but that comes from my horror background. Messy can make a spiral out of control more powerful and put a spotlight on raw, messy emotions. If you wanna get philosophical about it, it can be a metaphor for a lot of other emotional things going on in the story. Personally I like my death scenes real intimate and raw. Though I don’t think I get all that complicated either. (Scene in bathroom = heavy soapdish to the head) Something that happens spontaneously to normal people who don’t have guns just hanging around, so in the heat of the moment, they have to improvise, or they’re giant winged monsters and everything they do is messy anyway, lol. I can’t say I’ve done a lot of death-by-gun bits. At least not with main characters. It usually doesn’t make sense for the circumstances I lay out, or the settings. If I wrote about gangsters or cops or hunters (or republicans?) more, I probably would.
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I love horror fantasy fusions. But yeah, I absolutely believe you can be super attached to your characters and empathize with them yet still be more than happy to slaughter the fuck out of them. Doesn’t mean you’re less attached than someone who wouldn’t hurt their characters, I think it just means that you made a difficult decision, or like the more emotionally driven writers like me, let the story sweep you away and did what it demanded.
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Editing/betaing is a topic I could discuss for hours. I won’t, though, because I don’t want to hijack the thread. I’m happy you enjoy it. Like ridiculously happy. My favourite people to beta for are the ones who are eager to learn whether or not they take my suggestions. Giving feedback is an art form too, and helpful critiques are not always appropriate. I very rarely give critiques, even sugar coated ones, to people who didn’t ask for it. Like when I review random chapters on AFF, I usually bite my tongue and only put the positive things. Sometimes the best way you can help a struggling writer getting little-to-no attention is to give their ego a boost, and theeeen you can worry about helping them with their issues (if you want to take that on). Let them feel some love and positivity. Let them feel like writing is worth the deafening silences and that someone out there is listening. That will help their passion grow, and when people are passionate about something, they evolve. Some very well-meaning critical feedback can be crushing to someone whose confidence is already shaken and can do more damage than good. I’ve had arguments about this with other betas, but I’m the Queen Beta, so listen to me, not them. But if you’re reviewing someone like @Desiderius Price who has explicitly stated they welcome critical feedback, the gloves very nicely come off. I think it’s still important to not be a dick about it.
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I think confidence helps too. I think at the start a lot of writers think their writing is awesome enough to push on people, yet won't read it themselves and get super insecure about critical feedback so they won't go to betas. Getting over that phase was a bit of a milestone for me. Like getting to a point where I can take reasonable critiques and enjoy reading my own writing and edit the hell out of it and still think the shit I'm spinning is gold. Edit: I'm in a hotel recovering from a biopsy so if I Fuck up my grammar or spelling y'all just gotta deal. <3
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My writing has absolutely evolved. A few things factor into it. I very much credit my years in fanfiction as a powerful foundation. Though my writing sucked back then, it was an excellent training ground for character development and crafting interesting stories using elements everyone involved was already familiar with. Also formal education played a part. I'm a high school drop out but I went out of my way to teach myself as well as seek out others who could teach me: take classes, read writing books, write essays and long discussions with my english professor mother. Plus there's the natural improvement that happens just online from writing a lot and communicating with other writers that I 100% believe has the biggest impact out of all the things I just mentioned.
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As long as it's clear the story is in English, so readers don't get scared off, I think chapter titles are the one place you can go absolutely crazy without detracting from the story. Esperanto, klingon, complete gibberish. Might make the writer pause and wtf about it but it won't rip them out of scenes or mess with the pacing. Might even pique curiosity and make some party more attention for hidden meanings.
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I saved a spider from the bathtub twice today. He gets in there and runs frantically at the slippery walls trying to get out. 10 seconds ago i watched him run back in and fall like a kid closing his eyes and running across a busy street.
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Hey, using your cleavage as a snare is a perfectly valid spider-hunting technique.
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@GeorgeGlass I've had enough spiders in the middle of the night drop onto me to know they agree with you.
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Too late. I already Googled it, and I’m now laughing. I also Googled “fabulous mini house for tarantula”. XD
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Following the flow of the scenes is always fun when it uncomplicates things for you. I kinda hate it and kinda love it when the scenes force me out of my wordcount limits. Hate it because of some minor obsessive tendencies, and love it because it’s always nice when things flow at their most natural. It’s not too common that the scenes force a shorter or longer wordcount, though. Most of the time my control-freakiness gets nicely sated.
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If you were a demon, just recently raised from the dead, like within the last hour, and knew nothing of the world, where would you go? Inquiring minds and all that.
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Aw, so you’d be more into a demon to cause a bus load of people to suddenly strip? Though if you’re looking for extreme fun, the pervy demon could simply use its powers in various high schools.
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If I know nothing of the world, then I will go to the nearest elementary school, cram myself into one of the tiny chairs, and drool acid on the faux-wood table in front of me while the teacher nervously tries to read us Charlotte’s Web.
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“Man, what a day I had. In show and tell, this demon turned up. Brought in a one tonne Hellhound Pupper. It was still less of a disruption than Cadence McMahon and her ultra-rare Pokemon Go! find.”
“Oh my god! Are you serious? Which Pokemon did she have?”
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I’ve been hmm-hawing about chapter lengths for what feels like every moment of my 32 years on this planet. When I was a beginner, I thought longer was better. I also thought long-winded was better. I was not very good at this shit. Then I decided shorter was better. Little bitsized 3kperchappie pieces packed with action and maybe smut. That was better. I do best with fast-paced stuff, I think. Then I thought even that wasn’t bite sized enough because I assumed all readers had gnat-sized attention spans like me. So I cut my average chapter down by 500ish words. It still worked with my style. My latest finished product was all of 50k, with 20ish chapters, and I think it turned out pretty good. But lately I’ve been thinking short isn’t always best, even in this post-vine internet age. Like, I feel like if people are taking the time to read my story, maybe they actually wouldn’t mind a little more story in each bite. It’ll be harder on my betas, sure. I find betas tend to get less excited when chapters get more than 2.5k and backlogs start to happen. But I’ve been trying to decide on a larger number anyway. Like maybe 3.5 to 4k. It’s still short by the standards of some writers on here, but I don’t think longer than that would work with my particular style. Or maybe it would. Obviously, I’m still not sure what to do.
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New phones always fall on the first day. It’s a universal law. It’s motherfriggin science. If you got a new phone and it didn’t drop the first day, then you’re a witch and you need to stop cheating because it’s not fair.
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@GeorgeGlass Butt cracks might be perfectly acceptable on @CloverReef’s phone, just saying….
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@Desiderius Price There’s no “might” about it. Wink wink. Especially since my artsy friends are such pervs.
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@CloverReef Wise cracks are more than fun here!
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