CloverReef

Okay, I need to talk about this because it made me angry. As things usually do when they start calling writers who do a certain thing ‘lazy’. 
http://inventingrealityeditingservice.typepad.com/inventing_reality_editing/2014/09/cut-plot-cliché-of-histrionic-exit.html
I somewhat agree with avoiding cliche plot things, but the histrionics? We’re advising writers to cut bold actions now just because they’re dramatic? People do dramatic things. Some people slam doors when they’re angry. The little gestures like the balling of fists is good advice, but telling the writer not to have characters slam doors just seems totally counter intuitive to me. And Ending a scene on that note, when appropriate, and when it fits the characters and the circumstances, doesn’t seem lazy to me. 
Can I get an “Amen”? Or a “fuck you clovey”? No, really, someone tell me I’m not crazy, please. 
Edit: plus WTF? Since when are we telling writers to delete relevant physical actions? 
Edit 2: This kinda turned into a rant, but it’s meant to be a discussion lol. I’m stressed. Let me be pissy. 

I now follow the author dedicated to fighting her on Twitter, so I can follow the insanity without adding to her follower count. So I can be amused/baffled/angry daily. 

I now follow the author dedicated to fighting her on Twitter, so I can follow the insanity without adding to her follower count. So I can be amused/baffled/angry daily. 

I made the mistake of checking out our cocky friend, and I urge you all not to do it. Seriously. Talk about ego?

Wow. I just woke up so wut r werds, but wow. Very first thing that came to mind was “fuck you, now I’m gonna write a romance with cocky in the title” too. There’s like a million books titled “Alone” and somehow the suspense reading community doesn’t implode. I remember looking for a series called Raised by Wolves, and finding a million other books, but I was able to purchase the right one by looking at the authors name. If your title is distinct, sure, but then trademark the whole thing. You shouldn’t be able to trademark a single word that exists in the dictionary. It’s just greedy and mean. And I kinda wanna debate point 4. 

Wow. I just woke up so wut r werds, but wow. Very first thing that came to mind was “fuck you, now I’m gonna write a romance with cocky in the title” too. There’s like a million books titled “Alone” and somehow the suspense reading community doesn’t implode. I remember looking for a series called Raised by Wolves, and finding a million other books, but I was able to purchase the right one by looking at the authors name. If your title is distinct, sure, but then trademark the whole thing. You shouldn’t be able to trademark a single word that exists in the dictionary. It’s just greedy and mean. And I kinda wanna debate point 4. 

Wow. I just woke up so wut r werds, but wow. Very first thing that came to mind was “fuck you, now I’m gonna write a romance with cocky in the title” too. There’s like a million books titled “Alone” and somehow the suspense reading community doesn’t implode. I remember looking for a series called Raised by Wolves, and finding a million other books, but I was able to purchase the right one by looking at the authors name. If your title is distinct, sure, but then trademark the whole thing. You shouldn’t be able to trademark a single word that exists in the dictionary. It’s just greedy and mean. And I kinda wanna debate point 4. 

For me, the structure of having a fandom to play in gave me the courage to try to write the worlds in my head. I made my mistakes playing in someone else’s universe, which is not to say I’m not making mistakes in my own little worlds, but it feels rather nice to have them out there, warts and all.

I’m inclined to say let’s try it, and see how it goes. Just label them clearly so we don’t get a dozen plagiarism reports about you stealing from yourself. 

I think one of the most overlooked benefits of writing fan fiction is how often it leads to incredible original fiction. 

Oh absolutely, I wrote like 5 books of a series that was originally a fanfiction. It basically stopped being one about a few chapters in because there were SOOOO many OCs and new plotlines. And honestly? I was cool with that. It was all very organic; it felt like a graduation. I went back later and changed whatever fandom vestiges remained to make it truly original. An original series that I could potentially sell one day? Hell to the YES! 

For me it wasn’t one story, it was more gradual. Like eventually my fan fics started getting more and more distant from the canon and I couldn’t quite bend the characters the way I wanted to without making them completely out of character. I think I kept trying to steer things back into the fandom (It was a while ago, so my memory of it isn’t all that clear). And I tried jumping from fandom to fandom, because though working within someone else’s universe is somewhat limiting, I found it very comforting. It comes with its own fanbase already installed that you don’t necessarily get with originals. It comes with people who know and understand the characters, and those limits it imposes make planning just a little easier (That’s my experience, I can’t speak for others.) 
But I did eventually give in and start chasing those plotbunnies down the proverbial rabbit hole. For me it was scary, but it was the right move. I’ve never looked back. 
Honestly I think you should follow your inspiration wherever it needs to take you. If you’re pumped for this, and it sounds like you are because wtf, 30 page timeline?! Bring that world to life! 

For me it wasn’t one story, it was more gradual. Like eventually my fan fics started getting more and more distant from the canon and I couldn’t quite bend the characters the way I wanted to without making them completely out of character. I think I kept trying to steer things back into the fandom (It was a while ago, so my memory of it isn’t all that clear). And I tried jumping from fandom to fandom, because though working within someone else’s universe is somewhat limiting, I found it very comforting. It comes with its own fanbase already installed that you don’t necessarily get with originals. It comes with people who know and understand the characters, and those limits it imposes make planning just a little easier (That’s my experience, I can’t speak for others.) 
But I did eventually give in and start chasing those plotbunnies down the proverbial rabbit hole. For me it was scary, but it was the right move. I’ve never looked back. 
Honestly I think you should follow your inspiration wherever it needs to take you. If you’re pumped for this, and it sounds like you are because wtf, 30 page timeline?! Bring that world to life! 

Sometimes, something about a character’s appearance is relevant, and so I mention it. Maybe his eyes are a shade not customary where he’s living, or maybe he has a unique scar. But on the whole, I describe the minimum about a character’s appearance. As a reader, I don’t want an overload of details. I might not growl about it in a review, but I do prefer being able to put my own mental spin on a character. 

@KassX You’re absolutely right. I’ve never heard someone ask for less, but I have wanted less too, and personally asked for less as a beta. You can definitely have too much, even in smut.  I wonder if readers are just more forgiving of excess, or if they’re sooooo unforgiving of it that they won’t even dignify it with a comment, lol. 
@Desiderius Price That is absolutely my favourite amount of description. Just a sentence or two of relevant or distinct detail. If it were pages and pages, they’d definitely lose me. When I read, I just want to know what I need to know to visualize the scene without interrupting it with huge dumps. 
 

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  As a writer, I tend to prefer leaning on the reader’s imagination, I mean, they should have an imagination, right?  Esp as that imagination can fill in the detail much more than my words can.  So, my typical description of a character… a sentence of two, because, well, when I’m a reader, I find that  pages and pages of description to be a pet peeve of mine.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I personally like a little bit of description to help me visualize, and in smut, visuals are kinda a priority, so you keep doing you. I tend to throw in little relevant details about character appearances throughout the story. I’d actually prefer to give more description of my main character, I just can never find the right moment. It was so much easier when my main character was a narcissist. Sigh. But yeah, I get readers asking for more description every now and then. Have you ever had a reader ask for less?

Pet PEEEEVES, omg you guys do not want to get me to start bitching because I will literally never stop, lol. I agree with so, so many of these. But here’s one that doesn’t happen too often but when it does, it pisses me off SO MUCH: writers who tell you not to describe your character’s physical appearance because it ‘ruins the reader’s mental image’. Fuck your image, my dude  
I mean look, I’m not the kind of girl to go off on three-page character descriptions from hair and eye color all the way to the single, curly hair on their left big toe, but firstly, I’ve had readers say they wish they had more physical description to picture the story better in their head and secondly, I tend to write stories set in metropolitan cities with lots of ethnic diversity. That diversity happens to be important to the story and to me! Now unless I give every POC character a ridiculous caricature of an ethnic name, that  is just not going to get across without a physical description so PLEASE LET ME HELP YOU

Well that’s unfortunate, unrealistic and highly improbable are my forte.  The rules of writing are more like stable observations, everything is ultimately circumstantial.  I guess my biggest personal peeve is lack of detail.  A lot of internet fiction I’ve read take place in a vacuum, with the setting only vaguely described and characters who lack motivations or identities.  Fan fiction tends to be especially guilty of this because novice or lazy authors may just assume we know the characters and setting.  Failing to fill in the blanks makes immersing the reader into the story difficult.  This makes the story inaccessible to newer readers, doesn’t convey what the author has in mind, and ultimately doesn’t build upon the established lore.  Which I think is the whole point of fan fiction, never mind original works that need to be engrossing right out of the gate.  Other than that, basic literacy errors that should have been corrected in grade school will turn me away.  Such as spelling mistaiks, poorer grammar, missplaced!punctuation, verbing, run on sentances that go on and on and on, and sentences that end before they.

Agree with all of you: When it comes to fiction writing, there can be no hard and fast rules. Yes, 98% of your sentences should have both a subject and a verb, but there’s that other 2% that are so much better if they have only one or the other, or neither. (“My name is Bond. James Bond.”) 
That said, rule-breaking only results in good writing when it’s done for a purpose, and not just because the writer doesn’t know the rules in the first place.

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. 

I totally fucking love you.

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. 

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::

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!