mastershakeme

I’m really digging this thread… I shared a clumsy example of me using the gun concept, such as it is, above. But as I think it over, I realize I’ve used it more than once in my recent writing, probaly more than twice lol. Another example, in my first act I had the main character use a bat to intimidate an intruder, at the end of the scene he puts the bat behind the front door… In act two, the character’s love interest uses the same bat, still behind the door, to off a different attacker that is in the main characters house… I like how you mention the Gun doesn’t have to be used every time as an actual murder weapon, or a plot point in general. Describing particular items can be another way to personalize a character… I’m being a little obvious using family pictures and such as my personalizing objects, but I guess I was on the right track. I’ll be molling this over for a while Cool topic @Tcr I’m curious, are you against the use of Chekov’s gun? I’m not trying to offend you! I just sense this air of annoyance in your post. LIke your sick of people using it as a ‘rule of forshadowing’ as you said….I agree that its commonly used as a means of efficiency… But I didn’t mention the bat in the beginning of my story because I knew I was going to use it again as a murder weapon, so… yeah. Idk… Optimal efficiency seems to be the key. Nobody likes being bombarded with useless facts and descriptions…

Nope, thank you, DP! Yay! This site is like a writing workshop! Every time I break away from writing to come check out my new buds on AFF, I get a burst of inspiration!

Lol! I made fun of Tcr but I'm guessing this is a typical format for quoted samples... My bad! You guys are all so serious :-P I think your example works well. I like the inclusion of the sounds, it's an interesting and unique way to quickly draw up the image of a trotting horse. And then you zoom in and pick out a few important details here and there. The stacks of coffins, the cobblestones, the boy in forest green climbing the fire escape... It's a wonderful image! I can see this very clearly!

You’re awfully smug today Fine… fine, I won’t use your examples. I’ll just sit back and admire your descriptive genius

yesssss, I like this tip. It instantly brings an image to mind. Dude, that’s what’s up! So…. You’ve never been able to get into stories that put too much detail into their descriptions? But you’re gulity of it in Come Hell or High Water!!! Shame @Tcr !!! I’m just kidding I was gratreful for your help in my story, cuz I wanted to gear up and explain EVERY LAST DETAIL of that landscaping office. I like that scene so much better now, although I was upset at the time, after the description was cut down. I didn’t need to explain every last business card to get the effect of ‘we do landscaping here, fuckers!!!’ I always thought my stories lacked description. So I’ve been trying not to forget it. As soon as my character enters a new setting, I make a big old paragraph of description… I feel so lame. I had my character enter somene’s house twice now, and he notices pictures on the wall. I was highlighting another character’s past, it was a childhood pic of her. and the other house, well, my character was about to meet his half brother for the first time and he saw YET AGAIN childhood pictures of him… My character was bitter because his half brother looked like a typical spoiled brat, crying at a birthday party, pouting with an ice cream cone, shit like that. But is describing pics in this way stupid??? idk. it’s relevant. The half brother is INDEED a brat. So I’m sure it’s ok… i guess. :-S

Your a trooper I bog my game down just trying to make it look shiny. I think its interesting and probably very smart on the part of the developers to accept modding at this point. I mean, look at Steam. If you go ahead and buy the game through them, you get a whole workshop of mods and a community to support them. I mean, those mods install automatically! That’s against everything I’ve ever learned! Mods are supposed to be hard to install lol. I’ll PM you about the publishing… I def saw all the press on Torque closing down, but didn’t actually know what that meant or the authors that had dealings with them. No, your not a warning! You are seasoned! I’m sure you feel differntly about it, but living is a challenge, it sounds like you’ve jumped over quite a few hurdles and your still in the race! Whoot! You go girl!

You guys are so knowledgable about this stuff. I was just joking with the lawyer comment, but anything that involes contracts and yes, disclaimers, my mind goes out the door… I was told your someone I could talk to about publishing and what that all entails @BronxWench……. On another note, that’s a pretty interesting tidbit about mods for games. I’ve done my fair share of gaming and yep. mods add to the game significantly, and some games are almost unplayable without them. I was just doing a sims 4 session the other day and got off because i wanted to update my sex mods lol. They’re SO FLIPPING amazing this point. My little simies are anatomically correct and they have some pretty explicit animations. It’s like watching a porn. But, when i went to update my mods, i saw some links to pateron. They’re making money off this! I’m not sure how its ok, but i then went ahead and got a subsciption to the mod site. i paid for it. Yea….

@Desiderius Price you and your legal stuff you sexy moonlight lawyer lol. But yea..... I'm sure people don't like stories saved, that's why they're just for me. I again and again butt my head against the wall because I try to write like a reader. I've been in both positions and I know more about being a reader to be honest. Just a few months ago, when I started planning rewrites and began posting outside AFF, I got recognized on another site and hurried to delete the AFF content before this chick blabbed my awesome idea. I'm DEF paranoid, but whatever :-P legality be damned but I own it!

Lol do you mean it breaks your heart when someone takes down a story? I've lost stories I've loved before. Of you are an HP Fandom guy then you know what I'm talking about. They used to (Idk how active they still are now) have communities who's sole purpose was to either store and distribute or help people find old fics, deleted ones and other shit of that nature. I guess this site has a place for that too..... So yea, Harry Potter was my biggest Fandom, so sorry for rambling about it all the time. It was all consuming now I do nothing but original fics Idk about the legality of it, but I've gotten into the habit of saving stories I like because I have gone back to a story and saw some page like "Author deleted fic!" and I went nuts lol. It's just for my personal viewing. Hopefully that's OK, lol I wonder if anyone has my old stories... That'd be pretty creepy

You're sound incredibly knowledgeable! Wow... I've always struggled with setting scenery, I guess I've gotten better but I really like the way you just explained the eraser. To keep your descriptions short, sweet and RELEVANT, the details you're going to focus will "speak thematically" about your setting. Lol, don't mind me! I'm taking notes! See, I'm straddling the fence between your point and @Anon's. I HATE outlining as well. When I started to get serious about writing I bought a book on outling and started plotting! I lost interest so fucking quick. I didn't want to go any further because I WAS BORED. I've found a somewhat happy medium. I have a general idea where I want my story to go, but how I get there? That's up to the characters. I toss ideas away quite a bit because once I'm actually in the scene, something else happens and I like like better, I'm not restricting myself, I just go with it. Idk thou. Ive got some complicated story ideas I'll probably start working on in the next year or so (I've got too much on my writing plate atm) and while I'll use some of our preferred pantsing, I'll try to use some of @Anon's advice about adding meaning with setting and description. I already *know* I want a Checkov's gun, I'll just keep that in mind and look for a good place to put it as I pants my way along!

I think it's probably best to do it unintentionally. Yep, you can always smooth it over in edits and make yourself look like a literary genius! Your too funny I bet people are surprised :-P we're both turning scenery into guns!!

Oooooh! Murder mystery! Now that’s a whole other topic in itself! lol, I’m basing my idea of the Chekov’s gun on Jk Rowling’s style, my fricken fave author ever (Nobody laugh at me!!!) but what i mean is like, she mentioned Hermione’s locket in the third book as something insignificant and it ended up being the way she was traveling through time! maybe JK has issues with Chekov’s gun too though, because it seemed like Harry and Co. should always use the time turner and they NEVER used it again… JK gets criticism same as I do, same as alllll of us chums on this place Weeeeee! It’s fun to find flaws in our writing. it’s ok! we can work on things we notice!

That’s the only way i’d delete them. i deleted a story, but that’s because i wanted to re-write it.

Agreed… I just posted a new chapter to my latest story and thought it was pretty exciting… I didn’t get anything off AFF, which I was expecting, but the other two sites I’m on I got a weird combo of super breif ‘Yay! New update!’ and ‘The next chapter will be hard to wait for’. Well, ok. I’m super sorry. Lol. Maybe a lil encouragement would help. i wasn’t shy about mentioning my writers block in the authors note… At least I know they’re coming back. I guess I have that going for me. You lucky dog! The best reviews I got were from betas, and that’s because they focused on the technical aspect of the writing. Besides getting short, although positive, resonses from commentors like @Anesor said, I’ve gotten my fair share of criticism. People don’t like this character, or my research on a particular place was SHITTY! Lol. But it’s all part of the writing game… We talk to other writers and get tips to improve, and hopefully we see some sort of reply from our readers. But expecting it, can sorta set you up for failure. I’m not going to do that. What comes, comes and I’ll be happy either way this is my story and I’m having fun playing with my characters! Whooo!

I guess I have used Chekov’s Gun… but it was unintentional. I placed an abandoned house at the end of my character’s street. Mostly just for aesthetic purposes. I wanted the ‘isolated’ feel. But I mentioned it more than once and took pains to describe it as well and finally my beta said ‘I feel like something really cool is going to happen there! Can’t wait to figure it out’ or something like that. And lol, i felt pretty stupid, because i HAD no plans for the abandoned building. So I made up a whole different plot line that involved the house. It was a shotty job, but maybe I’m just feeling self-conscious about it, because I know that whole area of the story is basically a band aid from my first accidental use of Chekov’s Gun. In retrospect, I’ll try to take more notice of that happening in my writing. Maybe it’ll be intentional next time

down the drain – cave in

Natural Disaster – Enon

Thanks TCR! Keep up the good work!!!!

I'm really glad you cleared that up for me... I usually tend to be a little gullible... Haha! Like I already mentioned, I'm also on gay authors and the fourms over there are crazy! I offended someone right off the bat because I didn't realize they had some sort of Master title and that they are ALSO a cop in real life or something... Yep. This dude is totally a COP so everyone on the fourms over there respects this guy and they all suck his d**k!!!! @sweetmamajamahad some issues there too... They're just really unfriendly to newcomers... I'm not getting the same feeling here thou. This fourm really shines, you guys have an amazing community of writers gathered here! Thanks for all the cool legal answers though. That was informative and I feel a little less scared. Your right, you kind of have to get used to the idea that some people will steal at all costs. Hell, I pirate things off the web from time to time.... Anyways, thanks. it's all good info to know.

I'm wondering if there's a way to turn that feature off on the AO3 site... I was thinking the same thing unfortunately. Honestly, I think there are other ways for an online author to profit, I guess as long as there's a way to get your stories removed if they are up for sale and you the author didn't agree, then it's there's a silver lining... Please tell me there's a way to get your stuff removed if that ever happens........

Hahaha! I let @sweetmamajama scare me off my more darker urges in my current story… I’m still recovering It’s cool to know I can go a little off the wall again once I’m done. I’m gonna do it! Rape for everyone!!!

That’s fricken scary… OMG! I don’t wanna be plagiarized!!! The community is friendly, but I don’t even know if they have a forum. I didn’t do research when I started cross posting. I just did it on a whim… This is all a learning experience. And sure, an easy download button makes it simpler for someone to rip you off, but I’m sure if someone is determined enough, they’ll find a way without it too…. But whew! I’m feeling the heeby Jeebies! Super paranoid!!!

I used to go there to find bad fics specifically! Why are they all so bad… Jk but the best and only story I was subscribed to there was eventually abandoned and I never found my way back….

Let's Groove – Earth, Wind & Fire

Awww, now I’m afraid my sex scenes were too tame for you Sadly, the worst reviews I ever got were because of the mental abuse I put my characters through in a past story. I think it kind of reflects my state of mind, I’m just more willing to put up with abuse in relationships. Like a character of mine systematically broke his ‘bf’ down, physically abused him and outted him to his family. Oh and then he had him raped as a punishment for straying lol and they ended up together in the end… Oops!