Wilde_Guess

Hi, BronxWench. The review was from 2018, and only covered Chapter 1.. The reviewer hasn’t posted anything since then. I’ve made minor edits to Chapter 1 and other chapters since then. Since the Archive opened back up last month, I’ve also done and uploaded major edits on the first eighteen chapters, and I’m working through the rest. So for all I know, I might have already fixed at least the worst of it without realizing it. Since the one review is the only review, and since the review was generally favorable, I’m reluctant to delete it. Yet, while I’ve worked on making the story on the page match the story in my mind, I’m not confident that I’ve actually done it. Thanks.

Hi, Desiderius Price. Ough, kay? Take a big chug of ‘F??kitol’ and write a full paragraph monograph or two it is, then. I’ve also been double-checking the speech tags, and changing them up as I’ve revised. Almost all the ‘under eighteen’ main characters speak at above their grade-level to well-above their grade level to at least some degree. The one exception is three years old, and is the younger sister to one of the later-introduced main characters. She’s mostly part of the background, but does speak when she shows up. Reading back to the notes in the review-response, I’ll also try to feed some additional facial expressions in where I can...

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Hi, GeorgeGlass and all. Is that supposed to be some Appalachian kink transferred back to the UK Aristocracy? “Make him Earl like a pig!” perhaps?

Hi all. I’m looking for some suggestions/examples on how to have a first-person narrator describe their own speaking voice without coming off as either a narcissist or being written by a bad author. Why? In the one review I received on Riding the Lincoln Way, the reviewer stated that they believed the first person narrator spoke “robotically,” and in monotone. That is the farthest thing from the way I “hear” that character speak, or for that matter any of the main characters. While all the “under eighteen” characters speak “better than their ages,” they also possess and express the full range of emotions. For example, in the first chapter, four characters actually speak. All four have a “Chicago-midwest” accent and speak English. The “under-eighteen” characters speak in a “natural” register appropriate for their given ages. Otherwise, they match with the examples below. Danny Dvorak (14)—Robert DeNiro in character in a Martin Scorsese film. In real life when not acting, Robert DeNiro does (supposedly) speak like a monotone robot, so no joy there. Danny is also just a little bit of a “wise-ass” and joker, despite his severe looking yet handsome face. He is naturally outgoing. He has a nasty temper. However, since he grew up in a house with two redheads, he’s gotten used to not losing his temper, and thinking things through. Michael Dvorak (13)—Joe Pesci, likewise in-character. While he doesn’t hold grudges, he can become obsessed with things. He’s naturally shy with strangers, but has had to “work” through that shyness more than often enough. Once any “shyness” is done away with, he can be so enthusiastic that he literally takes you along for the ride with him. His temper is near-legendary. It’s also near-unpredictable, since his face naturally portrays happiness, even when he’s actually sad or furious. John Dvorak (37)—Gregory Peck, especially in-character as Atticus Finch from the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Delilah Johnson (16)—Lauren Bacall. Thanks in advance.

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Hi, Thundercloud, and all. I read Chapter 1 of Carmen Elisa Needs to Die. It’s now the second of your stories to make my “recommended reading” and “currently reading” lists, for what that’s worth. Both it and your current story With The Mirror Came… will give me the occasional (and hopefully only the occasional) break from my own original current work, Riding the Lincoln Way. I’m currently working on Chapter 36. In the past week or so, I’ve also given at least light “clean-up” and revision to the first fifteen chapters. With no beta reader and only one one review, that wasn’t easy. As a side note, To Kill a Mockingbird was effectively two stories in one. Her other novel, Go Set a Watchman, was actually written first. When she submitted it, her publisher basically responded, “Great story, great characters, but I can’t print it. Do you have something ‘lighter’ and more “redeeming” with these characters? Maybe you could polish up and knit together the childhood flashbacks?” Thus, Lee wrote her Pulitzer Prize winning first novel. I’ve yet to read Go Set a Watchman, but I have every intention of doing so. I truly enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird when I read it for high school English, unlike some of the dreck that was also assigned. Watchman is the “other half” of Mockingbird, though both are complete novels. Most of the controversy surrounding the late publication of the earlier Watchman centered on the fact that Lee had only relented to publication at the end of her life, well beyond her ability to further refine Watchmen, and according to a few observers under pressure that Lee previously resisted while in her full vigor. Watchmen had also been relatively untouched since the late 1950s, when her editor at Lippincott steered her away from it towards the extracted flashbacks that became Mockingbird. While the literary reviews criticized the work more for the less flattering portrait of Atticus Finch at 72, the fact remains that in 2015, Lee was no longer able to edit and revise the work, which she had put aside untouched and desperately needing revision over fifty-five years previously. Had she polished and published in 1970 or so, I’m sure that Watchman would have also won the Pulitzer Prize. Cheers!

Hi, Deadman and all. No problem. We all started writing at some point or other. And, we’re all still learning to write, too; at least on our better days. Steven King is still learning to write, even having done his self-imposed “10,000 words creatively written about something” mental bench press every day since the 1970s. And I too have my faults. Beyond pulling the occasional Dreiser and writing 5,000 words when 1,000 will work nicely, I sometimes have trouble making my characters speak in their own voices rather than mine, or at least my relative lack of self-confidence has me worry about that. I’m also working on my mechanics, particularly mixing character dialog with action. There is nothing wrong with “killing” a story if you kill it artfully. Just remember to leave yourself an “out,” in case you discover that you’re a later day Arthur Conan Doyle, and you are obliged to start the f???er up again. A “good” author can write both prose and plays. However, like I described in previous posts, prose and plays have different requirements. You can’t write a play “outside of dialog” in anything other than present tense, and other prose only works in past tense. If you start out with prose, you will struggle at least for a moment writing plays of any kind, because the actions of any play are always present tense. Likewise, if you cut your creative writing teeth writing plays, you will struggle with straight prose, since you’re used to describing right f’ing now; and in straight prose, they always had enough time to write a book about what happened. So, present tense in straight prose is right out. Prose will always have a narrator, whether it’s the first person, second (rare as hell, but some masochists do write in it,) or third. Since prose lacks either the moving picture, actor’s visible actions, or the “sound effects people” to portray the non-speaking occurrences, there is always a narrator. Never be ashamed of writing in first person POV. It’s both easier and harder to write well than third person. But if you write first person well, you can truly create something great. Perhaps, you might even write something greater than yourself or the genre in which you write. A comic book and science fiction writer wrote a short story in 1959 entirely in first person perspective, in the then still barely respectable genre of science fiction. However, that author worked with Stan Lee, and proved to be at least his equal, in at least one story. Whether the original short story, or the later full novel, Daniel Keys’ Flowers for Algernon is some of the most powerful prose written in the English Language. Don’t watch the film. I’ve seen better films on a cream-of-mushroom soup, which is truly sad. Read the book! You will either thank or curse me later. However, if you have any capacity for empathy at all, you will have been moved. Cheers!

Hi, Desiderius Price and all. Exactly. I have three WIPs on this site; all of them are in first person POV. Two of them won’t change the “first person.” The third has done so sparingly; once with the “battle of quotation marks,” and the rest with a full in-plot explanation of why the other POVs momentarily come in, and also being offset by reverse-italics. That one, while voiced mostly in near-present first person POV is actually being written by the protagonist at a far greater time distance than implied by the voicing. The narrators of all three stories are “first person and reliable,” as are the two “change-to” POV characters. Lincoln Way, the story with the POV changes, has the “main narrator” as one of the protagonists of the story. At several points, he quotes from a younger brother’s unpublished memoirs, and at two or three points the POV voice change happens for narrative clarity, since any reactions given to this character’s tale happen after he finishes speaking. The other “original” is first person reliable peripheral, since while the narrator is important, he is not the titular character, and the narrator concentrates more on telling the titular character’s story, even while his own is intertwined with it. Your exercise would restrict any and all changes of the first person. However, if your POV is alternating frequently and continuously, you just might want to change to a different perspective. Deadman, having a first person narrator “flashback” in a third person voice wouldn’t work unless your first person narrator is not only unreliable but borderline insane or at the very least has enough ego for a dozen “normal” people, such as Douglas MacArthur. The reverse of that, however, could work easily. “In hopes of solving the mystery before their friends were killed; Shaggy and Fred picked up Velma’s diary from three years ago, and began to read. ‘I told Fred...’” “A first person to first person flashback” is no more and no less than the first person narrator telling you something immediately relevant that happened at some defined period prior to story-current time, much the same way that you or I in real life would tell a time-appropriate anecdote from our own pasts, or would in moments (of real time) remember the entirety of an incident from some time in the past that causes us to take a “current-time” action in hopes of repeating success or avoiding difficulties. If your first person narrator only changes at the beginnings of chapters, you can always follow the example of George RR Martin, whose third person imperfect narrator routinely changed between chapters. In Martin’s case, he had to change narrators, since his story covered too great an area, and since he also had “plot anti-armor,” and killed off lead characters whenever the mood struck him. “Chapter 24, The Van (Velma); Chapter 25, The Van (Fred); and Chapter 26, I’m Dry Coming and I Need to Feed Scooby (Shaggy)” can provide an alternative to putting a POV Flag in the text itself.

Hi, Deadman and all. Your POV change “works,” but poorly. You can change the “first person POV” in just about any way except for that without looking like a “total beginner.” Changing the first person POV in your first person POV, like inserting a “flashback,” should never use the actual words [or acronyms for you pedants] “POV” or “flashback.” ““I can’t believe she did that!” I thought to myself as Buffy put two fingers up my womanhood without warning while everyone in history class watched. “She later admitted to Oz, “I didn’t know what I was thinking Even while I was so angry with Faith then, I had run completely out of words to express my love for her. So I went straight to fingers. Her femininity was gushing even before my cuticles made it in...”” The above will work much better than flagging a POV change in the middle of a chapter using POV Flags, with just a little more polishing. Likewise, the one cue you don’t use when switching to a flashback is the word “flashback,” unless the protagonist is remembering a flashback they had some time previous to the “current time” of the main narrative. “Buffy thought back to six years ago. She was only twelve then, lost her anal virginity doggy-style to Oz’s ‘eleven,’ and felt like number ten...” or “Oz thought back to that time little more than six years ago, and his first orgasm-induced flashback he had while “making Buffy into a woman...”” both work much better in the flow of the narrative than “Flashback!! Buffy was bent over the doghouse...” Coming up with a great story idea is the first thing you need to do, and without that all the mechanics in the world are meaningless. So far, you’ve done that. Now, with the good story in your mind and at your fingertips is where the mechanics start to mean something. Thanks.

The review response thread for this story has been “up” since 2018. I added the link to it to the first post in this thread earlier today. I’ll also post it below. https://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/topic/66392-riding-the-lincoln-way-review-response-and-author-commentary/ I’m also working on Chapter 36. Thanks for reading.

For what my opinion is worth, each POV for a story has its place, its advantages, and its disadvantages. Third person perfect allows the author to tell the reader their entire tale, including any internal thoughts for any character the author believes relevant. However, this POV can make it more difficult for the reader to connect with the author’s intended protagonist. And, sometimes, having the reader know more about what’s going on in the story than any of the participants can make it more difficult for the reader to connect with any of the characters, or even the story as a whole. Third person imperfect POV forces the reader to connect to the story via the “lead” character, or at least the “focus” character where the “lead” changes, a la George RR Martin’s famous series. This also restricts the reader’s view to that of the lead character. Many people when writing about Harry Potter often mention or even complain about the “Harry Filter.” And Rowling did break from the Harry Filter to third-person perfect POV at a few key places through the seven books. First person POV portrays the story through the experiences of the lead character literally first-hand. This gives you both the lead character’s insights and myopias. In some cases, you can switch first-person POV from one character to another—however, this is not common, and needs to be explained within the confines of the story itself. And, just like third person imperfect, the reader’s view of your tale is restricted to the experiences and observations of the lead character. First person POV is quite literally being given ‘permission’ to read the diary or journal of the protagonist. You seldom read the diaries of say two siblings side by side for any length of time, and the likelihood of believeability tends to drop with each POV change. But, there are exceptions. If one of the secondary main characters tells an extended yet needful tale to the protagonist within the first-person POV story, you can just change the POV to simplify things. Or, if the reactions of others to the tale is needful, you can “fight the army of uncooperative quotation marks” in order to capture the reactions of others hearing that story. Mickey Spillane in his Mike Hammer series, and Rex Stout in his Nero Wolfe series both used first-person POV. And, both authors still have a loyal following even today, many decades after their demise. However, third person perfect and third person imperfect are more commonly found. Steven King has used both first person and third person imperfect. I’m pretty sure he’s also used third person perfect, but I can’t cite examples right this second, so I’ll say “probably.” When mentioning tense differences between a prose story and any form of a play, you need to remember that a [*]play is not just a story. That play is also the instruction set for the director, actors, and other technical personnel performing that play, whether on a theater stage for a live audience or on a soundstage for cameras [and studio audience if you work at Desilu or are being produced by Norman Lear.] Outside of dialog, those are always present tense, because the director needs the lights changed right f??king now, not when it’s convenient. In a prose story, however, it’s assumed that you quite literally had time to actually write a book about what happened, so the activity portrayed has definitely finished happening.

Hi, Desiderius Price. “Sweating it” would be excessive to describe my concern. And, “lowering the bar” too much would only serve to wear out my “delete” key. Just the same, giving the (potential) reader one less excuse to comment would be nice, if the genuine trash-typers and Cheap-Ass Rat B?????d hackers could be kept from causing excessive trouble.

Hello, Deadman, Desiderius Price, and all. How many stories do I have going at the same time? Hmmm… I don’t abandon anything. However I have a few stories under my other pen-name that haven’t seen attention in a long time. Under this pen-name, I have three WIPs. That’s just how it turned out. I work on each one when I’m “inspired” to write that particular story. Of course, the biggest down-side to having more than one story going at the same time is that you can get writer’s block or write yourself into a corner in multiple stories, for multiple the frustration! The benefit side of that coin is that if you get into a log-jam on one story, you can write another, and your working on “another” story might help you solve your log-jam on the first. Some authors will work multiple stories, others only one at a time. Likewise, some authors (including me) will start posting with few or no “reserve” chapters and post when they’re able and willing. Others will only ever start posting once the entire story is entirely written. Once again, that’s up to you. As for the tense of your writing; outside of character conversations and experimentation, you will typically write in past tense. You are, after all, recounting something that has already happened, even if the occurrence you’re describing has only happened in your imagination. Writing in present or future tense in the body of your story can be and has been done without coming off as certifiably insane, gaining undesired governmental attention, or being utterly unpleasant to read. However, this is not even remotely easy to do while still creating an enjoyable story for your reader. It also gets exponentially harder to pull off the longer your story gets. Even the critically acclaimed examples of present/future tense literature can be an almost painful drudge to read, even when the underlying story is good.

Fair enough, and thank you for the quick answer.

Hello, @manta2g and all. I have “anonymous reviews” turned on. So, my readers are told they need to create an account and log in to leave a review once. Others have anonymous reviews turned off. Their readers are admonished to create an account and log in to leave a review twice. Why? Thanks in advance.

41655 ...or browser windows that don’t “drag and drop” well with others.

Hi, all. They might be happier with “white dog” than with “white liquor;” although it’s actually clear. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_whiskey#Production_process] White dog is described in the first sentence of paragraph two.

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