swirlingdoubt

Lame. Gotta go read these... (I said I was gonna submit, but business got in the way. Now I have to make it not-holiday themed, which actually might work better. It’ll happen, I swear)

Went a little Cronenberg, there.

It would be delicious if you left it wanting. So you know, “That’ll be the one with all the orgasms” aught to be spoken out of context while at a party full of strangers. And whee! New chapter. I’ll get to reading it when I have more time to savor it.

It was hard, and then soft, and then hard, and then HARD AND SOFT.

If you throw in a yule log I’ll flame it. It will warm everyone’s hearth.

There was a book I read once that was quite amazing – for 200 pages the author very well hid the fact that all the characters were animals and not people. Over the entire story, you are lead to believe it was some science fiction universe where culture was totally different and there were a few odd species running around – but you come to realize the unfamiliar species described were humans, and the main cast were animals like pigs and monkeys and bears. The strange culture was due to animals developing human-like communities far in the future. It was very clever. I had to go back and re-read passages to figure out how I was so tricked into assuming everyone was humanoid. I don’t remember the title of that book – I read it in high school. If anyone knows what I’m talking about... My point is, the beauty of the written word is that people rely on their imagination to interpret what you say. You can manipulate readers to see what you want them to see by giving them as much or as little to work with as your story requires. If you want to focus on the hideousness of the species, that is what you can do – if you want to focus on the emotional or psychological rapport between characters despite their appearances, then that is what you can do. An unstable environment shouldn’t be a handicap here. I think it is a very interesting question. How would a personal relationship develop over the turmoil of coping with a recent, traumatic history for the biology of the species? What does that say about our current phobias and expectations about what we are to each other? You could go a lot of directions with that idea.

I actually might be able to add to this! Woo! Holiday horror is tantalizing, but there is a cheery and fun one knockin round the nogged out noggin. The great thing is this story will require some field research for the location to add those little details that will put it over the top. Even with a paper-thin plot, it’s gotta have some moments of ridiculous humanity sprinkled in that I wouldn’t think up on my own. BTW I’m awfully drunk right now so I apologize if there are audacious spelling errors. Those scurrilous red squiggles are not to be trusted.

Thanks for pointing out Focuswriter! I’m downloading it. I burn my retinas writing in Word since I tend to write in compulsive, 8 hour long fits fueled by caffeine and mental imbalance. Music is also great fodder for setting a mood. That can really spark more creative illustration of events.

What the heck is a pantser? Desiderius Price and BronxWench, I never thought of using images to help with inspiration and description. That seems very effective. I will try that. Participating in RP helped a lot with character development as sort of a sandbox for the way a character might behave and act. Being able to bounce them off others can make them more fleshed out and creative since you can put them in situations that you wouldn’t have anticipated. I came up with a lot of characters RPing with friends when I was younger, although we stopped doing that after high school (a favorite was a Christmas horror theme where a sugar plum “fairy” terrorizes... – hm, might be a good one for a Christmas submittal here ). I’m glad I’m not the only one that suffers with too much planning. Thanks for detailing your processes. The only thing I write beforehand is dreams that can be used for plots. If I don’t write those down 10 minutes after I wake up, I forget them. Some of my best ideas, including a story I’m working on now, have actually been my subconscious talking. For some reason, my dreams tend towards comedy, puns, and satire that is far more clever than what I can come up with when awake...

Hey there, I’m curious how other writers develop their ideas into a full story. What is your process? When I was a teenager, I was daydreaming all the time and stories ran though my mind like films non-stop. I could only write via computer or typewriter because handwriting was too “slow”. One of my favorite instruments was a handheld word processor that I got from a library (does anyone remember those?). I didn’t have access to a computer unless I went to a public library, so often times a story would be stewing in my head for weeks and when I finally had a keyboard in front of me it would spill out in one go – then the editing process could begin with a wealth of material. When I have access to a computer to write whenever I wanted, I barely wrote at all. I realized a story must sit in my head for a long time before I can write it. I can’t write character sheets or outlines or summaries, otherwise the story dies. It seems like everyone is going to have a different method to get their ideas out. It’d be interesting to hear how your methods developed over time or how you discovered them!

Hm – I have to challenge this a little bit. It does create another barrier because in order to leave a review, a person without an account must sign up for one, log in, find the story again, and then leave a review. That is a lot to ask for someone that might not be in the habit of reviewing fiction. I’ve only had two reviews, and for one of them, I am sure the person created an account just to leave the review. They have no work on AFF, and created the account the day they left the review. That is impressive to me that they went to the trouble – of course, I have no way to thank them except via the review thread on the forum, but who knows if they would even know to look for that or see it. I would need to advertise within the text of the document, which I didn’t quite understand for posting a first story. We are all sort of working against the limitations of the website (no fault there, just maintaining this database on a shoe-string budget is impressive). Anyway, I realized most of the dragon prints are likely from people without accounts and no desire to sign up for one. I don’t judge them for that. More on topic: Lack of feedback means I’ll keep doing how I do. It doesn’t de-motivate me not to get it, but skilled, constructive feedback would likely improve my writing. However, I have no expectations that I should get such feedback unless I hire an editor or get a beta reader.

Your fics are a real bash! Don’t take a trip to Downsville on account of those high standards or that‘s bad news. You razz my berries, chicky-boom. I know it’s just the title, but I keep having Scissor Sister’s “Bicycling with the Devil” stuck in my head when I read that story. Which is a song no one should ever use as a reference. I wish more people would review on this site, then I would feel less obnoxious reviewing multiple chapters.

Hah, mine is about that old, too, but not on AFF. I haven’t been consistent with writing but I did produce some horrors in my adolescence, some still on ff.net (anything I didn’t post there is lost forever, as hard disks are no longer supported, anywhere). If I went to my very first posted fic on ff.net, I don’t think it would be possible to update it. There is nothing salvageable about it. It is 15 sentences of mindless violence and obscenity. Some teenage years were spent writing JtHM and Invader Zim fanfiction that is not so bad. Yet, the maturity level of my additions matched the maturity level of the source material, so I see little point in updating those.

I used the D/s and M/s tags in my fic, and wrestled a lot with whether or not to do so. I initially didn’t include them because I worried that it was false advertising or might piss someone off because these definitions are very distinct. I finally did settle on including both tags because the relationship between the characters was undefined but heading in that direction – there was no connection between them (practically) at the beginning of the fic, and at least one of them had no design to be in a D/s or M/s relationship but could move into that role over time with the influence of the other. Although it isn’t a proper D/s or M/s, my intention was to show the possible beginnings of one if the characters’ encounter was not so brief. I hope that came across. Although, from reading this article, perhaps I should have only tagged one (M/s). The consensual nature of a D/s or M/s relationship is emphatic to ward of misunderstandings – but, to me, it neglects a truth that boundaries can be messy and are often discovered through trial and error. I get the impression that some would object to a non-consensual D/s or M/s-like portrayal due to the touchiness of the subject in wider society. What should such a relationship be labeled, then? Or maybe I’m thinking too hard about it.