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[Phantom of The Library]

Sounds like a good idea to me! 

Although, I do have to admit that I'm behind on my DF lore right now and I know nothing about Spearbreakers other than hearing the name here and there.

[Reudh]

Absolute behemoth of a community fort that began as sequel to Syrupleaf. Now in its tenth year. 400+ pages, a huge canon that accompanies it written by multiple authors, an alternate reality fic by Splint, an RTD, a brief idea floated for a radio play of it, and stuff like that.

Also Holistic Spawn.

[Phantom of The Library]

Wait, you mean as in spawn of Holistic Detective?  0_0

Also, holy cow that is massive, I don't think I'll ever have the time to catch up with it all...

[Urist McScoopbeard]

an eight day slumber, Scoopbeard? Wow.

Ya, sometimes I get cold feet...

anyways, after many days of procrastinating and cold feet-er-ing I decided to post that poem I said I'd post.



"No present existed.

I would escape for hours, for days.

This is how you forgot the cold.

The first time I read a book, I lived another life,
the reality which I had always taken for granted now became the most remote fantasy,
it was like forgetting the disappointmnet and the difficulty.

I dreamed of the future, dreaming of ideals and success.

I used these fragments to weave more dreams, better dreams, new realities.

I placed and re-placed details upon details and made a wonderful game." -Escape



No present structure exists in the poem I guess, hell im not good at poetry, but it recounts my younger days as an avid reader of fantasy.

As for writing a story and breathing life into my creation, I find more and more that I have trouble finding the right words. I'm just so... dry, if you tried to read an essay of mine and weren't getting payed I would think you'd rather have your teeth pulled.

EDIT: this poem has somewhat evolved from its original form which is basically quotes from Gerda Weissmann (Holocaust survivor) interspersed with quotes from me, I have in the process paraphrased and replaced words.

[CrucialCore]

Umbra
It's a short story. The focus is mainly the setting. But I feel it is far too wordy. Especially because so little is going on.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So it’s dark, which is good considering where I am, and I’m standing in the middle of an alleyway with a map hoping I’m not specifically where I think I am but just in the general direction. Surrounded by concrete buildings with the sound of cars in the distance it was sort of easy to lose your way. Skipping out on magic class. Again. See, a friend of mine and I decided to not go to our Magic: Atoms class, which is odd because you’d think that manipulating the foundation of matter would be pretty damn interesting, and instead took an exploration mission out in Umbra, the big city with its never ending night. I didn’t know what I was looking for and with the place stewing in a civil war I had even less of an idea.

   Though a well-made, not corrosive sandwich would be a good start.

   The mission was taking some time to be completed, but that was more a problem with the location.
You see, the city had its name changed to Umbra when, around 10 years ago, some idiot wizards threw up a rift to the Shadow Planes or Shadow Realms or Shade (whichever one is more politically correct) around the city, plunging the poor thing into nearly impenetrable darkness. Normal light still worked, and Umbra tried to compensate, but things weren’t really the same.

Pretty soon word went around that this was a pretty nifty place to be if you were a criminal or a denizen of the shadow plane studying Terran architecture. In no time at all criminals and Shadow Creatures (Shadowers? Umbrans? What’s the word for them again?) started to hang out here and law enforcement started to crack down for real. No side really liked each other. The Umbrans (I guess) wanted to be left alone, the lawmakers wanted everybody to stop, and the criminals did their thing and broke the law.

Outsiders had a different perspective on this place. The rift turned out to be a hotbed of Scientific and Arcane study. The rift cause changes to inorganic material in the area that were there before, if that makes sense. Something along the lines of “That which was made before was part of the land and grew, while that was built after was unaffected.”. However, this didn’t mean things on Terre turned into something you could find in the Shade, but they instead became something new. So there are a lot of expeditions to salvage things that have changed in there for study.
So that’s basically our lot. Three Factions battle for dominance and a fourth one steals all the beers. Though from what I’ve heard there have been talks of diplomacy between the Umbrans and Law Enforcement, a real breakthrough I’m told.

Whatever.

I for one, had split up with Keith. We had done our mission and he had went off to do… Whatever he wanted to do in the big city (probably clubbing) and I went down an alley to beat up criminals and finally live my Film Noire dreams without being arrested. Unfortunately, if this map was right, I had long since wandered off of the path of the safe areas that criminals sometime infiltrate and had stumbled smack dab into a danger zone. Great.

If I met law enforcement this would be no problem, if I met an Umbran, I was in for it.
Umbrans don’t ask questions and won’t think twice of killing you (being of different species and all that). In a place like Umbra though, these guys positively thrived.
And of course, because my luck is so bad, suddenly a medium sized pillar of a leg materializes in front of me. Twenty feet up the unmistakable glowing white eyes of a mauler survey me.
Maulers are shadowy, humanoid, tall, patient, and very deadly. That’s all you need to know.
That sandwich of mine is gonna have some cheese soon.

And by that I mean I’m gonna cheese it. Fast.

[Cthulhu]

I decided to hold off on that other story, it's a little too ambitious for me right now.

I'm thinking about writing a short screenplay as a joke and an exercise in dialog, characterization, etc:

The Christmas Dinner - An extended family meets on Christmas Eve for a dinner.  Nothing happens, it's basically an unwatchably sappy soap opera with no serious conflicts, where everyone wins.  They exchange presents, characters who don't like each other for various reasons put aside their differences, etc.

And that's when the wendigo comes.

[Leatra]

I got a question. How do you write? Do you write randomly and set it straight later? Or do you try to write everything right at your first try? Do you try to implement the ideas that you think of while writing or do you have a strict idea set before writing? Do you try to explain everything the 'narrator' sees or just give the reader what is required?

I carefully write what I intend to write first. When I finish a chapter (or the whole story if it's shorter than 5 pages) I read it quickly and see if it's engaging (which is very important for the first chapter) and interesting. I try to put myself into the reader's shoes and treat the story as just a simple reader. If it's too boring, wordy, and if there is too many boring "imagery" stuff in the story, I cut them down. Sometimes I don't even tell how a character looks like but have his appearance, and sometimes backstory, told during the story. Like, a character sees an old buddy while walking on the street and I throw in some kind of a flashback sequence where the character remembers something specific about her buddy. After they meet, her friend makes a remark about the appearance of the character, like "Hey, I have never noticed that you were this short without your heels." or something like that. Dumb examples but you get the idea.

I also tend to have a lot of ideas while writing and I try to implement them, which sometimes creates problems.

[fqllve]

It depends. I probably do extensive planning for most of my stories, but I've also written quite a few, of significant length even, where I outlined not one iota. Both approaches can be fun. Outlining lets you develop this intricate world and plot where everything fits together just perfectly, but not planning allows you to just enjoy the ride, almost in the way a reader would. I do think it is important to always be injecting new ideas into a story, though, at least for me. Otherwise I have a tendency to get bored with what I'm writing. I try to surprise myself.

However, I do my absolute best not to reread, other than what's necessary to get myself back in the mindset or to refresh myself on the details, until I'm editing. And even then I try to do that as long after the actual writing as possible. It's just hard for me to judge the quality of what I've written until I've gotten some distance, which usually takes about a month or two. I can usually find problems with the details otherwise, but the big picture will elude me.

[schrocko88]

My stories never get far enough to need a plan. I just write until I get distracted by something else and usually never come back to it. Bad characteristic, I suppose. 
-_-

[Leatra]

However, I do my absolute best not to reread, other than what's necessary to get myself back in the mindset or to refresh myself on the details, until I'm editing. And even then I try to do that as long after the actual writing as possible. It's just hard for me to judge the quality of what I've written until I've gotten some distance, which usually takes about a month or two. I can usually find problems with the details otherwise, but the big picture will elude me.

I see what you mean. It's difficult to read your own work while you are completely aware of everything and it's also difficult to find someone willing to read thousands of words and give constructive criticism. Maybe I should just keep writing and reread when it's done. I'm going for a long story (it's around 7,000 words right now) so I get too afraid since if I make a mistake, it may create a chain of mistakes.

I also do extensive planning for my story, like you mentioned, but even after writing pages and pages of backstories, possible plot twists, information about the setting and whatnot (which will not be revealed to the readers, of course), I tend to change my mind or think of even better ideas while writing. I also use this to find ideas. While daydreaming, I imagine myself writing the story. While I'm playing the story from my head, I find a lot of new ideas.

@schrocko88, you just need to find an interesting plot and some free time. Sometimes I leave a story abandoned for a month and suddenly write like 1,500 words in a day when I feel like it because I just fall in love with my plot. I can't stop myself from daydreaming about it and writing the ideas I found while I'm in the class. Sometimes I think of like 3 possibilities for the fate of a character and think about what should I choose for a few days, rather than just choosing one and writing it. I had a lot of projects which I abandoned later. It's really rare for me to like a long-term project and keep doing it. If you don't like what you are doing, you just can't bring yourself to continue doing it.

[fqllve]

I see what you mean. It's difficult to read your own work while you are completely aware of everything and it's also difficult to find someone willing to read thousands of words and give constructive criticism. Maybe I should just keep writing and reread when it's done. I'm going for a long story (it's around 7,000 words right now) so I get too afraid since if I make a mistake, it may create a chain of mistakes.

Well, go back and read if you're in doubt, but keep in mind most of the mistakes you're going to make are gonna be really minor, the kind of stuff that will be easily picked up by editing. I mean, I can't say I've never forgotten a major plot point before, but that was only after letting the story sit for weeks and even then it was pretty readily salvageable. Just keep your notes close at hand, and read a bit of what you wrote the day before every time you sit down, and really keeping rack of things isn't too big of a problem.

My stories never get far enough to need a plan. I just write until I get distracted by something else and usually never come back to it. Bad characteristic, I suppose.  -_-

I have the same problem. My solution is to write furiously so that I finish quickly but not so much that I get tired of writing, and to constantly find ways to keep the story exciting for me, usually in the form of "twists" in the loosest sense of that word. I also try to cut anything out that I'm dreading writing, whether it be because it's boring or too difficult.

But do keep in mind, and this is something I've been struggling with lately, not every story is worth finishing.

[Doomblade187]

I was wanting to give myself a bit of help staying on the writing hump for my NaNoWriMo novel, so I went ahead and made a google doc spreadsheet that you can use to track your writing over a period between 1 and 100 days. This is the first rough draft, so issues are expected. Check the second page for the chart.

Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuVIx_dGFiP0dFFxVW9XVm1NWklzQklzcENOajI5QXc

Feedback is welcome!

[Mr.Zero]

Hello guys.

I was wondering if i could receive some tips or guides regarding more varied writing. Because often i feel when i write something that i use the same words too much which make the story a bit dull.

[fqllve]

I think that's something that everyone struggles with. For my part, I try to constantly be reading things that are going to expand my vocabulary, or at the very least, will have very different vocabularies from eachother. I find that the words I use most in stories tend to be words used strikingly, or commonly, in whatever it is I'm reading at the moment. The same is true of other things, actually, like plot devices and character tropes, so I think a varied reading diet is important to varied writing in general.

I also try to adapt more technical, obscure, or archaic terms to metaphorical usages that still sound good or are understandable, and to make sure that I'm not just tempted to use exotic adjectives, but nouns and verbs as well. Still I find that there's a core set of words I tend to use regularly, but knowing what those words are is half way to avoiding using them.

Really though, unless you're ok with having a large vocabulary in the text (which can seriously deter readers) there's not much you can do, because there are only a few thousand words you can use that most people are going to follow and that doesn't leave room for a whole plethora of synonyms.

[GiglameshDespair]

Don't just go through a thesaurus though. You can often tell when people do that, and it looks terrible. Make sure any metaphors or similies are appropiate - if you're writing a medieval fantasy don't write that someone hits like a train, for example.