feuervogel | Wangst and weemo

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I don't even know what structure *means* in this context. Like, I learned the 5-part plot thing in, uh, middle school? (opening, action, climax, denouement; I'm clearly missing something there, since I have 4 words written down), but aside from that, what's structure in a narrative?

It's like, I don't know all these things I feel like I should know, or that would enable me to be more critical or proactive or something when I'm writing, rather than just putting words on paper in order (then going back and filling in where more words need to be.)

Feeling you 100% :( That pretty much describes me to a T.

But honestly, I do wonder how many of these things really apply to all writers. It seems like they come from all walks of life and levels of education.

I know there's no One Right Way to do writing, but god I feel like such a poseur.

Bollocks to this "poseur" business. There's no club. Booo. If there is a club we should ignore it, they are self-anointed and should be ignored and bypssed. You have something to say and the words to say it with? The end.

(And I hope I actually said what I meant there, but my point is I don't like it that you feel "fake" because of some arbitrary qualifications. :-( )

I should probably stop reading some authors' LJs because they depress me. I mean, I don't like *reading* books where the author wants to break your heart all the time, so why the hell would I write them? And everyone seems to LOVE these books where everybody dies and it's depressing and I just don't get it.

*skulks away quietly with in-prog books full of dead folks* ^___________^

I think that's ridiculous. I am an English major--hell, I'm an English major 'with a concentration in Creative Non-Fiction' and I'm trained in all that stuff and well-read in classics, folklore, and myths (not just the Western, Greco-Roman, Biblical stuff either), but honestly I feel like you have a much better chance of becoming an author than I.

I think about it and how many authors do I love who were actually English majors? None. Zip. Zero. How innovative are my fellow English majors? How innovative am I in a sea of other writers and English majors who wish they could be writers? Leads me to feel that people who write become authors and English majors become teachers and professors and perpetuate the cycle.

Rather than piddling away time learning How To Be Like Everyone Else In Your Department And the Mainstream of Respectable Fiction and Non-Fiction That No One Ever Reads, you learned actually useful things and lived a life and read stories which were enjoyable--which I think gives you Something to Write About. Everything else is practice, persistence, and luck.

Also, this:

I hope it cheers you, since that was the intention. I'm probably bitter myself and I hope that doesn't overpower an effort to cheer.

Avenue Q makes everything better.

You make good poetry. It's kinda depressing, but that means you can evoke emotions well. (I'm thinking about one you posted earlier this year about living in Guam.)

Bollocks. I'm not trained. And in all seriousness if you can get yourself one hell of a editor who understands your brain (poor thing in my case) and can recc you books about that sort of stuff -- you don't need to be. Yes it is harder work, yes you'll prob make the same stupid mistakes that I do. But the MOST important thing about writing is that you have a story to tell. The rest can be taught. That spark that makes something interesting can't. In my opinion of course.

My brain is a very strange place, and my weemo surely isn't helped by the part of my brain that wants to name things and put them in ordered little boxes. (I'm a sensing-thinking-judging type, and having read what that means on a couple MBTI sites, everything makes so much sense now.)

But how do you know if something is interesting? How do I make this idea into something people would want to read? *sigh*

Oh I am very much an INTJ or ENTJ (depending on when I take the test) so don't worry :)

Interesting for me is when the story is pulling you forward. For instance I don't really LIKE the character I'm writing from First Person POV at the moment but he fascinates me by being very much himself. The story started out simple but things kept on piling up and sub-plots developed of their own accord. Everything is tying together perfectly -- like it would not in real life -- and all leading to the denoument.

That is what I call an interesting story. It also helps that the feedback I receive is positive. I have two very trusted friends whom I've known since fandom-days who're more than willing to tell me "this is shite."

So, write what makes you want to write and have good people who'll call a spade a spade in summary. :)

I'm an ESTJ.

Maybe if I get further into this stupid thing (I have 2000 words. With a target of 90000... ;_; ) I'll feel better. I sure hope it gets/stays interesting...

If you're very "I want to know where I'm going" have you ever tried to outline. It does not work for me fully (in that I tend to completely re-write my outline after every chapter) but it gives me a sense of knowing where the end is....

Feel free to post in meta_writer if you want tips from people who are a lot saner than me :)

I'm trying an outline this time, since I've never used one before, and I've wound up getting mired in plots that make no sense and require rewriting heavily.

Of course, it's also possible that I'm bored of it, because I know where it's going and how it ends. I've already procrastinated over an hour with the file open on my desk.

LOL. I do that all the time.

Here is something quite evil: www.etherpad.com. Invite people to come and watch you write live. THEN you end up ramping up your output.

Your outline is very detailed - much more so than mine (can't post it online as for something VERY specific and don't want it availble). I tend to keep it to a line per chapter i.e. "Edgar goes to the brothel to talk to Archie and they fight because Archie wants to directly challenge Tarrant". From that I get about 1.6-2k.

I know what you mean about being bored. Hence I write the one line things. Hope that is of some help.!

That sounds terrifying 0_0

I don't think that outline exactly maps to chapters - it's like, this is what's going to happen with enough backstory for me to work it out without having to go back and fix gaping plot holes, only small ones. (And since then, I've decided I need to include a POV from the resistance on Centauri 7, but I'm stuck on them at the moment and moving on.)

I feel you with 2D artwork. Sure I've had some formal training and all, but proportions are still a little iffy, lighting? REALLY iffy. Composition? Passable. Speed? I'm a goddamn snail, I take 4 hours to make what some genius kid shats out in what, 20 minutes?

I found this site and just nearly died.
http://iradukai.com/making/550/fuzitop.html

This site has a bunch of how tos that make me feel like an incompetent tard.

OMG. People like that are the reason I gave up trying to learn to draw. (That and I couldn't make myself slog through the penciling and stuff, because I want it done NOW, why can't this be as easy as writing?? ¬_¬)

You don't need a degree or help from so-called experts to read. A lot of what an English degree does is simply to put names to a lot of things you already knew by osmosis.

I like knowing the names of things. I may or may not make use of this knowledge, but having it, and being able to say, "oh, this is X" can help.

I occupy a weird intersection between organic writing and ordered. I have no idea how to explain it, though. Like when I learn taiji, I can learn the postures and form, but if I want to improve, I have to know why I'm doing, for example, single whip or cloud hands. I need to know the application, the why.

I'm terrible with theoretical *everything.*

Shakespeare didn't major in English. Neither did Hemingway.

Neither, for that matter, did Asimov, Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp or J.K. Rowling.

Some things you don't need school to learn. Some things that teachers insist on are wrong anyway. Good writing isn't all about following the Rules.

What you're doing is reading the work of people who're actually working in the field, many of whom also got the classical education. That actually puts you one up on those who just had the education, and certainly one up on losers like those folks up top, who didn't do either. ;)

Edited 2009-09-14 16:09 (UTC)

This could explain why some current SF writers' work feels somewhat ... pretentious? smug? Let's see how many references to things Well-Educated and Well-Read people should know I can work in to this manuscript! Which always leaves me feeling like an uneducated plebeian.

I think there's something to be said for knowing the craft. But you can learn any craft without formal training, and sometimes formal training can actually get in the way. Likewise, the more trained you are, the more likely you are to take that training to heart, and particularly since genre writing is always considered "beneath" literary writers, if that's what you want to do, you're unlikely to get a lot of help from an English department.

College doesn't exist to somehow magically let you learn things you can't learn elsewhere - it exists to provide what is necessary to teach what you can't seem to grasp on your own, and to give you a piece of paper that says you're competent at what you know. That piece of paper doesn't matter when you're shopping manuscripts around, only the knowledge does.

Then again, you're talking to a guy who cut a straight month of math classes at JC, so grain of salt. I still got an A when I came back for test days, though, so make it a small grain.

Dude, I went to my second semester German class on average once a week. (I had to take 210 and 220, for some unholy reason.) There were 8 people in the class, and I think most of us had the same schedule. Poor teacher guy.

Ah, see, I went to most of my humanities classes, because the discussion usually mattered. Plus, Klaus was awesome and jumped me to third-year German based on my entrance testing. It was cute, he had to hand-write the option on the bottom of the form so he could check it off.

But, at any rate, you have the experience to understand - the classes are there for when you need someone to explain things, not for all your learning. ;)

I didn't have that option. It was Annoying. (I did get to skip freshman English both semesters, though I heard that was mashed into some required 5-credit thing after I graduated, or around that time.) I slept through class, or skipped, and got As. Bah.

I didn't skip many classes, actually. Even my 8 am p-chem class when I was hungover.

Freshman English turned into College Writing Seminar (Proper name: Shit they damn well should have taught you in Highschool), which was bundled with Information Access (Subtitled: Mouse Use and Word Processing 101), and Extended Orientation (AKA: Don't get drunk and have promiscuous unprotected sex while high, mkay?). 5 credits, divided into 3 courses, and you were allowed 1 absence total in each, or you failed the whole goddamn five credits. And even though I had a 4 on the English AP, and a 5 on the CompSci AP, and the common sense God gave a dog, I couldn't get out of CWS, IA, or EO respectively.

My Extended Orientation session was 8:00 on a Monday. And, again, miss it more than once? Fail the things I should have tested out of on top of the thing that was no use to me. Yeah, not fun. At least the class eventually started meeting over breakfast in Baker.

Aside from that... well, in the MA/CS Department I was apparently known as "the best student you never see." It was a weird moment during the parent visitation thing in my first semester, because the head of the department knew me, told my parents about how well I was doing, and I hadn't had a class with her yet.

To this day, that's how I describe the JC to people - "A college so small, there were professors who knew my name, and I didn't know theirs."

What sort of bullshit nonsense is THAT? I remember pretty much all of us going "WTF? That's a stupid bullshit thing. Extended orientation? WTFery!" Do they still have it?

There was a woman MA/CS head? Oh, was it the woman with the dog? *avoided math and CS*

Also, LOL. Reingold did his damnedest to know everyone in Chem Concepts - like half the freshman class - by the end of the first week.

I have no idea if EO is still around. JC was aiming for a lot Changes that didn't appeal to me as I graduated, so I haven't really kept up. Plus, there was a lot of Drama about my graduation (I ended up having to argue my way to a diploma, a year late, because of credit transfer problems - they decided to change the way credits would transfer the year I went abroad and not explain that was the one place to ignore The Marburg Manual - and missing half a credit for the "Cultural Analysis" requirement due to living in a different culture during an American election year).

Not that I'm still incredibly scathingly bitter, or anything.

That was the one. I avoided names A) because I figured you wouldn't know her and B) for anonymity. ;)

The nice thing about JC was that, in my departments at least (CS/MA/DE) the classes never went much over 20 or so people, so we were all well-known. I also started in Calc II (multivariable), and had the same experience you did with DE210 etc - "Oh, this is exactly like normal calculus, but you ignore one variable and do it again ignoring another variable. See you next week."

I felt kind of bad sometimes, because my Calc II professor taught in the same room I had my Computer Organization class, the hour after I had CO, which was also the hour before I had Calc II. So he knew I was very much cutting his class, a lot. Thank the various gods he had a sense of humor about it.

One day, he asked if I was showing up for class later, and I asked him tocall a coin flip. He lost, nodded ruefully, and said "See you Thursday, then, maybe." Coolest. Prof. Ever.

WUT. Shit, I was in Marburg in 96. I watched the election returns on the kitchen TV at 7 am before catching a bus up to the chemistry building. They were probably a lot less depressing than finding out that wanker from Texas won...

I felt bad because I fell asleep in Klaus' classes a lot. Including the one where it was just me and this other guy. I had really bad sleep habits in college.

2000, baby. I received a phone call at What-The-Fuck AM from a German friend to tell me that ZOMGWTFPONYBBQ AMERICA DOESN'T HAVE A PRESIDENT.

I woke up just enough to reassure him that, in fact, we had systems for this, and months to work it out, because instant tabulation was a pipe dream just a few decades ago, and to go to sleep. Little did I know at the time how much panic I should have felt. As it was, I had friends who hadn't lived in America since before the elections, and who voted Democrat, getting yelled at for Bush administration BS before we left in the Summer.

I never nodded off in Klaus' classes - but by the end, German Lit Since WWII, there were three of us, and it was embarrassing when we all admitted we weren't keeping up on the reading - there was no one to hide behind if you weren't ready for classes.

That's the scary part about small schools, and why I'm glad I went to one.

Huh, and here it never even occurred to me to consider myself inadequate or inept as a writer because I am not an English major. It boils down to your ability to tell a story.

The thing to bear in mind is, you're not writing literary fiction, bb, you're writing genre fiction.

Nobody is going to deconstruct your work and inspect it for literary devices until your work becomes very popular and is considered groundbreaking or classic for genre fiction. AND EVEN THEN I find people will pick up far more meaning from your work than you consciously put in. =p

Some modern genre writers are very enamored of Structure, Narrative Form, and Deconstruction of Tropes. People love them. They win Hugos. (Also, apparently, Purple Lyrical Prose is the big thing these days.)

I'll also never be considered a Good Writer because I don't like killing off my characters.

And is winning a Hugo your goal and why you want to write? Are you looking for literary acclaim? If you are then, yes, be concerned about these things. If you just want to publish your stories and have readers enjoy them then don't sweat it; just tell your stories as best you can. J.K. Rowling is proof technical skill and education are not requirements for writing a popular and money-making story. (Not that I am accusing you of writing as bad as J.K.Rowling, I would never do that! lol I'm just saying, if SHE can do it...)

(Purple lyrical prose will NEVER be a big thing in my taste for writing. If it has come back into vogue then comfort yourself with the knowledge it is a fad and will go away. [Much like acid wash denim.] =p)

As for killing off your characters, dude, who says?

I understand that all creative people navigate ups and downs with their work but don't let these sort of things get to you. Soldier on and keep writing. Rejection is part of the industry and you need to move past the stories that don't sell and keep going!

And, yes, next time I'm having a low moment and going on about how I'm unpublishable feel free to toss all this back at me. I'll likely need a reminder!

J.K. Rowling is proof technical skill and education are not requirements for writing a popular and money-making story.

Ahem. For further evidence, I refer you to Stephanie Meyer. If the metric is success, money, audience... yeah. Knowledge of and even skill at writing aren't requirements.

I was going to mention S.Meyer but I've never been brave enough to actually try reading one of her stories. XD Is her writing absolutely horrible?

What bothers me about popular but horribly-written stories is what the kids reading them learn about story-telling. Then again, history is fraught with horrible writers who tell popular tales. Staying power seems to be based on popularity and having your works physically survive long enough to become 'classic'.

I've never read them. I'm afraid the books would burn me. I've read in-depth reviews and analyses, though, and excerpts... summaries showing the characterization, etc. I know some people who have read it, but none of them are writers or English majors, and even they comment on the mediocre quality.

I particularly worry about popular-but-crappy genre fiction, because it just confirms what people want to believe - that all genre fiction is inherently inferior, because look at what the "break out" genre fiction is like! Likewise, every poorly written breakout inspires even crappier knockoffs of the crappy original. From what I've read, the Twilight novels actually bother me more for their commentary (and indoctrination) on people and relationships than their writing lessons.

Not to mention that S.M. publicly and profusely disavows having done her homework with regard to writing fantasy. Which, of course, she's not writing, really. Those vampires and werewolves are taken from fantasy, which is of course a ghetto of unpopular, badly written stuff for D&D nerds.

...because it just confirms what people want to believe - that all genre fiction is inherently inferior...
Ugh, yes. This attitude needs to go away and blockbuster crap isn't helping. XD

Not to mention that whenever a genre novel starts getting literary attention, it stops being considered "science fiction" or "fantasy" or what-have-you - now it's a bildungsroman that just happens to be set on a fictional world where there happens to be magic, or it's a "startling vision of the future" or what have you.

Oh, god, I forgot, until a news story tonight about the new book...

The ultimate argument. The final proof you don't need writing skill. You don't need research. You don't need realism. You don't have to write compelling dialogue or narrative. You don't even need interesting, realistic characters or consistency in characterization.

I give you...

Dan. Motherfucking. Brown.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Ahahah! Is that the guy who wrote The Da Vinci Code? (Which I have not, nor will I ever, read.)

Q.E.D., indeed!

It is, and, sad to say, I have read the book. So I can say with all reasonable assurance that he would fail any writing course in the world. Not to mention any history course.

And then this lovely link (http://ow.ly/pGV9) crossed my path. XD

Wow. Picking the 20 worst sentences of Dan Brown is like trying to find a needle in a needlestack.

So, now, take that, and multiply it by hundreds of pages over multiple novels. Because, trust me, The Da Vinci Code doesn't really have any better turns of phrase that I recall.

But the chapters are short, and the sentences are usually simple, and you get to thrill to the fact that you're way smarter than the Professor of Symbology and all his very educated friends. I mean, like, people who studied Leonardo da Vinci's life, but are thwarted by a clever "code" for several pages - said "code" being mirror-writing. You know, like Leonardo used all his life.

Ack! Horrid! That shit was *published*????

As someone's LJ icon says, Stephenie Meyer is my hero. If she can get published, I can too.

AND EVEN THEN I find people will pick up far more meaning from your work than you consciously put in. =p

My parents always used to talk about one English professor at their college who fetishized some author's work, had whole classes devoted to deconstructing the intricate symbolism and themes and the deeper meaning that went into it, etc, etc. Then, one day, he landed the author to come talk at the college, went to pick him up, and said author spend the whole ride to the college, and much of his talk, angrily deriding all the morons out there who kept trying to read all this deep meaning bullshit into his work.

Apparently, the class was not offered the following years.

AHhaha! YES! Exactly! My experience was with a poet and a teacher who kept arguing a particular meaning for this one line and when we asked the poet himself about it he looked at us and pretty much said, "I don't remember what I was thinking when I wrote that."

LOLOL -- I feel pretentious now. ^_______^

*chops and cuts and trims*

LOL!
Not at all! Like

smarriveurr has said, "...all the work from here on out is on the part of the audience." If you're in the audience, then poke away but don't look to the originator of the work for validation on your observations. XD

(To be honest, "trimming" is NEVER bad advice when directed at me. But that's another thing. ^_______^)

No, I gotcha. Poor Dead Author. :-D (LOL I remember a prof giving us an anecdote about "I grow old, I grow old, I will wear my trousers rolled" -- everyone was looking for a huge death metaphor or something when in fact Eliot stated that he was just stuck and needed a rhyme.)

Bingo. We talked specifically in my Hermeneutics class at the Philipps-Uni about how you can't divorce the reader from an interpretation of a piece, but it's all too easy to divorce the writer - his/her job is done, and all the work from here on out is on the part of the audience.

his/her job is done, and all the work from here on out is on the part of the audience
That is heartening to read! I always thought I was a bit odd for how callously I move onto another project when I finish something. I've always felt that once something is published the creator's job is done. Which is probably why I so STRONGLY resent people like George Lucas going back and revising a published work.

Any creative work is inevitably out of the hands of the creator eventually. The goal, as far as my Professor was concerned, was to try to achieve a "molten horizon", where you and the creator kind of meet.

I'm terrible about editing. It's one of the reasons I don't really write anymore, nothing ever feels done. But once something is published, it's out of your hands. You might cringe at it if you read it again, you might think you could tell that story so much better now, or handle that scene with more skill... but it's over. It's not uniquely yours, it's in the hands of the fans and the minds of the readers. You can say what you tried to achieve, what you wanted to say, but the message, ultimately, is in their heads.

Grabbing Lucas, classic example: Han shot first. No one cares how Lucas wanted that scene to go, much less how he wants it to go now. The audience considered it a defining facet of a complex character, and audiences thoroughly objected to mucking around with it.

Han shot first and I really show my geek colours when that phrase brings a swelling to my heart that one usually associates with national pride. XD

But yes, exactly.

I like deadlines because they FORCE me to push a story away and declare it finished. You could tinker ad infinitum otherwise.

It seemed pretty much the most iconic "You are actually detracting from your work by trying to 'improve' it" example to hand. ;)

I have a love-hate relationship with deadlines. I don't work well in an open-ended environment, but deadlines always give me agita. Part of me wants to try to set some rules and get back into writing. Part of me wonders if the results would be worth the stress.

Wasn't it Kurt Vonnegut who said that to find the best writers, look anywhere but the English department?

Heh. He also said literature shouldn't crawl up its own asshole. Smart man, he.

Wangst and weemo

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