✍️ Writing
A community for writers, like poems, fiction, non-fiction, short stories, long books, all those sorts of things, to discuss writing approaches and what's new in the writing world, and to help each other with writing.
Rules for now:
1. Try to be constructive and nice. When discussing approaches or giving feedback to excerpts, please try to be constructive and to maintain a positive vibe. For example, don't just vaguely say something is bad but try to list and explain downsides, and if you can, also find some upsides. However, this is not to say that you need to pretend you liked something or that you need to hide or embellish what you disliked.
2. Mention own work for purpose and not mainly for promo: Feel free to post asking for feedback on excerpts or worldbuilding advice, but please don't make posts purely for self promo like a released book. If you offer professional services like editing, this is not the community to openly advertise them either. (Mentioning your occupation on the side is okay.) Don't link your excerpts via your website when asking for advice, but e.g. Google Docs or similar is okay. Don't post entire manuscripts, focus on more manageable excerpts for people to give feedback on.
3. What happens in feedback or critique requests posts stays in these posts: Basically, if you encounter someone you gave feedback to on their work in their post, try not to quote and argue against them based on their concrete writing elsewhere in other discussions unless invited. (As an example, if they discuss why they generally enjoy outlining novels, don't quote their excerpts to them to try to prove why their outlining is bad for them as a singled out person.) This is so that people aren't afraid to post things for critique.
4. All writing approaches are valid. If someone prefers outlining over pantsing for example, it's okay to discuss up- and downsides but don't tell someone that their approach is somehow objectively worse. All approaches are on some level subjective anyway.
5. Solarpunk rules still apply. The general rules of solarpunk of course still apply.
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So for my goal, I said I would
I've done maybe 60% of that, but feel good about it, especially since it's my first time looking it up and trying to make a "proper" outline.
My current conflict (as a writer, not like in the plot), is that it's a story about colonialism and I've been thinking of my characters as indigenous coded, whereas I'm actually a white settler person. I've been reading through resources like this to help me through, but I worry that I don't have the experience (speaking of lived experience, as well as writing chops) to pull it off with the care it deserves.
My thinking at the moment (and I feel like this might change easily) is to keep the details scant, rather than wade right in and risk botching the job. But then I run the risk of just gesturing lazily at indigeneity as some amorphous monolith...
Those challenges aside, my goal for August is to finish the outline of my short story. Actually, now that I know more about what's involved in writing an outline, I'm even less certain than I was last month about finishing it, haha!
That's a super understandable challenge of writing beyond your lived identity. I would say to base the characters on a specific indigenous group. Heavily research that group, their customs, and their history. Look for first hand accounts. & If at all possible seek feedback on your characters and writing from the groups you are writing about as well.
Having the characters based on real peope helps prevent them from becomming stereotypes & can help give you the added ideas for how certain situations might be handled by different peoples.
Good luck on beefing up your outline :) I hope august is a productive month
Thank you, this is an excellent point (among several). I think your suggestion of diving into a specific peoples' lifeways is the right approach. It seems more obvious the more I think about it, yeah.