โ๏ธ 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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My goal proved a touch ambitious for this month.
I said I would complete at least 10 morning-pages-like "writing sessions." I completed maybe half of that lol. But I'm still counting this month as a win because 1) I dunno I just feel pretty good, and 2) because I did some heads-down work on a short story. This one is brand new so has the advantage of not having been bouncing around in my head for years (poor unwritten stories, I really should treat them better).
I tried to start with a real outline this time, and actually, I kinda love it. Like always, there is the sensation of distaste at seeing your own ideas on the page (instead of in the perfect crystal prison of your mind), but it helped me get off to a decent start.
In the interests of continuing to practice publicly, here's what I've come up with so far. It's very rough, so please excuse the draftiness. Right now I'm trying to 1) figure out how to story will actually go from scene to scene, and 2) inject some personality, character, and overall detail, into the writing. Right now, I feel like it reads like I'm just hitting plot beats without much flavour (because I guess that's literally what I'm doing).
Link to early draft of untitled short story: here.
The skill of planning, if well honed, is invaluable in writing works that stand the test of time, I think. I reckon I use my plans like maps who's traces of roads I use to plan stops in my text. I try to make sure that the reader's view at each of these stops is worth the travel.
Reading that comment was well worth the travel for me. Yes, I like the way you put that. While I'm sure there's a place for seat-of-your-pants writing (aka "pantsing"), it's nice to know what the view, as you put it, is going to look like from different parts of the story.
I really like getting to see people's early drafts and how their writing process works. The little comments to yourself are fun & i enjoy getting to see that side of the process.
Also glad to hear you're enjoying using outlines. I tend to be an outline kind of person, though my outlines tend to be very broad then I kind chunk out the bulk of the writing when inspiration hits.
As always thanks for sharing and posting :)