✍️ 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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I think sometimes! Though I've never really been able to pull it off. I like when I can get the plot to flow naturally from the setting - I usually start with whatever issue or technology hook I'm interested in, and build the setting around how that tech or cultural change would warp the society. If I'm lucky, the plot flows naturally from that, sometimes around a pivotal moment in that setting or one that just concentrates or showcases the themes I'm playing with. Other times I end up with a cool setting, characters, even an idea of what they're doing, but it'll feel like it's missing that hook that'll catch the reader and give them a reason to read it.
I've been making these photobashes because a picture doesn't need a plot to tell a bit of a story, and I can do some worldbuilding in the attached text post. The upside is that I've been thinking about this setting so much that I'm starting to get some ideas about how people really live here, which is where the interesting conflicts and potential plots rise from, plus a bunch of ideas for the society that'll work better in text than in pictures. So I'm hoping to make another attempt at solarpunk soon.
I really like writing that treats tech, and the laws of physics, somewhat respectfully. (On that note, have you read K.J.Parker? He writes tech so well I was obsessed with his books for that even though they are quite depressing).
Nothing is more boring than a story where every natural obstacle to progress is just magically explained away with [random high tech from the future] or, well, magic. So can the plot arise from characters simply being let loose in the settings and having available x technology? Because I would rank characters before plot as well in pleasure of writing. If I don't believe the characters are real I don't care what happens to them.
What happens in me for plot - hmm I think I have asked for inspiration at some point. Like in, witchcraftily put an ad out there like 'Some friendly spirit please come and help me put stuff in words' - and have sort of (imperfectly) followed the instructions from there, and often get told parts of the story in my head. Problem is sit down and write them down, sometimes. Part of the instructions always involves going out there and do the stuff I write about. I'm afraid that will involve meeting people at some point, because, characters?
Anyways after writing nothing but shit for work or uni since 2006 all I have so far is notes, and a skeleton of a story that still keeps shifting around somewhat, and some tiny bits of actual story meat are attached to some of the bones. But hey I'm enjoying myself.
The photobashes are are cool thing to create an imaginary place one can actually move in!
I haven't read K.J.Parker but I'll take a look! I read a lot of schlock military scifi and a lot of cyberpunk, so in my reading I'm often all over the place on the tech-realism scale. I work with computers IRL so I tend to be kind of obsessive about getting it right when I write. I do a lot of research and try to run any ideas past people who know more where possible, which is often a limiting factor on what I write, but I think for good reasons.
Character writing is a bit of a weakness of mine, unless the idea at the core of the thing starts with them. But it's usually a setting idea. Without good characters driving a good plot, its easy to end up with a "here's an idea, the end" kind of stories, which I've definitely been rejected from magazines for submitting before. I think that can work on flash fiction, though I haven't written as much of that. I've got the luxury of writing for fun, so I can get away with just writing stories that I want to exist, and then trying to find a home for them. I'm waiting to hear back from a magazine for a rural-cyberpunk-with-environmental-rage thing and I've got a couple backburndered stories I'll probably pick back up when I finally burn out on the photobashes.
I definitely find myself wanting to try out some of the stuff I've been researching for the art. I'd like to build a parabolic solar cooker, and I've been making plans for a fresnel lens solar forge, which would be cool to build next summer. And now that I'm researching agroforestry, I'm looking at what crops I could be planting in nearby woods.
Best of luck with your writing! There's wonderful opportunities there to demonstrate solarpunk concepts, technologies, ways of life, in hands-on kind of ways that'll help regular people picture it for the first time.