✍️ Writing

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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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grrgyle

Writing Club - July 2024 (self.writing)

submitted 4 months ago by grrgyle to c/writing

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Welcome to the inaugural writing club update! This is a brand new writing club, first proposed here. I have some ideas about what I want from this club, but where we go from here is open ended.

So feel free to start new posts or spinoffs in between my monthly posts, as long as they jive with the rules in our gracious host community's sidebar, you have my full support. :)

On to the whole point of this club! The following brave things set to text concrete goals for themselves (linked beside their names, just below). If you'd like to join their number, simply say so in the comments, along with your goal for this month. Okay, here are the stars of our show: 👏👏👏👏

Participants

You don't have to share any of the actual material you've worked on unless you want to (you could even use our local Etherpad to share writing stuff - for example).

Here are some questions to start you off. I'm genuinely interested in your answers, but don't feel you need to follow my script. This is just a prompt:

How do you think you did on your goal(s)?
What would you like to accomplish for our next check-in in August?
Is there a part of your project that you'd especially like feedback on?
Is there anything about this writing club you'd like us to do differently?

No stress if you didn't accomplish everything you set out to (I fell short and I'm still here hehe). I would love to hear your updates no matter how things went!

I'll share my own progress in a comment below. What I'm hoping from this step is that we treat this as part check-in, and part conversation. This is your chance to really dig into each others' projects (and if someone has done so for you, maybe it would be nice to return the favour and take an interest in their own project? ;))

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[–] grrgyle 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

For my part, I set out to draw a fairly detailed map of the part of the fictional world that my story takes place. Here's what I came up with:

A map of two mountain ranges with orange at their tops, paths going into them from the left, and out at the right, leading to an outpost, and further still some buildings labelled "Bunks." (Please DM me if you would like more detail)

I'm pretty happy with it, but it still feels like just an outline/draft/unfinished. But maybe it's enough for now. Does this image make sense to anyone else? I imagine it's pretty vague if your brain isn't loaded up with all the context I've been soaking in for the past year (!!!).

My second goal was to connect two scenes together, which I didn't even start on. But I have a good reason (lol)! Previously, I was working this material into a WIP Twine game, but since reading about the "Snowflake" method of writing, I realised I don't even have an outline - which has been making the writing of these Twine game scenes harder than it has to be (because I essentially have to invent motivations on the spot to puppet my characters around).

So I'm doing a slight pivot. I'm going to write this story as a short story first, then maybe adapt it into a Twine game. I'm hoping to use the Snowflake method to my full advantage this way (yes, you guessed correctly, I do like structure hahaha).

So my goal for this month is to finish my short story outline: characters, plot/events, worldbuilding (enough for the story anyway), beginning, conflict(s), and end.

Good luck, me!

[–] hazeebabee 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think starting with a short story and potentially building it out sounds like a great approach! Will likely help with ironing out character motivations and will spark ideas for world building :)

The map looks good as an outline that can continue being filled in as your project grows. On a personal note, I like the inclusion of wetlands. I've always thought they're such a cool setting that isn't often included in fiction. Way better than deserts in my opinion lol.

Good luck for the next month! Excited to see your idea continue being brought to life :D

[–] grrgyle 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for your feedback! This already feels like a better place to be writing from, so I'm hopeful I can use this new approach to get, yeah, a solid foundation for the characters/world.

While being mindful not to get too trapped in my own infinitely entertaining worldbuilding reverie (not sure how else to put it, but I suspect this is common enough).

Also, having finished reading Dune this year, I agree with your sentiment about deserts! Haha give me moisture, give me teeming verdant buzzing squawking lifeforce, rofl

[–] hazeebabee 3 points 4 months ago

Getting stuck in the world building is a classic problem, but not a horribly bad one. I think it can make the process last longer, but once a story starts to form within it I think all that backdrop in the writers mind really adds to the story. World building icons like Tolkien show how powerful that can be.

I think the hard part is not getting lost in the world building & finding characters and interesting plot points within it. Sometimes it's just so fun to create a world it's hard to move on to the writing :p

And nothing can help you get over desert settings like finishing the dune series hahahahaha great books, but they can be as long and dry as the setting in some parts