✍️ 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 - September 2024 (self.writing)

submitted 1 week ago by grrgyle to c/writing

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Welcome to this our third writing club update! See previous writing clubs here. As always I hope you have all had a great month, with a good balance of outdoors and indoors activities.

Here are our participants with stated goals from last month, although anyone is free comment with their own writing progress. If you'd like to join this list of participants, just say so in a comment, with a description of what you're working on and what you'd like to do this month. Easy as pie!

Okay, without further delay, our...

Participants!

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[–] grrgyle 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I got laid off from my job early in the month, and haven't had much luck finding a new one, so that has been sapping my will and energy for creative writing.

Thankfully, it has not dampened my appetite for reading, so I have been doing plenty of "research" for my story, in the form of reading many many short stories (primarily from World's Best SF #3, and the Analog and S&SF magazines), and various Wikipedia entries on indigenous lifeways. It's actually been nice just planting seeds in my creative garden, without asking it to produce anything.

My goal for this month (not counting my unfortunate requirement to secure a day job) is very humble: I would like to get back on track with sketching out my outline. I think if I can handle that with everything else that is going on, I will be quite proud.

[–] hazeebabee 3 points 1 week ago

Reading is a great way to continue building up inspiration and references when you're not quite in a space to be actively writing. I love the planting seeds metaphor too :)

Good luck with everything this month!

[–] JacobCoffinWrites 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm still working on the adventure module for Fully Automated! but I've definitely slowed down a bit. I know someone who does environmental restoration IRL so I want to work with them to add more information on testing sites for contamination, and to maybe try and build out a minigame around it. Then I have to write up one set of characters (build out descriptions and personalities and goals for them) and then go through and start adding all the game mechanics stuff. Right now, the campaign is essentially system-less. You could drop it into anything from GURPS to FATE but you'd have to work out the character stats etc that come into play when the dice start rolling. My goal is to stat out all the characters I've written descriptions for (which in FA includes a bit more history than I've currently got for some of them) and to script the handfull of possible combat encounters.

Outside of the game, I've finished a photobash of a solarpunk cargo ship and been doing research on other possibilities for solarpunk shipping. I've also had some awesome discussions here on slrpnk.net about things folks would like to see in scenes of ships, boats, and coasts, and about what they'd like to see in depictions of cities in wet areas (which many cities are or will be).

Most of my solarpunk projects start with a sort of input-gathering stage these days.

I've also been putting together a list of parts from cars which can be used in other (hopefully more solarpunk) ways. This is part of my ongoing attempts to get more reuse in solarpunk media - just trying to make including it easy for writers and artists.

So that's it, a lot of discussion, one bit of art, and some incremental progress on the campaign.

[–] hazeebabee 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's cool you want it bring in more real world knowledge and references into the campaign. I love seeing creative stuff thats grounded in real scientific knowledge and current practices.

& the art looks awesome!

[–] JacobCoffinWrites 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you!! I very much want to ground the campaign (and solarpunk fiction in general) in worthwhile, usable information, at least to the extent that I can learn/present it accurately! I'd very much like to help people learn about real-life illegal dumping tactics, watersheds (and how they're frequently split by borders, and their importance to humans and habitats), and getting to add a basically-functional understanding of soil testing (possibly just minus sending samples away for a lab, unless we use drones for that) is a great opportunity.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how they'll investigate - will they focus on old records? Oral histories from locals who were around at the time? Scientific test kits of modern soil? Some combination? Will they consider erosion and the sites' proximity to the town's three watersheds to narrow their options? Will they think of something completely out of left field and leave me scrambling to provide useful info?

[–] hazeebabee 2 points 1 week ago

I love that approach to creating the world: open ended and educational. Realistic games are such a fun way to delve deeper into new topics -- especially ones that can seem a bit dry other wise. Like soil testing!

I think the multilayered approach works particularly well for the slrpnk genre too, since our ecosystems are complex with many different changing parts that contribute to the whole. Having all of that baked into the game encourages the player to get familiar with all the different ways our environment can be hurt and healed.

Super cool :) thanks again for sharing your process, I find it very inspirational

[–] hazeebabee 2 points 1 week ago

So this month went by in a blur, my sister stayed with me, and my full time job started up again. I haven't done much work on my book, but I have done a few story outlines/concepts over the month when ideas came to me.

They're probably not stories I'll ever flesh out fully. It's still fun to imagine entirely different story concepts and plots. Plus it feels refreshing to soend some time writing and thinking about other stories after being so invested in one particular project.

This month, I'm hoping to have my new office area set up and do a bit of work on my book. Write a chapter or two and do some editing. Mostly my goal is to keep writing now that I'm back to working full time & getting settled in a new house.