Ameriganastan wrote:Why must people ask me personally for my opinion on their stories? It always feels like I get put on the spot when that happens. I'm not even that good a fic writer, so it's not like I can give them a good critique. And then I wind up just saying something generically positive cause I don't wanna hurt their feelings. It's a mess.
Have you considered asking them what kind of feedback they'd like? Not to put too fine a point on it Ameri but you're... fairly opinionated, it's possible they're after your honest views. Is it possible to couch things via questions like, "Would you like me to be hyper-critical?" or is it not that sort of medium/site??
As to the quality of yourself as a writer... it is interesting (to me anyway) to compare the differences in the scores I gave stories in our (sadly defunct) short story contests and those others did. I like to think my feedback was useful and appropriately pitched but at the same time (when you look at my own entries) I'm... middling at best as a writer (but optimistic).
Nordengrund wrote:I finally got back to writing after a hiatus. I have always struggled with perfectionism and don’t feel as creative as I used to be. I stopped due to a lack of ideas I thought were good or original, and because I feel too limited in some ways. I had to have the perfect story idea. So now, I just force myself to write whatever comes to mind. I have gotten back into reading novels because the best writers are readers and I hear it can help boost your creativity, but I wonder if this applies to other mediums like scripts, light novels, manga, etc, as my view is that you should read extensively in whatever medium you plan on writing in?
Probably. The concern is that you end up too similar in style to what you're reading. To be honest, I personally worry more about that.
That being said, if you're ever up to watch three movies... you can definitely see similarities between Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and Layer Cake... and not just because of substantial actor overlap. The director of the last was a producer on the first two, you see.... and Layer Cake is almost a serious version of the first two. The point being that certain similarities in approach can work out well without feeling derivative... even with reasonably similar plot structures and settings. (I have also seen Lock Stock and Snatch compared to Tarantino movies but the former two are vastly funnier and generally better, so I view the comparison as facetious.)
Chan Island wrote:They miss so many opportunities, though.
You won't be surprised to say that I agree. Honestly, complicated politics and their dynamics is one of the best parts about world building in my opinion. [/quote]
It's also too fascinating. The number of times I've figured out how I wanted a world to work but never got anywhere...
It even infects my reading: "here's the end of the plot, the story is told, but where's the sequel on consolidating the tenuous denouement? I want to know
how they rebuilt the kingdom/country"
Vienna Eliot wrote:I disagree with the politics stuff. If the story isn't about politics — if the audience doesn't care about politics — then if anything it hurts to include it. Nobody praises the Phantom Menace for its attention to political detail.
I have to disagree here. An audience completely unfamiliar to the political (and/or historical) context a work is drawing on is going to completely misread and misunderstand the text. If you've got the space and ability to provide this context, then not doing so is the mistake.
USS Monitor wrote:It's that Pax, as the author of a story about a Martian rebellion, should have an idea of why Mars is rebelling.
Between this and Vienna Eliot's line about plays... I am reminded of something.
We were doing a play at school (originally intended to be acted by two people... so not so far off the one person play mentioned)... and the character/scene I had really gave very few details about anything that happens around it, e.g. the dude didn't even have a name. So we, as the "actors" had to come up with this stuff. Whenever we watch something, the actors and/or director/s have all this extra stuff which influences all the decisions that they make. What makes the good characters Vienna Eliot is thinking of is precisely the situating of the characters.
The Inkworld trilogy talks about this quite a lot with authors as well... especially when there are unpenned sequels in the air.
Vienna Eliot wrote:It's demonstrably not necessary to understanding the story at all or else it would be included. It seems like you're convinced plot matters. But any serious writer will tell you it doesn't. People take characters and write stories and stories and stories about them. Nobody writes multiple books about the same plot five times.
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...not that I (or it seems the OP of my random Google-found source) agree that much with the assessment, but it was pretty true.
Writers can and do, as it were, type-cast themselves... to varying degrees.
Vienna Eliot wrote:House of Cards, great example. If I write House of Cards fanfiction for some reason, I don't write about the America Works program. It's never really expanded on, is it?
It's not expanded upon because it undermines the entire premise of the character. Which is interesting, because what you're talking about is, in a very real sense, fan fiction.
I write about Frank and Claire Underwood as characters. We don't understand Frank Underwood's politics very well. What we do understand is his character.
The original House of Cards television adaptation consists of three arcs. The first is "wronged servant takes throne". The second is a power struggle... but not over policy but political/national relevance. The third is about handling a scandal. These arcs work. It is possible to maintain belief in the idea of Francis (who really is far more loathsome than, and as a result far superior to Frank) and see those beliefs tested and vindicated by the plot. When the American adaptation moved past Tusk (in some sense, its idea of the second arc is thus subsumed into the first) and put Frank in the White House, it either chose or was forced (c.f. forced errors in tennis) to test Frank against policy challenges. And the result? What TV Tropes would call "informed ability".
Now, I pretty much gave up on the show after this point so maybe it recovered itself somewhat but the point I am making is the same... you can't ignore plot and you especially can't ignore what it says about your characters (meta character in the terminology of the below paragraph).
It's probably also a fair point to argue that, on balance, you could not really translate House of Cards from a Westminster system to a semi-presidential regime with supreme law. Which is now the importance of the minutiae of the setting dictating plot and thus the demands the plot places on the character and the meta-character.
n.b. on the remote chance anyone cares about the story I mentioned when I resurrected the thread... I am currently intensely touristing and have not written anything more on it.