Mad Scribblers

Writers' Corner
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I do. There was one point though, a few chapters ago where I wrote 5 got stuck on 6 so wrote 7, was still stuck on 6 so wrote 9, was still stuck on 6 so wrote a little of 11. I then had to force myself to go back and I was then lumbered with three solid chapters of [name_u]Robin[/name_u] to do x_x That was unpleasant. I’m back in the right order now. I’m trying to keep it that way but I have been a little more jumbled with my scenes the last few days.

I’ll have a go at your synopsis tomorrow, though I like what Essjay did with it.

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I just have to shout out that I started the day with around 6,000 and ended it the 10,000! Those write ins really help.

Personally, [name_f]Fey[/name_f], I think your synopsis is fine. I think you just need to seperate it into two paragraphs. You know how on the backs of books, there’s be the section about one person, then there’ll be a new paragraph and a section about the next person, then in a third usually they link them together?

So it would look like this:

[name_f]Tamsin[/name_f] and [name_f]Sabine[/name_f] were born from magic: a spell their mother received from a hedgewitch. [name_f]Sabine[/name_f] was lovely and sweet, everything their mother had wanted. [name_f]Tamsin[/name_f] they called Tatter, a plain. rebellious girl. They were as different as two girls could be, but where one went, so did the other.

The trolls were masters of the sky. They lived in castles made of glass, high in the clouds above the frigid northern mountains. When the [name_m]King[/name_m] of the trolls takes [name_f]Sabine[/name_f] as his bride, it is Tatter who follows.

Guided by a gunslinger she’s forbidden to love, and with nothing but her goat and her pistols to keep her warm, Tatter braves the wilderness, racing to reach [name_f]Sabine[/name_f] before it’s too late.

That makes everything make sense the way it already is. If you want it all in one paragraph, then yes, I would cut that sentence and move into the next and just let the reader find out about where the trolls live and what they live in inside the story.

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essjay: thanks! I really like that and will play with it.

dantea: go you! That’s awesome. I’m just about to hit 10k. I should get a couple of hours of writing in tonight so I’ll hopefully be over 10k by the time I go to sleep. For my synopsis, I like having one streamlined paragraph that gets to the meat and potatoes of the story. I also like to have a longer version where I can add in details, so I’ll probably take those paragraph break suggestions and flesh them out. Thank you!

44

Um, hi, shyly waves hello

Sorry to break up the flow, but I found some of your posts very useful, and touching. It is so good that a thread like this one exists, sometimes you really need to talk about what you’re writing to work out through a scene or something, and I can’t seem to be able to talk to my friends about writing and be taken seriously.

Right now, I’m simply writing fanfiction (maybe that’s why I’m not taken seriously?), and I’ve attempted to write a novel of sorts a few years ago, but it was just…crap. It was simply a way to work out in my head a way to get over an impossible high school crush, so yeah, terrible, terrible stuff. I think I found my niche in fanfiction, though I’d love to explore some of my AU ideas with original characters. It’s so hard to do, because after writing for the same fandom for years, it’s like writing a series of your own, you get attached to the characters, you know them better and better each time you post something more, and I feel a little apprehensive in starting an original novel and being unable to get the characters right. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can’t seem to be able to write in Italian, my mother tongue, and that puts a damper on all my excitement. That’s pretty weird, I know, but I started writing in English as a joke, to simply exercise and get a better grade in school, and fanfiction was so easily accessible, it seemed the right path to follow. I’ve always had stories in my head when I was younger, and putting them down on paper was a relief. Again, terrible stuff, but it seems like I’m getting better. Surely my English has improved (even if there’s a lot of room for more), and the urge to go back and re-write those first stories is always present :wink:

I’m doing my own fanfic-friendly NaNoWriMo, which basically is writing 50,000 words in a month, no matter what story I’m working on. Since it is for original works, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t enter the NaNoWriMo either, but it’s nice to set a goal for yourself. I found myself setting up a weekly deadline to post my chapters, and it helped me out immensely. Who knows, maybe I’ll just find the courage to re-write some of that AU stuff into an actual novel if I keep up with this pace, and I’ll to the NaNo next year.

Good luck to all of you with your projects!

P.S. Out of curiosity, anyone here who likes to write in another language?

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You can write whatever you want for NaNoWriMo! Original fiction, fanfiction, I know someone who wrote a collection of short stories throughout the month, anything really. No need to feel limited by it. There’s even a fanfiction forum on there. So while it’s less common for people to do NaNo for fanfics, you could easily find some people doing the same thing as you.
It’s amazing that English isn’t your first language. As someone from the US, I always envy bilingual people; it seems people in every country have English that’s even better than some of my peers, while I’m stuck here with my English language and nothing else. I’m in Korea right now learning Korean, and while I would love to write in another language, I sadly doubt I’ll be reaching that point anytime soon. So yeah, you’re amazing.
The transition from fanfic to original stories can be tough. I used to write terrible fanfics in high school, but after going through a largely non-writing phase, I switched entirely into original fiction. I think it started when I adapted my fanfics by changing names and stuff so I could show it to friends without being embarrassed, and after that I just kept those names. My stories still had the same setup based on the characters I wrote about, but they were changed just enough to make it “original.” Then I just sort of never went back, and as my writing improved, my work became less and less like the horrible fanfiction of my teen years. Not that it’s any good now either, but at least there’s improvement. I still sometimes base what I write on things I read, but never enough to call it a fanfic. I know some people write both fanfics AND original fiction. Whatever works for you.
Maybe you can try and transition into original work as you get used to writing in Italian? Or would that be too many changes at once? But if writing in English is linked to fanfiction for you, then maybe going back to your mother tongue could make the break from fanfic easier. English=fanfic, Italian=original? I dunno. I’m not bilingual, so I can’t be much help there, I’m afraid.

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[name_m]Hi[/name_m], berries. My name is [name_f]Niamh[/name_f], and I’m kinda new to Nameberry. Writing is my passion; I have been scribbling out ideas on paper ever since I was little. I have an idea for a story in my head, but I’m horrible when it comes to planning. My biggest worry is that the reader will think that my book is copied from othre series. Does anyone have any advice for me on making my book seem more original? [name_m]How[/name_m] do I stay away from cliches?

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@periwinkleblue Well, that could be an idea, though I’m horrible at writing in Italian, the sentence structure is way too complicated and adaptable, and I’ll just end up rambling endlessly. The idea of adapting some unpublished fanfictions I wrote into original works could be an idea, though. Also, I just signed up on the NaNo website, but I’m clueless about how it works other than the fact that I have to write. I have the whole month to learn :wink:

Oh, and English-Italian between English-Korean? Totally different languages when it comes down to it. I don’t know much about Korean either, but if it is a tonal language like Chinese, I’m pretty sure it is hard to get into the mechanism well enough to actually write something original.

@[name_f]Niamh[/name_f] You know, I think you should just write and write and write. You’ll recognize the clichés later, when you go to edit it, and then you might find a way to edit it in a non-conventional way. Everyone draws inspiration from something, it’s natural, mixing it all up is what creates original works. Or maybe draw from your own experience. For example, if you went to a place, no-one has seen it like you did. Maybe I saw the same things when I visited the same city, but you saw that monument on a rainy day, and the light shone on it in a different way than when I visited it in the scorching hot summer.

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Wow, that is actually really helpful! I will start writing it now! It makes much more sense to edit it later. Thank you, cilesuns92!

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I know your comment was meant for someone else, but it actually helped me a lot! Lol :slight_smile:

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[name_f]Glad[/name_f] I could help out! Comments of others helped me out, it’s just fair I give back :wink:

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[name_m]Hi[/name_m] cilesuns92. [name_f]Welcome[/name_f] to the writing party. :slight_smile: I think a lot of writers get their start exploring other writer’s worlds. Fanfiction wasn’t really a thing when I was growing up, mostly because we didn’t have the internet, but I do remember we’d write plays and stories that took place in the books we were reading. Sweet [name_f]Valley[/name_f] High was big when I was in grade school, and we’d do our own fanfiction stuff, before we even knew what fanfiction was. I write in English, although my first language was Spanish. I was raised in English speaking schools and all my creative writing classes and clubs were in English. I’ve never tried to write anything but poetry in Spanish. It might be an interesting challenge to try.

niamhmiller: I agree with cilesuns92. [name_m]Just[/name_m] write. Worry about quality after you have the story finished. [name_m]Even[/name_m] a cliche can be explored in a new way, but you might not realize that until you’ve written it. Your main character is a feisty red-haired princess who runs away because her father wants her to marry someone she doesn’t love? Okay. Been done to death. You might decide not to write the story because it sounds like a cliche, but once the story is written, you might discover you’ve succeeded in telling the story in a way that feels fresh.

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Thanks, cilesuns92 and redwoodfey. That’s some helpful advice-- I just need to start writing! Thank you. :slight_smile:

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@redwoodfey Uh, I’m trying to learn Spanish too, but it seems like I’m hopeless to pass my exams. I do love the sounds, and I really get why you write poetry in Spanish. If you end up writing something let me know how it went!

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I’m trying to teach SO Spanish and it’s not going so well. He’s just not retaining any of it! I’m using [name_f]Margarita[/name_f] [name_f]Madrigal[/name_f]'s books because I thought they’d be the easiest for an English to Spanish learner. Are you learning Eng-Spanish? Or Italian to Spanish? I took a couple years of Italian and can get by. Well. I can read a lot of Italian, and understand the gist of what a person says. I have a harder time forming my own sentences, written or spoken. It’s similar and different enough to Spanish to both make it easy, and complicate things. Hah. I’ve also taken Portuguese, which is a really neat language. I used to work at a research company that conducted most of its research over the phone, and they had me calling South [name_u]America[/name_u] because I was the Spanish speaker. Well, the research company failed to research what language Brazilians spoke, so there I was on the phone almost but not quite understanding what was being said. It piqued my interest in the language.

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Korean isn’t tonal so speaking is manageable, and reading/writing is actually quite easy (phonetic alphabet yay!), but the grammar is so so so so so different different from English, and even European languages in general. Oh my goodness, so different. So as much as I love the language, trying to write in it just wouldn’t work.
The idea of poetry vs. prose in different languages is interesting, though. I’ve never written many poems, but that could be a good way to practice my Korean, actually. There are poems in the subway stations here in Korea, and I like reading them. Maybe I should start writing some. [name_m]Even[/name_m] though they’ll turn out terrible, it’d be an interesting exercise, since I’m definitely not ready to write prose.
I love this thread. So many cool ideas being thrown around. Thanks! :smiley: Haha

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@redwoodfey I’m learning Italian-Spanish, though sometimes I use English-Spanish dictionaries online or I watch Spanish movies with English subtitles, since they’re easier to find. It is crazy how similar and yet different Italian and Spanish are. It is mindboggling. I can understand more than half of what is going on in a conversation, but writing and grammar are much more complicated in Spanish (well for me!) than in Italian. Hm, Portuguese should go in my list of languages I should know at least the basis of. Funny how you happened to learn it.

@periwinkleblue I had no idea Korean wasn’t tonal, my bad. I am absolutely clueless when it comes to [name_f]Asian[/name_f] languages, though they absolutely fascinate me. I still haven’t found a languages that it’s not fascinating, being honest :wink: You could definitely try out poetry, maybe even go with the cliche rhymes or themes, and then try to develop your own style. By the way, it is the most beautiful thing the fact that they hand out poetry in subways. That’s a really clever idea to make people stop and think for a little while as they commute.

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No worries, I didn’t know anything about Korean either until recently, and it was actually that lack of knowledge that got me to look into it in the first place.
The subways here have clear walls separating the platform from the tracks (good idea so people don’t fall in) and there are poems written on some of the doors there. I think it’s amazing. What better way to use all that blank space than with poetry? When I first noticed it, I was unreasonably happy. It was like, okay, that’s it, I officially love Korea. Haha. Poems written on the subway…there’s a story in there somewhere, I can feel it…

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Yep, this whole idea of poems written on walls is definitely story-worthy. I just love it when small details like these sometimes can make a whole story blossom. Like yesterday, it was raining so quietly and consistently it seemed almost surreal, and I said to myself, I have to write this kind of rain in one of my stories. [name_m]Just[/name_m] like that, I had a paragraph, but I have no idea where to squeeze it in.

[name_f]Do[/name_f] random inspirational moments happen to all of you or am I the only freak who should get around with a notebook and write in random words every day?

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No, random inspirational moments happen to me (and I think most writers). I know a lot of the big writers talk about carrying notebooks around and writing down anything that inspires you. I’ve seen it in writing books. :stuck_out_tongue: Take note of the little everyday things that inspire and you can always squeeze them in somewhere later.

When I was doing my creative writing class at college a few semesters ago one of our options for poem prompts was to go around campus or the store or where ever and eavesdrop. We were to make a poem made up entirely of quotes we heard taken out of context. I ended up hearing some really weird things. :stuck_out_tongue:

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[name_m]Hi[/name_m]!
I am currently developing two different stories at the moment (one a medievalish fantasy trilogy and the other a modern-day love story) and I was wondering, from the perspective of someone who hasn’t actually completed anything (I tend to over-plan and never actually start to write), how do you keep going and resist the urge to give up? I like to always engage myself in one of the plots but sometimes I just feel too busy to work on anything. I’m still in school and have a few years to go so one one hand, I feel that I have heaps of time to write later but on the other, I feel that if I don’t get started now, I never will. I do take my writing seriously and would love to be an author later on so any advice or tips would be super helpful
Thank you so much in advance!