Crash and Fancy’s Despicable Hearts (and Writers) Club™

Claudius Caesar

That 90's Boy
Sorry I've been gone for so long. Real life has been sort of kicking my ass here lately.

I need to start writing again, either on here or on one of my accounts at Archive Of Our Own
 

CrashOuch

she/her
AKA
Sara
Hello, Despicable Hearts! I am also sorry I've been gone so long! I've been insanely busy but the last few weeks I have actually managed to do a little bit of writing here and there and I definitely managed 500 words last week and the week before (I know, I'm as surprised as you are!).

But lemme tell you how I did it, cos it's sort of a tip, I guess.

I always, always, always have a notebook of some sort on me. I tend to go with a smol one so it doesn't take up too much room. Then, when I've been at work and the kids are behaving and I have five minutes where I don't have to be reminding them to crack on with their work every couple of seconds, I've been doing a teeny tiny bit of writing. And lemme tell you why that's been working so well for me.

Once upon a time, I read this piece of writing advice that went like this: You must always rewrite your entire work. And I was pretty sceptical of this, but it continued and explained that if you literally sit your fully written doc next to a blank one and word by word retype the whole thing, this will prompt you to be less lazy with your edits. 'If I'm gonna have to type that sentence out again anyway, I may as well make it flow a bit better,' you'll apparently think to yourself.

And this is why, for me, scribbling some nonsense down into a notebook without any thought while I'm at work and not even thinking about plots and characters and progression and development has been working for me. Because even though in the advice I put in the first post says to go and keep going and fix it later, and despite knowing that's how it will always turn out, I still put off writing because I want to 'get it right'. I want to have it straight in my head before I get anything down. You know? But what that ends up looking like is a whole lot of pretty blank, neglected documents I haven't even opened in months weeks. But if I'm writing in a notebook, I'm going to have to type it up anyway, so I can fix it then, so it doesn't really matter what I write. And this way, even with a mad amount of work and no time off, I managed to write more than I have in months weeks.

And that's my little bit of advice for you, if you'd like some.

So,

Who's done some writing?
I was chatting with an author earlier today and he said this:
If you focus on relationships rather than characters it helps you write deeper characters. It also makes you focus on conflict, which is the key driver of pretty much any plot (or scene!)

Which I love because my absolute favourite thing to write about and attempt to capture is the complexity of relationships. So here's a question for you all that I want you to discuss: What do you strive to do with your writing? If you became a well known writer, what would you want to be known for?

I'm gonna leave this as vague as I can in the hopes that y'all can go a bit wild with it.
 

Claudius Caesar

That 90's Boy
I've been doing some outlines for a story heavily inspired by the old PC game DOOM from way back in the 1990's and I'm also considering working in crossovers for it as well.

It is an Isekai type story that is also sort of a subversion and commentary on the genre, and is based more on Doom-type games than on the standard JRPG and MMO tropes found in most Isekai settings
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
In my writing I strife, well I'd like to strife for being able to take you on a journey along with the protag, make you feel how tired the character feels.
 

Claudius Caesar

That 90's Boy
So, I'm thinking of some ideas for my Doom-inspired story.

Namely that I want to write it from a first-person point of view but also have multiple protagonists and different chapters being told from the perspectives of different characters.
 

CrashOuch

she/her
AKA
Sara
Oops, oops, it's been way much longer than I meant it to be, sorry!

Hello, Despicable Hearts,

Who's done some writing?

I have! I've been keeping on my sneaky notebook at work and that's still working for me, which is nice.

Here is some advice I stumbled across today:

1. Have a schedule.
When I started out, I used to write whenever I wanted at all hours of the day. It was typically when inspiration struck. However, this developed the bad habit of becoming increasingly undisciplined and without focus.

“By developing myself a writing schedule, all the ideas would flood to me throughout the day (which I would only make a note of), but then when I sat down to write, I had focus and my mind knew it was time to get words down on paper,” shares Tina Hardy, a book editor for WriteMYX and Brit Student.

2. Don’t beat yourself up.
Suffering from writer’s block can be demoralizing, and it’s easy to think there’s something wrong with you, or you should be doing better than this. Nevertheless, the harder you are on yourself, the worse the writer’s block will be.

Go easy on yourself. As I said before, my writer’s block lasted for months, and it was easy to think it was all my fault. However, the more I relaxed, the easier writing became.

3. Pressure creates diamonds.
Although some of us avoid stress and worry like the plague, having a bit of pressure to perform can bring out the best in us; just like coal can turn to diamonds, if you’re into that metaphor. Set yourself a deadline with your writing and work hard to meet it. Punish yourself with less TV time or reward yourself with a nice meal for meeting it.

“If you’re writing a new chapter or blog post, give yourself a set date that you want to complete it by, and then work out how many hours it will take, and then combine this with your schedule, so you know exactly what you’re going to write and when,” explains Terry James, a publicist for 1Day2Writeand Next Coursework.

4. Juggle tasks.
Now, I’m not saying multitasking in a good idea. It lessens our focus on the tasks we’re doing, thus harming the overall quality of the piece. However, what you can do instead is focus on tasks, but juggle multiple tasks to keep your mind fresh.

Write up a draft for one task, then another, then another. Then go back to the first and keep cycling through like this. This will keep your mind fresh, and you’ll be much less likely to have writer’s block on any of your projects.

5. Let sleep be your friend.
When we sleep, our mind is actively solving problems and coming up with solutions, and this works very well for writing. Spend 15-30 minutes before you go to bed focusing on your writing, whether you’re rereading something you’ve already written, or simply jotting down notes.

When you wake up in the morning, you’ll be full of ideas on how to proceed. I found this to be one of the best ways to come up with new inspiration for my content.

6. Use technology to aid you.
Thanks to modern-day technology, there are a ton of apps and services out there that can help you overcome writer’s block. From providing you with writing prompts, to actively helping you manage your schedule, it can pay to research what’s out there to see what’s best for you.

One of my firm favorites is The Dangerous Writing App. This is a distraction-free writing website that deletes everything you’ve written if you stop writing for ten seconds over the course of three minutes. Start with an idea and then force yourself to write for this long. Read it back to get the creative juices flowing!

~ Joel Syder

How are you all getting on?

Good luck and happy writing <3
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
Lucky! I've been doddling on my notepad at work, mostly worldbuilding and map drawing for a dnd setting that's spinning around in my head. Very soon though, training will be over and when we go "live" we'll be paperless at the workplace. T_T
 

CrashOuch

she/her
AKA
Sara
Oh no! So no more notebook? The dnd stuff sounds cool though! Can you tell us any more about it? Let us know if you do some writing for it too!
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
Oh no! So no more notebook? The dnd stuff sounds cool though! Can you tell us any more about it? Let us know if you do some writing for it too!
Sure! Know that I have not settled on any definite names for anyone yet.

The world is relatively young, primary to the setting is an elven led empire.
It's heartlands are halfling inhabited farmlands, controlled by a Gnome Counts. It also features a mighty castle which currently serves as the Mage's College, but was once the home of a most powerful Mage-King that equated himself to the Gods.
To the south, connected by a peninshula are the forests where the elves first arrived in this world, further south it turns from forest to tundra where Snow Elves dwell and from tundra to ice where Frost Giants and Ice Drakes roam, this is on a southern hemisphere. The empire ordered these lands, as far south as they can claim to have any sway, into a Duchy granted to an old alchemist who rather then conquer had once made it's home in the local mountain where the elves had first learned to use their magic to pull metal from the rocks and armed themselves.

One the landmass to the north was the capital, surrounded by Gnome mines and saltflats. It was conquered by an elven lord who survived the Mage-King divine reckoning but he later fell in wars with Dragonborn citystates to his west. His twin sons thought to conquer a dwarven mountain kingdom to their east, that was once already subjugated by the Mage King, but both died before the Dwarven Kingdom's western gates. Their sister, the current Empress, was more diplomatic. She offered that in exchange for loyalty she'd make one of the citystates her duchy, and help him destroy his rivals. Today the Dragonborn Duke is the perhaps the richest being that doesn't fly, as his city has become the centre of trade between foreign kingdoms and the empire.
To the southeast, across a vast sea from the elven forest, lay wildlands where orcs dwelled. the Empire's borders with these lands were entrusted to the chieftain of a tribe of hill dwarves. His title is now Marquess.

Many human empires and kingdoms can be found on the far side of a valley to northeast. This valley was home to a small Goblin culture, but when the Mage King decided the Dwarf Kingdom ought to be brought to heel he tore open the mountain, created a new river, right down the traderoutes into the valley, creating a lake where there were once were towns. And the far side of the valley, humans found their forests slowly became swamps. The goblin people scattered to the winds, in the wake of this cataclysmic upheaval never uniting again. Though around the lake new towns where people from anu races can be found have now formed, the valley is most known for having been the battlefield for multiple wars between kingdoms and empires.

The most recent of which saw a human knight go rogue and declare himself a king, but most saw him as the chief of a band of robbers. He controlled the passes and the empress, in what many see as her least wise decision, felt that elven lives could be spared by formerly making these passes this human's territory. The Baron is still called the Robber Lord or the Robber King by many, but above all he is known by his ill-omened coat of arms, quartered between a lion's head, a dragon's head, a goat's head and a snake. The Chimera keeps the current peace in the empire and for that he exacts a hefty toll from any that cross over his lands.

That's all I think I can say without going into actual plots that I might want to keep to myself until I run them. Hope any of that made sense.
 
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CrashOuch

she/her
AKA
Sara
Oooohhhhhh! That's so deep and well thought out! How long did it take you to get to this point? Where do you start when you wanna begin planning something like this?
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
Oooohhhhhh! That's so deep and well thought out! How long did it take you to get to this point?

Some of it is over a year old, a lot of I only did in the last couple of weeks. My obsessions cycle between medieval fantasy, sci fi, noir and whatnot and this is something I managed to pick up when I circled back around again. Hope my other story are as fortunate. :wacky:

Where do you start when you wanna begin planning something like this?

I started with the history of the Mage's College which was originally the start place of just a dnd character I wanted to run, then I realised what i was thinking about should just be in my own setting. The other starting point of it was the valley where I imaged the story to be set and deciding why it was so important.
 

CrashOuch

she/her
AKA
Sara
My dear Despicable Hearts,

Who's done some writing?

I'm not sure if I have, honestly, so whatever.

Here is some advice from tumblr that I agree with:
when you’re writing description, everything about that world is assumed until you, the writer, say otherwise. are the characters in a studio apartment? the reader will conjure their idea of an apartment, along with all of the social context that comes along with it: city living, temporality, potentially poverty or at least financial struggles. in other words, the reader will always assume the familiar.
so it’s your job to only point out the unfamiliar details.
is there something special or interesting about this studio apartment or the reason they’re living there? does it face east? and if it faces east, what’s the consequence of that? does the sun wake your character up every morning? are they annoyed by that? can they afford curtains?
if a character is in the bathroom, you don’t need to describe the toilet unless there’s something meaningful about that toilet. we might need to know it’s filthy before a character falls to their knees and pukes into it. we might need to know there’s hair clogging the drain if they’re trying to wash their hands. we might need to know the shower is immaculate, or that there’s expensive shampoo in the caddy or even a fucking pumice stone because all of those things provide context to a character’s plight.
the point here is, we don’t need a description of the sun rising unless there’s something special and relevant (see: unfamiliar) about that sunrise. is it fucking green today?? are there two suns? is the character watching it rise, and if so, why are they awake that early, and is that outside of their norm?
every detail, and i mean every detail you write becomes indicative of your narrator. no one cares about yellow light spilling out over the streets unless there’s something about that observation that affects how your character sees or thinks or feels.
everything else? cut.
______________________
This is good advice, but remember that the “unfamiliar” should be to your narrator, not to you. If you’re writing a fantasy story where everyone wears leather boots, describing a pair of leather boots in detail is awkward if it’s something your narrator should find commonplace.
Every reader comes from different assumptions. A studio apartment might sound like poverty to some people, but to others, it may sound wealthy because the only studio apartments near them are in the heart of downtown. Don’t just *assume* that something will be strange or commonplace to all your readers because it won’t.
Describe what your *narrator* would take note of, and then get some readers to tell you if they feel you left out too much.

What do you think about show vs tell? What do you really like to describe?
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
I like describing to the point that we are clearly getting the main character's POV. But I haven't been writing cause I'm so busy so don't mind me. :sigh:
 
I think Show and Tell both have their place. For example, writing a story which shows how much one character loves another, without ever using the word 'love'.... I think that in writing as in life, the saying, "Don't tell me what you feel, show me," applies. When you show it, you make the reader feel it too.

But if you have some information you need to get through quickly to reach the main event, then 'Telling' is definitely the way to go. "Jocelyn was twenty-five when she lost her husband to lukaemia, and since then she had been raising their two children alone," for example, sets the stage effectively and succinctly.

Some writers are so good at choosing their words, they can make telling as emotionally powerful as showing.

But when a tyro writer gets it into her head that everything has to be shown, what we end up is this:

"Meaghyn woke up on Tuesday morning when her old-fashioned alarm clock chimed at seven a.m.. Luxuriously she stretched as she went into her recently renovated Mediterranean style bathroom with the marble tiled floor to enjoy a deliciously long shower under the newly installed rainwater effect shower. After towelling off her naturally blond curls...... Her brand new Honda Civic was flashing the 'check engine' light at her. "How annoying," she thought to herself, turning smoothly off at highway at the Appleby Road exit and slowing down as she approached the red traffic lights. "Now I'll have to get it serviced." The rising sun was casting a bloody red light over the turbulent waters of Lake Ontario as she pulled in to her appointed parking spot..."

None of which helps to advance the plot or engage the reader in the narrative. All you need is this, "On Tuesday morning Maeghyn drove to work as usual." Or, if her drive to work has nothing to do with the story, why even include it? Because you have to show her driving to work in order for the reader to understand why she's at work?
 

Airling

Ninja-Fairy-Jedi-Princess
I feel like this is a bit of a sticky point for my writing at the moment. I'm rolling with a strange "retrospect" sort of narrative for the story, since it is effectively still semi my D&D character's backstory. But I kind of zoom into particular events, and then it goes from being a brief overview sort of "tell" in one paragraph, to being more focused on showing the next.

I've heard "show, don't tell" sooo much, and tbh, I've often thought it to be pretty restrictive hogwash. As long as one doesn't do what Lic described, I have never found anything wrong with telling (but I may also be a tad defensive because Benjamin says I write like Salvatore and he does a lot of telling:shifty:). No matter how you're writing, the more important guideline to me is, never tell your audience something they don't need to know to help them make sense of the story.

But then there's also the problem with how you present the knowledge. So in Lic's example, a lot of that stuff could tell us something about the character and their life, which is good. But receiving it in an unnecessary scene that super obviously exists for the sole purpose of being an exposition dump? No thanks.

I don't know how I would have explained this without your sample, Lic. Thank you for killing your soul to write that.:cuppa:

Also, I took your "take a book" advice, Crash, and got a paragraph or two down next to the netball fields the other day.:headbang: Haven't done anything since.:hohum:
 
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Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
Very few writing rules are absolute, there's always an 'it depends'. At best, there is a 'do this, or know why you're not doing this.'

The pitfall of 'only describe necessary things' is that the reader can tell something is necessary if it's described. I've had my reading experiences damaged by noticing 'oh, they're describing that painting a lot, it must be important' on occasion, especially in crime novels.
 
Why would that spoil your reading experience, Clem? Is it because they described the painting a lot but then it never amounted to anything?
 
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