This is the best advice on adverbs I have ever heard in my life!!! Watch Those Adverbs
We always hear about dropping them from our writing but they are a proper part of English grammar, so how do we use them properly? This gives some great insight into the use of these pesky words.
Indeed. If you are writing a fairy tale/child's book... you should start it with once Upon a time There's a time and place for cliches... just keep them in the right time and place.
As far as any unique advice I can offer, take the time to re-read every line, broken up into paragraphs or some similar chunk; you will more-often-than-not find weaknesses that you probably wouldn't notice otherwise (incoherence, incosistency, redundancy, boring-ness, etc.).
to prevent writers block when you put your book down for the night, stop in an action scean that way u reread the last paragrah your thoughts start flowing again as soon as you get to where u left off. it has helped me a ton. that was advice that i got from a perfetional author and i have found that it has helped me incredibly
Always make sure you have someone to proofread and edit your stories, for even when you reread it, there are things you won't notice the second and third time. Another reader might just notice those things.
An excerpt from sitcom educator John Vorhaus's book "The Comic Toolbox: How to be funny, even if you're not":
There's a book by William Strunk and E.B. White called The Elements of Style... [...] Strunk & White were big on rules and not at all afraid to take a stand. They hated the passive voice, for instance, and insisted that use of the passive voice led to weak writing. Because I was young and impressionable when I read this book, I made this rule my own. [...]
And then one day I discovered how much fun it was to write in the passive voice. I knew it was wrong; Bill and E.B. had told be it was wrong. But I couldn't help myself. The words just came spilling out onto the page:
The room was walked into by a man by whom strong, handsome features were had. A woman was met by him. The bed was lain upon by her. Then the bed was lain upon by him. Clothing was removed from them both. Sex was had. Climax was achieved. Afterward, cigarettes were smoked by them. Suddenly, the door was opened by the husband of the woman by whom the bed was lain upon. A gun was held by him. Some screams were screamed and angry words were exchanged. Jealousy was felt by the man by whom the gun was held. The flying of bullets took place. Impact was felt by bodies. the floor was hit by bodies. Remorse was then felt by the man by whom the gun was held. The gun was turned upon himself.
And the rest, as they say, is forensics.
I wonder what Yoda would have sounded like without the passive voice.
Agreeing with the above, but one thing further: Know the rules before you try to bend/break them. Taking a course on editing and/or having a professional editing book on hand will do wonders for you. This is especially important if you plan to submit any of your writing for publishing. If you don't know how to properly use (obscure) punctuation and then proceed to use them haphazardly, you will then run the risk that whoever reads your submission won't read past the first spliced comma.
I say obscure because a lot of people don't know what a semicolon does or the difference between n-dashes and m-dashes, among other things.
Be aware of or turn off auto correct if you're typing.
I've encountered this a few times now and sometimes your computer will change something you don't want it to (like unique name spellings or similar words). If you're like me, when you're proof reading, if it's not underlined in red, you skim over some words, especially after you're past your first few initial readthroughs. It's amazing how "Maniachle" (I have never been good with spelling) ends up as: Manacle when you're actually trying to get to: Maniacal with auto spell check for example. Can make for some funny proof reading for others, but is overall a little annoying.
I was told this by an author at a convention once. Check out what your work (especially if it's a novel) looks like templated (usually 5x9 or smaller). Most big book stores (Barnes & Noble and Borders notably) are starting to enforce rules that they will not accept books in paperback that are over 300 pages (in 10 point serrifed font, single space) long templated because they take up too much room on the shelf. If you're writing something you know will be long, write it in the template, or paste in what you have and make the decision before it's irreversable about if you should break what you're working on into two/more volumes, or cut extra scenes out. Keep in mind, you need to allow for the copyright page, dedication, about the author, and title page in the 300 pages, and your first page of the book needs to start on a right hand side page if you're publishing in English.
My writer's block tip which almost always works for me: Try out different forms of writing. When I have trouble hammering out a story, I'll take a few minutes to write poetry or dialogues/monologues. It's a good way of developing writing flexibility and it keeps the mind moving, uncovering new trains of thought that probably hadn't been considered before.
Or, and what I do sometimes as well, I will write complete incoherence. A good tangent can free you up from overthinking things.
In response to Oro... My only regret is that I have but one funny to give! It's a damn good thing I"m the only one in this office, I think my boss probably would have tried to do the heimlick on me thinking I was choking to death!!!
That was about the best worst thing I've ever read!!!
Dialogue exercise: Try not to use the word 'said' in prose unless you absolutely have to.
You can advance character and emotive drive far more economically with better verbs than 'said'.
"Can you pick up some sugar from the shop?" Janet whispered.
Without context, the reader creates that personal 'theatre of the mind' experience. Why whisper? Does she not want to have other people hear her? Is she in an intimate situation? Laryngitis?
Try an exaggerated conversation where you must tag every line of dialogue with a verb that indicates how something was said. Don't think. Write dialogue, then stick in a bunch of different words that might not fit the situation:
"Hey look: see that spot in the sky?" groaned Kevin.
"'course I see it," bellowed Sarah. "It's... something falling."
"Nah," pontificated Kevin, "it's just some weather balloon caught in a wind stream or something."
"You think?" belched Sarah.
"Absolutely", hazarded Kevin.
This isn't about broadening your vocab. It's about assisting scene and character economically.
Always be aware of your narrative voice and focus:
You must keep tabs on how you describe characters. The diction and word choice a narrator uses from the 3rd person can (unintentionally) come off as sounding elitist or egotistical, reflecting a narrator looking down on who he/she is viewing/describing, and in a worse case scenario, looking down on the reader (in interpretation, unless the narrator goes out of his/her way to bad mouth the audience in a clearly non-satirical way). 2nd and 1st person tend to get away with elitist voice as being an attitude of the narrator who is almost always involved personally in the story (thereby being a character in the story as well).
As for focus, keep in mind who you want the reader to see the most of in a story and the direction from which they are to be viewed. As an (on the fly) example, think of a bedroom wherein there is a woman sitting before a vanity mirror, and she is brushing her hair. Is the woman described directly or through her reflection in the mirror? If someone else walks in to the room, is it seen from out of the corner of her eye or through the mirror as well? Describing the woman directly, and then the other person through her eyes, suggests a woman-centric story, whereas describing everything through the mirror suggests a neutral/open focus (unless it's a story about/personifying mirrors, in which case, please don't turn it into a terrible movie). Keep this in mind with each scene, or you might lose track and find yourself jumping from one focus to another, creating confusion and poor direction.
Oddly I'll go right ahead and contradict Oroboros and say... Use 'said' unless another word better describes the action. Open any well written book and 'said' will still be the most common word used and it tends to float to the background. You don't notice it as much. Certainly when it calls for it, yelled, whispered, shrieked, hissed (but only if what was said had a lot of SSsssss in it!), grumbled, murmured, laughed, or any other descriptive term can be used. But it's not necessary to attempt to tag every single line of dialogue. "Said" is the good catch-all for any spoken line.
That said, there are other ways also. Drop it all together and use surrounding narrative to tell the reader who is speaking and insight into how they might be saying the words.
She shrugged and pushed herself off the wall. "I suppose that could work."
Also, when two characters are engaged in dialogue, by virtue of 'taking turns' and/or by having characters with identifiable manners of speaking, it is unnecessary to identify every line.
"What, you mean.. like this?" Lisa asked. "Exactly," Chase replied. "But won't that get confusing?" "Not at all!" "How do they keep track of it all, though?" "Well, it's simple. We just wait our turns." "But what if someone else jumps in?" Jason interrupted. "Then we can identify a bit more," Chase said. Lisa rubbed her head. "I think I need to lie down."
This is a pet peeve of mine in editing. When you're writing, pick a tense and stay in it within your story construction. That is not to say jump around in time, or to not have a narator telling the story from the present that happened in the past, but don't do this:
"She walked across the room and sits down in her chair to begin write."
You want to find a happy medium where your character is only existing in one tense. If you have doubts about being able to notice these things, read what you write outloud to yourself and see if it sounds like anything you might remotely say. If it sounds like a foreign language that got run through babelfish, then there's something wrong.
2.) always double check to make sure your not just copying a book or film.
However, given the sheer volumes of books and films out there, inevitably, you will be at some point. Don't worry about finding out you've done the same thing as someone else, because you've still done it in a different way!
This came up in another of our forum threads so I figured I'd mention it here:
I find it very helpful to draw up my characters as Role Playing Character Sheets before I start writing. I tend to use Tri-Stat dX (BESM) or Dungeons&Dragons mainly, but I've seen others do the same thing with Vampire the Mascarade, Munchkin, and Planescape now too. It can give you a more accurate (or inaccurate if that's what you're going for) idea of your characters abilities and limitations depending on your environment in the story (I would sugest using D&D for Steam Punk/High Fantasy/Horror/Pirate stories and Tri-Stat dX for far future/Anime Based/Historical Fiction/super hero genres). You don't have to play the characters in a game for this to work, but just having concrete statistics on them might not be a bad idea if you're trying to really flesh out a new character idea.
They both easily tell the story and indicate what the reader ought to be looking at, instead of offering an opening to thoughtful discussion. I think a fair analogy for the two would be salt and pepper for cooking. Too many twists will make a story salty, taste unrefined and appear to cover up for deficiencies (thereby identifying the deficiencies). Foreshadowing is like pepper in that it (the smell of pepper) can be detected far in advance of the actual food; too much of it and the story will have told itself before it's finished. And it will make you sneeze.
And no, plot twists don't automatically make a story "intelligent and exciting". That being said, I'll spare people my M. Night Shyamalan ranting.
Nothing makes me more angry when reading (except not being able to read whats in front of me) than people who write things that are supposed to be factual that are so wrong it's not even funny. It's enough that I actually devoted an entire journal to it this week. You cannot pass off fiction as fact when you're working on something that is supposed to be factual (say a biography, journalism project, research paper, or a discussion). I don't care if you're only writing to post it into a message board, take a second and check your facts!
I got flamed earlier for asking someone to fact check in a discussion and thought this was relevant to our group (not that it's happening in here). Passing off misinformation is just about as bad as plagerism, and it's as easy to discover and avoid.
Er, hello! I wrote a series of tutorials for absolute-zero beginners for the Naruto fandom a while ago and thought it might be of use here. So far it's fourteen parts long so I'll post over a long period. This is just the introduction really, comments and Crit very welcome to make it better next time round!
...And Stop
This is it. This will be why you write. Forget readers. Forget reviews. Forget ‘because I have time on my hands.’ This is it. Close your eyes and imagine a scene.
The climax of your story. The final confrontation. It all comes down to this, where every one of your characters is walking the razor edge between triumph and disaster.
It doesn’t have to be clear in your mind. You may not be sure of characters, or setting. All it needs is one sharp vision.
Your character being hurled by an explosion. Being spitted on a sword. Lying half unconscious on the ground as blood trickles into their eyes and their enemy stands above them taunting. The thin, wavering silhouette of your character facing the raging wall of a tidal wave, laced with electric blue tendrils of eldritch energy.
A harsh laugh, a low threatening voice, a defiant cry.
Then there is the atmosphere. A storm lashes the skin with pelting rain. Violet forks of unnatural lighting and the boom of thunder like hooves over head amongst angry red clouds. Or maybe in a deserted hallway, where the scuff of shoes and the buzz of phosphorescent lights are the only sound. Or the roar of the wave as a wall of water rushes towards the coast, the screams of civilians, the crash and crumbling of brick and mortar.
And music. Gowon, imagine the music. Building around the scene, rising and throbbing as tension and urgency grows. With the clash of cymbals is another splinter of lightning. With the explosion of an electric guitar your character shoves herself to her feet for one last attempt, despite the gushing wound and fading consciousness.
Now freeze. Imagine that moment. Imagine a movie poster with a catchphrase. Imagine a soundtrack. Imagine all that you have worked towards that shining, exciting, nail-biting moment as you and readers walk the razor edge, lighting, blood, and a scream of triumph as your character overcomes.
This is what you work for. Not readers, not reviews, not boredom. You want others to feel that gutretching tension you get when you lay in bed at night going over that scene. It will take a long time to reach that scene, lots of work, lots of revision to get everything perfect, but believe me when I say it is worth it
Most of all....
Write for the love of writing, write because you want to tell a story.
Personal comment? Um... It's lacking in story, shows you don't know the characters, is unfilmable in machinima and lacks imaginative dialogue, and has punctuation and spelling errors.
Bull shit, this is so filmable in machinima, it's not like there fucking brake dancing. can you think of something better Simon Cowell? Go ahead, fix my gag in your image.
Actually, I'll give you one for free. No Halo character can punch, but they can melee strike. You can fix your own spelling mistakes.
You asked for a personal comment. I gave it. If you're unhappy with it, tough. If what you were actually after was people to blow sunshine up your ass, you should have said.
