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thewritershelpers · 5 years ago

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Improving Your Writing when English Isn’t Your First Language (mega-ask)

As you can see above, we've gotten more than one question about writing, improving your writing, and even publishing in English when it's not your native language. First off: that's awesome. To anyone writing or even consuming in a language that's not your first, kudos to you.

You can google any variation of this question and get different articles with a ton of the same advice, and some with conflicting advice. Not only have I compiled the most commonly repeated information, but I've also reached out to people on our Discord server and others for their personal experiences.

I'll start off by listing concise versions of the advice and then expound on them further on in the article. Remember that we are not experts on your writing and that everyone learns in different ways and at different paces. These are in no particular order.

-be patient

-practice

-get feedback from native sources

-don't undermine yourself to your audience

-Grammarly

-research

-don't get discouraged

Be patient

That's first because, well, duh. Patience is so important for both yourself and your writing. Writing is hard enough of a passion without the added difficulty of doing it in a language that doesn't come naturally. In the world of literature, writing/publishing in your non-native language isn't just a matter of translating words. It requires translating of ideas, concepts, and even cultural norms, which is why just slapping it into Google translate won't work.

Part of the reason for the advice of having patience, too, is that writing in your native language needs to take time. It doesn't really matter how fast you can whip out 20 pages of a first draft--it'll still be a simple first draft. Writing is a craft that requires not just love and passion but time. So what if you need a little bit of extra time--or a lot of extra time--because you're accomplishing a feat most don't even think about attempting?

Next is to practice.

That goes hand in hand with what I said about being patient. Again, writing in and of itself is all about practice and doing it daily (not that I'm an expert on getting that done, but you know). But when it comes to practice another language, there are different ways you can do that. You can reach out to native speakers (for English, there are going to be so many people willing to help, even just in our community! you just need to ask) and practice having conversations or ask them to look over your work. Practice by turning on your favorite movie or TV show in English with subtitles in your native language. Watch videos on YouTube, find a Spotify playlist/podcast, in your target language. There's also plenty of people who have done what you're trying to do who have shared their experiences and what helped them on those same platforms.

Get feedback from native speakers

This is a bit of an expansion on what I mentioned in the previous paragraph. In my experience, and from what others have shared, writing in a non-native language can be pretty clinical. Writing with figurative language or in metaphors won't be as easy or come as naturally as it does in your own language. Things like idioms and even pop cultures reference aren't always going to translate even if you have the exact words. That's where native speakers come into play. If they're willing to look over your work, whether as a friend or in an editorial position, they can give you advice about whether the wording in one spot sounds clunky or if a phrase doesn't make sense or if there're synonyms for what you already used to help convey your message even stronger.

Don't undermine yourself

This is something that I personally am saying. It's not mentioned on any of the linked sites, and no one I talked to said it. But as someone who is a native English speaker (and even has a degree in it) I think this is super important. This point goes towards native English speakers/writers, too. Don't undersell yourself and undermine your work to the audience before they have even picked it up. Disclaimers are different, and it all comes down to the words you use and how you use them. Let your readers know, whether it's people on AO3 or a literary agent, that English isn't your first language. Let them know concisely that they may find some basic errors--but stop there. Don't grovel. You have nothing to apologize for, especially once you've given that warning (those is it really a warning? what's so dangerous or scary about a few mistakes?). You're writing is not going to be any less of an accomplishment for a few grammatical errors, or mistranslated phrases, or even typos. I've seen so many mistakes in published works that it's kind of ridiculous. But if you put something out there for someone to read and in the same breath say "I don't know that this is worth reading" I'm going to need extra convincing to pick it up. *kicks soapbox away*

Grammarly

*NOT sponsored*

Grammarly is a wonderful tool that you can use, for FREE. It not only (with the free version) helps correct spelling and grammar, but can also help point out the tone you're writing with. For example, right now, Grammarly is telling me that this writing sounds mostly informative--which it's meant to be--and a little appreciative and friendly. When sending emails I've had it tell me that it sounds formal (which I was going for), and I've also had it not say anything because the text was a different kind of writing (like when I'm proof-reading something being posting it on AO3...). I honestly don't know what else it helps with once you've paid because I've been happily using the free version for about 3 years now.

Research

Don't be afraid to pick up a book, or head to the library, or pull up Google. Research is paramount to writing anyway, let alone once you're doing it in another language. Your research options are limitless and can include your mutuals on social media as well as those dictionaries that translate from one language into another. Research can also include (in my humble opinion) binge-watching/reading your favorite things...in English. In four years of university, one of the most frequently said things was to improve your writing 1) write every day and 2) read every day. You're never going to learn from worrying or overthinking, and you're also never going to learn from just doing DuoLingo (that's more conversational than literary anyway).

Something a member of Discord specifically said in relation to research was to look at morphology, at the roots of words (and root words). Morphology is, in linguistics, looking at how words are formed. For example, let's look at "biology". There are parts to this word that each has a different meaning, that formed together created a new/elevated meaning. "ology" means the study of something, and bio means life. So biology is, simply, the study of life. Once you've got those basics of things like "ology" under your belt it'll become easier to not just translate words but the concepts (if this works with your learning style).

Last but not least, don't get discouraged.

Writers of all kinds get discouraged when writing in their native language. Even those of us who speak English as our first language make mistakes worth discouragement (you will never know how many typos were corrected by Grammarly as I wrote this all out the first time). English is not an easy language. It's not the hardest, but it's far from easy (learning another language isn't easy regardless of what languages are involved). This is a post from someone who is a non-native English speaker but you would never know unless they told us.

While researching for this, I found some articles/blog posts that said mostly the same thing, and are where I got some of the information

This one is from a native English speaker giving advice

This one is for writing for non-native English readers, but still has good advice

And finally this one is a blog post (I think) from someone who is a non-native English speaker!

In specific response to some of the asks:

English, like any other language, changes. It's a very dynamic language, actually, and from region to region, there will not only be different accents but different frames of reference. 1950 isn't so far back in time for the English to be drastically different from what is spoken today, but I'm in the USA and you're asking about Oxford. English in England has very different nuances, even more so than you would get between California and Texas and New York. This is a link to the Oxford English Dictionary list of words that became more common in the 50s. However, this is a generalized list, not specific to any English-speaking country let alone region or city. If you're wanting to look at how to convey the accent of people from/in Oxford, there are videos on YouTube of people speaking in different accents so that you can have an idea, a comparison, at least in your own mind. With the 50s it's going to be more just thinking really of what words and lifestyles and things weren't around yet; cell phones didn't exist yet. Here's another link to some stock images of Oxford in the 50s. Remember, this time was very close to WWII so there'll be lingering effects of that, especially in England.

About fight scenes and curses, there's a ton of resources on that. If you just search "fight" on our page, you'll get a ton of posts answering that question. Also, here's a link to a superb and excellent source on writing fight scenes. When it comes to curses...just watch Rage Quit on YouTube, or spend a while on TikTok. If you want to dive right in just Google "English curses" and there'll be YouTube videos, entries on Urban Dictionary, you name it.

When it comes to publishing, once you've gotten your manuscript is a perfect time to have a native-speaking friend look it over. Whether editing is their thing or not, they'll be able to help with the things that are really obvious. I don't have any experience publishing in a different language, though, so there might be other resources along the different stages to help you. Some general publishing advice I've gotten: when wanting to publish fiction, literature, start small. Start with short stories in literary journals, online and in print. You really can't make much headway with large publishing houses without a literary agent and it'll be easier to attract one if you have evidence that you can write, and write well enough people want to read it. When it comes to poetry, just start submitting. Get familiar with the process, and educate yourself on things like simultaneous submissions and a good rejection. Publishing is an ever-changing game that isn't cut and dry in any language or country. We can't tell you what's best, but my advice is to go with your gut and try your best. Don't be afraid to try again, too.

Everyone overthinks their writing. Or at least, everyone I know who writes does. Honestly, in my opinion, if you're not overthinking at least a little bit, you're not worried enough. You will never be able to fully know whether you've explained or described enough. A good chunk of the experience is up to the readers, so you have to leave them some wiggle room for imagination. But that doesn't mean you have to cheapen your story or short-change your characters. You mention specifically that you're POC, which I'm gonna guess also means that your characters will be POC. It's never too much to specify the race/ethnicity of your characters, even in a fantasy work. How you go about writing those descriptions might need to change but it's kind of like chocolate chips, in my mind: you decide those things with your soul.

So, there you have it. A ridiculously long way to say: you're awesome, you do you, practice, love yourself and your writing, and don't be afraid to put yourself out there (in any way).

(images read:

Anonymous said: Im writing a book based in Oxford in 1950s. how was the language different from now. I am not from an English speaking country at all. Never been outside my country either. And Im going to write a book based in England in English

Anonymous said: Hi there, I’m a writer for almost 3 years now but since English isn’t my first language I get discouraged easily if things I write come off strange to myself. Do you maybe have any advice for me, on how to motivate myself and not comparing myself with native English speakers? Thank you in advance!

Anonymous said: Hello! I starting to work on this shortfic but it’s been really hard. It’s like I’m trying to building a house alone and with my bare hands. Even though I’m already used to write in mother tongue. Any advice for non-english speaker trying to write their first story in English?

Yaelburstine said: Hi. Do you have any tips about how to write a good fight scene and curses that people speak English get cus’ it’s not my first language

gyger said: I am not a native english speaker, but most of the books I read are in english and I generally prefer writing in english as well. However, I am worried about making mistakes that I can’t recognize myself. I have no idea how good my english is to a native english speaker, plus some things are easier to write in my native tongue (such as dialogue). I’m also worried about publishing, since that definitely would be easier in my country than abroad. How do I decide what language to choose?

Anonymous said: As a POC writer and English as their second language, I overthink all the writing I do. I feel like I don’t describe my ideas thoroughly or my character descriptions are vague or not good enough. I’m currently working on a YA novel but I plan on writing a YA fantasy novel but I feel like my lack of vocabulary and grammar structure makes me give up on finishing my book. Is this normal for native English speaking authors or is this considered a language barrier thing? Thanks! Love your blog!

Thank you for your questions, and for your patience as we do our best to answer them.

-S

#TWH Respond #ESL #writing in a second language #mega ask #improving English #resources

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mrswhozeewhatsis · 4 years ago

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To stop the accusation that I’m dragging this out to please the drama llamas, I’ve studied everything I got (and spent a fair amount of time searching for things on blogs), and managed to whittle things down to their bare essentials. I’ve also tried to talk to everyone about everything, which took time. I won’t address everything that everyone has said on both sides, just a few points that are either concrete, or I can’t address them privately for whatever reason.

The timeline as I’ve been able to piece it together is like this:

Vanessa made a post about more popular writers complaining about lack of feedback.

Beka messaged Vanessa wanting to know why Vanessa had a problem with her.

Vanessa responded in a way that upset Beka.

Beka blocked Vanessa.

Vanessa got around the block and sent anonymous asks to Beka.

Beka outed Vanessa by responding to the asks publicly.

Vanessa deactivated her blog.

Friends of both proceeded to attack each other.

Claims about Beka (this is not a complete list):

Only supports her friends on her blogs and in Pond Angel Fish Awards

Although it’s been a couple of months since Beka has reblogged fics from other writers at all, by going back through her #read with me tag, I see reblogs of fics from at least a dozen different writers just in May and June. I’ve only been tracking Angel Fish Awards since February, but since then, Beka has nominated 8 stories by 8 different writers.

Ignored asks for Big Fish advice sent to her blog

If there were a way for me to prove this, then I wouldn’t be listing it here. As it is, it’s impossible to prove. As a Pond admin, I’ve experienced the weirdest stuff with asks. I spent one evening chatting with a member while they repeatedly tried to send in asks, and we didn’t get a single one. I do know that asks sent via the app seem to be more likely to be eaten than asks sent via desktop, but asks sent both ways have disappeared.

There are other claims, this is not a complete list, but I will be addressing them with Beka personally (I have already started doing this, actually). I’m only including these two because they can be proved or disproved with facts. Some of the other claims have been leveled against Big Fish in the Pond other than Beka, as well. The Pond will deal with those privately, but we hope you will see an improvement in these areas when the Pond returns from hiatus.

Claims about Vanessa:

I’ve talked to Vanessa about these, without anything constructive coming from it. I tried. I tried to explain to her that she could have gotten further by using less provocative language and offering constructive suggestions. We ended up having the same old arguments about unrelated issues and going around in circles. The only thing Vanessa ceded was that she should not have continued to reach out to Beka after Beka blocked her. She has apologized for this. I don’t need to list the rest here, just know the conversation happened and nothing came of it.

Claims about Beka’s opposition:

Made unsubstantiated claims about Beka sending herself anon hate

I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t have a single clue how to figure out who has sent an anonymous ask on Tumblr. However, what I do know is that it requires access to the inbox the ask was sent to. In order for someone who is not Beka to say that Beka sent herself an anonymous ask, they would have had to have hacked into her account, somehow. I don’t know much about this, but it sounds illegal. Since there was proof of this offered, it’s a useless claim.

Picked apart posts on her personal blog and said they were intended for her writing audience when they were not

Beka’s personal blog was, she thought, relatively private. It was not meant for her readers to see. (There is an argument to be made about how it’s still a public blog that the world can see, but the charge is that she intended for her readers to see it and respond, and that is not the case.) Yet, someone took it upon themselves to stalk it, and then match posts between the two blogs, making it look like it all came from one blog. They then took their argument to the absurd and claimed she was using her mental health issues to drum up patrons on her Patreon. If that were the case, then it all would have been on her writing blog. But it wasn’t.

Belittled Beka’s cries for help, and then attacked her further

I don’t care if you didn’t believe her when she said she was on the edge, you just don’t do that, folks. That right there is the point where you either walk away or report her to Tumblr as a threat to herself. The last thing you do is double down on your attacks. Take a break, walk away, find a kinder, gentler way to make your point. I don’t care who they are or what they believe or have done, when someone puts the gun to their head, you do not tell them they are an awful human being.

Dissected every post, word by word, including auto tags, using intentionally provocative language

Not every post made was like this, but a lot were. This is high school stuff, guys. To rip apart words used by someone obviously in pain instead of reaching through and looking for the meaning behind it is petty and cruel. Not to mention it takes so much more energy to dig into things like that than to just respond to the meat of things. To take someone’s blog name and twist it into a degrading moniker is sickening. To attack words used in an effort to distract from the topic at hand, or to just add on to the already heaping pile of anger you’re throwing around is unconscionable and pointless. This is not what people who are coming from a place of love or kindness do. This is what you do when you hate someone, and that’s just not cool, guys.

Brought up old issues thought to have been settled a long time ago

My husband calls this “stamp collecting.” There’s a statute of limitations on things, and it depends on the thing, but my personal limit on Tumblr is about two weeks. If nothing has been said about something for two weeks, I assume it’s in the past and I try to move on. I say this because, if it weren’t settled, then we’d all still be working on it, right? If something is bothering me, and I work on it with someone, but I’m not happy, then I’m gonna keep working on it with that person. If they seem to forget (which happens because we’re all human), then I’m gonna send them a quick message. “Hey there! I’m still working on this thing. Can we talk about it again?” I do this with contractors who work on my house. I did this with clients when I worked in an office. To bring up something that happened a long time ago like it’s still an active issue is pointless, and goes against one of the main tenets of effective arguing.

Taking obvious glee in tearing down another person

Do I really have to talk about this? If you had any care for the other person, even enough to just care that they are a person, you would not gloat about how you’re going to tear them apart.

Really, all of this stuff comes down to if you are approaching the world and everything you do from a place of love or from a place of anger and pain. Even if you are angry and in pain, treat other people like you love and respect them, and you will find that everything is just better.

If you feel like I’m coming down on one side or the other of this situation, just know that I’m not. Pretty much, I don’t like things that were done by both sides. These are just the things I feel more comfortable talking about in a public post like this.

Other stuff that’s come up in the course of all of this:

Complaining about notes/followers

So many writers, lately, are frustrated. Tumblr sucks balls on a good day when it comes to notifications and the whole algorithm mess, and that’s still being generous. In an effort to keep the porn blogs at bay, they’ve stifled all creators. Add to that how tags seem to never work when you’re searching for something, and disseminating your work is nearly impossible.

I could tell you all the different ways you can change your focus on the readers you do have, give you lists of things you can do to expand your audience, and offer advice about not comparing yourself to other writers. But you’ve already heard all of that. So, I’m just gonna say it.

If you complain publicly about a lack of notes or followers, you’re gonna look like a dick.

That doesn’t mean you are a dick. You’re just gonna look like one. You’re going to look like you’re ungrateful for the readers that you do have, which is going to turn off those readers, and you’ll end up with even fewer notes and followers. If you manage to disparage other writers while you’re complaining, you’re gonna look like an even bigger dick. So, just don’t do it, unless you don’t mind looking like a dick.

Need to vent about it? Find a close friend and send it to them in a private message. Have a funny thought about it that you want to share? This is exactly what private messages are for. Create a group DM in discord. Heck, I think even Tumblr has a group chat option, now. Just, don’t put it on your blog, unless you want to lose followers.

The number of admins at the Pond

Some folks seem to think that the Pond needs to add more admins in order to react more quickly when something goes down. Honestly, I have talked to Mana and Kale about stepping down as admin because I believe the opposite is true. We have a policy that we all must agree on the big things. However, we are separated by 8 time zones. There is a rare hour every few days (sometimes it’s weeks) when all three of us are awake and not occupied with caring for family members. We have a private group chat thing where we each toss ideas and questions and such into the pot when we’re doing things. When the others get to it, they add their two cents. Usually, there are two of us active at a time, and then we wait for the third to stop by for approval. Often, the third has a question or argument that then needs to be addressed, but the first or second one isn’t available. More admins would only be a good thing if we were all in the same time zone. But we’re not. We are an international group, which I believe is a good thing, but the downside is that it slows us down. Sometimes, being slow is a good thing, too. Generally, at least one of is calm and level-headed at any given time. It shifts on who that one is, but they keep us from doing anything rash.

The whole problem is that no one feels like they can tell you when there’s a problem

I’ve heard this so many times, now, but I haven’t responded to it publicly, so here goes.

Most of you don’t know what I’m like in person, but I’m built like a linebacker. I’m tall, I’m heavy, and I have wide shoulders. I have literally scared small children. Take Jared Padalecki, add another Jared Padalecki on the side, and then take away all the pretty, and you come close to what I’m like when you see me walking down the street.

I don’t want to be a scary person that anyone is afraid to approach. My goal in life is to be kind and fair. I will give you second and third chances, because I know how awful it feels to be written off.

My ask box is always open. My chat windows are always open. My email address is [email protected]. I’m the same on discord and skype. I don’t care if you think your thing is stupid, if it’s something that’s bothering you, and I can help, then I want to help. I can’t always help, but I always want the opportunity to try.

If I have ever done anything that made you feel like I didn’t care, then I give you permission to tell me. I’ll hate hearing it, but I need to hear it.

If I have forgotten to follow up on something for you, PLEASE REMIND ME. Holy, cow, I have a TERRIBLE memory. It’s really bad. I have tricks and stuff that I do to try to make sure I don’t lose track of things, but it still happens. Please, come back to me and remind me that I promised you something. I guarantee that I will not be mad or upset. I will be glad, because you’re helping me to be the person I want to be.

I think that’s about it. The Pond is still on hiatus, indefinitely. We have a lot of things we’re talking about for if/when we come back, and some of them are really exciting to me. I hope we come back. I hope we can make the Pond what we always meant it to be. We’ll need help, and constant feedback from our fishy family, but I still have hope.

#incoherent babbling by mrswhozeewhatsis #michelle rants #mrswhozeewhatsis rants

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canadian-riddler · 6 years ago

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How to Improve as a Writer When You Can’t Get Feedback

(or how I do it, anyway)

1a) Read stuff by people you look up to

Chances are when you look up to someone else as a writer, you have a general idea of what it is about them that you like so much. You really like the way they build sentences, you admire their vocabulary, they’re really good at plot twists. Surprise! You can do all that too. Take note of what they do and how they do it and then put your own spin on it. If you DON’T know what it is, put some time to figuring it out.

1b) Read stuff you absolutely hate

Now why on earth would I tell you to torture yourself like that? Simple: it teaches you how to identify mistakes. Go through stuff you don’t like, think about why you don’t like it, and then do the exact opposite.

2) Stop posting stuff when you know it’s not ready

I’ve done it, you’ve done it, we’ve all done it. You’ve got a story or a chapter or whathaveyou and you KNOW it’s not done. And you know exactly WHERE it’s not done and you know exactly WHY, but you can’t be bothered to fix it. You’re done, you’ve been working on it way too long, and you’re sick of it and just want to dump it so you can move on. Stop doing that. Grinding through the boring stuff is part of life. Buff it until it shines even if buffing it takes you eighteen months. Unless you’re going pro, the time it takes doesn’t really matter. It’s done when it’s done.

3) Avoid using the same word multiple times in the same paragraph, or even on the same page if at all possible

This is a little bit of a stylistic rule I have, which I invented so that when I reread my own stuff fifteen thousand times I won’t feel like I’m having deja vu. However. Following this as a rule means that you MUST expand your vocabulary. It forces you to stop using basic words and to start looking into creating nuance. It also makes you sound smarter, which is always a bonus. Use a thesaurus. That’s what they’re for.

4) Create a dialogue with other writers

What I see a lot is people getting sad about people not talking to them about their stuff... but they never talk to anyone ELSE about THEIR stuff. This happens SO OFTEN. We’re all in the same boat here. Stop getting salty over who’s getting to use the oars. Chances are that person is someone who engages with their readers and other writers a lot more than you do. You’re right, sometimes it doesn’t work. But guess what? While you’re attempting this step, you’re completing step 1) at the same time! Net win for you!

5) Write characters how they are, not how you wish they were (that comes later)

There are a lot of posts on Tumblr telling you to project your heart out and make your favs do whatever the heck you want just because you want them to. And if that’s your gig, then you do that. But it won’t really make you better at writing, because you’re just writing yourself. You know how you think and you know how you work. As a writer your job is to tell the audience how someone ELSE thinks and how someone ELSE works. Will there be some overlap between your fav and you? Possibly. But having them react to things in ways that you would or ways that you think would be good for drama isn’t you writing them. It’s you writing a version of them you wish they were. You can GET them to that place, but you have to build the bridge first, and the foundations of that bridge are the core character traits.

6) You need to have characters do things that you don’t like or don’t want them to do

It’s tempting, very tempting, to have your characters cry at all the right times or make up the next day after a blowout fight or do the morally right thing because it’ll give you a feelgood ending. And you can write like that if you want to. But it’s retracing a path you already know. To become better at writing you need to brush aside that initial inclination to do something really obvious or cliche or angsty and think of some other direction you can go with it. And then possibly do that again a few more times until you come up with something really special. If you’re just going for one-and-done, banging out a whatever, go with whatever you think of first. But if you want to improve you cannot take your first thought. That’s the easy thought. You don’t want that. You think you do, but you don’t.

7) Tropes are not your friends (but they are also not your enemies)

Tropes are fun. Tropes are easy. Tropes sometimes get you a lot of pageviews really fast. Because people know them, they’re familiar with them. They know what to expect out of them. Tropes are also a route a thousand people have already taken before you. They don’t teach you anything. Now, you might think I’m leading into ‘if you must use a trope, subvert expectations a la Episode VIII’. I’m not. There are so many tropes nowadays it’s hard to avoid them all, and subverting them all can be almost as bad as just plain using them. So use them, but be mindful about it. Resist writing them because they’re easy, but also resist subverting them as a convenient plot twist.

8) Read a little bit of everything

I don’t mean fiction. I mean just plain articles. Read a little bit about basketball, read a little bit about the Prime Minster of Australia, read a little bit about the greenhouses in Iceland. You can do videos too or podcasts, but reading articles is generally a lot faster. This creates a cache of knowledge that you can use later. If you’re a writer who only writes about things they know very well, your stuff is going to end up very narrow in scope. If you write a lot, it’s going to end up very repetitive. You don’t need to become an expert, but if you only put pencils in your pencil case all you can draw with are pencils. It’s good to have fineliners and oil pastels and copics when you need them, even if you only know how to use them a little bit.

9) Make personality psychology your new best friend

Personality psychology is a massive key to understanding how people work and, subsequently, a roadmap to strong characterisation. Get familiar with the Big Five personality traits. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is also a good thing to keep in mind for character arcs, especially long ones. There are several different classifications for personality (Myers-Briggs is another popular one, for example) but I like to use the Big Five (which is honestly really the Big Ten because each trait includes the opposite) because I find it easier to understand and remember.

10) Don’t take advice you don’t like as a personal insult

It’s not a personal insult. Get mad over it if you want, but then think about WHY you got upset. It’s probably because it pointed out something you already knew you were weak on. Getting mad helps nothing, but doing something about what made you mad does. And no, I don’t mean writing a really long rant about how the person who said something you didn’t like is stupid and doesn’t know what they’re talking about. I won’t pretend I’ve never done it, but I also won’t pretend doing that accomplished anything other than making me look really bad.

11) Pay close attention to your character voice

A mistake you see a lot, especially from younger writers, is characters that all sound like exactly the same person. Usually that person is the writer. They only really know how to write in their own voice, with a bit of flavour from whatever characters they’re trying to do. If you write some lines of dialogue without indicators (pronouns, names, epithets, etc) and the reader cannot tell who is supposed to be talking, your writing lacks character voice. And the solution is NOT (ABSOLUTELY NOT) to give characters accents/overemphasise accents they already have. That does NOT solve the character voice problem, it just hides it. And that does not help you improve at all. If you have five characters in your story you should be able to write them all a plain dialogue cycle and the reader should be able to figure out who is who without having to count the order of who was talking in the beginning. You should also be able to lift one character from a story and transplant them in another where they have never been mentioned and the reader should still be able to follow who they are because of their distinct character voice. This gets a lot harder in stories with large quantities of characters. Struggle with it anyway. It’s important.

12) You’re going to have to write more, probably way more than you ever wanted to

Yeah. Getting better as a writer involves a metric ton of actual writing. Sucks eh? Staring at the keyboard doesn’t count. Neither does refreshing your fav website eighty-nine times or staring out the window waiting for a spark of inspiration. Just get to it. The theory goes that if you want to get good at something, you have to spend at least ten thousand hours doing it. That’s a lot of hours. More hours than anybody really wants to comprehend or put themselves through. But you’re going to have to do it and the best time to get started is now.

13) Remember who you’re writing for...

... and that person is yourself! Writing for your readers? Often an exercise in futility. They love you, but they’re too shy to tell you so. Sometimes too shy to let you know they even exist. So you have to love yourself twice as much. I mean your writing. Love your writing twice as much. It’s gonna be on your computer forever, after all. Make sure you put as much love and care into it as possible so that when you accidentally open one of your documents five years from now, you can read it without cringing and ‘accidentally’ flinging your computer out the window.

14) Don’t skip editing (and editing once is not enough)

There are so many stories out there with an author’s note that includes something along the lines of ‘oh yeah I just wrote all this in an hour and didn’t read it lol’. Dude. If you didn’t care enough to make sure your story made sense WHY on EARTH would you expect your READER to care about it? Have a little respect for your audience and for your own stuff. And judicious editing is important. You have to actually LOOK for mistakes. You can’t just read through it without actually getting any words through your eyeballs and declare your mission a success. I promise you those mistakes are there. They’re still gonna be there after your ninth edit. Should you really edit nine times? Of course you should. Step 2) says so.

15) Stop selling yourself short

Go ahead and look up to other writers and wish you knew how to write like them. But stop telling yourself you’ll never get there. That thought right there is your biggest hurdle to doing it. You’re good at some things and bad at others. Wonderful. Praise yourself for the former and work on the later. You don’t have to be all ‘tortured writer’ and shrug off compliments because someone else does something slightly better than you. Give yourself a thumbs up and remember all the stuff you do right. The stuff you come up short in will join it eventually.

#so says Indy #writing advice #advice you didn't know you needed #writing angst #yes Vogel this is because of you

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bangtanstanst · 6 years ago

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Do you have any suggestions on how one could improve their writing of physical actions? Like, any personal advice? Or any books that one could read to help? Because your writing is so good!

Ahhhh first of all, thank you so much!! This is like the biggest compliment and it means so much to me fjdsklsdfjkfdjskld MY HEART THANK YOU ANON♥♥♥

I’ve included some stuff that I hope might help under the cut. Of course, everyone writes differently and everyone prefers different things. Moreover, my writing is definitely not perfect and I am by no means an expert. All this advice is specifically things I know have helped me, but it might not work for someone else :)

I could honestly talk about writing for hours (OOPS) but I kept it as short as I could! I hope it helps :) Good luck, and let me know how it goes if you want to!♥

I’ll start with the great and unhelpful advice: practice makes perfect. It’s true, though! From my experience, experimenting with your writing really does help a lot in improving it and finding out what you like. Don’t be afraid to write weird and different stuff sometimes! No one will see your writing unless you want them to, so go crazy ;) If it works out, you’ll have improved your writing, and if it doesn’t, you’ll know that it doesn’t, and you’ll be able to look at the reasons why it doesn’t work, which can also help you forward!

Now, onto the more concrete stuff. For me, different kinds of scenes require different writing styles, slightly different ways of describing physical action. For example, I approach fight scenes differently from ‘normal’ scenes, and I approach both of those differently from kissing scenes, etc. etc. etc. It all depends on the mood, the feeling you want to go for. For now, I’ll focus on the more general issue of ‘writing physical action’, since I think that’s what you’re asking about ;) If you want some advice about how to write fighting/action scenes or want me to elaborate on anything I mention here, I’ll be happy to do so!!

Firstly, it can be difficult to even come up with what your characters are doing. Sadly, there’s no real solution I can give you for this :( For me, scenes kind of play out like movies in my head and I write down what I ‘see’ (read: imagine), which is how I come up with most of the physical actions you read in my writing. The more I ‘live’ the scenes, the more vividly I imagine them, the better/easier I can write them. This is also why it’s important to have a good grasp on your characters, since you can then let them ‘control’ what they do a bit more if that makes sense (but that’s a whole other thing fjdks). You can also think of how you can use your characters’ environment to your advantage, how your characters or your scenes connect with it. Not only does this help you in moving the scene forward, but it also ‘grounds’ or locates the scene so that the location doesn’t feel random or arbitrary.

Of course, you’ll also want to have a broad repertoire of words and phrases you can use to describe what your characters are doing. This is indeed very important: you can picture things all you want, but that’s not very useful if you don’t know how to describe the images in your head, or if you have so few words and phrases at your disposal that you keep repeating them way too much. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix for this. However, you can definitely do some things to broaden your repertoire! It all comes down to knowing these things well, so you can read fics, watch movies, look up vocabulary lists, etc. to learn them. Find movements and actions, words and phrases you like, ones you don’t use a lot, ones that you think will make your writing better, and slowly incorporate these into your writing. For example, when I see a word or phrase I like, I try to weave it into my writing the next time I’m working on something, thus slowly making it a part of my repertoire. Of course, don’t go out and plagiarise whole descriptions/paragraphs/etc., but look for those short, relatively common phrases or movements that are often used (but that you find are missing in your own writing) and start using them! It’s something I think you’ll keep doing, even if you’ve been writing for years and years and years. This is also what can make writing really fun, in my opinion!

As I said at the beginning, though, everyone has their own style and preferences. Words or phrases I like might not be your cup of tea, and vice versa. Ways I use to improve my writing might not work for you and you might struggle with different writing problems than I do. But, again, experimentation is key! You won’t know if you don’t try ;)

Quick sidenote that’s not really a sidenote: do make sure to be consistent in your characters’ actions throughout the scene, have one follow logically after the other. Otherwise, it can sometimes be a bit jarring to read and it can mess up the flow of your scene.

And lastly, as for your question if you could read specific books on it, I wouldn’t say you need any. I will say that reading is very important as a writer, but I would advise you to read novels or fics you like rather than books on writing techniques, especially because you’re asking about that rather than plot. You can learn a lot from other people’s writing in that sense. Also, if possible and if you can afford it, creative writing classes can be useful. They kind of force you to try different things, read others’ writing and give and receive feedback, and, most importantly, to keep writing, which can all be of great help. Generally, however, pretty much everything I learned is from experience, from fics/novels I’ve read, from the internet, etc. and I’d say you definitely don’t need to pay a lot of (or any) money on improving your writing. You can if you want, of course, but it’s not a must!

If you made it all the way up to this point, OOF, I hope I didn’t bore you and I hope this helped! Of course, I’ll reiterate that everyone’s writing is different and that you’ll probably end up preferring to do things differently than me. I do think these tips can be useful, however, otherwise I wouldn’t have included them ;)

In the end, practice really does make perfect! Experiment, take it slow, do things at your own pace and on your own time. And, most importantly: keep it fun!

TL;DR: read & write, practice & experiment. Keep broadening your repertoire, do things at your own pace, figure out what works and what you like, and keep going! You’re doing great :)

#fjdskl honestly anon im honoured that you'd ask lil old me for writing advice #I hope you have a great day/night♥♥♥#thanks for your message!!#answered #anon #feedback #writing advice #writing #fic writing

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stampstamp · 6 years ago

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TL;DR: People at work and home don’t take my skills seriously, so I’m struggling with mustering the self-worth to pursue my dreams.

2018 has been a really frustrating year for not being taken seriously by the other adults around me. People at work ask me to create projects for them (with barely any hints of what they’re looking for), praise my work, then use it as an early draft and completely change it. And I’ve tried to avoid that happening again by taking the initiative and creating my own projects, but even then someone finds a way to ask to re-write/re-artwork it. I get that I’m not brilliant at art or writing, but what’s most frustrating is that I don’t get any feedback on where I went wrong. How can I improve if people just say things along the lines of ‘Thanks - this is great! But here’s my version, which we will use going forward’? When I illustrate something myself, that’s the part that people change (they keep the rest of my ideas/copy which took up about 10% of the overall time spent on it.) When I spend a long time working on copy for something, that’s what gets replaced in the later drafts. If I’ve written in the wrong tone, or missed the mark, they could just tell me! It couldn’t have been completely crap if it managed to elicit a rare piece of praise from my boss. It makes it feel like they’re just not accepting it because I wrote it. Four years ago, I thought it was because I was young and new to the company (they’re ageist) but I’m not that young anymore and it seems to be getting more frequent. Maybe I’ll just always be the one to have a go and fail first so that someone else can pick up the fragments and fashion it into something worthwhile.

One of my colleagues asked for suggestions based on some plotless illustrations an artist had presented to them, so I wrote some brief concepts and my colleagues on the Editorial Team say that they plan to use them (which is brilliant!) However, they’re talking about who they can get to write the books using those plots, and they haven’t approached me to see if I could have a go at fleshing my ideas out. I’m tempted to just give them a manuscript based on the idea they liked the most, but I don’t want to waste hours of my time if they decide not to use it! Especially if they don’t explain where I’m going wrong.

I suppose I’m getting so frustrated about it because this year I rediscovered how much writing improves my mental health and sense of identity. I even forgot that I joined this publisher four years ago because I wanted to be a creator of picture books. I got so disheartened by senior colleagues acting like I have no experience (despite practicing writing in my free time and studying Literature at Uni) that I just gave up on that dream.

It’s not just at work; my mum needs to sell a few of my deceased Grandad’s belongings on eBay but she won’t do it unless her brother helps her with the product descriptions. I write copy pretty much every day at work but she doesn’t accept my help (or let me even have a go at it). It’s the same with letter-writing. I write formal letters and emails every day at work, but she only respects her brother’s abilities (before he retired he worked with numbers, not words, so I don’t think his skills are that much better than mine).

So I don’t know how to get people to think of me as a capable writer. I suppose getting published might change their opinion of me, but 1. I’m not able to improve as a writer without people giving me opportunities and 2. My personal projects are all super gay self-inserts and showing family and colleagues my work would mean coming out to them.

#Stamp's mental health #Sorry for the long post but everyone's left Tumblr anyway so...

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longlivefeedback · 7 years ago

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“Why Can’t I Say This?” Context, Concrit, and Commitment

The current (unwritten) rule for commenting is the golden rule:

Gif of Thumper from Bambi saying if you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all.

Commenting (on AO3) is a public experience and we at LLF have openly supported this stance, urging people to praise in public and criticize in private.

Still, what about those writers who explicitly state at the end of their fic that they are open to concrit? Is that permission to take their fic apart, line by line and give them what is could very easily become the equivalent of a public flogging?

The answer, as with all things that involve more than one person, is that it depends. If you are reviewing a work and find yourself wanting to say more than just praise, here are a few questions to ask yourself that can help you determine if your feedback and criticism is actually constructive.

1. Which party are you at?

First, let’s establish where you’re giving concrit - is it as a beta in a GoogleDoc on a first draft, is it in the public spheres of tumblr/AO3, or are you in a writing group or writing class where today’s assignment is to practice giving critique? Depending on the situation, how much and what type of concrit you give would vary.

Let’s say that instead of fic writing, we’re all chefs (or people who make food) here. We each make a dish and now we want to share it with the world. Do you (A) take it to your friend’s house where they are holding a potluck celebration; (B) set up a stall at the state fair; or (C) enter it into a cooking/baking competition ala Chopped where 5 star judges and food critics will sample your food? Depending on where you take you food, you would expect very different reactions. Generally speaking, you would probably want your friends at the potluck to thank you for bringing something and compliment you for how delicious your dish is. If you were still fine tuning your recipe, you could let them know and maybe they would be able to say one or two things they liked or didn’t like about it which you would file away for the evening, to be looked at for the next time you made something. However, if you were at a state fair, even getting your dish looked at by the crowds of people milling around would be an achievement. If someone bought some of your food, that would be fantastic! If they bought it, took a bite, and then told you how tasty it was, even better! Those people that bought your food, went away, and then came back to tell you how much they enjoyed it or came back to buy some more and brought all their friends with them are heaven sent angels. You probably wouldn’t expect anyone to say anything negative about your food because even if you were still fine tuning the recipe, a state fair is neither the time nor place where any sort of meaningful culinary discussion can really take place on a consistent basis. The situation would be different if you were at a cooking competition. There, you would expect these food experts to pick apart your food. Maybe not steamroll and chew you out à la Gordon Ramsey, unless that’s what you were expecting and the kind of feedback you respond best to (in which case, you should sign up for a competition where he is judging). Perhaps you don’t want to just be yelled at, but would actually like to be coached, then maybe enter a competition with more of a mentoring element versus cutthroat competition.

Being aware of which and what kind of party you’re at helps establish expectations and prevents you from breaking the dress code and expected rules of conduct - something that often leaves you and the host standing around in embarrassment at best and on toxic hostile terms at worst.

We’ve all heard stories about people leaving concrit on works and might have started out as a gesture of good intentions, devolves into a dumpster fire of abuse and personal attacks. If we give each party the benefit of the doubt, this kind of scenario often stems from a mismatch of expectations.

In my opinion, posting to ao3 is closest to the state fair, and is why the “positive feedback only” default is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged. If this stance annoys you, this might be an indication that there is some disconnect between what you really want as a commenter/author and where you’re going in order to get it. I think that we can all agree that going to the state fair and expecting Gordon Ramsey to show up and tell you why your dish sucks is just… not going to happen. Even more, it’s something that shouldn’t happen on the reg. What if you were at the state fair to raise money for charity? No well-meaning person there is going to tell you that your food sucks and that you should do better - and if they do, they don’t mean you well.

So how do determine which party you’re at and what sort of criticism, if any, to expect? Well, when in doubt, ask.

2. Who are you and who is your audience?

When it comes to feedback, take a step back and question your assumptions. Who is the author whose work you are commenting on? Is this an old time friend who you know has nerves of steel and likes every single typo pointed out or is this an unfamiliar username whose work you’ve just stumbled across? Or are you a regular reader who has followed this author’s works, had regular conversations about them with their story, and to whom they’ve expressed their struggles with pacing/plot/characterization?

Are you at Janet’s party, where everyone is expected to pat each other on the back and say something nice to each other, or are you at Bob’s party, where everyone has known everyone for years, has eaten every variation of Dinah’s herring pie, and knows that she’s still looking for the perfect complement to it?

Establishing your audience and writing for them is one of the fundamental rules of effective writing. Whether it’s business emails, academic essays, or love letters, the better you know the person on the other side who will be reading your words, the better you will be able to deliver your message to them.

Be conscious of the fact that people write for different reasons, and that while some may be okay with great advice being shouted at them, it is a nightmare for others. Don’t be a Gordon Ramsey walking around at the charity fair of home baked goods giving tips to the local families trying to raise funds to repair their schools. Be kind and don’t show up at the wrong party.

3. What does the author consider ‘concrit’ and how do I get them to listen to me?

Concrit is, by definition, constructive. It should help an author as well as encourage them to keep improving and to keep writing. If the author comes away feeling discouraged and like giving up on writing, you have failed in your goal of giving concrit.

It doesn’t matter if you have the best cake ever. If you package it in a moldy and dirt encrusted box, I won’t eat it. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if your criticism is pure objective truth (unlikely, since the rules of writing get broken all the time), if you give it in a way that the author is not receptive to, they will not listen.

Giving and receiving criticism is hard, even when you think you’re ready for it. Please also keep in mind that context matters. Anyone who has been a beta will tell you that giving criticism is not easy, especially when we do not have the benefit of verbal and visual cues to help us express what we really mean. How you say things is often just as important as what you say. Tone and nuance is difficult to get right in writing, particularly when two people are essentially strangers on the internet. Cases of misunderstandings and miscommunications abound (they are the villains in so many fics) and sometimes, things just get written the wrong way, or read the wrong way.

Everyone has their own personal biases, and to assume that criticism that you would find helpful and valuable would be similarly received by the author is fallacious and a dangerous assumption. What works for you may be hurtful to others, which is another reason as to why we support the “positive feedback in comments only” default. It’s harder to ruin someone’s day with only positive statements, especially when you don’t have the time or platform to really explain yourself and have a meaningful conversation with the author.

Even in the cases where the author has explicitly asked for concrit, giving it is hard. The best forms of concrit are specific, targeted, and provide a roadmap to the author on why this isn’t working and how to improve. It is not as easy as listing out all the flaws you see and letting the author figure out the rest. If you are serious about giving concrit, make sure that you’re prepared to commit to answering questions and having conversations about why you think something works or does not work. If someone asks you for your opinion on the pie filling, be clear that you think that it has too much salt and only if they ask for it do you tell them about the burnt crust since it could be the case that they are well aware that it is burnt and is why they only asked about the filling in the first place. When critiquing, make sure to establish expectations and who your audience is and commit to having those conversations.

In conclusion...

Consider the fact that feedback doesn’t have to be negative in order to be helpful. If you are able to point out the flaws — and I mean really point them out as writing flaws and not stylistic differences because you are able to pinpoint and explain why something generally does not work — then you should be able to point out the good as well. It is rare when a work has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Maybe you will have to look harder to pick out the unpolished gems, but being able to see the potential and conveying that to the author can more constructive than a hyperfocus on tearing their work apart.

In summary, when you’re tempted to leave constructive criticism:

Remember your audience;

Check your expectations;

Show up at the right party; and

Bear in mind that knowing how to say things is just as important as knowing what to say.

~ mod dragonling

#longlivefeedback #constructive criticism #concrit #context concrit and commitment

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funkymbtifiction · 7 years ago

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Thanks for all great the feedback! Speaking generally, what is the strengths/weakness of each type in relation to writing fiction? Personally, I struggle to see my strengths. I do struggle with chronic dissatisfaction. I'm trying to translate a dream/grab a cloud and make it solid. Usually I feel like I get it wrong. At times, I struggle to write cause I know I can't create the perfect the story in my head. It's better to keep it perfect, but that doesn't make me happy. Thanks again.

First, you need to remember this:

Perfect does not exist.

Perfect is an abstract concept.

Define “perfect.” If you do, it equates perfection TO YOU, but not to the rest of the world. Your idea of perfect differs from my idea of perfect. Perfect is an imaginary thing that is never quite you, that is just out of your reach, a goal so intangible that you can never succeed, an ideal which you cannot define – it’s just… perfect.

Think about it. Can you write the perfect novel? What IS the perfect novel? A novel with no mistakes in it? Well, would that REALLY be perfect? What makes something perfect? Can you ever achieve it? Has anyone ever achieved it? In my opinion, no. You may think your favorite novel is perfect. It isn’t. There’s always some way for anything to be improved.

What happens is, in your striving for perfection, you spend about a thousand more hours making something 1%, 2%, 3% better… when the world, and everyone except the irrational little perfection demon on your shoulder would have been happy with 95% perfect. You can drive yourself insane, trying to live up to a standard that does not even exist.

I know this. I have done it. I have written, and written, and proof-read, and changed, and streamlined, and risked ruining something, because I was always trying harder for perfection, creating problems in my head where there were none on the page, being too ruthlessly critical of myself and my product. Other people read it and tell me, “This is good, but I got confused in paragraph six,” meanwhile I’m thinking, “The characters aren’t deep enough!” Or, “I liked this character, but could you weave him into the plot a little more?” whereas I was worried about the sentence structure in that part of the book.

I read a writing book once, from a very well-known / best-selling author who said she let several friends read a novel once and all of them complained about the exact same thing. She had a choice whether to try and fix it (which would mean hours and hours of work, tearing up and reconstructing chapters to fix it)… or to sell the book to a publisher. She sold it. They published it. And when the reviews first came out, she thought, “Oh, they’re all going to harp on that one flaw.”

None of them did. No one noticed it. No one commented. No one thought it was a big deal. That huge glaring “error” her friends noticed went unnoticed by the world – or at least, enough people for it to catch no air time. She could have spent another six to twelve months fixing that flaw… would it have been a better book? Maybe. But it proved to her that: the world is hard to please, the world really doesn’t care if you spend a thousand hours or twelve thousand hours on a book, and everyone is going to harp on something different, so … a book in your hand is better than a perfect, imaginary book in your head.

Are you an NF type by any chance? They struggle the hardest with wanting to live up to some perfect ‘ideal’ / imaginary potential which is not always grounded in reality. Their intuition feeds them all kinds of paranoid thoughts about their writing ability / plot construction / detail-focus / etc, that trust me, very few other people notice or care about. And the more research you do, the more you can feed those problems.

Here’s a few solutions:

Recognize perfect does not exist. This is a made-up thing by evil goblins to keep you from feeling good about what you write. Screw ‘em.

Do your best. Is it not good enough? Tough. If you did your best, no one can ask anything more of you – including yourself. Writing is a skill enhanced with time and practice. You will be a better writer in ten years than you are right now – but to BECOME that better writer, you have to write right now.

Consciously Improve. I read an excellent article once about how it takes a thousand hours of practice to become an expert at something – but a thousand hours does not mean practicing in general, it means practicing with intent. Let me give you an example: you notice as a writer that you tend to use a lot of adverbs instead of strong verbs. Practicing in general would be continuing to write, but using 10,000 adverbs – as usual. You are teaching yourself nothing, just repeating your old mistakes – and not becoming a better writer. Practicing with intent is continuing to write and training your brain to seek our and supply and use strong verbs instead of adverbs.

Do not seek advice from other perfectionists. Two unreasonable idealists do not make one realist. And do not put ideas into your proof / beta reader’s mind; they will go in looking for that flaw and reaffirm your concerns. Trust me, a fresh pair of eyes will find things wrong you did not think of, and may not consider what you’re worried about as a problem. If you have five beta readers, and they all say something different, you cannot make anything perfect by listening to all of them (unless they all have a point); but if five of them say the exact same thing (”Joe is a poorly developed character…”)… LISTEN.

Set reasonable standards for yourself that conform to good writing (such as: I will proof read it to catch any mistakes, I will not over-use adverbs, I will run it through a grammar checker to see if my sentence structure is good) … and then stick to them. Force yourself to stick to them.

Do not borrow trouble. Do not compare yourself to other writers. Do not envy other writers. Do not read other writers, while working on a project, if you have learned in the past that this triggers your fear / perfectionism and makes you overly hard on yourself. (This is why I read no fiction while writing novels; my Ne likes to play the comparison game and I always come up short.)

Okay, the strengths and weaknesses: (these are SUBJECTIVE… and remember, readers of your own type won’t consider them flaws)

NFs: [weaknesses] too much desire to be perfect / too unrealistic / high of standards which stalls the writing process, a lot of trouble adding in the right amount of description. [strengths] Intuitive understanding of emotional dynamics, able to write compelling characters with complex psychological motives.

NTs: [weaknesses] may have unrealistic / perfectionist tendencies / too high of self-standards, a lot of trouble adding in the right amount of description, and sometimes, flat or emotionless characters. [strengths] Often excellent satirists or comedic writers with zany world approaches and good at jarring the reader from their comfort zone.

SFs: [weaknesses] may use too much detail / descriptions / focus on things that do not drive the plot forward, be fussy about making their story ‘realistic’ and worry their ideas aren’t original enough. [strengths] Terrific at creating realistic, emotionally dynamic characters and world building in ways that make the world seem real (focus on describing actions / events, and noticing everyday things that intuitive writers tend to forget about).

STjs: [weaknesses] may become absorbed in making their stories logical / realistic and focus more on that than emotional connections or growth between characters; may forget to explain motives or clumsily handle emotions or fall into using too much description which slows the plot. [strengths] Excellent at creating realistic, complex, dynamic worlds full of details, often packed with action.

- ENFP Mod

#question #writing #infj #enfj #infp #enfp #intj #entj #entp #intp #estp #istp #esfp #isfp #estj #istj #esfj #isfj #mbti

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lovingnikiforov · 7 years ago

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Trying this again (evidently I discovered a keyboard shortcut for posting earlier...fun). Tagged by @bandaged-chessmaster, thanks Annie!!

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

Ahh, I’m super melodramatic and I had a different AO3 account that some people (read as, my parents) found so I went: “no one will find this because I’m…..writing from the shadows.”

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos)

Bookmarks- Equivalent Exchange (144) Subscriptions- Equivalent Exchange (303) Hits- Illustrations of Lying (6560) Kudos- don’t you ever tame your demons (511)

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

I wanted something that had a degree of personalization without actually being me in the icon so this is great because I’m also a black woman (and she’s hiding her face so it fits the melodrama I got going on).

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

!!! I have so many amazing commenters who I see on most of my fics (and yes I do remember your usernames). I’m actually working on an appreciation list for @ficwritersweek next week so stay posted!

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

My all-time favorite fic is a HP fic called Cunning and Ambition. The writers went through and rewrote the first five HP books with Harry in Slytherin house. It’s technically unfinished because they didn’t write all seven books but….it’s so fucking good.

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

So many jfc. Can’t believe I have to count this and AO3 won’t tell me….I’m subscribed to 48 stories. I have 434 bookmarked.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

Mafia Boss!Dazai…but is it really an AU or am I just predicting the future?

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

Subscriptions: 113 Bookmarked: 816

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

🤔🤔 nope. 10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

Replying to comments!! I generally don’t reply because I never know what to say and then I feel bad bc people are so nice to me rip

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

Popular ships. Across the…6 or 7 (?) fandoms I’ve written for I think I’ve only ended up writing for a rarepair once. No that’s a lie, I just remembered I decided to pick up every single rarepair in one fandom and write for them all but that’s a long story.

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

Across 2 AO3 accounts and fics I’ve orphaned….probably somewhere around 50.

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

In general...idk somewhere in the hundreds. In just my fic folder 56.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

Write them down. I have story ideas just floating between so many notebooks it’s a mess.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

Once upon a time in an old fandom like 3 years ago.

16. How did you discover AO3?

I actually joined when it was first getting popular and the waiting list was intense. The buzz tugged me over there.

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

In an old fandom, yes. In all the others, lol no. In yoi, no. In bsd......popular.

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

Ahh, I just say ‘my readers’.

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

No. I started writing fic before I had any idea what was going on.

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

Find a support group! Or a support person. Someone (or a group of someones) who you can bounce your ideas off of or can beta your fic and generally be encouraging. Writing is intimidating so finding people to help you get through it is key!

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

Depends on the story. IoL and dyetyd were originally plotted out to the chapter but dyetyd decided it didn’t like that so I was changing things constantly. For Equivalent Exchange, I have a basic outline of ‘intro, rising action, climax, resolution’. And where your loyalties lie is just doing whatever the fuck it wants.

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

Way back in the day. I probably cried.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

Fluff. My brain is hardwired to make my character suffer. Also smut is hard for me, it takes like 6x longer than the rest of the story to write.

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

Equivalent Exchange- viktuuri magic/fantasy!au where your loyalties lie- soukoku yakuza/arranged marriage!au Rent a (boy)Friend- phichuuri fake dating!au

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

Sometimes. If an idea just grabs my by my face and says ‘you have to write me’ I might start planning immediately.

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

1k a day!

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

Absolutely. The difference between my first fics and what I’ve written for bsd are night and day. Even within my bsd fics the difference between my earlier ones and newest ones are fairly stark.

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

on cliff’s edge- It was fun! I wrote it as a stress reliever whenever I got stuck on dyetyd and I’m pleased with how it turned out.

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

Hmmm, I have stories I think I could have done better with but I won’t call anyone of them least favorites.

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

Hopefully my novel will be done by then.

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

Building intrigue. I’m really good at holding back information to the point where I have to go back and write in reveals sometimes because I’ll just instinctively skip them lol.

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Pacing. Making sure the plot and the characters are developing at a natural speed and that nothing feels rushed unnecessarily and nothing drags.

33. Why do you write?

Writing is 100% my passion, I could go on and on for days about how much I love to write. Being able to create people and their motivations and then weave an entire world around them is just so....mind-blowing, I can’t even articulate it.

Tagging: @aizawashoutah @goddamnitdazai @itsclowreedsfault and @fy-soukoku. Apologies if you’ve already been tagged! Unless you didn’t do it, in which case I take back my apology.

#dessa.txt #t: tag game #ty for the tag annie you hit me at the perfect time!1 #(which is right before work for anyone keeping track)#this was fun #long post

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gremlinwithacause · 7 years ago

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Tagged by @cloversdreams . Looks pretty interesting to do!

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

Well I like magic (huge fantasy nerd here, shocker), and my middle name is Mackenzie. Also middle names were like made to ward off witch craft (true name shit, but I won’t get into it). So yeah.

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos)

Bookmarks: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/10921746/chapters/24290337">Coffee Cans and Energy Drinks</a> (302)

Subscriptions: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/10921746/chapters/24290337">Coffee Cans and Energy Drinks</a> (199)

Hits: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/10921746/chapters/24290337">Coffee Cans and Energy Drinks</a> (15462)

Kudos: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/10921746/chapters/24290337">Coffee Cans and Energy Drinks</a> (1441)

Yeah.... not surprised tbh. I’ll never be able to replicate this ever.

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

It’s KA from Oyasumi Jack the Ripper. A really unknown manga that i love with all my heart. And KA is my favorite character, so it makes sense to me.

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

I have a few regular commenters! Idk their tumblrs or if they have any. I wouldn’t say I have a favorite, but I especially love the longer commenters

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

Nope. I don’t reread things unless I’m looking for some specific thing in it.

((Cut for length))

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

About five stories, and I don’t use bookmarks. I usually just read the entirety of a fic in one sitting or leave the tab open.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

Usually fantasy?? Or canon?? It really depends on what you’re talking about.

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

81 user subscriptions I think is the right thing. And I think the bookmark is 695? I don’t really believe that, but yeah I guess that’s a thing.

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

Not really??? I don’t think so, at least. 10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

Yup. I hate my descriptions, and the fact I use a probably too much dialogue. I wish I wasn’t so awkward so I could reply to comments, and I want to do better updates, obviously.

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

I’m sorry is this even a question. I’m like at the top of the bakushin tag.

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

19 in total, but one of them is a big compilation of a bunch of mini ones

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

Let’s just say a lot.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

In the brain. My brain is weird in remembering all the details about my stories but forgetting if I ate anything.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

Nope!

16. How did you discover AO3?

I was looking for fics and decided that I was done with ff.net. It was a pretty quick switch

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

Not in the tiniest way.

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

Nope. I mean I don’t think I have a lot of fans, so I’ve never put any thought into it.

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

Yup! A friend of mine was one of them (she writes fanfics on ff.net despite me telling her to switch over to ao3) and basically a lot of other authors on ao3. I guess the biggest in the rarepair department and in general was @cloversdreams

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

Keep writing! Even if you think it’s shit! If you think your twists/turns in the plot are predictable, that’s because YOU’RE writing it. Other people usually don’t expect it. And don’t try to please everyone, but don’t be against taking suggestions.

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

My life mottos are “if you can’t amaze them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit” and “fake it till you make it”

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

Surprisingly not?? I mean I write for a rarepair, so there’s not too much of an audience.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

Action, sorta, but mostly the emotionally based ones, or where it’s all just feeling.

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

Love the World Like I Should, my nanowrimo project, Middle of Nowhere Town, and an even rarer pair that I might never post :3

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

It all just kind of happens at once? It’s just a mess of stories and plot lines and characters. I don’t even know how it works

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

It used to be 2000, or around that, every day. Now I try to add on a few sentences to each project to see if it starts any kind of thought.

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

Oh yeah! My previous stories that never got posted all sucked. I’m sort of proud of what I write now.

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/12187344">About That</a>

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

the one with the kids that I won’t even link

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

Nowhere, really. I would love to be writing professionally, or freelance, but I don’t think it’s going to happen

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

To me, it’s getting the ideas. Putting it on paper or doc, whatever, is a lot harder than nonwriters think. Second would be the dialogue because I love dialogue

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Starting a story, continuing after finishing one idea, and conveying emotions.

33. Why do you write?

Because reality sucks and everyone has an escape method. Writing is mine.

(and who’s gonna fill the bakushin tag if I don’t)

#tagged in a thing #shut up mack

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natalieweepoetry · 7 years ago

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Are there or have there been any particular teachers, professors, or other adult mentors in your life that have influenced you and your writing? Also, how did you become confident in your work? To be a bit more specific, I'm curious, inner-confidence aside, how do you know/decide what outside opinions/reviews/criticisms to take to heart? As in, who's opinion of your work do you trust enough to take their advice in terms of helping you improve or edit a poem?

Hello!! I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to respond! Thank you so much for your questions!

Well… My junior college literature teacher was a verbally abusive woman who swore at students and slammed doors, and pretty much terrified me out of writing as a career. I guess she influenced me in that I wanted to succeed just to spite her. My sociology professors were godsends and I absolutely loved my cultural studies professors. They taught me the importance of positionality and reflexivity, which is something I hope to work on more.

Most of my confidence came from writing online and figuring out what I personally liked to see in writing—it’s probably an unusual starting point, but hey. A lot of it, I think, was curating a sense of style I personally enjoyed and then adapting aspects of it and making it my own. I continued doing that professionally and learning techniques by writing. Like, my writing improves the most 1 week before something is due for submission, just because during that week I’ll rewrite the same thing 1000 times before submission. And that improvement is something you can sense! Like maybe words come easier or you phrase something in a way that you wouldn’t have been able to a year or month or day ago. Seeing those moments give me confidence in myself, which in turn enables me to carry myself forward in writing!

I don’t think you ever really know what outside opinions/reviews/criticisms to take to heart. For me, it was always more about what I liked. Was I writing like someone I could be proud of? That was more important to me than anything. It’s really tempting, as a young poet, to kind of trust someone’s words 100% on your writing, but that may not always be the best thing to do.

Case in point: I was part of a poet-in-residence program while working on “The Other Woman”, and was set up with a prize-winning Canadian poet. Her feedback was that (1) the form of my poem didn’t seem to have a purpose and I should stick to a more regular form, (2) there wasn’t a single consistent image which meant there was way too much going on, (3) I should think about writing only as a hobby unless my husband could support me and the kids.

So I like, went back, looked at my poem, and decided that I could work on (1) more technically but I didn’t want to use a regular form, (2) was definitely advice I needed to hear and helped me tremendously in getting this poem into The Adroit Journal, and as for (3) this old straight white woman just could not fathom that I was a young Asian lesbian.

So working on stuff is kind of like that. There’s no 100% perfect advice. It’s a lot of critical listening, which is figuring out what works for you and understanding someone else’s positionality when they’re giving you advice, and using what you can to make yourself better. Like, writing is kind of like a video game in that occasionally you meet characters who hand you random objects, the characters being people and objects being feedback. It’s important to pick those objects up and inspect them, because if you don’t pick them up at all, you won’t know anything about what’s being offered. But in this game, what’s your character’s end goal, and how does keeping that object help?

TL;DR: What’s the style you want to achieve as a writer? What techniques do you want to be better at? I find that those questions usually guide me when making my decisions about what writing advice to take to heart.

I hope this helped!!

#thank you for your questions! <3 #I'm sorry it's taken so long!#ask #ATLASOFIMPOSSIBLEDREAMS #atlasofimpossibledreams

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oprpadvice-blog · 7 years ago

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1 Hi, if it's okay can I ask for some kind of advice? I've started a RP blog (usagiemiko) for an oc and it's been active since March (ish) but I never get any anyone interested in me, I have to remind (or at least feel like I'm reminding) other people to respond. Only twice before have people responded without needing prompts. And when I first started I contacted others to only have a thread stop after one or two responses. I initially had 4 people who started, 3 which have stopped and one who's

been RPing with others while not interacting with me (makes me feel worthless) and 1 who started to plan with me to only stop. I just want some interaction and I’ve poured my heart and soul out into this. I’ve asked RP blogs and that kind of stuff to follow/promo me, which they have done to no avail. And I’ve put my character’s info/rules/format and all that stuff. And I don’t see much of a difference between my OC and other OP OCs besides interaction and brand. Any input? 2/done.

;;I feel like this is something I discuss quite often on this blog , but I would like to start off by saying I am sorry you feel as though people are not interested in your OC . I have answered similar questions here , here , here , here and here .

Next is an advice I always tend to give people regarding this matter , but do not wait for people to display interest in you , instead you really have to put yourself out there and try to approach them first . Just like you don’t think people are interested , others would not know you are in fact interested in interacting with them unless you display this as well .

Second is try to be patient with your roleplay partners , sometimes people need days or weeks or in some cases even longer to find their muse and manage a response . Not everyone can pull out replies instantly or always have the energy and motivation to do so , just because they did not instantly reply to your thread while responding to others does not mean they want to stop interacting with you .

If you feel that way , however , then my advice to you would be to contact them regarding it and I do not mean pressuring them for a response , but instead asking if they had dropped the thread and politely inquiring why they did so . Communication is always key and while I personally , would not have any way of knowing why your partners would stop or lose interest , the best way for you to find out is to ask them yourself to get a better insight on why this may be happening and how to best avoid it .

Anything else I can give you is general roleplaying advice but I hope it will be of help anyway:

Try to have a proper tagging system if you don’t and this doesn’t necessarily have to be long fancy ones but simple ones could work too , and to not reblog too many posts unrelated to roleplaying .

Try to cut your posts when possible.

Pay attention to people’s rules and make sure you aren’t breaking any of them.

Always make sure your replies give your partner something to work with . This is something a lot of roleplayers need to pay attention to but you can be the best writer out there and have the most developed and well panned OC but unless you give your partner something they can reply to , they won’t be able to .

Address their muse , ask a question , commit an action involving their muse that their character would have to react to — basically don’t expect them to do all the work or completely lead the thread as roleplaying is a team work activity .

Also another advice would be to eliminate the way of thinking claiming others get attention based on brand , etc . I think it’s always best to try and identify where someone may be lacking and improve those parts rather than get swept up by comparisons of jealousy and such .

I am in no way saying that your Original Character is not in fact as well developed as others may be , but the beautiful thing about original characters in my opinion , is the limitless variations that can exist of them and how different they can be , so perhaps the lack of difference you address in itself could be contributing to the problem . This is merely a suggestion and not based on actually reading up on your muse .

However , if you need feedback on your original character then may I also suggest you head to @opocreviews . They offer great constructive criticism and advice that could help you identify any issues with your muse and aid you in developing them in a manner that could make them more attractable to your partners .

I wish you the best of luck .

#;;oc #;;advice #freezestime #;;ask #;;rp

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kestrel-of-herran · 8 years ago

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Hello! I really love your poetry and I was wondering if you had any advice or tips for when it comes to writing poetry/starting to write poetry?

Hello!

First of all, thank you so much for reading my poetry and thanks for asking!!!

I hope you’re in the mood for reading, because this is gonna be l o n g.

STEP ONE: GETTING STARTED

- The first thing you should do if you want to start writing, or just start doing it on a regular basis, is to get inspired. And I don’t mean sitting around, waiting for the muse to come visit you. Inspiration comes not from having extraordinary things happen to you, but from always trying to discover something interesting and unusual about your immediate surroundings. Inspiration comes from thinking. Watch your thoughts. Describe the things you see in your mind, ask yourself what feelings and thoughts they evoke in you, and why that might be. Keep your brain muscles fit - draw connections between objects that are not usually regarded as similar, concentrate on the details, invent stories in your head on your way - it’s would also make your alone time much more interesting!

- Get to know yourself. Poetry is an excellent way to examine your feelings and accept yourself as the person you are. It’s also a way to take control back from your emotions when they seem overwhelming and scary. Don’t shy away from your feelings - get to the core of each emotion! The moment you understand why you feel the way you do, you’ll be able to cope with it and find a way to feel better! :)

- Find connections between your feelings and the world around you. Now that you know how you feel and why, think about the things that have made an impression on you recently, and match them to your current thoughts! The more you think about your ideas, the more different points of view you regard them from, the deeper you will explore into them and the better you will understand them!

STEP TWO: GETTING IT RIGHT

- Take notes. It might sound tempting to store your visions only in your memory, but trust me, memory has an attitude of its own, and can be suprisingly single-minded and stubborn sometimes. You know how when you suddenly recall something you realize that in a moment you weren’t aware of that thing ever happening? If you want to develop your ideas, you have to keep them ordered. The best advice I can offer is to make a notebook or simply a file in your phone where you can write your thoughts down in plain text, when you’re particularly satisfied with them.That will allow you to go back to them as often as you like, and draw inspiration from them whenever you need it!

- Read. Vocabulary is the most important thing in poetry (imho), especially if you want to write in rhyme. Getting to know the language is even more important if you’re not writing in your mother tongue (as I am), so don’t hesitate to learn these new words - but don’t hang on to each one! Sort the new words that are most common and learn them, because using uncommon words can be frustrating for the reader (more on that later). Make sure you understand the context of the words you’re using, so as to not convey the wrong meaning!

Example 1:

Don’t tell meFor spoken words, they fumbleAnd fall to the groundWrite it down.

Don’t play meFor sung words, they waverAnd lose in the soundWrite it down.

As you can see, the word fumble should be replaced with tumble so the right meaning will be conveyed. Always check the words you’re using, especially if you just added them to your vocabulary!

STEP THREE: GET TO WRITING

- Write it down. It doesn’t matter in what form - uneven rhyme, blank verse, or even plain text - the most important thing is to get your ideas ordered. Once you figure out what you want to write about, the rest comes easily!

Example 2:

oh, I would whisk you awaysend you on a missioncount down the thingsto make you beat for

and I’d shoo you awaywhen you came back faithfullyand scold you forbeing a fickle heart

thank God I finallyopened up my rib cageand you, my bruised, my loverrested in my own chest

Now, this is a very rough draft that, of course, is what I would have called absolute trash had I not concidered it as the mere spine on which to place the bones and flesh of my actual poem! It as a very common mistake, so don’t make it! If there is a law to writing, it is do not delete anything. You never know when you can turn a failed verse into a materpiece!

- Plan. Planning is a writer’s best friend. Think about the structure you want to use, focus on the begining and the end - these should be your strongest points! Speaking of structure, that’s one very helpful device - a mirror frame or a refrain would help you organize your poem around a phrase/motif, and make your writing more coherent and your thought process easier to follow. Remember, the reader doesn’t know your way of thinking, and can’t always get adjusted to it unless you help them a little!

Example 3:

Oh, why don’t you wander,My little fickle heart?There’s a rose-bud– there’s a thunderWhy not settle for that?

“Roses stung me, thunder burned me,”Said the little fickle heart.“So I stole a petal and a flash,Won’t you let me now come back?”

Oh, but what of wonder,My little fickle heart?Worlds await you– words will mend youWhy not settle for that?

“Words enslaved me, worlds forsakeme,When their magic had worn out.But I brought a paper and a pen,Won’t you let me back again?”

Ah, you’re so ungrateful,My little fickle heart!Life will bend you– I’ll betray youWhy d'you settle for that?

“‘Long as you would let me restBruised and bleeding in your chest,‘Tis but all I’ll ever ask,”Said the little fickle heart.

Now this is the beautiful poem that came out of that messy draft! :D

- Forget the thesaurus. Draw your words from memory and not from a dictionary, unless you want your writing to turn into an incoprehensible mess of complicated words whose meaning even you don’t remember

Example 4:

The ink of my soul got blurred under yourfingertipsThe solidness of my bones went fluidThe width of my gaze narrowed down to your faceIn the hole between my lungs your heart found a place

Our words lost their outlines in the sweetest ofsighsAnd light and shade colorizedWe put liquefied stars in each other’s eyesBut the universe expands and gravity took our hands

It tore through our lungs and our united breathsgot burnedDesecrated our dreams and our starlight refracted in tearsSat like morbid growth on the tips of our tonguesWhispered blood in our ears ‘till we choked on the feeling

And acid rain fell from the atmosphereOur hearts beat brokenly for no-one to hearFingerprints we left faded from our handsThank God we’re sane again

(I have absolutely no idea what desecrate means :D)

- Revise. The key to editing is to put as much distance between yourself and the work you’re editing as you can. If you try to edit as soon as you finish, you will most likely find little to none faults in your poem (the euphoria of finishing a piece plays a big part); but you will find that in a couple of weeks you’re able to look at your work on a critical level, acknowledge it’s strong points and correct it’s weak ones. Don’t forget to add punctuation - its appropriate use will influence the reading speed make longer works more easy to read!

- Reimagine your old work. Change the meaning of your old poems in a way that is more relevant to you now - that’s a quick way to exersize and to use the structure of an old piece you like but don’t consider good enough for public

Example 5:

Autumn rainIt’s a shameThat you’re somewhereAnd it’s not Paris

Sort of retroSort of well-knownThat you’re somewhereAnd it’s not Paris

I wear your hatI think of thatThat you’re somewhereAnd it’s not Paris

I blow a kissI wish you wishedYou weren’t somewhereThat wasn’t Paris

Example 6:

Autumn rainIt’s a shameThat you’re somewhereAnd it’s not Paris

Sort of retroSort of well-knownAnother affairAnd it’s not Paris

Your letter’s lateAnd your glass of champagneIs getting you somewhereAnd it’s not Paris

But when the mud’s goneI’ll be your widowYou won’t be sparedAnd it will be Paris

(footnote: The Widow is another term for The Guillotine)

- Do warm ups. Allow yourself to write several mediocre pieces before you start writing with thought. Take your time! A four-liner might take five miuntes, but a long, complicated poem could take more than an hour. Remember, the more you think about it, the closer you’ll get to perfecting it!

STEP FOUR: GET FEEDBACK

- Ask your friends, family and teachers to read your work and express their opinon on it. Sharing can be really intimidating, but the way to improve is to get someone else’s view on your writing. There is a large number of poetry websites where you can get feedback quickly, but its quality might not be good. Therefore, asking someone who knows you personally is the most effective way to get relevant feedback. Don’t be afraid that you’re a “burden” to people in asking them to spend some time on your poetry - most people are delighted that you’re seeking their guidance and will take the task very seriously. Also, it’s really motivatng - you never know when your trash won’t turn out to be somebody’s treasure! :)

- Most of all, keep writing. No matter if you do it once a day or once a month, your writing can only develop if you work on it. Even writing fanfiction in your head can make a difference! And never ever give up on your dreams, no matter how “impossible” they look - I wrote song lyrics for 3 years, completing more than 300 pieces of original text and melody, and even though I never got one of them performed on stage or recorded, all of the word inventing, grammar rules ignoring and cliches got me really familiar with rhyme and rhythm. Break the rules all you like - it will only make you better acquianted with them!

KEEP MAKING YOUR ART. THE WORLD NEEDS IT.

#lilly talks #anonymous #writing reference #writing resources #writing help #writing advice #keep writing #poets on poetry #writers on tumblr #poets on tumblr #poetry advice

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lightdark18-blog · 8 years ago

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How to Fix RWBY Volume 4

I can’t bring myself to say I hate this volume. But I can’t bring myself to say it was fantastic either. After the drama of V3, it felt good to relax a little bit on the plot and attempt to balance world-building and character development to set up for later, bigger events in the story. However, as it much as it seems like I’m playing a broken record by saying this, the idea of segmenting all of Team RWBY’s individual subplots in a relatively short show like RWBY may work on paper, but it requires very fast pacing and extremely powerful scenes, something which this volume seemed to lack. Thus, I will talk about how V4 could have been improved to give it much better character development and an overall more exciting narrative.

Disclaimers: I will be structuring my arguments into individual sections in the following order: Team RNJR, Weiss, Blake, Yang, Oscar, Team WTCH, and Other Improvements. You can scroll down to whichever one you’d like, or you could read the whole thing. I will be talking about everything, including the finale, so if you haven’t finished the volume, you might want to do that. Spoilers will be flying. I won’t be touching World of Remnant, because that isn’t really part of the story as it is exposition (personally, I think it’s stupid that Miles and Kerry need to resort to exposition episodes rather than working the exposition directly into the plot, but whatever). Also, I won’t be addressing ship concerns. I mean, Renora is canon this volume, what more do you want?

Thus, without further ado, let’s begin this shitpost!

Team RNJR:

Explain why the team walked rather than taking trains. It’s great that all of Team RWBY will reunite at Mistral, and I will praise the volume for its pacing in this regard. However, the fact remains that RNJR could have gotten there much faster had they taken a train like Oscar did. Would it cut out a lot of RNJR’s tension this volume? Yes, unless you have Tyrian hijack the train, forcing RNJR to flee (maybe jump off the train, I don’t know) and walk the rest of the way. This would not account for 6 to 8 months’ worth of travel, but that flaw hurts the entire volume more than RNJR itself.

Ren talks too much. I’m a writer. It is very hard to write character development for a silent character, but it can be done. It just takes skill and delicate dialogue crafting. I don’t think Miles and Kerry understand this, and I have a few reasons why In Volume 3, Ren was relevant in the first couple episodes, where he would make constant remarks about Nora’s vomit comment in Episode 1, take an active part in JNPR’s strategies before their Episode 2 fight, and make sarcastic remarks when Jaune was strategizing (Jaune: “Ren, take out the sniper!”, Ren: “Sure, why not?”) All of this feels out of character. Fast forward to V4, where Ren becomes relevant, and they constantly have him give commentary on fights, argues with Nora about the team name, talks to a dying villager, etc. I’m not saying that silent characters don’t interact with people (I’m an introvert, so I know this for a fact), but Ren’s place in the story felt extremely deviant from the first to volumes. At the end of the day, once Kuroyuri comes, the sudden care and outbursts that Ren has towards the Nuckelavee and his home village should have been a drastic character change that the audience would have noticed and praised, but Ren’s overbearing role in the volume just ruins the impact of the character change.

Making Jaune the strategist is fine. Stealing time away from Ruby is not. Many people have already commented on this, so I’ll be brief. Jaune is on a good path to becoming the paladin of this show: the Lawful Good character that starts off shit-tier, but grows through his many experiences to become one of the show’s greatest characters. Think Donnel from Fire Emblem: Awakening. I’m excited for this change, and I’m even fine with his skepticism towards Qrow and how Pyrrha had to choose her role as a maiden. However, Ruby takes a back seat to all this development. Miles and Kerry keep her optimistic, naïve attitude for the sake of consistency, but at the expense of giving her development. Had she not read aloud her letter to Yang, I think Jaune would have had more lines than Ruby. And if there is anything that any story should NEVER do, it is keep attention away from the hero of the story. If Ruby is the main character, make her act like it. Have her learn new battle strategies. Make her use her new electricity and fire bullets more. Rewrite the fights to force Ruby to fight alone at times. Have her give feedback on what she thought of Tyrian, or Salem. Have her give feedback on Kuroyuri. ANYTHING to give Ruby more relevance this volume than just dragging her along for the ride. I hope that V5 goes better for giving Ruby screen time, because this volume did not.

Don’t drop Pyrrha’s attempt at communicating. Episode 2 felt strong in the regard that Pyrrha was attempting to communicate with Ruby (somehow), and I felt that this would come in handy in the finale fight. Guess what? It didn’t. Not once was it ever relevant again. And all it did was wake Ruby up to see Jaune training, which felt like a much better way to put Pyrrha in the volume. I like to think that Pyrrha turning into dust reflects how Ul in Fairy Tail became water, and communicated with Ultear on Tenrou Island by showing her memories (sorry to all who haven’t watched Fairy Tail because you won’t get this at all). Pyrrha’s soul is still alive somewhere in a dust form, and is attempting to tell Ruby something. If you want to use this, save it for a later volume. I guarantee that because RWBY has such a large gap between seasons, only hardcore fans will remember any of Pyrrha’s communication come V5.

Give the Bandits a role. I never saw one bandit this entire volume (no, I don’t count Raven). This would have been a PERFECT time to introduce them, especially since they were mentioned in Episode 2 after they attacked Shion Village. Nope. However, I do have a good way on how to introduce them in a later point (see Yang).

Give us Jaune’s semblance. Seriously. The new sword felt extremely underwhelming. I would rather see his semblance than a sword sheath that gives his sword a little extra cutting power (which never even proved that relevant in the Nuckelavee fight).

Explain why Tyrian is interested in Jaune. Is it because of Pyrrha? Is it because of his character? Is it because he could be the paladin that kills Salem at the end of the show, only for Raven to be revealed as the show’s final antagonist (look, that’s just my theory)? Beats me, because Jaune nor Tyrian (when he’s crying like a bitch to Salem) never bring it up again.

Shame how a stupid reaction shot allowed Qrow to be poisoned. When I was watching the Qrow vs. Tyrian fight, I had very little problems with it. Right up until Qrow cut the wooden board that was going to crush Ruby (a clever instance of his bad luck semblance). Let me explain my reaction:

Qrow: *cuts board*

Me: K.

Ruby: *smiles at Qrow*

Me: You realize that there’s a psychotic scorpion Faunus that could literally poison any of you since you’re both low on aura, right? Maybe you ought to turn back to hi-

Qrow: *smiles at Ruby*

Me: DUDE WTF YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTI-

Qrow: Aaah! *gets stung*

Me: *insert Michael Rage Quit dialogue here*

Explain how Ruby was able to cut off Tyrian’s stinger. So, Tyrian’s stinger could block Nora’s fully-charged hammer, Ruby’s scope bullets (even without him seeing their trajectory), and various other attacks, but all Ruby has to do is shoot him while his guard is down? Is this that “don’t let your guard down” BS that Goku suffered from in Resurrection F? Is Aura like Nen in Hunter x Hunter, and you have to force it to a specific point to block, else your limb is coming off? It makes no sense, even if Tyrian screaming “You BITCH!” is hilarious.

Tyrian should have been captured. I’ll talk later about how Monty warned against team fighting, and how RT refuses to follow his advice by choreographing bad teamwork fights, but why didn’t Ren and Nora, maybe even Ruby, go after him? He was low on aura. He could have been captured and questioned. Hell, some RWDE critics preferred that the Tyrian fight occur in a forest so Tyrian could have legitimately gotten away. Why not that?

The Relics are DUMB. D. U. M. B. Welp, Miles and Kerry just retconned Torchwick stealing all the dust again in V2, didn’t they? I was 100% sure at the end of V3 that Salem’s plan was to amount enough dust to infuse it into her body and become some sort of Dust God (which falls in line with the dust exposition in Volumes 1 and 2), and terror through attacking the schools was the only way to eliminate any threats in her way. Nope. Now we have out-of-place Relic bullshit that I’m certain Miles and Kerry just pulled out of their asses after Monty died and the holes in the story he planned began to surface. Shane’s letter suggested to me that RT wanted to take RWBY in their own direction, and retconning even the basic exposition of the OPENING EPISODE of the series just feels desperate. Stop taking our attention away from Dust, Aura, Semblance, and any of the other unique elements that make up the story. If you want to make a mythology, put in in place either at the beginning of the story, or in line with the past exposition. Miles and Kerry did neither. What’s next? By the end of the summer, a comet will arrive and give the Maidens unbelievable strength, and Salem plans to manipulate them to finish the war once and for all?

Explain why Qrow is a teacher. Qrow’s semblance is fine…except for the fact that V1, E1 stated that Qrow was a teacher. Why would Qrow be a teacher if he instigates bad luck onto his students? Wouldn’t he get like a 1.0 on RateMyProfessor? Or is this just another retcon?

“Don’t you know, you never split the party?” I don’t have too much of an argument for this, for RNJR splitting up to both Kuroyuri and Mistral sounds okay, but doesn’t that make both parties extremely vulnerable to large-scale Grimm attacks? Thank the two gods the Nuckelavee needed to wait for the plot to bring RNJR back together before it attacked, else we could be having one or two more Pyrrha’s on our hands.

Everything about Kuroyuri is fine, but it’s in the wrong volume. I like the Kuroyuri mini-arc, as well as Ren and Nora’s development, but let’s be honest. This volume is supposed about Team RWBY’s development. Cut Kuroyuri from this volume and give more screen time to Weiss, Yang, Blake, or literally anyone else. Kuroyuri isn’t far from Mistral, so it might’ve worked better as a mid-season finale for V5. Maybe. Eh.

Mistral airships giving RNJR a lift is just plot-convenient BS. “Lol bro we saw da smoke n we thot someone wus smoking weed and we wnted to buy a few grams”. At least that would have been kind of funny. But no. Mistral helicopters should not have been able to see the Grimm smoke, and immediately drop everything to show up at Kuroyuri, where they rescue COMPLETE STRANGERS to invite them to the kingdom. BS.

Weiss:

Explain Whitley and Weiss’ mother. Contrary to popular opinion, I like Jacques. He is certainly the “Rich Asshole Type A: the Overprotective/Abusive Father” character, but at least his devotion to maintain his rich and comfortable lifestyle falls in line with the absolute power dynamic that Atlas was established to have (I could even talk about how this reflects real-world politics right now, but I won’t). Whitley never felt necessary to introduce to the plot: all he did was go down on Jacques or criticize Weiss. I have a good way on how to make him relevant on a later point. Also, Weiss’ mother was mentioned once, “drinking in the garden”. You know what the powerful girl vs. refrained mother conflict reminds me of? Kallen from Code Geass. Did that show handle the conflict well? Yes. Could RWBY handle it well? Probably. Did it even try? No.

Explain Klein. Not a big issue, but what is up with Klein’s different personalities? Is this a reference to Launch from Dragon Ball with his sneezing, or does he have legitimate dissociative identity disorder? Considering that Klein probably won’t ever be relevant again, I don’t think we’ll get the answer, even though I wish we could. If J. Michael Tatum was hired to play a butler, his most famous role in his career (Sebastian from Black Butler), make him interesting.

Weiss’ song was beautiful, but I still have a couple issues. First, Casey Lee singing as Weiss just looks and sounds off. I know they didn’t have much choice, but maybe they could have had Kara Eberle sing it and heavily edit her vocals. Or maybe she has a naturally beautiful singing voice, I don’t know. Also, this song tends to have even less subtle lyrics than most of the RWBY songs so far. This is entirely a “daddy issue” song. Make it a bit more powerful by showing some of Weiss’ positive personality traits in the lyrics.

Henry Marigold’s role in the story is just too unclear. When you give a character a first and last name, HE/SHE SHOULD BE RELEVANT. Miles and Kerry did not follow through on this with the minor characters of Volume 3, and I doubt they will ever mention Henry again. Then again, that’s fine, even though he could’ve represented the youthful perception of Atlas’ place in the world that reflects the ego of Atlas’ parental and corporate figures which Weiss is precisely trying to fight in her character arc. But hey, what do I know?

This whole “rich people are snobs” shtick is just cliché. It makes logical sense for Atlas to have this mindset (absolute power corrupts absolutely), but it’s too cliché to consider interesting. Give it a twist. Maybe they want to gain control of the kingdom defenses in the rest of Remnant by using Veil and the Fall of Beacon as an excuse to supply better defenses.

Weiss’ rebellion feels weak, as well as her anticlimactic Summoning. Weiss summons a boar about to murder Rich Asshole Type B: the Complete Bitch? Ironwood ex machina, and Weiss never mentions her feelings about her uncontrollable summoning. Jacques locks her in her room and strips her of her heiress title? Cry for 5 seconds, and rebel by messing up the room. Weiss training to regain her skills as a Huntress and protect the friends she holds dear? Master her summoning by creating the knight in the White Trailer on a much smaller scale, and have it accomplish absolutely nothing except break a window (which was a result of the summoning, not the knight breaking the window itself). Some of my friends wanted her to summon a Nevermore, which would’ve been cool. But no.

Jacques should have noticed, or heard about, Weiss breaking the window. Surely someone from the garden must have seen or heard the window breaking, and informed Jacques about it. Wouldn’t that have actually given Jacques a role in preventing Weiss’ escape? Wouldn’t Klein be one of the last people to see or hear the window breaking?

Weiss fleeing Atlas should have been completely rewritten. Weiss should have just ridden the Knight, smash through the garden, grab her mother (yes, more Code Geass references), and hop on a ship to Mistral, while using her rapier to summon and prevent any attacks by the Atlas military. But if this isn’t plausible, this is another option. Flee with Klein as usual, but after she locks Ironwood and Jacques in, Ironwood should break the door down (he’s a freaking metal man, he should be able to do it), and Jacques should alert the entire estate to find the sabotager. He should find Weiss’s room empty, and alert Whitley. Then, in the library, reveal that Whitley is a Hunter. Have him incapacitate Klein and fight Weiss, with her fleeing on the airship. Let me explain why this is good in the next point.

Give us foreshadowing into whether Jacques or Whitley will be relevant in V5, for they’re on a time limit. Ironwood has basically given Atlas an ultimatum: Atlas borders will be closing at the start of next week. This means that if any character from Atlas in V4 is to be relevant in a later volume, they need to leave. NOW. Jacques probably won’t so he can run the company, but Whitley, who could now be revealed to be a Hunter, can legitimately go after and stop Weiss at Mistral. Or have Whitley inherit the company immediately and have Jacques go after Weiss. Make someone important.

Blake:

Explain what Blake was doing for the last 6-8 months. So, six to eight months after the Fall of Beacon, Blake just NOW decides to go to Menagerie? What was she doing throughout all that time? Hiding? Contemplating? Getting her new outfit? Explain.

Sun following Blake is really OOC. Alright, let me get this out of the way right now. The FNDM is blowing this way out of proportion, especially once you factor in Black Sun and Bumblebee shippers. It is certainly out of character for Sun to follow Blake silently, and he should have just been open about it to find out why she fled Ruby and Yang in the first place, but it isn’t THAT big of a deal. End of story.

COMPLETELY change Blake’s family arc. Volume 2 convinced me that Blake was born into the White Fang, grew up in the streets, and had little actual freedom until she ran away from Adam in the Black Trailer. Therefore, giving Blake a family who is practically royalty in Menagerie is retconning at its finest. Plus, what does it prove? That Blake regrets her time in the White Fang after leaving her family like a child? Says more about her than it does the morality, or immorality, of the White Fang, which is exactly what Blake wants to challenge in V5. Have her find that her family is dead. Find some old friends of hers that left the White Fang. Put the good side of the White Fang front and center to make me care more about her fighting Adam. She has two grudges against Adam now: ruining the White Fang’s moral high ground, and disARMing Yang. Give me a better reason to see her fighting these grudges instead of “it sounds okay to the audience”. Blake proving that the Faunus are equal citizens is one of the show’s strongest potential plot points, so capitalize on it.

This Sun comic relief isn’t comical. Not much else you can do except avoid the cringy writing. Sun’s “just hanging around” pun and breaking in to Blake’s conversation with her dad are two good examples.

I get that Adam is too far away from Menagerie to be relevant in this volume, but Ilia is pointless. Who is Ilia? Why do I care? Why can’t we give Adam some screen time to see him going to Menagerie or Mistral? Is Ilia even that important? Was she an old friend of Blake that used to support the morally good White Fang? If so, why did she stop? If not, why is she relevant? Miles and Kerry, please make us care if you are introducing her so late in the volume.

Sun’s heart wound was dropped too quickly. Seriously, is Aura like Nen in Hunter x Hunter? Sun should not have run out of Aura, unless his multiple copies consumed all of it, which didn’t seem clear. Besides, even if I accepted the wound, Blake’s reaction to Sun’s potential death was honestly too good to waste on a wound that doesn’t even seem that bad in the long run. Unless Sun’s wound hurts his fighting in V5, it seems pointless.

Yang:

Yang’s PTSD is very underdeveloped. I was fine with Yang’s broken glass and nightmare-induced PTSD right up until the show dropped it entirely once she put the arm on. That is not how PTSD works. It should continue to haunt her for years, maybe even until she dies (hopefully not during the show, I love Yang too much). Keep her having PTSD symptoms with the arm on. Hell, especially with the arm constantly reminding her of Adam.

If Port and Oobleck are in this volume, we should learn more about the other teams. Do…none of the other characters in V3 matter? If Port and Oobleck matter to Taiyang, and Glenda is shown to be constantly working, then what about Team CFVY? Or the rest of Team SSSN? Or Team CRDL? Or, literally anyone else? Show us what they are doing, albeit briefly. The more they continue to not be relevant in the show, the more I believe that the tournament was a waste of time.

Yang gets used to the robot arm too quickly. Qrow is voiced by this random guy named Vic Mignogna, who, I don’t know, just happened to voice this character called Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist and Brotherhood, one of the greatest anime franchises of all time. And, not that this is related or anything, Edward just happened to have his arm lost and got a mechanical arm that took him a year to master, which was far shorter than the expected length for a normal person. It involves sensitive nerve connections to allow alchemy to be performed. So, how can Yang master it in a matter of weeks, if that? I know that they are two different universes, and I am not educated on robotic arms in the real world, but it should take more than a few weeks to master.

Stop beating around the bush with Raven. So, Raven leads the bandits. Cool. She has family issues. Fine. So, why doesn’t the show capitalize on this? If Yang finds Raven, then what? What does that mean for both if they interact? I feel like the only reason that Yang chose Ruby over Raven was because she realized that her immediate family matters more, which invalidates Raven’s role in the show completely. And before you say “but she is against Salem”, there is nothing that she has physically done to perform this goal, besides forcing Neo to flee. If you want to give Raven a role, give her a more concrete role independent of her mommy issues with Yang.

The show needs to earn “Armed and Ready” with a climactic Yang fight with some Grimm or bandits or rogue White Fang members. “Armed and Ready” is easily the best song that the Williams family has ever done (that opening guitar is downright orgasmic), but Yang has done nothing to fight her PTSD besides training with Taiyang. That does not convince me that she is ready to kick Adam’s ass. Give her a fight towards the end of the volume and have it be the finale fight rather than RNJR vs. the Nuckelavee. Fight some Grimm as a metaphor for overcoming her negative emotions while simultaneously still harboring her PTSD. Have her fight some bandits to introduce them to the story. Have her fight some White Fang members to prove her change in strength since Volume 2. Bonus points if you have her drive on her motorcycle while fighting (just so I can make an AMV with some Initial D themes, probably Running in the 90s).

Oscar:

Cut out his scene in Episode 1. That scene communicates to the audience that Oscar is related to Salem’s antics (by waking up from a nightmare after the opening scene) and he works on a farm. You want to know what does that? The very next scene he is in a few episodes later. Save some money and cut his first scene.

Give us some of Oscar’s own backstory, or individual character. If you introduce a character only for the sake of keeping a previous character relevant, it doesn’t make me sympathize with the new character. The ending scene with Oscar receiving Ozpin’s cane from Qrow sounds promising to give Oscar some development, but not giving him a backstory or why he works on a farm, or even why he just leaves so easily to head to Mistral. He is obviously the Dorothy character in the show (to keep the Wizard of Oz character metaphors going), and Dorothy had a backstory, however brief it was. Give Oscar one.

Ozpin/Oscar is driving the plot now. None of that. When Qrow is asked what Team RNJR should do now that they know about the relics, he literally responds with “I don’t know”. If that doesn’t sum up how irrelevant Ruby is, I don’t know what will. To put icing on the cake, Qrow says that they should put their faith in Ozpin to make up a plan. That means that even if Ruby dies, the only disadvantage that the characters have is that they lose the silver-eyed Super Saiyan (sorry Yang, but Ruby fits that bill better). I’ll talk about the Silver Eyes later, but my point is that Ozpin, regardless if he is the elder, should not drive the plot now. Otherwise, Oscar should be the main character. If he is the Dorothy of this show, that possibility is not too far off, unfortunately.

Team WTCH:

Give Mercury and Emerald more screentime. They were the ENTIRE REASON that Cinder could execute the Fall of Beacon. Now, Miles and Kerry have introduced new villains so fast that there is no time to give Emerald and Mercury any relevance. Emerald is merely a translator, and Mercury does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Have them go out and fight Team RWBY or RNJR. Hell, maybe even have them fight Yang in that hypothetical finale I talked about earlier. After all, Yang does have a grudge against both, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

Flesh out the other villains beside Tyrian and Cinder. They’re obviously being saved for later volumes, which is fine, by introducing them in Episode 1 only for each to have one or two more appearances in the rest of the volume feels out of place.

Make Tyrian cold rather than crazy. He’s a scorpion. Not a monkey (that’s Sun’s specialty). People pointed out that he sits like L from Death Note in his opening scene in the dining room (I think that’s what it is), and L was extremely cold and calculating. Make him like that. I’ll take intimidating cold villain over batshit crazy villain any day.

Explain about what happened at Beacon when Ruby unleashed the Silver Eyes. I have many questions. First, how did Cinder get out of there? Did Salem rescue her after she was frozen, or was she never frozen at all and just lost her eye? If not, why did the Grimm Dragon freeze (or is this just some sort of Portal talk in Fullmetal Alchemist where he takes something precious from each person, Cinder her eye that sees her future, and the dragon its ability to fly)? Why has Ruby never mentioned her silver eyes in the ENTIRE volume? Can she induce it under extreme pressure like the Avatar State, but it comes with a horrible cost? Or are Miles and Kerry just retconning all of it until a later volume, when whatever is relevant will just show up? I was looking forward to finding out exactly what happened to Cinder and Beacon, as well as Ruby wrestling with her new abilities. The former was only half developed, and the latter was never mentioned.

Explain why Team WTCH is only now acting 6-8 months after the Fall of Beacon. Tyrian has been looking for the Spring Maiden, and Cinder is undergoing treatment, but what has everyone else been doing? Reading Ninjas in Love alone in their rooms?

Is Cinder…afraid of Tyrian? If so, go into it more. Seeing Tyrian going insane against the Beowulf just felt satisfying to watch (albeit terrifying and stupid since the Beowulf should have disintegrated into dust after the first few stabs). However, Cinder being terrified by Tyrian’s reaction felt even more interesting to see. Maybe Cinder should have had a short PTSD-like flashback to an event from her past.

General Improvements:

Stop hiring so many professional voice actors. Look, I love Funimation. I love Team Four Star. But hiring so many professional voice actors to voice both one-shot and major characters just comes across as corporate money-hogging. RT should have more confidence in its own voice cast, not to mention that the voice acting feels wildly inconsistent, putting professionals on the same level as amateurs. I was fine when they nabbed Vic for Qrow, but this is just pandering.

Improve the fight scenes with Monty’s advice. Remember when Monty said that “you should utilize motion in a way that doesn’t waste movement?” Tell that to the animators that love to swing Crescent Rose around pointlessly during Ruby’s fight scenes. Don’t believe me? Check Episode 7 when she climbs to the rooftop to set up her scope against Tyrian. Also, remember when Monty said that “in team fights, get rid of as many people as quickly as possible?” RT should’ve taken his advice, for Team RNJR vs. Tyrian in Episode 6 was complete garbage, where everyone was standing around too much while Tyrian was fighting 1v1 or 1v2 instead of 1v4. Don’t believe me? Nora got hit with Ruby’s bullet, and stood there for 20 SECONDS while no one did anything else to distract Tyrian from Nora’s charging. I’m not saying that the fight scenes were overall bad in this volume (Qrow vs. Tyrian is my favorite fight in Volume 4 just how Qrow vs. Winter was in Volume 3), but they still need work. No one will be able to animate like Monty, but flash animation can always improve, and “keep moving forward”.

Give the Williams family more songs. The RWBY V4 soundtrack will be good. I guarantee it. I just wish we could have a couple more songs.

Keeping Pyrrha and Glynda in Poser but the rest of the show in Maya just looks awkward. I know it would cost more money to convert both Pyrrha’s recording and Glynda fixing the building on Yang’s TV from Poser Pro to Maya, but it would just look better. Plus, I really want to see Pyrrha’s new model in Maya. Maybe they’re just keeping it once Pyrrha comes back in a later volume (a man can dream, right?).

The show needs to make up its mind about religion. Qrow in V3: “Not many people are super religious these days.”

Captain in V4 E3: “By the gods!” (nice foreshadowing btw)

Qrow: *proceeds to talk about an entire religious mythology that will take the forefront of RWBY’s main conflict*

Me: wut

The sexual references are starting. And I hate them. Blake’s dad calling her clothing too revealing, and Nora telling Ren not to look up her skirt. Unless you’re Evangelion and subverting common fan-service tropes, you don’t have the right to being them into RWBY, especially since Monty was very avid in Volume 1 interviews about shying away from showing the girls in upskirt/sexual scenarios.

Talk about the moon. Qrow looked up at the moon during his talk with RNJR about the relics. Might want to explain why after four volumes of complete silence about it.

Where’s Neo? Is she alive? Dead? Relevant? Irrelevant? Why didn’t she fight Yang in my hypothetical finale? Has she been looking for Torchwick, not knowing that he’s dead? A mute character like her just has too many interesting scenarios for her to be completely dropped.

And that’s it. Thank you to all those who have sat through this 5,400-word post. In the end, there were many things I liked about Volume 4, like how the Nuckelavee was terrifying, and how Qrow’s poisoning was handled, with everyone on the edge of their seats on whether Qrow would die. I just wish it lived up to all the hype that we gave it. Oh well. Cheers to a good Volume 5 in Mistral, the most Omashu-looking city I’ve ever seen (when will this show stop ripping off of Avatar).

#rwby #rwby4 #rwby volume 4 #rwde #slight rwde #not really sure what to call this mess

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trueloveisrarelyafairytale · 8 years ago

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1. Editing. This is, by far, the most expensive thing when it comes to getting your book self-published, but also the most important. I would absolutely suggest doing as much editing as you are able to on your own to minimize the cost, as well as finding beta readers (I offer that service for free BTW). They will catch things you won’t. Be sure to find an editor that works with your genre specifically, as they will give you your most valuable feedback (and some editors won’t edit certain genres). There are multiple kinds of editing, and while I don’t feel it is mandatory to get all of them, I do think they are all beneficial. a. Copyediting In my opinion, this is the most detrimental of all the types of editing. This is when the editor will check for grammar and punctuation mistakes, inconsistencies in the story or timeline, and makes sure certain items stay the same throughout the novel. While I do see this as the most important, it should also be one of the last edits you do (Unless you are getting it proofread). The cost of this service will range depending on if the editor charges by hour, by page (250 words is a page), or by word count. Hourly rates can range from $30-$80 per hour, $3- $5 per page, or $0.01 to $0.02 per word. For an 80,000 word novel, you will be looking somewhere between $800-$1,600. b. Developmental editing This covers your story itself. If there are plot holes or the characters don’t seem to grow, this is where the editor tells you what doesn’t work. Things that are cliché or farfetched will be reworked until the story is at the best it can be. This is a major edit and may cause you to rewrite large portions of the plot. Editors know what does and doesn’t sell in your genre, and will help your book have more positive responses from more readers. $45-$55 per hour or $0.06 -$0.08 per word. An 80,000 word novel for this service will cost around $4,800- $64,000 (I know…I about choked to death). c. Line editing. This is exactly how it sounds. Each sentence is dissected and checked for awkward phrasing, better word options, word repetition, and fact checking. This is another fantastic service that will drastically improve the quality of the novel. I have read so many books recently that could benefit from this service. This is around $0.019 per word, but a lot of time you can get a cheaper copyedit/line edit combo. Line editing alone for an 80,000 word book will put you at about $1,500. d. Proofreading. This doesn’t really change much of the book. This is just to double check what has already been previously copyedited. This is a nice polish to add on to your editing to be secure in the product you are about to publish. This will cost you about $.006 -$0.009 per word which comes to around $500- $700 for an 80,000 word manuscript. *Complete editing including all services is going to land you in between $6000-$8000. I know that is insane, and I know I don’t have six grand lying around. Do what you can do and remember this is an investment. If you are a more seasoned author you can get away with doing less. Decide where you will benefit the most and go from there. 2. Formatting and Layout Formatting is the way the book looks on the page and the way it appears on e-book vs printed copy. This can be done for free if you have the skills to do so or know someone that can. If you don’t, conversions can range from $150-$2000. While formatting is important, self-publishing isn’t cheap so if I had to skimp and go a little cheaper somewhere, this would be where I would do it. 3. ISBN number The ISBN is the little barcode on the back of the books. They are used to identify the book, edition, and publisher. You can grab a single ISBN number for $125, or ten for $250. There is nowhere to bargain shop for this, the price is set. It isn’t always necessary if you are only publishing in e-book format, but be aware that you may not be listed as the publisher for your own self-published book. If you are going to be writing more books or putting out multiple additions of your book, it would be smarter to get the ten pack. 4. Book Cover For me, the cover is where I want to go all out. I’m obsessed with book covers so this is the part I am excited about going through. You do have a lot of options, just remember this is the first thing people see involving your book so you want it to stand out and be eye-catching. a. Create your own. Let me go on the record saying that I do not recommend this unless you have extensive experience with this type of design. Not having the knowledge on what makes a book cover esthetically pleasing, can easily result in readers not even giving the book a chance. While this is the cheapest option by being free, I do not see it as the smartest option. b. Hire a designer for a custom made cover. This is the highest recommendation by a long shot. Good covers cost you in between $200-$500, but also your books will be the only one with that design and is created based off your story. (I will say one of the most beautiful work I’ve seen that also has a very decent price is murphyrae.net. He also offers other services at very reasonable rates.) c. Stock image cover These cost around $50 or so, but are reused and edited over and over. I refuse to buy a book if I know it has a stock image. Maybe that is a little stuck up, but I hate having more than one book with the same cover I think it cheapens the entire project. Seriously, I would rather an author create their own cover than go this route. d. Hire multiple professionals. Some authors will hire models, photographers, and designers, as well as purchase their own font. I can’t really put a price on this because there are so many factors and I have no idea how to go about finding a model. If you have contacts with people that do these things though, you may be able to create a beautifully unique cover with all the elements chosen by you. This is an interesting option and I have seen some amazing covers that went this direction. *Also, keep in mind, if you are planning on putting the book on both e-book and printed format, you will need to purchase the cover for both. (They will look the same, but the printed book has a spine and a back cover as well. E-books don’t.) 5. Website. It is important to have a website. It’s a place for people to find you and for you to showcase your work and showoff your brand. The range in price is as extreme as you can imagine. There are websites that offer free basic website packages (such as Wordpress and Wixsite) as well as the ability to upgrade giving you things like a custom domain. You can also get a website custom designed on the low end for $300 and it can jump up all the way to $10,000 (that seems excessive) on the high end. While I do think a quality website is important, I don’t believe this is the place to spend thousands unless you have it to burn. 6. Author photo. Your author photo is what goes in the back of the book and the image you can use for your website and social media sites. A basic headshot will cost you in between $100-$250, but if you want to look like a supermodel in your photo, modeling headshots will cost you upwards $200-$400. For me, this is not the important place to splurge. As long as the photo looks professional, you are good to go. 7. Printing. There isn’t much of need to pay much for printing these days with book on demand options (Such as Amazon’s Createspace) and e-book popularity. There will be times that you will need to get large quantities for your book such as book signings and other author events. For a basic 400 page book without any special images or other additions will be roughly $4.00 -$5.00 per book. 8. Marketing. This is a tricky one because there are so many ways to go about it that don’t cost money, such as asking bloggers and like authors if they would like to help promote your book. You can give some of the proceeds to a good cause (gaining readers AND helping people… It doesn’t get better than that), going to author events and self-promotion (not too much) on your own page. There are also the advertising options, such as Facebook advertising which is around $3-$15 per post depending how many people you want to reach or $5 a day page promotion (Keep in mind this is usually untargeted, so while you may reach a lot of people most of them may not care). You could also go the crazy expensive route and get publicists and marketing consultants, but I couldn’t begin to tell you what that would cost. I personally feel it’s about contacts and relationships when it comes to marketing so get out there and make friends with other writers and people that share the same passion as you do. Books! When I first got the numbers, it discouraged me a little bit, but keep in mind that you may be able to hire someone locally that is more affordable or maybe you have a friend has some knowledge in one of these subjects that you can ask for help. I would suggest knowing exactly what you are going to spend where, before doing anything, so you have a clear understanding of your budget. Also, remember that some of these professionals are booked out months in advance, so if you find one you like give yourself plenty of time. Just whatever you do don’t give up. This is your dream, so even though things like budget can get discouraging sometimes, don’t allow yourself to give up on your goals. * Was this post helpful? Anything you would add? Thank you so much for reading and keep writing! Charity B.

#self-publishing #editor #proofreading #line editing #developmental editing #copy editing #book cover #formatting #marketing #charityb #blog posts #website #get published #self-publishing cost #personal #blogpost

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