POPULAR: Simple Questions, Simple Answers

[AceTrainer14]

Thanks for the feedback gang. I think you are right @canisaries that people are more forgiving early on, but I also think there are those who if they don't like things straight away will just as quickly declare their hatred.

@diamondpearl876 I know you are reading one of my stories at the moment so I will wait for that review for your specific comments on that point. I was talking more about introductions and how much is too much to put into a first chapter/prologue that sets the scene but is also engaging, but I see your point. I think a lot of description is a personal style thing that people either like or dislike, and I definitely feel my creative side comes out better when I am describing things and do all that world building. Are a lot of them necessary? Not to the grand scheme of things, but there are certain things such as Giovanni judging the town on Knot Island that I feel adds to the character and feel.

In this particular chapter, I think I will apply your 'ask yourself' question and read over the churches description again.

 

[canisaries]

Is having things go right for the protagonist (and poorly for the antagonist) for up to 1.5 pages (1000ish words) boring? I mean, I'm trying to make it disturbing and spooky and all that, but the audience might as well be desensitized to that by now, even if it's a bit different this time.

Can't really speak for whether it's a satisfying kind of right or not, I'm not too great when it comes to putting myself to the reader's shoes.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Is having things go right for the protagonist (and poorly for the antagonist) for up to 1.5 pages (1000ish words) boring? I mean, I'm trying to make it disturbing and spooky and all that, but the audience might as well be desensitized to that by now, even if it's a bit different this time.

Can't really speak for whether it's a satisfying kind of right or not, I'm not too great when it comes to putting myself to the reader's shoes.

If things always go right or always go wrong, sure. But if you think you've got a nice balance going on, a stretch of 1,000 words doesn't seem awful by any means.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Depends on the context of the story. If the protagonist doesn't have to expend any real effort, and/or if he essentially always gets his own way anyway, I'd say yes.

 

[Iggy]

Depends on the context of the story. If the protagonist doesn't have to expend any real effort, and/or if he essentially always gets his own way anyway, I'd say yes.

Quite right, nothing vexes me more than characters achieving something effortlessly, be they protagonists or not.

Is having things go right for the protagonist (and poorly for the antagonist) for up to 1.5 pages (1000ish words) boring? I mean, I'm trying to make it disturbing and spooky and all that, but the audience might as well be desensitized to that by now, even if it's a bit different this time.

Can't really speak for whether it's a satisfying kind of right or not, I'm not too great when it comes to putting myself to the reader's shoes.

Disturbing and spooky somewhat implies to me that whatever a character (any character) achieves must only come through excessive amount of effort and a fair level of drama. Only the sun comes up for free.

 

[canisaries]

Disturbing and spooky somewhat implies to me that whatever a character (any character) achieves must only come through excessive amount of effort and a fair level of drama. Only the sun comes up for free.

it does??? then wtf have i been payin daily fees to nasa for

no but i mean, a lot of the spooks come from the character himself, so i'm not sure if that really applies. though i guess he's still been through a lot of annoying and painful stuff before this

 

[AceTrainer14]

I am trying to write about a character's romantic feelings for another without explicitly saying they have feelings for them; as in, it will be clear to the audience this character is romantically attracted to the other character, but not clear to the character themselves. Any advice on how to achieve these without getting too smaltzy, or any good books I could read for inspiration? (Not Fifty Shades, this story ain't that raunchy - yet)

 

[canisaries]

i'm probably among the worst people to answer this question, never having been in love, but i'll try anyway

well, when you're near someone you like, you tend to feel comfortable and good. they make you laugh or you make them laugh. you pay more attention to what they look like and what they say, speculate what they mean when they say certain things. your body language also tends to be open and/or mirror theirs. i suppose this really isn't different from just having a good friend, but i do know that a strong friendship is still key to a healthy and long-lasting romantic relationship.

for romantic interest, i suppose there's the attraction as well. different things make different people swoon, but i think at least confidence is usually considered alluring. then there's the physical side - heartbeat quickening, pupils dilating, blushing, everything else that comes with sexual arousal (although to avoid coming off as 50 shadesy, you may want to leave the b0ner out or at least downplay it). focus on describing traits that are masculine/feminine/whatever gets the character goin'. no need to march into smut territory, just even mentioning those traits are there make them subtly seem important, subtly enough for the character to not realize what's happening.

the elements you can utilize depend a lot on what kind of narrator is used (outside or POV, and if POV then whose), since if the person is the narrator, they likely won't notice any subtle chances in their body language. if an objective narrator is used (though probably not, it seems like a pretty cold choice for something romantic), it can't get into the character's heads.

 

[MisheardWhisper]

Difficult thing, as mentioned, is making something obvious to the reader that's not obvious to the character. This is of course regularly done in fiction - it's called dramatic irony and it's a whole big thing - but it's difficult to pull off, particularly from a constrained point of view. With first-person or third-person restricted viewpoints, your character basically has to be a big dope who has absolutely no idea why their heart beats fast, their palms get sweaty, they can't stop looking at someone, etc etc.

That aside, we've been conditioned through decades of media to immediately recognise many overt physical and verbal cues as signs of attraction. Staring, fixing your hair, straightening your posture when the other person comes into the room, changing tone of voice to address them, 'zoning out' of other conversations, taking on a more confident personality (however misaimed), making any excuse possible to physically touch them, batting eyelashes, the whole nine yards. You can freely pick and choose from these and many more, as long as they're not explicitly being employed as deliberate flirting. The audience will instantly smell the romance in the air like a flock of seagulls after your chips, and many of these things could be done unintentionally by the affected character - perhaps without them realising they're doing them even after the fact.

 

[Srebak]

I really need to get this out and so I hope that at least someone will take notice of this and reply—



In the midst of planning ahead for a future part of my American Dragon fan made sequel series, I have once again reached an impasse in a very important plot point; for you see, at some point in the future of this particular story arc, I was going to have Jake Long be placed within the confines of a machine that actually places him on the inside of dream world of sorts, which shows him a whole world where everyone in his life is living their lives without him and are apparently glad that he is gone from their lives, even lamenting about how disappointing and sad a character he was to them and everything. Now the point of this particular part of the story was to give Jake’s enemies a means to remove him from the equation in order to grant them the freedom to attack Lao-Shi, Fu-Dog and all of the rest of them, since they all viewed Jake as the only real threat to their initial plans.


However, I’ve encountered at least two problems with this scenario, which is one that I can’t go back on now, by the by, and here they are;


1. The point of Jake’s little dream sequence was to crush his spirit and to strip him of his will to fight and to go on by showing the heartbreakingly negative views about who he is as a person coming from just about every single person he knows and loves. To cause him to feel hurt and betrayed by all of them through no fault of his own. However, my ever-on-the-move mind keeps trying to turn this into a ‘Ghost of Christmas yet to come’ type of moment where Jake is shown things that reflect on the kind of person that he needs to stop being if that makes sense. And that is not my intention


2. Then there is also the matter of just how Jake will respond to all of this, I mean sure; having him lose complete and total faith in everyone around him is a gimme, but, i have also come up several other different possibilities for what should happened as a result of that—


A. Jake becomes so angry and vicious that he becomes violent and is ready to attack anyone at any given moment


B. Jake just decides to angrily lash out everyone


C. Jake just decides to stop interacting with people in general and just sits there, without talking to anyone, showing no signs of the cheerful type of person that he used to be


D. Jake is still left in the hands of the enemy and is locked up tight on the inside of some prison of some sort


E. Jake is taken away far-far away from New York City by the enemy and is left somewhere all by himself


F. Jake simply runs away all by himself trying to find out where he belongs


Now the problem with these ideas are as followed—


A-B. Jake would have to apologize for his aggressive and incredibly violent behavior


C. It makes no sense that he would continue to live somewhere that he didn’t feel like he was welcomed at or that he would continue to be around people who he felt did not want him


D. It feels kind of depressing for Jake to spend a very long time in a prison cell with no one looking for him


E. People would be asking him why he didn’t make any attempts to try and come back home


F. People would be saying that he abandoned his role as a protector


Please can someone help me out on these problems?

 

[diamondpearl876]

@Srebak Well... I don't know this fandom at all. Necessary disclaimer. But it sounds to me like the option of him becoming violent steers the most away from him reflecting - in fact, it's the exact opposite. It's him acting irrationally in response to the information he now knows. Of course, this only works well if him becoming that violent isn't too terribly out of character for him in the context of the fandom. I don't see anything wrong with him needing to apologize later, so I might be missing something there?

C, it sounds like you know there's a plot hole already.

D, yeah, you're going to have a very hard time not doing the self-reflecting thing at all, and depending on the story, you might not want to spend that long with Jake's POV in a location like that.

E and F, I don't see an issue with using these options if Jake wants to and is able to justify what happened at the end of everything.

 

[Iggy]

@Srebak So you're putting Jake through the metaphorical "visit to death"; the point in the story where the main character suffers an apparent permanent defeat. From my view, either give him the desire to prove the dreams were all wrong or end him (and the story). Maybe some character does see the good in him, maybe he preceives the visions as false, anything that refuels his desire to reach his goal. Throw the poor bloke a bone.

 

[Srebak]

@Srebak So you're putting Jake through the metaphorical "visit to death"; the point in the story where the main character suffers an apparent permanent defeat. From my view, either give him the desire to prove the dreams were all wrong or end him (and the story). Maybe some character does see the good in him, maybe he preceives the visions as false, anything that refuels his desire to reach his goal. Throw the poor bloke a bone.

That was initially going to be a part of the original plan. Because you see in the midst of Jake’s time of depression, he was supposed to have some sort of spiritual awakening of some kind. One that would eventually lead him to learn more about the true history of the dragon species. I just haven’t figured out just how that was supposed to strengthen his resolve just yet

 

[canisaries]

Okay, so, question. How would you say an author should approach writing recurring scenes? As in, one scenario / type of scenario happens again in the story. How similar is it allowed to be to the first occurrence / previous occurrences?

Naturally the characters will be able to tell that something is repeating (unless they've forgotten), but with a story that has lots of recurring locations/situations, I feel like saying "wait, we've done this before" or "well, here we are again" every time would by itself become repetitive.

I feel like repetition in general has gotten to be a problem for me... I want my prose and description to be gripping and visceral, but before long I run out of cards to play, so to speak. I can't keep describing heartbeats and breathing rhythms accelerating with every tense or action-full sequence, but the fact stands that it just does happen to every human.

I guess the short version of this is that I'm having a hard time really coming up with any new angles to approach stuff. So, is there a way I can help this? Or am I just paranoid and this isn't really even an issue?

 

[Iggy]

I guess the short version of this is that I'm having a hard time really coming up with any new angles to approach stuff. So, is there a way I can help this? Or am I just paranoid and this isn't really even an issue?

I think this is where creativity comes in, leave behind the obvious/repeated parts or adress them very short and different, observe and describe the situation from a different point of view. Example: If you're tired of describing a recurring battle between the same opponents choose a symbol to reflect the battle's progress (such as the state of the environment). Desribe how pristine it looks at the onset then report how ravaged the place is afterwards. Conclude it by naming the victor and the loser. The reader can fill in the blanks, if there are any.

 

[lucarioknight56]

I'm writing a chapter for another character for my story, and it mainly acts as a backstory for her. I'm thinking about including the behind-the-scenes of my currently posted chapters, that way readers can know more about how she's reacting in those moments, but I feel like that that is unnecessary, considering that people can connect the dots on a reread. It would end up with a bunch of transitions and would frankly look a bit ugly in the formatting I use. What do you guys think?

 

[diamondpearl876]

I'm writing a chapter for another character for my story, and it mainly acts as a backstory for her. I'm thinking about including the behind-the-scenes of my currently posted chapters, that way readers can know more about how she's reacting in those moments, but I feel like that that is unnecessary, considering that people can connect the dots on a reread. It would end up with a bunch of transitions and would frankly look a bit ugly in the formatting I use. What do you guys think?

I'd trust your readers to be able to connect the dots. You can also hint at the things from past chapters to refresh peoples' memories in-chapter, but overall, it sounds like you might break the flow and lose the impact of the character's past with a behind-the-scenes method.

 

[canisaries]

Bit stuck on one scene and I'm not sure how to make it play out. Got an arrested serial killer in the back of a police van being transported to wherever and being watched by an arcanine. I feel like there's lots of monologue or dialogue fuel here until they arrive at their destination, but it's just not coming to me somehow. Ideas on this or on finding new angles in a scenario in general?

 

[Misfit Angel]

So, a question about focus characters and chapter order...

All major chapters of Land of the Roses so far have been in chronological order (aside from a brief weird timeskip in 23 and the very beginning of 24). It's been easy to maintain and a logical choice. Now, my two main characters are separating, but I'm keeping both of them in the spotlight with their own little plotlines until they eventually join back together. But now I'm torn between keeping things in chronological order and keeping storylines together. Currently, if I keep things in chronological order, the chapters look like this:

Kim
Kim
Kim
Andrea
Andrea
Kim
Andrea
Kim
Andrea
Kim

I'm a little concerned that bouncing around so much would hurt the focus of these chapters... As a reader (not necessarily mine, just in general), what would you find more approachable? Three chapters per character, or keeping things in chronological order?

I feel like there's lots of monologue or dialogue fuel here until they arrive at their destination, but it's just not coming to me somehow. Ideas on this or on finding new angles in a scenario in general?

Are you struggling with what ideas to actually approach as they speak their inner monologue, or how to break up the monologue with ideas and scenery? If it's breaking things up, I'm sure there's little windows or something that they could peer out of to see themselves moving around as they reach their final destination.

As far as ideas of what that inner monologue could be, perhaps an introspection on why they feel they're justified in what they're doing? Or a realization that, "oh, maybe I shouldn't have killed all those people".

 

[Iggy]

I'm a little concerned that bouncing around so much would hurt the focus of these chapters... As a reader (not necessarily mine, just in general), what would you find more approachable? Three chapters per character, or keeping things in chronological order?

I would keep them in chronological order as much as possible (regardless of how many times you switch between characters). Not doing so, I think, would confuse the heck out of the reader and yourself. If some events are mentioned or occur on both storyline (or anything else that marks the passing of time, such as seasons) it could function as a way to get some sense of time progression.