Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Nitro Indigo]

I wish I had such abilities. There's a beautifully written Metroid fic that hasn't gotten a chapter in almost two years, and I'm dying for more of it.

Here's the fanfic I revived: Amici Improbabile Chapter 1, a cars fanfic | FanFiction
Cars (specifically 2) fanfiction taught me that everything has fans, and you can make anything beautiful if you have enough passion.

Meanwhile, I watched a bit of TheRunawayGuy's let's play of Super Metroid and liked how atmospheric it was, but I only watched one episode. I don't want to play a Metroid game because Kirby and the Amazing Mirror is labyrinthine enough for me.

 

[Beth Pavell]

It is easier to keep going if you know people are reading, though, which is why reviews are such valuable. Er. Currency?

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

I wish I had such abilities. There's a beautifully written Metroid fic that hasn't gotten a chapter in almost two years, and I'm dying for more of it.

That's pretty much the story for 75 percent of the Pokémon fics that I read, unfortunately. That's too bad, because many of them have a lot of really interesting ideas and potential that never gets realized. That said, I suspect that the reason that this happens to a lot of fics (journey fics especially, for instance) is that people tend to underestimate how difficult it is to maintain what's basically a multi-hundred-page novel while dealing with real life on top of that, and with only the love of writing (and the story itself) as motivation. Not to mention lack of reviews for a lot of them, as @Beth Pavell pointed out... although even then I've seen a lot of relatively popular fics that ended up falling by the wayside anyway.

That said, there is a flipside to all of that... it makes it all the more wonderful to see fics with hundreds of thousands of words being pushed out in only a few months like it's nothing, or to see fics that began almost ten years ago still being updated today. And sometimes, there are fics that haven't been updated in years that are revived against all odds and logic... and some of them even end up being completed one day. Not a lot of them, unfortunately, but enough to keep checking on some of the more interesting abandoned fics every once in a while to see if they became one of the "lucky ones", so to speak.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

It is easier to keep going if you know people are reading, though, which is why reviews are such valuable. Er. Currency?

I gave up on Eighteen Elements two years ago because I knew I needed to improve, but couldn't get any feedback.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Well, it's a tough one. My own The Long Walk, by Workshop standards, has historically been among the more popular. That's probably still true, i think, but it's also true that regular reviews have dropped right off. I don't think it's a complete coincidence that I've found these last few chapters harder to finish.

That's the way it goes sometimes. I try and return the attention where I can (Uni has unfortunately got in the way of that more than once, though I have already resolved to automatically kick "return" reviews up to the top of the list in future), but sometimes you just have to tighten your belt and push through it

 

[AceTrainer14]

I have, on the whole, found that my fics that were once quite popular have dropped off a bit as well. Maybe it is an internet-wide thing: people just don't have the same attention spans anymore, don't want to wait around for weeks for new chapters or otherwise don't want to start something that already has lots of chapters? Eight Easy Steps always had a few regular reviewers, but the last two chapters on FF.net have currently received none. Baffling, a bit.


In other news, for those interested or affected, the links for banners for the first three awards have been changed due to an issue with Photobucket. If you won an award way back in 2012/3 and display your banners anywhere, you will need to use the new links. Check the Hall of Fame to find them all

 

[canisaries]

that feel when you're thankful for your brother and father's help with realism in a scene in your fic revision but also mad because you already rewrote most of it and now you have to fix it again

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I keep getting a five-second long advert for YouTube... on YouTube.

Also, I've recently encountered glitch where two of the default thumbnails for a video you've uploaded are identical.

 

[Misfit Angel]

We have a thread for cliches in Pokemon fanfiction, but not one for general cliches seen elsewhere, so I'll complain here.

It's review week for my IRL writing group and I've been partnered up with someone who's writing something in the science fiction genre. The idea is that a group of space explorers has critical systems of their ship disabled by some sort of alien entity that's trying to see if they're an intelligent species before they reveal themselves. Of course they're intelligent, they built a space ship that's capable of traveling faster than the speed of light! Cave men don't do that!

I have seen this idea sooooooo many times that it's so incredibly boring. What kinds of boring, overused cliches do you guys see in non-pokemon writing?

 

[Nitro Indigo]

It's review week for my IRL writing group and I've been partnered up with someone who's writing something in the science fiction genre. The idea is that a group of space explorers has critical systems of their ship disabled by some sort of alien entity that's trying to see if they're an intelligent species before they reveal themselves. Of course they're intelligent, they built a space ship that's capable of traveling faster than the speed of light! Cave men don't do that!

r/WritingPrompts in a nutshell.

Another cliché on r/WritingPrompts is: "You have a superpower. One day, your superpower does something unusual."

Meanwhile, my prompt about characters played by the same actor being telepathically linked got downvoted. I also just found a prompt that made me laugh.

 

[Beth Pavell]

I suppose the one that most consistently gets on my nerves comes from the fantasy spectrum, where putting a sword into the hands of the girl is a prerequisite for a Strong (I.e: good) Female Character. My feelings on the status of role models in fiction aside, I find it just plays into an assumption that the trait that matters the most is the ability to chop people up. Fantasy is capable of so much more than this.

I think my favourite example of what I mean comes from I Shall Wear Midnight, where the trait the protagonist admires the most is in an old witch's ability to get an entire funeral to start singing in a moment of shared catharsis - doing it the hard way using empathy and a dash of charisma rather than a convenient spell

 

[Nitro Indigo]

@Beth Pavell I don't like it when people market things as being "liberal and progressive" because it feels like they're using "representation" as gimmick. They might as well be wearing a giant flashing sign saying, "WE'RE TRYING TOO HARD". I once saw someone point out that almost every important character in Finding Nemo/Dory is disabled, but it worked because Pixar didn't draw attention to it.

Meanwhile, I've heard that custard car Cruz Ramirez from Cars 3 is a "strong female character". I am so glad that the marketing team didn't make a big deal out of having a female character like it was a shocking new innovation that will change the way we view cinema forever. That's why I have a bad impression of Wonder Woman, though I'm not into superheroes anyway.

 

[Beth Pavell]

I don't like being preached at, as an adult. When writing for children, and teenagers for that matter, it's a different kettle of fish. As an adult I find it at best patronising and at worst deeply arrogant when I see the author's trying to teach me a lesson.

 

[UselessBytes]

@Nitro Indigo I frequent r/WritingPrompts, and you aren't far off. I love the unusual and funny ones, though. In particular, this one is my favorite.

 

[Misfit Angel]

I suppose the one that most consistently gets on my nerves comes from the fantasy spectrum, where putting a sword into the hands of the girl is a prerequisite for a Strong (I.e: good) Female Character. My feelings on the status of role models in fiction aside, I find it just plays into an assumption that the trait that matters the most is the ability to chop people up. Fantasy is capable of so much more than this.

What of the heroine who dispatches her enemies with flesh-searing fire? At least she's not swinging around a sharpened hunk of metal like some barbarian lunatic.

 

[AceTrainer14]

@Emma Prescott: I have no qualms with the Cliches thread being used to discuss general cliches as well as Pokemon ones

 

[kintsugi]

Meanwhile, I've heard that custard car Cruz Ramirez from Cars 3 is a "strong female character". I am so glad that the marketing team didn't make a big deal out of having a female character like it was a shocking new innovation that will change the way we view cinema forever. That's why I have a bad impression of Wonder Woman, though I'm not into superheroes anyway.

If it helps, this incarnation of Wonder Woman is easily the least "obnoxious" about how its crime-fighting protagonist also happens to be a woman. There are a few moments where she gets told by men that she can't do things and she has to prove that she can, but on one hand it's the 1910's and hey these things actually did happen and ignoring them is basically ignoring some of the founding beliefs behind the character, and on the other hand the rest of the film is dedicated to her nonchalantly doing her job.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

@kintsugi Interesting. I don't like when people pretend that things don't happen for the sake of Political Correctness™. Apparently, you have to invert stereotypes in American textbooks.

 

[kintsugi]

@kintsugi Interesting. I don't like when people pretend that things don't happen for the sake of Political Correctness™. Apparently, you have to invert stereotypes in American textbooks.

I don't fully understand your last comment, haha.

 

[Beth Pavell]

What of the heroine who dispatches her enemies with flesh-searing fire? At least she's not swinging around a sharpened hunk of metal like some barbarian lunatic.

Thing is though, fundamentally it's just the same thing by another name. It doesn't really matter whether it's a sword or a wand or a gun, too often fighting prowess is the yardstick against which female characters are measured.

That's not to say that the battle girl - or whatever the hell you want to name that trope - is something to completely avoid. I'd point to characters like Sergeant Angua or Brienne of Tarth as examples why it isn't. Point is they have something to offer besides fighting prowess. Angua's character is bound up in a genuine insecurity about being a werewolf. Brienne is ironically the only knight in Westeros who actually takes the knight's moral duty seriously