Chit-Chat: Random Writing Nonsense

JNathan said:

JNathan here. My first time stepping here actually. I've been wanting to post stories but something bugs me : I can't make chapters. Yes, I don't know when and where to end a chapter.

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Neither do I. A while back, I was working on the final chapter of a fanfic and I just didn't know when to stop. Finally, I just decided to end on a good line that would lead into the sequel while also closing out the first book.

Like Bay said, you can think about where your next chapter might begin to get an idea where your current chapter might end. For instance, my current work right now is one chapter equaling one day in the story. It keeps things kind of tidy, where the chapter starts with the characters' school day/set-up for the next plot point and ends when things are solved or it's nighttime.

Cliffhangers are a good way to end your chapters. They make the reader want to keep reading, to see what will happen next.

Or just write your story, read over it, and arbitrarily decide where to begin and end chapters!

Thanks a lot for the advices. Maybe I'll post it soon.

Another way to think about it is that a chapter should be roughly like a tv series episode or the like. But there's usually multiple ways to split things up, haha.

Sounds like English was approached differently at my school than it was at you guys'; with us, we'd read a book and the class would analyse it among ourselves as we went along, taking it in whatever direction we wanted, and occasionally directed a bit by the teacher. I guess that's probably why I love taking literature apart and putting it back together again; I was taught to do it for fun, in the context of a lively debate among a group of people having a good time. There was never more than a little prod in terms of direction from the teacher, and by the end of the year we'd invented more than enough material to pass our exams by ourselves - we just had to sort through it all and see what fitted the themes we were supposed to be studying.

We read all sorts, too. I think in the course of four years I studied The Canterbury Tales (with particular emphasis on "The Pardoner's Tale"), Macbeth, Hamlet, Frankenstein, Dubliners, Things Fall Apart, Enduring Love, The Merchant of Venice, The Great Gatsby, a selection of poems by Tennyson, and more poems that I don't remember. The main point is, pretty much all of our material we developed ourselves, which I think is a pretty good way to study English and sharpen your critical skills, and probably why I'm about to head off to uni to study English Literature now.

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I am kinda envious. :<

Let's see... in my high school years, we covered from Shakespeare A Midsummer's Night Dream, Macbeth, As You Like It, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. One for each year. We applied various themes to them like feminism and etc, even if they didn't quite fit too well. =/ We didn't have too much freedom - maybe some, but a lot was 'right, here's these themes. You can see this by ___' - the themes more assigned to us than us coming up with them. My year 11/12 teacher was better than others though.

Other non-shakespeare works include The Canterbury Tales (although mostly just one story from that and only in extension English! - we also did The Road and part of The Odyssey in that), Heart of Darkness, Bridge to Terabirthia, Frankenstein (but not the book, more movies of that...), poetry extending as far as Wordsworth and friends and... more modern ones or Aboriginal poets mostly doing the same theme. On that note every year in English we also did a major study of an Aboriginal work, and I don't have much against the idea if only they didn't seem to keep choosing subpar works from that range! =|

We only started touching creative writing in year 10, and again in year 12. By then forums had taught me everything that was covered in the course, and more. Plus creative writing over here isn't so fun when you're told to work off a specific theme and whatnot. -_-

I guess I'm still disappointed/bitter by the English schooling system over here. =p

Don't worry Bobandbill, the same goes for the US (or at least my school). Except we never really covered creative writing. Literally every day was consumed by learning how to write essays. I'm surprised I still like to write after that. Of course I did get into an argument with my senior year LA teacher about when we were going to learn about actually writing books. He just said writing essays was more important for college. Yup, because four years is really going to outweigh the rest of my life. :/

fascinating discussions here. And I have to say that my highschool expierence was much like Slayr. The last and only time we touched creative writing (poetry) was in primary school and well, you can imagine the quality of that... even though when I showed it in highschool, people believed I stole it from the internet...

On a different note: usually when I write it has to come from myself and in such a situation Im in full control of characters and everything. That is how I began my latest story.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed the story just wouldn't flow in the direction I imagined. It actually drifted farther from that point with each line that naturaly followed on paper. And when I thought of the new direction and revised my original plan, it still wouldn't flow in that direction.

The other side to this is that even though I didn't plan to write it like this, it flows, it fits, perfectly even. The nuance of earlier lines can be seen later on.
In short, I have no idea where Im going with that, but it feels right; the direction it takes, almost by itself.

Have you guys encountered this in your own writing? What are your thoughts on this?

CreativeVision said:

The other side to this is that even though I didn't plan to write it like this, it flows, it fits, perfectly even. The nuance of earlier lines can be seen later on.
In short, I have no idea where Im going with that, but it feels right; the direction it takes, almost by itself.

Have you guys encountered this in your own writing? What are your thoughts on this?

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Story of my life. I never plan ahead - or if I do, I only do so in order to later disagree with myself. I make pretty much everything I write up as I go along, and, usually without any effort on my part, the themes and plotlines fall into place. There's even foreshadowing, sometimes - how, I have no idea, since it pretty much by definition requires forethought - but it's there.

No story I've posted online has ever had anything of a plan to it, except for a few instances where I thought It'd be cool if something like this happened when the characters got to that place. I'm told my writing flows well and fits together, but what happens next is as much a surprise for me as to anyone else. Maybe by the time I'm three quarters of the way through I'll have worked out the main points of the climax, but I still won't know how to get there. If I drop cryptic hints in the course of a story, well, they're as opaque to me as to anyone else.

I suppose some people don't work like that, but I'm not sure how it would work. For me, writing is a game - a fun expenditure of time and effort, but not one that precludes intellectual engagement. I guess that approach to constructing a story goes some way towards explaining why it is that any plans I make for a story always collapse.

Like I told you before, CreativeVision, I don't plan out my stories. How I write is I think of an end goal for my characters to end up at, sit back, and write down what they do. Everything comes together much better than anything I have planned, so that's my method of writing and I'm sticking to it.

Can I admit that my dreams apparently give me clichéd fanfic ideas?

It seems that I map out my entire story, get to the second chapter, then trash the map completely and write whatever comes to me. I still try to make the main events happen, so I guess it's more like guiding the story through these checkpoints, rather then me driving the story around under complete control.

As far as dreams go, I think they could be great for story ideas. In fact, I try to see if I can twist my dream around to see if I can make an original story out of it. Unfortunately, I have a very active imagination and it's hard to make a story that makes sense when your dream consists of driving a monster truck through your old high school's marching band camp, into the new band director's house, and then flying away on a dragon to a moon made of jello. XD

A whole bunch of my dreams get very wacky and I have no idea how I would write a story out of them that would have much coherence behind it. Oh well?

I plan ahead often, or rather I try to. But what I do plan is more of a loose overview of the events, and quite often I change things or more often get more ideas that 'threaten' to take the story in quite a different direction. I didn't have this problem too much in my parody of Colosseum in part because the framework for plot was already there, I suppose, but with some newer stories I'm trying to write in spare time, it's certainly popping up a lot. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is extending the writing time by quite a bit when I keep thinking new ideas and I don't even have the time to finish writing them up before they change further. :V

currently, i'm writing a crossover AU of Ignition-Shipping and i guess i'll share some out to you guys before i post a thread. cause to me, the writing/fanfiction forum looks dead. ^^;

Great to see a new member willing to share their work! Welcome to PC and FF&W!

We have a thread here where you can share bits of your writing and (maybe) get some comments on it.

oh ok, thank you Astinus! :D

Astinus said:

Can I admit that my dreams apparently give me clichéd fanfic ideas?

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Oh, you can totally admit that. I haven't based any stories on dreams myself, but I'll certainly say it's possible - recently, I've started to dream in full stories, with discernible, sensible plotlines and even character development. (I think it might be a result of having devoted myself so much to narrative this summer; since March, I've written well over 200,000 words.) I've never thought a dream could form anything more than the mere basis of a story before, but some of these dreams I've had could be turned into stories just by transcribing them. It's pretty weird, and a new phenomenon for me.

MTG said:

currently, i'm writing a crossover AU of Ignition-Shipping and i guess i'll share some out to you guys before i post a thread. cause to me, the writing/fanfiction forum looks dead. ^^;

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Welcome! It's a slow forum, yeah, but it isn't quite dead, and we're happy to see new people coming in. I hope you enjoy your stay.

Cutlerine said:

Welcome! It's a slow forum, yeah, but it isn't quite dead, and we're happy to see new people coming in. I hope you enjoy your stay.

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oh thank you for the warm welcome, Cutlerine. i hope i can at least stay on this forum than any other ones. i do need to learn some new tricks on writng.

I'm wondering, how much do you guys review the stories of others here compared to how much you post your own?

Red's Hawt Chibi Pelippers said:

I'm wondering, how much do you guys review the stories of others here compared to how much you post your own?

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Honestly? Not at all enough. I'm speaking for myself here, but I suspect a lot of other people are the same.

It sounds like a terrible thing to say, but it's probably because of the similarity of errors across the board - many of the stories here that are flawed have the same flaws, most of which could be fixed with just a little research into grammar and some careful thought on the part of the writers about the story they're trying to tell. There's also more than a few stories that try too hard to be writerly, which is always vaguely painful to read.

I feel very bad for pointing all these things out, and the feeling's compounded when I realise that I'd have to repeat them over and over. So I guess the infrequency of my reviews is sort of down to guilt - that, and the fact that I know I'm not a particularly good editor or reviewer, so I know I'll mostly be pointing out obvious flaws rather than giving any really constructive criticism.

Frankly, I think people posting here deserve better reviews than that, and so mostly I abstain from giving them. Although I suppose at this point, people are glad to receive any response to their work at all.

Edit: Ooh, I just noticed this was my thousandth post. Hooray for life's small achievements!

I'm wondering, how much do you guys review the stories of others here compared to how much you post your own?

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I currently have one story on here (that isn't dead), and I try to review just about every new story that comes my way.

It's definitely nerve-wracking writing reviews because you're always worried about whether or not you're actually giving them good advice. I've learned that leaving your thoughts on a story is only half of what you're doing. What you're really doing when reviewing is letting the writer know that you think their story is worthwhile. You're letting them know that there is someone out there that actually cares enough about their story to post on it. Encouraging the writer to not only keep up with their story, but to improve as a whole. That's why I review, because I was sick of stories written for no one. I wanted to give a reason for the writers to continue writing, and not feel like they could just stop without anyone caring. Although my writing isn't that strong, I still put reviews out there because everyone has something they can contribute. I'm just making sure I'm submitting my piece.

My first reviews were probably lackluster to say the least, but I feel that I've gotten better at them and now I'm even proofreading various things for friends in real life. It's hard picking apart stories at first, but it gets easier as you start gaining more experience. It's always terrifying when reviewing works you know are better than yours by a long-shot. I just remember that the author is looking for any advice anyone can give.

Well this turned out to be a lot longer than expected, oh well.

Thanks for the replies :3 So, I don't have to feel super bad if my first proper review attempts aren't the best? Haha. I've only done a few in the past. Like Cutlerine says, it's often the same kind of errors authors here do. I doubt I'd take the time to correct every spelling error, rather I'd just tell them to double check again. I'm worried myself that if I post a story, someone will remark on my grammar. Since I know I don't fully grasp English and possibly never will.

And um, I'm usually hanging around the Roleplay Corner but I've... Lost my spark. So, I thought I'd try to write something on my own to try and find it again. I know how I want to feel about writing, and I'm struggling to not expect too much from myself because then it becomes hard work rather than fun.

There are plenty of people who write stories on here that don't fully grasp the english language, so I don't think you'll have anything to worry about. Honestly, I would have never guessed you struggled with english a little bit. Grammar mistakes are common and nothing to be embarrassed about, mistakes happen and you're not going to catch every single one you make.

You should post your story here! We don't bite, well... I'm trying to stop at least. Just write at whatever pace you feel like.

I've been very slow on reviews of late, but it's in part a burn out of the recent competition coupled with a rather hectic uni semester. Haven't done as much writing as I'd have like to of late too, in part because what I am writing is of the form of project reports rather than fics. Hopefully I will be able to get back into reviewing later on.

Normally I'd be at least trying to review a few things a month at least. And certainly I think that overall I review more than I write, haha.