JX Valentine
Your aquatic overlord
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- Harassing Bill
- Seen Aug 19, 2020
As I've said before, I believe we've been talking for months about refining or consolidating the general writing guide to weed out unnecessary, outdated, redundant, or just plain wrong information and replacing it with current information. While the majority of the threads that were around at the time have simply been merged, it would do to go back through it and weed out posts that are simply repetitions or just contain explanations that are actually taboo or otherwise vague. For example, could we please not advocate thesaurus abuse? Or actually redefine the most common genres or points of view (and spell check on top of that)?
Moreover, it might help to create a general writing guide with all the tools (or at least links to possible tools) that a writer would need. I'm going back and forth about whether it might be beneficial to merge The Grammar Advice Thread, but if it's best on its own, then it really should be finished or at least continued to cover more of the most basic mistakes. (I'm really glad there's a comma guide which some of us seriously need. Apparently, we could use a paragraph break guide as well because it's suddenly become fashionable not to hit the enter button twice between each paragraph. Maybe we could even use something that defines why we need to avoid raping the English language with a rusty pole.)
So, yeah. A Mary Sue guide might be nice, but you can actually pretty much say everything you need to say about Mary Sues in one simple post. (We've covered most of the ground except the very basic definition as it is. As I've said before, if you have to spend pages upon pages detailing all the traits that hoist the red Sue flags, most likely, you're missing the definition of what a Mary Sue actually is. After all, it's difficult to specify exact traits because Suethors tend to borrow elements of what's "trendy" in a fandom. When I first learned about what a Sue is, one of the red flags was starting off with an unusually colored Pikachu and eventually getting a Raichu. Nowadays, it's starting off with a Riolu and eventually getting a Lucario, and not that many people do the Pikachu thing anymore. The details tend to change. And that's not even touching the fact that the Chosen One fic has become an entire standalone genre.)
Off the tangent, if we can trim it down to just one post, we can add it to a general writing guide to avoid cluttering the WL up again with stickies while at the same time actually getting down the basics that we've been needing to refine for months.
Edit: Post above is tl;dr. Read Asty's link as well for more ideas on what needs to be done.
Moreover, it might help to create a general writing guide with all the tools (or at least links to possible tools) that a writer would need. I'm going back and forth about whether it might be beneficial to merge The Grammar Advice Thread, but if it's best on its own, then it really should be finished or at least continued to cover more of the most basic mistakes. (I'm really glad there's a comma guide which some of us seriously need. Apparently, we could use a paragraph break guide as well because it's suddenly become fashionable not to hit the enter button twice between each paragraph. Maybe we could even use something that defines why we need to avoid raping the English language with a rusty pole.)
So, yeah. A Mary Sue guide might be nice, but you can actually pretty much say everything you need to say about Mary Sues in one simple post. (We've covered most of the ground except the very basic definition as it is. As I've said before, if you have to spend pages upon pages detailing all the traits that hoist the red Sue flags, most likely, you're missing the definition of what a Mary Sue actually is. After all, it's difficult to specify exact traits because Suethors tend to borrow elements of what's "trendy" in a fandom. When I first learned about what a Sue is, one of the red flags was starting off with an unusually colored Pikachu and eventually getting a Raichu. Nowadays, it's starting off with a Riolu and eventually getting a Lucario, and not that many people do the Pikachu thing anymore. The details tend to change. And that's not even touching the fact that the Chosen One fic has become an entire standalone genre.)
Off the tangent, if we can trim it down to just one post, we can add it to a general writing guide to avoid cluttering the WL up again with stickies while at the same time actually getting down the basics that we've been needing to refine for months.
Edit: Post above is tl;dr. Read Asty's link as well for more ideas on what needs to be done.
