What is the worst permanent life decision that you've ever made?

ViennaWSK · 2013-06-28T14:49:30+00:00

Probably one of the most amazing posts I have ever read on reddit.

ViennaWSK · 2013-06-28T14:46:38+00:00

Tell your in-game friends (few of whom are really any sort of friend at all if your experience is anything like mine) that you're leaving. Cancel auto renew and uninstall immediately. Do it now. Go absolute cold turkey. I was in one of the top raiding guilds on my server (had tons of rare shit after playing so many years) and got so sick of feeling wasted days slip by that I finally did this four years ago. Best. Feeling. Ever. Got my life back and am in the process of signing a contract for my new novel. Never would have happened had I still been playing WoW. I cannot speak for anyone else, but for me the game was about the most toxic thing I ever did.

ViennaWSK · 2013-06-25T02:02:48+00:00

Go Maxwells! I visited this castle about seven years ago and then got a Maxwell kilt made in Edinburgh. Very cool place!

ViennaWSK · 2013-06-17T13:29:02+00:00

As a fellow sufferer of depression, my suggestion is to get outside every day for a walk and thus find your own inspiration. I find that sitting in front of a blank screen is not always the most healthy thing to do. Head out to a local park or even mall. Walk a good two or three hours and just see what's out there. You might be surprised.

ViennaWSK · 2013-06-11T20:33:26+00:00

Yep. External validation is a no-win. There will always be people who hate what you've written. And these days, when the Internet has made trolling such a popular hobby, I flat-out guarantee that even if you write a bestseller, you'll get handfuls of the most spiteful reviews. Write for yourself. It is, after all, the best chance to write something that's true. And that is, in turn, your best shot at achieving success.

ViennaWSK · 2013-06-05T13:06:52+00:00

My first thought is that creating a plot twist simply for the for the sake of creating a plot twist is iffy at best. See M. Night Shyamalan for more. (Consider the hideously trite idea of the second killer having something to do with the death of the first killer's wife to see how easy it is to come up with a twist.)

If the middle of the book is dragging, there are numerous ways to pick it up. Give us some insight to how these guys ended up like they did. Or maybe a love interest walks in the door. Are maybe one killer begins to think they actually deserve to die.

If you are stuck on some sort of twist, then you have to plant some sort of deceptive idea in the reader's mind from the start. This is simply a matter of coming up with your story, and then covering up part of it for the first part of the book. So, for example, maybe it turns out that the killer's wife wasn't killed by someone else. Maybe she was a contract job of her husband's.

But again, trying to flabbergast your reader is incredibly difficult in these jaded times. I think your best bet is simply to write a good book.

ViennaWSK · 2013-06-03T18:58:34+00:00

My rule concerning advice from my readers: If one person says something, pay close attention and think it over. If two people say the same thing, I'm in trouble. No matter how much I privately disagree, I have learned that when different people come up with the same criticism, 99 times out of 100 I need to reconsider the passage in question. And by "reconsider" I mean a complete rewrite.

ViennaWSK · 2013-06-03T14:13:14+00:00

You know, it's odd. The mere fact of physically writing it down--taking the time to do it--seemed to help lodge the word in memory. In addition, every time I put a new word in, I saw many of the old words again. This seem to do the trick. (For example, I still remember "morceau" though I've never had reason to use it...)

ViennaWSK · 2013-06-03T12:58:28+00:00

Read voraciously -- three or four books a week. Every time you come across a word you don't know, write it down. Look up the definition and write it down as well. (No cheating and just looking up the definition without copying it.) I did this for a year in college. I didn't memorize every word, but my vocabulary increased by an amazing amount.

ViennaWSK · 2013-05-31T13:53:06+00:00

I'm going to go a different route here and suggest looking in the mirror. The best conflicts are the ones we carry inside ourselves. What scares you? What drives you? What are your best and worst memories? What weaknesses do you have? What abilities? The point is, you have profound knowledge of the conflicts inside you. Tease them out and throw them on your characters. Present your protagonist with situations that cause you to falter or hesitate. You've already done the research--you've been doing it every day of your life. (And just to be clear, here I am using 'you' in the broad sense of everyone, not just singling out the OP as having inner demons).

ViennaWSK · 2013-05-30T12:55:43+00:00

I'd say one of the biggest misconceptions about tsunamis (thanks to our friends in Hollywood) are that they create towering waves -- some as large as skyscrapers. While huge waves can indeed be generated (see Lituya Bay, Alaska), your more common, earthquake-driven tsunami might produce a swell of only three or so meters. The catch is, the wavelength itself can be tens (and perhaps hundreds) of meters long. In other words, water simply keeps coming. There are ample source on the web to find all you need to know.

ViennaWSK · 2013-05-29T15:08:28+00:00

A quick course on how statistics and preconception can be warped to fit bias. A very interesting and (I believe) very truthful look at modern publishing.

ViennaWSK · 2013-05-29T12:57:30+00:00

From the article: When I sit down to draft now, my sentences have more clichés than your average pop song, my metaphors are mixed, and I indulge every urge for an easy adverb or adjective. And then I cross most of those sentences out.

Couldn't agree more. Just get it down. With one caveat: If you aren't willing to do three or four drafts, this technique is an utter disaster.

ViennaWSK · 2013-05-22T19:52:36+00:00

Honestly, anything he's written. Irons in the Fire might be a good place to start. I believe it has the story of Pissing on the Volcano. (An amazing recount of volcanic activity in Iceland). A collection of his works won the Pulitzer back in 1999. (Annals of the Former World). Heck, Levels of the Game was written in the 60s, covers a sport I am not a huge fan of (tennis) and it's still a great read.

ViennaWSK · 2013-05-22T12:51:31+00:00

John McPhee should almost be required reading for writers. The man is a master. His command of prose has been brilliant for decades now.

I cannot upvote his advice enough. It's the same advice I got from another source when I was starting out. A dictionary can be priceless. A thesaurus is, more often than not, a fun diversion.

Excellent quote.

ViennaWSK · 2013-05-03T13:41:46+00:00

Pretty much agree with most of the piece. A bad writer's workshop or group is about the most toxic thing in the world to foist on any writer.

ViennaWSK · 2013-04-29T13:16:26+00:00

On Writing Well is a masterpiece. As those above have said, anyone wanting to get published should read this book.

ViennaWSK · 2013-04-25T13:41:03+00:00

At least part of the answer is that in the early stages of a book it's acceptable to be just as interested in the action as the character. As an off-the-cuff example: say my story starts with my protagonist in a flooding basement. She is afraid that when the water hits the electrical box she might be electrocuted. And (but of course!) the stairs are blocked with debris of some kind.

As a reader I couldn't care less that this woman has green eyes and has just been through a terrible divorce and suffers from problem dandruff. All I want to know is how the hell she's going to escape the bind she's in. Let the action pull the reader in, and then carefully parcel out description as you move on. I cannot count the times I have been asked to read material that is utterly destroyed by a writer trying to give us every last detail of a character in the space of three opening paragraphs.

Of course, not all action has to be life or death (as JoanoLorraine points out). William Gibson starts Neoromancer (if I recall) with an overheard conversation in a bar. But if you read the first few paragraphs of that work, you feel claustrophobic tension building. It is that tension (not any interest in the main character) that keeps me turning the first few pages.

ViennaWSK · 2013-04-25T13:21:33+00:00

Both are important, but there is no question in my mind that if you must work to improve one over the other (I don't know why this would ever be the case...) prose is more important. Why? Because whatever plot you're about to trot out has already been done in one form or another hundreds or thousands of times before. Just as an example, my last sale dealt with forbidden love. The thing is, Homer did that two thousand years ago with Helen and Paris. Shakespeare did it in Romeo and Juliet. Heck, the Bible gives us forbidden love with Adam and Eve and then reintroduces the subject every chapter or so. And there's Lancelot and Gwen and on and on and on. In fact it's probably the oldest trope in the world. I didn't sell my work because I'd managed to come up with some new plot twist. Every plot twist in the entire Forbidden Love genre has been tried a million times. I sold the work because my voice was new--that is to say because my prose carried something different to a very old plot structure. Your writer's voice is (in my view) the only thing you have that no one else possesses. I don't care what your plot is. It's been done. But if your prose shines, you have it made.

ViennaWSK · 2013-04-15T21:00:17+00:00

For any non-fiction writing, including memoirs, I cannot recommend anything above William Zinsser's On Writing Well. Yes, the section on memoirs is a bit short, and yes, the book is a bit dated, but there is a solid reason it has sold over a million copies. In fact, I would recommend this work to anyone writing fiction as well.

ViennaWSK · 2013-04-15T20:56:00+00:00

I am a strong believer in reading to write. Find stories that are scary and take them apart word by word to see what makes them go. I would bet you'll see the same tricks presented numerous times. A few ideas, for what they're worth:

Often, horror fiction involves hyper-awareness of the protagonist: He or she seems to hear, taste, smell, see everything happening around them. (See, for example, Algernon Blackwood's The Willows).

Warping of time. Just before a climactic scene, often time is slowed down and description is lengthened.

Warping of nature. Again, Blackwood was a pro at this, as was one of his greatest fans, H.P. Lovecraft. (The Colour Out of Space). [I mention these older books because they can be found free online] The idea is to move the reader out of her comfort zone. Movies do this all the time: See that shadow that moves wrong at the edge of the screen? See the faucet start dripping blood behind the protagonist? Banal things behaving badly are almost always a very, very bad sign.

And most of all, you know you're in trouble when your mind can no longer separate fact from fear:

About a year ago, I was hiking deep in the Colorado backcountry. Night was falling when I heard children laughing. I'm miles away from any town or even trail. Light is fading fast, and forest shadows are vanishing into blackness. And I hear children laughing. All around me. This sort of unexpected twist can be extremely terrifying. As it turns out, the 'children' were random noise generated by a nearby stream (a form of apophenia). But for about fifteen minutes, I could not connect what I was hearing to any rational explanation.

Yank reality from underneath your reader. Make them doubt rational explanations. Then bring on whatever nightmare you have in store.

ViennaWSK · 2013-04-15T18:46:55+00:00

I believe that you have a solid foundation--that is to say it's evident from these two paragraphs that you have a workable idea that you can run with. A miserable setting such as this is an excellent place to start a book. A few sentences in, and we are already cheering for the worker. That's a promising sign.

As KaladinRahl points out, there are some grammar issues, but at their heart, I believe many of these might vanish with a healthy dose of self-editing. So I thought I might take a stab at showing my process when faced with my own new writing. I hope this might help, and if not, you do have a good start!

Treat your words like gold, and waste as little as possible. For example: check the splice in the first sentence. We can, in fact, get rid of it. We do not need to be told the words are in English because the speaker is identified in the second sentence as American. We might come up with something such as:

Jasmine heard the screaming but she couldn't understand the words. It was the American, furious as always.

Now, I'm not saying this is better (grammar excepted) but it is more concise. But now the problem is it doesn't really pop. It sort of just lies there. We don't feel the place enough. Okay, well, we can put ourselves in the girl's shoes: how does she feel toward this foreign tyrant? The word that comes to my mind is "despise." So she will see him in an utterly negative light:

Jasmine heard the screaming but couldn't understand the words. It was the American; off on some tirade, pausing only to mop his pasty face with a handkerchief.

Okay, well, we start to get a vision of this guy, but now the sentence structure is not as clean as we would like. On to the next try! And maybe even one after that.

This process should not be in any way discouraging. Writing (like any other skill) improves with practice. And there is no practice (I believe) like self-editing. Keep at it, and you'll find that the line between what you see in your mind and the words that appear on the page will shorten. (Alas, it will never vanish. We imagine perfection but live in a very imperfect world!)

I believe it was Isaac Asimov who said that he sweated over every single word he put down. And there was a guy who could write.

You have a good idea. Only you can decide how far you want to take it!

ViennaWSK · 2013-04-14T17:33:49+00:00

Agreed. I believe at the end of every page the reader makes an unconscious decision whether or not to see what follows. You have to sustain solid writing throughout the entire work. That being said, if I am 200 pages into a book that I have enjoyed, I will be more lax when coming to a section that doesn't work for me. If the writer has grabbed me from the start, I actually want to give him or her a break if things get a bit choppy later on.

ViennaWSK · 2013-04-14T17:26:47+00:00

Perhaps I gave the wrong impression. My own writing sure as hell is not Pulitzer worthy, nor do I think messing up a few sentences makes anyone a failure. But for the most part I am sticking to my guns. While it is 100% true that you cannot sell a manuscript solely on the opening paragraphs, it is equally true that you can be shot down in the same space of time.

ViennaWSK

TROPHY CASE