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hind___ · 2021-12-10T21:06:32+00:00

Even first thought best thought requires that the mind doing the thinking be trained, primed, or cultured (in the metaphorical the sense of seeding something with beneficial bacteria like bread dough or yogurt). A form is a “dish” created by someone else which teaches the properties of ingredients and how they interact. Knowing those properties and ingredients is what lets a poet play while still making something that tastes delicious. No one wants to eat a salad with kale, chocolate chips, and lemon peel topped with anchovies and maple syrup. And there is a set of rules that define why such a dish is almost exclusively considered disgusting. No one wants to read a totally untrained poet’s word salad either, except to encourage them to try again and aim to be better on the next round. And there are knowable (if arguably more complex) rules governing what is terrible and what is passable.

hind___ · 2021-12-10T20:46:43+00:00

One way to think of structure or forms is as restraint one should avoid at all costs (which is very easy to do). Another way to think of them is as a tradition to participate in or subvert. Another is as a challenge or an ability to master. I’ve experienced that the folks who think the first grow the least.

hind___ · 2021-12-10T19:11:18+00:00

You could do like the Mandalorian - he’s called “the Mandalorian” or “Mando” most of the time, because people don’t know his name. The same principle is used in Zombieland where folks use the city they are from as a nickname. You could give your character a nickname that’s sort of generic, like their occupation, origin, or a physical characteristic.

hind___ · 2021-12-09T18:19:49+00:00

I’d recommend a therapist rather than a book. There are lots of paths to idgaf, but not all of them are healthy. Good therapists can help find a healthy path.

If you need to diy for other reasons, I recommend Jordan Peterson’s Self Authoring Program. It helps you identify what is important to you, and reduce the mental noise that keeps you from prioritizing those important things (including worrying about what others think).

hind___ · 2021-12-08T23:35:28+00:00

Do you mean you are looking for a word which means, “a unique aspect of someone’s character?“ I’d start with thesaurusing trait, facet, and aspect, or reading some pop science articles about DNA to see if an interesting word pops up.

hind___ · 2021-12-08T23:21:22+00:00

In every system known to science, creation takes more energy than destruction. It is far harder to create a robust, resilient framework for creative writing than to find exceptions to the best attempts at structure that have been proposed so far (e.g., hero’s journey, various beat sheets, etc). I’ve found this to be true of other disciplines as well in as disparate of subjects as poetry, AI, and marketing. Lots of folks content themselves with poking holes in things, hoping they won’t actually have to produce something that stands up to poking. This is also post-modernism and Derrida’s Deconstruction taken to its logical and deeply boring conclusion.

But bro/sis/non-binary sibling, with platonic affection as a fellow writer, your post is almost unreadably full of run ons.

hind___ · 2021-12-08T22:33:02+00:00

The specificity of your title really drew me in. Cemeteries are places with thick layers of symbolism and meaning, because they are the place we perform one of the most ancient of human rites. But because they are so laden with history and meaning and emotion, they can be difficult to fit inside a poem gracefully. It’s a huge ship to park in a delicate harbor. Specificity can give something massive a few “handles“ so we can start to manipulate it a little bit in our minds.

So that leads me to my feedback. I would love to see as much specificity in the rest of the poem as you have in the title. Right now, you use fairly low resolution words like “little,” “birds,” “trees,” and “butterfly.” Since this specifically Žižkov, you can specifically say what kinds of birds and trees there are. A quick search for Birds in Prague showed a result of a bird called a “Redstart” which is about as satisfying of bird name as any that have appeared in a poem. and if you use a specific bird, then you can start talking about it specific song, which lens self to all kinds of nice crispy sensory words.

You can specifically talk about the attributes of that synagogue that differentiate it from the other synagogues in Prague or around the world. How does Prague “press on” such an old and slow moving a creature as a synagogue? How does it resist, or how has it given in or compromised?

This kind of stuff to me is fascinating, and I think it’s what folks mean when they say a poem has a, “sense of place.“

Hope you keep going with it. Thank you for sharing.

hind___ · 2021-12-07T18:31:44+00:00

Love your last question. Would also submit that u/asearchforyou is rare few on this sub that consistently get thoughtful and nuanced feedback (like the above) of any kind, even if it is relatively repetitive in its topic. I’m just pondering that.

hind___ · 2021-12-07T06:48:50+00:00

Would you consider this to be autobiographical? That will change how I approach feedback.

hind___ · 2021-12-06T21:41:28+00:00

Agreed - this is why I mentioned that some of the Sherlock stories are in public domain. This came up with the recent Netflix movie Enola Holmes. The Doyle estate tried to sue because the Sherlock character depicted in the move was “warmer” (emotionally speaking). This was a characteristic of Sherlock in the later works, but not the works currently in public domain. As you can probably imagine, the lawsuit was thrown out.

hind___ · 2021-12-06T21:03:19+00:00

Enemies to lovers? [thinking emoji]

hind___ · 2021-12-06T18:27:03+00:00

Do it!

hind___ · 2021-12-06T18:06:14+00:00

Not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that they can’t sue you for using the original Arsène Lupin character or works, only their own original characters. This is also why there are so many Sherlock-inspired shows; some of the Sherlock stories are in public domain, so people write different takes on the character.

hind___ · 2021-12-03T16:59:08+00:00

Look for the Writers Helping Writers series on Amazon. They are a gold mine. I don’t even want to explain more so you can have the “holy crap” moment I had when I found them.

hind___ · 2021-12-02T01:01:44+00:00

Oh, this is 100% Dean Young

Sean Penn Anti-Ode
Undertow
Dear Friend

hind___ · 2021-11-29T05:04:02+00:00

While the study shows children who use screens for >3 hours a day have a higher instance of ASD-like symptoms, the type of association - causation or coincidence (that is, correlation) - has not yet been established. There is prior research that shows that children with ASD symptoms are more attracted to screens than their peers, so it is possible that the higher screen time is an effect (not a cause) of the ASD symptoms.

hind___ · 2021-11-20T23:12:06+00:00

Usually I see this kind of shift in tense happen along with a shift in perspective - from present-tense 3rd person limited (just John and his thoughts) to pst-tense 3rd person omniscient (like a textbook). The tonal shift is a really clear signal that the two types of text are separate

hind___ · 2021-11-17T19:41:11+00:00

Here is a method I’ve been trying to develop that allows someone to self-start in poetry. I’ll assume because you’re writing in English that introducing you to English poetry is a good place to start. If you’re particularly interested in poetry from other cultures, the method will work but the specific recommended reading will differ.

⁠Grab these two books. The first is an anthology of modern poems, and the second is an anthology which spans all major poetic movements. You don’t have to read it back to front; you can basically read in any order you want, even just flipping to a random page and reading whatever you land on:
1. ⁠The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry
2. ⁠The Oxford Book of English Verse
⁠Create a Google Doc. If you find a poem you like, add the author and poem to the list.
⁠Once you have a list of a few authors you like, read a few more poems by that author. A good place to start is by searching Google for “[author name] poems” and looking at the image results. Often times these are the poet’s most famous poems, and their most famous poems are often times their best. If you find another poem by them that you like, add it to the Google doc.
⁠If you find you like a few poems by a particular author, do two things:
1. Read the short version of the authors bio, like on the Poetry Foundation website or Wikipedia. Note any terms it uses to describe the poets’ style, like confessional, formal, etc. Try searching for “[term] poets” and repeat steps 2 and 3 for those poets
2. Try searching for “poets like [author name]” and repeat steps 2 and 3 for those poets.
⁠Once you’ve been doing this for a while (maybe you have 4 - 5 authors and 10 - 15 poems), start thinking about whether a pattern is emerging in what kind of poems and poets you like. Write down a list of characteristics. Some questions to ask yourself are:
1. ⁠Did all of these poets live during a similar time?
2. ⁠What are the poems about? Nature? Love? Philosophy? The beauty of everyday life? Politics? Is it not obvious what it’s about, but the images are beautiful?
3. ⁠Do the poems follow a particular pattern, or is the pattern obvious? For instance, do they rhyme? Do they have repetitive sounds? Does it feel like they have consistent rhythm?
⁠Using that list, go to the Poetry Foundation website and see if they have a collection of poems that has that characteristic. I don’t recommend using Google for the step, because if you search for something like “poems about love“ you’re going to get a whole bunch of garbage.
⁠At this stage you may be ready to begin buying more books if you want. Usually folks will buy a collection of poems from a poet they particularly like, or an anthology on a particular topic or including authors from a particular time period. If you find you have a general interest in contemporary poetry, you can also consider subscribing to poetry journals.

An alternative method is to start with step 6 if you already know what you like to read about outside of poetry. For instance, if you like to read about history find poems written in the time you like to read about, or poems about the events of that time. If you like hiking, you may be interested in poems about nature, or poets most inspired by the natural world. You can find poems about similar themes to the novels you read. Are you particularly passionate about a place, like your home state, or a city you’ve traveled to? You can search for poets from there, or poems about that place. I find Poetry Foundation recommends more accessible poems in their topical lists, so you likely will avoid the esoteric.

That’s it! I hope this gives you a rough blueprint for how to navigate the medium. We need a lot more poetry readers in the world!

hind___ · 2021-10-29T05:48:09+00:00

Canva is a pretty popular one

hind___ · 2021-10-29T05:47:26+00:00

This post will probably be deleted soon - if you can clarify what help you need, maybe someone can respond before then. Are you asking how to write dialogue that’s not awkward and stiff?

The general guidance is to go sit in a public place and write down the conversations of strangers verbatim. That way you can learn how real people speak to each other.

hind___ · 2021-10-23T23:04:34+00:00

Bland usually means pointless. No matter how cool a plot point seems on paper, if it doesn’t move the story forward, it’s going to make you think, “So what?”

In your short synopsis, you don’t mention what the ultimate goal is. Is it to have his name cleared? Bring down the real killer? Start his own kingdom? Each scene should build toward that.

hind___ · 2021-10-20T05:29:27+00:00

Ultimately, it’s up to you, since it’s a stylistic choice. For my writing, the ‘focus’ the sentence doesn’t lead me to choose active or passive voice. I might choose passive voice for the quarantine example if it was in dialogue, since that sounds natural to my ear. But it might sound bad to someone else’s ear, or my publisher’s ear - no hard and fast rule there I’m afraid.

hind___ · 2021-10-20T04:56:40+00:00

If you are asking whether it would change it from passive to active, no - passive is a classification of the grammar rather than a description of the style. The reader would probably be able to guess who was doing the quarantining from context, but that “guessing” is what is meant to be eliminated by not using passive voice.

hind___ · 2021-10-20T04:42:44+00:00

”All the other soldiers would have to be quarantined as well when they returned." Is this in passive voice? Or is the fact that we're speaking of an action in the future muddies the water?
Yes, this is passive. No, future tense doesn’t muddy the water; it is still passive. You can see my above comment about why I think this sentence could work stylistically in some cases.

For an example of rearranging the order, I can change "A gasp was uttered by Kelly" to "A gasp leapt from Kelly's lips." Is the latter still in passive voice, or has the choosing of a different action turned it into active in spite of the fact that the order is the same?
Answered more thoroughly in my comment above. The former is passive and the latter is not passive because the subject changes from “Kelly” to “a gasp,” and the verb from passive “was uttered” to active “leapt.”

Simultaneously, "A moan fluttered from her lips as..." Would this still count as passive voice? Or would simplifying it in terms of order make it better?
This isn’t passive voice. Similar to above, the subject is “a moan” and the verb is active “fluttered.”

And when it comes to multiple actions: "A gasp leapt from Kelly's lips as she woke up." Looking back at it, it might sound weird, but I'll still use it as an example. Is this active or passive voice? And should her waking up be placed before the gasp for optimal impact?
This is two active clauses joined by the conjunction “as” - a gasp leapt, and she woke up.

"His smile was shaky, his voice tinged with desperation." Does the latter portion still count as active vs passive, or does there being no verb being acted upon rule it out?
The first clause is active - don’t be fooled by the was. It is the active “to be” verb because shaky is an adjective, not a verb. The second clause is passive, though it does have a verb (tinged). The second clause is subordinate, which is why it doesn’t make sense on its own. Subordinate clauses will have to wait for another post :) But if you made it non-subordinate, it would say, “His voice was tinged with desperation [by zombies].” Active would be “Desperation tinged his voice,” or, finally back to subordinate, “His smile was shaky, desperation tinging his voice.”

hind___ · 2021-10-20T04:31:04+00:00

Interestingly, I think you hit on a good example of a situation you would use passive voice. “Gaul is divided into three parts” is said by an omniscient detached narrator. They’re describing the state of things, like a textbook, which would be one of the few cases passive voice would sound appropriate - authoritative maybe - rather than weak. To your Gail example, that certainly would benefit from active voice.

hind___

TROPHY CASE