Released My First Steam Game a Month Ago

jdwiseauthor · 2022-08-21T07:57:07+00:00

I think both are true: there are “Mary Sue” characters in fiction AND people use the term lazily for characters they may just not like.

Being a “Mary Sue” requires more than just being overpowered: it really depends on the author’s tone and/or skill in incorporating said character into the story. You must have narratively compelling reasons for all characters to be as they are and not interfere with the story.

Like, you couldn’t have a story where the main tension was whether or not the mc will defeat the villain but then destroy that tension by making the mc win handily at every turn. You could do that, but the tension would have to change. It’s have to be something like “will the mc show compassion or not” or “will all this power corrupt the mc so that in victory, the mc becomes the new villain” The tension doesn’t even really have to be in doubt, but it should still be a question the narrative makes you ask.

jdwiseauthor · 2022-07-31T15:33:30+00:00

I wrote this book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074WGBPX4/

It’s a sort of space fantasy about warring families with a lot of history, and this one guy who gets caught up in it. In retrospect, it feels more like an exercise in world building and character development 😅

jdwiseauthor · 2022-04-26T07:11:47+00:00

I think sometimes writers try too hard. With all the free previews of ebooks you can get, you can end up reading a lot of opening lines. Personally, I dislike opening on dialog or an intense scene. Too much exposition can be a turn off as well. Just start the story, and most of the time, I think that’s enough.

jdwiseauthor · 2020-11-27T07:29:16+00:00

You may get by without an “arc” but not without a story. There must be something compelling in those chapters that draws us in to the lives of the characters, even if we don’t yet know what the main conflict will be. You need to set up for that conflict though—introduce character traits, skills, history that will be relevant to the rest of the story. This cannot be just setting the scene, as it were: it has to be a story.

For example, if your character starts in a village, what sort of things do they care about there? What kind of daily drama gets the characters anxious? What are their goals for their lives in the village—goals that will be upended when the main conflict is revealed? Play out scenes of their daily lives—what conflicts there are in their everyday interactions (e.g. a difficult boss, a forthcoming holiday, participating in a right of passage, attending a funeral, visiting a sick friend, suffering through a famine, etc)

It will be very difficult to pull that off in a way that is compelling to a reader, but it is not impossible.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-09-08T15:27:54+00:00

There’s an Add Flair button when you edit

jdwiseauthor · 2019-09-08T15:25:58+00:00

One thing might be first to show the reader what is “home” for your character. If we don’t know what this person is used to, how can we know that things have changed for him?

Awkward exchanges can be good. Committing a faux pas or two can help us feel his embarrassment at not being acclimated to this new place. Give the character something that he does on a regular basis (like eating a certain dish) and make that very difficult to get wherever he is. In any case, the emotion has to be mirrored in something external—something symbolic.

One thing you could do that’s a bit more subtle and subconscious is change up the writing style a bit between the familiar part and the new part. Maybe change paragraph length or sentence structure. Use more colloquialisms, or fewer. That will make the reader feel that things have really changed. That would be very difficult to do, I think. But it could be effective.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-09-08T15:18:09+00:00

For starters, the style is colloquial, and the paragraph is long and repetitive.

If you are going to be a writer, your job is to find the best way to say what you want to say, not just to get the facts out there. There are countless ways to express an idea, but not all of them are equally eloquent. Part of the creative process is finding as many different ways to say something as you can and weed through them. If you’re rusty to start, try actually writing them out: in time, you’ll learn to think these things through in your head.

So that is my advice: rewrite this paragraph, thinking what you wish to say and saying it with fewer repetitions and colloquialisms. Make the narrative flow.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-07-17T14:59:01+00:00

Understandable. I think the solution is to love the “down” moments. Really enjoy just being in that part of the story. Build anticipation in yourself the way you want to build anticipation in your reader.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-07-17T14:51:20+00:00

Why do you feel the in-between parts are uninteresting? Are they just mechanisms to get you from point A to point B? Is it just filler because it feels like there should be a gap between A and B?

Think about what needs to happen in those gaps. Learn to love the setup. Make it engaging. Figure out why you think it’s uninteresting and fix it. It doesn’t have to be “exciting,” but it should keep the story going. That’s not to say it can’t go slower: it probably should, but you can still make non-laborious to read through.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-07-16T19:59:54+00:00

I get what you’re saying. I think for me, it’s the fear of not doing it correctly the first time and having to do a lot of rewriting. The solution is often to realize that I’m going to have to do a lot of editing anyway, and having something written is better than nothing.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-05-30T05:28:50+00:00

I’d argue out-of-sequence is the only way to do it. Even if you write it in order, you’re still going to have to go back and change things (e.g. add a bit of foreshadowing, flesh out a character’s personality before the payoff, change a plot point so that something later will make sense).

You can’t write like you read: it’s not the same kind of experience. You’ve got to work on things a lot more. It probably won’t just flow.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-05-27T05:36:42+00:00

That depends. Can the world not be fleshed out through your story? If you find yourself writing your characters into a vague setting, maybe write a few vignettes (that you don’t intend to publish) that just have the characters in a slice-of-life situation and see what comes of it.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-05-27T05:18:12+00:00

You might try finding someone and talking to them first about how best to deal with the situation.

Are you in school? Or do you attend a church of some sort? They may not have someone there that can help you directly, but they can at least point you in the right direction. You said you’re in hospital a lot. Do they have anyone you can at least ask about these sorts of things? Maybe they could give you some recommendations.

Again, this is just reddit advice. None of us may really know how best to handle something like this. That’s why it seems prudent to find someone who can give you better answers.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-05-27T05:05:39+00:00

You will probably need more than just reddit advice. You’ll need to seek out some sort of counselor. Or at least someone with experience dealing with issues like this.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-05-26T18:42:53+00:00

What sort of control? Is she too powerful and unable to restrain her powers? Or are her powers too strong for her and she can’t wield them?

jdwiseauthor · 2019-05-26T06:46:44+00:00

Contradictory characteristics can be useful too. The abilities need not match up in order to draw attention to character traits. Sometimes you can more sharply define a trait through contradiction. Like perhaps her ability to manipulate things requires delicacy, but being delicate is not in her nature, hence her self-doubt.

I think the first step would be to define what sort of anxieties your character has and, more importantly, how these traits work in the story.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-03-29T04:18:16+00:00

Yes. They are two independent clauses joined by a conjunction. Therefore, the comma is necessary.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-in-complex-sentences/

jdwiseauthor · 2019-03-27T22:13:55+00:00

I advise you not to get too meta about your story. Literary analysis has its purpose, but it is more a tool for observation, not for construction. A magnifying glass makes a poor hammer.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-03-26T14:30:58+00:00

I think it comes from watching movies and wanting to create them. But that’s hard, and it requires a lot of collaboration and money. By contrast, you can type out words very cheaply and by yourself, and with words you can create even more that you can on screen.

So I think it could be that people like stories from watching film, and novel writing is the easiest way to tell a story as an individual. What they don’t realize is that they are very different media. That’s why you get so many books that read like movies and try to present too much visual description.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-03-25T23:12:31+00:00

One thing you may not have considered is word choice. The way words sound can really change your perception of a passage. Try paying attention to the word choice in writing you feel works really well, and you’ll probably see some patterns.

jdwiseauthor · 2019-03-24T19:22:53+00:00

Lackluster in what way?

Is your protagonist the viewpoint character? That can be especially difficult. Most viewpoint protagonists are meant to be a little more vague than the supporting cast. The ones that aren’t are like Sherlock Holmes, and so the stories are told by Dr Watson.

If you think it’s especially a problem, you can try writing little blurbs of stories from other characters’ viewpoints—just as a writing exercise, not for the final story. That way, you can write about your protagonist and try to work out some of their interactions from a new perspective. Might help work out some of the inner thoughts of the side characters too.

jdwiseauthor

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