Well I've noticed there has been a bit of talking about writing from snooping through a few of the threads. If you couldn't tell from my in depths reviews in the "Games You've Beat" topic that I quite enjoy it as a pastime besides gaming.
I "practice" creative writing on a daily basis as I've been running a fantasy roleplay for the past year on another website 😅
It can vary between a maybe post or two a day to 200-300 over the course of a week with me creating a whole world, characters and the likes with plenty of improv on my part to boot.
I'm not that great (at least I don't think so, my puncuation is honestly pretty bad) but I figured it'd be neat for there to be a topic no matter how small it is to maybe share examples, tips & ideas, how you plan and the likes!
Course if this violates anything feel free to lock the topic mods! I just figured it'd be too specific to just post about writing in the chit-chat topic!
I find writing contests and on-line magazines very useful: they give you those directions that help you writing, while otherwise one can lose himself in the attempt of creating the "perfect-but-never-ended" novel.
Thanks to some contests I've been invited to prize-giving cerimonies which are always a good way to build your confidence, to meet new people, to visit new cities and especially to have an offered dinner. 😂
As I said in the opening post/statement that I've created (Well still at it really) a whole world and it's easier said then done. In fact I haven't even come up with the days of the week yet :')
Religion/belief systems, Political Values + Rulership, The level of technology, infrastructure, towns + regions, countries + landmasses, characters + jobs, wildlife + fauna etc...
... You really need a little pad or notebook to dedicate entirely to your world & it's notes to keep track of everything. Plus as I've seemed to find you can always stand to fine tune things or completely change others as you go along!
It can be pretty rewarding though when it finally starts coming together!
A way that helped me to get to grips with developing something on such a large scale (My creation has 10 different races, 5 main continents and countries, and a whole bunch of characters. I think I have a good 100 or so) was to start small with a single character and their room and go from there.
Even just what their bed is like, what's on the walls or across the shelves can say so much about your character's personality and or interests to kickstart things off!
After that you can move on to other members ofbthat characters family or the next door neighbour and carry on from there.
I'll happily provide an example of a character description of mine later on if anyone is interested!
I've attempted writing a story but it just hasn't worked for me so far @andreoni79 . Doing the roleplay or tandem story writing has helped me get better with it as I'm constantly being engaged with and kept on my toes as I never know what she's going to do with her character!
You sound like a much better writer then me though... fancy contests and free dinners lol! 😂
Though I mainly do it for fun, hence why I'm not too bothered about my skill level
Networking and writing circles and specialty communities and whatnot are all well and dandy, but the truth is that there is no magic pill you can take to help you write better, and, more often than not, "helpful tips" are usually just one person speaking out about their own habits as if they're universally applicable to everyone.
The secret to writing better is to read a lot and to write a lot. Scrutiny from an impartial third party is helpful, too. That means someone who writes for a living and isn't your buddy. Certainly don't ask you mom or someone to critique your writing.
That's not at all necessary, though. Learning to articulate your own thoughts in a cogent manner is, and there's no replacement for practice.
I guess if I had "tips" to offer, I'd say:
1) Write what you enjoy, as a hobby. You'll be more motivated if you don't treat it like an obligation.
2) Public accountability tools can be helpful. A lot of social websites have "magic spreadsheet" groups where people will record their daily number of words written (either with regard to specific exercises, such as crafting short fiction, but even forum posts and blogs can count if that's more what you're going for) and try to aim for a monthly number of total words written. When people think they're being observed or judged, they tend not to goof off as much. That's why you wait until your boyfriend or whatever is asleep before you sneak downstairs for that piece of cake that has been calling your name all day.
3) Read widely. If language is your business, so to speak, you want to have a lot of exposure to it. That often means opening yourself up to stuff outside of your comfort zone. For me, that's popular fiction, technical manuals, foreign languages, and poetry (which I tend to dislike, aside from my beloved senpai T.S. Eliot's classic work)
I have always enjoyed creative writing. I find it cathartic. I’m not much for the spoken word; I feel more at ease expressing myself in the written form. When I speak, I’m too prone to stick my foot in my mouth.
I have toyed with the idea of trying to get published, but I haven’t taken the time and effort to really perfect my craft. Maybe one day...
I would be happy to peruse anyone’s writings and give feedback though, as uneducated as that feedback might be.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy can you give me / us an example how your world works please? I'm unsure how this works.
Do you for instance come up with a place like Middle Earth / Tatooine / Springfield in your own imagination and then work out the inhabitants etc and that is then the subject matter for creative writing?
That's a great idea.
Forum Best Game of All Time Awards
PS3 Megathread 2019: The Last of Us
Multiplat 2018: Horizon Zero Dawn
Nintendo 2017: Super Mario Bros 3
Playstation 2016: Uncharted 2
Multiplat 2015: Final Fantasy 7
and, more often than not, "helpful tips" are usually just one person speaking out about their own habits as if they're universally applicable to everyone
[Contains a tip in my first proper post. Also had some cake last night whilst my partner was asleep]
Oh crumbs @Ralizah hope that didn't come off as me being a bit of a... cotton-headed-ninny-muggins :')
I'll admit @RogerRoger it was seeing that comment in the work topic that inspired me to start this topic up! I hope it goes well for you and I'd be happy to read anything you write... like @Th3solution says though it probably wouldn't be the most constructive or educated of comments as I mainly just write for fun. But whatever helps!
So as I said it's a Roleplay or you could call it a tandem story writing excercise so there's another person involved and it constantly goes back and forth between us.
I gave her the basics of what I had in my head first. A really rough outline of the five main landmasses and the races that inhabit them.
She chose the country we'd start in and then came up with the Main Character for our little ditty.
Hunter Yaina-Lavellan.
Hunter's a Hyena Beastperson (Think like a cat girl/bunny girl with just hyena ears and a tail but otherwise normal human looking rather then an anthropomorphised animal) & High Elf.
So first I had to come up with Hunter's parents.
Hunter's mother ended up becoming the Hyena part and her father being the Elf.
Then I had to figure out the backstory on they how they ended up getting together.
The backstory being a "simple" opposites attract story with Hunter's mother being a blue blood and member of high society whilst Hunter's dad became a mercenary, jovial and mischievous but falling head over heels for Hunter's mom the moment they saw her.
Course then I had to come up with a mercenary group for Hunter's dad to be part of and how they'd actually meet Hunter's mom.
The group "Hunter's Folly" (Hunter now being named after the group) was born consisting of six main members and were hired by Annette's (Hunter's mom's name) father for a job and was how the two met and eventually the pair eloped, Annette joined the mercenary group for a small time before she settled down in the small town they now reside in with Hunter's dad being away for weeks/months at a time.
And yeah... things just keep snowballing from there as I kept slowly building the details up as I made Hunter's friends, the small 500 person town they live in (Having rough ideas for about 20 or so characters) and kick starting the plot off with Hunter's dad taking Hunter to the capital to train her into becoming a mercenary.
Again there's another person involved who controls Hunter's actions, whilst I control everyone and everything else. So it's very reactionary where i may have an idea on what to do next, only for her and Hunter to completely quash it.
So if Hunter ends up swiping a biscuit from a bakery for example, maybe I'll set the guards on the scamp and there'll be a chase through the city and we'll see if Hunter evades them or gets caught with me having rough ideas for multiple little scenario's.
There's a bunch of off the fly improv on my end that somehow works.
You could consider it almost like a written version of a game of D&D if that helps you understand my thought process and developing this works for me.
Hope that's a good enough explanation, sorry if i waffled on a bit, feel free to ask any more questions!
Previously known as Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy
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"You don't have to save the world to find meaning in life. Sometimes all you need is something simple, like someone to take care of"
I'm about a third of the way through writing a book. It's going well, I think. Hoping to have the first draft done by Christmas-ish. It's the first time I've committed myself to writing a full-blown book. I've written various bits and pieces down the years, for local newspapers and websites, but never anything like this.
It's amazing how quickly you can veer between "Hey this is pretty good" to "This isn't working at all, it's terrible". I don't know if it's even possible to give advice since everyone is so different, as @Ralizah mentioned. Ralizah's tips are spot on and are pretty much what I'd say as well.
I'd also add that if you're struggling or stuck, just power through. Write something that is vaguely like what you wanted for the part you're stuck on, and then come back to it later. I've always found that it's all in the second and third drafts, and I'm hoping that will be the case with writing a book as well. If it's not then I'm screwed.
Good job, Parappa. You can go on to the next stage now.
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I don't know really. Thriller? Crime? Romance? It doesn't really fit into any of those categories really, although it has elements of each. I had intended it to be funny, but it's coming out with a more serious tone. I'm just letting it happen, it could all change in the later drafts anyway.
Also thanks for the 1442 heads up!
Good job, Parappa. You can go on to the next stage now.
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy@RogerRoger Cheers guys. I'll let you know how I get on. I've got the entire thing mapped out, so it's just a case of actually doing it now.
"One time I had a particularly-beloved character and I accidentally wrote them into a corner, so I killed them and it really, really worked." - This is brilliantly brutal!
Good job, Parappa. You can go on to the next stage now.
I'd also add that if you're struggling or stuck, just power through. Write something that is vaguely like what you wanted for the part you're stuck on, and then come back to it later.
That's actually really great advice. At bottom, the practice of writing fiction is sort of like cleaning a particularly messy room or chiseling a statue out of a block of marble: it's imposing order on the raw meaninglessness of the noumenal world. In all those scenarios, and probably in almost any endeavor that involves the creation of discreet pieces of art, you can't properly get a sense of what the fine details should look like until the underlying structure is in order. And getting that sense for structure requires bold, aggressive steps to limit the scope of chaos on your piece. So as tempting as it is to try and get a sentence just right as you come to a certain section of a story, article, etc. it's best just to roughly fill it in and move on.
Geniuses can probably write something properly on their first go with minimal to no editing required. For the rest of us, passable literature isn't written, it's rewritten.
I've actually sort've ended up doing the same @RogerRoger
It was surprisingly quite emotional for a character who for the most part was fairly cruel (She was an assassin and she used illusion magic at one point to make Hunter think she was dying from being stabbed by her... When really she was just eating soup nowhere near her 😅)
Previously known as Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy
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"You don't have to save the world to find meaning in life. Sometimes all you need is something simple, like someone to take care of"
@JohnnyShoulder I haven't earned a Trophy for months genuinely. The last one I got was playing Tomb Raider online with Rog and Kal and I don't want anymore until we finish that! Dreams has helped me get over that addiction.
@Gremio108 Wow mate great work. When you publish I will buy a copy for sure and buy another one for the local library to get your stuff out there!
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy That's quite the imagination. I can't imagine a Hyena and an Elf getting it on lol.
It's a great way to build up a back story and is the first time I have even heard of this method. I struggle to build characters and the few stories I have written always end up about a particular incident or brief Windows into a person's life scraping on the details.
Could we make a Science fiction one about a team about to embark on a mission to a foreign planet?
Forum Best Game of All Time Awards
PS3 Megathread 2019: The Last of Us
Multiplat 2018: Horizon Zero Dawn
Nintendo 2017: Super Mario Bros 3
Playstation 2016: Uncharted 2
Multiplat 2015: Final Fantasy 7
@RogerRoger Agreed. Let's grab Kal and have a 2 hour go later in the Week.
Forum Best Game of All Time Awards
PS3 Megathread 2019: The Last of Us
Multiplat 2018: Horizon Zero Dawn
Nintendo 2017: Super Mario Bros 3
Playstation 2016: Uncharted 2
Multiplat 2015: Final Fantasy 7
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Topic: The Creative Writing/Literature Topic
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