Ancient Domains Of Mystery, forum overview / Stories / How do you write?
| Online users ( Unknown) |
| Application object not working properly at the moment, no clue who is online... * Numbers in parentheses are the number of minutes since the user last loaded a page. Logged-in users time out after 40 minutes (unless they manually log out), lurkers and anonymous posters after 20. |
|
Matt Registered user Adventurer Last page view: 6917 days, 19 hours, 43 minutes and 48 seconds ago. |
I thought I'd start a topic here because I'm interested in how people write. If you've noticed how you write, I mean, and feel like sharing. By 'how you write' I mean what circumstances and environment help or hinder the writer process; what gets it going, too. Your individual peculiarities. Maybe I'm the only one like this, but I find I can only really write satisfactorily late at night, past eleven usually but best at one or two in the morning. When I start a story it's from an idea I happen upon; I've got lots of story ideas that I haven't written, so I usually just live my life and the story builds on itself until it's fairly developed in my mind, before I put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard actually. I didn't do that with 'Wanderings', initially. There are also particular songs that I learn to associate with my story and the mood that inspired it; I find that when I cease working on a story it's usually because I've lost the original feeling, so music and other associations help. I can see it now; three weeks pass with no one responding to this topic, and then finally some unregistered person replies, "Man, you're farked in the noggin. I just sit me down and write." (I don't know if I need to put 'OOC' in the thread name; The Forum rules and Rules don't have it, only out-of-character topics that center around stories seem to have 'OOC' as part of their thread names. Duke, feel free to change it.) |
||
|
Iridia Registered user YASD Last page view: 3755 days, 10 hours, 29 minutes and 56 seconds ago. |
No, you don't... "OOC" in a thread name means the thread is the companion to a story thread, used to post OOC comments for that particular story. As for me, writing works best if I just sit down and do it. If I can't figure out how to say something, I skip it or summarize it and move on; it'll be replaced in the editing. Usually, I think of story ideas while doing boring tasks, like cleaning the apartment, or while I'm riding my bike someplace (I routinely go as far as 5 miles away, so that's not too short a time), or (not these days, since I'm a full time student) while I'm working at a boring job. I write down summaries on whatever paper I have handy (my last story was born on a McDonald's hamburger wrapper), then work with the summaries later on, or not, as the mood takes me. I write rather slowly; my stories often take years to complete so I've only finished maybe ten to fifteen short-stories and one novel-length fan fiction. Essays and book/movie reviews are more my forte; I started writing those as soon as I COULD write, I write them quickly, and I've probably finished hundreds of them. I don't find essays boring, if I choose the topic. I like stating my opinion, or sumamrizing my knowledge on a subject--and I don't run the risk of boring my audience, who can choose to read or not. Mostly "not"; but that doesn't matter to me: I don't write for the readers, but to understand things more clearly. In school, a class which requires me to regularly answer essay questions is the class in which I will learn the most. And, despite what it looks like... *looks over third paragraph* I am not addicted to parentheses. Really. Die Gedanken sind Frei |
||
 Derek B Rackham Esq. Registered user Swordsman of Forcena Last page view: 6961 days, 11 hours, 48 minutes and 27 seconds ago. |
I think (as you may see from the last arcanium post) that my approach to writing is and always has been one of the ugliest, least elegant approaches to writing. For me writing comes down to sitting down at a task, and writing whatever my mind and hand regurgitates. This forms the first draft but I always approach it with the idea that I am not going to do any drafts/revisions and that I will complete the item in one sitting. Apon finishing this attempt and reading what I have written, large sections are usually found to be unsatisfactory and rewritten. Rinse and repeat. This is the revision process for me, though I don't look at it as revisions as I only really do one final copy of the item with no drafts ;) Or so I keep telling myself. I realised early on that not drafting/revising work ended with highly unsatisfactory results, though I still tell myself I won't draft/revise when I start a new item. This is a similar approach to those I take in many areas of life - just jump right in and go for it. My Software Design and Development teacher in high school didn't really appreciate this approach - where he wanted me to take the 'elegant' approach to programming, he said I always took the 'sledge hammer' approach, that I just bashed away and away at the problem until I solved it, rather than working around it. While I was able to spit out some exceptional work (essays, poetry etc) this method was also frowned apon in English classes. Tell me how to get stronger.... |
||
|
Lamaros Registered user The sieve Last page view: 7168 days, 12 hours, 54 minutes and 41 seconds ago. |
I write best when my life is boring as hell and I need some release. I generaly hate most of my writing, and so I don't do as much as I would like it. I have very poor spelling and very poor gramatical skills, so that doesn't help either. I write better when it just flows. When I try to write it's usualy terrible. I am very good at criticising my own work (most of what I have done in Arcanium I dislike). That said. I also write better when I think carefuly about the subject, and not just dribble out whatever is on my mind. The Arcanium writings I've done have been the most on one topic (around 7000 words so far), normaly I have a very short attention span. If you ever need a critic ask me, I'm exceptionl at it. :) I have a lot of ideas, often inspired by dreams, as I dream prolificly and abmornaly. Otherwise I usualy get ideas as a response to something else I've read or seen, I dont have spontantionus imaginations. |
||
|
Jetman123 Unregistered user |
Hm, well, where to start. I can never write something that's meticoulously planned out. When I write something, it may be as part of an overarching plot that I already have planned out, but other than that what I'm writing is completely spontaneous. My short stories are the best example of this - when I write one, I don't plan to do it. The inspiration hits me suddenly, I open up WordPad and start making a story. I tend to oscillate between the mood for writing and the non-mood-for-writing quite often. I'll sit down suddenly, write for half an hour, then I find that I've stopped being creative and stop. A few hours later I'll come back and write a little more once the inspiration strikes me. I can't write when I'm not in the writing mood - I'm devoid of creativty, then. Sometimes creatvity will elude me for a couple of days, in which I stop writing immediately. Even if there are poeple who want to see the next chapter or whatever. I never, ever let myself push too hard to get creativity and end up writing dully. Most of all though, I have many "inspirational" moments during the course of a day, and when they come I ALWAYS write them down. Then I revisit them and see if they looked as good as when I imagined them, and if I'm sufficiently motivated I might experiment with writing about it. This part is more advice than anything, as what I'm saying is that only about a tenth of my ideas actually end up being turned into stories, and even less of that fraction that are written are actually what I consider up to my standards. My point is, write down your ideas, always, and then revisit them later, no matter how crazy they seem. And most of all, don't get discouraged just because many of your ideas end up being flops. A final bit of advice. DO NOT CRITISE YOURSELF DURING THE WRITING PROCEDURE FOR ANY REASON. Critisism too early MURDERS motivation like a Purifying mace kills Undead. Once you've got the thing written, THEN you go back and edit, and not before. That's one almost-universal way for writers to keep their drive to write, and I always try and remind myself of that, so this again fits into both the advice and my own preferences categories. Well anyway. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings :P |
||
|
exterminator Registered user Guerilla from the North Last page view: 5804 days, 7 hours, 12 minutes and 6 seconds ago. |
Very interesting thread, indeed. You've not read any of my writings, mainly because I'm not good in writing stories in english, but I write lot of them in my native language. This is how my writing happens: I get an idea. I write it quickly down with few words before I forget it. I usually carry a notebook with me for this. When I have the time, I properly outline it. I make this even to the worst ideas. Then I read the idea and think if it could be used to make a good story. If it's good, I start to make a story. I'm unable to make the story in my head only, and then start to write without any kind of outlining in paper first. The ideas in my head are like fragments of a story, and I have to write them down so I can edit them, arrange them and build a whole story from them. Like Jetman, I write only when I feel like writing. If I try to force myself to write, the text will usually be boring. However, my writing mood usually doesn't change on and off very quickly: if I feel like writing now, I usually write the whole day. And there can be several days or even weeks before my next day of inspiration. I have one major problem: I have many ideas, and I want to stuff them all in same story. If I try to write one good story based on only one or two good ideas and save my other ideas for the next story, I usually end up to write several stories simultaneously, because I can't wait until I get a chance to use my next brilliant idea. Another, though smaller, problem is that I sometimes have lot of ideas for individual scenes, but not for the whole plot. Therefore some of my stories tend to be endless chain of great scenes without a good plot which would connect them together. I sometimes also do what Jetman just told not to do: I criticize myself and lose my inspiration because I don't like what I wrote earlier, even if I like that part of the text I'm currently working on. Se parhaiten nauraa joka toiselle kuoppaa kaivaa. [Edited 1 time, last edit on 1/18/2007 at 09:02 (GMT -5) by exterminator] |
||
 Kirbot Registered user BattleHax0r of Devastation Last page view: 5884 days, 9 hours, 57 minutes and 45 seconds ago. |
The way I tend to write is I spend time thinking for several days sometimes before I actually sit down to write. I just churn it over in my head. Then, when inspiration strikes (usually past 11 pm for me, too), I just sit down and start writing. I know what you mean about not wanting to write when you just don't have the drive; it comes off dreadfully dull, or at least not how you want it to. I wrote a short novel a while back (around 96 single spaced pages in MS Word). Recently, I've started going back and completely rewriting it. Not just editing, but starting over from scratch. I'm using the same basic outline I had before, but it is so much better the second time through, you'd have thought somebody else had written it. I like writing short stories and essays/reviews too, but I like the long-term, plot-driven types of writing more. Just more interesting to me, I suppose. Molach: "I like to have 200+ hp and over 5 good healin potions when I do [the fire] temple. AND some way of killing the Wyrm" Morio: "Some way of killing the worm is recommended, yes :D" |
||
|
nOOb-mAsTeR Registered user Master of all things nOOby!!! Last page view: 5763 days, 15 hours, 41 minutes and 4 seconds ago. |
exterminator's method is exactly how I write music....nice method:D "You try to give Fang, the large dog the bone. Fang, the large dog says,"Do you know who I am, mortal?!?!" My smartest dog ever:D |