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[Burbank_]

I uploaded the start of my story to critique circle and got some very constructive responses, seems like a good site. I'm hesitant to put up the whole story on there though
-_-, might just wrap it up as is and be done with it.

When should you use a scene break? DO you use a scene break when you switch between character POV's?

 

[Mr-Joker]

You also might consider, assuming you're not planning to rip chapter one's guts out, just moving on and fixing it later. Sometimes it's good to just get it all on the page and see how you feel after. You might just be too hard on it right now and feel differently, or have a better idea of what's wrong with it, later.

Yeah I just going to make little notes for later and just move onto chapter 2, otherwise I will end up wasting my time trying to fix chapter 1.

Plus once I have finished chapter 5 I can ask someone to read it and get feedback which will help me pin point the flaws and how to improve it.

 

[Vagabundo]

When should you use a scene break? DO you use a scene break when you switch between character POV's?

Yeah its usually less confusing. Although Dune did in scene character POV switching and used 3rd person omniscient. But you know, Dune! I'd go with KISS.

 

[Master Milk]

so is that website in the op the best way to get feedback on things you've written?

 

[Kalentan]

That's difficult to say. Books are made of books. And fan fiction is the latest to tow the line between inspiration and plagiarism. And profiteering corrupts the innocence of inspiration like no other.

Some people might not like you labelling it Star Ocean fan fiction; seems like you're being open and honest; but others will see it as a way to gain traction with Star Ocean fans. Or at least to draw attention to your self using the brand. In your case specifically, neither of the latter two accusations/assumptions appears true to my mind.

Nobody'll care unless you hit the big time anyway, and only then Star Ocean fans might call it a rip off. To my mind, your pitch seems unrelated enough to the Star Oceans IP. I know you're intending to write purely for your self, but who knows, Star Oceans fans might want to read it, so why hold back?

Sorry for the late reply. Had to think about it for a few days.

Thanks for the response and sorry for the late response of me telling you that I thank you for the response.

Yeah. I feel like it can be hard to keep up with the thread due to it not being that active. If that makes sense. xD

And yeah... I guess I only asked because you know, as I consume media, sometimes I can't deny that I want to go like: "Can I write my own take on a similar idea?" Cause you know, as writers we're always thinking up of ideas and when you see an idea already done but you realize that there is either stuff you would do different and such and maybe meld it with other ideas.

Maybe I'm a bit too inspired by other peoples ideas sometimes. Yet it isn't even a problem to think up of original settings, but I always want to give my take on already established ideas/settings.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

.

 

[Mr-Joker]

So I went back and had another reread of Chapter one, it wasn't as bad as I originally thought and a few rewrite can improve it.

I also decided to end chapter one earlier and have the rest flow into chapter two, otherwise it would have ended up being too long and bloated.

Anyway I feel a little better about chapter one and will just plough on with Chapter two.

 

[Crimson_Justice]

Lately I've been finding some success with keeping myself motivated to write by purposefully stopping in the middle of something exciting. This chapter of my novel I'm writing now is one I've been looking forward to since I came up with the whole idea, and, getting ready to write some more today, I'm psyched to get back into. Same thing happened yesterday with the conclusion of the previous chapter.

Obviously this isn't possible all the time, so when I can't get myself excited to write, I write anyway and force through the boring stuff even if it sucks. I can fix it up in draft two, anyway.

 

[TheGreatDirector]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12058731/8/A-Peanuts-Tale

I finally broke 20,000 words! The last chapter took a lot of time to write. I'm going to try to reach 30,000 quicker.

 

[Delio]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12058731/8/A-Peanuts-Tale

I finally broke 20,000 words! The last chapter took a lot of time to write. I'm going to try to reach 30,000 quicker.

Congrats!

 

[Media]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12058731/8/A-Peanuts-Tale

I finally broke 20,000 words! The last chapter took a lot of time to write. I'm going to try to reach 30,000 quicker.

You should cross post to AO3, might get more feedback possibly if you need an invite, pm me

 

[FlowersisBritish]

So I submitted a short story and the guy had some weird formatting requests. The big one being no Tab indents. Took me ten minutes to delete ever single tab and an extra 15 to figure out how to do paragraph indents. Twas weird, but maybe I'm the weird one? Do people use paragraph indents normally? Is Tab generally frowned upon?

 

[Media]

So I submitted a short story and the guy had some weird formatting requests. The big one being no Tab indents. Took me ten minutes to delete ever single tab and an extra 15 to figure out how to do paragraph indents. Twas weird, but maybe I'm the weird one? Do people use paragraph indents normally? Is Tab generally frowned upon?

I thought tab was standard for fictional writing. Is it like, supposed to be in some sort of citation format like APA or MLA or something?

Now I am worried about all my formatting lol

 

[phillipgessert]

So I submitted a short story and the guy had some weird formatting requests. The big one being no Tab indents. Took me ten minutes to delete ever single tab and an extra 15 to figure out how to do paragraph indents. Twas weird, but maybe I'm the weird one? Do people use paragraph indents normally? Is Tab generally frowned upon?

Using tab for indents is frowned upon, at least as manuscripts pass into any sort of production phase. They definitely have to be stripped out before moving into design and layout. It is probably better to not use them in the first place for future works.

 

[Soulfire]

I'd have to double check but I'm pretty sure that Amazon and the other places that you can self-publish on do not want you to use tab, just change the paragraph formatting to indent and you should be fine from now on

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

So I submitted a short story and the guy had some weird formatting requests. The big one being no Tab indents. Took me ten minutes to delete ever single tab and an extra 15 to figure out how to do paragraph indents. Twas weird, but maybe I'm the weird one? Do people use paragraph indents normally? Is Tab generally frowned upon?

Not the first time I've heard of it. I'm so ingrained to hit tab every time I enter down that I figure it'll be something I have to manually do every time I get that far. So far I haven't ever gotten that far so no worries for now!

 

[Nappuccino]

Using tab for indents is frowned upon, at least as manuscripts pass into any sort of production phase. They definitely have to be stripped out before moving into design and layout. It is probably better to not use them in the first place for future works.

Instead of using tab, use the ruler (or paragraph settings) to mark your indent. In publishing, the actual indent is often much less than a full tab, and many online journals have no tab at all, just memo-style extra white space between the paragraphs.

If they place your work with all the tabs into their document with said document's formatting, things will look all sorts of weird.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

In my limited online experience, the tab versus indent is that Tab only works in old-school word editors like Word, but due to being an actual command is a hard cut (or incomprehensible garbage) in HTML, which is used by Amazon's Kindle and other modern platforms.
Indent does convert direct to HTML, so that's safe to use without fucking up layout or spending a lot of times 'debugging' the word file.

Don't know what the effect of using the ruler is on that. I think that's an internal rule or Indent with the length as an argument. so: Indent (5), for indent on 5mm, or something like that. Tab is a different, but actual command, like Break is.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

For those of you watching the Presidential "debate", there would be some great parody in there if it wasn't actually happening.

However, Trump is a great example of a pathological liar. You could definitely use that at least if you happen to have a character like that.

 

[phillipgessert]

In my limited online experience, the tab versus indent is that Tab only works in old-school word editors like Word, but due to being an actual command is a hard cut (or incomprehensible garbage) in HTML, which is used by Amazon's Kindle and other modern platforms.
Indent does convert direct to HTML, so that's safe to use without fucking up layout or spending a lot of times 'debugging' the word file.

Don't know what the effect of using the ruler is on that. I think that's an internal rule or Indent with the length as an argument. so: Indent (5), for indent on 5mm, or something like that. Tab is a different, but actual command, like Break is.

Tabs are basically meaningless whitespace. Using them is about like hitting return 50 times to try and get text to the middle of a page. You're right, it's just a junk character floating around in the MSS and doing no one any good.

If you use paragraph styles, and use some sort of automated conversion (e.g. the one in KDP), the indent setting may carry into the ebook edition. Setting it to arbitrary fixed values like 5mm may cause problems, though, because it should really be bound to line height or font size, so it will scale if readers adjust font.

If the ebook is built out manually, you don't really have to set an indent at all within Word, because we mainly look for carriage returns to differentiate one paragraph from the next.

The basic idea is to never use whitespace characters for positioning at all, and I'd say it's best to not worry about any sort of positioning in the base manuscript in the first place. The base manuscript should be raw structure and content.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

Man, every time I let this book just be stupid, it's way more fun to write. I don't even want to count the amount of world building plot holes I have going, but they can wait. Right now it's toys fighting toys because there apparently hasn't been enough of that.

It's so dumb. Not sure how much of this I"ll end up editing out, but probably a lot. There isn't that much tension to it, since you know, toys fighting toys.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

Third draft done. Added 40 pages and cleaned up a TON of stuff.

There's still the two extra scenes to add, then I'm done, I think. Time to start thinking about next steps.

I've realized my book is something like Akira meets Bladerunner meets Lord of the Rings with some YA "powers" thrown in in a subdued manner.

Not sure what the hell audience wants that but it's at least unique, which is what I was going for. I had a lot of fun writing and editing it and I saw my own skills improve a lot. I was always good with concepts, but actual scene-to-scene description and dialogue was difficult at first. I feel like I've refined a skillset, so even if this book goes nowhere, I got something positive out of it.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

Third draft done. Added 40 pages and cleaned up a TON of stuff.

There's still the two extra scenes to add, then I'm done, I think. Time to start thinking about next steps.

I've realized my book is something like Akira meets Bladerunner meets Lord of the Rings with some YA "powers" thrown in in a subdued manner. Not sure what the hell audience wants that but it's at least unique, which is what I was going for.

Sounds better than the last few books I've read

 

[Mr-Joker]

Man just when I was 100% sure that I wanted to commit myself into writing a multi series book, I get cold feet and want to work on story that is only 1 book.

Had this last year and it cropped up again, which leads me to believe that it's the newness of the idea that has me interested and I hoping that it will pass soon.

 

[Crimson_Justice]

Man just when I was 100% sure that I wanted to commit myself into writing a multi series book, I get cold feet and want to work on story that is only 1 book.

Had this last year and it cropped up again, which leads me to believe that it's the newness of the idea that has me interested and I hoping that it will pass soon.

Not sure what you want (doesn't sound like you know exactly, either, which is fine), but if it's the size of the story that's putting you off, maybe you can work on some outlining or planning for the series while you write the solo? My first novel was a standalone, the second was the first in a separate series that I dropped, and the one I'm working on now is the first in a series that I don't see myself dropping. The difference is, I think, that I sufficiently planned this second attempt at a series out before diving into the actual writing. That's just me, though. I need to pre-plan, I guess.

 

[Mr-Joker]

Not sure what you want (doesn't sound like you know exactly, either, which is fine), but if it's the size of the story that's putting you off, maybe you can work on some outlining or planning for the series while you write the solo? My first novel was a standalone, the second was the first in a separate series that I dropped, and the one I'm working on now is the first in a series that I don't see myself dropping. The difference is, I think, that I sufficiently planned this second attempt at a series out before diving into the actual writing. That's just me, though. I need to pre-plan, I guess.

I think for me this is my first entry into writing and I feel that it would be better if I do a stand alone book first to get some experience in writing and publishing the book before attempting to tackle a series as the last thing I want is book 1 to be the worse in the series due to my inexperience.

 

[disappeared]

Figured it had to happen sometime.

step 1: organize this shit

we'll see where this goes. maybe upwards of six or seven hundred pieces. A lot will be going to the axe. We'll see.

 

[Crimson_Justice]

I think for me this is my first entry into writing and I feel that it would be better if I do a stand alone book first to get some experience in writing and publishing the book before attempting to tackle a series as the last thing I want is book 1 to be the worse in the series due to my inexperience.

Ah I see. That's a good idea then, starting simple.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

I think for me this is my first entry into writing and I feel that it would be better if I do a stand alone book first to get some experience in writing and publishing the book before attempting to tackle a series as the last thing I want is book 1 to be the worse in the series due to my inexperience.

Advisable. A book is already a big project. You start off going "THIS WILL BE FIVE " and you're going to feel overwhelmed pretty quickly.

Bunch of my writer friends are all "I'm going to do a seven book series about X and this is book #1" and none of them have finished book #1 yet. I know for a fact one never will.

 

[BorkBork]

Hello Writing-GAF,

Would anybody be interested in giving feedback on a Zelda essay? It's around 4,000 words long and is best described as a literary personal essay/memoir. There is some time jumping and is also written in a style that might be a bit difficult to parse. Thanks in advance!

 

[Timu]

So Nano is next month, anyone prepared for it?

Thank god I'm doing an anthology or else I would be screwed. Oh and it's about messed up teenagers, lol.

 

[kevin1025]

So Nano is next month, anyone prepared for it?

Thank god I'm doing an anthology or else I would be screwed. Oh and it's about messed up teenagers, lol.

I'm preparing for it! I should be (SHOULD BE) finished the first draft of my book this month, and then I'll dive in deep on Nano for something else entirely as a cleansing of the palette before doing rewrites and editing!

I always start out great and peter out on Nanowrimo, though, so we'll see what happens.

 

[Mr-Joker]

Ah I see. That's a good idea then, starting simple.

Yeah, hopefully this new book will go a lot smoother as I am already loving the story and the characters and plot points are already falling into places.

Advisable. A book is already a big project. You start off going "THIS WILL BE FIVE " and you're going to feel overwhelmed pretty quickly.

Bunch of my writer friends are all "I'm going to do a seven book series about X and this is book #1" and none of them have finished book #1 yet. I know for a fact one never will.

Yeah when I first came up the idea for my multi part series I was still in Uni so the ideas was in its early days was only two books but then over time it grew becoming three books when I decided to split book one into two books thus leaving me with 4 books and a very complex story structure.

So yeah this is a big project so I am work on a smaller and simpler project first and while working on this in the background.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

So I'm trying a different writing approach to this novel: Giving very few fucks about quality. I figure I already go through four rounds of editing and fix all the problems i know the book has from day one to all the problems I didn't realize the book had until day like 300 or whenever I'm done with the project.

I guess, why stress over them now?

Normally I'm happy with what I've written and then hate myself on draft two because holy shit problems everywhere. Like, everywhere. How'd I fuck up this bad? Now I know I'm fucking up that bad and just saving it for future me. His problem. Well, my problem, but not for awhile.

It's making things go faster, but ti's kind of strange to write some paragraphs, know they aren't very good, and leaving them for later. I can't tell if this is more enjoyable or not.

I am curious to see how my first round of editing goes, if it'll be harder or just as hard as normal. I guess the good thing is i won't feel as attached to some of this, so cutting/changing will be easier.

 

[Jintor]

i got a job and now i'm immediately regretting it because i could have taken a few months off and just written for a while. lmao

damnit

 

[Noirulus]

Hey guys, I'm developing a software for my honors project that is an idea generator for characters and intercharacter relationships in stories. It randomly generates a few characters based on archetypes in stories (e.g. Eccentric Mentor, Housewife, Beggar, etc) and relationships between them. It's meant to give ideas/inspiration to writers and game developers. Is this something that is of interest to any of you guys? If so, what kind of features would you like to see?

 

[FlowersisBritish]

Hey guys, I'm developing a software for my honors project that is an idea generator for characters and intercharacter relationships in stories. It randomly generates a few characters based on archetypes in stories (e.g. Eccentric Mentor, Housewife, Beggar, etc) and relationships between them. It's meant to give ideas/inspiration to writers and game developers. Is this something that is of interest to any of you guys? If so, what kind of features would you like to see?

That sounds kind of neat. While I don't every use those kind of things, I have always really enjoyed just messing around with them. If I could make a suggestion, maybe try adjectives plus character instead of archetypes? As an example; lets say three suitable adjectives to describe a character(Depressed, Eccentric, Paranoid) and some basic jobs(nurse, detective, lawyer) so that when you run the program, you add an extra layer uniqueness to people's results.

Like, instead of "Eccentric Mentor frames Beggar," you could get things like "Depressed Lawyer cheats with Paranoid Butler." There's just more to work with, and from what I know from people who do use these kind of things, they are looking for adjectives and other descriptors to help flesh out their characters than just basic scenarios.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

Man, I really need to get back to writing. I don't know how long it's been now.

i got a job and now i'm immediately regretting it because i could have taken a few months off and just written for a while. lmao

damnit

How you going to regret eatin?

 

[FlowersisBritish]

How you going to regret eatin?

Listen, i have been jobless for a couple months now, and you don't actually need food. It's nice, sure, but science has told me I can go thirty days without it, and I like to think of myself as the kind of trendsetter that breaks records.

 

[Noirulus]

That sounds kind of neat. While I don't every use those kind of things, I have always really enjoyed just messing around with them. If I could make a suggestion, maybe try adjectives plus character instead of archetypes? As an example; lets say three suitable adjectives to describe a character(Depressed, Eccentric, Paranoid) and some basic jobs(nurse, detective, lawyer) so that when you run the program, you add an extra layer uniqueness to people's results.

Like, instead of "Eccentric Mentor frames Beggar," you could get things like "Depressed Lawyer cheats with Paranoid Butler." There's just more to work with, and from what I know from people who do use these kind of things, they are looking for adjectives and other descriptors to help flesh out their characters than just basic scenarios.

Thanks, this is the kind of feedback I was looking for. That's a great idea and I'll definitely implement it.

Provided that I have enough time, I'm trying to create an intelligent context based system that will pick characters in a more sophisticated manner, rather than pure randomness (which is boring because things can get nonsensical). I'll keep you guys updated.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

i got a job and now i'm immediately regretting it because i could have taken a few months off and just written for a while. lmao

damnit

I know this feel. I was between jobs for most of my first book, and it's so nice to do like eight pages a day. Second book I worked full time throughout and damn that was a challenge. That's carrying over to this one too.

Oh well. Just part of the deal, I guess.

 

[H.Protagonist]

Ahhhhh, October. Best month for all things spooky. Got my chapter in in time for the Halloween issue, got a Good Reads giveaway coming up, and a lot of fun planned
for the next few weeks promo-wise. I can feel it's going to be a good month for writing.

Anyone else have plans for Oct? A horror tale or two for the holiday? Two sentence horror story time again???

 

[Delio]

Ahhhhh, October. Best month for all things spooky. Got my chapter in in time for the Halloween issue, got a Good Reads giveaway coming up, and a lot of fun planned
for the next few weeks promo-wise. I can feel it's going to be a good month for writing.

Anyone else have plans for Oct? A horror tale or two for the holiday? Two sentence horror story time again???

Other than Nano Planning nothing for me. Would be cool tho to do some horror side story.

 

[AngmarsKing701]

Ahhhhh, October. Best month for all things spooky. Got my chapter in in time for the Halloween issue, got a Good Reads giveaway coming up, and a lot of fun planned
for the next few weeks promo-wise. I can feel it's going to be a good month for writing.

Anyone else have plans for Oct? A horror tale or two for the holiday? Two sentence horror story time again???

I have two scenes left in part 1 of book 2 in my series. I want to finish that this finish month, edit it, get a couple of beta readers to give some feedback, and then I may very well self publish part 1. Haven't decided. May depend on beta reader feedback.

 

[FlowersisBritish]

Ahhhhh, October. Best month for all things spooky. Got my chapter in in time for the Halloween issue, got a Good Reads giveaway coming up, and a lot of fun planned
for the next few weeks promo-wise. I can feel it's going to be a good month for writing.

Anyone else have plans for Oct? A horror tale or two for the holiday? Two sentence horror story time again???

I've been planning for awhile now to write some stories for 'No Sleep' on reddit. The plan is to try and become a regular poster there to try and gain a bit of a following. Long term goal is to have enough people there like my work that when I probably self publish a collection of horror stories next year, I will actually have an audience who will want to buy it.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

So I'm trying a different writing approach to this novel: Giving very few fucks about quality. I figure I already go through four rounds of editing and fix all the problems i know the book has from day one to all the problems I didn't realize the book had until day like 300 or whenever I'm done with the project.

I guess, why stress over them now?

Normally I'm happy with what I've written and then hate myself on draft two because holy shit problems everywhere. Like, everywhere. How'd I fuck up this bad? Now I know I'm fucking up that bad and just saving it for future me. His problem. Well, my problem, but not for awhile.

It's making things go faster, but ti's kind of strange to write some paragraphs, know they aren't very good, and leaving them for later. I can't tell if this is more enjoyable or not.

I am curious to see how my first round of editing goes, if it'll be harder or just as hard as normal. I guess the good thing is i won't feel as attached to some of this, so cutting/changing will be easier.

Scratch all of this. I can't keep writing like this because it's like I'm losing the characters the more I don't care about quality. I really need to edit what I have before I continue. Take some actual fucking notes maybe. Things have changed too much.

Hate it, but it's the difference between fixable and a waste of time, I think.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

.

 

[Valdfellgar]

How's everyone's writing going?

I'm about 108,000 words into my own novel, a conversion of my very first screenplay with tons of fleshing out, rewriting, reimagining etc. I discovered that if you breach 100k words on Microsoft Word for the mac it stops tracking word count in the bottom indicator <.<

Sometimes I think what I'm writing is exactly what I want on the page, and other times I feel like I'm not really saying what I'd like to say. I really hate that about me and writing, the highs and lows and what that does to my ego on a regular basis. I suppose it partly comes from how long I've been a writer without a 'real' win, you know? I've done 'okay' in a few screenwriting contests now and again, but never anything big, never anything that lead to some real recognition or cash flow with my work. Sometimes it makes me feel like a real failure and I wish it didn't.

Sorry if that got a bit dark or whatever, I guess I'm just in one of those moods where it's hard to convince myself that my writing and talent are good, that I'm just lacking the big break and opportunity. But my wife has a lot of faith in me, heck she moved across the globe to be with me, so I sometimes have to remind myself that her taking that huge leap means something.

What do the rest of you do to get yourself out of that negative funk? And my above question about how everyone's writing is going still stands.

 

[zulux21]

How's everyone's writing going?

I'm about 108,000 words into my own novel, a conversion of my very first screenplay with tons of fleshing out, rewriting, reimagining etc. I discovered that if you breach 100k words on Microsoft Word for the mac it stops tracking word count in the bottom indicator <.<

Sometimes I think what I'm writing is exactly what I want on the page, and other times I feel like I'm not really saying what I'd like to say. I really hate that about me and writing, the highs and lows and what that does to my ego on a regular basis. I suppose it partly comes from how long I've been a writer without a 'real' win, you know? I've done 'okay' in a few screenwriting contests now and again, but never anything big, never anything that lead to some real recognition or cash flow with my work. Sometimes it makes me feel like a real failure and I wish it didn't.

Sorry if that got a bit dark or whatever, I guess I'm just in one of those moods where it's hard to convince myself that my writing and talent are good, that I'm just lacking the big break and opportunity. But my wife has a lot of faith in me, heck she moved across the globe to be with me, so I sometimes have to remind myself that her taking that huge leap means something.

What do the rest of you do to get yourself out of that negative funk? And my above question about how everyone's writing is going still stands.

I didn't do so hot in sept after having a solid july and okat august, and thus overall am sitting at 131809 words between book 1 and 2, but I am approaching the finish line with book 1, so that will be nice to have the rough draft fully complete like book 2 is

 

[Valdfellgar]

I didn't do so hot in sept after having a solid july and okat august, and thus overall am sitting at 131809 words between book 1 and 2, but I am approaching the finish line with book 1, so that will be nice to have the rough draft fully complete like book 2 is

What do you think threw you off? One thing I know that always ruins me is I generally only have a solid hour to write in the morning. I can technically write later at night after the day is done, but 9 times out of 10 I'm too exhausted from churning out Anime and Manga reviews for my Wife and I's website. So I write in the morning, for sure, in that one hour before we start work. Trouble is if I don't sleep well, and the last few months have been rough, I generally just end up shitting on the page.