A Thread for Writers to talk about Writing

[steuben]

4 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

 Honestly I could do with anything since it seems I can't get them from other places. Anything other than grammar please. 

It's just, where do I lose my readers? What can I do? Any info would be great guys!!

I know you don't want grammar, so I'm not going to comment on the details. Besides, I suck at grammar. My suggestion is to feed the text into Word, or software of preference, and pay attention to the green and blue lines.

notes as I go along:

- change female kerbal to kerbalina

- 4gs isn't trivial, even if you haven't been in microgravity for any time.

- "Then my eyes rolled back into my head, and I fell asleep." <-- not sure about this line. sounds closer to her passing out rather than falling asleep.

- leaving the crash site... this one sums to zero. first I think it goes against much of standard RL training to leave the crash site if you aren't in immediate danger and have a reasonable expectation of rescue. but, she's also really cracked her head so while she's functional she's not thinking perfectly clearly. You may want to dig up some of the US military survival guides, it will help with some smaller details.

- mmm grits. and as a side note don't pack grits in your carry-on. you'll get searched by every airport security stop between departure and arrival.

- don't use a quarter word when three dime words will do... and oddly the other way around as well. but I think you should be using simpler words. Jabe has walked by 2 signs of available help, the cows and the dog, by the time she's reached the cabin and hasn't followed them. So she's not thinking clearly. The text should try and reflect that.

notes after finishing.

- you may want to think about and layout Jabe's general frame of mind. given point 4 above she's making a couple of odd decisions given the amount of training that she's had for what would be an elite pilot IRL. Though depending on your interpretation of kerbal mentality it maybe correct.

- you may also want to wander around a dangerous website... TV Tropes.

Edited June 8, 2016 by steuben

[ZooNamedGames]

10 minutes ago, steuben said:

I know you don't want grammar, so I'm not going to comment on the details. Besides, I suck at grammar. My suggestion is to feed the text into Word, or software of preference, and pay attention to the green and blue lines.

notes as I go along:

- change female kerbal to kerbalina

- 4gs isn't trivial, even if you haven't been in microgravity for any time.

- "Then my eyes rolled back into my head, and I fell asleep." <-- not sure about this line. sounds closer to her passing out rather than falling asleep.

- leaving the crash site... this one sums to zero. first I think it goes against much of standard RL training to leave the crash site if you aren't in immediate danger and have a reasonable expectation of rescue. but, she's also really cracked her head so while she's functional she's not thinking perfectly clearly. You may want to dig up some of the US military survival guides, it will help with some smaller details.

- mmm grits. and as a side note don't pack grits in your carry-on. you'll get searched by every airport security stop between departure and arrival.

- don't use a quarter word when three dime words will do... and oddly the other way around as well. but I think you should be using simpler words. Jabe has walked by 2 signs of available help, the cows and the dog, by the time she's reached the cabin and hasn't followed them.

notes after finishing.

- you may want to think about and layout Jabe's general frame of mind. given point 4 above she's making a couple of odd decisions given the amount of training that she's had for what would be an elite pilot IRL. Though depending on your interpretation of kerbal mentality it maybe correct.

- you may also want to wander around a dangerous website... TV Tropes.

1- I believe the term "Kerbal" is analogue to "Man" as in "Mankind" and therefore a term for both sexes.

2- I know 4gs is a lot- hence why I didn't make it out to be easy.

3- Well after her experiences, well it's what she did.

4- Well she landed far outside her predicted landing site. Therefore the recovery forces have no clue where to begin. She's on her own and she knows it.

5- ...ok.

6- I'll keep it in mind.

7- I have a general mentality in mind

8- dangerous website?...

[KSK]

On ‎21‎/‎04‎/‎2016 at 7:50 PM, Starwhip said:

Bit of a side question here, relating to this. We could beat the "it's your story" horse to death on these questions, but I'm not here for that.
I find that I'm one of very few (Perhaps the only one) who has not given Wernher an accent. While I'm not going to change it now, for sure, I wonder what other folks think of it. Is it overly detracting, or simply odd? Would you have noticed it had I not pointed it out? And something else. What say you of his command of the Space Program?

Not sure how I missed this first time around.

I deliberately didn't give my Wernher an accent. At the time it was a cliché I wanted to avoid, although I've kinda mellowed on that point since. However, I very much wanted to get away from the von Braun comparison - since that comes with a fair few expectations about Wernher's background which I also wanted to avoid - and just write about plain old Wernher Kerman.

[steuben]

ZooNamedGames,

8. TV Tropes will ruin your life. But tropes are tools.

3. You may need to phrase it then. It feels like you have two completing descriptions of the same action. They aren't mutually exclusive but they don't complement each other well.

4. http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA365888 will be a valuable reference in this context

[ZooNamedGames]

12 minutes ago, steuben said:

ZooNamedGames,

8. TV Tropes will ruin your life. But tropes are tools.

3. You may need to phrase it then. It feels like you have two completing descriptions of the same action. They aren't mutually exclusive but they don't complement each other well.

4. http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA365888 will be a valuable reference in this context

I'll take a look.

[Mister Dilsby]

18 minutes ago, KSK said:

However, I very much wanted to get away from the von Braun comparison - since that comes with a fair few expectations about Wernher's background which I also wanted to avoid - and just write about plain old Wernher Kerman.

Hmm, does this mean I've touched the "third rail" of KSP fanfic--and survived?  

11 minutes ago, steuben said:

8. TV Tropes will ruin your life. But tropes are tools.

Absolutely! And of course since I'm usually playing for laughs, not only do I shamelessly use tropes but I link to key examples on my Canon page (in .sig)

[ZooNamedGames]

2 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Hmm, does this mean I've touched the "third rail" of KSP fanfic--and survived?  

Absolutely! And of course since I'm usually playing for laughs, not only do I shamelessly use tropes but I link to key examples on my Canon page (in .sig)

In your previous response you said my story was much like any other mission report, but my story isn't a post mission report but a complete fan fiction.

I assume you were aware, I just wanted to say that to make sure.

[Mister Dilsby]

27 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

In your previous response you said my story was much like any other mission report, but my story isn't a post mission report but a complete fan fiction.

That was kind of the point of my comment, yes.   When you originally posted your story, at the point where I stopped reading I thought you were simply making a report (in text form) of a standard vanilla orbital mission and return. 

[ZooNamedGames]

38 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

That was kind of the point of my comment, yes.   When you originally posted your story, at the point where I stopped reading I thought you were simply making a report (in text form) of a standard vanilla orbital mission and return. 

Oh. Well I was speaking with @diomedea and he said the beginning is like poetry so I am kind of left in the middle. I don't know what to do.

[Mister Dilsby]

5 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Oh. Well I was speaking with @diomedea and he said the beginning is like poetry so I am kind of left in the middle. I don't know what to do.

That's kind of what happens when you ask for feedback. You can't expect all the responses to make sense, much less agree with each other. Your job is to take the elements of each criticism and figure out for yourself what will help you tell the story you wanted to tell. It's no one's job but yours to find the magical tweak that makes people sit up and say "wow, what a great story!".

It's entirely possible that an opening that reads like poetry might still not successfully convey what unique thing the story is about, and 'hook' the reader into wanting to go in. As I've said before, every story on here is competing for a very limited attention span against every other story, mission report, and the game itself. Good writing, even beautiful writing, isn't enough. If people just wanted good writing... well, they'd be at the literary fiction shelf in the library and not in the Fan Works section of the KSP forum!

This is my point, take it or leave it: you can write the most beautiful, lyrical lines since Thomas Hardy, but no one will ever get that far unless you get their attention. To get their attention, you have to demonstrate right away that you are telling them a story they haven't heard before. Anything that distracts from that unique element--no matter how "well" it's written--hurts you rather than helps you. 

This, by the way, is just one reason a writer can get overwhelmingly positive feedback from friends and family but get rejected by agents and publishers: your friends will faithfully read your whole story no matter how slowly it builds, understand the whole work, and compliment you on the great things you did in there. A literary agent will look at the same work and reject it after reading the first paragraph, because the agent knows that a person deciding whether to buy the book or not will make the same decision based on that same first paragraph.

[ZooNamedGames]

12 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

That's kind of what happens when you ask for feedback. You can't expect all the responses to make sense, much less agree with each other. Your job is to take the elements of each criticism and figure out for yourself what will help you tell the story you wanted to tell. It's no one's job but yours to find the magical tweak that makes people sit up and say "wow, what a great story!".

It's entirely possible that an opening that reads like poetry might still not successfully convey what unique thing the story is about, and 'hook' the reader into wanting to go in. As I've said before, every story on here is competing for a very limited attention span against every other story, mission report, and the game itself. Good writing, even beautiful writing, isn't enough. If people just wanted good writing... well, they'd be at the literary fiction shelf in the library and not in the Fan Works section of the KSP forum!

This is my point, take it or leave it: you can write the most beautiful, lyrical lines since Thomas Hardy, but no one will ever get that far unless you get their attention. To get their attention, you have to demonstrate right away that you are telling them a story they haven't heard before. Anything that distracts from that unique element--no matter how "well" it's written--hurts you rather than helps you. 

This, by the way, is just one reason a writer can get overwhelmingly positive feedback from friends and family but get rejected by agents and publishers: your friends will faithfully read your whole story no matter how slowly it builds, understand the whole work, and compliment you on the great things you did in there. A literary agent will look at the same work and reject it after reading the first paragraph, because the agent knows that a person deciding whether to buy the book or not will make the same decision based on that same first paragraph.

Alright then, I will make that amendment to my introduction so it's more foreshadowing of what's to come and as you said, let the reader know that it's different.

[Just Jim]

2 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

To get their attention, you have to demonstrate right away that you are telling them a story they haven't heard before. Anything that distracts from that unique element--no matter how "well" it's written--hurts you rather than helps you. 

This, by the way, is just one reason a writer can get overwhelmingly positive feedback from friends and family but get rejected by agents and publishers: your friends will faithfully read your whole story no matter how slowly it builds, understand the whole work, and compliment you on the great things you did in there. A literary agent will look at the same work and reject it after reading the first paragraph, because the agent knows that a person deciding whether to buy the book or not will make the same decision based on that same first paragraph.

Agreed.  I'm bad like this, I need something to draw me into a story, like a fat worm on a hook.  Otherwise I get bored fast.

If you look at my story, I skipped right over the first 5 years of my career and jumped right into an impending disaster.  And chapter 2... that's the really juicy hook for the romance fans.  With one screenshot, I turned a mission report into a romance.

I know it's bad to judge a book by it's cover, but most folk do... or judge it by the first couple paragraphs or chapters.  
So the trick is you need to dangle something juicy in front of them at the very beginning... something they can't resist, and make them come back for more.

[Mister Dilsby]

Good example Jim! I guess I had it easy; my best hook was the format itself, since no one else was doing graphic novel mission reports back in May 2015. 

(And hey! You all missed my anniversary! Kuzzter make sad face now: )

[KSK]

46 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Good example Jim! I guess I had it easy; my best hook was the format itself, since no one else was doing graphic novel mission reports back in May 2015. 

(And hey! You all missed my anniversary! Kuzzter make sad face now: )

Wow - has it only been a year Kuzzter? It sure was a productive one - and here's to another! *clink*

I'm not entirely sure what my initial 'hook' was to be honest. Possibly a combination of my fic being an origin story and a relatively serious attempt at writing about an amateur space program that really did start in a junkyard. That and setting up a bigger hook (everything that happens away from the space program) before the initial hook got too tired. In the immortal words of one latecomer to the thread:

Spoiler

Bunch of friends building rockets.... check.

Competition from big corporation with questionable motives... check. 

Head-sucking hippie tree. Whaaaaaaat?

Fortunately this was followed up with "more reading required!" rather than "Uhh - no."  

Edited June 8, 2016 by KSK

[ZooNamedGames]

Guess all I can do is modify the intro and just keep releasing coming... maybe through sheer persistence I'll get something out of it... granted I won't enjoy a moment of it if I don't get the feedback I need to enjoy it... but it's a sacrifice.

[Ten Key]

11 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

It's just, where do I lose my readers? 

Let's take a look at your opening lines. . .

==================

It had been 4 days in high Kerbin orbit. I had just set the record for the longest duration in space. I also was the first female Kerbal in space. "Jabe, get ready for retrofire in T-3 minutes", rang in Chris Kerman, the mission Capcom. It was the end of a long journey for me. I leaned forward against my restraints and looked out onto the vast ocean of blue velvet below me. The water shined and glistened brilliantly, and formed a blue crest against the blackness of space. It was beautiful, and it was coming to an end for me. So I leaned back into my seat, and set the control system to auto in preparation for retrofire. Then, a minute later, the control system fired to life and aimed me towards retrograde. The planet slowly vanished into the bottom of my tiny window, being swallowed into the vastness of space. Then Chris began the countdown to ignition of the retrograde thrusters. . .

===================

There are twelve sentences here and they all have the same cadence. They are flat, emotionless, with all the charm of a metronome or a stenographer. This is where you lose your readers Zoo-- your opener is clinical and lifeless. This is what spaceflight would sound like if narrated by Ben Stein.  

Honestly, if it was me, I think I'd start the story with the protagonist waking up after the crash. It will drop the reader right into the action and it will spare you from having to pin down some of the details that just aren't working at the moment. A few kilometers deviation is pretty normal I think. . .Gemini 3 was 84 kilometers from its intended splashdown point, and Gemini 8 came down in the wrong ocean. You could even do partial amnesia or something where your pilot doesn't remember the recovery team at all, but just keeps marching forward. . ."I have to get home. . .". Maybe a childhood memory of being lost in the woods?

I mostly agree with what's been said by the others, but I would add that trying to write in first person/past tense can be difficult. It works well for moments of reflection or recollection, but trying to use it for the whole story is pretty limiting. Will Jabe survive? Of course she will, she's telling us the story in the past tense! It's very hard to do suspense with it. You're also limiting yourself to a single perspective. Let's say, in the scene where Jabe is running away through the field, that you wanted to jump the camera to Andy for a moment and give the reader a glimpse of something Jabe doesn't see. Maybe it's just a rabbit? If you were writing in third person you could do that. First person has its uses, but it also closes a lot of doors. 

[KSK]

3 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Oh. Well I was speaking with @diomedea and he said the beginning is like poetry so I am kind of left in the middle. I don't know what to do.

OK, for my money, they're both right. You have some lovely turns of phrase but you also have a tendency to be a little repetitive in places or to go into 'stream of consciousness' writing where Jabe does this and then this and then that happens so she does the other. That style of writing certainly has its place but it also slows the story down and takes some of the drama out of what is otherwise a very tense situation.

Let's take a leaf out of Ten Key's book and have another look at those opening lines:

 " It had been 4 days in high Kerbin orbit. I had just set the record for the longest duration in space. I also was the first female Kerbal in space. "Jabe, get ready for retrofire in T-3 minutes", rang in Chris Kerman, the mission Capcom. It was the end of a long journey for me. I leaned forward against my restraints and looked out onto the vast ocean of blue velvet below me. The water shined and glistened brilliantly, and formed a blue crest against the blackness of space. It was beautiful, and it was coming to an end for me."

OK, there are a couple of redundant sentences in there.

"It was the end of a long journey for me." We know this already from the opening sentence.

"it was beautiful and it was coming to an end for me." We already know about the beauty - you just described it  And again - we already know that it was coming to an end, although arguably a little repetition works quite nicely there in a melancholy sort of way.

Let's take out the redundancy and let's take out Chris's part too since having him cluttering up the airwaves definitely breaks up the mood. What does that leave us with?

 "It had been 4 days in high Kerbin orbit. I had just set the record for the longest duration in space. I also was the first female Kerbal in space. I leaned forward against my restraints and looked out onto the vast ocean of blue velvet below me. The water shined and glistened brilliantly, and formed a blue crest against the blackness of space. And it was coming to an end for me."

Getting there! A wee bit of tidying up needed still - you'll probably have your own ideas on how best to do that but here's one example:

 "It had been four record breaking days in high Kerbin orbit. First female Kerbal in space on the longest - and highest - flight so far. I leaned forward against my restraints and looked out onto the vast ocean of blue velvet below me. The water shone and glistened brilliantly, forming a deep blue crest against the blackness of space.

And all of it was about to come to an end."

And there it is. A bit punchier whilst hopefully catching the same bittersweet mood of your original version and which also adds a tiny bit of ambiguity to the end by way of a small hook. Or at least that's my interpretation - your opinion, quite rightly, may differ!

[Just Jim]

9 minutes ago, KSK said:

And there it is. A bit punchier whilst hopefully catching the same bittersweet mood of your original version and which also adds a tiny bit of ambiguity to the end by way of a small hook. Or at least that's my interpretation - your opinion, quite rightly, may differ!

I'm out of likes..... considered this post "liked"   

[ZooNamedGames]

1 hour ago, Ten Key said:

Let's take a look at your opening lines. . .

==================

It had been 4 days in high Kerbin orbit. I had just set the record for the longest duration in space. I also was the first female Kerbal in space. "Jabe, get ready for retrofire in T-3 minutes", rang in Chris Kerman, the mission Capcom. It was the end of a long journey for me. I leaned forward against my restraints and looked out onto the vast ocean of blue velvet below me. The water shined and glistened brilliantly, and formed a blue crest against the blackness of space. It was beautiful, and it was coming to an end for me. So I leaned back into my seat, and set the control system to auto in preparation for retrofire. Then, a minute later, the control system fired to life and aimed me towards retrograde. The planet slowly vanished into the bottom of my tiny window, being swallowed into the vastness of space. Then Chris began the countdown to ignition of the retrograde thrusters. . .

===================

There are twelve sentences here and they all have the same cadence. They are flat, emotionless, with all the charm of a metronome or a stenographer. This is where you lose your readers Zoo-- your opener is clinical and lifeless. This is what spaceflight would sound like if narrated by Ben Stein.  

Honestly, if it was me, I think I'd start the story with the protagonist waking up after the crash. It will drop the reader right into the action and it will spare you from having to pin down some of the details that just aren't working at the moment. A few kilometers deviation is pretty normal I think. . .Gemini 3 was 84 kilometers from its intended splashdown point, and Gemini 8 came down in the wrong ocean. You could even do partial amnesia or something where your pilot doesn't remember the recovery team at all, but just keeps marching forward. . ."I have to get home. . .". Maybe a childhood memory of being lost in the woods?

I mostly agree with what's been said by the others, but I would add that trying to write in first person/past tense can be difficult. It works well for moments of reflection or recollection, but trying to use it for the whole story is pretty limiting. Will Jabe survive? Of course she will, she's telling us the story in the past tense! It's very hard to do suspense with it. You're also limiting yourself to a single perspective. Let's say, in the scene where Jabe is running away through the field, that you wanted to jump the camera to Andy for a moment and give the reader a glimpse of something Jabe doesn't see. Maybe it's just a rabbit? If you were writing in third person you could do that. First person has its uses, but it also closes a lot of doors. 

Well I don't want to stray too much and seem like I don't have an aim or basis.

I also have spent years teaching myself to delay the introduction to the story because it leads the reader into Jabe's world, and not to mention, makes enough material. Tbh I'm trying to write this as if a book (with the exception of the grammar), and books don't drop the reader directly into the heat of the situation. They tend to build.

That's an obvious fact, but maybe she's going through a flashback? How could you be certain that the "present" point for Jabe isn't in her last moments? 1st has a wide use, and can be done with fantastic effect. I just need to settle the story in and then start using 1stP to it's strengths  . Besides, I rarely write 3rd since I feel it's overused.

1 hour ago, KSK said:

OK, for my money, they're both right. You have some lovely turns of phrase but you also have a tendency to be a little repetitive in places or to go into 'stream of consciousness' writing where Jabe does this and then this and then that happens so she does the other. That style of writing certainly has its place but it also slows the story down and takes some of the drama out of what is otherwise a very tense situation.

Let's take a leaf out of Ten Key's book and have another look at those opening lines:

 " It had been 4 days in high Kerbin orbit. I had just set the record for the longest duration in space. I also was the first female Kerbal in space. "Jabe, get ready for retrofire in T-3 minutes", rang in Chris Kerman, the mission Capcom. It was the end of a long journey for me. I leaned forward against my restraints and looked out onto the vast ocean of blue velvet below me. The water shined and glistened brilliantly, and formed a blue crest against the blackness of space. It was beautiful, and it was coming to an end for me."

OK, there are a couple of redundant sentences in there.

"It was the end of a long journey for me." We know this already from the opening sentence.

"it was beautiful and it was coming to an end for me." We already know about the beauty - you just described it  And again - we already know that it was coming to an end, although arguably a little repetition works quite nicely there in a melancholy sort of way.

Let's take out the redundancy and let's take out Chris's part too since having him cluttering up the airwaves definitely breaks up the mood. What does that leave us with?

 "It had been 4 days in high Kerbin orbit. I had just set the record for the longest duration in space. I also was the first female Kerbal in space. I leaned forward against my restraints and looked out onto the vast ocean of blue velvet below me. The water shined and glistened brilliantly, and formed a blue crest against the blackness of space. And it was coming to an end for me."

Getting there! A wee bit of tidying up needed still - you'll probably have your own ideas on how best to do that but here's one example:

 "It had been four record breaking days in high Kerbin orbit. First female Kerbal in space on the longest - and highest - flight so far. I leaned forward against my restraints and looked out onto the vast ocean of blue velvet below me. The water shone and glistened brilliantly, forming a deep blue crest against the blackness of space.

And all of it was about to come to an end."

And there it is. A bit punchier whilst hopefully catching the same bittersweet mood of your original version and which also adds a tiny bit of ambiguity to the end by way of a small hook. Or at least that's my interpretation - your opinion, quite rightly, may differ!

Well that for one is what I need...for the rest of my story, but still, nonetheless thank you for this edit and I'll make sure to use it.

[0111narwhalz]

In Warped Stars, my hook was that little prologue. You have a silent launch. What kind of rocket goes up silently? There's the draw to read more.
Kerbal Future had a more personal hook. Where does this sense of trepidation come from? Oh, the fight. Wait, this is a big fight. Again, the draw.
The Change had a sort of rhythmic feel, I think. The single lines provoke a sense of foreboding, which itself creates a draw. Besides that, it's a short writing, so even relatively disinterested users could blaze through it in only a couple minutes.

The "wall of text" issue seems to have been a problem for Kerbal Future. Perhaps it's why I didn't get much attention for a while. Warped Stars' shorter chapters appear to have helped with that, though perhaps the subject matter is involved more with that.

[UnusualAttitude]

Hi there guys,

Just dropping by to hopefully brighten up a grim rainy Monday morning (at least where I am) with this new little gem I found in Mission Reports by Creature: Perfect Tomorrow.

Normally I would pass on yet another story/report with the classic KSP characters, but this one caught my attention. It has an interesting take on the usual suspects, and some great attention to detail (excerpts from a biography written about the first Kerbals in space, a scientific paper written by Bob...). I'm certainly looking forward to seeing where it goes.

 

 

Edited June 27, 2016 by UnusualAttitude

[Commander Zoom]

On 6/8/2016 at 4:32 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

I also have spent years teaching myself to delay the introduction to the story because it leads the reader into Jabe's world, and not to mention, makes enough material. Tbh I'm trying to write this as if a book (with the exception of the grammar), and books don't drop the reader directly into the heat of the situation. They tend to build.

They still tend to have attention-getting first lines/paragraphs, to hook the reader.  Consider the many memorable and now famous opening lines by Dickens - who started out writing serial fiction, not unlike this, and wound up being counted as one of the giants of English literature.

If you want more examples, from genre fiction and SRS LIT alike, I'll be happy to dig out my degree and find you some; it's not like I'm using it for much else at the moment.

Edited June 13, 2016 by Commander Zoom

[Mister Dilsby]

On 6/8/2016 at 7:32 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

I'm trying to write this as if a book (with the exception of the grammar), and books don't drop the reader directly into the heat of the situation. They tend to build.

They do build, but they also need to start strong. I think it's a common misconception that you can start a book any old way and build to the good parts. People who think this point to such-and-such a classic as an example, forgetting that when that book was written there were just a handful of literary people around, and if you were one of those then publishing was comparatively easy.

I know quite a few people who have tried to publish books, and a couple who actually have got them published--and I mean mainstream, big houses, NYT reviews, etc. 

The successful ones all have a few things in common, including:

• The books started strong, established a good hook for the reader, and THEN built to a climax
• Each author spent a huge amount of time tweaking the opening. Most of their early rejections had to do with the opening not being good enough.
• They asked for help and feedback from other writers about those openings...
• And they didn't argue with the people who gave them that feedback. They thought about why readers reacted to the work the way they did, and worked hard to understand and incorporate what was true in each comment.  

[steuben]

14 minutes ago, Commander Zoom said:

They still tend to have attention-getting first lines/paragraphs, to hook the reader.  Consider the many memorable and now famous opening lines by Dickens - who started out writing serial fiction, not unlike this, and wound up being counted as one of the giants of English literature.

If you want more examples, from genre fiction and SRS LIT alike, I'll be happy to dig out my degree and find you some; it's not like I'm using it for much else at the moment.

 

On ‎2016‎/‎06‎/‎08 at 7:32 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

I also have spent years teaching myself to delay the introduction to the story because it leads the reader into Jabe's world, and not to mention, makes enough material. Tbh I'm trying to write this as if a book (with the exception of the grammar), and books don't drop the reader directly into the heat of the situation. They tend to build.

A bit of column A an bit of column B. Much of what I've been taught on the subject is basically introduction to the story as soon as possible. The setup has to be a barebones as possible. The more you can work into the introduction the better. Most of it coming from people who buy and sell books to get them into print. I'll dig around in my library to see what I can find on that.  Too much background in the introduction, or just a plain Infodump, will turn readers off, unless you are really, really good.

Hunt up "Rolling Hot" by David Drake. It is an example of a novel with pretty much no introduction to the setting. But the relevant background is slowly trickled in as required, mostly as Dilating Doors. Though twenty years on I'm still trying to interpret the ending.

[Ehco Corrallo]

On 6/8/2016 at 4:32 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

I also have spent years teaching myself to delay the introduction to the story because it leads the reader into Jabe's world, and not to mention, makes enough material. Tbh I'm trying to write this as if a book (with the exception of the grammar), and books don't drop the reader directly into the heat of the situation. They tend to build.

I just finished writing a 245 page novel (so...book length); I chucked the reader straight into the thick of things on page 5. Worked fantastic. 

27 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

They do build, but they also need to start strong.

I was going to say that! *Feigns righteous indignance* But yeah, starting strong is important, not just for the reader, but for the writer also. We tend to make assumptions about our readers (or maybe we don't, maybe I'm just assuming that), that may or may not be accurate; it's important to consider the whole 'writing' thing, also. 

Also remember that the first sentence is only as important as the second, third, or fourth. Sacrificing a solid first paragraph for the sake of a punchy opening line is not an advisable course of action (it's yours to take if you want to take it, though). 

Also:

On 6/8/2016 at 4:32 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

Tbh I'm trying to write this as if a book (with the exception of the grammar)

I'm sorry what? With the exception of grammar? Pedantic rant following: This is not poetry. There are a number of rules that can be broken in creative or informal writing, but you have to know the rules first!!! Sentence fragments. Multiple exclamation points. Exclamation points at all! Comma splicing, commas themselves. You need to know the rules of usage so that you can better understand what 'mistakes' to make, and which ones you shouldn't and when you've made a number of mistakes in rapid succession like I just did (in order to make an example). And better use of grammar promotes, longer, clearer, and more varied sentences. Subject/verb sentences are excellent, but it's inexcusable to use them because you can't find another way of phrasing action because your knowledge of commas and clauses is limited (I'm referring to myself). If you want to write formally, too, you shouldn't have to completely change your mode of thinking; grammar should be natural; you're going to have to edit someday. 

And beyond that, it'd be a real shame if your ideas were discarded because you put an apostrophe in the wrong place and came off as an amatur as a result. 

Cheers!

Ehco

Quick disclaimer: My grammer's not spectacular, nor do I claim to be an expert, but I think proper form is important for no other reason than to wilfully misuse the english language; you can't deliberately break the rules without knowing what rules there are. 

Edited June 13, 2016 by Ehco Corrallo
Seriously, don't look too closely; I probably made some unforgivable mistakes considering I was playing grammar off as a righteous necessity. (I'm not that stuffy, I swear!)