A Thread for Writers to talk about Writing

[KerbolExplorer]

So I want to know what you guys think of my story so far. I think is good but I will like to know what can I improve there

P.S. the link s are in my signature

[Gyrfalcon5]

45 minutes ago, KerbolExplorer said:

So I want to know what you guys think of my story so far. I think is good but I will like to know what can I improve there

P.S. the link s are in my signature

After quickly skimming through the chapters you have currently on your OP, I think your main focus should be proper story structure and grammar. Your attempt is admirable, however, and I guess we all have to start somewhere. I also noticed that your characters lack some personality up until Chapters 3 and 4, which for what I'm aware, you had received other feedback from another writer. Giving the characters different silly, Kerbal thoughts is a good way to keep a reader engaged and chomping at the bit for the next chapter. 

Another thing that you may want to consider is story progression. The way I see it (and this is just my opinion, it may not be yours), your story may be moving a little to fast. Using more descriptions of the setting or characters can help extend and interest-ify the content, as well as attributing to characters' development. This development can help the readers attach to the characters and look forward to what escapades they become active in. 

On a better note, your story is an intriguing parody of Subnautica's narrative, and I'm very interested in what direction you may go with this. I wish you the best of luck.

 

And now it's my turn.  Starstuff is a project that really popped out of the blue, and it really didn't meet my expectations for planning. However, I'm confident that it'll turn out great, and feedback would assist me greatly in improving. One problem I'm eyeing is story progression. I find myself incorporating Starstuff into the Gyrfalcon's Fictional Universe, which is expansive, deep, and largely unfinished in the most intriguing areas. The problem I'm seeing is that this deep-knit tie is hard to maintain with the amount of stuff in the GFU. On one hand, I want a deep lore that is easy to understand, but on the other, I'm worried that the GFU may be way too expansive to tie into KSP with reasonable accuracy and interestingness. What do you guys think? Should I start smaller? (Note: The current GFU document is over 14,000 words long with so much detail that it probably isn't healthy)

If you'd like to see Starstuff's prologue, check my signature. Cheers!

Edited May 16, 2018 by Gyrfalcon5
Spelling, Ironically enough

[KSK]

17 hours ago, KerbolExplorer said:

So I want to know what you guys think of my story so far. I think is good but I will like to know what can I improve there

P.S. the link s are in my signature

It’s a good start and the ‘shipwrecked on an alien world’ setting has a lot of potential to become a really interesting and fun story. Plus your ship and vehicle designs are very cool.

The first few chapters felt rather quick.(discover alien artifact - wham. Build giant interstellar spacecraft - bam. Fly to new star system -  kablam.) That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you’re just setting the scene for the main story and getting your characters to that alien world as quickly as possible. For future chapters though, you might want to slow it down a bit.

For example - imagine what would happen if we found supposed alien artifacts on Earth? You could probably make a whole book out of your first couple of chapters, starting with that initial discovery, dealing with all the different reactions to it, proving that the artifacts are real and not some conspiracy, showing how the world (eventually) opts for peaceful exploration and finally researching, building and launching a starship.

Last thing. I don’t normally comment on spelling and stuff. I know all too well how easy it is to miss the odd typo or grammar fail, and I can only imagine how hard it must be to write a story that isn’t in your first language.

But if you could run your chapters through a spellchecker before posting them, it would make them a lot easier to read. Spellcheckers aren’t perfect of course but they do help.

[steuben]

3 hours ago, KerbolExplorer said:

So I want to know what you guys think of my story so far. I think is good but I will like to know what can I improve there

P.S. the link s are in my signature

What level of critique are you after?

 

2 hours ago, Gyrfalcon5 said:

The problem I'm seeing is that this deep-knit tie is hard to maintain with the amount of stuff in the GFU. On one hand, I want a deep lore that is easy to understand, but on the other, I'm worried that the GFU may be way too expansive to tie into KSP with reasonable accuracy and interestingness. What do you guys think? Should I start smaller? (Note: The current GFU document is over 14,000 words long with so much detail that it probably isn't healthy)

One of my authors of preference, David Drake, has done outlines of 60 kilowords, and has a librarian on staff to help, and keep him separate from any computers connected to the intra-tubes. And I'm sure the Hammer-verse and RCN-verse canon-bibles are in the 200 kiloword range each.

It may be that you can't tie into KSP. If you have to do too much hand waving to get the canon welding, or worse just can't buff out the welds, surrender on trying.  Just use KSP as the modeling frame work.

 

[KSK]

20 hours ago, Gyrfalcon5 said:

And now it's my turn.  Starstuff is a project that really popped out of the blue, and it really didn't meet my expectations for planning. However, I'm confident that it'll turn out great, and feedback would assist me greatly in improving. One problem I'm eyeing is story progression. I find myself incorporating Starstuff into the Gyrfalcon's Fictional Universe, which is expansive, deep, and largely unfinished in the most intriguing areas. The problem I'm seeing is that this deep-knit tie is hard to maintain with the amount of stuff in the GFU. On one hand, I want a deep lore that is easy to understand, but on the other, I'm worried that the GFU may be way too expansive to tie into KSP with reasonable accuracy and interestingness. What do you guys think? Should I start smaller? (Note: The current GFU document is over 14,000 words long with so much detail that it probably isn't healthy)

If you'd like to see Starstuff's prologue, check my signature. Cheers!

KSP is a very flexible setting. Squad have given us almost no lore about the kerbals, Kerbin and the other planets in the stock game (let alone modded in planets), so you're free to make up whatever you need for your story. I doubt anybody's going to complain about the accuracy of your KSP lore because there's nothing official to compare it to.

So rather than worrying about tying the GFU into KSP, I would just tie KSP into the GFU.  If the GFU is too detailed for your story, that doesn't matter - just reveal as much of it as you need. From your prologue, it looks like a lot of the story is probably going to be about the kerbals going interstellar and experiencing some of the marvels of other planets and alien cultures for the first time. Which is great - your readers will be able to see your universe through the eyes of a species that's completely new to it all.

Edit:   Even when there is an official lore of sorts, there's no particular reason why you can't ignore it. Be inspired by KSP but don't feel that you have to stick rigorously to what we see in-game.  For example, in my own story, I've completely disregarded the various Easter Eggs scattered around the game. This is in complete contrast to @Just Jim's Saga of Emiko Station where the Easter Eggs  (and even some  in-game graphical glitches) play a very large part in the story indeed. 

In other examples, some folks choose to imagine the kerbals living underground because all we see in-game is the KSC and a couple of other locations. I've chosen to interpret that as a limitation of the game rather than a piece of official lore. My kerbals have noses (the better to include recognisable gestures and body language), the in-game models don't. And I haven't even started to think about writing in a justification for the weird and wonderful planet sizes and densities that we see in-game. 

And for all that, I still think of my story as a KSP fan-fiction! It includes some of the in-game characters (although it's old enough that Walt, Mort and the rest weren't around when I started and haven't been written in since) and, to begin with at least, it takes a reasonably serious approach to the whole 'parts found lying by the side of the road' meme. It also includes a lot of the different companies we see in-game and provides a bit of backstory for one of them. 

So I haven't ignored the official lore completely  

 

Edited May 17, 2018 by KSK

[KerbolExplorer]

7 hours ago, steuben said:

What level of critique are you after?

 

One of my authors of preference, David Drake, has done outlines of 60 kilowords, and has a librarian on staff to help, and keep him separate from any computers connected to the intra-tubes. And I'm sure the Hammer-verse and RCN-verse canon-bibles are in the 200 kiloword range each.

It may be that you can't tie into KSP. If you have to do too much hand waving to get the canon welding, or worse just can't buff out the welds, surrender on trying.  Just use KSP as the modeling frame work.

 

i want you to say what you think of my storie and how can i improve it

10 hours ago, KSK said:

It’s a good start and the ‘shipwrecked on an alien world’ setting has a lot of potential to become a really interesting and fun story. Plus your ship and vehicle designs are very cool.

The first few chapters felt rather quick.(discover alien artifact - wham. Build giant interstellar spacecraft - bam. Fly to new star system -  kablam.) That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you’re just setting the scene for the main story and getting your characters to that alien world as quickly as possible. For future chapters though, you might want to slow it down a bit.

For example - imagine what would happen if we found supposed alien artifacts on Earth? You could probably make a whole book out of your first couple of chapters, starting with that initial discovery, dealing with all the different reactions to it, proving that the artifacts are real and not some conspiracy, showing how the world (eventually) opts for peaceful exploration and finally researching, building and launching a starship.

Last thing. I don’t normally comment on spelling and stuff. I know all too well how easy it is to miss the odd typo or grammar fail, and I can only imagine how hard it must be to write a story that isn’t in your first language.

But if you could run your chapters through a spellchecker before posting them, it would make them a lot easier to read. Spellcheckers aren’t perfect of course but they do help.

thx but the only ships i made were the rover,the unundentified spacecraft,the pika infinity the KIP(kerbin interstelar phasegate) and the lifepod are mine but the kaurora and the plane Ryley used i found them at kerbalX

Edited May 17, 2018 by KerbolExplorer

[steuben]

Don't let the following dissuade you from continuing this craft.

4 hours ago, KerbolExplorer said:

 want you to say what you think of my [story] and how can improve it

*laughs evilly, cracks knuckles, rolls shoulders, does that neck crack thing*... What? I'll be gentle. It looks like it's your first rodeo so it'll be thorough. Well... I'll try to be gentle.

I won't dwell on spelling and grammar, as I am not one to sling such stones. Or at least sling them too hard.  MS Word, or equivalent, has both a spell checker and a grammar checker, use them. Doing this on a phone or similar device isn't much of an excuse. Take the time and find a real computer and use that to do the edit. Never post a first draft of a story.

Style and technique...

Quote

dooduki kerman:what is this thing we are looking for again vall?

Valentina: I dont really know[. The] guys

This is basically an As You Know Exposition. A better way would be to have them in the briefing room being given the details by the wounded deskbound commander in a bored manner. Then have them bouncing along the terrain an hour before arrival.

 

Quote

 small [crystal] with something like 1000000 kilotons of power

Tons  isn't a unit of power. You might be thinking watts, or horsepower. But for reference an average car generates 150 kilowatts (200 horsepower) of power. Each first stage engine of the Apollo Launcher generated approximately 22 million horsepower or 16.8 gigawatts of power. A bit of a lack of scale, but so do many sci-fi writers. You will also want to rescale your scaling modifier word. In this case moving from kilo- to giga-, or perhaps tera given the context of use.

 

Quote

Vall:*slaps dooduki in the face [angrily] and goes away*

Drop the angrily, and a descriptive to her departure. Something like "Vall slaps dooduki in the face and stomps off."

 

Quote

10 days later the 170 crew members were in the Kaurora.

You placed the right hook for this earlier with

Quote

we now make planes in a day!

But the station pic earlier doesn't give much weight to the line of getting a 170 seat craft out the door in 10 days.

 

Quote

Bob: dark [matter] engines when boom sir

You may have to rework this. Unless he's speaking in a second language having translated through a third. He could be Eloquent In His Native Tongue. But, you'll have to indicate that previously.

 

Quote

Vall [what's] happening dont like this at all

Yes, And That's Terrible. Loud noises from inside a beer can in space, what's to like?

 

Quote

  need you to recruit the crew there

Umm... aliens in the crew helping them to survive once they land. Not what I think you meant but a good example of rereading and reediting before you post.

 

Quote

Valentina  is now [unconscious]

Show Don't Tell, this is the core and primary direction of writing.

 

Quote

[I'll] post three chapters per week

If you can do it great. But, don't trade quality for quantity. And beware of such an ambitious schedule. It can easily generate Schedule Slip, which begets an Orphaned Series, which begets a Dead Fic.

For further reference and research you may want to hunt up "Robinson Crusoe", "Robinson Crusoe On Mars", and maybe "Swiss Family Robinson". The US Army's FM 3-05.70 will provide some additional planning support for you depending on how interesting you plan on things getting for your crew.

Now since you are coming out of Spanish into English, I do have this recommendation. Use Google Translate. It does make hamburger out of idioms. But it can get you pretty close for the remainder of the text. It does have to be good Spanish in the first place for it do it reliably.

 

Edited May 17, 2018 by steuben

[KerbolExplorer]

thanks @steuben for the feedback i will defenetly add the stuff you said on my storie .but first i want to clear some of the stuff you said:

"small [crystal] with something like 1000000 kilotons of power"

i complitly missread that from the wiki and i will change that to say :small cristal with something equivalent to 100000 kilotons of TNT

"Yes, And That's Terrible. Loud noises from inside a beer can in space, what's to like? "

the kaurora is an interplanitary vessel that is massive in size. the 170 kerbals fitted perfectly in the kaurora and more kerbals could have gone inside.Valentina at the moment of the first explosion was at the hangar bay.In the kaurora`s hangar would have been big to give the infinity space to launch and dock ones its back

"Umm... aliens in the crew helping them to survive once they land. Not what I think you meant but a good example of rereading and reediting before you post. "

The survivors of the kaurora will NOT be helped by the aliens beacuse:

Storie spoiler below!(asswel for the game subnautica)

Spoiler

the probe they found was sended millions of years before.that probe was a massege from the aliens to not aproach 4546B.The aliens did this beacuse the planet is infected with a strong bacteria that wipped of the aliens from exintence.this will be explained later in the storie..

my current inspiration for this Project is from the game subnautica.Im asswel Reading the book "tale of a castaway"

[SiriusRocketry]

P'raps I shall write something...

[HansonKerman]

Any idea how to make my story... less cheesy/corny/other negative aspect?

Link is in sig, but for any who can't find it (or have signature viewing turned off), link is below:

 

And yes, the grammatical error at the end of Chapter 6 - Enter Captin (yes, also intended, spelling error) Stelala Kerman is, also intended.

Edited May 21, 2018 by HansonKerman

[Guest]

18 hours ago, HansonKerman said:

Any idea how to make my story... less cheesy/corny/other negative aspect?

I read through it... and I'm sorry, it's hard to tell you much since there really isn't much connecting the narrative to actually tell a story. It's a mash-up, like your sig says: you take some elements from Kerbfleet (the spelling of Captin, a fourth wall breach...) some elements from Emiko (which is far, far from over...) some elements from Duna Attacks and I can't tell where else.

Well, it takes more than borrowing a few memes to make a story. The reason those elements from my work and @Just Jim's resonated with you are because they are from carefully constructed narratives that drew you in and made you think or feel something. Most good stories on this Forum start with an interesting mission, then add characters and narrative that makes the reader care a bit more. Maybe start with that?

 

[HansonKerman]

18 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

I read through it... and I'm sorry, it's hard to tell you much since there really isn't much connecting the narrative to actually tell a story. It's a mash-up, like your sig says: you take some elements from Kerbfleet (the spelling of Captin, a fourth wall breach...) some elements from Emiko (which is far, far from over...) some elements from Expidition Eve and I can't tell where else.

Well, it takes more than borrowing a few memes to make a story. The reason those elements from my work and @Just Jim's resonated with you are because they are from carefully constructed narratives that drew you in and made you think or feel something. Most good stories on this Forum start with an interesting mission, then add characters and narrative that makes the reader care a bit more. Maybe start with that?

  

 Thanks!

Edited May 23, 2018 by HansonKerman

[KSK]

19 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Well, it takes more than borrowing a few memes to make a story.

Another problem is that you're assuming your readers know the memes - which might not be the case. For example in your prologue, you refer to Darbels and TX. I can figure out what (or who) the Darbels are from context but I have no clue what TX is.

I have to admit that I'm not quite sure what to make of Project Seekers so far. It seems to be a mashup of relatively serious, mostly text based story (Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 6), illustrated mission story (Chapter 4), "how I did this stuff in KSP" with all the blueprints and staging diagrams (Chapter 2 and Chapter 4), and slightly oddball comedy (Chapter 3), the whole thing being sprinkled with fourth wall breaches.

Each of those can be made to work well in isolation and I could find examples of all of them in the Fanworks and Mission Reports forums. Put them all together though and they break up the flow of the story and make it disjointed and hard to read. I would suggest picking what story type you really want to write and focus on that, rather than trying to juggle all those different styles of writing at once. Which you pick is entirely up to you but I think that ditching the blueprints and staging diagrams might be an easy way to start. Or, if you really, really like your Kronal blueprints, try working them into a picture somewhere, rather than just pasting them in as a separate image. Maybe have a couple of your characters talk about the staging sequence instead of presenting that as a separate image.

And, whichever style you pick - slow down a little. Give your characters some screen time, give your readers some time to engage with them, see how they respond to what's happening in the story and maybe even how their reactions to events drives the story. Take Chapter 1 for example. It's a great, attention grabbing opening - and then nothing happens.

Now, this may be something you plan to return to in later chapters but right now, KSC Tracking Station is out of action, Gene is missing, presumed dead - and nobody seems to care all that much. Chapter 2 kicks off with an 'everything has gone wrong - what will our heroes do next, dun...dun....dun' kind of opening, and then just jumps right into building the biggest spacecraft that Kerbin has ever seen. Then Chapter 3 takes an odd detour into Wernher and Bill talking about some advanced parts, which are only really advanced for KSP parts - fill gauges and drain valves aren't particularly unusual real-world features.  Then we're into the launch, run an EVA - and still nobody seems particularly worried about poor Gene or the wrecked Tracking Station.

Edited May 23, 2018 by KSK

[KSK]

Okay, so this thread is mostly about people asking for help to improve their writing and other people offering that help in various measures. There's one thing though that we can all do to improve. It's not glamorous, it aint a quick fix, I can't offer you one weird tip to improve your writing (whether or not it makes published authors hate you). However it is reliable and I'm betting that pretty much all published authors recommend it.

We can practice. We can write more. It's as simple - and as hard - as that. 

But then again, this shouldn't really be a surprise. Practice is the same way that you'd improve any other art, craft or skill. You can read all the textbooks and self-help guides you like but in the end, there's no substitute for actually busting out that paintbrush, hammer and chisel, wheelbarrow, or whatever the tools of your particular chosen craft are, and putting in the hours of practice. Why should writing be any different? 

Let me give you a (fictional) example. 

I'm 45, greying and in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis. I decide to solve said crisis by making my long overdue bid for rock stardom. Yeah - I'm gonna be the next Brian May. Heck, I've got the hair already, KSK would make a killer stage name and that old leather jacket in the back of closet still fits right? How hard can this be? Well, to tell you the truth, I don't actually know much about playing guitar, so it's time to hit the local library and do some research on this. Luckily, the library comes up trumps:

Rock Guitar for Dummies.  Sounds like a good place to start.
Waking up the Neighbours - Powerchords 101.  Oh yeah, I need that.
Beyond the Status Quo - Play Your Way to Stardom with Four Easy Chords.  Sounds legit.

So I check out all three books. I devour those suckers end-to-end and upside down. I get more books and read those too. I've got this. Eventually I buy my guitar, an amp, a tuner, one of those clamp things that I can never quite remember the name of. I lug the whole lot out to my garage and set up. I pull on my lucky Queen t-shirt. 

Quick straw poll. Who thinks this is going to go well? Yeah - I thought so.

I improvise a spotlight out of my old desk lamp. I strike that perfect 'Rock God' pose. I raise my hand, bring it crashing down onto the strings...

SPRAAAANNNNNGGGGGG. SCREEEEEEEEEEE.  SPRRAAANGGgggg-ggggg-gggg.

Well this guitar is magic. I can tell that because the darn thing seems to have turned all my fingers into thumbs. The next door neighbour's dog is howling along with me and I wouldn't care but the mutt is holding a better tune than me too. The next door neighbours on the other side - the ones with the son who's learning to play the bagpipes - are knocking on the door, politely asking me to turn it down a bit. All in all, it doesn't take me long to figure out that a) turning the amp up to 11 was a bad idea and b) forget about Rock Godhood - it's gonna take me a ton of practice to knock out a halfway decent cover of Bohemian Rhapsody.

But so it goes. A rock god's gotta do what a rock god's gotta do. 

Edited May 24, 2018 by KSK

[CatastrophicFailure]

41 minutes ago, KSK said:

one of those clamp things that I can never quite remember the name of.

Capo...

 

Sounds like all @KSK‘s fantasy is missing is a pony-tailed foul-mouthed comedian and a Sufficiently Advanced Phonebooth. And also the Grim Reaper and a bipartite alien with a most excellent Martian— er, anyways...

But continuing the musical metaphor and the foul mouth too, I suppose  I’m reminded of a quote from Dave Grohl:

Quote

Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy an old [language!] drum set and get in their garage and just suck.

 The same applies to any art, or any skill at all. You have to be bad before you can get good. When I think back to some of the cringe-worthy crap I wrote back in high school...  And yet I still see the side of grin-worthiness in it, too. Sometimes it’s a challenge just to get over that fear of “this is crap, why am I bothering?” and put pen to paper, as it were. But that’s where everyone starts. Go back to any respected author’s earliest works and you’ll no doubt find a great heaping plate of suck. 

Stephen King’s The Gunslinger is one great example, especially the early unabridged edition. By all means a superb story, but oh, the adverbs!

[KSK]

32 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Sounds like all @KSK‘s fantasy is missing is a pony-tailed foul-mouthed comedian and a Sufficiently Advanced Phonebooth. And also the Grim Reaper and a bipartite alien with a most excellent Martian— er, anyways...

Station.

\m/

[steuben]

Excellent! Party on... oops. wrong generational movie.

Yes, practice is half of where it is at. If I look at the stuff I wrote when I actively started to write  almost 14 years ago... well to call it crap would be an insult to crap. Though the stuff I wrote shortly after was better. And the earlier stuff... eaten by the internets, or a grue, probably gave it indigestion.

 

 

[Torgo]

Mods: If the link in the following post is not permissible here, please remove it. I have no vested interest or financial consideration involved, just thinking this might be something that might appeal to writers

I got this message today from a company with whom I've done business before. They released a new course called Science Fiction as Philosophy. It has a series of 24 lectures by a university professor touching on, well, philosophical discussions of popular science fiction, including Star Trek, The Matrix, Westworld, Dr. Who and a bunch more. Copying and pasting just a touch:

...throughout the lectures of Sci-Phi, you will ponder many questions that have concerned philosophers for centuries, including:

• Do humans truly have free will?
• Could machines one day be conscious? Or be sentient?
• Could we actually be living in a simulated world?
• How will humanity confront a future of diminished resources and advancing technology?
• Are science and religion compatible?
• When, if ever, is war justified?
• How do we know what information to trust and what to dismiss?

 I know not everyone's in a position to be able to fork over cash for stuff like this, but I'm sharing it as possibly it may be of assistance to some aspiring writers.

[steuben]

Looks like they have a few directly on writing, at least according to my public library.

[Guest]

On 5/24/2018 at 2:24 AM, KSK said:

We can practice. We can write more. It's as simple - and as hard - as that. 

Well, as a 48 year old aspiring trombonist I couldn't agree with @KSK's general principle and specific example more. I keep one trombone at home and one in the office (yes, really) so I can practice whenever I have a spare few minutes. In the six years I've been working on it, I've gone from very basic can-sort-of-make-a-note to performing on stage, under lights, with a few different bands. I practice my instrument a heck of a lot more than my kids practice theirs, and believe me I do remark on that when they wonder why they're not first chair in wind ensemble  

I suppose I'm learning writing (and have been learning, continually, for about 40 years now) the same way I'm learning trombone, and I would just add one thing to @KSK's rock god example: criticism. Yes you have to get it from others: directly from helpful friends and indirectly from your readers. It can be hard to stay objective and know what to listen to and what to discard in that criticism, but a good writer develops the knack. I suppose receiving criticism is something else that can be practiced

BUT the most IMPORTANT and VALUABLE CRITIC IS --

YOU!!!

If you can look at something  you wrote and tell whether it's good or crap, you'll progress much, much faster. It's like the computer algorithms that learn to play really good chess--they work by playing millions of games against themselves and continually refining techniques based on the outcome. The difference of course is that a chess result is objective and a writing (or musical) result is not. But as with anything else, self-criticism can be developed through practice. A good way to start is by reading a lot of stuff and criticizing it. What worked? What didn't work? and WHY??? If you can answer that last question and apply it to your OWN work, you WILL write better.

[adsii1970]

2 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

Well, as a 48 year old aspiring trombonist I couldn't agree with @KSK's general principle and specific example more. I keep one trombone at home and one in the office (yes, really) so I can practice whenever I have a spare few minutes. In the six years I've been working on it, I've gone from very basic can-sort-of-make-a-note to performing on stage, under lights, with a few different bands. I practice my instrument a heck of a lot more than my kids practice theirs, and believe me I do remark on that when they wonder why they're not first chair in wind ensemble  

I do the same thing. I am a French Horn player and practice as much as I can. It's been a comfort to me over the years and I find myself enjoying my 45 minutes to an hour of French Horn bliss. But I also play an oboe and cornet. And I've been asked to play in a few different venues... And now my 7 year old daughter is becoming interested in playing the cornet. I'm doing good to get her to practice 25 minutes a day.

 

6 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

criticism. Yes you have to get it from others: directly from helpful friends and indirectly from your readers. It can be hard to stay objective and know what to listen to and what to discard in that criticism, but a good writer develops the knack. I suppose receiving criticism is something else that can be practiced

I beg for it...

[Alpha 360]

I'm just wondering how people like @CatastrophicFailure, @Kuzzter, @Just Jim, @KSK and other greats like them have kept writing on the SAME story for year after year after year with it all fitting together like a masterpiece. Corrections, they're works are masterpieces. How did they start out on their stories? I know @Kuzzter's Kerbfleet series started with a Duna colonization fleet, but did he have the entire series outlined or is most of it from the seat-of the pants? This applies even more to @CatastrophicFailure's Kraken series which is on its 3rd book, each book larger than a decently-sized novel or @Just Jim's Emiko Station series which is over 95 chapters! @KSK's First Flight series has been running (I believe) before most of the other great series and it's all in the same thread(literally).  I assume it is something to do with the personality and age. 

I'm much younger than these writers, half the age of both @Kuzzter and @KSK as they mentioned. I am also a tweaker who transforms an original idea into something which is completely unrelated. Do these greats I mentioned above have any input for me as an aspiring writer? 

Happy Explosions! 

[SiriusRocketry]

Echoing @Alpha 360, Imyself am an aspiring young writer less than a third of @Kuzzter's age, and I was wondering if you had any tips for writing longer novels/novellas! (Going through exams, but I still try to write as much as I can in my spare time)

[Kerbinchaser]

@SiriusRocketry your signature is so large is blocks the page picker. Please remedy this. 

 

I just have this one problem in writing where I will start a story and just... Leave it, and then start ANOTHER story and leave THAT one, and the process continues until I have like 150 docs on my computer. I have issues. 

 

HOWEVER:

I actually am trying to get a novel published!

It's a short story about a pigeon from WWI, written from the pigeon's perspective, but the reader doesn't know it's a pigeon until chapter II. It's really well written in my opinion, and I've gotten lots of people to review/read it. My Mom has a degree in art, so she'll be my illustrator. She's already illustrated a few books already. 

 

@SiriusRocketry

For writing longer stories:

If you want to make long chapters, (something I struggled with for a long time) try to describe things in more detail without overdoing it. For instance, let's say I wanted to talk about a man walking down a cobblestone path in England on a rainy night. I would describe it like this:

The stout man was strolling down a pathway which shone like a lake from the hard rain that was falling down in thick sheets. Nearby, residents of the small town ran with umbrellas, splashing water onto the young gentleman's shoes. Shaking off the thick mud, he continued his brisk walk, the raindrops falling off his wide-brimmed top hat. Carriages lumbered by him, the steady 'clop clop' creating a rhythm on the stone. 

If you still have a gap, use dialogue to fix it. Many people fear character dialogue, but honestly it's really easy. Talk to yourself while writing the words and see how you would talk normally. If you have a character from a place with a strong accent, include the accent in the writing.  

[Just Jim]

I'm sorry... I saw my name mentioned a few times, and I should have chimed in before now... trying to do 8 things at once... but I'm not a Kraken, so.... 

OK, first... 

On 5/24/2018 at 2:24 AM, KSK said:

We can practice. We can write more. It's as simple - and as hard - as that. 

I could not agree more, and I don't really know how to expand on what @KSK said... just keep writing... or writing in your head... I do that a lot. 

On 5/25/2018 at 3:02 PM, Alpha 360 said:

I'm just wondering how people like @CatastrophicFailure, @Kuzzter, @Just Jim, @KSK and other greats like them have kept writing on the SAME story for year after year after year with it all fitting together like a masterpiece. Corrections, they're works are masterpieces. How did they start out on their stories?

First off, thanks you!

Mine started off as just a single mission about a stray asteroid that got caught in Kerbin SOI, and turned out to be a monster... but I had been inspired by @Kuzzter and some of the other fan-fiction writers to do it as more than just "another mission report"... and it got a pretty good response, so I decided to try a second chapter, more character based... and that did pretty good as well.

And by this time was I starting to get the writing bug, and wanted to keep going. But I didn't know really what to do... except it had to be cool... and exciting... OK... exciting... that means danger... yeah... that's what it needed next... something dangerous... a... a villain!!! And not just a villain... Nope... chapter 2 was a character based romance... so it had to be someone after the heroine!!! 

And my third chapter evolved, and brought in a robot spy... and that's when things really got started. 

After that I just kept going, thinking out who (or what) would be controlling the robot spy... and why... and I slowly introduced one or two new characters every few chapters... not too many, or too fast, or it's hard for people to keep up. And letting them slowly evolve their own personalities over time. And it just kept going.

Truth be told... I just don't want it to end, so who knows how long I can keep it going???

I treat Emiko like a soap opera, or on-going TV series, and not a book... and try to stay as flexible as possible. Which can be hard sometimes. But again, other than following a general plot and outline, I only worry about one chapter at a time, and seldom about anything beyond that. 

22 hours ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

It's a short story about a pigeon from WWI, written from the pigeon's perspective, but the reader doesn't know it's a pigeon until chapter II. It's really well written in my opinion, and I've gotten lots of people to review/read it. My Mom has a degree in art, so she'll be my illustrator. She's already illustrated a few books already. 

A pigeon??? I love this idea! You have to let me read it once it's finished and illustrated!

22 hours ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

Many people fear character dialogue, but honestly it's really easy. Talk to yourself while writing the words and see how you would talk normally. If you have a character from a place with a strong accent, include the accent in the writing.  

Agreed! I think I saw @Kuzzter mention this somewhere as well... and I do this all the time! And I'll roll around dialogue for hours and sometimes days in my head, and just sit back and sort of listen, until everything feels right, then write it all down. It's not that hard once you get the hang of it, and it is really how a lot if my characters evolved their own personalities.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Just Jim