Workshopping your MS

@scriptstructure / scriptstructure.tumblr.com

A blog for your questions about how to incorporate elements of your research, plotting, and themes into your manuscript. See pinned post for question guidelines.
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About & Guidelines

About the Blog:

In the fashion of ScriptMedic and cohort, this blog is here to answer questions about how to structure your story, and develop your narrative, and themes. If you’ve got your research, and you’ve got your plot, and then you’re stuck on how to make it fit together, or how to use your awesome research, then this is the blog for you!

This blog can provide assistance from simple tips regarding writing itself, through to recommendations for further reading and research. If I’m able I will provide links to relevant texts, or at least attempt to provide ways to find them.

Guidelines for Asking:

FIRST! An important note: I will not read your manuscript!

MS reading is time-intensive and is the sort of thing better left to dedicated beta readers or paid editors, please do not submit part/ all of your MS, and ask me to ‘tell you what’s wrong with it’ or ‘help fix it’.

Sending your ask:

  • ask box is preferred! Submit box is available if you absolutely can’t fit your question into the ask
  • I’ll be keeping messenger open in case I need to ask clarifying questions, but I would prefer that initial questions NOT be sent via messenger.
  • You’ll probably need to put 1-2 sentences of context about your story, and ask about the specific issue you’re having difficulty with

Generally speaking, the more specific your question is the better I will be able to help you – figure out the area that you’re having difficulty with and ask about that in particular. Sending a long rehash of your MS and then simply asking how to make it work is impossible to answer. Tell me what You think the problem you’re having is, and we can work from there.

As this blog grows, there will no doubt be posts related to troubles you’re having, I’ll be making sure to keep up a consistent tagging system so that all previous posts should be simple to find, simply head to the navigation page and look to see if your question has already been answered. If it hasn’t? Then ask away! If I’ve answered something similar to the question you have but haven’t quite hit the nail on the head? Ask away!

Also, you might notice that I’ll often advise people to read certain texts, or recommend stories, shows, films, novels, etc that are similar to what they’re working on. Reading is the best practice for writing, you’ll learn a lot about writing by reading attentively, and it is a process – all writing is a process! There’s no quick fix or cheat sheet that will work for everyone.

If you must send a question longer than the ask box allows, use a browser to access:

www.scriptstructure.tumblr/submit

About the Blogger:

My name is Mason and I’m all about character and narrative development, I’ll be doing my best to try and work through the thorny problems that come with the writing part of writing!

I have a degree in Creative Writing, a minor in English Literature, and an honours degree in Creative Writing (thesis focused on character structure and narrative). I’ve lectured on Character development in adaptation, and I’ve taught general creative writing, as well as writing for the stage.

I have several short stories published, as well as a self published novella, you can find my personal/ author blog [HERE]

#housekeeping
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meat4meat - Transgender Body Horror Short Story Anthology
meat4meat is an illustrated short story anthology celebrating the unique relationship that transgender and disabled authors and artists shar
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Hi folks,

Mason here, I don't like to use this blog to promote my own work, but at the same time I think this is a very cool project, and there are probably some of you out there who would love this.

Meat4meat is an anthology of body horror short stories by trans authors, it is currently in the kickstarter phase, and has just ten days to go in its campaign. It features short stories from a bunch of incredible authors, including Joe Koch, Claudine Griggs, and many more (and me!)

From the Kickstarter:

What is meat4meat? meat4meat is an illustrated short fiction anthology dedicated to exploring body horror by those who know it best. It is a study in the relationship between discrepancy in self and body, in the horror of losing control, and the joy of taking it back. It’s a celebration of the strange and wonderful. But most of all, meat4meat is a fever dream of an anthology that drags the reader face-first though the guts and gore of world-class body horror. meat4meat features seventeen stories by transgender and disabled authors, ranging from debut writers such as Lorelei Thee to masters of the craft such as Joe Koch, Claudine Giggs and more! Each story is accompanied with original illustration by similarly marginalised artists, offering their own perspective on the anthology’s themes.

I hope that you check it out!

#promo#not writing advice#just a few days left on the ks i hope you check it out if you’re interested 😊
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meat4meat - Transgender Body Horror Short Story Anthology
meat4meat is an illustrated short story anthology celebrating the unique relationship that transgender and disabled authors and artists shar
BackerKit

Hi folks,

Mason here, I don't like to use this blog to promote my own work, but at the same time I think this is a very cool project, and there are probably some of you out there who would love this.

Meat4meat is an anthology of body horror short stories by trans authors, it is currently in the kickstarter phase, and has just ten days to go in its campaign. It features short stories from a bunch of incredible authors, including Joe Koch, Claudine Griggs, and many more (and me!)

From the Kickstarter:

What is meat4meat? meat4meat is an illustrated short fiction anthology dedicated to exploring body horror by those who know it best. It is a study in the relationship between discrepancy in self and body, in the horror of losing control, and the joy of taking it back. It’s a celebration of the strange and wonderful. But most of all, meat4meat is a fever dream of an anthology that drags the reader face-first though the guts and gore of world-class body horror. meat4meat features seventeen stories by transgender and disabled authors, ranging from debut writers such as Lorelei Thee to masters of the craft such as Joe Koch, Claudine Giggs and more! Each story is accompanied with original illustration by similarly marginalised artists, offering their own perspective on the anthology’s themes.

I hope that you check it out!

#promo#not writing advice
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Anonymous asked:

!! NSFW WARNING !! Hey, I totally understand if you don't want to answer this I've been trying to write smut. Specifically, an orgy with ~15 characters with ~7 of them having more focus. Things are happening at the same time and partners/groups are changed all the time and not together i.e. a single person finishes and just joins somewhere else. I don't know how/when to start switching who/which group to write about or even backtrack to a different group. It's rather jumbled up now.

I think the most important thing to remember when it comes to writing sex scenes, is:

Sex scenes are action sequences

We are developing a series of acts between a number of characters, and we hope to do a number of things:

  • There is an arc of action, beginning at the beginning point, moving though the action, and a crescendo & denoument
  • Who did what -/With whom -/and where
  • Give a sense of mood, theme, and continuity with the rest of the story (or, jarring discontinuity, if that's what you're using it for)
  • and so on, as with any other action scene

So, as we do with any kind of action sequence, we need to figure out the order of events, the way that we want to feel about those events*, and the time we're going to take to show all of this.

First up, you probably want to think about how central this scene is to your story. Is it a major incident, or a minor incident? ie, do we want to spend a lot of page space and detail on it, or is it something that just needs to be glossed over in a few paragraphs, just so we know that it happened?

This is going to change depending on what you're trying to do with the sex scene, and what your story is about.

Second up, the 'blocking' or figuring out the choreography of the scene. Who is where, what are they doing, and with whom. You can probably figure out a skeleton outline, just so that you can be sure that characters have time to participate in each scenario that you're including them in. (This is also a good time to think about the pace and rhythm of the scene--are there going to be snack breaks, lulls in the action, time for characters to catch their breath, etc)

If you're having trouble thinking of how to shift focus between different groupings, think about when and why the characters decide to move on from what they're doing to join someone else. Or about how what each group is doing might change the vibe of the scene.

Then, we'll think about mood. The mood can shift throughout the scene, eg frantic/ high energy->slow/ romantic->lazy/sated, or nervous->focussed->confident, whatever the emotional beats and journeys that you want to show.

Mood is also something which is going to lend a great deal to the scene in terms of communicating what it is for** in the story. Is this scene a way of showing the group dynamic, or of exploring individual character's psychology, or illustrating a cultural norm, or of celebrating a victory, or any other thing that it could be about. These characters are having sex, why are they doing that, and what does it mean in the context of the narrative.

So now we know that we need to have an understanding of what the purpose of this scene is in the overall narrative, what exactly happens and in what order, what sort of mood we're trying to evoke with this scene, and what other things we might be learning about character/ place/ culture through this scene.

Next, what about some examples of books that use sex scenes with more or less complex staging to develop various plots and themes:

In the Court of the Nameless Queen by Natalie Ironsides->exploration of gender and identity, with both orgy scenes and couple scenes

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite/ Billy Martin->this is a horror novel featuring two serial killers falling in love, look up some content warnings if that sounds like it isn't for you

Leash by Jane Delynn-> a classic of lesbian weirdo-erotica, about societal alienation and BDSM

Some posts about plotting and POV that might be useful:

Multiple plots with different character groups [HERE] Multiple plots that converge at the end [HERE] Multiple plots and subplots [HERE] Multiple POV characters and narrative shape [HERE] Third person POV and focalisation 'depth' [HERE] First person POV strengths and limitations [HERE]

I hope that's helpful! If there's anything that needs clarifying, please don't hesitate to ask again!

-Mason

*note: you might think that I'd say that we're assuming that people should read the sex scene to get horny about it, but that is just one option of many, and while it has its place, there are far more things that you can do with a sex scene

**note: I also do want to be clear that there's nothing wrong with writing sex scenes explicitly for the horny factor. That, traditionally, is one of the major reasons to include sex scenes in a story. But I do think that more narrative weight makes a sex scene more memorable and interesting.

#Anonymous#writing sex scenes
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Reblogged malcolmschmitz
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patternedclouds asked:

Dear DD, I'm wondering if you could show examples (from your own work or otherwise) of what really, *really* rough drafts of fiction writing look like. I'm talking the earliest stages of the process that normally most people don't show to the public; whenever I look around online, what folks seem to post as "WIP" samples are usually more like 80-90% polished excerpts.

While my brain logically knows these are the late-stage stuff, it has an ill-advised habit of trying to draft to that 80-90 level of quality from the get-go--I think it might help to see what the equivalent of "thumbnails" or "sketches/doodles" look like in writing, especially from someone who's been At The Work for a long time. Hopefully it's an alright request! I understand if for various reasons you can't.

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dduane answered:

I'm more than willing to show people my stuff in process, every now and then. ...But in my case, your initial query poses an unusual challenge. And it's this:

After pushing fifty years of doing this work (or indeed, you had it right, this Work) for money, everything comes out looking fairly polished.

And this can't be helped. Once you've been doing this work for long enough—once doing it well starts being the thing responsible for keeping you and your family fed—you will inevitably (eventually) evolve the ability to exude smooth-looking prose at minutes' notice. Over the years your internal prose filters will get trained into being increasingly fine-meshed... and the longer this goes on, the more flatly they'll refuse to let clunky stuff out onto the page any more. You don't really even think about it. You just keep refining a given phrase/sentence/paragraph in your head until it feels acceptable.

After a couple/few decades, this ability becomes an ever more finely-honed survival characteristic. You can no sooner emit actively coarse prose (without trying purposefully to do so, which is another story...) than you can stop breathing for minutes at a time without suffering the consequences. (shrug) It's just the way your life experience has taught your Drafting Brain to conduct itself, going forward.

Now... this doesn't mean at all that the drafted material, be it ever so polished-looking, is necessarily what you intended (or needed!) to write. Oh no. I could this very day show you some prose that by my standards is still really rough, because I wrote it five minutes ago... and you'd look at it and be very unlikely to be able to see what my problem was with it.* Whereas I'm sitting staring at it and muttering "Dammit, something's missing here. No idea what. I'll come back to it tomorrow."

And indeed I wrote something about three hours ago that (as I got it onto the page in its earliest form) left me literally gasping about how obtuse I'd been about the situation and emotions described in it, as recently as early this afternoon before I had lunch. It was a scene that had been missing from something I'm completing at the moment—indeed not merely missing but completely uncontemplated—and as it spooled itself out on the page all I could do was shake my head at my own idiocy at having missed the opportunity earlier, while I was nailing down the plot.

And I would love to show you that piece of prose right this minute, so that you could see what minutes-old prose from me looks like. Except it's seriously spoilery, and I refuse to sabotage a larger work by allowing out any material that's so loaded... and which viewed out of context would deprive it of most of its power. So, as we say around here, 'Sorry not sorry.'" Though I promise I'll come back to this and talk about it "in the clear" later, when that work's published.

...Anyway. The best advice I have for you just now is that trying to make your filters-in-training less effective is—to put it as gently as Captain Amelia might—a mistake.

That urge to have the first draft—or the "zero draft" as some are calling it these days: I use this myself—be as good as possible is frankly a lifesaver. Indulging it, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, will only leave you with less frustration, less editing and re-editing, and way less Flat Forehead Syndrome over time. You are going in the right direction, even if it makes you feel like you're losing valuable time.

Your brain's attempts to draft to the highest possible level are not ill-advised. Indulge the urge to get your drafting more right, even if it makes you suffer a bit. No one ever said this writing lark was going to be all fun. (And if they did, they lied to you.) Also: hunting through other people's WIP excerpts, be they rougher than yours or more polished, in a search for something that your excerpts or drafting style should or could theoretically look like, will do you no good in the long term... and may do you harm. All you're likely to be left with, after you haven't found anything useful in the wake of the shoulder-peering, is a sense—almost certainly an inaccurate one—that you're somehow doing it wrong.**

You're not. You're finding your own way, at your own speed. This is the Writer's Journey. (As opposed to the Hero's, which I have characters shouting at me about at the moment.) (eyeroll) As you continue going your own way, your drafting will gradually pick up speed without losing quality. ...And don't neglect your outside reading. You need to be reading outside your own genre and your own century to pick up, as it were, new (or old) plugins for your filters.

Anyway. If (as it seems) you're in this for the long term: get right down here with the rest of us and suffer your way (briefly) through it. We all suffer from concerns about process from time to time. The only cure is to say "fuck that noise" to the back of your Writer's Mind, and get back to the actual writing, where these problems are worked out in the only way that counts.

So: go do your thing, and let the chips fall where they may. And I hope this has helped! Let me know, over time, how things go.

*This situation is also, BTW, a bit of a problem for a writer in a career stage like mine. In an inversion of the usual rule—where "the Perfect becomes the enemy of the (Merely) Good"—the "Really Not Bad At All" becomes the enemy of the "Could Have Been Way Better If You'd Given It A 'Should I Maybe Sweat Over This A Little More?' Pass". Because the Not Bad At All genuinely isn't... but if you're not careful, you stop seeing where to kick it into the next stage when you're distracted by all the other junk going on in life.

**...But this is one of the downsides of the community, and communality, of the writing life online. We wind up endlessly looking over each others' shoulders to try to find answers that—in many cases—were already sitting between us and the screen, on the keyboard.

(And now a suggestion for those who find these occasional excursions into the Advice Barrel useful: at various folks' request, I have a Ko-Fi now. If you find the advice useful and you feel so inclined, send me a sign.) :)

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#reblog
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Goths for Breakfast
An online days of Gothic and horror classes and workshops to support the charity Magic Breakfast
Eventbrite

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

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This is THIS WEEKEND!!

Don’t miss out!!!

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Event begins in ONE HOUR!!

Remember, the talks and workshops are recorded so if you cant make it at the listed times you will still be able to access all of the content if you buy a ticket!!

Proceeds go to a fantastic cause!

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About & Guidelines

About the Blog:

In the fashion of ScriptMedic and cohort, this blog is here to answer questions about how to structure your story, and develop your narrative, and themes. If you’ve got your research, and you’ve got your plot, and then you’re stuck on how to make it fit together, or how to use your awesome research, then this is the blog for you!

This blog can provide assistance from simple tips regarding writing itself, through to recommendations for further reading and research. If I’m able I will provide links to relevant texts, or at least attempt to provide ways to find them.

Guidelines for Asking:

FIRST! An important note: I will not read your manuscript!

MS reading is time-intensive and is the sort of thing better left to dedicated beta readers or paid editors, please do not submit part/ all of your MS, and ask me to ‘tell you what’s wrong with it’ or ‘help fix it’.

Sending your ask:

  • ask box is preferred! Submit box is available if you absolutely can’t fit your question into the ask
  • I’ll be keeping messenger open in case I need to ask clarifying questions, but I would prefer that initial questions NOT be sent via messenger.
  • You’ll probably need to put 1-2 sentences of context about your story, and ask about the specific issue you’re having difficulty with

Generally speaking, the more specific your question is the better I will be able to help you – figure out the area that you’re having difficulty with and ask about that in particular. Sending a long rehash of your MS and then simply asking how to make it work is impossible to answer. Tell me what You think the problem you’re having is, and we can work from there.

As this blog grows, there will no doubt be posts related to troubles you’re having, I’ll be making sure to keep up a consistent tagging system so that all previous posts should be simple to find, simply head to the navigation page and look to see if your question has already been answered. If it hasn’t? Then ask away! If I’ve answered something similar to the question you have but haven’t quite hit the nail on the head? Ask away!

Also, you might notice that I’ll often advise people to read certain texts, or recommend stories, shows, films, novels, etc that are similar to what they’re working on. Reading is the best practice for writing, you’ll learn a lot about writing by reading attentively, and it is a process – all writing is a process! There’s no quick fix or cheat sheet that will work for everyone.

If you must send a question longer than the ask box allows, use a browser to access:

www.scriptstructure.tumblr/submit

About the Blogger:

My name is Mason and I’m all about character and narrative development, I’ll be doing my best to try and work through the thorny problems that come with the writing part of writing!

I have a degree in Creative Writing, a minor in English Literature, and an honours degree in Creative Writing (thesis focused on character structure and narrative). I’ve lectured on Character development in adaptation, and I’ve taught general creative writing, as well as writing for the stage.

I have several short stories published, as well as a self published novella, you can find my personal/ author blog [HERE]

#less than 24 hours to go!
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Reblogged stjohnstarling
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fascinating that when you tell people "you have to learn the rules to break them" when talking about drawing/painting etc everyone nods and agrees but the second you say "you have to read books if you want to write better" there's a horde of contrarians begging to be the wrongest people ever all of a sudden

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if one more person in the notes of this post says "omg op has clearly never talked to a beginner artist!!" as if im not a literal professional artist and was making a broad point........ this time im really gonna do it

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and reading only fanfiction does not count as reading books to get better at writing. Fanfiction, where everyone reading it already knows who the characters are and what their relationships are and what the setting is and all that crap, is not the same thing as reading an original self-contained story.

If you only read fanfiction, you will not be able to write original stories well.

Reading books does not have to be expensive. It can be completely free. Project Gutenberg exists. So does the Internet Archive's lending library.

Fanfiction works in ways that original fiction doesn't. You can't write original fiction like it's fanfiction if you want your story to actually be well written and interesting.

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I think it's important to point out why fanfiction is different - so much context and interest hooks depend on you already being interested in the source. You are familiar with these characters and therefore don't need to have the basics built into the story. With original work, you need all that underlying character development to be in the story you're writing to make us want to read it. You could 'cheat' and give us a modern Sherlock Holmes - but we still need your version explored in narrative to actually care about it. Dr. House is more than just Sherlock Holmes in a hospital, he has his own issues and foils and quirks. The Holmes from the TV show Sherlock and Elementary are vastly different takes on the same character. You need to read original fiction in order to learn how to do that in your own original fiction. Fanfic is great, but it intentional has gaps that make it a different form.

#reblog
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Reblogged
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Goths for Breakfast
An online days of Gothic and horror classes and workshops to support the charity Magic Breakfast
Eventbrite

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

Avatar
Reblogged
Avatar
Goths for Breakfast
An online days of Gothic and horror classes and workshops to support the charity Magic Breakfast
Eventbrite

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

Avatar
Reblogged
Avatar
Goths for Breakfast
An online days of Gothic and horror classes and workshops to support the charity Magic Breakfast
Eventbrite

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

Avatar
Reblogged
Avatar
Goths for Breakfast
An online days of Gothic and horror classes and workshops to support the charity Magic Breakfast
Eventbrite

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

Avatar
Goths for Breakfast
An online days of Gothic and horror classes and workshops to support the charity Magic Breakfast
Eventbrite

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

#Goths for Breakfast#Romancing the Gothic#Educational#Charity#fundraising
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Reblogged saxifraga-x-urbium
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You can fight AI in indie publishing by leaving reviews.

Seriously.

Ai-generated garbage is flooding the self-publishing market. It works as a numbers game- put out ENOUGH fake crap and eventually someone’s aunt will buy them the ebook as an unwanted gift, and you’ll have made two dollars. This tactic works at SCALE, which means real independent titles are now a needle amongst a haystack of slop.

If you have read a book this year that has less than 5 reviews, your rating is an algorithmic spotlight on that needle.

A one sentence review helps. Really. A star rating helps if you really can’t think of anything to say, but if you can muster up even “I laughed at the part about the tabby cat” you are doing indie authors a favor like you cannot believe.

(Also if you left a review on one of my books this year I am kissing you so softly on your forehead and I adore you)

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as a former indie author i cannot express how much even one single sentence review can mean to sales.

so if you care about supporting authors take a sec to leave one!

#reblog
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Reblogged writingwithcolor
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I cannot emphasize enough how much you need to read thoroughly through the terms of any publication before you send your writing to them. It is mandatory that you know and understand what rights you’re giving away when you’re trying to get published.

Just the other day I was emailed by a relatively new indie journal looking for writers. They made it very clear that they did not pay writers for their work, so I figured I’d probably be passing, but I took a look at their Copyright policy out of curiosity and it was a nightmare. They wanted “non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license and right to use, display, reproduce, distribute, and publish the Work on the internet and on or in any medium” (that’s copy and pasted btw) and that was the first of 10 sections on their Copyright agreement page. Yikes. That’s exactly the type of publishing nightmare you don’t want to be trapped in. 

Most journals will ask for “First North American Rights” or a variation on “First Rights” which operate under the assumption that all right revert back to you and they only have the right to be the first publishers of the work. That is what you need to be looking for because you do want to retain all the rights to your work. 

You want all rights to revert back to you upon publication in case you, say, want to publish it again in the future or use it for a bookmark or post it on your blog, or anything else you might want to do with the writing you worked hard on. Any time a publisher wants more than that, be very suspicious. Anyone who wants to own your work forever and be able to do whatever they want with it without your permission is not to be trusted. Anyone who wants all that and wants you to sign away your right to ever be paid for your work is running a scam.

Protect your writing. It’s not just your intellectual property, it’s also your baby. You worked hard on it. You need to do the extra research to protect yourself so that a scammer (or even a well meaning start up) doesn’t steal you work right from under you nose and make money off of it.

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Exclusive publishing rights have to have a set time frame! Do not agree to anything that doesn’t clearly state “up to five years from signature” or something like that. 

What if the publisher goes defunct? What if they get bought by another publisher who doesn’t care to promote or publish your work? You still can’t to anything with it, you don’t own it anymore!

For a thorough overview of what you should be aware of regarding your intellectual property and publishing rights, please read through this collection of post [https://kriswrites.com/business-musings/contracts-and-dealbreakers/] by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. 

Protect your IP. Do not give away your stories.

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Every writer needs to read this before signing that contract:

Writer Beware!

#reblog
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Reblogged johannestevans
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Cozy Fantasy and Why It Doesn't Work

I think I am among many who feel like they should love cozy fantasy and have found it an incredibly lacking genre.

This newly branded "cozy fantasy" genre that has taken readers by storm since 2020 and while it is new that books are now marketed as cozy, the genre itself isn't new. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a great example of the genre before it was labeled and also how to make it work.

Cozy fantasy is defined by many as fantasy with low stakes. Fantasy aesthetic but less sword fights. On paper, it sounds great. But the execution has been less than stellar for readers like me. The lack of physical stakes has also impacted the emotional stakes of these books, creating forgettable characters with boring problems. As a romance reader, I find this frustrating. Romance is known for being a predictable and formulaic genre, the now defunct Romance Writers of America defined romances as needing happy endings, a term romances have continued to follow. Yet these romance texts manage to have low physical stakes (how to date your neighbor, how to confront your toxic friends, etc) while still maintaining high personal stakes that keep readers invested and begging for more. So I was initially confused why cozy fantasy authors struggle to write texts that connect to readers like me.

I think I have found the answer which is the genre is just here for vibes. It is all about aesthetic, not even worldbuilding that fantasy is known for as most cozy fantasy I read have so many problems as soon as you ask one question. It is hard to acknowledge that a genre that is pitched to work for readers like me doesn't work for many of us. Especially because occasionally there is one that works beautifully to my taste.

I often say my favorite cozy fantasies that are more contemporary are short and visual, which I plays into the idea of the genre being an aesthetic. The Bakery Dragon by Devin Elle Kurtz is a good example because it is a simple story that is given the perfect amount of pages and gorgeous visuals without dragging on when the message is very clear and easy to understand. Books like The Phoenix Keeper and Legends and Lattes have absolutely nothing for me, their very clear message hitting the reader over and over so the readers don't miss it and focusing on the aesthetic of worldbuilding rather than the reality of the fantastic elements within the world.

I guess my point is. . . I realize this genre isn't for me since I have realized it is more of an aesthetic than anything. .. .but I want it to be. Should I let it go and put my efforts elsewhere? Or should I keep exploring this new trend and find the hidden gems?

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I think you nailed it on the head but also:

So many cozy fantasies seem to do no work to make you like the characters. They feel like the epilogue to another story, or like fanfic in the sense that you're expected to already care about these people, but they're skipping the leg work to get you there.

Legends and lattes worked for me mostly because I had fun with the exploration of how a fantasy setting would reinvent a coffee shop. It also felt a bit like a videogame, delimiting tasks and creating new, small problems each time one goal was reached. Which is to say, it appealed to the part of my brain that likes puzzles, but failed to reach me with its characters. I don't remember a single thing about the love interest aside what she looks like on the cover lol

Stories with high stakes immediately make you see what your character cares about: justice for murdered parents, saving their home from the armies of evil, and so on. In low stakes fantasies, you're handed a character whose values are just the bland goodness people pretty much universally strive for. It makes them both forgettable and unremarkable. And a story that has no plot and very little worldbuilding cannot afford to have weak protagonists on top of it.

Which honestly might bring me back to my main theory of what makes a story good: it's a balancing act of Plot, Worldbuilding, Characters, and usually the stronger a book is in one of these aspects, the more likely I am to overlook flaws in the others. But by definition, cozy fantasy starts off with only two of these, so it makes it all the more important and unforgivable when an aspect is weak. Its like trying to build a stool with two legs.

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Hello, professional author here, I have a *slight* tweak of a suggestion to offer, or an alternate take from a slightly different perspective. First, I 100% agree with the meat of what you're both saying here, and I absolutely share your frustrations with the genre of cozy fantasy as a whole -- so many of them have something going wrong with the engine of the story. The car won't start. You turn the ignition and all you get out of it is a weak grumbling. So what's happening here from a mechanical perspective?

We're talking about cozy fantasy being "low stakes", and that's certainly how it bills itself. But low stakes are not the source of the problem -- there are plenty of stories/movies/tv shows with very low stakes that we still enjoy watching! Great British Bake Off, for example. The stakes are only "Will the cake come out right" and "how will the judges react". Right? Those are low stakes! The world is not ending, society is not in danger of crumbling to pieces, there is no great battle between Good and Evil for the fate of all humanity. But we watch GBBO and we're ENRAPTURED. We're INVESTED. Why?

Not because of the stakes, but because of the tension.

wait hang on i need to say this in the loud font because it's crucially important

IT'S BECAUSE OF THE TENSION

Both readers and apprentice writers often confuse "stakes" and "tension" because, frankly, increasing the stakes is often a cheap and easy way to increase the tension. Here's the difference, just to make sure we're all on the same page: Stakes are an external, objective thing -- "will the cake come out right, how will the judges react" -- but tension is internal. It is the pull between two things: On one hand, how much this contestant wants to win, how hard they've been trying, how emotional they're getting about a mishap, and our knowledge from an earlier episode about how their mum always believed in them and how they've struggled to believe in themself but since making it onto GBBO they've been thinking that maybe... maybe they can believe in themself.

And what's pulling from the other side is: How their nervousness and lack of confidence is causing them to make mistakes; how we as the audience don't know whether this challenging thing they're trying is going to turn out well; how they're ever going to recover from a cataclysm like forgetting to turn the oven on; whether they could do their absolute best and try so so so SO HARD and it might not make any difference because the other contestants also were all trying their hardest.

Man, I don't know about you, but even just as I was writing that out, my heart was in my throat and I was getting a little choked up.

THAT'S tension. And that's what a lot of cozy fantasy is lacking, because they say "low stakes" and they think that stakes and tension are the same thing, and so they forget that YOU STILL HAVE TO MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS CARE PASSIONATELY IF YOU WANT THE READER TO HAVE ANYTHING THAT THEY CARE ABOUT. As readers, we care when the character has something that really, really, REALLY matters to them. We literally cannot help it -- look up "mirror neurons" if you want the neuroscience explanation for why we literally cannot help it.

High stakes is a cheap cheat code to tension because something like "We have to save the world to keep the Dark Lord from invading the kingdom and slaughtering everyone" is sort of self-explanatory about why it matters. Ah, yes, We Don't Want To Be Slaughtered. Got it. No explanation necessary. You can get away with not really showing whether it matters to the character, because the audience just naturally ASSUMES that it's a Good and Important thing to be doing.

You can't get away with cutting corners like that if you're doing low stakes. Here, look:

  • High stakes & high tension = Think Mad Max: Fury Road. It is a LOT and you can't look away but you might feel sort of exhausted afterwards and need a nap.
  • High stakes & low tension = Many Marvel films. Sure ok yeah we're saving the world, that's fun, whatever. Probably saving the world is a good thing to do so that's fine
  • Low stakes & high tension = GBBO as previously mentioned. Also pretty much any sport (sorry, sports fans, but "will they win the big game" is not high stakes, it just SEEMS like high stakes because of ow much you care about it -- which is TENSION!!!) You will be on the edge of your seat, you will be crying about how amazingly well that border collie/papillon mix did in the agility course.
  • Low stakes & low tension: Legends & Lattes. Probably if Plan A doesn't work out, the character could just wander off and try Plan B and it wouldn't be that personally upsetting.

So that's my two cents on where a lot of cozy fantasy is going wrong. And like, I can kind of see where my colleagues are coming from and why books like this keep being produced these days??? Like the pandemic really fucked up everybody, and so many of us are incredibly burned out and running on fumes... And so sometimes it feels impossibly challenging to write any book except one where nothing bad happens and nothing is in danger and nobody is really bothered or worried about anything and everything is mostly fine and there aren't any major setbacks.....

But that leaves readers cold. And frankly, I don't feel like it does much of anything to nourish either our souls or theirs. It feels like eating a bag of potato chips for dinner instead of going to the effort of even just heating up a frozen dinner that has a vegetable in it.

idk, man. I've taught university classes about this shit, but what do I know. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass. (Also, if you would like an example of cozy fantasy where it really fucking matters to the person going through it, may I humbly suggest Yield Under Great Persuasion? I wrote it partially as an illustration of how there's a difference between Stakes and Tension. :D)

#reblog
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Reblogged johannestevans
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call-me-cd
Anonymous asked:

What's the worst trap you see amateur writers falling into?

call-me-cd answered:

Not appreciating the whole story.

Scroll around "Writing Tumblr" for a few hours and you'll see something to the effect of "I was daydreaming about this big fight/plot twist/dramatic irony, but I hate writing all the stuff leading up to it!"

Everything leading up to the big third act is treated as an obligation. The 'homework' before you get to the 'fun part.'

See this enough times, and you start to realize why you see so many stories meandering around for the first two acts until they can have their big, dramatic climax. You start to see why everything that isn't a Baysplosion is considered "filler" now.

If you're only into writing to write memorable third act reveals, then everything you write is going to be terrible.

There's a video by Noralities going over an old anime, which she admits she hated at first because she was skipping the episodes that were dubbed "filler" by some idiot, and her friend who suggested it to her had to sit her down and tell her that the filler was some of the best parts. And she was in disbelief about that.

"A character-based show feels worse when you watch only the plot episodes and none of the character episodes? Say it ain't so!"

It is a moment of spectacular brainrot in what is otherwise an S-Tier Youtuber, because it's such a basic concept that some people will weirdly fight you on.

Character moments, slow moments, things that might be considered boring to a hyperactive, plot-obsessed weirdo, these are all important. Trying to have a big grand plot without these things is like trying to build a bridge without supports. If you don't have as much of a deep and abiding love for those things as you do for the big fight scene at the end, you're going to make shit.

There are entire genres of storytelling that don't have villains, fight scenes, or dramatic plot twists. There are NO genres of storytelling that don't have characters and character relationships as a core component of them.

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[squishes your face]

[looks you in the eyes with our noses touching]

It's the CHARACTER stuff, the in-between, the stuff they call "filler"--the stuff where you see how they react to frustration and loss and each other--that makes the Baysplosion scenes meaningful. It's that character stuff what demonstrates what they have to fight for.

#reblog
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