I think this is the most appropriate thread for this. I was looking around on SparkNotes because I just wanted to skim meaningless stuff and not really think, and I found this contest for stories inspired by songs, and some of them are really good and/or interesting. Like the winner of the contest. I’ve only read three others, but I’m going to probably browse more.

Has anyone heard of 750words.com? I suppose it might have been brought up already, but I just found it. It’s not exactly a writing how-to, but it is a good place to do regular writing—which, if you’re like me, you don’t do often enough. (I tend not to write without an assignment, and have a hard time writing myself assignments). It has a pretty good self-motivator. It counts your “streaks” and while I don’t think you get chided for not making it, you lose all the neat badges you can get if you keep going.

(That is a really good story)

I read this book a few months ago; it wasn’t especially revelatory, but it was concise and it crystallized several ideas that I hadn’t quite pinned down in my head. And everyone knows how awesome this one is, especially Lyttle Lytton fans.

Like I don’t have enough things on my iPod already. [/sarcasm]

Here’s something I found a little while ago. Poul Anderson’s 1978 essay On Thud and Blunder. It’s a bit long, but it basically boils down to “When writing, thinking and doing research are good things to do.” Plus, it has a few useful tidbits for fantasy/historic fiction as well.

I can’t imagine most people don’t know about this here already, but Limyaael’s rants are pretty much a comprehensive list of anything you would ever want to know about fantasy ever, as well as on general things like descriptions and protaganists and plotting, etc. etc.

There’s also Writing Excuses which is a series of podcasts done by two authors (the author of Mistborn and I Am Not A Serial Killer, if you’ve ever heard of them) and a webcomic writer who does a comic called Schlock Mercenary. I’d never heard of any of them before, but they’re quite interesting.

This doesn’t just apply to writing, but to any ambitious endeavor. I’ve been recommending it to a lot of people, whether they’re artists or not. It’s called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Any writer can relate and gain some encouragement from this book.

The Rejecter .This is quite an interesting blog written by a woman who is an agent’s assistant, and therefore is the one who rejects most queries before they get to her agent (hence, the title). There are a number of interesting blog posts to do with the publishing industry and such, so you should give it a whirl.

^Yeah, I remember that one.
I think what he mostly meant was that they’re time-consuming and very hard to pull off, which is why whenever you’re writing an action scene, it seems to drag on forever.
And don’t worry, I’m right there with you. :-)

I don’t think you have that much to worry about the fight scene being improbable – maybe the setting calls for it? And if doesn’t, then one slightly unreal fight wouldn’t shatter the reader’s disbelief.

I think I did okay describing it and making it thrilling

Then that’s good, right?

Hey, that’s better – as in, safer – than what I’m doing: a TV series in web original form.
:-O

But that’s awesome are you actually going to film it?

No – if I had actors, and camera and sound guys, and bands offering up songs for the soundtrack because exposure is a good thing, and a massive budget for CGI, sets, effects, etc. I would do so in a heartbeat.
But I don’t. :-(

So now it’s an experiment: a TV series without TV: basically a serial story, in the form of episodes instead of chapters/sections. And I’m trying to “time” every episode so that it will appear to fit into 40-60 minutes, if you filmed every scene just like that. Except that the pilot is a lot longer.

I’ve got a youtube series planned

Awesome – do you have a channel already?

Well that’s still cool. It would be neat to see it picked up by a network and actually made some day.

Thanks!
I think so, too.

Sound might be shit though.

I’ve found that a lot of youtubers have that problem. You’re not alone.

Mine’s main difficulty lies in making it believable it’s 20 years ago.

Dress up in bright non-matching clothes and make references to this new up and coming band Nirvana and how they’re never gonna be big. ;-)

Yours sounds much harder

So far I’d say it’s all in the pacing.
Because apart from that, it’s pretty much just a serial story.
...I could be proven horribly wrong, though.

Poofy hair. Like you permed it while touching a Tesla coil.

And don’t forget the boombox. Gotta have one on every shoulder, blasting bass right into your ear.

Ahaha we do need to make it really phony and obvious like that.

Yeah but what wasn’t real was every single person walking around with a boombox on their shoulder.

Oh noes the 80s has doomed us all!!

shudder

seconds

But Gunther’s mullet just makes him funnier.

This blog is quite helpful. This guy provides advice on just about everything, from how to stay motivated to keep writing, to perfecting that query letter to land a literary agent.

Here’s a blog by Gail Carson Levine, the author of Ella Enchanted. She has some good writing ideas:
Gail Carson Levine Blog

This seemed helpful to me, so I’ll put it up for you guys.

And wouldn’t dog + dog just be a dog? :P

@ Puppet: No, it’s a two-headed dog.

@ Puppet: No, it’s a two-headed dog.

Fair enough, but Narwhale + Human = Mermaid?

I found this pretty interesting. One day I would like to be working in a writers room. Sounds a little stressful but whatever. No idea how I would get to that point. I suppose if I proved myself a good author by having published books and movie scripts sold that did well. I’ve got an idea that I think would be great for a TV series along the lines of Supernatural so I dunno how I’d go about pitching the idea to a network. I would also fail at being showrunner. I don’t like responsibility and being an authority figure.

I suppose this isn’t strictly a how-to, but I thought it was a rather interesting way of thinking about storytelling. I am Writing Blindly". The author’s a bit…maybe even pretentious, but I rather like his examples.

I think a week is long enough between posts.

This time, it’s a bit of motivation from Scott Lynch – Being good can be a shortcut. There is no shortcut to being good.

Here’s a few selections:

Cripes. Once I spot them [people who believe in a “publishing shortcut”] in an audience, I’m pretty sure I can see them actively translating my words to their sub-reality. “I’m not saying networking isn’t useful,” I might say, “but you’ve got to have something worthwhile to sell before you start selling!” In their heads, this transmutes to “ZOMG! THERE REALLY IS A SECRET CLUB!” And don’t even get me started on what happens when I talk about work or discipline; I can see my advice turning into the noise the adults make in a Peanuts cartoon: “MWA MWA MWA MWA MWA, MWA MWA.”

How long does the process of hard work + self-awareness + perseverance take? I don’t know; how long is a string? There is no RIGHT path. There is no IDEAL way. There is no PROPER length of time. There is only your right path, your ideal way, your proper length of time.

If Step 1 is “write something,” Step 2 is “write something new while you shop it around,” not “sit on your ass for the next twenty years and keep petulantly holding out the Only Thing You Ever Wrote.”

*I did receive a firm but gentle e-mail rejection from Steve Jackson many, many years ago, in response to a proposal to write the introduction to a certain GURPS book. A proposal I only belatedly realized could be used as an object lesson in how to NEVER EVER structure a proposal. Still, I was chuffed. Rejected by Steve Jackson himself! I wish I’d printed a copy of that e-mail.

I like it. I agree with all of them. Broad enough to cover everything, specific enough to be useful.

He should have added, as an addendum to the Sixth Law, the ‘call a rabbit a smeerp’ idea.

If you’re interested in prompts and whatnot, here’s a couple of Tumblrs:

F Yeah Character Development
Keyboard Smash Writers

Both can fall into hugbox territory sometimes (as Sansa would say) and I don’t agree with all of their advice, FYCD more so than KSW, but they do have some nice prompts often. Nice way to get yourself to write or develop characters if you, like me, keep making excuses why I shouldn’t/can’t write.

That is my perpetual question with those stupid character sheet things…

They don’t. I actually did an excersise that’s pretty interesting – fill out a really in-depth character sheet (one that asks you everything) about yourself. Then read it. It will sound nothing like yourself.

On Fairy Stories, by Tolkien.

Every time I think I can’t love Tolkien more, I read something else of him and then I’m all obsessed again. The man truly loved fantasy.

Heard of it, never read it yet. Not sure why not. I should look it up.

I heard about this book on Writing Excuses – 21 Reasons You Think You Don’t Have Time to Write.

And it’s free.

Just read a blog post from Laurell K. Hamilton on LKH Lashouts – Blogflog – Show, don’t Tell.

Thing is, she gets it all completely backwards. And demonstrates her amazing anti-talent as a writer.

Yeah, Hamilton doesn’t seem to really understand how commas work, if her blog/facebook posts are any indication. And unlike some crappy authors, who leave them out, she actually puts them in places where they don’t belong.

Really, I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually did get kicked out of her college’s English program. (I remember reading that somewhere, don’t recall where)

Oh, yeah.

Here’s the first one I found. It starts with the first Anita Blake book, and goes one chapter at a time. It’s up to the tenth book (Narcissus in Chains), which is where everything really started going down the tubes.

Here’s another one. This one starts with NiC (back in December 2012), and has kinda bounced around a bit. There’s also sporkings of one or two of the Merry Gentry books (i.e. Anita Blake, but with fairies and about sex from the get go), along with some other books of varying quality.

And yeah, until I see actual proof otherwise, I refuse to believe that LKH actually types at 200 WPM.