i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I tend to break it out if a character or characters are engaged in a long string of related actions that are happening very rapidly.
Given you've read quite a lot of this in detail and it hasn't bugged you, I guess I'm not doing it often enough for it to be obnoxious.
Honestly, the feedback I'm getting is pretty overwhelmingly positive. Though, there's definitely some style choices I need to keep an eye on and make sure they don't start to overrun everything.
It was pretty rough for the first several chapters, but you've pulled it up really well since then. I can still pick out a few things here and there, but the severity and frequency has dropped to a resounding meh and you've done a great job of identifying your most common slip-ups. Other than the really obscure stuff, I'm not sure how much of it you already knew and you're just going over it with a finer comb first, and how much you actually learned here -- but in any case that's a process that often takes months (some of that stuff took me years).
To be frank, even before you cleaned that up, you were kind of a weird case in that your content was considerably better than your writing. That's actually really unusual -- most writers' proficiency in syntax pretty closely follows their proficiency in timing, pacing, character interplay, and all that other conceptual stuff. If they nail one and whiff the other, it's usually the other way around: they'll write reams of technically correct stuff that's so bland you want to empty a salt shaker down your throat just to taste something.
The nice thing about grammar is that it's the part we can easily classify in relatively strict and well-defined terms. To an extent we can even classify the exceptions, deliberate departures, and fuzzy border cases. When I read this, my main thought was, "Hey, awesome! You already know the hard part!"
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Thanks!
Thinking back to some of my TV Tropes stories and posts, I don't think I've had much problems with thinking up funny situations and dialogue. I just got around most grammar issues (except spelling and word choice errors) by keeping things formatted like a script.
This habit mostly continued here where I moved to a sort of chatlog format. The two short Homestuck fan-fics didn't really help either.
Though, I think I've done one short very-serious-sounding-but-actually-a-joke-with-a-long-setup story here in a more standard fiction setup.
My biggest issue in college papers was, in fact, grammar. However, there was a golden period where my brother's future wife would edit my papers and I was pretty much guaranteed an 'A'.
So, it seems thinking in coherent and well flowing thoughts has never been my problem, it's translating those thoughts into something technically correct.
Though, years of writing e-mails every day in a professional setting has probably helped things long a bit...
“Now, Dan. It’s only fair given you try to bet with me every time Elise goes out on a dangerous mission.”
The tactic seemed to work, Dan snapped right back to his angry, irate self of a few moments ago. “Aaaaand you’d have made a pretty penny off of me if you could ever stop crying long enough to settle on an amount. I mean, she’s still here aint she?”
Oh GOD. That's a very special kind of amusingly horrible. I don't know whether to :D or D:
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
:) Thanks for the comment.
It's funny the directions writing takes me with the characters. I can't help but start to like them a bit more. There's aspects of Chris and Elise's relationship I never would have thought of if I didn't start writing
I'm also really happy I got do do a few blackrom jokes with Dan and Elise. I couldn't figure out how to get it into the story at first, but the whole "betting" thing came up and I was rather proud of it...
And then I had to ask myself if Dan would even OWN a toothbrush or toothpaste, then the "passive aggressive gift" idea hit me and it set me up for the "misery scrap book" idea I wanted to do.
Incorporating song lyrics in a way that doesn't interrupt the flow of the story and also doesn't make fan fiction parsers barf all over the place is a pain.
Sorcerer’s Stones: 76,944 Chamber of Secrets: 85,141 Prisoner of Azkaban: 107,253 Goblet of Fire: 190,637 Order of the Phoenix: 257,045 Half-Blood Prince: 168,923 Deathly Hallows: 198,227
Word count in the LOTR Series:
The Hobbit: 95,022 Fellowship of the Ring: 177,227 Two Towers: 143,436 Return of the King: 134,462
This changed me
My fan-fic is longer than most of these, and I'm only a fraction of the way through.
Meh. Comparing the entirety of a serialized and episodic story to a single novel isn't really that useful. They're too structurally different. What you have to start worrying about is when the plot gets too slow, and in an episodic story, episode arcs have a higher pacing priority than the overall one.
Look, for reference, that first Harry Potter book took nearly half of that 76,000 words just getting to Hogwarts.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Yeah, definitely a bit episodic, hence why it's separated into parts.
Obviously, there's still character development going on and an overall plot.
Though, by my own admission, the overall plot gets ignored for chapters and parts at a time in favor of whatever little tale I'm telling at the moment.
Comments
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
To be frank, even before you cleaned that up, you were kind of a weird case in that your content was considerably better than your writing. That's actually really unusual -- most writers' proficiency in syntax pretty closely follows their proficiency in timing, pacing, character interplay, and all that other conceptual stuff. If they nail one and whiff the other, it's usually the other way around: they'll write reams of technically correct stuff that's so bland you want to empty a salt shaker down your throat just to taste something.
The nice thing about grammar is that it's the part we can easily classify in relatively strict and well-defined terms. To an extent we can even classify the exceptions, deliberate departures, and fuzzy border cases. When I read this, my main thought was, "Hey, awesome! You already know the hard part!"
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
D:D
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
disclaimer: real men don't give a shit.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I get the best reviews.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
orangelemonart:
Word count in the LOTR Series:
This changed me
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Look, for reference, that first Harry Potter book took nearly half of that 76,000 words just getting to Hogwarts.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis