Writing

What's crackalacking! Yeah, I'm actually sticking to this, since it seems like a lot of people had a lot of fun with it last week, and I'm still having fun forcing my horrible ideas onto the unsuspecting populace of beehaw. And then you lot, entirely forgetting the point of all this take the bad ideas and actually make them entertaining! How could you?! I've actually become emotionally attached to Emo-Chan and her battle to defeat Hitler. Of the drama obsessed story teller food critic. Alice and her Woman Emotions. And, of course, the late entry of Timmy's Taco Tuesday Torment. (How could you miss the alliteration you MONSTER)

Jokes aside, I'm going to do things a bit differently this time. I've always found the traditional reddit writing prompt to be a bit too limiting, so I'll be trying to include some writing prompts that don't really follow the formula of "here's a story idea." To a greater extreme. Also, feel free to post your own prompts in the comments, I'll try to edit the post to include them, and if I find the time/energy to, I'll write a few myself. No promises though, I'm a lazy bastard.

Adding onto that, I want to stress that the point of this activity is just to write. Not write a complete or even good story. Just to write. If you don't like the prompts, ignore em, or make up your own, or write about how bad the prompts are. I don't care just write!

Now, I'll stop fudging around and give you the prompts of the week.

Bad Character Ideas

• Like, omigosh, did you see that Janet was going out with Hugnthlenbar? She totes just dumped Jason for him too! Ugh, what a, like, totes bitch, right?

• A young shonen protagonist, ready to take on the world with his best friend! The parasitic alien fungus that occupies the right side of his body. He is still relentlessly positive.

• Elves... As wise as they are old. And of course they all old, right? I mean, it'd be unthinkable for the wandering Elf spouting wisdom of the ancients for the low low price of $699.99 (plus gratuity) to not be old. R-Right?

Bad Setting Ideas

• In honour of facebook market place deciding that my one and only desire in this world is apparently milk kefir grains (no I don't know what they're used for either), the story is set and explained through horrible social media posts.

• Check it out! Fashion revolution, new styles and the hottest new designs to wear in the post apocalypse world!

• Everyone knows the get stuck in the videogame plot. And that's already bad. But what if the videogame also just sucked? Glitchy, unfinished, and nearly entirely empty.

Bad Plot Ideas

• A deep intrigue story filled with deep plots where everyone has their own interests. It's for a baking competition.

• Since I'm apparently on an anime roll here right now. The plot is that the cast is trying to kill God. God is just a chill dude though.

• An adventure story where the dohicky that everyone is after is lost media from a children's TV show from the 70s. This is treated with a grand amount of severity.

Unique Idea!

• Hey, you know that piece of media that you love? The one close to your heart? Write a bias an unfair review of it where you rip it to shreds and call it shit.

Alright, once more I'm running out of time before work. Thanks for reading, and double thanks for posting! I'm off and out, see you all next week!

Most of my creative writing is handwritten. I usually use legal pads, or more preferably wire bound legal pads. It's easy to write on both sides of them and for some reason the yellow just does it for me. Every once in a while I decide to by a fancy notebook. In the past it was Moleskines, more recently it was ones from etsy made with Tomoe River paper. I have a (cheap) fountain pen, so I figured I'd try some better paper.

The problem I run into is that I never use the fancy notebooks. The paper is better, and the ink flows smoother. It has a better tactile feel to it. But it is a fancy notebook and it should only be used for the good stuff—the stuff I want to look over a decade or two from now and be proud of.

So I'll be very careful and take my time to write in the best handwriting possible. I'll last for a few pages before my handwriting gets sloppier, or a have another idea that doesn't fit, and I abandon that fancy notebook. I go back to the spiral bound legal pads which contain a chaotic jumble of non-linear thoughts. There are notes and poems in the margins, things crossed out all over the place, and handwriting that becomes only legible to me if I squint real hard at it and pick it up from context.

So how do you feel about fancy journals. Are you able to treat them as the paper they are, or do you too put them on a pedestal?

I think this is the best place to post this, but I was going through my saved posts before deleting my Reddit account and thought that a lot of writers on Lemmy/Fediverse might be able to enjoy this one.

There's some great tips in these comments but this archive snapshot will make sure that information isn't lost.

Feel free to add your own tips here in the Fediverse as well!

Do you set aside a time each day to write? Do you write five pages stream of consciousness then trim it down into something that makes sense? Are you a planner? Do you write in a notebook? Do you write once, edit once? write twice, edit once? Write once, edit thrice?

I don't have a consistent process. I've been experimenting with writing in a basic markdown editor, maybe 500 words at a time, then stringing together multiple entries as best I can. What I find is I have lots of ideas and thoughts that are separate, and critical to my ability to form complex thought is correlating multiple seemingly unrelating things, which then creates a new more complicated and hybrid whole. I can't sit down and write 5,000 words on one thing, but I can write 500 words on ten things, and then use that as the basis of a mosaic piece that (when edited well) comes together into a unique whole.

(I haven't seen any writing prompts on here so far, so I figured I'd write the first one!)

Hey all.

I've been writing a novel recently - I'm only 2200 words in. It feels like so little and so much at the same time.

Until I graduated college, I loved writing. Reading, too. Then, it feels like my ADHD got much worse and I lost all the passion I had for both. I had about a year of really intense depression while trying to find my first job during COVID. I had basically written nothing for almost three years up until recently. I started, and did not finish, a short story, and am working now on this "novel". The problem is that I love writing in the abstract, I love putting words together in interesting ways and telling a story. But I can't stop looking at the word count and feeling hopeless. I can't stop feeling like there's no point to any of it because my writing is shit. I feel like all of my passion has just left and I don't know how to get it back, but I desperately want it back.

This isn't a question, really, despite the title. I guess I needed to vent and know if I'm not alone in having experienced this.

So this post is somewhat introspective but I am curious to how others feel about a similar topic. This is going to be a pretty long post, so I totally understand and pre-emptively forgive you for skipping through it and moving on to another post.

A quick introduction: I write nonfiction in the form of personal essays; occasionally I write reviews of books/movies/etc. but for the most part my lane is the personal essay. Mostly, I publish my stuff on either my personal blog, or on Medium.

Lately though, I have felt like I am turning too much to the idea of making everything my life "content". To better illustrate what I mean, recently I decided I wanted to specifically journal my health & fitness efforts because I've been struggling with that lately. My first thoughts after deciding I was going to do that were "what platform do I post this on?" and "what do I call this??" (because I didn't think it was a good fit for my already-existing platforms). I put a stop to that thinking and relegated these journal entries to a Simplenote document and it's 100% for my eyes only. Not everything I do or write needs to be fodder for the online community.

But I still like to write, and will go through alternating periods of having a lot to push out onto page, and having no output whatsoever (right now is one of those periods, and I'm fine with that, because I'm enjoying getting some good reading time in). My issue is that I don't have a sole focus with my writing, so it's hard to get people to see what I'm writing and engage with said people. If I published a book, I could at least see sales figures or downloads or something. I don't really trust subscriber or follower numbers on WordPress or Medium to mean anything.

Where I'm going with this - many collections of personal essays that get published come from either celebrities or at least public figures of some sort - they aren't people just throwing a collection of stories at a publisher hoping they'll get a book deal. So what's the point of me writing anything for other people? Nobody knows who I am outside of family and friends.

I do have one area I'm immensely familiar with: epilepsy. In the back of my head I have a small dream of putting together a short book of my experience since my diagnosis 4 years ago but I turn back to, "well okay, but will anyone care if they don't know who I am?"

So right now I am in a weird rut. I want to write things, but at the same time I don't feel upset about the fact that I'm not writing (apart from journalling). But I'd like to write something meaningful to me, that other people could be interested in reading.

Does anyone else feel this way? What are you doing about it? Am I just beating myself up for no reason?

I love writing and reading reviews. It started with film reviews. Reading Donald Clarke's scathing review movies in the Irish Times when I was younger was a formative experience. Often I find myself enjoying the critiques more than the movies! I've developed a soft spot for restaurant reviews as well.

During the pandemic I set up an Instagram page to start sharing food reviews, just for fun. They're not serious at all, I write them in a very tongue and cheek fashion and often try to incorporate what is happening in my own life in them. I love being honest about my own biases and having controversial takes about something as simple as ice cream flavour, I find it leads to some really fun discussions!

Who are your favourite critics? Do any of you here write reviews for fun or even for a living?

Hey there!

I try to find some new interesting writing content, mostly about lifestyle, self exploration, relationships etc. I'd love to get some fresh readings :)

Two of my current favorites: https://ava.substack.com/ https://mindmine.substack.com/

Share a haiku about your day!

A moment of peace,

That's all that I'm asking for,

Please go to bed now.

I’ve been working for several years on a novel, and in a lot of ways it’s been fun. I have some very interconnected themes, some plot twists that tread the line between being surprising, and meaningful, and a fair few characters that develop through a lengthy confrontation.

I’ve started to consult an editor about tuning it into something publishable. Due to the way I was writing it, I only recently got the tools to calculate a total word count, and we realized that in the end, it’s far longer than I wanted it to be; on the order of 370,000 words.

Apparently people like George R. R. Martin can sometimes get away with this length, but I understand this is way out of line for a first time author. I’ve been looking at ways of trimming this down, and admittedly, there’s a few chapters with low hanging fruit I can get rid of; but I think I’m in need of a lot more than that. My editor was suggesting getting rid of entire main characters that don’t have as much development as others.

But at a lot of turns, it feels like trimming out X causes 5 other problems (plot points lost, throwbacks disconnected) that might threaten to either make the book soulless, not make sense, or even fail to reduce word count when I tie things together.

The option of simply splitting it into 2+ books has been there, but…it doesn’t seem practical. There’s a very clear villain, with a steady buildup to their dethroning, that would feel unsatisfying pushed off to another story.

If I assume publishers, or even just readers, would show only mild interest in a 300k word book, it makes me feel a bit stuck. I’ve already committed a lot of time to the story, and it feels grueling to go back and redo large parts of it; while also aiming to make it shorter.

Curious if anyone has thoughts on what they’d do in this situation.

So, Grammarly is correcting me a lot on a phrase I tend to use, and I don't entirely understand the difference.

On a sentence that expands upon a previous sentence in dialog, I tend to have a character say "Which means [...]"

Grammarly wants to fix this to be "This means [...]"

It's become clear to me that I tend to use 'which' instead of 'this' when speaking, but I am not sure why one is preferred use over the other.

Can anyone offer me some insight? I already tried googling "which vs this", but I got results for "which vs that" instead, which is an entirely different use case.

Hello! I was curious how you guys like to share your work, particularly long-form works. I mean, excluding publishing because that sounds like a lot of effort I cannot be bothered to put in. I've been wondering what other people like to do, I don't really share my work that often.

Welcome to the first (unofficial) Bad Writing Prompt day of the Beehaw Writing instance!

I've been reading a bit on the instance, and I agree with the consensus that we're going to need something weekly to bring and keep a community together. So I'm doing my part!

Wait, what do you mean by bad writing prompts? Partially inspired by this post here.

“Don’t try to prove you’re a good writer, you’ll never write anything. Try to prove you’re a bad writer and you’ll write everything.”

So, here's my general idea. For now, I'll be posting 3 different things.

• Bad Character Ideas
• Bad Setting Ideas
• Bad Plot Ideas

For you to mix, match and use as you please! Again, I'm writing this off the cuff and with 20 minutes before work, so apologies for the short post, but without any more delay, here's what I got for you all!

Bad Character Ideas

• The disgruntled younger sibling of the "Chosen One"

• A food critic who actually suffers from no sense of taste, getting by on charisma and faking it alone

• A magical anime girl who has a strange hobby and obsession with taxidermy (Thanks to my coworker for giving me this one haha)

Bad Setting Ideas

• Cowboys and digimon. How that works I have no clue. Just. Cowboys and digimon combined. If you do this you have my eternal gratitude.

• Told entirely through the lens of the endless blurb you skip before a recipe.

• An office building set within purgatory itself.

Bad Plot Ideas

• The main character has traveled back in time to kill Hitler. Little do they know is Hitler is now a skilled killer of time travelers.

• A love story where two people are fated to be with one other, lest the world end. They hate each other.

• A heist on the Vatican vault.

Alright, I'm running out of time, and need to skip off to work. Hope to see some posts, and remember to make it awful. I want some real schlock and cringe. Feel free to use all of the prompts, or none of them! Your reward will be nothing. Ciao ciao!

An article I wrote a while ago when the LLM's were blooming, decided to publish it on paper.wf too!

I have always been fascinated by internet communities, and going through almost all of the versions of it so far in my life, I felt like rumbling about it, as I wonder where we will go from there.

For me it was advice from Dan Harmon: "Don't try to prove you're a good writer, you'll never write anything. Try to prove you're a bad writer and you'll write everything." Not perfect advice but it really does help me write when I'm being overly critical of my ideas.

@writing artificial Divide is a multi-genre fiction anthology by blind and visually impaired authors. all information can be found here https://blindjournalist.wordpress.com/2021/08/30/artificial-divide/

Hey everyone, just curious how you guys go about protecting your writing and ideas. I'm very much an amateur but would really like to start sharing my writing, short stories etc. But I'm not sure how you go about protecting yourself from your work getting stolen?

This idea popped into my head this morning, and I just wanted to share it with you all. If you find it interesting, feel free to write something based on it. ☺️

idk if i should share the whole thing or continue with links, this is my first time posting, anyway i consider myself an extremely amateur writer, this is my latest uploaded piece about warhammer 40k adepta sororitas

im also currently writing a new 40k thing that hopefully will become a series

Inspiration

The screen lit on my face like some half assed light at the end of the tunnel.
I wondered when it would tell me all the words to write down,
what great epiphanies it would reveal to me.
I found out that the glare stings after a while,
and that the words will only come with a sacrifice of
blood and tears
onto my 101-keyed altar.
I never did get any beautiful, flowing words or heartfelt confessions though.

All I got were these.

Writing can take many forms now a days. Some prefer pen and paper and others prefer word processors. I am curious what [email protected] uses for their own writing.

For me I have used Scrivener before but found it too powerful for my style of writing. I now find myself using Google docs since it can sync to so many places and I can write wherever I go. (If anyone has a FOSS Google docs alternative I am all ears)

So, [email protected], what is your software of choice? If you prefer pen and paper, what does your process look like?