~Hakurei Shrine~ > Patchouli's Scarlet Library
Welcome to PSL: Hatate's Writer's Lounge ~ Rules, info and general discussion!
Joveus Molai:
(Apologies in advance if the following is something everyone already knows.)
There is a well-known saying in fiction writing: "Write what you know". Taken literally, this statement is misleading--as Stephen King once pointed out in an autobiography/how-to-write-stuff book, this would seem to indicate that one cannot write things like science fiction or fantasy, since, obviously, none of us have directly experienced such a thing. Rather, I prefer to interpret the saying in a different way: when writing a given story, make sure you know at least as much about the setting details as your target audience. This is important because most people find it distracting when their knowledge of how a given thing works conflicts with how that thing works in the story.
For example, let's say you're trying to write a teen drama set in a contemporary, American economically middle-class high school. If your target audience is ~18-40 year old middle-class Americans, the vast majority of that audience will have gone through high school. Not every high school experience will be the exact same, but nonetheless most of that audience will remember little details from high school, like that hot girl/guy in X class, the school bully, the nerdy/jerkass/nice teachers, the straight-laced school principal, the rowdy lunch room, the school gossip about who's dating who, etc. Because of the nature of these details, f you yourself are not intimately familiar with American high schools (i.e. went through it yourself, or at least studied it very extensively), then replicating the general high school experience from scratch will be extremely difficult. And if you fail to properly replicate the general high school experience in your teen drama, your target audience of 18-40 year olds will be too distracted going, "Wait, this is supposed to be a high school? My high school wasn't like this at all!" to pay attention to the rest of your story.
But keep in mind that you only have to know at least as much about the setting elements in your story as your target audience does. This is why Hollywood movies are able to get away with blatant historical inaccuracies--aside from the very broad strokes, most people don't know enough about history to be distracted when the inaccuracies come up. You might not be able to get away with the Nazis winning WWII in a historical movie, for example (unless it's very clearly stated to be a "what-if" story or something similar), but you could easily get away with generic German soldiers running around with MP44s (even if these were comparatively rare), the Wehrmacht using the wrong types of tanks at the wrong time, bizarre military strategies and tactics, etc. since most people don't know enough about WWII military hardware and such to really notice. Likewise, no one really gets into action movie-style gunfights against hordes of faceless gun-wielding mooks, so most people don't notice that the hero has very bad trigger discipline, or is making literally impossible shots all the time, or somehow survives that giant explosion behind him just be leaping dramatically at the right moment.
The implication of this is that speculative fiction--namely Science Fiction and Fantasy--are doubly able to get away with what would otherwise be oddities in the setting. In your generic Fantasy setting, for example, mages are often in service to non-mage kings. Depending on how magic works in the setting, however, it may make much more sense for mages to be kings instead. Nonetheless, few audience members will be distracted by something like this because, obviously, none of them have lived in such a world. No one has a real frame of reference to compare that Fantasy setting to, since no one has lived in a world with mages in it.
So...yeah. It's not so much "write what you know" as much as "make sure you know at least as much as your audience knows about the things you're writing", I think.
Joveus Molai:
Speaking of the above...
I have plans to write a romance story at some point, but romantic relationships don't fall under my purview of "stuff that I know at least as much as my audience". Does anyone have any tips on how to write a good romance that feels like a real romantic relationship between 2 people? Not just the build up to where the guy/girl gets the guy/girl, but also the stuff that comes afterwards--the fights, the adjustments you have to make to let a person into your life at such an intimate level, etc.
hungrybookworm:
--- Quote from: Joveus Molai on January 16, 2014, 01:36:59 AM ---Speaking of the above...
I have plans to write a romance story at some point, but romantic relationships don't fall under my purview of "stuff that I know at least as much as my audience". Does anyone have any tips on how to write a good romance that feels like a real romantic relationship between 2 people? Not just the build up to where the guy/girl gets the guy/girl, but also the stuff that comes afterwards--the fights, the adjustments you have to make to let a person into your life at such an intimate level, etc.
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Romance stories are heavily character driven, so to get a really involving, memorable romance story you'll want to think about your leads' personalities, desires, and backstories and use those as the main sources of plot and conflict. If you can nail those down, then use them to create some great chemistry between your two main characters, then that's half the battle right there. Often bad romance stories have iffy characterisation (ie Jane is a tsundere who hates men, but no explanation is given as to why she hates men, and beyond her tsundere character there's nothing particularly unique or unusual about her, so the reader isn't sure why Bob would like her, let alone put up with her borderline abusive behaviour) or forces the characters to do things because plot says so, rather than let the character's own feelings and desires drive it (ie Harry runs out the room due to a misunderstanding and decides to go start a new life in New Zealand rather than talk about the misunderstanding with his girlfriend, all because the author couldn't think of a good way to create some new conflict.) Don't worry, if you keep thinking things like 'How would my main character react to this?' and 'Why would she react like that?', then you should avoid most pitfalls. I also recommend finding one of those character questionnaires, and filling it in 'in character'. It can help fill gaps and bring up ideas you wouldn't otherwise have, plus give you a more solid understanding of your characters' thought processes. (I have a really good one handy, just say if you want it.)
Personally I think up the main scenes I want in the story, then work backwards from that. Let's use a Touhou example. Let's say I want to write a romance fic starring Sakuya and Meiling, and I think up a shocking scene where Sakuya slaps Meiling around the face, tears in her eyes. Sakuya, as we all know, would not normally do something like this, so what spurred her to suddenly strike out? Maybe she's been under more stress recently? Why? Perhaps Reimilia's been asking her to do something particularly crazy, and Sakuya's feelings for Meiling are interfering with it, so when Meiling says or does something that upsets her, Sakuya feels far more angry than she normally would. Maybe she feels that Meiling doesn't appreciate or understand her enough? And what about Meiling? Did she mean to say something so nasty? While it would be perfectly in character for her to say it by accident, wouldn't it be more interesting if she knew what she was saying would upset Sakuya? Maybe she's been trying to find the right time to tell her for days, but Sakuya's work schedule means they rarely get alone time together. Maybe if she didn't tell her soon, something really bad would happen, so Meiling has to tell her right this instant. And perhaps on top of that, Meiling worries that Sakuya doesn't always take what she says seriously, so she isn't sure how her girlfriend will react.
All that before we even start dealing with the aftermath. See how much believable conflict we can get just through that? (And we don't even know what Meiling said!) Also while it's good to give the characters (and readers) a break every now and then, it's important to keep up the tension to keep your readers interested (especially if you're going for something long). Also if you have time, head down the library and grab a few romance books, or even suspense books, or any kind of novel that has characterisation as its driving force, and see how those authors handle it.
Woah this ended up really long. Hope it helped! Also what works for one writer might not work for others, so hopefully some others will chip in with their own way of doing things. Good luck :P
Sixten:
So I just finished making a 42-page comic (a Toho doujinshi, of course). In the past, I stuck links to my works on the art forum, where I received helpful feedback regarding the art. If I wanted feedback on the story, would it be proper to create a new thread in this section of the forums?
Iced Fairy:
--- Quote ---So I just finished making a 42-page comic (a Toho doujinshi, of course). In the past, I stuck links to my works on the art forum, where I received helpful feedback regarding the art. If I wanted feedback on the story, would it be proper to create a new thread in this section of the forums?
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Hm... I think Aya's writing workshop would be a better choice for a one off like this. You might throw up a request on the IRC as well, though I can't guarantee any response there. It's kinda hit or miss depending on who has free time I'm afraid.
I did a quick runthrough myself, though I'm at work and kinda just skimming, and a couple things stuck out in my mind. First, your sentence flow is weak. I'd write all your scenes down as text and have an editor go through them to make the words flow better. In addition setting up your dialogue like that will help you develop unique accents for your characters. Your characters have a uniform accent, which keeps the reader from full immersion.
The other thing that came to my mind is your expressions don't always match the severity of the text. You seem to be aiming for a comedy (in the archaic sense) so you should cut loose with the exaggerated expressions a little more I think. That will put your humor and overstated situations in better context I think.
Your setup was pretty well designed, especially since you aren't using standard Gensoukyo. You managed to setup the needed explanations without dumping too much text. The idea was cute as well, though it could probably be tweaked here and there to keep the proper feel from multiple critical viewpoints.