Writing Treatise : Part I Introductus

 

Writing Treatise: Introductus

             The point of this treatise is to cover more advanced writing concepts often not discussed. I am old and stuck in my ways with a strong opinion, shaped by my frame of reference, and enculturation. It may not help you get published, publishing is complex, yet at the same time many people seem to be getting through those hoops when their work is in utter shambles. I will not be covering this topic as I have not had fiction published in a long time, but will post a link to an excellent resource of a new writer and his publishing journey and struggles in the modern publishing world (Benjamin Walter Deliver us.) Some of this will also simply be repetitive old hat to those I often critique.

                Again, this is for advanced writing concepts. Writers of any stage can learn from this, but if you are new to writing or would like to ponder simpler things as you just wing writing and never really had a formal education in it; see the attached links in the bottom of this chapter by some fellow fine furs and excellent writers.

                So, I have written for an insanely long time. One does not need a degree in English to write. I often purse my lips at the throngs of wannabe authors that come through the grind mill suffering money for this when it is absolutely not a requirement. Many great writers did not or do not have a degree in writing; however, they have come to their talents on their journey as individuals. I would not recommend blowing your money unless you feel you need that base learning as we all learn in different ways. I do have a degree in English, but it was a requirement for another means to an end not involving my interest in the writing of fiction. Writing has always been a knack of mine. However, I was always bored with English classes, always feeling the subject matters were A Priori via a waste of time sitting discussing character, setting, and plot in the simplest form imaginative.   Most writing guides gauge around on these concepts, there are tons out there. The point being, a friendly otter person reminded the fox of broken fixes that people do need this information a lot.  So explore and look through those great guides.  I am simply not discussing these things for the most part, as they are discussed again and again and I am not the best person to teach them as I do not perceive or approach writing in this vain at all via process. Albeit, I may have to bring certain subjects up to get to tougher topics.

                We always need to start somewhere. Often what inspires us is what we read and fall in love with. We become snared by those genres we become addicted to. Such work provides us a delusion of becoming authors and persuading ourselves to this maddening art. Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was the first real book I ever read. It has led me to many places. I have been blessed with three great teachers: An idiot savant who taught me writing description and whom I thought was the coolest person ever until I realized they are quite an idiot savant of a writer, master of genre savviness, editor abuse, and smoke and mirror trick plot writing became entwined both blessing and curse of my style. The second was an old man whose life story is the weight of prejudice. His people still suffer today in the catch of story reality. He taught of rhetorical balance of a work. Last, a Jedi of a folklorist and mentor who taught of the ultimate weight of the story and by utterly life being strange walked the same road I did every step of the way five sacred times.  We are only lucky to ever receive such teachers in our lives. Thus, most of our teachers become the books we read. The trick is to realize the books we read and enjoy early shape us. Mass market books are much the stock today. When students are asked what their favorite book is and why they want to be a writer I tend to receive three very common answers.  The students tend to often add they want to be the best like these authors.  So the first law of reality if you have only read these books or one pure genre you are cutting yourself short, go read. Go read older works as they often contain new things to work with. Learn, look, prod, and pay attention to how things are written. The second law of reality you are not blank X author, you will write as you write.  Yes you may pick up some traits, but you are you. The rules of the market may decide instant success, or the book may simply speak truly for itself, or it may simply outlive its maker as a bottom of a chair stand picked up by some bloke that loves it and sends it sky rocketing generation to generation.  The books we love have problems and learning to see those problems lets us reach self-clarity. It is hard for people to disconnect from a favorite book or author and see the finer picture at first. The point being, go read and learn, but learning to detach oneself from the writing of others and from your own writing is a skill to develop.

                Learn from other mediums: you are surrounded by stories, as a very nice old fennec vixen always mentions if it is a show or movie, it often has to be written first.  Go pay attention and put the thinking critical caps with these stories. We are surrounded by the story. It does not mean it is a good story, but at least can help leap with some simple notions in storytelling.  A note of warning stray away from random online articles or 20 minute YouTube analysis. They are often not the best sources than you think for self-growth.

                Learn from other writers: So many here on FA go and get stuck on giant dog dicks and the naturalist nudity of depraved pleasure, but there are plenty of writers to learn from.  Ask them questions and interact.

                Learn from the world: This is one reason why simple English degrees frustrate me. How can you write if you do not learn of the world itself, basing your desire to tell a story out of the single book that you love, or film, or cartoon. I learned far more about good writing from my biology and anthropology classes then a single class on writing. My job description and ultimate degreeige is not Author, it is anthropologist with specialty in folklore and storytelling. Good research and paying attention to details and pausing to think on elements of the work can go a long way in writing. Science, chemistry, biology, nature, other art forms, cooking, your street, peoples’ lives, technology, they compose this world. They can be inspiration and show truth or lies in your searching that can make all the difference in the world to the story. I don’t just mean do a quick Wikipedia (the large bibliography at the bottom of every Wikipedia page is very useful start however) search or watch somebody spat nonsense on YouTube. Do some more research, ask where is this information coming from, is it good, who is providing it, why? I often find many young writers of fiction tend to pick up information from hacks never realizing they are perpetuating false ideas. The internet does not make this is easy as it would seem. AI algorithms are making quite a knowledge bottleneck and social medium vacuums are shunting great expert voices from reaching people. There is nothing wrong with going to the library and reading a GOSH DARN book once in a while.

                Learn from the lash: Open yourself to critique if you are new to writing. Eventually you may find specific critics and editors to get your BDSM fix with in the backroom behind the scenes, but in the beginning you need to learn. Note: Friends and family rarely are good critics they often can’t look at things you do with a good critical eye. A good critic and editor are hard to come by. Yet, you won’t grow if you don’t feel the burn. The trick is a good critic distances themselves from the work and you to critique the story for its own sake. They do not attack you or the work, but see it as an objective standpoint to make you and the work better.

Just write: You’re not writing if you’re not writing; you’re not learning if you’re not writing.

Last, I highly recommend the Lunsford Easy writer, a great tool to learn from. I have used mine for 20 years. It is a pocket guide of English language grammar and nuisa which I find very useful.

 

The Requested check list of super common problem areas (look through linked documents):

1. There is a Deus ex Machina that undoes the whole work

2. There are plot holes that destroy the work especially in concern of science and reality tied to world design (fiction is fiction and fantasy is fantasy but the point is ability to cover and not have them)

3. The work has a bad ending

4. The work fishes sexually to sell the work at the cost of the work.

5. The works purpose is to reveal a mystery to the audience when the mystery is already known to the audience.

6. The work is a Scoobey doo chase seen getting nowhere aka there was no point.

7. Sexually harassing/assaulting your own characters.

8. Being unethical, illogical, and unemotionally sound in your work.

9. Selling yourself to audience, not respecting your medium, your audience, or yourself.

10. Having a character’s identity only being their gender and the plot then only being excuses to express that gender identity.

11. Obsifucating stupid antagonists in a work where that’s not supposed to be the case

12. Your main character is an insufferable Mary/GARY/ARI SUE

13. You have little children save the world when go go gadget gun would be far more acceptable.

14: You tell don’t show.

15. Repetitive sentence structure and other bad habits like the wrong tense

16. Very unclean edits needing to brush up on some grammar rules, F7 auto brings up spell/grammar checker in word (we all make mistakes. What I mean here is the story is unreadable because of too many mistakes).

17. The Maguffin device shall be the plot... wait where did the plot go?

18. Having spectacle without weight or purpose for the sake of spectacle

19. Writing a prologue when you don’t need them. Prologues serve to show something that happens before a work begins.

20. Make sure your writing in the correct tense. Framing is hard, if you’re not framing signs strongly point to you should be using past tense.

21. Having no point to your anthropomorphic characters or characters in general.

22. Letting go and learning good writing involves lots of rewriting. AKA rewriting is not just surface level editing. It’s not something you sit down and do after writing. It’s something you do constantly rewriting entire parts to work and simply ultimately taking your time.