Writing - Critique and Improvement for the shy and the chickens

[nallnaom 3]

NOTE

           - this is not an article for how to build your story or build characters or world. I will write about that in the future though.

           - everything written here is subjective and the opinion of the author as it usually is with these kind of guides. There is

             no right way.

 

 

Salutation to you all,

Again, I freed myself from the shackles of my troubled mind,

One sole purpose driven by that is to sheed some light,

On to a topic that by definition knows no reason

And yet, without logic it could not ignite,

Initially by our feelings we were driven yet,

Age took its toll and here we are,

Searching for something more,

Meaning, reason, purpose,

Some say they found It and we follishly believe so,

We take their words for holy writ,

Attempting to follow in their footsteps,

Liars, thieves and murderers I call them

For they found nothing, yet they shout

They stole our time, one of few true possesions we have,

But most brutal of all, they killed our spirit,

The one sole thing we are fully in control of,

It was independent, carried with the winds on an autumn wind,

crashing on the shores of Reason,

Driven by our thoughts,

 

Alright now I wrote that piece up there as an exercise for you to criticize. Its just a stupid ramble that I tried and feedback is welcomed. Now I'm gonna assume that most of you reading this are under 20, shy (not looking just at the girls) or some of those anime freak fans (seriously since 2010 you people give me the chills, but no more digressing) and are to shy to show your writing to someone. Now I'm asking you:

            1) How the heck do you expect any improvement if you don't have feedback?

            2) Why do you even give a f**k if what they're saying is truly said by the egotistical?

 

Ok moving forward. If you wanna improve as a writer for plays, games, poetry and so on, first and foremost just ignore the really bad opinions (not if the opinion is not given with malicious intent). Don't give a shit.

 

Second, watch bad movies and good movies in succession and watch out for character behavior, lines, environment, mood anything that raises an eyebrow. An important thing to not do here is read reviews on IMDB or even ratings (they tend to affect judgement). Remember you are not training to become a critic but improve your own work, so be as subjective in your thinking as you want, don't be objective (its your writing, your rules). Compare that to what you have and improve.

 

Third, never throw away your drafts, You wanna say months later "What the f**k was I thinking"

 

Try and show some drafts that you wrote to people outside this forum. By this I mean get the hell out of the house and get some stranger opinions. If you are a woman though be cautious as some men take this as flirt. As for the dudes, who knows you might score (not kidding)

 

Never be a hungry artist! I cannot stress this enough. If you wanna do this as a passion you should be internally motivated and write for you and people close to you. Don't put shit on an already over saturated market where it's becoming more and more difficult to look for books that stand out. If you wanna do it by all means but don't get your hopes up. There a fine line between decent and hot dayum!

 

Never give a twat!

 

Last but not the least. What the hell do I know? I am a programmer and system admin. I do this in my own time and I had mixed feelings about what I wrote. I can't help you avoid blows but I hope you got some pointers!

 

I hope this helps you and I am gonna risk by saying this but you may send me some drafts if you want a real honest opinion. I'll reply as much as I can,

Edited October 3, 2015 by nallnaom

[+ Chaosian 617]

Pwar. Resident white trash WRPG toolbag here, and I feel very under-represented by your post. I don't really watch the animes, and by gosh I'm 21-and-a-half years old.

 

While it's not my norm to take writing advice from systems admins who talk down to me and my peers, I'd say that for the most part, this sounds correct. Really, it's advice in getting feedback, because if you stay in your confined in your own bubble, you will never know the actual impression your creation will leave. Not sure what the whole "don't be objective" thing is about, it's imperative to constantly take a step back and see the forest through the trees, ESPECIALLY in the very expensive art of game design. Perhaps more pertinent is to not hang onto your work for too long. The idea that something is "95% done", and "just isn't ready to be show yet" is usually wrong. It is never too early to get feedback from a trusted source.

 

The advice with drafts is pretty solid, and I recommend the same for old notes you might have. I have drafts of a still ongoing project since (maybe) mid 2012. They're fun to look at, not just because they give you the right sense of embarrassment, but to see how you've grown. I imagine the same things happens to visual artists who look at their old works.

 

 

And because you asked... poetry really isn't my thing, it often comes off as meaningless meaningful words, so I'm not the best to judge it's merits. From the looks of it however, you might need an editor.

 

 

• "One sole purpose" is redundant.
• Line 3, "sheed" - "shed"?
• Light, Ignite, potentially set up some kind of ABCDC rhyming scheme that is never followed up.
• House
• Line 10, "follishly" - "foolishly"?
• Line 15 "possesions" - "possessions"?
• Line 19 has a capitalized "Reason", when it isn't capitalized anywhere else.
• The lack of periods throws me off a bit. Perhaps this is stylistic, again not my expertise, but it makes it seem like thoughts never seem to end or come out with any kind of thesis. The last line especially suffers from this.

 

 

Edited October 1, 2015 by Chaosian

[kaz 1,338]

As a well over 20 year old female, and Admin of this forum, I would like to point out that it is not necessary to make your point using swear words. This is a 14 and over Forum and although we let the odd word slide, we do not allow unnecessary foul language.

 

Please edit out the F""""k's.

[Squires 35]

The advice with drafts is pretty solid, and I recommend the same for old notes you might have. I have drafts of a still ongoing project since (maybe) mid 2012. They're fun to look at, not just because they give you the right sense of embarrassment, but to see how you've grown. I imagine the same things happens to visual artists who look at their old works.

This happens to more than just visual artists and writers. Lots of people look back at their own work from long ago, and wonder either what the heck were they thinking when they made it, or how in the world they improved. Like me, for example. xP

[+ Chaosian 617]

 

The advice with drafts is pretty solid, and I recommend the same for old notes you might have. I have drafts of a still ongoing project since (maybe) mid 2012. They're fun to look at, not just because they give you the right sense of embarrassment, but to see how you've grown. I imagine the same things happens to visual artists who look at their old works.

This happens to more than just visual artists and writers. Lots of people look back at their own work from long ago, and wonder either what the heck were they thinking when they made it, or how in the world they improved. Like me, for example. xP

 

 

It's the sort of things that I'm sure go along with most professions, probably all of them that have a creative output. For my current job doing level design, I'd love to go back and see what some of my old Bethesda mods looked like. Unfortunately, I think I lost them some time ago. A bit of a shame, and perhaps, a good lesson in securing your backups.

[Balter 32]

the "poetry" you just wrote up there,

it's more like someone giving a speech in front of graduation ceremony.

[nallnaom 3]

Sorry for the late reply!

 

Ok

Pwar. Resident white trash WRPG toolbag here, and I feel very under-represented by your post. I don't really watch the animes, and by gosh I'm 21-and-a-half years old.

You certainly don't seem like one of the anime freak fans i was talking about! The extreme cases I'm talking about can't distinguish between what's real and what's not! I'll hapilly discuss this problem but in private (because to me this seems more as a clash of opinions) as it's not in the subject of this thread.

 

Regarding my writing, you might be on to something when you said that it looks as if they don't end. I can't even remember what I was thinking about when I wrote it..

 

 

As a well over 20 year old female, and Admin of this forum, I would like to point out that it is not necessary to make your point using swear words. This is a 14 and over Forum and although we let the odd word slide, we do not allow unnecessary foul language.

 

Please edit out the F""""k's.

I have edited them out

 

 

Regarding my vocabulary! I am not really the sort of person to censor my words. Always straight and to the point.

[kaz 1,338]

Sorry for the late reply!

 

Ok

Pwar. Resident white trash WRPG toolbag here, and I feel very under-represented by your post. I don't really watch the animes, and by gosh I'm 21-and-a-half years old.

You certainly don't seem like one of the anime freak fans i was talking about! The extreme cases I'm talking about can't distinguish between what's real and what's not! I'll hapilly discuss this problem but in private (because to me this seems more as a clash of opinions) as it's not in the subject of this thread.

 

Regarding my writing, you might be on to something when you said that it looks as if they don't end. I can't even remember what I was thinking about when I wrote it..

 

 

As a well over 20 year old female, and Admin of this forum, I would like to point out that it is not necessary to make your point using swear words. This is a 14 and over Forum and although we let the odd word slide, we do not allow unnecessary foul language.

 

Please edit out the F""""k's.

I have edited them out

 

 

Regarding my vocabulary! I am not really the sort of person to censor my words. Always straight and to the point.

So am I in real life but here we have to ..

[nallnaom 3]

control ourselves and take responsibility for the cr.... errrrr bad words that most people get touched by emotionally [sarcasm] and make this world a better place for our children so that they don't follow with this kind of foul language.

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

I've been writing for three years now. And I always pick a book title that's never been before used. Some of them don't get searched that often, but who knows, Tazchel of Benai may be searched by a devout Jew looking for a book with a theme on Discernment of Wisdom.

If you really want to wade through some writing, why not look into joining Fantasy-Writers.com I have some works posted there, mostly focusing on Cupid's Rising (which is more like Cupidity Rising, but it makes the point)

As for starving artist, I am on SSI, so income isn't a primary concern at the moment. So if I make some bucks off of my writing, I am empowered, if not, at least I can say I'm a published author.

I tend to be more towards the side of writing for your own interests, before others. And you'll find you're unique, but not that unique, others will like things you do. Even if it's about some fantasy of a Flower that can morph you into a tree. The point being, that once you can purchase your own book, you can enjoy reading it as a book, and know you are the author, and others can join in when they feel like it.


Peace

[nallnaom 3]

Again, the over-saturated market issue with people who wanna say they are "published authors". I don't know the situation in the US but take my advice and don't count on the SSI forever. Income from the state comes with a psychological price.

 

EDIT:

 

The reason why I'm saying not to count on income received from the state is that in any country I've been to it always tries to screw you over somehow. I'm living in Europe mind you, and I've been living in 3 diferrent countries and I what I saw is that with each year they adopt laws  to try and make it more and more dificult to receive this income. To give you an example, I had this danish classmate while studying in Denmark for some time. He was thirty something, an ex soldier with wife and kids, but no job and he was counting on a "form of SSI". Because of some new laws of something, he had problems receiving this income for a period of months just because they found out he was half british. My point is, state always tries to screw its people, but also this comes from me so..

 

By psychological price, I mean a false sense of longterm financial security that can cause a lot of issues. One of them being the classic "Why do they get more than me" classic world problem. The best example that I can give you is with the recent waves of syrian refugees. In Denmark, due to the coming of refugees they are being given money, food and shelter from the state and receive a decent income. The problem comes when immigrants like romanians, bulgarians and polish start complaining that they deserve the same so they ask for more. Finally the danes get pissed themselves and start hating foreigners altogether by being led into the false idea that any foreigner that comes into their country wants their stupid cash.

 

To sum it all up, money is such a delicate subject that very easily cause distrust. I can only suspect where the problems start and where they end.

 

EDIT 2:

I should mention I'm overly cautious (not paranoid, just cautious) . And I think I lost my original point with this so I'd rather discuss it further in the mail as it is not in the topic of this thread.

Edited October 10, 2015 by nallnaom

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

No, I think you don't get it. I am diagnosed delusional schizophrenia. I have been determined unable to work. and am threfore disabled legally. I don't see any psychological issues. I highly doubt you're informed enough to make such statements.

And as for highly saturated markets, who cares? you write something, you publish it. I mean for hitler's sake, you make it sound like I should give up my ssi and give up on writing because you don't know the situation in the states.

edit:

I don't mean to come across as rude, or even state my opinion on anything. But when someone gives an opinion based on assumption and generalizations, it comes across as ignorant. the problem with most people's opinions, is that they largely never change with facts, and this is called the confirmation bias. most people don't watch news sources that give opinions they don't agree with, they reject those sources. and everyone has a confirmation bias.

"the problem with opinions, is that they rarely change. due to the fact that they come with beliefs." - Cupid's Rising. taken from:
the point is, opinions can't be changed, no matter how true or false they are. because they come with beliefs. - Leon Sandcastle

you completely ignored the fact that I was interested in having you read my manuscript, and went straight on to your own opinion. and from the looks of the OP, it was highly opinionated, and is never the kind of advice I have seen from an author who was successful at publishing. the good thing about Fantasy-writers.org wasn't that everyone had their works on the site, in a password protected area. it was that some of the authors have sold millions of copies of their works, in a market you deemed to be overtly saturated. it's as if you're just attempting to roil the hopes of authors, aspiring or published, so that you can push your own agenda.

Edited October 9, 2015 by chungsie

[nallnaom 3]

Ok first I will admit that I did not read your stuff. Primarily cuz I was at work and don't really have the time. I'll do it as soon as I can though.

 

Second you misunderstood what I said about SSI I'll edit that. English is not my first language and I got this ego problem where I don't like repeating myself.

 

Third. For the sake of argument, I wont discuss it further in this topic as it's not in the spiriit of this thread, but in PM ok?

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

sure. looking forward to your pm.

I appologize I attacked you with words, if that is how it was taken.

[nallnaom 3]

Well I'm not apologizing!

I'm just making a formal defense in writing to you and everyone to make sure no one misunderstands my words.  

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

proper debate is not built on opinions, but facts. a proper defense in likeness, is best when there is misunderstanding.