Discussion The Scribble Pad (Fanfic Writing Discussions)

I googled around for a Jedha street map. I'd love some more names of places and a good sense of going from one place to another.
So... yeah. I'll make your map Canon.

I know Jedha is more Middle Eastern than India, but I have a story that needs a place, so a bit of a shoehorn

 

Here you go:


It's a reasonably high-resolution pdf, so you can zoom in. As I said I named just a handful of streets, plus the city gates, and I inserted a few landmarks that matter for my story. If you name more streets, please make sure to send me the names (there's a lot of streets there and I know that I'll run out of ideas before I can name them all )

Also, I don't think the Indian vibe is a shoehorn at all; there were many elements that reminded me of a South Asian city as well as a Middle Eastern one in Rogue One. It's just that the Middle Eastern option worked better for the story I wanted to tell, and the fact is that the geography and topography of Jerusalem lend themselves very well to creating a map for Jedha city.

 

Lovely. Let's see as I map out the story. Early days yet

 

@Chyntuck that’s a really cool idea, to map out the city like that.

I’ve made some maps of scenarios for role playing sessions before (for the game Dialect), though mine are low quality MS paint scribbles more to give a sense of the world. Often creating the map is most fun part of the process

 

Yes, it's kind of a rabbit hole, isn't it? I started making this map because I needed to have a better idea of the city's layout. My story takes place entirely within the confines of the Holy City and I wanted to have at least a semblance of consistency about locations, landmarks, distances etc across chapters. But of course, I found myself coming up with lists of possible street names and this and that, and in the end I forgot to actually write the story

 

creating maps is what I did for my stories taking place on Moniron

 

Is there a particular program you tend to use?

 

Just a piece of paper and drawing with a pencil

 

@TherenAdarni I use Photoshop, but the truth is that my husband does most of the work because I'm not what you'd call a tech-savvy person.

 

I've gotta learn to do this. My habit is to think really hard about every single sentence, so that I essentially do multiple drafts of each sentence as I go, in my head.

 

@TherenAdarni Word-vomit isn't my preferred way of doing things, but I find it useful when I'm struggling to decide what a chapter or section of text should look like. I'm normally like you; I try to shape the sentences in my mind before I transfer them to paper (or keyboard) and when I do things that way I usually find that the text I type up needs very little tweaking. This is what I've been doing for instance with the drabble challenge. I get the prompts before I go to bed on Monday night and I turn them around in my head while I fall asleep; on Tuesday morning I transfer that to paper and on Wednesday I give them a final polish before I post.

The problem with this approach is that it works only when I've already figured out an entry point for the story, and before I convinced myself that the word-vomit way was a valid approach I often ran into the dreaded Darth Writer's Block. With word-vomit, on the other hand, I don't care at all about the quality of the text I'm writing. I just dump in there all sorts of things: bits of description, punchlines, lines of dialogue, brackets where I note "X goes here", and it really doesn't look like a story at all. Usually when I go through it again the next day, something will grab my attention and will become the entry point I was looking for. The rest will flow from there and I can edit the mess into a story. This isn't foolproof though; I've found myself deleting entire pages of word-vomit and starting over when nothing I'd written worked. It's also more time-consuming than building the story in my head, or at least it requires much more time in front of the keyboard to deal with nitty-gritty stuff But right now I'm working on re-starting a WIP that I've had on hiatus for several years and I'm still not able to get the tone right, so word-vomit it is until I find my mojo.

 

Okay, so it’s more just an option to have rather than a standard approach to a first draft? I guess I’ll stick with what I’m doing until I run into problems. If it ain’t broke etc.

Trying to remind myself lately that I’m really writing for me, and not stress about it.

More a general question for the group, what do you consider a good day of writing in terms of word count?

 

I'm with Finds on this one #BusyMumsUnite I regularly go through periods when I'm under a lot of stress for personal or professional reasons and I can't write at all, either because I don't have time, or because I'm too tired, or because I just can't focus, and it's very frustrating. During those times, managing just a sentence or two will make me very happy.

In a period when my life is not entirely chaotic, if I find my writing mojo, my normal pace will be between 500 and 1500 words in a day – closer to 500 if I'm making things up as I go along, closer to 1500 if I have the story outlined in detail. I find that my brain tends to shut down after 1500 words and that any further words I write are promptly discarded the next morning, so I usually stop there if I make it that far. I'll only push myself beyond 1500 words if I'm very close to finishing something (a chapter, a story arc, an outline) and I don't want to lose the flow.

Funnily enough, I've noticed that it's the same when I write in Greek. I'll do between 800-2200 words a day, which is equivalent to 500-1500 in English since Greek is a more long-winded language. The difference, of course, is that writing in Greek is faster because I don't need to refer to a dictionary every five minutes to check separable transitive verbs and such.

 

These days I'm lucky to get a paragraph done a day.
It's less that I'm busy (I am), but I have a lot of other distractions in my free time that keep me off focus.

 

A story can rattle in my head for days, weeks, trying to find the angle.
The magic angle that will make the story interesting. Worth telling. That puts a little life into the characters.
And because of that, the number of words can be ZERO, or one poorly written sentence. Just sit there staring at the monitor, then, ugh, watch some YouTube.

But today is a good day. I figured the angle for some secondary characters that actually helps get the story to its destination, and maybe also add a little light heartedness to the proceedings. The angle gives them life. Beautiful life and personality that can live inside my head. A good day.

 

There's something about break that gets the creativity flowing.
I've written multiple chapters the last couple days, and I'm almost on my last phase of A Shattered Mind's Eye! Some plot points I'm very excited to get to!

 

Edit: nvm

 

I would love to know what everyone's process is when reading and reviewing stories.

Personally, I struggle to identify what works (or doesn't) for me beyond vague generalities, and it's a deficiency I'd like to address. Both for the sake of giving more helpful feedback, and so that I may improve my own writing.

This was very reassuring, as it's pretty similar to my own experience so far. It's very easy to get intimidated looking at some writers' multiple works of over 100,000 words when your own total word count is more like 15,000.

It's very much "look at what's in front of you, not the summit."

 

I wish I knew.

In all seriousness, one of many reasons I don't comment very much is one of the same reasons I don't write very much anymore - I feel like what I have to say isn't good enough and isn't worth saying, so I don't say anything. For reading and reviewing, I struggle to articulate my thoughts beyond emojis and "I love this" or "this made me feel *emotion*". I've considered taking a literary analysis class or something for the sole purpose of trying to learn how to write better reviews. In the meantime, I just try to write my rambling, emotion-based, stream-of-consciousness type reviews and not overthink things and end up not commenting at all.

I also want to add that as an author, I don't think there is such a thing as a 'bad' or 'inadequate' comment (with the exception of actual threats or things like that, which luckily we don't have to worry about here) and I sincerely appreciate any and all comments, from single emojis up to long essay-type comments. So I do think we (and by we, I mean I ) as readers might just worry too much sometimes, too.

And I don't know if there's anything useful in any of that, but I typed it up so I'm going to not overthink, and leave it.

This is such good advice for so many things in life!

 

As an author, I love the quote and emoji filled reviews but I also love the to the point ones that hit the central theme/point I was aiming for. A brief review is just as enjoyable as a long one. The thought and time they put into it is valuable. As a reviewer, I focus on immediate events of he update, big picture stuff regarding character development and relationships.

 

First of all, to @amidalachick and anyone else who might feel this way, because it's very real and hard to overcome sometimes! I lurked for three weeks before I registered here, and was terrified of commenting for quite a while, never mind writing. Everyone else seemed so assured and like they belonged and knew what they were saying and how to act. Well, joke's on me, we're all faking it, every hour of the day Seriously, we don't have to be perfect or perfectly assured to have a voice. We don't. And this forum, specifically, has always been one of the friendliest and most welcoming places on the internet. No one has to be intimidated by participating. We all want everyone to have a voice here and feel comfortable using it.

That said, please, don't anyone feel like they have to leave some great piece of timeless literature for a review. That has never been needed. The main point of a review is to let the author know you enjoyed their work, however you feel comfortable saying that. And since the only payment fanfic authors get is their own satisfaction and the praise of their peers, we like that praise. We really, really like it I would far rather have a brief review than no review. And "this made me feel" - I love reviews like that. I want to know how my writing affected someone.

My own process for reviewing is to pull quotes that speak to me. A lot of other reviewers go with a bit more of an essay style, which is completely valid. Use what works for you. But what works for me is pulling quotes - for one thing, it helps me organize my thoughts; for another, as an author, I love knowing which specific parts resonated with a reader. When I was but a wee n00b, I was always the most excited when a reader pulled a quote that I had worked hard on, or that was part of an important moment in the story. So "this made me feel *emotion*" or "I love how you worded this" or "this is where I started wondering about *story/character development*", comments like that? Awesome. Love 'em to death. Don't think they're too simplistic. Not only is it great to know your writing evoked real emotion in a reader, but it's also helpful to see which parts of your writing accomplished what you wanted them to.

Let's use the mod guidelines in the first post of the review race as an example:

• How did the story make you feel?
• What is a line of dialogue that stood out to you?
• What is a line of prose that stood out to you?
• What is a character element that you enjoyed?
• What is a descriptive element that you enjoyed?

​

These are really good starting points! If you include stuff like this, you will be pretty much guaranteed to write a great review. I'll add something, though: why. Why did the story make you feel that way? Why did this line of dialogue or prose stand out to you? Why did you enjoy this bit of characterization or description? When you start thinking along those lines, not only will you write an even better review, but it will very likely improve your own writing as well. Thinking about why something works for you as a reader helps you to think about why it worked in telling the story, which you can then apply to your stories.

There are all sorts of good resources out there to help improve your writing if you want to go farther - personally I love Abbie Emmons' YouTube channel, and think The Plottery often has great advice. Many people swear by Save the Cat!, which started out as screenwriting advice, but there's a Save the Cat! Writes a Novel book, too. Personally, I own probably three dozen books on writing and grammar, because I am a nerd You don't have to go that far But yeah, for anyone who wants to get into the nitty-gritty of what works and why in fiction writing, there are lots of places to look, and they can be super helpful. But you'll also go a long way if you simply ask yourself why as you read, be it fanfic or pro writing. Why did this work, why is this meaningful. The more you simply think about that, the more you'll gradually learn about what makes a story effective.

And it is a gradual process, so don't ever beat yourself up about not being as good as you'd like. In fact, a good writer is going to keep improving right down to the end. There is no magical plateau where any of us have nothing left to learn, and that's part of what makes life fun

Let me also add that while I don't go to cons as often as some, I've been to about a dozen and met quite a few professional authors and artists and had lovely conversations with some of them, and guys, you know what? They're just like us. The day I saw a New York Times bestselling author cringe and say, "yeah, I don't think *fan reviewer I had mentioned* liked my last book very much," was the day it really clicked with me that all of us, whether amateur or pro, are putting our hearts out there with any artistic work, and that's an inherently scary thing. It means the world to us to hear that someone liked it. It is awesome that anyone wants to improve their reviews; that is so, so appreciated. But anything nice at all that you want to say is one more voice out of the darkness telling us that we aren't out here alone with our hearts on our sleeves wondering if anyone noticed.

I'll just add something I think reviewers should avoid: don't tell the author they're wrong, or how you would have written their story differently. That's something we don't have to worry about much here, which I greatly appreciate, but over on AO3 and ff.n, comments like that are fairly common, and no, they're not encouraging and they're not kind. No one wants to hear "I'm really disappointed you didn't include" / "why didn't you do it this way" / "another way it could have gone is *several paragraphs completely rewriting your story/chapter*" / "laundry list of things you 'got wrong'", all of which I've gotten on the other sites. This forum's culture has thankfully always discouraged such behavior to the extent that it almost goes without saying here, but yeah. Don't do that. Genuinely, "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" applies in full force to any and all fan work. This is stuff no one's getting paid for, that they put so much work into and shared for free just in the hopes that someone else would like it too. Be kind and encouraging and just skip over anything that doesn't speak to you.

A professional writer I follow on Twitter once said, "when I start writing a novel, it's like driving a car on a dark road at night. I may not be able to see every step of the journey at the beginning, but as long as I can see what's right in front of me, I can keep going and know I'll get there eventually." I've found that very helpful to remember.

Also? Never worry about comparing yourself to others. You aren't them; they aren't you. Everyone starts somewhere, everyone has their own circumstances (and you never know when those circumstances will change; fifteen years ago it felt like pulling teeth for me to come up with ideas for stories and now the ideas come far faster than I can write them and I don't even know how it happened), and everyone's voice is valuable. Your story could - and will - mean the world to someone. Even if it feels like you're invisible, even if comments/likes/kudos are few and far between, always remember that lurkers far outnumber commenters and there are people out there who love your story and will never forget it. There are stories I read back in the summer of '02 when I had just discovered that fanfic was a thing, before I knew the JC existed, that I still remember, still love, still reread, that are still influencing my own writing more than twenty years later. Something you write is going to have the same effect on someone else, I absolutely guarantee it

 

@TherenAdarni , @amidalachick : I've been dealing with similar worries this year and it's tough because there are so many times where I don't feel like I have the words to do justice to how I feel about a fic! And I've definitely felt self-conscious in the past when some part of the plot slipped my mind while writing a review and confused the author (whoops). But that kind of thing happens to us all, and (when I'm being objective about it and not letting my insecurities drive) I really think writers here are just happy to have someone leave a comment -- short or long, coherent or... that rambling thing I tend to do.

For Theren's question, it might be useful to know that in this forum we don't at all have the expectation that every comment needs to have editing suggestions. There's actually a signup list here to get PM concrit because the default forum rule here is to keep things positive/non-critical in posted reviews.

I'd recommend signing up there if you want improvement-related feedback yourself. If you do want to work on giving concrit as well there is a built-in list of people right there that can give you feedback on your feedback if you want. Lots of fanfic writers don't want/feel the need for critical feedback at all, which is how that rule became a thing. For many of us it's a beloved but lowkey hobby that we may not want to pour a whole bunch of energy into at any given time.

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha , I really like that advice and will be keeping it in mind as I try not to stress so much about reviewing.

Edit: And @Gabri_Jade too: what you said!

 

validated
I've bookmarked your comment to come back to!

Pulling this quote to mention something I've just realised. Little comments about characters I've written and their choices/motivations have actually been fascinating, in that they point out personality traits that aren't there by design, but follow inevitably from what is 'in character' for them. It's super interesting to watch them take on a life of their own through the process of interpretation.

Wasn't aware of that thread, thank you! I absolutely want to know where I can improve but it makes total sense that authors prefer to have those conversations privately (if at all.)

We have emotional needs as well, and sometimes that just means acknowledgement and encouragement.

 

@TherenAdarni

Woot! What you said about personality traits of your characters not being intentional but organic to the story just proves how well-thought out and conceived they are.