Aspiring and experienced Writers' discussion thread

[Rhondazvous]

The publisher hath provided a template with a character counting button. But I believe Word has it integrated with the word counting feature?...

No see it.

Oh well. Do you know of any programs that are good for writers? I'd like a program that let's you highlight a whole section and click a button to automatically enclose it in quotes or parenthesis, one that helps you keep track or chapters or one that finds all the adverbs and gives you tips on how to change them into verbs. Wonder if we have any programmers at AF.

[Rhondazvous]

Last night I had patient files to update.  Took them home, sat down with my iPad, and spent 6 hours riding chapter 2 of my story.

Ended up rushing through the patient files at work.

It happens that way. You run into writer's block and don't want to be in the same room with the damn story for three months, then come back and write a whole fucking chapter at one sitting.

[Ravenshire]

What then makes a writer good? I find I can't go by popularity, even though most writers who write for publication want that name recognition and big advances. Take Stephen King. He has a big name. I read just one of his novels and for the life of me could not figure out what the hype was all about. Commercial fiction has no excuse for being that bad.

As a writer, I want to write quality stuff that does not disappoint even the most discriminant read. If some big house wants to give me a 5 million dollar advanced royalty, I wouldn't turn it down, but I won't write junk just because that's what the publishers are looking for.

I think characters and situations that are compelling.

Rarely these days do I find a book I'll pick up and then read until I suddenly realise it's morning.

(emphasis is mine)

Brandon Sanderson.

[Ravenshire]

What did you read by Stephen King? He's got an a pretty extensive body of work. I would agree that some of more recent stuff is pretty cruddy....they can't all be hits! He's still one of my favorite writers. The guy is a master when it comes to short fiction, in my opinion anyway.
Stephen King offers a great deal of insight into what makes a good writer in Stephen King On Writing.

I don’t remember the title off the top of my head. It was a novel that opens with this guy tracking another guy. After several scenes King still had not gotten around to telling me why he was tracking the other guy. He enters a town and kills everybody after the spiritual woman accuses him of killing the Crimson King.  There was a lot of violence and bloodshed but I never knew why things were happening. Never knew why the main character’s goal was. He was just there.

If you give me some recommendations, I’ll give King another shot.

That's "The Gunslinger."

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." It's the first part of a much longer tale called "The Dark Tower." It's dry, but it's short (something of a rarity for a King novel), and the following books are worth it.

Other King recommendations (in no particular order):
"11/22/63"
"The Stand" - Either the original edition or "The Complete and Uncut Edition"
"The Green Mile"
"Misery"

[Ravenshire]

Awesome!  I got an agreement for a trial period for the subforum. We need to keep it popular, though, in order to keep it alive!

Now where is it?

Indeed.

[The Valkyrie]

Now where is it?

Indeed.

Doing something properly takes time.

Look at Noah and his ark.

We're waiting on the unicorns to arrive.

[rexbeccarox]

Staff has pretty much agreed that we can do it for a trial period, but I think Beccs and I are the only staff members who are into it, so we're pushing

[Rhondazvous]

I sent a pm to Stimbo (since he is an administrator) asking if he could create a forum for writers so we can have threads for those who want to share and those who want a critique and those who just want to discuss writing. I sent it Thursday but haven't heard back from him. Maybe if you guys sent pm's too, he'll see the need.

[Longhorn]

Just wanted to say I love the idea and would gladly read all of you's stuff and maybe get some of my own lame shit out here sometime, I hope it happens

[rexbeccarox]

I sent a pm to Stimbo (since he is an administrator) asking if he could create a forum for writers so we can have threads for those who want to share and those who want a critique and those who just want to discuss writing. I sent it Thursday but haven't heard back from him.  Maybe if you guys sent pm's too, he'll see the need.

Like I said, I started a thread in the staff area- it's not up to one admin... the need has already been seen. It's been agreed we can have a writers' group subforum; now we're just waiting on implementation.