fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2334 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2334 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Jesus Christ Superstar]

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[Torvill and Dean]

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[Conan O'Brien]

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11. http://i.imgur.com/eBIFfE1.jpg
[linked for gore, video game]

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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]

12. [SPOILERS for Resident Evil, Gears of War, Red Dead Redemption, The Walking Dead and Jonah Hex]

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13. [SPOILERS for Iron Man 3]

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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]

14. [WARNING for suicide]

[Hetalia]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #333.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 1- broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If you've been doing a lot of revision, stop. You're killing your voice. I keep reading that advice by very successful professional authors and I believe it. Keep writing and do little revision other than for continuity errors, etc. in order to develop your own voice. Kill that perfectionist voice and learn to let it go.

I agree with you, anon.

I write things TOO emotional most of the time, but this means I can spot a story with no soul about a mile away. Characters need to have personalities and sometimes editing too much can edit away their accents, their way of speaking, et cetera.

I know a lot of professionals say to delete non-plot relevant stuff, but don't forget that character development is a plot device, too, and characters interacting and THINKING and *FEELING* can be important to the story, too.

Find authors who write in a style you LOVE, and pay attention to what they do.

(Writers read. Writers read ALL THE TIME.)

Look at manga, anime, TV shows, movies, books, comics--what are your favorites and why do you love them? You can keep a list, too: what do you like to see in writing? Is it emotion? Do you want to FEEL something when you read? Or are you drawn to action? To the resolution that will happen at the end of the story? Do you love silly little details in stories, or do you like clean-cut, simple description that gets right to the point?

Some people love L. M. Montgomery and other people hated her Anne books because they were so damn full of description. I love description. Sometimes I feel she has too much, but boy when I was reading those books, I felt I *KNEW* that place. It reminded me a little of where I'm from. And because I cared about the PLACE the characters were from, I too cared about the characters, because the description spilled over into their mannerisms, speech patterns, the way they loved and feared and FELT.

I try to edit for simple basic errors, like grammar. I make sure my sentences make sense, and shorten them or rephrase them when I made a three-paragraph long sentence on accident. But I have a specific way of writing that makes every piece uniquely mine. I bet most of my friends could pick one of my fanfics out of a pile immediately, just by recognizing my writing style.

One last thing: for lots of people, they like to read what they write, at least to an extent. I love history so historical AUs make me go AHHHHH and correct representation of any time period is met with me weeping all over the place (tears of joy, obviously).

That's something to keep in mind. Sometimes, too, we make the mistake of telling a story USING the characters, instead of telling the story OF the characters. :)

I'm a visual writer, mostly. People keep saying my writing could easily be a screenplay. I actually prefer writing over reading, and I'm one of those people who doesn't necessarily write what I'd read and vice versa. I'm strange in that sense.

Actually I never did much revision at all. I mean, obviously spelling and such, and taking out plotholes, and kicking out redundant sentences. Apart from that, though, I always sort of know what I want to write before writing it, and it end up on the page 80% done.

I don't know what it is, maybe I'm just not connecting to the characters, or the events. What sucks is, in essence it's something I really love doing, but sometimes I just feel like a stranger wrote it.

I've suffered from this in the past. Honestly, I'd say that this probably happens to a lot of people, probably at that point where you start really caring and have the experience to know what you like and don't like about reading generally and about your own writing.

I sometimes feel like my writing had sort of stagnated and become overly, idk, clinical? That is, everything seems technically correct, but it lacks some undefinable thing, some style or personality. The best thing for me when I get this way is to set it on the backburner for a time (depending on deadlines, of course), then come back to it when my brain has stopped nagging me about it.

If you've read your own work too much, it gets repetitive. The time and distance can help you see what it is the writing may be missing, when you can look at it with a fresh perspective. There may not even be anything wrong, which is always a welcome surprise. And if there is -- like maybe the verbs or adjectives you've chosen seem inappropriate to the character's mood or the atmosphere you want to create -- then you'll be able to spot it better. If it doesn't work the first time, or seems to only do so halfway, just rinse and repeat until you get it.

But it's also possible that, as others have pointed out, you're just being too hard on yourself. :)

SA

Also, I don't know if you do this already, but one of the best things any writer of any sort can do is to read the work out loud. I think this goes especially for fictional works; it lets you hear, in your own voice, the emotion/mood/atmosphere of the prose and the voice of the characters. If something seems off, you can highlight those parts and work on them, specifically, rather than feeling that the whole piece just seems "off".

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