http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ Web Fiction Guide Forums » Tag: writing - Recent Topics en Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:02:39 +0000 http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/writing-inspirationmotivation#post-7758 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:47:59 +0000 Verydien 7758@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I've been thinking about this quite a bit, and I'm not sure how it is for many of you out there, but for me, writing really seems to come in stages. I can write most of the time, but the inspiration to type out a whole chapter of a story in one sitting happens far more sparingly.</p> <p>Which brings me back to my question. Is there something that helps motivate or inspire these writing sessions for you?</p> <p>Mine consist of several things. My mood/health (the worse it is, the more I seem to write), listening to a specific music artist (VNV Nation) or driving. I drive a lot for school, so plenty of time for thinking.</p> <p>So what about everyone else? What works for you? </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/pseudonyms#post-3348 Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:14:21 +0000 Murazrai 3348@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I just wondered, is the usernames here are the pseudonyms or real life names? My username is a pseudonym, but I have a full pseudonym named Muranyl Kizrai. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/print-rights-sold-for-flight-of-the-godkin-griffin#post-7594 Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:57:24 +0000 M.C.A. Hogarth 7594@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I just signed a contract with a small press for the print rights to my first serial, Flight of the Godkin Griffin. Flight was my first go at crowdfunding back in 2004, back when putting an entire novel up for tips was considered bad business. I'm glad I put it up now!</p> <p>You can read the details here: <a href="http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/1022826.html" rel="nofollow">http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/1022826.html</a></p> <p>Just remember... just because you're not being paid now doesn't mean you won't be later! :) </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/in-a-quandry-ebook-pricing#post-7606 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:49:13 +0000 Erin Klitzke 7606@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Since this is a community I've come to trust (even though I've been sadly absent lately), I thought I'd come here and float this question. It's a business question, and we've got some very smart folks floating around, so picking your brains seems like a good idea to me.</p> <p>I've released several ebooks over the past few months--a novelette (c. 17k words, currently free), a novella (20k words, $0.99), and a novel (80k, $1.99). My quandry surrounds the pricing of my novel, <em>Epsilon: Broken Stars</em>. Recent bloggings from other indie writers seem to be indicating that the $1.99/$2.99 price point leaves some consumers assuming that a book at that price point is indie crap and that it's not worth their time. I'm not thinking about going to $4.99 or something, but I'm thinking of maybe bumping my work up a couple dollars.</p> <p>Any thoughts? I suppose this is as much about pricing my first novel-length ebook as it is about my future pricing strategies. <em>Broken Stars</em> is the first book in a larger series, later books will be priced about $1 or so higher than the intial book. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/special-extrasin-betweens#post-7358 Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:40:49 +0000 Erin Klitzke 7358@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>For about the past week, I've been following some advice that I've seen in various places: I've been assessing different projects and figuring out which ones are viable and worth hanging on to, which are salvageable, and which should be given the heave-ho. This has resulted in considering the broader "universe" of <em>Awakenings</em>. I have a novelette that I'd considered developing into a larger work, though I've since decided that I probably will never get around to it. However...there is significant promise for this work as part of the <em>Awakenings</em> universe.</p> <p>My question to folks is thus: I'm within a few chapters of the end of Book One of <em>Awakenings</em>, and I was wondering what everyone does when they come to the end of one major story arc. Do you just launch into the next one, or do you divide it up by adding extras and "filler episodes"?</p> <p>If you do special extras, where and when do you post them?</p> <p>I look forward to thoughts and such! </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/collaborative-1920s-superhero-stories#post-7311 Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:24:00 +0000 Robert Rodgers 7311@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I've been talking to Jim Zoetewey (the author of Legion of Nothing) for a few days about a project that combines the dexterity of our previous successful crossover (on his website--'The Omnisphere') with the pleasure, momentum, and creative output of a larger group (an attempt that failed earlier). The idea we're working with is something I'm tentatively calling 'The Pulp'.</p> <p>The idea is this--a set of 1920s/30s 'comic book' serials, each concerning either a specific character or organization, each with a set core author. All of them would be hosted on the same site (with individual blogs 'nested' into the primary blog), all of them with one author dedicated to writing their story. Also on the site is a forum for us to brainstorm about characters, work on plots (that unite several several characters), omnivillains (that unite several stories), submit chapters for proofreading and feedback (optional, but probably an excellent idea), etc. In addition, we'll probably have a 'primary' story feed that involves short one-shots with a rotating author schedule.</p> <p>Some of the benefits of this model: If an author gets sick, has to quit, can't keep up with the update schedule, or otherwise loses interest, we have options--we can 'cancel' the series, write an ending, put the character/organization on a bus, collapse it into someone else's narrative, or even have another author take over the whole thing. If you can't make your update just for a week, someone else can step in and write the story for you for that week. Crossovers are easier, and can either be just a two-person thing or a grandiose all-involved thing; we can have multiple story foreshadowings (a villain foreshadowed in one narrative, appears in the other), have guest stories (I take over your story for a week, you take over mine), and do all other sorts of interesting authorial hijinks. Authors are allowed to do 'their own thing' without having to double-check everything with the community; also, you get the benefits of brainstorming and feedback with a group intimately involved with the project, as well as a pool of interesting bit characters that everyone can trade around freely.</p> <p>I picked 1920s/30s pulp serials because I have a particular love for that century's feel of heroism--but also because it's something I haven't seen often done. I love the process of world and character building, and I feel like there's a lot of material to chew on in that era--characters like the Shadow, Doc Savage, and others offer a whole platter of ideas to modify and make our own. There's also the fascinating possibility of ending the pulp era and moving on to other periods of superheroism with the background established in this first part.</p> <p>If you're interested, feel free to register at <a href="http://thepulp.inmydaydreams.com/wp-admin/" rel="nofollow">http://thepulp.inmydaydreams.com/wp-admin/</a> and post under 'Anything Goes - Introductions' to tell us what part you'd like to take in the project. We've got a forum up now, and we're getting into the nitty gritty of the basic rules/characters that occupy this setting--fresh ideas and writers are always welcome.</p> <p>Thanks for reading! </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/a-definition-of-success#post-7368 Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:28:06 +0000 M.C.A. Hogarth 7368@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Since this has come up a few times in the past few weeks, I thought I'd offer a link to my post about definitions of success:</p> <p><a href="http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/989051.html" rel="nofollow">http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/989051.html</a></p> <p>If you are too busy to read the whole thing, the takeaway is probably the last line: Because if you have ever made a single thing that touched another person, you too, have succeeded. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/review-request-notorious#post-7103 Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:46:21 +0000 Robert Rodgers 7103@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Notorious, a story about a superhero assassin trying to go straight, is now linked on webfiction; I'd love to get some reviews! Or just additional readers! The story takes place in the same universe as the Last Skull (linked in my signature) with some subtle but important changes; nevertheless, reading the Last Skull is not at all necessary.</p> <p>If you're at all curious or interested, here's a link: <a href="http://webfictionguide.com/listings/notorious/" rel="nofollow">http://webfictionguide.com/listings/notorious/</a> </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/well-thats-that-now-for-something-completely-different#post-7119 Sat, 13 Aug 2011 14:33:25 +0000 ubersoft 7119@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p><em>Pay Me, Bug!</em> is finished.</p> <p>It will still be updating until October 19/20 (last chapter/last podcast) but it has been formatted and edited as much as it possibly can be, converted to epub and mobi, and queued up on my site to updated every Wednesday (chapter) and Thursday (podcast) automatically. So from my perspective, as far as serializing the story goes, I'm done.</p> <p>Now I need to move on to my next set projects for this thing, which include:</p> <p> - selling <em>Pay Me, Bug!</em> in epub and mobi on various sites (Kindle, Nook, iTunes, etc.)<br /> - create a POD version on Lulu in the off-chance anyone demands a paper copy (ha! But it will still be cool to do)<br /> - look into putting it in audiobook format</p> <p>But that's sidebar stuff. The important thing is to figure out what I'm going to do next on my site. I have two projects in mind, one a Charles Williams-inspired modern fantasy, one a dark fantasy-ish mystery. Both are considerably different from PMB! (neither are even remotely close to Space Opera) so I have no clue if they'll retain the small audience I built up so far. And neither was at the level of "it's finished" PMB! was (which was completely written but needed a final edit). The modern fantasy is partially written (but I know how it ends). The dark fantasy-ish mystery is a complete first draft but needs rewriting. This means my next project would probably be a little more on the fly than PMB! was and that's a little, um, intimidating. I suppose I could take the two months I have before PMB! ends and finish one or the other, then post that when PMB! ends, but one of the things I wanted to see with unexploredhorizons.net was how well it could handle multiple overlapping projects and it'd be a shame to waste that opportunity.</p> <p>On the other hand doing that would take a lot of free time which I haven't had of late.</p> <p>... but anyway! That's neither here nor there. The important part is that I finished something, even though nobody will be able to tell till late October. It feels pre-awesome. ;-) </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/ive-figured-out-what-im-going-to-do-next-i-think#post-7152 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:49:22 +0000 ubersoft 7152@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Well, I think I've figured out my next project. It's a little scary though.</p> <p>As I mentioned in a previous post, I've finished up with <em>Pay Me, Bug!</em> and I'm trying to flesh out what my next project is going to be. I was torn between two stories that are in various stages of completion:</p> <p><em>Northlander</em>, a dark fantasy murder mystery, kinda sorta, and</p> <p><em>The Points Between</em>, sort of an urban fantasy, kinda, but it doesn't really fit with classic urban fantasy tropes, and might be closer to a ghost story but not really. It's hard to describe and probably equally hard to sell.</p> <p>So of the two, just looking at the descriptions, <em>Northlander</em> is the obvious choice. It's easier to describe in a sentence. It also has the advantage of being further along.</p> <p>But... <em>The Points Between</em> was inspired by Charles Williams. If you've never heard of Charles Williams, we'll, that's not a surprise -- he was a contemporary of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, and a fellow Inkling, and his fiction was fantastically weird but not generally known. He's one of my favorite authors, and when I started TPB I used him as inspiration because it was going to be hard to do.</p> <p>Anyway. His birthday is on September 20. It seems like the perfect launching point, assuming I can push forward and get this beast rolling.</p> <p>So there it is. Because his birthday is kind of close I'm going with the much-more-difficult-to-explain-and-therefore-write-not-to-mention-market story.</p> <p>WINDMILL! CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE! </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/review-request-grigors-amazing-adventure-part-zero#post-6980 Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:19:47 +0000 GrigorsAdventure 6980@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Hey, </p> <p>I wrote this novel to be compeletely over the top in manliness and completely outrageous to boot. So I was wondering if people could tell me what they think of it? Does anyone want to see the actual story emerge or is that a lost cause? should I try to tighten up the writing style to make it more focused, or does it being a bit crazy work?</p> <p>Thanks loads guys </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/interested-in-guest-writing-anyone-i-want-to-share-my-toys#post-6962 Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:43:39 +0000 Gavin Williams 6962@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Okay so a long time ago I asked if anyone wanted to do a crossover with their characters and mine because I think it's a lot of fun to see other people's takes on characters. I really enjoyed the April Fool's writer circle -- I got to write for Allan T. Michael's excellent fantasy An Empire at War, while JZ filled in on Diggory and I popped over to Legion of Nothing for a fun back-and-forth.</p> <p>It's really enjoyable. And right now Robert Rodgers is making it look like even MORE fun in his take on the Legion of Nothing as he's doing a very cool guest arc featuring interdimensional alternates, which is one of my favourite comic book tropes since X-Men and their offshoot Excalibur, let alone all the other variations on the theme.</p> <p>I had hoped that people would be interested in my own superhero story, The Samaritan Project, and refuel my own desire to write it since sometimes it lags behind my other projects. But the people who were interested are also busy people too so it's kind of on the backburner.</p> <p>SOOOOOO I thought it would be more interesting if I offered up my main project, The Surprising Life and Death of Diggory Franklin. There are all kinds of interesting options for stories given that time travel is a main feature of the plot -- so there are Continuity Integrity Agency characters and Federal Bureau of time Investigation characters, plus side stories featuring the current era's protagonists. What do you say people, want to write stories with my creations? </p> <p>Seeing things from a new perspective is exciting, and then I could reciprocate with other people's stories -- or figure out how to do a crossover. Or write an indepth blog post or review or basically scream from a mountaintop because this would be FUN.</p> <p>It's summer and I want something cool to look forward to. Who's up for it? </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/crossover-experiment-anyone#post-5927 Sat, 02 Oct 2010 15:37:05 +0000 Gavin Williams 5927@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Springboarding off the discussion about successful weblit elsewhere in the forum, I had an idea thanks to Allan. He suggested crossovers between dfferent writers' characters where appropriate. Not only would this be fun for writers and readers, but it would create more exposure for stories -- the two audiences would overlap.</p> <p>Allan, very kindly, mentioned my own protagonist, Diggory Franklin. Currently he's not really on the market for a cross over with say Dash from Allan's supernatural thrillers, because Diggory lives in a world much like our own until 2008 when he finds out his girlfriend invents time travel. There's no room for ghosts or monsters in his realm -- though I wouldn't rule out what might happen in the future. One of Diggory's contemporaries, Dahlia Sorley, is currently embroiled in a superhero crossover as we speak, so eventually he might be available.</p> <p>No Man an Island is a completed story right now, so there's not a lot of wiggle room for a crossover there either. But I have an idea based on something else Allan said in a comment on my site months and months ago. He asked if I'd ever consider letting people contribute to my Samaritan Project with side stories. At the time the story was still finding a direction, but I didn't forget the idea.</p> <p>Soooooo -- what I'm proposing is to let other kids play with my toys. In other words, I'm inviting any writers or readers who want to try writing to come over to the Samaritan Project on my site and check out the characters. I'm currently on Volume 3, using the unnamed protagonist and his two friends Dorothy and Rebecca, but the rest of the characters are "off-stage" and could very well have stories of their own. </p> <p>You can write spy missions, skirmishes, origin stories, an ordinary day, or crossover with your own characters if there seems to be a good fit. I'll blog about your story site in return, with a review and a link so my readers are aware of your work. Or reciprocate with collaborating with your characters if you want -- that might be fun. I'll act as editor for the story you submit (gavin_strider@yahoo.com) or give suggestions if you get stuck -- but mostly you'll have creative freedom to play with my characters. If it doesn't suit my continuity somehow, I can always make it a fun Elseworlds/What If variant like DC comics or Marvel. But I'm sure there's room to accomodate a lot of ideas.</p> <p>Any takers? I think it would be fun. Here's the link to Samaritan's start: <a href="http://gavinwilliams.digitalnovelists.com/samaritan" rel="nofollow">http://gavinwilliams.digitalnovelists.com/samaritan</a> </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6909 Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:41:48 +0000 Gavin Williams 6909@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>An interesting conversation happened in the comments on Jim Zoetewey's "Legion of Nothing" this week when someone mentioned the superhero trope "Woman in Refrigerator," which is an idea with its own website that women in comic books are frequently victimized (killed, hurt, raped) to up the stakes on storylines. Different comments on the Women in Refrigerators website (WIC from here on) and comments on JZ's actual story summarized this trend as the result of a largely white, male, heterosexual writing class wanting strong masculine heroes to have emotional reactions to damsels in distress because that's their culture.</p> <p>So, parallel to that, most comics are white hetero-normative (I think that's the phrase I want to use). There's not a lot of cultural, racial, sexual or gender diversity. There are sometimes "token" gay or racial characters. (There are also some comics that deal with diversity well - I think of X-Men, which addresses oppression, discrimination and diversity all the time).</p> <p>Anyway, what I was wondering, was where do writers here weigh in? Do we have a social responsibility to try to incorporate different voices, perspectives and cultures in our writing, or just go with what we know? Do you write to be entertaining or educate? (This isn't an either/or thing, just want to see people comment).</p> <p>Me personally, I have a lot of multi-cultural experience, but because of plots I've decided to do in my stories, I just realized that the majority of my characters are white, and they're all heterosexual (so far as I know, I haven't really asked most of my characters about their sex lives). I found it funny that a kid that had black, white, Asian, Christian, Muslim, straight, gay, agnostic friends and studied world religions grew up to write primarily white fiction. My own writing doesn't reflect my experiences and while I know my plots have a lot of planning (like in NMAI the main characters are rural Canadian white kids from the same small town, not much room for a gay kid from Hong Kong to join them) I wonder if I'm perpetuating stereotypes. Does anyone else think about stuff like this? </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/wow-done#post-6887 Sat, 25 Jun 2011 20:54:47 +0000 M.C.A. Hogarth 6887@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>After a little over a year and a half of posting twice a week I've come to the end of <em>Spots the Space Marine</em>, which is at its completion a proper novel-length novel. It feels very strange to have finished, after I've been at it so doggedly for so long. This will be my fourth web serial; the first was <em>Flight of the Godkin Griffin</em>, which I started writing in 2003, followed by the two short-story collections about Kherishdar, <em>The Aphorisms of Kherishdar</em> and <em>The Admonishments of Kherishdar</em>.</p> <p>I've already started the next, <em>Black Blossom</em> (<a href="http://www.stardancer.org/project/blackblossom)" rel="nofollow">http://www.stardancer.org/project/blackblossom)</a>, a fantasy of manners, and will probably start serializing an urban fantasy about angels in a few months.</p> <p>After finishing four of these, I'm starting to come to some conclusions about the differences between writing serially and writing "in the garret." I hope those crystallize at some point. But until I have something more coherent to say than "OMG IT'S OVER I CAN FALLOVER NOW" I will just say: come read the new serial while it's only 10 episodes in! This is gonna be a long one! :) </p>