Writing a (some) Story(ies)

[The Introvert]

Just throwing a question out there:

What is the general consensus on the idea of me posting a story/stories I've written/am writing here for analysis? At least for advice and opinions.

No point in posting work if it isn't going to be looked at.

A simple "yea" or "nay" will suffice

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

How long it is may decide whether I read one or not.

If you post some around 5k words, one at a time and people like them then they may then be willing to read longer stories. That at least may apply for those who consider their time to be limited.

They say an author has to capture hir readers attention. Interesting and appropriate choice of words. Capture. Big wall of text on the internet doesn't capture unless the reader is already looking forward to reading it. What reasons would we have for that? We don't know your style or if we like it. You don't come recommended by a friend or someone whose judgements and opinions we hold to any esteem. The stories won't come with a cover with blurbs and artwork.

I think most of us will give you a chance if it's not asking too much of us in other words. Drop the net on us. Capture us if you can. Just do it quickly

I would say this post of mine is worth 2 cents but I'm up way too late and it's not even worth that. Show us your stories. I'll read at least the first one. Within a day or two. So that's one yea and fuck the nays, they don't have to read them.

 

[redbaron]

I don't really care either way but: if people don't want to read it they're under no obligation to open the read. So you may as well post it anyway since there might be some people who do want to read it.

Opinions don't really matter for this if you ask me.

 

[The Introvert]

I don't really care either way but: if people don't want to read it they're under no obligation to open the read. So you may as well post it anyway since there might be some people who do want to read it.

Opinions don't really matter for this if you ask me.

I garner inspiration from perceived appreciation. If I know people will take the time to read it, then I will take the time to write what I think is a good story and put it here. If not, then I won't.

If nobody replied to the thread, then it would get lost in the list of useless threads. If people do reply, then I will post my story(ies) in it!

 

[Coolydudey]

I say post at least one; it will be interesting to read, if it isn't too long (excellent post by IP).

 

[The Introvert]

Here's the beginning. I break my writing into very small chunks, either because it's easier to work with that way or because said chunks are supposed to make sense in their own context as well as in the context of the story.

I know it isn't much, but it's the only part that's tentatively finished so far. Any questions about the direction in which the story is going are welcomed, and as always, comments are very much appreciated. I hope you enjoy! (It really isn't much so far)

Spoiler

Prologue: The End​

In the end, there is nothing. There is no second chance. There is no rebuttal. In the end, everything I have to live for is lost. There is no cold, there is no feeling. All of the people I know, they are nobody. All of the memories I have, they are forgotten.

1: The Chair​

It’s been a typical, atypical day. I skipped class to sit in a chair at the top of the library and think. Normally I never miss, but lately I’ve just started to lose interest, again. What’s new?
I sat on the eleventh floor, in the chair. I looked out the window, and tried to think of something intellectual. I tried to think of something unique. All I could think of was how cold it was outside. I wrote down some faux interpretations of the weather, of the landscape, of campus. I said:
“People come in, they look around, and they sit down, attempting to appreciate the beauty of campus in February; multitudes of beautiful but aimless snowflakes scattering the buildings and the trees and dancing erratically in the winter wind”.
Sometimes I think I try too hard. The sentence, despite its beauty, will never be spoken. It’s not real – it’s not unique. And I’m beginning to think that nothing is.
I sat in the chair at the top of the library for fifteen minutes. I looked out the window, at the marvels of life, the complexity of our existence. And I thought about the snowflakes, and the cold. I saw a man bravely ride his bicycle through the ever-present crowds of people in an attempt to beat the cold – if only for a few extra minutes. I saw the people, bundled in coats with heads buried in their chests. I saw a single squirrel scurry along the rooftop of the building adjacent to me. All from the chair on the eleventh floor of the library.

2: Me​

“Describe yourself in fifty words or less”, asks the application for the convenience store down the street. I start to write.
“I am a hardworking individual…” - the sentence in my head trails off. I start to think about what the application is asking. This company wants me to describe myself – an entire person, no less, with emotions, ideas, stories, and opinions – in fifty words or less. They want me to give them an example of myself and why I am worthy of their shitty minimum wage part-time job in fifty words or less.
I close my eyes in frustration.
“You can’t think about this right now, Ben”, I say to myself. This is how my life usually works. I get an idea. I try to expand on the idea. I see a flaw in the idea. I spend copious amounts of time trying to fix the problem, get frustrated, and quit with a half-finished project. My notebooks are filled with half-written stories: my memories are filled with things I wish I would have remembered to say.
“You need this job, even if it’s hardly any money. It’s better than nothing”. I don’t know how to describe myself with words; Hell, I don’t even know how to describe myself at all. Should I tell them I’m so desperate for money I steal food from my friends’ refrigerators, not because they wouldn’t give me any, but because they would know I can’t afford my own? Should I tell them although I’m neither an avid writer nor an avid reader (and am not particularly good at either) I have the delusion that I can someday make a living doing so?
Sure, there are physical descriptions – roughly six feet tall, brown shaggy hair, a grotesque under-developed moustache that seems to grow back more quickly than I can shave it – but is that how you really get to know a person? Can my life really be boiled down to fifty words or less on a piece of printing paper, sloppily carved out with a black ink ballpoint pen I found in the crevice of my couch? Is it worth the effort to write fifty (or less!) meaningless words on this paper, considering they will most likely be lies, and will most likely not be in any way representative of who I truly am?
If it gets me the job, then yes. Yes it is.

 

[Coolydudey]

How long will it be? Do you mind if I wait till you finish it to post feedback?

 

[Duxwing]

Here's the beginning. I break my writing into very small chunks, either because it's easier to work with that way or because said chunks are supposed to make sense in their own context as well as in the context of the story.

I know it isn't much, but it's the only part that's tentatively finished so far. Any questions about the direction in which the story is going are welcomed, and as always, comments are very much appreciated. I hope you enjoy! (It really isn't much so far)

Spoiler

Prologue: The End​

In the end, there is nothing. There is no second chance. There is no rebuttal. In the end, everything I have to live for is lost. There is no cold, there is no feeling. All of the people I know, they are nobody. All of the memories I have, they are forgotten.

1: The Chair​

It’s been a typical, atypical day. I skipped class to sit in a chair at the top of the library and think. Normally I never miss, but lately I’ve just started to lose interest, again. What’s new?
I sat on the eleventh floor, in the chair. I looked out the window, and tried to think of something intellectual. I tried to think of something unique. All I could think of was how cold it was outside.I wrote down some faux interpretations of the weather, of the landscape, of campus. I said:
“People come in, they look around, and they sit down, attempting to appreciate the beauty of campus in February; multitudes of beautiful but aimless snowflakes scattering the buildings and the trees and dancing erratically in the winter wind”.
Sometimes I think I try too hard. The sentence, despite its beauty, will never be spoken. It’s not real – it’s not unique. And I’m beginning to think that nothing is.
I sat in the chair at the top of the library for fifteen minutes. I looked out the window, at the marvels of life, the complexity of our existence. And I thought about the snowflakes, and the cold. I saw a man bravely ride his bicycle through the ever-present crowds of people in an attempt to beat the cold – if only for a few extra minutes. I saw the people, bundled in coats with heads buried in their chests. I saw a single squirrel scurry along the rooftop of the building adjacent to me. All from the chair on the eleventh floor of the library.

2: Me​

“Describe yourself in fifty words or less”, asks the application for the convenience store down the street. I start to write.
“I am a hardworking individual…” - the sentence in my head trails off. I start to think about what the application is asking. This company wants me to describe myself – an entire person, no less, with emotions, ideas, stories, and opinions – in fifty words or less. They want me to give them an example of myself and why I am worthy of their shitty minimum wage part-time job in fifty words or less.
I close my eyes in frustration.
“You can’t think about this right now, Ben”, I say to myself. This is how my life usually works. I get an idea. I try to expand on the idea. I see a flaw in the idea. I spend copious amounts of time trying to fix the problem, get frustrated, and quit with a half-finished project. My notebooks are filled with half-written stories: my memories are filled with things I wish I would have remembered to say.
“You need this job, even if it’s hardly any money. It’s better than nothing”. I don’t know how to describe myself with words; Hell, I don’t even know how to describe myself at all. Should I tell them I’m so desperate for money I steal food from my friends’ refrigerators, not because they wouldn’t give me any, but because they would know I can’t afford my own? Should I tell them although I’m neither an avid writer nor an avid reader (and am not particularly good at either) I have the delusion that I can someday make a living doing so?
Sure, there are physical descriptions – roughly six feet tall, brown shaggy hair, a grotesque under-developed moustache that seems to grow back more quickly than I can shave it – but is that how you really get to know a person? Can my life really be boiled down to fifty words or less on a piece of printing paper, sloppily carved out with a black ink ballpoint pen I found in the crevice of my couch? Is it worth the effort to write fifty (or less!) meaningless words on this paper, considering they will most likely be lies, and will most likely not be in any way representative of who I truly am?
If it gets me the job, then yes. Yes it is.

*cracks his neck*

task (main)
{
mercy = 0
run (story_critic)
}

.
..
...

Overall Criticism: J.D. Salinger has already written The Catcher in The Rye; your themes of misery and existential angst, along with your depressed, melancholoy yet gritty style, have already been covered.

Mechanics: Use more complex and varied sentence structures: reading several simple sentences in a row-- especially when some of them begin with coordinating conjunctions-- is like having my eyeballs repeatedly jabbed with a spoon. In addition, you'd do well to simplify wordy expressions like the following: "Should I tell them although I’m neither an avid writer nor an avid reader (and am not particularly good at either) I have the delusion that I can someday make a living doing so?". A better way to put your point would be:

" Should I tell them that 'althoughI'm not an avid writer or an avid reader, I have the delusion that I can someday make a living doing so?' "

Putting single quotes around what you intend to say to "them" will make the absurdity of your statement and the hopelessness that you feel all the more sharp and cutting by having the reader imagine you actually saying the statement in the scenario that you imagine.

Style: Your steady crescendoes and sighing anticlimaxes express your themes perfectly. Every time you're about to catch a break in life, life catches and breaks you.

Returning to human operation.

If I were you, then I would find other topics to cover and give chapters 1 and 2 (what I presume to be your exposition) a more uplifting and interesting conflict than 'The main character must debase themselves in order to find work, let's see if their moral and intellectual principles will break!'. And before you say 'But life is pain, and I express it!' such a conflict is not pathos; rather, reading it just makes the reader feel miserable much in the same way that reading a terminally ill patient's chart makes them feel miserable, only without the drama and intrapersonal conflict that one might imagine when reading the latter. To sum my point up, I present the maxim: The end and purpose of fiction is the expression of concepts, experiences, and emotions more interesting than those found in the audience's immediate reality.

Ergo, feel free to utilize the reader's willing suspension of disbelief during your exposition. Give them a tale of an ancient war, put them on a spaceship bound for a mining colony on Venus, see them from the perspective of an ant; do anything but give the reader more of what they would experience in reality! Writing about reality is the job of researchers, not authors. But your artistic liscence is not unlimited: few can survive, for example, abstract postmodern surrealism with both their willing suspensions of disbelief and minds intact, so ground your story in something, be it a reality of your own imagining or our reality. But if you choose our reality, don't let it consume your work! You don't need to find your characters, setting, and plot in life in order to write about them. Instead, understand the limitations of reality and then imagine freely within them: People really do fall in love, SEAL team six is real, arctic bases exist, but you need to make the ordinary extraordinary lest readers lose interest.

However, if you choose to invent your own reality, then be consistent with its rules. If people can fly, then people can fly, and don't you forget it! If mice can talk and wield swords, then don't make them mindless animals in the next chapter. If the second door of the boys bathroom in Jakesville Middle School has an invisible keypad that opens a portal to the bridge of a star fighter that orbits Pluto, then don't let the protagonist be cornered there. As long as the reader can relate and be drawn into the story, you're OK.

So overall, you must choose: either use reality as you know it, or invent your own: The degree to which readers are willing to suspend their disbelief about what is passing before their eyes is far more important than whether your tale actually adheres to the laws of nature or not.

-Duxwing

Appendix:

Use these two tropes to justify your aritistic decisions:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnthropicPrinciple
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AcceptableBreaksFromReality

 

[The Introvert]

If I were you, then I would find other topics to cover and give chapters 1 and 2 (what I presume to be your exposition) a more uplifting and interesting conflict than 'The main character must debase themselves in order to find work, let's see if their moral and intellectual principles will break!'. And before you say 'But life is pain, and I express it!' such a conflict is not pathos; rather, reading it just makes the reader feel miserable much in the same way that reading a terminally ill patient's chart makes them feel miserable, only without the drama and intrapersonal conflict that one might imagine when reading the latter. To sum my point up, I present the maxim: The end and purpose of fiction is the expression of concepts, experiences, and emotions more interesting than those found in the audience's immediate reality.

The problem I'm having is finding a starting point for the story. I know where I want it to end, and I know what I want it to do, but due to the polarizing nature of my idea it's difficult to choose an exact place to start.

In all honesty, these first two 'chapters' are more or less intended to give some background information, if you will. Kind of a preface to the story - other than a way to get to know the main character and his feelings, these first two 'chapters' were not intended to really influence the story all that much.

So, perhaps, I should start on a high note? In essence I want my story to flow much like anything else - with climaxes and lulls, with ups and downs. Personally, I enjoy reading less about action and more about personal conflicts and confrontations, so my writing will reflect that. I do agree that some (or many) of my sentences don't really bring much to the table - this is something I'm trying to work on.

 

[Duxwing]

The problem I'm having is finding a starting point for the story. I know where I want it to end, and I know what I want it to do, but due to the polarizing nature of my idea it's difficult to choose an exact place to start.

If your idea is polarizing, then be BOLD: don't waste your time by trying to find "an exact place to start".

In all honesty, these first two 'chapters' are more or less intended to give some background information, if you will. Kind of a preface to the story - other than a way to get to know the main character and his feelings, these first two 'chapters' were not intended to really influence the story all that much.

If they were a preface, then you should have labeled them as such. I don't mean to sound nit-picky and bitter, but presentation matters because in art, presentation is quite literally everything.

So, perhaps, I should start on a high note? In essence I want my story to flow much like anything else - with climaxes and lulls, with ups and downs. Personally, I enjoy reading less about action and more about personal conflicts and confrontations, so my writing will reflect that. I do agree that some (or many) of my sentences don't really bring much to the table - this is something I'm trying to work on.

A bit of action never hurt anyone, and action needn't be violent. You can write about overcoming fear with a story about two boys and a hang-glider perched on the edge of a cliff in the the Rocky Mountains: the first boy is trying to convince the second boy that riding the hang-glider is perfectly safe, and you can have the denoument of the story be about the wonder and joy of flight as the two boys take an exhilarating ride past breathtaking mountain peaks or the tragedy of foolhardy youth as a sudden gust of wind crushes them into paste against the craggy rocks, or even the beauty of exploration as they find themselves transported into a bizarre and wonderful world of upside-down trees and dancing llamas. Action and drama are not incompatible.

But of course, one might choose to focus on one subject or the other, and that decision is yours and yours alone. I merely counsel you to underscore your themes with physical events in the world around your characters for the sake of entertaining your audience and creating memorable images. Blood needn't flow after every word, but where would Piggy be without his conch?

Mechanical skill, on the other hand, is an ability gained through talent and practice. If you don't have much talent, then you must practice.

-Duxwing

 

[The Introvert]

After some contemplation, @Duxwing , I think you're right. Nobody wants to read a book about nothing.

It's funny, I had a dream last night about this very topic, and it kind of made me understand what you're talking about. It also gave me some good ideas for set and setting, and theme. I'll start working on it soon, and post the changes in this thread. I just have so much other shit that I have to do right now, and so much stuff that I WANT to do but cannot due to time constraints.

So much to do, so little time..

 

[Duxwing]

After some contemplation, @Duxwing , I think you're right. Nobody wants to read a book about nothing.

It's funny, I had a dream last night about this very topic, and it kind of made me understand what you're talking about. It also gave me some good ideas for set and setting, and theme. I'll start working on it soon, and post the changes in this thread. I just have so much other shit that I have to do right now, and so much stuff that I WANT to do but cannot due to time constraints.

So much to do, so little time..

Over the long term, do not try to find time to do what you want: make time. But over the short term, be patient, friend, and you will find your moments tucked within the ticking of the clock: try practicing your writing in your forum posts.

-Duxwing

 

[Inappropriate Behavior]

This isn't my story or Duxwing's story or J.D. Salinger's story. This is your story and you alone can write it. Yes there are some technical things you can work on. Practice and feedback will help you along the way but you are the only judge as to what feedback you will/should accept. My advice such as it is, is to let it flow from within you. If it covers previously tread ground so what? Maybe you will ultimately cover it better (I didn't like Catcher and thus believe someone will come along and do it better. Maybe it will be you.).

Even if it isn't a crittically acclaimed literary masterpiece, at least you will have gotten it out of you and you can move on to other and perhaps better things.

Keep going if you wish.