Tip-Top Writing Tips

Sooooo...these are just a few observations I picked up here and there concerning writing and tips thereof :3

take everything with 1 pillar of salt, after meals

BEING A WRITER

1. Be observant. I find that often overhearing conversations or seeing something as mundane as, say, an empty bus, is enough to trigger a thought process. Thought processes are good stuff.

2. Be knowledgable. The more information there is in your head, the more stuff there is for a brain to connect facts and events and ideas to. You could be reading about a controlled nuclear detonation in the 1960s and you might suddenly start thinking about soil liquefaction! And then you would have a story about shockwaves in the Earth created by nuclear detonations that lie dormant, waiting to strike. Or something (that was a really stupid example. Dammit). You also don't have to look things up as much, and won't have to go back and correct a story because one of your (human) characters does something humanly impossible like jump 50 meters across a superhighway.

3. On that point, know your measures! It's a common problem of mine: I cannot actually envision a distance more than a meter. It gets difficult past about 5. And a kilometer is actually beyond my comprehension. This is why I have been guilty of creating kilometer-high towers (i.e. BIG ONTO THE SUN) in stories before, by dint of needing a tower and not really understanding how high up a kilometer is.

...that's probably why I'm also failing at Astrophysics. DAMN YOU PARSECS AND LIGHTYEARS AND ASTRONOMICAL UNITS

4. Sleep less. Sleep-deprived ideas, unlike drunk ideas, are the best ideas. Also maybe get sick into the bargain, fever dreams have created some of the most lasting literature of our time (actually, all the ones I can think of were drug abuse. But don't do that. In fact, don't do this either, it's not good for you and you build up a resistance to coffee).

WRITING A GRAND BATTLE

1. Past tense. It's the standard and violating it leads to demonphones. Fair warning.

2. Talk to people. Talk to your fellow authors, your Grandmaster, talk to your peers and your pets. Don't talk to strangers unless they are suitably arty and have a beret (even if it is just to steal it). Discuss plans and things, because a noninteracting character is a bad bad eliminatey character.

3. Throw yourself into it. This is a competition, people! Burning daylight and daylight does not burn pretty. Even though GBs can last for a long time, don't let this fool you. Your GM may decide to move things along in the blink of an eye, and where does that leave you? Make plans, enact them, and keep writing the best you possibly can!

IDEAZ

1. Write them down. Cannot stress this enough - write. them. down. It's said (well, Douglas Adams said as far as I know) that the human brain can only juggle seven things consciously at the same time. You can bet if you don't write your brilliant idea down it'll be gone like a breeze, off to be had by a more determined and focused writer, and your head will be full of useless things like 'I left the oven on' and 'my house is on fire now, claim responsibility or insurance?'

2. Research them. Chances are, something similar's been done. If there has been, look at it and see if you can have another take at it or can improve on it. If there hasn't (or Google says there hasn't) then learn as much information as you can on the subject! You don't want a critical part of the story to hinge on an erroneous fact. It's possibly your sources are misinformed.

3. Don't toss any. There is no such thing as 'too stupid' or 'intractable' or 'I can't write this'. Even if it's a cheese who falls in love with a rainbow and lives in a magical land with a pile of dollar bills who like to go walksies in the real world and cause inflation. There's got to be something in there worth using. At least the cheese is imaginarily nommy. :3

...So yes! I'm going to have to cut this short because it's late, but feel free to post up your own comments and tips and ideas and cheeses! <3 you all, night night

I am sleepy and hankering to post in this'ere fine forum but when it comes to Grand Battles: A post needs to be a story in of itself. It needs exposition, rising tension, then a resolution and finally a hook for someone else if you're feeling generous. It's not really enough for it to just be a narration - a segment of the Grand Battle's story.

Of course, a meandering tangent that doesn't advance the round or battle's plot's no good either, but a compromise needs to be struck. If you devote your post to telling the Grand Battle's story, it comes out a sterile commentary. It's relying on external forces (read: other writers) to give it context. Not only that, it's not as nice to read as a post that's a story in of itself - kind of like reading one paragraph in a book, instead of a chapter. Or something. I'm tired; bugger off.

My main piece of advice: Try to write every day. It's what I do, and I think it's made it a lot easier to write when I need to. If I don't have any ideas, I'll just write a silly story about whatever pops into my head, not even particularly caring about the quality.

One thing I like to do is keep an eye out for details. Little things that have made their way into the story that can have interesting consequences beyond wherever they were introduced. Sometimes you work in two minor plot points just because they were convenient at the time, and then you realize you can do something great just by putting both of them together.

Raise the stakes! This is particularly relevant to Grand Battles, but it's useful in general. Stories are always about some sort of conflict, and a stagnant conflict ultimately gets boring to follow. You don't necessarily have to make the conflict grow in scope, or get worse; revealing new aspects to the conflict, such as how another character is affected by it, can also raise the stakes.

Of course, there's got to be a balance. If you focus entirely on raising the stakes, you may forget to actually have your characters accomplish anything in the process. Resolving a conflict, even a relatively minor one, is like ending a story; and one of the main reasons we follow stories is to see how they end. If your story's long enough, why only give us an ending once? Give us a bunch of little resolutions along the way. They can still advance the larger story, but every smaller resolution, if done well, makes the overall plot that much more memorable.

This applies to any writing but I'm going to be talking about it specifically in an adventure context:

Show, don't tell! I'm sure all of you had heard that before but I see a specific form of it when it comes to adventures. I see adventures who put paragraphs under every panel, explaining the mechanisms of the world or the character's interests or something.

Why are you telling us this? You have the story right here don't you? Oftentimes a story will come to those points that are described eventually, in which these things mentioned will have to be drawn. So why mention it? You can save it for when you have to draw those panels. That's showing and not telling.

Sometimes refraining from going on long descriptions can help in the long run. Back when I did Godquest I slowly introduced the concept of demons. I didn't say the first demon I showed was a demon, just that he wasn't a god. That led to people speculating about what that meant, aka, more reader involvement, just because I didn't use one noun to describe this character! It was a good feeling and someone said he actually felt surprised when I formally introduced the concept of demons, and linked it back to the first character.

So really, you're doing your story a great benefit by easing up on the text. Just let the panels do the talking, and introduce mechanics and character backstories and whatever else only when they're actually coming into play!

So, for example, someone asked if you can have extra pinches or plot turns in a story. A plot turn primarily just represents a discovery or a decision, and a pinch is just anything bad that puts pressure on the characters, so yes, you can have as many as you want. They will not be, in my opinion, actual pinches or plot turns in terms of story structure—they won’t represent the same thing for the broader story arc—but you can and should have them, because a story that only has seven scenes or events is probably too short for anything other than a very short story.

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I think saying those two points "aren't good advice" is an oversimplification. It's definitely good to get in the habit of writing down your ideas; that doesn't mean you should use all of them in one story, but one of those ideas might lead you to write another story later. Or you might have an idea that's terrible and stupid, but through some chain of mental associations, leads you to a good idea.

Likewise, on adding plot points - okay, I will agree that adding them just to make it longer isn't the best idea. But thinking about adding plot points is going to be helpful. Heck, it could even be helpful to write a scene, then decide it doesn't really fit and put it aside; maybe the process will give you ideas about your characters, plot, or setting that you still want to work into the final product, just not in that particular way. Or it could make you think about another story you want to tell later!

I guess a better way of putting both of those would be "always consider new ideas for your story; don't always actually use them."

Going back to the idea of main ideas: one main idea. Things should relate to this main idea. If you want to have ancillary ideas too, that's fine; just remember, one main idea. If there's a prevailing mood or theme you want to portray, every single character should either contribute to that mood/theme or be affected by the prevailing mood.

The setting should allow the main idea to develop, acting as a catalyst. The plot should convey the main idea as something tangible coming to pass with its effects on the characters (and setting. The characters should humanize the main idea by illustrating what effects it has on relatable characters like you and me.

This is really helpful advice which I'll keep in mind!

Get a real, physical bulletin board. Get some note-cards and thumbtacks. Outline in whatever organizational scheme makes sense to you.