What kind of experience do you think improves your writing and stories?

Maybe this is my inner Forrest MacNeil talking, but I think the more I write about my fantasy cocaine equivalent, the more I should actually go out and you know, try the stuff.

 

There’s definitely some fantasies that are perhaps better not actually experiencing in real life. No matter how much you fantasize about meth or prison, they’re only glorious until you actually get involved and then you end up screwed.

 

I dont know, I've stopped watching plenty of movies halfway through that would suggest cocaine is a pretty wild time.

 

I'm sure that it is a pretty wild time until you wake up in an unfamiliar place with a sex toy stuck in your behind and leaking various bodily fluids that may or may be be your own.

Then you find out that the person sleeping in the sofa across the room isn't waking up, you hope the fluids you're leaking is only semen, the sex toy has to be surgically removed, and you aren't exactly sure how to explain to the doctors why you don't remember how it got stuck up there.

Then the police get involved, you go to jail, and...well....similar experiences can be found there probably.

 

I don't think it has to be interacting. Just observing should be sufficient.

In published works, dialogs are usually different from the way humans speak as well.
It's usually reduced to the necessary information. The grammar would be rather like you write and less conversational speech.

Though dialogs on CHYOA are different in a different way.

 

Look, I'm writing a non-con story. Some creative liberties have to be taken.

 

Shakespeare has most of his characters speaking in rhyming iambic pentameter which I very rarely hear in real life conversational speech. My stuff is much more realistic than that!

 

Even after majoring in English, I still don’t understand iambic pentameter. Something about lots of stress and unstress… sounds like yoga tbh. But also if characters in books and movies and whatever talked liked people, we wouldn’t really be able to understand them because of the interrupted thought and short cuts people like to take when speaking. Especially when you’re dealing with people with ADD/ADHD who make zero sense 80% of the time they’re talking because the brain moves on so much faster than what they just said and now suddenly we’re talking about sex instead of food and then sex turns into drugs and then suddenly we’re in New York and it makes absolutely zero sense but we as humans understand it… or at least comprehend it, but when it’s written down on paper, it looks really bizarre

 

Definitely lots of practice, in my opinion, but also reading other good works and deconstructing how good authors write goods stories from there. Sometimes I check online articles on how to write properly.

 

Definitely it isn’t enough to say I want to write like JK or I want to write like Riordan or I want to write like Shakespeare. You have to first understand WHY you like to read Rowling’s work or WHY Shakespeare is as revered as he is. What makes his plays so good? Or even simply if you just want to look at ASSTR or DeviantArt or Wattpad or even here on CHYOA and you find someone’s writing really good, figure out why? What makes their writing so appealing? Is it the way they describe scenes? The way they pace out an actual plot? Is it the emotions they convey? If so, how do you convey such emotions? It’s not enough to just copy, but to also understand why and how and how to replicate a style similar but not the same.

 

You're right. I read a lot of Hemingway a little while ago, and although I could see it was brilliant it took me a while to figure out why. One story I liked was "Big two hearted river". A quick summary of it is, a guy goes fishing for a couple of days and catches two fish. But shit the online critics read so much more into it like - you can see the narrator must have had a terrible war. Anyway, I tried deconstructing another of his stories and using the techniques and structure to write one of my own (non-erotic). Damn, but it was the best thing I've ever written. I was in tears finishing it.

 

I think people sometimes forget the saying “you get what you pay for”. Of course what I write for free isn’t going to be the quality of what I write for payment or for class. Sometimes people just want to write casually without really caring about the outcome. It doesn’t mean they’re lazy. And maybe more effort could be put into the stuff on CHYOA. But I mean we’re talking about a free, online site, and that does factor into the quality of work people produce.

I know that sometimes I could try a little bit harder, but other times I’m managing 20 different stories, I just want to pump stuff out. It’s almost like expecting oscar winning talent from porn movie and videos. It’s just not realistic expectations especially on pornhub. That’s not to say all adult films are bad, but the ones that are free aren’t going to be nearly as quality as the ones you pay for. It’s just consumerism.

I try to produce quality work everytime, but at the same time it’s not like I’m stressing about producing something that has a sponsor tied to it and therefore feel more pressure to make sure it’s of quality.

I do agree that experience helps immensely. When I read back the stuff I wrote when I was 12 versus now, the difference is night and day. I have more experience writing now, I have more experience in general, and I also don’t have the naive tunnel visioned mind that everything I write is a masterpiece or has to be a masterpiece.

I think I also have a very fatalist attitude in a way. If it’s going to happen, it will happen, but I’m not going to go out of my way to make it happen which also ties into my work. If I have an idea, I’ll write it, if not, I’ll put it to the side. If that means the story just ends, then I guess that’s just what it’s going to be.

 

I've read more Tolkien's work in Lotr, but there's also a fair share of Warcraft and Warhammer novels I've read over the years, including some new series I've been trying like Throne of Glass. Tolkien's portraying of emotions and the scars of war is what strikes me deeply the most, and in Warcraft and Warhammer it's in the portrayal of gritty war scenes that get me riveted on my seat. What I like in Warcraft the most, however, is the sort of getting-to-the-point writing that doesn't splurge words on descriptions, and I find I prefer that kind of balance between emotional portrayal, description of the world and linear progression that keeps the reader absorbed.

As such, when I write, I prefer to keep the description as concise and simple as possible but still interesting, so as to maintain an even pacing that doesn't feel draggy.

 

I agree that descriptions can at times feel not only like a waste of space sort of but also awkwardly placed. I mean, I tend to put all the information up front just because of the way the stories are usually formatted, but at the same time, does the protagonist really know by site that someone is 32DD? Or do they really know if someone is 6’2” by sight. It’s that type of stuff that is so obvious for the reader that it almost takes you out of the moment.

I think the better way is that if your protagonist already has an established height and you’re writing in first person or third person limited, then just say. “The woman approached towering over me. She had to be at least a few inches taller than me” versus “the woman looked 6’2” and had big boobs…” it also kind of makes your character seem a bit shallow if the first thing they notice is boobs. I mean same, but like… they just happen to know boob sizes so well?

I think what a lot of us authors like to do is info dump the first chance we meet them, but the best authors find subtle ways to express the same information. For example, if you’re saying. “The boy’s eyes reminded me of a clear night sky.” You kind of get the sense that they’re probably dark blue versus. “His eyes were dark blue.”

I’ll admit I tend to be bad at pacing. I play all my cards way too early and then I’m left empty handed by the 10th chapter. Perhaps if I didn’t info dump so much or I didn’t get immediately to the action right away, I wouldn’t necessarily be struggling as much to come up with more ideas or abandoning branches.

I understand that a lot of this genre does rely on visuals which is why description is important, but tell me…. Will knowing if a character is 6’0” vs 6’2” really make the difference of how you visualize someone? I think maybe sometimes we don’t really need the very specific details that are often given.

 

People-watching. Listening to conversations. Capturing moments of your experience to describe vividly in a story.

 

When I revisited Lord of the Rings, the portrayal of how trauma leaves its marks really jumped out at me. Frodo in particular, cringing away from Sam who has come to rescue him from the orcs at Cirith Ungol, and after the Scouring of the Shire, how nightmares haunt him. But I can read it as a running theme.

 

I don't like when a story starts with complete character descriptions.
Why should I spend 5 minutes reading something if I don't know if a story is interesting enough to read?
And if all details of a character (or even more characters) are described at once, it is unlikely that I can remember until they are relevant.

Even if the protagonist would be able to determine the perfect fit bra size of a woman doesn't mean that it is useful information for the reader. (As discussed in the bra size thread.)