What Aspect Of Your Writing Would You Most Like To Improve?

Zeebop

Zeebop

CHYOA Guru
Speaking just for myself...I struggle with dirty talk. Dialogue itself flows fine, I think, but trying to do dirty talk always seems to come across as unnatural, or falls into the same patterns, and eventually devolves into chains of expletives. It's one aspect of my writing I'd really like to work on...get some really good, raunchy dialogue going. I suppose I'll just have to read a bunch of erotic literature and try and find some good examples, pick them apart to see how and why they work.

Part of the problem, I think, is that a lot of the nuance of porn dialogue in film tends to rely strongly on tone and pitch that suggests urgency which is hard to really get across in print.
 
Looking into this forum and seeing people talk for themselves, I think my writing in general needs to be improved.

Granted it could just be that something in my head DEMANDS that I appeal to everyone's taste and replace my entire writing style to how everyone else does it. But if I were to be more honest with myself, I think I could use some improvement on how I write my scenes.

From how I look at others, they can write paragraphs upon paragraphs on how a sex scene goes while I can barely think of one or two comfortable sex positions, not to mention the words that I use are repetitive or just plain bizarre.

Zeebop said:
Part of the problem, I think, is that a lot of the nuance of porn dialogue in film tends to rely strongly on tone and pitch that suggests urgency which is hard to really get across in print.
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This might be bad advice, but at this point I'm willing to just tell you to think of what normal people would shout or say. Watching and learning from porn would be like an alien, trying to communicate with humans, through memes - I don't know how it would ever help.
 
Gambio said:
Describing things.

I tend to not describe anything, beyond the most basic level. Especially characters. Please make up your own mind on how a character looks, because you sure as ain't getting that information from me.
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I'm actually the same way.

I'm also not so great with sex scenes.
 
Zeebop said:
Speaking just for myself...I struggle with dirty talk. Dialogue itself flows fine, I think, but trying to do dirty talk always seems to come across as unnatural, or falls into the same patterns, and eventually devolves into chains of expletives. It's one aspect of my writing I'd really like to work on...get some really good, raunchy dialogue going. I suppose I'll just have to read a bunch of erotic literature and try and find some good examples, pick them apart to see how and why they work.

Part of the problem, I think, is that a lot of the nuance of porn dialogue in film tends to rely strongly on tone and pitch that suggests urgency which is hard to really get across in print.
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Me and you, pal.
I gave myself the explanation that's because I for one don't like dirty talks under most circumstances. And that's all the more true in my own language.
Dirty talks tend to feel and sound either cheesy or dull or simply overly dramatic to me, most of the times at least.

-"Tell me I'm your bitch"
Come on, really?
I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of people that get off with this, but I simply don't.

-"Fuck me"
Was that really needed?

"Ah! Ooh!"
See above.

"Fuck me mommy/daddy/(step)sis/(step)bro"
:rolleyes:

When there's an actual dialogue or a reference to a specific situation, even if uttered in a crude way, that's ok.
 
I'd like to be more able to describe the sensations and emotions I'm imagining the characters experiencing without it sounding like a science report. Sometimes I have an extremely specific idea of how I want a scene to play out, and it's difficult finding the gap between failing to accurately communicate the story I want to tell and bombarding the reader with information that inhibits their own vision of the scene.
 
Brevity would help my stories a fair bit I think. Not always, but I tend to get lost in the weeds and over explain and/or dump too many little extra ideas into scenarios and character moments. It can be good, but I do worry that I end up diluting what I think of as good character moments by always either over explaining it or jamming in some extra few sentences to hint at a future idea that just popped into my head.

Also, the ability to really, truly proofread a chapter before submitting it would be amazing haha. Instead I just half-skim it impatiently and usually read the same clumsy sentence fragment or misspelled word multiple times without catching it. I always feel bad for whoever reads my chapters the day I publish it because inevitably the next day I'll read it again properly and tighten up a few places. Ah well.
 
I'm working on improving my choices. Before I used Zeebop's system where I created a second choice for every ten likes only for those choices to be very slight. I'm trying to avert this with Arizelle Chronicles. I'm gonna try to make one path for each character. I'm also trying to contrast these stories;
  • One about a group of adventurers going on quests.
  • One focusing on a single character with a wider story.
  • One focusing on a damsel in distress.
  • A realpolitiks one.
  • A Romero and Juliet type romance.
  • One about a healer.
  • One about an amnesic hero trying to uncover his identity.
I'm also trying to end these chapters with questions that will make creating a second choice easier.
 
This is an odd one: physical fights between characters or large-scale battles, the first one is the one I struggle with much more. Despite my love for martial arts movies and combat sports, I don't really enjoy writing the fight scene itself as much as I do when writing the reasons behind it. I mean, there's only so many ways to describe punches, kicks, blocks, and basically every offensive and defensive move that is used in a fight. When weapons are added in, my writing is made a bit more coherent and less choppy. On the flip side, hand-to-hand scenes always sound off to me, especially because I'm an avid fighter (on the streets and for sport) IRL. Usually, I feel that reading the scene I wrote actually takes much longer than the fight would in real life. Even if it was extended for dramatic effect (like in a martial arts movie), the scene on paper will have to be much longer to accommodate for the extension. I prefer to gloss over trivial brawls in my stories, but when I write military science fiction (a genre where physical conflict is kind of a requirement), I am forced to do my best.

In terms of writing, large-scale battles can either be easy beyond belief or hard as a pedophile's cock in an elementary school. They also can flow as smoothly as a river or sound as forced as that pedophile raping a child. I usually struggle with large battles when I'm writing in the first person and I feel that a battle is written better from an omniscient point of view. When in the third-person omniscient point of view, battles are definitely easier than fight scenes, but describing the entire event in detail is sometimes challenging. There are so many factors that go into a battle between two armies, and before anyone asks, no firepower and manpower don't win every war. I might not be some armchair general, but just by reading about military history and contemporary conflicts, I can safely say that there's more to a victory than just having more resources than the enemy. Depending on the importance, a battle can be from half a chapter long to half of the whole story. I prefer to keep battles long in the fictional world, but somewhat quick to read. At the same time, I'm forced to also include all the aforementioned details of an armed conflict I spoke about. These two preferences contradict each other, and finding a balance is usually the main point of struggle.
 
Right now? Pacing.

Or at least setting up a question chapter and response chapter.

For example, at the end of a chapter, I'll set up the chapter option as a character's response. Q: "What's on their mind? A: "Wanna try Anal tonight?"

Then I have to find a way to fill up a decent chunk of text for a soliloquy to justify the next chapter answer. Q: "Are you going to do it?" A: "Yes" or "No".

I have managed to work my way out of this sometimes (I think), but I'd prefer to lessen the amount of times it happens.
 
REHoward was immense, and he rattled those pulp stories out quicker than I can write a chapter in CHYOA!
He's available on the Australian Project Gutenberg site more than the international one (must be more lax copyright laws in Australia). Read and re-read everything!
Cannibals with filed teeth; Swashbuckling female pirates; damsels in distress; Genius!

As for RL fight scenes. I cant claim an awful lot of experience, but my recollection is exact for the few times I've been involved. Time slows down to a fraction of its normal speed and you tend to be aware of everything. So a probably 30 second encounter (which felt like 15 minutes), 20 years ago - I could describe it in detail now.

My main drawback is (apart from a general lack of ability), a tendency to rush to get stuff out, so, far too many grammatical and other errors due to a lack of proofreading etc.

As for getting sex scene corny dialog, I'm going to head over to a webcam site, throw a few tokens around and take notes of what is said.
 
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