Tuesday Woes.

[silveradept]

Well, half-woes. Actually, no, full-bore woes. Went to see a prof at his posted office hours today, and he wasn't in. Which sucks. So I think I'm going to pester him even more when I see him next. I still don't really understand the nature of the project, and on Thursday I'll only have a week to write it. And, one other problem being that I'm going to have my weekend eaten up by the U*CON gaming convention. Oh fsck. I just realized that I have to be Elsewhere after class that day, specifically for U*CON. Godsdammit! Guess I'm floundering a tad and then trying to make it up. Maybe I will poll my classmates as well to see if I can't glean some idea of procedure and idea out of it. It's not due for another week, and if I know what I'm doing, I can crank the paper out in a single night. I just need to know what I'm doing. So, at the moment, I'm working on dutifully filling up space for all my other assignments.

Interesting thought - the schizophrenic might actually see better than you do. Or at least not be fooled by a visual illusion as easily. Additionally, if one should hear a mouse sing, that's okay. They can sing a few bars. You're not going crazy. No more than I am, anyway.

In politics, more than merely the game is afoot. One could read volumes into the Democrats forcing a closed-door session of the Congress, but frankly, it's better to let them speak for themselves. Mr. Reid, you have the floor.

In other weirdness, yet another person posits what makes fantasy good. As if somehow, good fantasy is separate from writing good stories in the first place. The rules of engagement are simply different, that is all. If you build a believable world and characters and such, you will succeed most of the time. It's not that difficult, is... oh, fine. So it is hard. But only because you have to compete with the other hundred and a half thousand books that other people have written and that are trying to squeeze yours off their shelves. But seriously, it can't be that hard, now can it?

...no harder than all the writing that I've already done, right? *eyes his undergraduate career*

Comments

on the subject of Harry Reid.

[bossgoji.livejournal.com]

Startling medical discovery: Democrats locate own testicles.

Re: on the subject of Harry Reid.

[silveradept]

Funny, a lot of other people came to the same conclusion - it would appear that at the moment, at least certain members of the Democratic party have found or constructed testicles. Perhaps we will see them using actual spines soon?

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember reading a quote from some writer about that exact thing. They had a single step that didn't need a lot of elaboration "Write something with engageing charecters and give them something interesting to do."

One of the biggest problems I have with lists like "How to write good (fill in genre here) novels" is that most of them are totally useless beyond the personal preferances of the list writer. There are some good points in there, but also some very bad or at least useless ones.

[silveradept]

Plus, the audience likes such a wide variety of things, from high-magic Tolkien clones to very sci-fantsay sorts of novels, that trying to write according to one list won't do. That only works for the Harlequin Romances.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Exactly, besides there are books where nothing on this list would matter. Take Simon R Green's Deathstalker series, or indeed everything he's ever written. By all acounts the guy has only actually written one book, over and over again, but no one's minded yet. They've all noticed, but they don't seem to care, he's got style, flair, wit and most of all banter. The books are bantatisc evidently.

Really all you need to know is your audience.

[silveradept]

And that works for any book - know what audience you're writing for. If it exists, and you do well, then you'll sell well. If it doesn't exist yet, you hope that it spawns into existence because of your book. But don't expect to do as well, unless you become the breakout hit for some reason. I do not quite understand why Harry Potter suddenly rose up - the books themselves are relatively unremarkable in comparison to everything else on the fantasy shelves...


...guess she knows her audience (although if you heard the shippers scream such bloody murder about HBP stuff, (stuff which I haven't read yet, by the way) you'd think she had no clue who they were.)

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

The Harry Potter books sprung up because they are the most cliche things that have ever been set to paper, but in a good way. (although, good is under debate) They use every element that has been sucseful to date. Recycled stuff is often very well recived, it just needs to be shifted enough to look newish. Look at Star Wars or Indiana Jones carefully, they are also extremly cliche. E.T. was the biggest movie ever made at the time and it's just a boy and his dog story with a few changes.

Shippers are annoying twonks who were going to get mad no matter what. Most of them need slapped with an angry carp.

[silveradept]

I'm not necessarily comfortable with that view that to sell well, all you have to do is disguise the old that you're playing off of. If that's true, then the value of innovation gets considerably stifled as everyone rushes to figure out their take on the old.

Of course, by thinking about it, I realize that it's an accurate statement, even if it's not a likeable one.

Maybe if I point some guns walkie-talkies at the various industries and get them to start thinking innovatively, things will be better. If not, well, I can always re-enact a scene or two from Dogma to show why rehashing old stuff is bad.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

The key is doing something new in the genre. It's like Jazz or the Blues. It's not the key you play it in, but the soul you sing it with.