Write Every Day: 04 August 02019
Aug. 4th, 2019 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptGreetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-in post for 04 August 02019.
I was worried I was going to run out of things to talk about during these days, but then, as part of previous linklists that I hadn't gotten to, suddenly, material appeared! So thank you, people who didn't know this was going to be needed, for helping me find things to talk about.
In this case, it'sdolorosa_12 talking about narrative dealbreakers, those parts of a story that aren't tropes that need to die and stay dead, but that will fling you out of a story all the same. One of the big ones that will do it to me is if the worldbuilding becomes obviously inconsistent with itself, and there's no hint from the narrative that this situation is odd or will be explainable later. I also tend to get shirty at characters that start behaving inconsistently without there being a reasonable explanation as to why. The Giving of Grief had a character that everyone acknowledged was behaving wildly out of character for themselves, but then, to a person, decided that it wasn't worth investigating, and instead that it was just a woman being her incomprehensible self. And this is why the Giving of Grief contains swear words.
What are the things that throw you from a story, even though they're not necessarily inherently terrible?
Today I put in a couple of paragraphs on an assignment, but really, a lot of what I was doing was re-ripping and putting together video content. Not because I'm making a vid or anything, but because I wanted to have single-file versions of a few things in my video collection that I didn't have before. I'm struggling a bit with the characterization in this assignment, because I'm trying to believably depict someone who is torn between going all in and risking the potential disaster that comes from that and not going all the way in, but risking the wrath of the person they need to accomplish their goals. It's tricky.
People who have checked in with writing on Day 1:alexcat, alexseanchai, athaia, auroracloud, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, magnetic_pole, sanguinity, shopfront, silveradept, sonia, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme.
People who have checked in with writing on Day 2:alexcat, alexseanchai, athaia, auroracloud, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, magnetic_pole, sanguinity, shopfront, silveradept, sonia, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme.
People who have checked in with writing on Day 3:alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, magnetic_pole, sanguinity, shopfront, silveradept, sonia, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, yasaman, ysilme.
People who have checked in with writing on Day 4:alexseanchai, auroracloud, bladespark, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, magnetic_pole, sanguinity, shopfront, silveradept, sonia, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme.
I was worried I was going to run out of things to talk about during these days, but then, as part of previous linklists that I hadn't gotten to, suddenly, material appeared! So thank you, people who didn't know this was going to be needed, for helping me find things to talk about.
In this case, it's
dolorosa_12 talking about narrative dealbreakers, those parts of a story that aren't tropes that need to die and stay dead, but that will fling you out of a story all the same. One of the big ones that will do it to me is if the worldbuilding becomes obviously inconsistent with itself, and there's no hint from the narrative that this situation is odd or will be explainable later. I also tend to get shirty at characters that start behaving inconsistently without there being a reasonable explanation as to why. The Giving of Grief had a character that everyone acknowledged was behaving wildly out of character for themselves, but then, to a person, decided that it wasn't worth investigating, and instead that it was just a woman being her incomprehensible self. And this is why the Giving of Grief contains swear words.What are the things that throw you from a story, even though they're not necessarily inherently terrible?
Today I put in a couple of paragraphs on an assignment, but really, a lot of what I was doing was re-ripping and putting together video content. Not because I'm making a vid or anything, but because I wanted to have single-file versions of a few things in my video collection that I didn't have before. I'm struggling a bit with the characterization in this assignment, because I'm trying to believably depict someone who is torn between going all in and risking the potential disaster that comes from that and not going all the way in, but risking the wrath of the person they need to accomplish their goals. It's tricky.
People who have checked in with writing on Day 1:
alexcat, alexseanchai, athaia, auroracloud, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, magnetic_pole, sanguinity, shopfront, silveradept, sonia, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme.People who have checked in with writing on Day 2:
alexcat, alexseanchai, athaia, auroracloud, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, magnetic_pole, sanguinity, shopfront, silveradept, sonia, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme.People who have checked in with writing on Day 3:
alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, magnetic_pole, sanguinity, shopfront, silveradept, sonia, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, yasaman, ysilme.People who have checked in with writing on Day 4:
alexseanchai, auroracloud, bladespark, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, magnetic_pole, sanguinity, shopfront, silveradept, sonia, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme. 
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 04:50 am (UTC)And I hate changing PoV in the middle of an emotionally intense bit. I think I only successfully managed it in "Suppose I Do", and that was half because the two conversations could not be conveyed via the same PoV and half because neither the simultaneity nor the narrative parallels could be conveyed half so easily if the two conversations were to be read sequentially instead of cutting back and forth.
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Date: 2019-08-05 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 05:12 am (UTC)I mean I absolutely could have D walk in, for any of three values of D, but then attention would have to shift from these clowns sitting down to talk about their feelings to making sure D continues to know fuck-all?
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Date: 2019-08-05 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 05:21 am (UTC)Also reading Good Omens fics I've realized that making God a character is 99.99% of the time a bad idea and I really hate it. If you involve God directly as somebody who acts and intervenes in your narrative, you instantly bring to bear every single philosophical and moral debate about things like the problem of evil and the nature of free will, and most stories reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally do not need that stuff cluttering up their plots. Leave God out of it, seriously. So far I've seen exactly one GO fic that brings God in that I liked, and it was just for a single line.
And I've ranted elsewhere about the problem of thousand+ year old characters being virgins and then suddenly deciding to bang for no reason other than Finally Meeting The One. That soooooooooooooooooo doesn't work. If a character is so disconnected from sex and/or so disconnected from people that they've never met *anybody* at all they were attracted to in literal multiple lifetimes, then your story had better given them a damn good reason to suddenly be interested now. (Funnily enough this bothers me not at all in Good Omens fandom, because the angel and demon in that had a really good reason to not get too close to each other, and the canon story removed that reason right at the end, ergo...)
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 05:24 am (UTC)The sex dealbreaker makes sense if you're writing something where the person who thinks they're in love turns out to be wrong, but otherwise, no, sex is not that kind of magic.
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Date: 2019-08-05 05:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 04:41 pm (UTC)But I'm leaving on vacation in minutes; maybe the backbrain can solve it while I'm gone.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 05:55 am (UTC)Not sure if this counts as a narrative dealbreaker, but I guess it can be folded into a larger dealbreaker: epithets. I despise them. In close third person POV where the POV character does, in fact, know the other person's name, they throw me out of the POV. Even when the POV character doesn't know the other person's name, so many epithets strike me as actively OOC for the POV character, and in fact, not especially natural for any average person's POV. My epithet hatred is part of the larger narrative dealbreaker that is consistent use of language, descriptions, etc., that isn't in character, or is otherwise implausible for the POV character to use or notice. If a narrative breaks any close POV like that, it loses me.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 03:56 pm (UTC)So something like using a title in place of a name is a thing that doesn't work for you? I'm trying to think of a good example and my brain is not helpfully providing any.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 09:49 pm (UTC)lol you might just be reading better fic than I am. I'm thinking of epithets like "the blond" and "the brunette" and "the smaller man" or "the younger man." Using a title is preferable when the POV character does not in fact know the other person's name, or where the name isn't important, since I think that's the norm for most people, i.e., "the barista" or "the bus driver" or whatever. It's when the POV character does in fact know the other person's name, and yet, the narration is still using the likes of "the wizard" or "the captain", that I feel flames on the side of my face. There are very few circumstances in which I'm okay with such epithets. I know a lot of writers use them because they think it avoids confusion when two or more characters have the same pronouns, but epithets are not the solution! The solution is to structure your sentences more clearly, use actual names, or let context do its job.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-06 12:33 am (UTC)oh I've definitely done it myself too, especially with "the other man" because somehow that doesn't always ping as an epithet to me. just some time in recent years, it's started to especially infuriate me.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 07:00 am (UTC)5th: 173 words, purely because I wanted to check in with more than just an alibi sentence. It's mostly been a day of to-do lists and minor adulting, with a little bit of meta discussion on the side.
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Date: 2019-08-05 03:56 pm (UTC)Are there a lot of K-dramas where the problem is his personality?
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Date: 2019-08-05 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-06 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 12:29 pm (UTC)Day 4 was supposed to be the day I returned to editing the "ambush project" novel (that's the time travel lesbian romance that ambushed the lesbian space opera, in case you were wondering), but I wasn't feeling it--I mean, PROFOUNDLY was not feeling it. So I did a little flash fiction thing instead, which may or may not ever see the light of day, and called it a win.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 03:59 pm (UTC)I don't know how much tone-shifting I do, but I do have to watch out for giving characters knowledge they don't have or shifting perspective without a scene break, as I tend to want to write the most important thing going on from the perspective of the character that best understands it at the time.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 04:06 pm (UTC)Hmm, a lot of my dealbreakers seem to have to do with values stuff and how various (disenfranchised) groups are portrayed, for example gender stereotypes/roles that I hate, harmful tropes etc. For example, I really hate it when a woman getting/remaining/returning together with a formerly abusive man is shown as a happy ending just because the man seems nicer and more appreciative now. And being expected to believe in a romance between two characters just because they're of the opposite sexes and have spent a lot of time interacting with each other, even if there hasn't actually been even a dash of actual romantic chemistry that I could feel. People writing same-sex pairings usually bother to actually establish an attraction and interest, but writers with a firmly het mindset sometimes believe simply that man + woman = love. Equally, I tend to hate the "only one woman in the cast, who is Super Extra Special" tropes, but it varies a bit depending on how it's handled - sometimes it can just be a factor of the setting or very limited cast of characters and not feel like misogyny in camouflage. And oh, I really really hate it when female characters have no meaningful relationships with other women, or when the only women in the story hate each other or are rivals or jealous of each other.
I also hate it when friendship, especially between women, is present in the narrative only in order to break down, turn into emotional abuse, etc. There aren't enough friendship stories around that I care to constantly see stories just about friendships being venomous
I also have a knee-jerk hatred of Bury Your Gays* and all kinds of homophobia; and while I must admit to being less sensitive to harmful tropes involving POC and trans people due to not having such a personal relationship to the topic (also I live in a fairly ethnically monolithic country, so POC issues haven't been that present in the discussion here until recently), the more I learn about them the more I hate them when I notice them in the story, and they can turn me off as well.
*(I don't mean gay/lesbian/bi characters, or members of other minorities, should never ever die, because of course bad stuff can happen to anyone, but if the only representatives of those groups end up dying, and especially if that part of the plot isn't so well handled, it really easily starts to feel like invoking that trope and I get angry and upset.)
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Date: 2019-08-05 04:26 pm (UTC)There are a lot of tropes that just could go away and never return, and we would be entirely happy with that. A lot of the ones you're talking about fit into that category for me as well.
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Date: 2019-08-05 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-07 07:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 07:45 pm (UTC)Or alternatively when I do believe that the characters would be parted by a problem, I am usually confused about why they were together in the first place *facepalm* My wife and I both have a very low tolerance for romantic drama in RL and sometimes side-eye friends and family about the same, so I suspect this is at least in part a me thing than a writers thing, but it's my personal bugbear.
Checking in for both the 4th and pre-emptively again for today/the 5th. Mostly just polishing fics again, though I did manage to add a decent chunk of words fleshing out one of them and I'm much happier with it now as a result, phew.
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Date: 2019-08-05 11:26 pm (UTC)Hooray for adding words. That's always nice.
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Date: 2019-08-05 09:41 pm (UTC)The narrative thing is an interesting question. This is super hypocritical given my own behavior in real life, but I don't like too many "I love you"s or endearments. Odd, hm? :) Thanks for asking! M.
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Date: 2019-08-05 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-06 03:39 am (UTC)worldbuilding can be a bar
no subject
Date: 2019-08-06 03:52 am (UTC)