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 04:06 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.)
no subject
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.