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 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.