Subject: Re: [FFML] Writing Practice (Was Evaluating Stories)
From: "Miko" <nausicaa@sprynet.com>
Date: 7/6/1998, 4:57 PM
To:

-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Palmer <jpalmer@best.com>

Hmmm, This has been one of the few threads about general
writing practice, I for one hope to see more discussion.


There's been a great deal of spam lately, but you're right, talking about
how to write and post is not a waste of my time or any writer's time I hope.

In a paperback, there is generaly no white space
between paragraphs, unless the author wishes to
indicate a break in continuity, (Such a delay in time,
or a change of veunue or character.


True.  In a paperback you indent at the begining of a paragraph.  Of course,
indenting plain text can take time (when Word converts to plain text, all of
my nice tab indents go away!)  If you don't indent then a space can indicate
a new paragraph.  I haven't been doing this but I understand why I should do
one or the other.

I really prefer the 'look' of my stories when they are
done up in HTML, and I feel really restricted by the
lack of italics in plaintext.


Yes!  ^_^

My suggestion to authors is to make a clean break
between any houskeeping you feel the need to prepend
to your story, and the story itself.
Try a row of Underscores....

____________________________________________________

Then the Story Name

By Author


Good suggestion... everyone's e-mail readers display differently, anything I
can do to make it easier to read is a good idea...

  Now begin with a really compelling opening sentence
to set the mood. Now another to draw me in. I suggest
you go to your bookshelf and read the opening paragraphs
of 10 or 20 of your favorite books.
  "See, that's how the experts do it," he wrote. "They
learn from the millions of others who've gone before
them." The author shifted stiffly in his chair. "Oh, and
one more thing, the backspace key is your best freind. I
usualy find that if somthing is not working, it's because
the sentence is too long."

Enough.

I think it would be a great thread to go through a few
opening pararaphs from fanfics and really look closely
at them. To pick out what works, and why, and what does
not work, and why.

For example: (From My fic, Autumn.)

   The rake pulled smoothly through the grass,
the leaves bunching and spilling past the sides.
The tines hissed through the grass, the leaves
crackling with each stroke.
         "Every year?" Ranma called across the yard.
         "Every year." Akane replied, pausing to remove
some leaves that had stuck in her rake.


Do you see it?

In the first sentance I have:
"...the grass, the leaves..."
and then I follow it in the second sentence with
"...the grass, the leaves..."

Eeeeeew! It might be 'artistic', but it starts the story
on a -stutter-, and I think it could be improved. Anyone
Want to take a hack at it? Or volunteer their own?

J.


Okay, this is fun and educational.  I like your stories a lot, and I hadn't
really noticed the repeated words... but you're right, the second sentence
doesn't really add a lot to the story.  Hmmmm... assuming I just don't want
to find a completely new opening, I might try to combine the two sentences,
then hack words out until it's short enough and flows well enough...

__________________________________________

          The tines of the rake hissed through the grass.  With
each stroke, leaves crackled and bunched and tumbled to
the sides.
          "Every year?" Ranma called across the yard.
          "Every year." Akane replied, pausing to remove
 the leaves stuck in her rake.
__________________________________________

Well, I'm a different writer than you but that might be how I'd do it.  ^_^
I'm actually temped to play with the snake image that "hissing through the
grass" conjures, but I'd probably only mess everything up...

What about my own stories?  I've only published one so far to the FFML:

>From "Monkey Head Butting"
__________________________________________

 "Oh!  What's this?"

 Kasumi set her laundry basket down on the grass and picked up the strange
object lying at the edge of the stone path.  She turned it over.  It was a
metal broach of some sort, of a dull gray metal, perhaps pewter.  It was
covered in dirt, but from what she could see of it, the front depicted a
rather amusing little monkey's face.

 "How cute!" she exclaimed.
________________________________________

Compelling?  I don't know, but I like to open my story with dialogue,
because it helps me get right to the point.  Nothing kills a reader's
interest more than wandering and meandering for several paragraphs before
you actually start going somewhere.  The above opening at least gets to the
point -- the broach is the device around which my plot spins -- so I manage
to start right at the begining, and that helps a lot.

I have this belief that most of my stories start this way, but a quick
search of the openings of about a dozen of my stories failed to bear that
out.  In fact, I'm afraid that, upon reflection, most of my opening
sentences are not all that compelling.  However, if I may be so bold, here's
the opening for one of my non-anime fan fiction stories which I think starts
pretty well:

>From "Chasing The Lady", an unpublished story for the Tai-Pan fanzine
(sequel to "Tipping The Lady"):
_______________________________

 The Rat was dead.

 I'll tell you right now, I'm no smoker, but I leaned up against the Rat's
side and lit a cigar.  I felt the situation warranted it.  I had more than a
hundred thousand miles to cover in only 24 hours, and my options at the
moment were to walk or learn to fly real quick.

 I took a deep puff and told myself to relax.  Everything would work out
somehow.
____________________________

I like this opening.  The first four words got a big reaction when I read it
at our writer's meeting.  "The Rat" turns out to be "The Desert Rat", the
name of the vehicle that the characters are (were) travelling in, but this
story is set in an anthropomorphic universe, so those four words could mean
several different things.  I think I get people's attention with those first
four words, and that's a good thing.  I don't really lay out the conflict
until the fourth sentence, but if I have the reader's attention, then I'm
doing okay.

I'd toss in some of my less successful openings, but I'm a bit embarassed to
do so...  ^_^

Miko!

"When you really need them the most," he said, "million-to-once chances
always crop up.  Well-known fact."  --Seargent Colon, "Guards, Guards!"
Terry Pratchett

Nausicaa@sprynet.com   Belldandy@angelic.com
Anime rpg at http://come.to/akane/
Fan Fiction at http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/pratchett/199/