KMC Writer's Workshop

Originally posted by Omega Vision
Not once have I heard the professors of the writing department at FSU invoke the Hero's Journey in a serious way. I think it's more for genre fiction, Hollywood script writing, and occasionally analyzing films and literature on a surface level.

Well...

Originally posted by Digi
Campbell actually gets eviscerated at higher levels of academia these days - he's far more popular to a mass market anymore. But he also remains the most fascinating scholar of myth in the last century, so writing about him or reading him is always interesting.

He doesn't get taken seriously because his attempts to overlap myth with pop psychology no longer hold up to scrutiny. Few doubt or disagree with his general Hero's Journey premise, it just doesn't provide the most fertile ground for further literary or historical inquiry when you're trying to reduce everything to its base elements, then leaving it at that. So he's not so much wholly discredited as ignored within academia, because your average historical or writing professor would rather search for something new instead of falling back on known archetypes.

.....

Originally posted by Blair Wind
I'd be interested in learning more about "the white hot center".

I bet you would.

biscuits

😐

Originally posted by Blair Wind
Eventually, if it's not too much of a bother to Digi, I'd like to have the first page or so cleaned up to reflect all the important things added to this thread.

Sure, just not for a little while. it might take come time to amass a large body of material to justify that.

I may lurk here, but I'm also going to bow out of posting in this thread. Most of what I do for a living is write, but don't really touch fiction or adventure writing in a serious way, so this isn't really my thing.

A few simple lessons I've learned over time:

-Remove all non-necessary filters from your writing. (Ex: "She came into the room. I looked at her and saw that she had her aunt's old dress on." --> "She came into the room wearing her aunt's old dress."😉 Filters include heard, saw, felt, smelt, and many other sensory verbs. I'm not sure if 'think' 'believe' 'remember' and 'wonder' count, but I put them under demi-filters and try to check their usage and use them sparingly. In most cases you can avoid using filters --especially more than once in the same sentence--without hurting your sentences.

-Avoid cramming every sentence with 'be' verbs (is, was, to be, would be, does). My Article Technique professor is a real hardass about this, but I don't agree with him that they should be removed scorch-earth style, just reduced to avoid repetitive sentences.

-Try to start off every piece of writing in scene, preferably with a character performing a relevant action. Starting off the story in the narrator/protag's mind or with summary of the backstory is tempting but really hurts your chances of hooking the reader unless you're skilled at getting their attention some other way.

-95% of the time, when dealing with dialogue tags for statements, just say 'says' or 'said'. You don't want your dialogue tags to call attention to themselves with flashy words like "ejaculated" or "declared" unless you're going for a specific effect that can't be reached with a simpler word.

-Always be on the lookout for tense shifting. Nothing makes a piece of writing look more unprofessional and unpolished (well, short of horrendous misspelling/grammatical trainwrecks) than seeing one line where people do things and a line immediately after where people did things despite no shift in narrative time occurring. Tense shifts are for flashbacks.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
95% of the time, when dealing with dialogue tags for statements, just say 'says' or 'said'. You don't want your dialogue tags to call attention to themselves with flashy words like "ejaculated" or "declared" unless you're going for a specific effect that can't be reached with a simpler word.

It's also been shown that most readers overlook these words entirely. It's not worth the effort.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
Tense shifts are for flashbacks.

And high school creative writing assignments. 😐

Originally posted by Digi
It's also been shown that most readers overlook these words entirely. It's not worth the effort.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
-95% of the time, when dealing with dialogue tags for statements, just say 'says' or 'said'. You don't want your dialogue tags to call attention to themselves with flashy words like "ejaculated" or "declared" unless you're going for a specific effect that can't be reached with a simpler word.

If you read novels from the second half of the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century, you'll notice the characters seemed to ejaculate quite frequently. From some recent articles, here's some examples of why writers might avoid using it these days:

"Kyrie Irving said Tuesday that he spoke prematurely when he announced Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski would be Team USA’s Olympic basketball coach for the 2016 Games in Rio."

"Sheriff Dave Brown said he spoke prematurely earlier when he said the death Wednesday appeared to be from a drug overdose."

The following is a direct link to the Marvel Comics C2E2 (which was a blast) Live Blog "Breaking into Comics the Marvel Way". Not sure how many writers here are actively pursuing writing comics specifically, but I found it interesting. It's a bit long to read and most of the stuff was basic kind of knowledge, but it is a general sort of guideline to aspiring writers (and artists) in the industry. Most of what I write down below is a combination of my own personal experiences and the advice given in said blog and I hope it helps in some way.

http://marvel.com/news/story/18473/c2e2_2012_liveblog_central

Generally, it's a good idea to have a portfolio of your work and a strong emphasize was made on social networking and forging positive and genuine relationships with people in the business. Like any job, who you know can help you out immensely, especially since the industry of comics is pretty tight knit and everyone knows of everyone basically. Personally, I found that going to various cons and picking the brains of creators, big time ones and the local ones who aren't as famous, is a great idea. Most of them are personable and can point you in the right direction as far as what you want to do.

Another strong point which was made is that if you want to write comics, then write comics; if you want to draw, then draw. Waiting around for someone to give you permission to write a comic is also not a good idea; you'll need to get work out there and constantly get critique from other writers and peers who will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.

Most companies are also more receptive to someone telling a story about a lesser known/mainstream character than one of their icons. You'll have more leeway in an Ant-Man story than, say, a Spider-Man one. Marvel in particular isn't accepting or looking for "creator owned" characters or anything, but they are always looking for talent.

The best thing to do if you specifically go to a convention is to leave a sample of your work with as many creators as possible (though if you can find an editor, that's even better). Networking seems to be the one thing virtually every creator in comic can agree on as being essential. Getting the e-mails of some of these people would be a great boon, especially if you're able to establish a cordial and friendly relationship with them, not just use them as stepping stones for your own career. Provided you land a job with Marvel or any big company, you'll probably be expected to move to be closer to their headquarters (or be willing to travel a lot), but you can get your start from anywhere, really.

Originally posted by basilisk
If you read novels from the second half of the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century, you'll notice the characters seemed to ejaculate quite frequently. From some recent articles, here's some examples of why writers might avoid using it these days:

"Kyrie Irving said Tuesday that he spoke prematurely when he announced Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski would be Team USA’s Olympic basketball coach for the 2016 Games in Rio."

"Sheriff Dave Brown said he spoke prematurely earlier when he said the death Wednesday appeared to be from a drug overdose."

I'm not sure how relevant this is to the thread, but this is the alphabet for a constructed language I'm toying around with: