(no subject)

[tryslora]

Discussion topic!

As writers, we all have things we fall back on. As readers, there are things that we spot in other writers' pieces that they tend to include.

These are our tells. Our comfort zones, our usual spaces.

As a writer, do you know what your tells are? Can you think of a particular theme or style that all of your fics (or many of them) tend to include? Is there something that you tend towards that you'd like to learn to move past? What are your comfort zones and how can you step out of them?

And how can you use those comfortable spaces to help you take slow steps into new places? Think of ways to write something you've never written, but wrap the comfortable blanket of something familiar within those new words. When I wrote a piece about suicide (a topic that makes me particularly uncomfortable), I made sure to include two things to help me along: a sympathetic Neville who was half in love with Harry, and a hopeful (if ambiguous) ending. Knowing I had those two rocks of my foundation to lean on let me stretch other wings along the way.

When you read, do you notice an author's tells? I'm talking either for fic or for published work here. Deconstructing how a writer builds stories helps us learn how to build our own. What are some typical tropes you've noticed authors use. And if you're not comfortable talking about someone without their permission, feel free to pick on me. I could start listing my tells, but with so many fests ongoing, I'm not sure it wouldn't help me break anon!

Comments

[eidheann_writes]

There are a couple authors I notice the tells for. How oldenuf2nb tends to describe Draco, for example. I wouldn't say I spot her stuff 100% of the time, but I'd say I'm in the 90% range for anon-fests.

As for my tells... Angst and flangst. I would love to be able to write fluff, but I've never managed anything I'd consider fluffy without a helping of angst to see it along. And it seems that whenever I try, I always end up with something sneaking in, even if it's totally not part of my original plans.

[birdsofshore]

Great topic. Mine are mostly bad habits I think, from being a crappy writer. Adverbs feature heavily. I just got a fic back with "embarrassedly" frowned at twice, and it wasn't the first time :D

I think I have a wide vocabulary, but I notice I use a lot of the same words fairly frequently. I also put cheesy jokes in if I'm losing confidence in my ability to hold the reader's attention. And my characters talk too much, don't do an awful lot, and blaspheme all the ruddy time.

[crazyparakiss.livejournal.com]

Mpreg, copious amounts of angst, characters not being able to open up, stubborn attitudes that lead to misunderstandings and hurts, dialog heavy. Man, I dialog like WHOA. Also I have a tendency to make people hurt one another, like the more in love they are the more likely they are to hurt one another. I've had complaints about that but I won't stop because I like that part of my writing XD

Um, honestly I wish I did scene better. Like what's going on in the world around them and I wish I was better at showing and not telling. I wish I was better at everything. As far as I am concerned I am a shit writer and could always use improvements. XD

I find fluff uncomfortable. It always is very forced if I write it and I really don't want to learn how to write fluff. But that's just me.

IDK if I notice things about other people's writing. I mean if I don't like the way something is done then I skim read cause I don't want to read it with a cynical eye I just want to enjoy the fic.

[germankitty]

I can't do short. Be it stories or sentences, I always end up with too much. (My average length for a fic is between 16K and 60K (!); the shortest I've EVER written is still over 2K.) As for sentence length, I've learned to stop and cut up once I reach 4 lines or so. *facepalm*

May have to do with being ESL, though -- my native German tends towards long, intricate clauses. In short, Hemingway I ain't. :)

Oh yeah, and add me to Adjective/Adverb Abusers Anonymous, please. *sigh*

Hemingway is overrated.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

Vastly so. Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Sir Walter, Robert Louis Stevenson: none of them the worse for length and intricacy.

Re: Hemingway is overrated.

[germankitty]

Thanks for trying to be kind, but ... given that I don't particularly care for any of these authors, I'm not exactly brimming over with confidence. *wry grin*

Actually, off the top of my head I can't list any British author who'd be among my favourites ... except maybe Georgette Heyer. (I dont want to judge JKR on Harry Potter alone.)

[khalulu]

Draco has biscuits. Once Harry is invited to eat one, and does. Once he is invited, but doesn't. Once he isn't invited, but does anyhow. (I am not a prolific writer and did not plan this.) Also, meeting by the shore. Draco is often in swimming trunks at the time. Odd place, the subconsious.

[blossomdreams.livejournal.com]

Fluff, fluff, fluff many of my fics are fluffy and I love it. I've come to accept the fact that there are many authors that can do dark!fic and angst better than me so I try to fill in the spots with fluff. Though I have received comments where someone said my things were too fluffy and made them happy. I suppose there's nothing I can do about that. Another thing that is found in many of my fics is sexy times, dialogue, side characters playing a role in helping the main, mpreg now, and themes I take from my own life.

I couldn't tell you who wrote what online unless it's an author where I've read a lot.

I would like to write some dark!fic this year and try some more angst. I've tried to include more angst in my stories before the fluff comes. Though I'm working more on writing angst and trying to write longer pieces. I can do shorter pieces a bit easier than long ones.

You call them tells.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

I call them a marque, or brand. I've never seen anything specially admirable or the converse in having or not having a 'comfort zone'; and God knows my tropes are obvious enough. Cricket; the corpus of English poetry and English choral music; rurality; the C of E; real cider and real ale.... And of course, the triumph of good in the end, and the military (or Auroral) virtues. I can read with pleasure writers and stories who are wholly opposed to these, but I see no reason to jettison them in my own hobby-prose. (I'll put it this way. I spent the last quarter of 2012 co-writing a history of 1937, the year Buchenwald opened for business, Guernica was blitzed, the Rape of Shanghai occurred, Chamberlain became PM, and All That. Damned if I'll write misery for fun: that's my 'day job'.)

Writers with strong voices - I really do think 'tells' is the wrong notion entirely - don't, I think, suffer, but rather benefit, from being recognisable (e.g., Noe, Femme, Brammers, and a host of others). After all, we go back again and again, as readers, to GKC or Tolkien or Sayers or Conan Doyle or Miss Read or Barbara Pym, not because we don't recall How It Ended or Who Done It, but rather for the atmosphere, the scene, the world, the characters who have become our friends.

JIM Stewart, both as a don (Student of Christ Church, in fact) and as the detective-story writer Michael Innes, had his stock phrases and foreseeable grace-notes; so did Homer. I can, I confess, rather readily pastiche him or Conan Doyle or Chesterton (who was himself a brilliant pasticheur: see 'Variations on an air', http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/kingcole.html); what of it? My beloved Betjeman - well, least said, and all that. As Kipling said, 'there are nine-and-sixty' (ooo, Missus! Titter ye not!) 'ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right' (http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_neolithic.htm); which being so, we're all ploughing the same ground in any case.

I believe your story will tell you how it is to be built, if only you listen; that is all on earth we know, and all we need to know (http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html).

My tuppence-two-penn'orth, there (bloody decimalisation: 2p indeed. Rubbish).