... and then you found AW?
A question, Uncle Jim, reaching far back into the archives:
At some point you said to be careful about reading and writing fan fiction, because it would subconsciously start affecting your style when writing original fiction.
Could you link to the original post? I don't recall saying that.
The two biggest problems with fan fiction are that it's legally impossible to publish, no matter how good it is, and it comes with pre-fab characters so you may not get the practice you need in characterization.
some very extensive use of this board's 'search' function shows no sign of it whatsoever.
I'm not in favor of going over as a group, or of organizing at one website to go visit a community at another website, to argue with them. Now if someone wanted to issue a polite invitation to come over here?
What's the exact URL?
Now I haven't seen the discussion there -- but in general, you write the way you practice writing, and it's possible for someone to get bad habits, for some definition of "bad," writing in a particular genre or style.
I emphasize care in your writing, in choosing your words and images carefully so that they all lead in one direction and support one theme. But that's just me.
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Speaking of jealousy, here are some more <a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/posysimmonds/page/0,12694,1201995,00.html" target="_new">Writers' Deadly Sins</A>.
Thank you for the url to Stephen King's speech. I found his book on writing a good read even though I can't read much of his fiction as horror gives me nightmares!
Whilst this site was down I spent my allowance of website time on the UK www.bbc.co.uk writers site. One writer questioned if she would damage her ability to write literary stories if she also wrote fiction for women's mags to earn money. Go look at the pretentious answers about writing potboilers and how it would seriously damage your ability to write literary stories. It would be wonderful if you all could come up with a polite (this is the British broadcasting corporation and they have very strict rules about anything vaguely impolite) rebuff and post it there if you could spare a moment. It's about time some of those hoary old chestnuts were popped!
Happy Writing!
So, err, do you think there's any danger in trying to write in more than one genre at the same time?
Shakespeare didn't seem to have much of a problem with it .I'd imagine that mixing highbrow literary fiction and sex-and-violence pulp might be more likely to cause problems .
Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey
Robert McKee's Story and, most recently,
Jack Bickham's Scene and Structure
Nancy Pearl, in one of her presentations to librarians about reader's advisory (aka, how to answer "what should I read next") talks about there being four doorways into fiction - plot, character, setting, and language. She argues (and pretty persuasively) that all works have a door of some size for each of these four, but also that *people* have strong preferences for which ones they enter (and you'll therefore be most successful in figuring out someone's preferred doorways, and suggesting books that match.)
A smart thing said elsewhere:
Like others, I cheerfully forget the plots of mysteries after I read them, unless I consciously try to remember them - but I can be very detailed about moments of setting, or characterization.
A bit of a personal announcement:
The German translation of The Price of the Stars is coming out (from Random House, Germany) on 21 June 2011.
What are some ideas of restarting the creative boiler again?
A bit of a personal announcement:
The German translation of The Price of the Stars is coming out (from Random House, Germany) on 21 June 2011.