You never know if a girl's gonna say 'yes', or if she's gonna laugh in your face and pull out your still-beating heart and crush it into the ground with her heel.

Xander ,'Help'


The Great Write Way  

A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.


Am-Chau Yarkona - Jan 24, 2003 11:36:53 am PST #542 of 10001
I bop to Wittgenstein. -- Nutty

I'm writing in first person, with a character who has to gradually fall out of love with one man and fall for another.

Am, get your mind clued up to the idea that Susan doesn't write slash. Because this sounds a little- thankfully, not too much- like the novel I'm working on at the moment. Only my first person is male.


Anne W. - Jan 24, 2003 11:37:06 am PST #543 of 10001
The lost sheep grow teeth, forsake their lambs, and lie with the lions.

Nothing says Happy Author like hanging your main character.

Connie, may I tag?


amych - Jan 24, 2003 11:37:25 am PST #544 of 10001
Now let us crush something soft and watch it fountain blood. That is a girlish thing to want to do, yes?

Nothing says Happy Author like hanging your main character.

This is my new motto for all fiction I have ever written, or will ever write.


Connie Neil - Jan 24, 2003 11:37:32 am PST #545 of 10001
brillig

t I was thinking slash too.


Am-Chau Yarkona - Jan 24, 2003 11:37:42 am PST #546 of 10001
I bop to Wittgenstein. -- Nutty

Nothing says Happy Author like hanging your main character.

Unfortunatly, it also says depressed reader- at least, any reader who actually liked the girl.


Connie Neil - Jan 24, 2003 11:37:56 am PST #547 of 10001
brillig

Connie, may I tag?

Feel free.


Susan W. - Jan 24, 2003 11:41:41 am PST #548 of 10001
Good Trouble and Righteous Fights

Am, get your mind clued up to the idea that Susan doesn't write slash. Because this sounds a little- thankfully, not too much- like the novel I'm working on at the moment. Only my first person is male.

Not slash, and set in 1810 to boot. And I'm not at all claiming it's particularly original. It all started when I was annoyed by the movie version from Mansfield Park a few years ago, and started thinking how I would do it if I wanted to make the themes of MP more accessible to a modern audience. With all the changes I've made, I don't feel like I'd be disrespecting Jane the Great by submitting it for publications, but the roots do show.


Am-Chau Yarkona - Jan 24, 2003 11:49:20 am PST #549 of 10001
I bop to Wittgenstein. -- Nutty

With all the changes I've made, I don't feel like I'd be disrespecting Jane the Great by submitting it for publications, but the roots do show.

Only a bad thing if it's your hair dye you're talking about. (Yes, Spike, I'm thinking about you again!)


P.M. Marc - Jan 24, 2003 12:22:03 pm PST #550 of 10001
So come, my friends, be not afraid/We are so lightly here/It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear

Often times, I'll print out a hard copy of a double-spaced first draft, get me a big ol' red pen and go to town on it in a big comfy chair. Then I'll type the whole thing in fresh. There's also the "remove five words from every big paragraph" game. You'd be surprised how many excess words there are when you start looking for them.

I have very few excess words. I do a lot of longhand writing, and then play edit-as-I-type. My first drafts tend to be pretty tight, though.

One of my literature teachers said that Kafka used to read his bleaker stuff out loud to his friends, and he'd keep cracking up in the middle of things.

Oh, hell. Kafka is me.


Alibelle - Jan 24, 2003 1:38:00 pm PST #551 of 10001
Apart from sports, "my secret favorite thing on earth is ketchup. I will put ketchup on anything. But it has to be Heinz." - my husband, Michael Vartan

I find that I get a lot of ideas and inspirations just from the simple act of running things by my friends. They don't even have to say anything. Just the act of physically having someone else in the room really helps me. I don't know why.