Writers Unite!

[Genowyn]

So I've finally started scanning my hand-drawn maps and doing them digitally. Now, I am no cartographer nor am I a graphic artist (I am, in fact, a writer ) so these aren't the prettiest. So far I've completed one for the more southerly content of Alvia.

You won't find a scale, because I'm not a cartographer so nothing is to scale (case in point Belhaus SHOULD be larger than Arl but clearly is not, Palakandria is also way larger on this map than it should be). Most islands are not labelled. You'll also note the inconsistent application of Drop Shadows so that's how you know I'm not a graphic designer either. (updated with a missing city, mountains, major rivers labelled)



You can click on the map to go to the Photobucket page, then click the magnifying glass there to see the full size one.

The reason I've started doing this now is because I'm running an interactive story here on this forum:  https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=43963.0 . If anyone in this thread wants to participate/PM me any constructive criticism on the writing found therein please do so.

Also if people are still reading this thread I may post a short story I wrote for your enjoyment/criticism.

[Sacul]

Looks nice  . I posted about an excellent mapping software in the previous page if you're interested. I'd like to point out a little constructive criticism to the map: it feels unnatural. Looks like a tree log with a huge tumour on the back or something like that .

Some rivers seems to come out of nowhere - remember they all originate in mountains, or at least in high attitudes. Making maps it's an art itself so I don't claim to be an expert or anything. Maybe you could try making the shores a bit more accident - I think that would work.

Anyways it looks like you've spent a lot of time on creating that part of the world, so props for that .

[Genowyn]

The rivers do all start either from mountains or higher elevations. I just don't have a way of indicating higher elevations that aren't mountains.

Hopefully you will find the other regions better along the lines of naturalness:

Here is a map of The Bridge Islands, much less detailed than the other maps because, as mentioned in my story thread, most people know far less about this region than either continent. The scale is also much smaller, the Bridge Islands make up a little less than half the size of either continent.



Finally we have the northern continent, Cavia:



Alvia has been with me for longer and is fairly well set in my mind, so I'm unlikely to change it.

[BlackInk]

Cavia looks the coolest. And I have no real problem with the shape of Alvia. If Italy didn't exist and someone made up that map everyone would say 'that's not natural, it looks just like a boot'. Although the northern tip of Alvia reminded me very much of the northern tip of 'Sothoryos' from the Game of Thrones books. But Cavia looks very good.

[WDADU]

Almost three hundred pages into the first draft. Over 1,400 words written today.

[BlackInk]

A productive day for both of us then. I started rewriting my prologue, as the first one was really jumbled and unfocused. I think I wrote over 2000 words, which is more than I have written in a day since last summer.

[Genowyn]

Did some writing yesterday...didn't track the exact number today but now past 40000 for the first draft. Long way to go

[Jarlaxle]

Been writing a bit lately. It's hard while travelling but I manage to get anywhere from 3-5 thousand words a week. I just started a new book after trashing (not actually trashing, but my thoughts on it changed so much, but hopefully I'm able to use chunks of it) a 170,000 first draft.

[BlackInk]

I was thinking about posting my re-written prologue somewhere when I'm done with it. And post a link to it here. It'd be interesting to hear some impartial opinions that isn't my dad's (even though I appreciate his support, of course). It might be a few days, but I'll post the link when I'm done and if anyone's interested, whoever wants to can say what they think.

[Sacul]

I'd like to read it . You can create an account on Wattpad and post it - you'd gain a few followers as well.

[BlackInk]

Thanks for the interest!

I had already created an account on WritersCafe before I read your post, so I'll be posting it there. Additionally, the formatting was easier there, as it looed better when I tested to copy/paste it from my word documents.

[BlackInk]

Apparently I was feeling creative today, as I actually managed to finish the re-writing of my prologue.

What anyone reading should know is that I'm not a native english speaking. My vocabulary might be a bit limited.

Anyways, here it is, the prologue to the first book, In the Rain, in my series:

https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/DanielLarnhem/1578840/

What changed with the re-write was that the characters were a lot more loose and there was basically no focus in terms of a PoV character, even though it was written in that style. So now it is focused up, and with some actual background to at least the PoV character.

[Jarlaxle]

A while back I tried setting up a dropbox account to have a DTF writing group, and it didn't pan out. Is there still any interest in creating a group? With those of us in here and Genowyn's thread we could have a nice little group.

Instead of the dropbox account thing, I was thinking if we could get enough interested, and permission of the mods of course, I thought it would be interesting if we could get our own private board, similar to what the mods have, that way we wouldn't have to worry about lurkers stealing our ideas (if that is a thing people are worried about). It would be so much easier to have the group on here where we all spend a lot of time anyway, and if we were looking for people outside our group to comment there are numerous veteran posters around here that we could trust to let in, view, and comment on our writing.

I don't know if this is possible or if the mods would be interested, or any of you for that matter, but it was just a thought I had the other night while trying to fall asleep.

[Sacul]

Anyways, here it is, the prologue to the first book, In the Rain, in my series:

https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/DanielLarnhem/1578840/

Didn't finish to read it (damn it's long ), so when I do I'll let you know my thoughts on it.

A while back I tried setting up a dropbox account to have a DTF writing group, and it didn't pan out. Is there still any interest in creating a group? With those of us in here and Genowyn's thread we could have a nice little group.

Instead of the dropbox account thing, I was thinking if we could get enough interested, and permission of the mods of course, I thought it would be interesting if we could get our own private board, similar to what the mods have, that way we wouldn't have to worry about lurkers stealing our ideas (if that is a thing people are worried about). It would be so much easier to have the group on here where we all spend a lot of time anyway, and if we were looking for people outside our group to comment there are numerous veteran posters around here that we could trust to let in, view, and comment on our writing.

I don't know if this is possible or if the mods would be interested, or any of you for that matter, but it was just a thought I had the other night while trying to fall asleep.

I'd be up for it. Don't know if a board could be possible, but maybe a FB group, or one somewhere else .

[Lowdz]

So, in the dim, distant past I was an aspiring writer. As a big fantasy fan (but a hater of many of the standard tropes- magic, dragons etc) I had a story all planned out, characterised etc, but then life got in the way. Well, I got a job.
I had an in depth synopsis written and stored on floppy discs (I did say it was in the dim, distant past!), so all that's left to do is write the thing. When I have the time I seem to lack the motivation.
I'm feeling motivated by reading this thread.

I started writing about the same age as many of you. A friend and I would swap he book each night and continue the story. I often wonder what happened to that book.

[BlackInk]

Good that this thread is getting you motivated, keep it up! I think it's really interesting when I think about the fact that pretty much every one in this thread each have their own story, with characters and twists and all, just waiting to be told.

[Jarlaxle]

I'd like to read it . You can create an account on Wattpad and post it - you'd gain a few followers as well.

Thanks for the interest!

I had already created an account on WritersCafe before I read your post, so I'll be posting it there. Additionally, the formatting was easier there, as it looed better when I tested to copy/paste it from my word documents.

I'm a little familiar with Writer's Cafe since I've looked through it a bit in the past, but not Wattpad. So I downloaded it and have been perusing it for a couple days, looks really neat! I think I'm going to post some stuff on there soon and see how it goes, maybe if I'm lucky I'll get a couple people following so it would give me a bit more motivation me.

For anybody who has done it, do you just post your first/rough drafts on there, or do you polish it? I think if I am to do it I will just do rough drafts and then if anybody comments on it I can use their criticism to edit it, and if I was to ever get it published or self-published it would give those that followed a reason to buy the actual product since it will no doubt change.

What are your guys' accounts on those sights? Mine is skenny04.

Anyways, here it is, the prologue to the first book, In the Rain, in my series:

https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/DanielLarnhem/1578840/

Didn't finish to read it (damn it's long ), so when I do I'll let you know my thoughts on it.

A while back I tried setting up a dropbox account to have a DTF writing group, and it didn't pan out. Is there still any interest in creating a group? With those of us in here and Genowyn's thread we could have a nice little group.

Instead of the dropbox account thing, I was thinking if we could get enough interested, and permission of the mods of course, I thought it would be interesting if we could get our own private board, similar to what the mods have, that way we wouldn't have to worry about lurkers stealing our ideas (if that is a thing people are worried about). It would be so much easier to have the group on here where we all spend a lot of time anyway, and if we were looking for people outside our group to comment there are numerous veteran posters around here that we could trust to let in, view, and comment on our writing.

I don't know if this is possible or if the mods would be interested, or any of you for that matter, but it was just a thought I had the other night while trying to fall asleep.

I'd be up for it. Don't know if a board could be possible, but maybe a FB group, or one somewhere else .

I don't have FB anymore, but if a group was organized on there I would sign up again and join.

[BlackInk]

For anybody who has done it, do you just post your first/rough drafts on there, or do you polish it? I think if I am to do it I will just do rough drafts and then if anybody comments on it I can use their criticism to edit it, and if I was to ever get it published or self-published it would give those that followed a reason to buy the actual product since it will no doubt change.

What are your guys' accounts on those sights? Mine is skenny04.

DanielLarnhem on Writer's Cafe, and DanielLarnhem on Wattpad.

The prologue is the only thing I've posted, and I posted immediately after finishing the first draft. I've gone back and edited it several times, sometimes just changed a word or added a sentence. So that's how I do it.

[Jarlaxle]

For anybody who has done it, do you just post your first/rough drafts on there, or do you polish it? I think if I am to do it I will just do rough drafts and then if anybody comments on it I can use their criticism to edit it, and if I was to ever get it published or self-published it would give those that followed a reason to buy the actual product since it will no doubt change.

What are your guys' accounts on those sights? Mine is skenny04.

DanielLarnhem on Writer's Cafe, and DanielLarnhem on Wattpad.

The prologue is the only thing I've posted, and I posted immediately after finishing the first draft. I've gone back and edited it several times, sometimes just changed a word or added a sentence. So that's how I do it.

Awesome, got you and Sacul on Wattpad now. I'm going to stick with it for now, it's nice and shiny on my iPad, but I haven't tried posting anything yet. Do you guys have intentions of posting on there, or just sticking to Writer's Cafe? I read a few paragraphs of your prologue, but I was heading out and haven't gotten around to it since.

I've been spending the past couple days outlining for the first time in my life.  Before, I had a very vague idea of what I wanted to get accompliished with a piece and then just went at it. Every single time it ended up with me meandering and adding so much stuff (which is much easier for me than being conccise, but has also caused me to never really finish anything because I tend to get a little lost and overwhelmed) that I thought it would be nice to try my hand at laying things out step by step. I enjoy it so far, it's nice to have things on a page and be able to think of ways to go about getting to that point in the book and then deciding which of those ways works best in the context of the story.

Unrelated; do you guys write short stories? For a couple years now I've been doing small amounts of dabbling, and as is my tendancy, I blow them up into much larger works and then discard them. Take for example the story I wrote for Camp NaNo...I had an idea that I thought I could get to and wrap up with my 10,000 word goal, but by the end of the month I had like 13,000 words and was halfway to what I wanted the end to be.

Since self-publishing seems to be the way to go for writer's trying to break through I thought it would be a good idea to try to get as many shorter works out as possible to try and build my "brand" but I am not good at that length of story. However, I'm going to give it a shot and split time between my major fantasy work and shorter works of whatever genre I'm feeling at that time (I have an interest in sci-fi, crime and a little horror as well). I've also been doing 100 words stories lately, which to me is much easier than the short story form. I have an idea to make a book with a bunch of 100 word stories and a handful of >10,000 word stories and then sell it in my community just for fun.

Anyway, I feel like I am rambling now, imagine that. I'm going to try my hand at posting the proloogue to my book on Wattpad soon. I don't think I'll go through and edit it, definitely not extensively since it is a bit of an info dump, which I will get around to changing in the future, and besides, because of the way I write I'll probably be changing it frequently, but hey, at least it's a start!

[BlackInk]

When you outline your story, how do you do that? I have like 50 pages of notes and stuff, but in terms of specific chapters I usually have only something simple like for example,

4. Osmol
   Discovering the fire
   Talking to Dannel
   Talking to Pelíbnoh

so that when I actually comes to writing that chapter, there's a lot to add and fun details to make up along the way. I also don't do it too far ahead, since the future chapters will surely have changed by the time I get to them. Do you do something similar or do you do more detailed outlines?

I used to write short stories back in school, I wasn't very good at writing, but the stories themselves actually turned out pretty cool. I don't anymore though, I have enough work on my hands with my fantasy series, which will be six books, and I'm already expecting the first one to be more than 400'000 words, and I'm only at 90'000 right now.

[Kotowboy]

Every time I see this thread i think I should go back to writing but i dunno what and when or anything

[Jarlaxle]

When you outline your story, how do you do that? I have like 50 pages of notes and stuff, but in terms of specific chapters I usually have only something simple like for example,

4. Osmol
   Discovering the fire
   Talking to Dannel
   Talking to Pelíbnoh

so that when I actually comes to writing that chapter, there's a lot to add and fun details to make up along the way. I also don't do it too far ahead, since the future chapters will surely have changed by the time I get to them. Do you do something similar or do you do more detailed outlines?

I used to write short stories back in school, I wasn't very good at writing, but the stories themselves actually turned out pretty cool. I don't anymore though, I have enough work on my hands with my fantasy series, which will be six books, and I'm already expecting the first one to be more than 400'000 words, and I'm only at 90'000 right now.

Since I'm new to outlining, and only a few days into it at that, I've just been jotting down major plot points. Once I feel im done with that I will do smaller points for each of the major ones to decide what needs to happen to get to that point and so own, so I guess it will become some sort of a web. I'm hoping it keeps me focused and on a straight path because I need that little bit of direction, I think.

For example, I've now got the "climaxes" plotted out for the first three books. Once I figure them out for as many books as I think necessary I'll tie in all the smaller sub plots that I've jotted down sporadically to make it cohesive. Say one characters death is the climax of a book, Ive got all the events that both foreshadow it and build up his character to make the death very impactful written beneath it, so as I check off those points I know when I'm ready to make the death happen. Hopefully it works.

Every time I see this thread i think I should go back to writing but i dunno what and when or anything

What kind of stories do you write? If you'd like we've been trying to drum up interest in a writing group here, you're more than welcome to join.

[Sacul]

Awesome, got you and Sacul on Wattpad now. I'm going to stick with it for now, it's nice and shiny on my iPad, but I haven't tried posting anything yet. Do you guys have intentions of posting on there, or just sticking to Writer's Cafe? I read a few paragraphs of your prologue, but I was heading out and haven't gotten around to it since.

[...]

Unrelated; do you guys write short stories? For a couple years now I've been doing small amounts of dabbling, and as is my tendancy, I blow them up into much larger works and then discard them. Take for example the story I wrote for Camp NaNo...I had an idea that I thought I could get to and wrap up with my 10,000 word goal, but by the end of the month I had like 13,000 words and was halfway to what I wanted the end to be.

Wattpad is the best place to gain a following audience because 1) is the biggest platform for new authors, and 2) big editorials have an eye there, with agents often seeking for new writers. It sadly doesn't allow to create a private group. But Goodreads does, so I went and created it - click here to join. We can share tips, some stories and stuff there, and then publish them on Wattpad .

I once tried writing them, but found that they were either too boring or the ideas way too good to leave them on just a "short story" format and not expand them on a novel.

[BlackInk]

Joined Goodreads as well.

[Kotowboy]

I used to enjoy writing very short fiction. like two sides of A4. I've not written anything in a long time. Like 12 years.

[Kotowboy]

I was on an unemployment course in 2003. Basically you sit in a room with other slackers and discuss topics. It was for 6 months and I went there every day.

One day the topic was what you should do if you have noisy neighbours. They told us all to go and write a short piece on the do's and don'ts of dealing with them.

Being me, I couldn't just write a side of A4 of bullet points and dry PSA style information.

I had to get creative. I would have been 24 at the time if you are wondering !

https://www.wattpad.com/151549302-the-war-on-decibels < - - - - Read it or don't.

[BlackInk]

^ That's a pretty funny story. The lockheeds through the bedroom made me chuckle.

[Kotowboy]

That's the kind of style I usually write in. It's got a touch of Chuck Palahniuk as I went through a phase of reading all of his books.

I once tried to read " Great Apes " by Will Self and that was some tough going



EDIT : Where I used to live ( and My Dad still lives ) - used to be right next door to an airfield - so any air show they put on - we could basically sit on top of one of our barns and watch for free  .

Also - we regularly used to get Hercules flying *REALLY LOW* over our house. It was awesome. Sigh. Memories .

[WDADU]

Finished the first draft on Saturday. Now the fun really begins

[Cyclopssss]

About seven years ago, I started writing a first draft of my biography/memoires/acounts of my first forage into the local rock scene. Plus stories about some ex-girlfriends. I used all real names.
It also had a failry large acount of my military service and the dying of my father in there, plus some of the bands I played in and sang in. So it was pretty much a mess, totally sprawling  and way too personal. It came out about 150 pages A4 and I sent a couple of manuscripts to some publishers to see if there would be any interest for this kind of book. Turned out, there was ZILCH. No interest at all, unless you're a famous name or suffering from an uncurable disease or something.

A while ago  I started releasing/publishing fragments and chapters on Facebook, most to some mild appraise,  until someone (not even a 'principal character') accosted me in a personal message to remove the chapters, because he 'was a different person then' and 'he had grew up, bettered his life and became a dad since' so please stop publishing these childish stories. Other then the fact that the story was really about an ex- of mine and he was just a bit player in it, I thought, 'he's actually right, I have no right to publish these things using their real names without their consent ' and so I took them off.

Now I'm sort of   considering to do a massive edit and rewrite using fictional names and all, to rework the whole thing and see if I can still get it published. But it just seems like a daunting task, to be honest.

I've also got some ideas for fictional suspense/horror stories, which would be way easier to achieve, I think. Btw, nice to have a writer's thread. 

[Jarlaxle]

All you guys, join the good reads writing group posted above!

[Sacul]

All you guys, join the good reads writing group posted above!

What he said - come here.

So I got my grandfather's typewriter, and while transcripting some notes, I got inspired and filled two full pages, expanding on what I had written and changing some details. I may still have about half of notes to transcript, but I haven't had such a wonderful time writing in a long time.

[Genowyn]

Posted a short story up there for you all. Technically a novelette I guess.

[WDADU]

I have a strange infatuation with typewriters. They feel so much cooler than using a computer. It's like a fuckin' weapon or something. But I know I wouldn't be able to write a five-hundred-page novel on one today. Maybe if I ever get one, I'll write a first draft of a short story on one, or something. Other than that, I'd like to have oe just for decoration because they look so cool.

[Sacul]

Well I've used mine to transcript some worldbuilding notes, and it's been a blast - completed a page and a half so far, and even expanded on some details. I know it's not a lot, but after some long time without writing anything at all, this is so refreshing.