The Writing Thread

[Kalsarikännit]

Personally? I write when the motivation strikes. Then I just write whatever idea I have bouncing around in my head. No editing, no checking spelling, no checking grammar, not caring how it sounds or if there's obvious plot holes or anything. Just go with the flow stuff. I find I can pump out at least four to six chapters of something like that. It's about then I'll stop, go over it to refine it, rinse and repeat as needed. Planning anything out ruins my motivation to get anything written. I think it's the tedium of the process that makes me dislike it, but different strokes for different folks.

I just can't do that. I too sort of fall out of love with an idea if I think too hard about it, but I'm too self-conscious of how my writing looks, or whether the plot will make sense to pants it. I guess I have to recondition myself to not care if my rough drafts look like shit.

Write drunk, edit sober. Works like a charm!

Also helps with writer's block, which is my Achilles' heel.

 

[Biggie Smalls' Taint]

I know this is more of a creative writing thread, but would any of you have any tips/opinions/resources on writing essays?

 

[Kalsarikännit]

I know this is more of a creative writing thread, but would any of you have any tips/opinions/resources on writing essays?

sure, depends on the type of essay though. In general, I've noticed that people seem to stick really hard to the sentence structures they've been taught in school ('If, then, because' and so on). I think it's a good idea to figure out how to convey the same idea without using that exact phrasing, or if you do have to use it, don't do it repeatedly. English is incredibly flexible with both word order as well as the numerous ways something can be said, making repetition not terribly hard to avoid.

Of course, a common issue is that people will overcorrect and use every word the thesaurus suggests as alternatives to a given word. The obvious problem is that you can end up using some really, really obscure words by doing this.
The other not so obvious reason is that even though two words might mean similar things, their specific connotations might differ, and sometimes drastically. For example, if you wanted to describe a green pot, but you think you said 'green' too many times already, a thesaurus may suggest 'verdant' as a related word, since 'green' and 'verdant' both have a connotation of a green plant, specifically with a focus on the fact that it is alive and/or thriving. If you don't know what 'verdant' means, you might make the mistake of calling a pot 'verdant', which it probably isn't unless it's covered in moss or something. The solution is to just do a little extra research on the words the thesaurus suggests. A little work now saves a lot of embarrassment later.

If you're writing an essay that requires citations, I've found it easy to, whenever I want to make an assertion (even if it's kind of a tangent) look something up so I can say something specific, and cite it. A lot of people, intentionally or not, write in a really ambiguous manner so they can avoid making direct assertions about things.

Also, writing in first or second person is a no-no. You can say "one" as an almost direct substitute for "you" in sentences to make them third person, but I'd really recommend that one does not do that, since it makes one's own work sound strange and robotic.

 

[Chandelier]

Recently I came across this old post on describing darker skin tones. I've always been more favourable to terms such a sepia, umber, ochre, golden and copper as they directly refer to said skin tone. Turns out, using terms such as "cocoa" is offensive.

Now that my tism has kicked into overdrive, what terms do you use to describe darker skinned characters? Are skin tone charts enough?

Spoiler: What I mean

 

[Kalsarikännit]

Recently I came across this old post on describing darker skin tones. I've always been more favourable to terms such a sepia, umber, ochre, golden and copper as they directly refer to said skin tone. Turns out, using terms such as "cocoa" is offensive.

What wonderful ramblings from the mentally deranged. If you try to filter your writing through what won't offend a brown woman on Tumblr, you'll probably end up with a blank piece of paper.

 

[MsFrancisFoster]

Write drunk, edit sober. Works like a charm!

The motto I live by. Though mine is more like "Write when seriously sleep deprived to the point of delusion. Edit when you've finally woken up from crashing." Has about the same results as being piss drunk, with having no inhibitions or internal criticisms. Though your mileage may vary.

Turns out, using terms such as "cocoa" is offensive.

If you try to filter your writing through what won't offend a brown woman on Tumblr, you'll probably end up with a blank piece of paper.

In general people need to get over themselves when it comes to food related descriptors and skin tones. Cocoa. mocha, chocolate, hazel, chestnut, etc so on and so forth are literal shades of brown. Said names are also used when it comes to naming Black Women's Makeup for the market. That, and they're also way more pleasing descriptors for the word "brown." Brown is just not a pleasant word to use to describe someone. For me, personally, it conjures up images of shit, dirt, mud, mold, and other such unclean things first, way before I think of a dark, warm skin tone. They're just more pleasant adjectives, period.

Now that my tism has kicked into overdrive, what terms do you use to describe darker skinned characters? Are skin tone charts enough?

Spoiler: Descriptor Tism

Pale Skin:
- Fair
- Pale
- Peachy
- Pink
- Milky
- Creamy
- Porcelain
- Alabaster
- Ivory
- Powder
- Snowy
- Ruddy
- Pallid
- Sallow
- Fawn

Medium Skin:
- Olive
- Brassy
- Tanned
- Tawny
- Caramel
- Golden
- Gold/Bronze Kissed
- Sun Kissed

Dark Skin:
- Dark
- Cocoa
- Mocha
- Chocolate
- Hazel
- Chestnut
- Coffee
- Cinnamon
- Umber
- Copper
- Bronze
- Earthy
- Russet
- Ochre

Personally I find it harder to describe people who are in the medium range of skin tones. Because you kind of have to hammer home: "This person isn't egg shell white but they're also not so dark they're mistaken as a black person." Cause people will misinterpret it otherwise.

 

[Kalsarikännit]

"This person isn't egg shell white but they're also not so dark they're mistaken as a black person." Cause people will misinterpret it otherwise.

I've found speculating on their lifestyles e.g. ('life at sea gave him a darker complexion than any other Frenchmen I'd seen on my journey') to be better than trying to say it in one word, at least when it's a tan white person. Otherwise I think I would just describe the shade of brown they are. It's definitely tougher than either extreme of the skin color spectrum.

 

[Pomniman]

In general people need to get over themselves when it comes to food related descriptors and skin tones. Cocoa. mocha, chocolate, hazel, chestnut, etc so on and so forth are literal shades of brown. Said names are also used when it comes to naming Black Women's Makeup for the market. That, and they're also way more pleasing descriptors for the word "brown." Brown is just not a pleasant word to use to describe someone. For me, personally, it conjures up images of shit, dirt, mud, mold, and other such unclean things first, way before I think of a dark, warm skin tone. They're just more pleasant adjectives, period.

Niggerstory:

He was a nigger. He was a blacknigger. A coalnigger. A shitnigger. A gorillanigger. The darkest stinkiest most simian ten mile long rap sheet having on the down low prolapsed GRIDS-pozzed but got ten baby mommas and thirty kids in multiple area codes not-even-numeral-having dropped out of school the day he turned five dropped on his head by his crackhead momnigger. Never had any a nigger so niggerishly beniggered God's green Earth with such unrepentant niggerdom. If all the niggers to ever nigger throughout all of nigstory were to be fused into one reeking felonious shitstain upon the tapestry of human civilization this nigger would surely be the platonic ideal of a nigger in some vantablack part of the underworld the Greeks dared not mention.

At least until the Day of the Knee. Then he was but a deadnigger. Only an I can't breefnigger.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I genuinely have no idea wtf any of you are talking about when it comes to skin tones. Are you taking notes from Reddit or something? Jeeze.

 

[Pomniman]

I genuinely have no idea wtf any of you are talking about when it comes to skin tones. Are you taking notes from Reddit or something? Jeeze.

I get the sense that this current strain of retarded tumblrite backwash about what is and isn't acceptable started to gain currency among the most vapid, mouth-breathing "creatives" and literary agents/editors sometime around 2012 or thereabouts. Fast forward 12 years and the viral load is at a lethal saturation. Whiny faggots who constantly make up shit to be offended by have always existed, but I feel like the more recent trend of pandering to them in the past decade cropped back up at around that time. If you go back and read things from the 90s or 00s no one gave a shit and even authors you'd think would be the trendy overeducated hipster faggots of their day weren't shy about using the Nigger Word or any other pejorative that suited whatever they were going for at the moment.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I get the sense that this current strain of retarded tumblrite backwash about what is and isn't acceptable started to gain currency among the most vapid, mouth-breathing "creatives" and literary agents/editors sometime around 2012 or thereabouts. Fast forward 12 years and the viral load is at a lethal saturation. Whiny faggots who constantly make up shit to be offended by have always existed, but I feel like the more recent trend of pandering to them in the past decade cropped back up at around that time. If you go back and read things from the 90s or 00s no one gave a shit and even authors you'd think would be the trendy overeducated hipster faggots of their day weren't shy about using the Nigger Word or any other pejorative that suited whatever they were going for at the moment.

Yeah, I had this thought last night as well coincidentally. I'd place it right around 2010 or so. The problem with writing is that it's always been deeply nepotistic. It's all about clubhouses and paying lip service to whatever is the agenda. But with the explosion of social media and leftism and even more gate keeped places like Reddit, I don't blame guys like you for just shitposting. It's not like any of us can get published not unless you say you're LGBTQ+ and maybe write gay pedophile serial killer fiction? The whole scene is AIDS on a metaphorical and literal level.

I was re-reading Artaud Anthology as of late and this one piece is a favorite of mine:

All Writing is Pigshit… by Antonin Artaud

All writing is pigshit.

People who leave the obscure and try to define whatever it is that goes on in their heads, are pigs.

The whole literary scene is a pigpen, especially this one.

All those who have vantage points in their spirit, I mean, on some side or other of their heads and in a few strictly localized brain areas; all those who are masters of their language; all those for whom words have a meaning; all those for whom there exist sublimities in the soul and currents of thought; all those who are the spirit of the times, and have named these currents of thought - and I am thinking of their precise works, of that automatic grinding that delivers their spirit to the winds –

are pigs.

Those for whom certain words have a meaning, and certain manners of being; those who are so fussy; those for whom emotions are classifiable, and who quibble over some degree or other of their hilarious classifications; those who still believe in ' terms '; those who brandish whatever ideologies belong to the hierarchy of the times ; those about whom women talk so well, and also those women who talk so well, who talk of the contemporary currents of thought; those who still believe in some orientation of the spirit; those who follow paths, who drop names, who fill books with screaming

headlines are the worst kind of pigs.

And you are quite aimless, young man!

No, I am thinking of bearded critics.

And I told you so : no works of art, no language, no word, no thought, nothing.

Nothing; unless maybe a fine Brain-Storm. A sort of incomprehensible and totally erect stance in the midst of everything in the mind.

And don't expect me to tell you what all this is called, and how many parts it can be divided into; don't expect me to tell you its weight; or to get back in step and start discussing all this so that by discussing I may get lost myself and even, without even realizing it, start THINKING. And don't expect this thing to be illuminated and live and deck itself out in a multitude of words, all neatly polished as to meaning, very diverse, and capable of throwing light on all the attitudes and all the nuances of a very sensitive and penetrating mind.

Ah, these states which have no name, these sublime situations of the soul, ah these intervals of wit, these minuscule failures which are the daily bread of my hours, these people swarming with data . . . they are always the same old words I'm using, and really I don't seem to make much headway in my thoughts, but I am really making more headway than you, you beard-asses, you pertinent pigs, you masters of fake verbiage, confectioners of portraits, pamphleteers, ground-floor lace-curtain herb collectors, entomologists, plague of my tongue.

I told you so, I no longer have the gift of tongue. .But this is no reason you should persist and stubbornly insist on opening your mouths.

Look, I will be understood ten years from now by the people who then will do what you are doing now. Then my geysers will be recognized, my glaciers will be seen, the secret of diluting my poisons will have been learnt, the plays of my soul will be deciphered.

Then all my hair, all my mental veins will have been drained in quicklime; then my bestiary will have been noticed, and my mystique become a hat. Then the joints of stones will be seen smoking, arborescent bouquets of mind's eyes will crystallize in glossaries, stone aeroliths will fall, lines will be seen and the geometry of the void understood : people will learn what the configuration of the mind is, and they will understand how I lost my mind.

They will then understand why my mind is not all here; then they will see all languages go dry, all minds parched, all tongues shrivelled up, the human face flattened out, deflated as if sucked up by shriveling leeches. And this lubricating membrane will go on floating in the air, this caustic lubricating membrane, this double membrane of multiple degrees and a million little fissures, this melancholic and vitreous membrane, but so sensitive and also pertinent, so capable of multiplying, splitting apart, turning inside out with its glistening little cracks, its dimensions, its narcotic highs, its penetrating and toxic injections, and all this then will be found to be all right, and I will have no further need to speak.

 

[Pomniman]

Yeah, I had this thought last night as well coincidentally. I'd place it right around 2010 or so. The problem with writing is that it's always been deeply nepotistic. It's all about clubhouses and paying lip service to whatever is the agenda. But with the explosion of social media and leftism and even more gate keeped places like Reddit, I don't blame guys like you for just shitposting. It's not like any of us can get published not unless you say you're LGBTQ+ and maybe write gay pedophile serial killer fiction? The whole scene is AIDS on a metaphorical and literal level.

Once upon a time even I vaguely considered trying to write something mainstream, but the more exposure I had to the whole slimy incestuous culture around modern American publishing the less I could stomach bending to the whims of these upjumped busybody twats. If you hear them candidly talking about what they do for a living when they're not pandering or trying to hype themselves up as literary professionals they'll admit, entirely on their own and without any prodding, that they hate everything about their lives and jobs, and it shows in the utter swill they promote.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Once upon a time even I vaguely considered trying to write something mainstream, but the more exposure I had to the whole slimy incestuous culture around modern American publishing the less I could stomach bending to the whims of these upjumped busybody twats. If you hear them candidly talking about what they do for a living when they're not pandering or trying to hype themselves up as literary professionals they'll admit, entirely on their own and without any prodding, that they hate everything about their lives and jobs, and it shows in the utter swill they promote.

Two guys I know, one extremely respected and has tons of sycophants wanting his dick, have either retired or plan to retire because of the scene.

I say weaponize this shit. Make it as nasty and shitposty as you want.

 

[Paper Machete]

Wokescolds shoot themselves in the foot all the time. Food related words are some of the only positive sounding descriptions for darker skin. You either are going to end up being awkward about what they look like at best or downright rude.

The solution is obviously to only write about white characters.

 

[Calandrino]

Can you even write "black" in lowercase anymore, or is an editor going to "correct" it anyway?

 

[BrunoMattei]

Can you even write "black" in lowercase anymore, or is an editor going to "correct" it anyway?

Nope. And if you say Nigger in any context at all you're done. It doesn't even matter if you make the "villain" say it. You're still fucked.

 

[eDove]

My pet project is in a fantasy setting. It's easier to get away with describing races and skintones that technically don't exist.

The terms dusky/duskies are used as perjoratives, but are apt in describing a certain deserty race in the story. There's also tawny and the classic "dark." You can infer race from evoking a character's homeland.

It's easier on me if I let the reader fill in the blanks and come to their own conclusions as to how someone looks. Too often, I think, writers get hung up on relaying their exact vision to their audience when it isn't all that necessary. Just give them the basics. They'll figure it out.

My book's dodged a lot of the skintone BS by focusing more on tangible racial divides, like there being giants that are, naturally, perceived as threats by the ordinary man. Not helping matters is that they have a violent history and are reclusive.

I find social dynamics like that far more interesting than: "He is brown. He looks different from me. Therefore, I do no not like him." And moralfagging about that widespread bigotry for dozens of pages.

It's fun to have characters throw height-related slurs at one another. Whiny bitches would have a harder time calling it objectively offensive too.

 

[BrunoMattei]

My pet project is in a fantasy setting. It's easier to get away with describing races and skintones that technically don't exist.

The terms dusky/duskies are used as perjoratives, but are apt in describing a certain deserty race in the story. There's also tawny and the classic "dark." You can infer race from evoking a character's homeland.

It's easier on me if I let the reader fill in the blanks and come to their own conclusions as to how someone looks. Too often, I think, writers get hung up on relaying their exact vision to their audience when it isn't all that necessary. Just give them the basics. They'll figure it out.

My book's dodged a lot of the skintone BS by focusing more on tangible racial divides, like there being giants that are, naturally, perceived as threats by the ordinary man. Not helping matters is that they have a violent history and are reclusive.

I find social dynamics like that far more interesting than: "He is brown. He looks different from me. Therefore, I do no not like him." And moralfagging about that widespread bigotry for dozens of pages.

It's fun to have characters throw height-related slurs at one another. Whiny bitches would have a harder time calling it objectively offensive too.

I hate fantasy but I wish you luck, My philosophy has been to write the minimum amount of description for characters not unless it is relevant to the story. A lot of writers learn from hacks and think you need description -worse yet it can be seen as blatant padding and it mostly is. If your character is, for example, Officer McFuckface and you go on about his family, his surviving his heart attack, how uncomfortable his shoes feel, his hair loss and success with Rogaine and all that bullshit is completely unnecessary if he gets raped to death by midgets on fentanyl and there's no callback to any of that.

 

[Pomniman]

Wokescolds shoot themselves in the foot all the time. Food related words are some of the only positive sounding descriptions for darker skin. You either are going to end up being awkward about what they look like at best or downright rude.

The solution is obviously to only write about white characters.

The Final Solution is to stop giving a shit outright and only write things that aren't commercially viable or socially acceptable in any way whatsoever.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Go Dennis Hopper in fucking Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and bring all of this shit down.