Posts by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
(DIR) Post #AbC8ejB9tw0vsR7rwe by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-10-27T06:55:40+00:00
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Well really think about it. Her low standards booked her book a deal that sent her into stardom. She didn't make anything after that, other than I believe a book written from the perspective of Edward, which means even she wasn't aware of her own secret genius.Random chance might be part of it, like she stumbled into the idea somehow, didn't know what she was doing, then came out with a smashing hit. But a lot of aspects in the story are really intentional. It's the same kind of "good writing" that we'd see in a martial arts movie. Each scene is there to create that "battle" moment, but here it's where a vampire "battles" his hunger and the girl "battles" with her conflicted feelings.I think a lot of people on minds, especially us guys, are completely clueless about where this comes from, because we're not Harlequin novel readers. I mean, try to get a chick to understand why some random game is fun/popular, like Heart of Iron or Total War. Or a movies like Freddy Got Fingered and Rikki-Oh: The Story of Rikki.It's a shocking disconnect at the extremes and online women don't really understand that disconnect themselves because girls going into male circles try to get along with the boys. But when I look at the white women on authortube, they ALL write in this Twilight style, and they mix it with something else that's girly like Hunger Games.
(DIR) Post #AbHWJqSIO3OLRO3zJg by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-10-26T08:25:15+00:00
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It's harder to bring a reader into a high fantasy story than a low fantasy story. The element of removing Earth from high fantasy means you're losing a majority of familiarity that sinks the reader into the world.Then high fantasy writers wonder why they get lower reads.
(DIR) Post #AbJJAGh34OPkpfzFQm by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-10-30T22:47:25+00:00
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I have a lot of lazy energy in me. That "eh, I'll do it later" thing, even though I easily forget and DO NOT do it later. I try to fix that by keeping a Google doc open on my browser and so it's always there as a reminder. Then the next hurdle is getting to it. I am also plagued by laziness with editing, and I helped that by being my own worst critic. Takes a bit of effort to make up personas for myself, still have to hone them, but it's something that grows with time. Sounds insane that I'm sitting there like Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, transforming between writer and editor, but that's what's needed to get the job done.
(DIR) Post #AbKijJagysknxymXxI by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-10-31T01:31:08+00:00
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There's this constant narrative that being a criminal in the US is cool because rebellion and all that. Especially with comics, vigilantism and all that.But you lose the customer when you say criminals are cool.You want justice to be cool, not breaking the law. Example: Final Fantasy 7.
(DIR) Post #AbKijRgIttzp3hT8oS by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-10-31T09:48:12+00:00
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Yeah, it's like, we enjoy Batman doing his thing. The land is corrupt, and he makes up for that corruption. But we don't enjoy that meaningless anti-hero whatever who is trying to appear like the next Aladdin because he robs from people but somehow has a heart of gold.I guess people are also trying to make the next Robin Hood but they want him to be a mass murderer like The Punisher.
(DIR) Post #AbNFXzA1M3d93CFMCO by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-01T20:35:19+00:00
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Thankfully December will be awesome for me since that will cause free time and I'll probably try to get more chapters done for Reel Life. But for November, probably finish up an editing thing for a friend. Have 8 chapters left but barely get time to sit down with it where my brain can function. Long days and short mornings.
(DIR) Post #AbOduVOolUAnSwOndg by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-01T20:30:36+00:00
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#writingcommunityEarth Business question for writers: writers rely on the charity of the reader to get eyes on their work in the first place, just how we rely on the charity of a stranger to begin a conversation. What do you do to make sure your approach to the "conversation" is accepted by your readers? What is your form of hello and handshake?
(DIR) Post #AbPHYddvQm30pRaqAK by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-02T20:09:10+00:00
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The "I write for myself" excuse. Not when someone is actually writing for themselves and in their room doing it as their form of a hobby. I mean the people who say it, try to sell it, turn it into their business, and then keep saying it as their defense mechanism. It's disheartening because that person knows they're trying to relate to others, get others on board, but then saying that to them usually results in more defensive behavior.I guess it's the diva aspect when it comes to writing and art in general. I used to have that aspect in me, we all do, but only a few grow out of it. Part of me wants to be in a lab coat, mixing beakers of strange colored liquid, to figure out the cure to such an issue.
(DIR) Post #AbREBUPHh3E3ybw20u by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-03T18:28:22+00:00
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It's really is where the only option at that point are to run away, diplomacy, some kind of purification ritual, or using a form of trickery/wit. In Reel Life, the characters can't use violence because the enemy is invulnerable to physical attacks. I intentionally made sure the heroes have to use their brain to get the job done. So usually it's in the form of a Scooby Doo trap to engage the purification ritual.
(DIR) Post #AbZddOH28q7HBM9k7U by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-07T19:50:04+00:00
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In Reel Life, they fly around in a magic film camera called The Monkeyshine. Kind of like that ship in Dr. Who. That phone booth one. But here it's a camera.
(DIR) Post #AbjRaFkM8HWfzwCyHI by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-12T12:26:23+00:00
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The trio in Reel Life looks up to actors and actress of media, not knowing who those people are at all, and reveal that their heroes are nothing more than some kind of popularity contest winners. Their hero then becomes their mentor who trains them to think differently, who also becomes their form of a father figure. Their mentor is an operator who goes around, unknown, as he saves movies and civilization from "destructive" movies.
(DIR) Post #Abtuycb4vJTFhktZUe by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-09T08:26:50+00:00
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Women tend to write men as dorks or sex objects. But perhaps I'm thinking of how authortube white women do it. Plenty of works to reference. Cyborg Tinkerer. Axiom's End. Savior's Champion. The Ivies.And when guys act like gal pals. Ugh...
(DIR) Post #Ac4MObygUMrhel9a2C by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-22T08:51:47+00:00
2 likes, 0 repeats
The 5 Steps To Get Your Stories Done FasterStep 1: Plan AheadThe first step to writing better is to plan ahead. Create the two points of your story so that you can make a line. Then you make a middle point in that line and tell yourself what that could be. What exactly is the climax or mid-point of your story? What is the climax or mid-point of your chapter? Did you realize you could have a 5 point structure for your chapters as well before I mentioned that? It is amazing how much you could get done by simply writing down your game plan and then acting out that very game plan. However, many fear that they lose creativity and box themselves in. This is what I have to say to that: You’re not creative to begin with. I’m sorry if this hurts your feelings or makes you cry, but you are not creative when it comes to STRUCTURE. Order doesn’t have much room for chaos, and the structure is your order that you bring into the book so that it’s functional. I’m sure someone is dying to make a car that has the gas pedal as the buttons on the door for the windows, but nobody wants to buy a car that’s goofy like that. Nobody wants to buy your story if its structure is all wonky and nonsensical. This is why you should aim to be familiar. Be the path that people have already beaten, because that means you can understand and visualize the barriers. I bet 90% of your time is wasted on trying to reinvent the wheel.You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You write down how many chapters you’re going to have, plan out each chapter in relation to your 5 or 7 point structure, give each chapter a purpose, and then split those chapters into smaller blocks if you can. Go down to planning the exact paragraph if you want to. The beauty of an outline is that you’ve already finished the story in your head and in your outline, and now you have to make it so the reader can enjoy it.Step 2: Learn MoreYou’re never too old to learn, but you might be too stupid to accept facts. I am fascinated by the constant proof that I receive about how you can’t fix stupid. There is an arrogance that is so powerful, it prevents people from learning how to do simple things that are essential for something they spend most of their brain power on. Really think about it: you’re trying to be a professional writer, you want to be paid, you want people to read your work, and you never thought about studying how a story works to begin with?Have you ever thought about why a fable or myth exists for longer than a trend? How about why a fairy tale is so short but impactful? How about why the Bible exists? In our secular environment, we are absent from religious text being read for entertainment or research purposes, because we aren’t told to read these. And, sadly, many Christians who read the Bible do not realize the fiction within that allows for proper storytelling.A story is an argument. You present this argument in the form of a rhetorical device called fiction, and this becomes your fiction story. In this story, you create a theme that is explained and expressed through events with characters. Even if your story is goofy, you’re going to be making a goofy argument. This argument is told through the narration, through symbolism.So many people right now are trying to do high concept and low composition, but this high concept is what’s taking up 90% of your time. You’re focusing so much on all the little gears and how they move, yet you didn’t even spend time in planning how those gears will work or what their purpose even is. I see countless amounts of people making a magic system or they’re worldbuilding, and it all goes nowhere. They never use it. Imagine spending hours on something useless and you’ll never get those hours back. Better yet, imagine those hours, count them up, then times them by how fast you could write.Boom, those are words you could have written that you didn’t.It’s simple: learn the classics, learn the basics like fables and fairy tales. Copy them. Try to make your own fable or fairy tail. Don’t even dare to make it more than 20 pages long. Figure out what aesthetic you want to go for and apply that to your small story that you are able to crunch out in a day or two.Your writing time should be 80% studying and 20% writing. You might be thinking “isn’t that a bit contradictory? Why would I spend less time writing if I’m to write faster?” This is because you’ll be spending more time figuring out what is to even be written vs your constant guessing and mindless confusion as you stare into a blank page. The main reason people don’t write as much is because they don’t know what to say or how to say it, but they think they have something to say.This is why you figure out what you want to say, how you want to say it, and then you say it. This constant dance of typing, then erasing, then typing again, then erasing, then thinking, then erasing more, then typing is all why you’re getting nothing done. This is what discovery writers praise themselves over, the idea of figuring out what to say as time goes on, but you’ll quickly discover that discovery writers are the slowest producers. There is nothing to discover when you’re already confident in what you want to say and how you’ll say it. Step 3: Repeat yourself Originality is the biggest lie that you’ll hear among any artist sphere. We’re told to be original, and so many writers are crippled by the idea of seeming too similar, and yet most production from corporate media is based on a trend. This is because they are seeing activity in one area, flood it, then move to the next area of activity and flood in an endless cycle. Many indie artists will stick their nose up and go “good heavens, I would never stoop to such dreadful levels of pleb thinking. I’m a true artist who doesn’t follow any trends and I do my own thing whether people like it or not.”Next thing you know, they’re writing down their DnD campaign based on all of the media they like, treating it as if it was a novel. They make sure their worldbuilding is based on all sorts of in-jokes and memes revolving around their groups and what other people talk about. They reveal that their stories are no different than a trend, but simply one that isn’t getting money to begin with. This attempt at originality is a dramatic waste of time. If you’re going to be that basic, you might as well make fanfiction.Writing anything is you trying to imagine something in your head and then putting it into words. But there are only so many things we could imagine and so many words we could use. It’s not like we’re able to create new words or make up new plots. There are only 7 basic plots possible, and we copy these plots all the time. Most of your outline time is not you trying to create something new, it’s you trying to realize what exists.The reason why you want to plan ahead and learn more is so you can repeat more. Repetition is the best way to get more familiar with your own themes and your own style. In fact, repeating aesthetics for every story is what caused someone like Lovecraft to become famous after his death, because then people were able to pin that specific writing style to his name. All of the great pulp writers, the people who wrote day and night for a living, were able to hone their writing style to a T and then repeat this process every single story.To have your own limits revealed to yourself, try to plan out as many stories possible as you can for about 10 mins. Go wild. Reach into as many genres as you think you can write. After that, try to write one single paragraph for each idea. If you have something like 20 ideas, that means 20 paragraphs, which is about 1,000 words; so this wouldn’t take long. The goal of this exercise is for you to realize how many ways you can start a story, and put them all together, side-by-side.I’m not even trying to say how you’ll make them good, just to see how you instinctively do it. Once you hit maybe the 5th one, you’re going to see that you’re having trouble starting them out differently. You’ll realize that you follow a pattern and it sounds good to you. Whether or not it’s good to the reader is not the point here. The point is that you have a limit that you just found out about, all because you decided to deplete your brain of its maximum abilities.And remember, this is something pulp writers did every month, or even week, for years upon years. Do you know how many times a story introduction has to be repeated for them? Once a week for a year is 56 and 10 years would make that 560. Imagine starting a story up over 500 times. Imagine trying to start a chapter over 30 times for 1 novel. Then imagine writing 10 novels to turn that into over 300 chapters.Writers never plan for the long run and never figure they’re going to have to repeat themselves. Some embrace the repetition, sometimes a little too much, and they can appear bland or derivative by constantly putting the same plot points or the same types of paragraphs. This is all switched around in your editing process. The beauty of writing is that you can change it up later. The problem is that you need to get used to repeating yourself, because you’re doing the same thing over and over again anyway over a long period of time.This form of repetition is no different than someone cooking or doing any kind of physical labor. In the beginning, there is a form of being unfamiliar, and you’ll be typing like how an old person does with one finger. Slow, painful, forgetful, long periods of pausing, and maybe a need for adult diapers. But as you get the ball rolling, and you do the same process over and over again, after you get your recipe, you’re going to remove all the guesswork and you’ll be able to do it blindfolded. I absolutely sucked when I made my first pizza, but after the 50th or so, it became second nature and I was one of the fastest.Repeating yourself is a factor of muscle memory, and the most important muscle is the one that needs to remember things, which is your brain. The second you remember what the recipe is, what the process is, and what the mechanical movements are, you’re going to be already reducing the amount of dead-time.Step 4: Write FasterI don’t really know if this is accurate around the writing type of people, but the average typing speed is something like 40wpm. This is the number they get when they include old people with one finger and gamers who try to type “gg” as fast as they can before the next match. I’ve done the online typing tests and stretches, and I can get something like 50 or 60wpm. I used to be around that average, now I’m slightly faster than average. Professionals go between 65 and 75.Remember a long time ago when I said my story typing speed is about 8wpm? That means I’m missing out on about 50 potential words per minute because I’m spending more time thinking than typing. If you are thinking for 30min out of an hour, that means your typing speed will go down by around half. That means your story will take twice as long as your mechanical “maximum”, because your hands are faster than your brain. So this is not about typing faster, but to write faster.If you can gather your maximum, which for an example let’s say is 50wpm, you can create the goal post for you to aim for. This is the number you want for every time you sit down and write. This is the number you get when there is zero thinking buffer within your typing time. Your goal is to get as close to that number as possible. Not exactly at the number, but closer than yesterday. Let’s give a long term example so you can realize how much this goal will help you throughout your journey. If your typing speed is 50, but your writing speed is 10, that means you’re making 1/5th as many stories as you would. You would be able to type 10 books in the amount of time it takes you to write out 2. You’d be done with 3 trilogies and a stand alone by the time it took you to barely get halfway through the first trilogy. You’d finish typing a novel in about a week if you took 8 hours a day. It sounds like cheating or like a pipedream, but the best way to write faster is simply to think less.You don’t need to think if you’ve already planned. You don’t need to think if you already know. Really try to make a list of all the stupid things you stop and think about when you’re writing. Any time you stop and put your hand on your chin and go “hmm”, write that down as what caused a speed bump. Figure out if that had to be a speed bump to begin with.90% of the time, you made up a speed bump that didn’t have to be there.As I’ve said before(and I’ll repeat myself proudly), I could only get something like 8wpm when typing out a story. It took me 2 hours to crap out a flash fiction story of 1,000 words. My current goal is to get about half of what I can type, which is about 25wpm. That means 3 times faster. That means 3 times the amount of flash fiction stories will be crapped out! And that’s only at half of the full potential, meaning it can be up to 6 times the production.Naturally, this is all revolving around the concept of an average. It’s not like we’re going to be typing as fast as possible all the time or writing at a breakneck speed the entire time. You’ll get sluggish moments, you’ll get distracted, and you’ll have brain farts. But the goal is to reduce the amount of things you can control, and most of your issues with speed are IN your control.Step 5: Write LessI am guilty of writing far too much. I am a person who likes to cover as much ground as possible before getting to the point. But this history of being too wordy has allowed me to figure out how much is too much. I have also realized, from studying how other people write out stories, that there are tons of stories that don’t need to be the size of a novel. Not even the size of a novella.Most stories you see from writers are worthy of something like a short story, or a series of short stories, due to how hectic and disconnected they are. There’s only so much you need to put down on the digital paper when it comes to telling a story. Most writing consists of distractions and filler like spectacle and info dumps and all sorts of nonsense that the reader doesn’t care about. I’ll ask some people “Why did you put this whole chapter in here?” and they’ll be like “I thought it would be nice filler to make the book bigger.”Filler to make the book bigger? It’s already massive! Why would the reader feel justified in their purchase for something they’re going to skip? This is no different than if a movie extended its run time by adding scenes where a character waits for a bus. That may work for indie movies that don’t intend to sell any tickets, but that doesn’t work for the daily crunch of storytelling.You’d be shocked how short most stories could be if there was less or zero obfuscation. Imagine cutting your writing time in half by turning your 700 page novel into a 300 page novel. Or imagine turning your 300 page novel into a 120 page novella. Turning your 120 page novella into a highly condensed 30 page short story. The dick measuring of writing length is another way of wasting time to remove the indie competition that corporations fear so much.Really think to yourself: do readers wish for a story to be longer? Do they wish for stories to sacrifice the quality of pages for the quantity of pages? Do we ever complain that cartoons like Spongebob need to be one hour long instead of 15min shorts? There was a standard for stories for the longest time about meeting a page length because companies were limited by physical production of bound books that had to go through a dang ol’ printing machine. This is 2023 for corn’s sake, and we have technology giving everyone ADHD.It’s a sad realization about the near future, but stories are getting shorter as time goes by. We are writing faster, writing less, and amateurs are left in the dust when they think of things in the old ways of process. Retain older ideas of what a story is, but not how a story is made necessarily. You’re not some aristocrat with a peacock feather dabbing it into an ink well, you’re a normal person of a modern age on a computer. The reader doesn’t want to spend all day reading a meandering story or post, they want it to get to the point as soon as possible, which is why flash fiction is so popular these days.Serials are also popular, which is why wattpad and royal road are increasing in usership every day. The demand of a daily or weekly update has caused most serials on such sites to have each chapter reduced to 1.5k words. This means my old writing speed would need 3 hours a day to keep up with demand, not including the editing process. If I hit 25wpm, I could get a chapter done in 1 hour. An hour a day to keep the doctor away.This is the benefit of writing faster, which is to also write smarter. It can become an amazing realization that, eventually, you’ll run out of things to write before you run out of time to write. If you write slow, it’s the other way around, meaning all of the stuff you wanted to do and say is going to be left unsaid. I am a firm believer of doing the things you want to do over doing things you don’t want to do, unless you’re a rapist or something. It’s not like people want to sit there and struggle with writing all day.People want to clock in to their writing session, slap the keyboard for an hour, boom they’re done. This post is about 4k words and I was able to slap it out in 2 hours. I probably reached my 25wpm goal with this one, because I turned my brain off and decided to remove anything that’s not essential. Little editing was required because it’s an advice piece. Either way, it’s proof that this adviceworks, by existing alone.Now the only thing left to ask yourself is: What is your typing limit and how close can you make your typing limit to it?
(DIR) Post #AcGqdGejNF4COSFChU by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-28T09:02:38+00:00
1 likes, 0 repeats
Before I was working on my first chapter skills. Now I'm working on my "third round editing" skills. I'm doing this with a friend's story because he wrote the whole thing out already and I'm switching around paragraphs and adding theme or personality where it's missing. Through this, I'm also working on figuring out where tone gets created, and my friend is used a referee because it's supposed to be the tone he wants. So far, it's been going swell, and I try to speed through it by going only up to around 10 paragraphs before I head into the next chapter. So I read into the chapter, figure out what the focus is, then make sure it flows better than the original.
(DIR) Post #AcKwvcdzjoBu9rsJVo by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-11-30T09:48:38+00:00
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I like to figure out how to make my writing into a "bug in your mind", like that song that never leaves when you try to think about nothing. Usually, it requires emotional manipulation. Sometimes anger works best.The time and money aspect comes from how much value the words hold, which comes with the theme. Great art requires a usefulness that challenges the reader's world view and changes their life. It's probably a ridiculously high goal to hold, but that's the way you aim to hit a target that matters.A novel takes over 9 hours of pure concentration to read through. Imagine trying to provide 9 hours of themes through symbolism. Something like Harry Potter was able to do that easily, and for kids.I'm always told my stories are unique, but I'd rather they be interesting enough to be familiar. The familiarity readers hold, while going through a different world, is what increases sales and reading time. You can say Harry Potter is a typical portal fantasy or low fantasy mystery that happens to take place in a boarding school, but that typical story was able to charm millions and people remember it.
(DIR) Post #AcXAcmGnSI4zlVS4Mi by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-12-06T13:23:52+00:00
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Xianxia is incredibly popular online in serial form, martial art movies are incredibly popular in movie form, and yet Chinese fantasy novels are unable to make lists in trad pub.But apparently the top fantasy book now is about Western dragons.The reason: white women.
(DIR) Post #AcaHJ5c40MGhiZ4y7E by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-12-07T02:54:15+00:00
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Watching the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn struggle to answer if calling for the genocide of jews is bullying will probably be marked down as the highlight of 2023.Like 20 years of woke pandering and they couldn't give a straight answer.
(DIR) Post #Acdi5ZbgyI2avPZ4Eq by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-12-09T08:21:08+00:00
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A lot of problems that develop for me are things like "the protagonist is dead" or "well... now what?"Like when the main quest is over after 3 books and we kind of have to sit there thinking "Well... now what?"Happens all the time with horror stories. It's really hard to think of horror stories that can create sequels outside of specifically slasher movies or creature features.
(DIR) Post #Acu3NBUTh7m4Oi6Y7s by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-12-17T12:16:14+00:00
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AI and automation is only able to do previously constructed concepts and ideas, meaning the dictionary and a history are all it is able to access. If we started AI from only ancient Greece, it could only write things like epic poems and fables. There couldn't be anything beyond that. This is why creativity is important with art, as well as lateral thinking, which an AI is unable to mimic. Even a creative person would not get a creative story out of an automated process. So the two main thing it's not able to mimic are creativity and human mistakes.
(DIR) Post #Ad7eCnifCBWE6g2GMS by erwintheauthor@www.minds.com
2023-12-23T12:58:22+00:00
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I've been my most creative during the holidays since it's mostly time off and time indoors. Plus I started doing concept and plot synergy to figure out where pretty much every story ends up as a form of existence, and that's allowed me to easily world build for future projects. Turning concept creation into a form of mad libs makes me feel like biological AI.