Can you provide any references to where you've seen this on the site? I don't know of any usage that would work like that. Maybe the examples are from the same author and he/she is just getting it wrong? There are certainly spelling, usage, and some mechanical differences between American English and British English, but I don't know of any differences like that which would go into the usage of a verb, in straight verb form, as a noun/predicate nominative (unless it is a slang or colloquial or very geographically localized idiom, or a character speaking in a very idiomatic way).
It's really just a matter that 'to be' is a linking verb (here linking 'I' to 'sat' or 'we' to 'sat'). A linking verb links the subject/noun (here 'I' or 'we') to a predicate nominative (and a predicate nominative is a noun that renames or describes the sentence's subject). So a gerund like 'sitting' can function in that noun capacity. But another verb like 'sat' can't.
So, again, unless this is some highly localized idiom used in some corner of Wales or Scotland, then the usage is just wrong.
I know what you mean. I have a strong preference for first person. But some stories simply can't be made to work any way but in third.
There's a lot of great advice here.
Characters are the most important element in your story. Before you write, sit down a figure out in detail who they are - their personalities, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, their virtuous characteristics, and their flaws. It's okay to tell the reader some of that, but you should really be figuring out how you show the reader who these people are.
Shyboy is right for a lot of writing. But stories don't necessarily have to be in a believable world. There's a great deal of fantasy out there. But generally readers want to be able to identify with the world they are reading about. I have a series of seven stories and the last four are set in the Chicago area. I remember once a long time ago changing planes at O'Hare, but other than that I've never been in Chicago. It's one of the advantages of the world we live in that now you can visit a place virtually. Readers of mine from the Chicago area have gotten in touch to let me know they felt very at home in those stories.
And someone mentioned about writing sex scenes. I suppose when I started writing the writing of sex scenes was a primary motivator. But I quickly got past that. One of the first stories I wrote - just because of how the plot went - had a great deal of sex in it. And I quickly found myself thinking, 'Oh, God, not again.' Writing the sex came to be, not a burden I suppose, but the least agreeable task. I soon found that making a plot and characters work, especially over a long story, to be what motivates me to write.
I guess it depends on how you define 'arrived.' And I think anyone who writes will attach their own meaning to that term. I too found it very satisfying when readers started getting in touch with expressions of enjoyment and questions about future writing. A couple years ago I published a series of seven interrelated stories called Taking Chances at smashwords. I don't make a lot of money from them - it's hardly a living. But I get a check every quarter. And it really is an ego boost that people will pay actual money to read my stories! I'm still amazed by that, and to me I guess that's 'arriving' in some small way.
The use of italics in English grammar is fairly well-defined.
They should be used for a title: name of a book, story, movie, television show, artwork (painting or sculpture), well known speech or address, plays, and longer musical compositions [so Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition would be italicized, but the names of the individual components of that composition (Bydlo, Limoges, Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle, etc.) would not be].
(Although, I got into the habit years ago of using both italics and underlining for such things because it was in common use then. And really I should try to get away from it, but the mental rut seems to be too deep.)
Italics can/should be used for emphasis.
For the name of some sort of vehicle/transport: Titanic, Mustang, Twentieth Century Limited.
You'll often see it used for a word used to convey a sound: boom, smack, splash.
It is used for some foreign words. The most common usage seems to be that a foreign word that is well-introduced into English usage would not be italicized (like et cetera), but foreign words or phrases less used would be rendered it italics (bon mot, maître d') - obviously there's a lot of judgment and subjectivity on the writer's part about what is or isn't in common use.
They can also be used for a number or letter that represents itself: The building had a big C written on its side.
Italics is also used to render a character's interior thoughts (when presented as internal monologue). Although there are differences of opinion as to what method to use. Some prefer italics. The other way to do it is with the words in single quote marks. (But never italics in single quotes). Some think italics best and some single quotes. I favor and use italics, although I think there are positive arguments to be made for either. I like italics because once a reader knows you use them in this way they are the quickest and surest way to render character thoughts and have the reader recognize them as such. Also, italics lessens the need for a dialogue/thought tag (, she thought.)
Hope the information is helpful.
I think you can analogize this to film directors. Some directors - Joe Wright (Atonement, the latest Anna Karenina), Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Clint Eastwood - tend to be very efficient in telling stories. They show what they need to show in order to tell the story and little else. As opposed to a director like Francis Ford Coppola who throws anything and everything into a film and takes the longest road possible to telling a story. Think about Apocalypse Now - it could easily be three-quarters the length it is. (And, unless you've laid in supplies for a few weeks you'd never want to sit down to watch a FFC director's cut).
On the other hand, Robert Altman's Short Cuts is over three hours in length, but it doesn't feel long (it's a film adaptation of a series of Raymond Carver short stories, tying them together) because he tells pretty much only what's necessary to move the story forward. And think how much he accomplishes in that incredible eight minute opening shot to The Player.
I think it's best to take the same approach to writing. Try to judge - are the details you provide necessary to tell the story and does the story have forward momentum? Or is it bogged down and moving slowly? That's difficult for a writer to judge in relation to their own writing, and why a beta reader is often a good idea.
I've found that with the story premise I've been pursuing in recent years that a level of detail is necessary, and getting into characters' pasts, background, life circumstances, and personal relationships and attachments have to be addressed. In responses I've gotten from readers I've found they very much like the level of information/detail in my stories as it helps to bring the premise from the edges of possibility into the real world of the possible and even likely. I don't tend to attract readers looking for quick get-off stories, but ones looking for real stories with real plots and characters, and some well-chosen level of detail is necessary to accomplish that.
I think the advice you're getting here is good. I've never seen a prologue that deals only with characters. Usually it has to do with some aspect of a character's past, a past event, or some other sort of scene-setting. But I think you have to ask yourself if that is best done in something like a prologue. Whatever you're explaining in the prologue is really some aspect of the story, even it's 'just' backstory. I've always thought that something like that is best done better and more naturally and unobtrusively when just worked into the flow of the story.
I've always preferred first person for a couple reasons.
1) It allows the reader to be inside the head of a narrator who is inside the story (as opposed to only hearing a narrator who is outside the story). To me that makes the perspective more immediate and better draws the reader in.
2) It allows you as a writer to keep things hidden naturally and to deflect and misdirect. An omniscient narrator outside the story knows everything and should reveal everything (In fact, as a reader I actually feel a bit cheated when I read a third person story and there is some reveal near the end because I think 'Well, you're the third person omniscient narrator so you knew this all along. Why didn't you tell me before?' It makes me feel manipulated). But a first person narrator in the story is not that way. Maybe that character doesn't have information, or they have information that they don't understand, or they have information they have misinterpreted, or they have incomplete information, or their understanding of information is colored by some emotional or relationship issue. You see, there are many reasons why a full understanding may be delayed.
It's one thing when you read: "He suddenly realized.....(something that the narrator obviously had to know all along)
It's another thing entirely when in the natural course of the story you read: "The truth became clear to me. All these years I'd thought he.....
I was going to put this up on several boards, as I'd like to get input from a wide variety of audiences. So I hope whoever moderates these boards will be okay with that.
For a few years now my writing has centered around the premise of people who make wagers of a sort that involve nudity or sex as the payoff/forfeit for losing. I've found the concept to be very rich in terms of exploring the motivations, psychology, and how the episode affects personal relationships (to be entirely honest I don't mind writing the sex parts, but sometimes they can get a bit tedious as my interest is more in the psychology and interpersonal relationship aspects of the story). Most of the content comes from my imagination, but occasionally I'll come in contact with a genuine story that sparks some ideas.
So, if you've had an experience like that I'd love to hear about it. I never use such real life experiences verbatim. They really act as just a springboard for growing other ideas. If you can share please let me know as much about the situation as you can: gender of the person you wagered with, their relationship to you, what you bet on, what each would have had to do had they lost, why you made the wager or what you hoped to gain (just fun, you didn't like the person and wanted to embarrass them, etc?), how the payoff went and your thoughts about it, how you felt about taking the risk, who won and lost, if you lost what you had to do, and especially how you felt about the experience.
Appreciate your input and sharing! And you can do that on this thread or you can PM me.
I was going to put this up on several boards, as I'd like to get input from a wide variety of audiences. So I hope whoever moderates these boards will be okay with that.
For a few years now my writing has centered around the premise of people who make wagers of a sort that involve nudity or sex as the payoff/forfeit for losing. I've found the concept to be very rich in terms of exploring the motivations, psychology, and how the episode affects personal relationships (to be entirely honest I don't mind writing the sex parts, but sometimes they can get a bit tedious as my interest is more in the psychology and interpersonal relationship aspects of the story). Most of the content comes from my imagination, but occasionally I'll come in contact with a genuine story that sparks some ideas.
So, if you've had an experience like that I'd love to hear about it. I never use such real life experiences verbatim. They really act as just a springboard for growing other ideas. If you can share please let me know as much about the situation as you can: gender of the person you wagered with, their relationship to you, what you bet on, what each would have had to do had they lost, why you made the wager or what you hoped to gain (just fun, you didn't like the person and wanted to embarrass them, etc?), how the payoff went and your thoughts about it, how you felt about taking the risk, who won and lost, if you lost what you had to do, and especially how you felt about the experience.
Appreciate your input and sharing! And you can do that on this thread or you can PM me.
Shows you how out of touch I am. I've never even heard of interactive erotica (or maybe I have and just don't know it by that name). What is it?
I find thinking of a celebrity analogy is helpful to base descriptions of characters on: Jennifer Aniston, Laura Linney, Gary Oldman, etc.
I don't know that they bother me terribly, but I do notice them. I find them occasionally in various works, but they do seem to reside to an inordinately large degree in Stephen King's stories. I don't know that you can really blame King. Even experienced writers make mistakes. It's really the job of a publishing house's proofreaders and editors to catch and correct them. I just wonder if King's writing is so popular and profitable that his publisher doesn't really look at all, or with any great care, at his manuscripts in their haste to get them on the market.
There was one in The Dead Zone. In the second section of the book, the main character Johnny Smith goes to work as a tutor for this 17-year-old kid of a very wealthy guy. When Johnny interviews for the job with the kid's father the father starts off as Roger (on pg. 264). On pg. 267 he's still Roger, but by the end of the paragraph becomes Stuart. He remains Stuart for the next dialogue tag, and then reverts to Roger. He pretty much stays Roger after that. I sort of recall the switch happening another time or two before he leaves the story. While I found the instances cited here, the others I wasn't able to pick up with a few minutes of skimming.
There are two ways you can go. One is to outline the story - detailing what needs to happen in the story and when - and that should suggest chapter divisions. The other way is to just start writing. In writing novels I've found that as I write places for chapters breaks tend to suggest themselves.
Okay. So here's a story that may be illustrative (or not). The composer Jean Sibelius was teaching at the Helsinki Conservatory. One day he encountered one of his composition students on the campus. During their conversation the student mentioned that he was having a great deal of difficulty developing the themes (the musical lines, melodies, on which a larger work like a symphony is grown and derived) for his first symphony. Sibelius told him, "You shouldn't be occupied with developing the themes for your first symphony. You should be writing your first symphony." Which I would take to mean: don't get too caught up in process and procedure. Simply start creating, and those process elements will tend to take care of themselves.
Maybe you should take some time, sit down and consider them, and begin the separate out the good ideas from the bad ideas. We all have both kinds.
Ephesians 2:9 "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast."
It is a fundamental tenet of Christianity that salvation and an eternal relationship with God are based on faith. One cannot earn one's way into salvation through ones works. The corollary principle is that one cannot be condemned by one's works (the condemnation of humans - speaking from fundamental Christian orthodoxy - is based on Adam's original sin and salvation through faith is the only escape hatch, if you will).
So the application here is that you don't get to say, "I didn't write any erotic, therefore I am saved." By the corollary, there is no basis in Christian doctrine that says, "You wrote erotic, therefore you are not saved."
However, having said all that, almost every Christian church, denomination, sect, cult, and ministry has its (often unique and imaginative) list of legalisms and taboos that either prevent salvation or trigger condemnation. Matters involving nudity, sex, and reproduction (and since erotica is typically about those subjects then writing erotica gets rolled aboard) are the prime foundations on which those organizations build elaborate structures about what acts in those areas get one saved (by not doing them) or condemned (by doing them). Dietary rules are another favorite area for legalisms and taboos.
So, it's simply a matter of how you want to go. Would you prefer to believe the basic doctrines of Christianity, or the legalisms and taboos dreamed up by people and their organizations?
This is one I don't think I've ever seen addressed anywhere, although even good writers often get the usage wrong. That's mostly because writers tend to use one form or the other for all usages.
The common usage is that 'awhile' is used when the usage is as an adverb of time (other words that are, or have one of their meanings as, adverbs of time are words like - then, now, already, just, since, and many more). So:
She nagged awhile, so I told her we could talk about our relationship and that I'd pencil it in on my calendar for three years from Wednesday.
But when used as a noun phrase acting as the object of a preposition it is written 'a while.' So:
She wanted to talk about our relationship, and I told her that maybe we could after a while; I turned my attention back to the game.
I have quite a number of stories written and published here and at smashwords. All of them are from a female character's POV (I'm male).
The feedback I've gotten (from actual female human beings) is that I've done it well.
That's fine and all. But really I don't so much see the distinction. To me people are people. There are seven billion of them right now, roughly divided evenly between blues and pinks. And I think men and women are, at their core, largely the same. Men and women both want companionship, to be loved and express love, to be respected, and a whole host of other values that are common to both genders.
When someone tells me 'Well, a woman (or man) wouldn't do that' my view is that only means that the person speaking would not do that. People are immensely diverse. Some have a highly charged sexual motor, and some are asexual. Some are masochistic, and some are sadistic. Some are submissive, and some are dominant. And on and on to a thousand different characteristics. You can find somewhere a real woman who would think/believe/say/do anything. And you can find a real man somewhere who will think/believe/say/do anything.
All that being the case, the real issue is whether the character you've written would think/believe/say/do whatever it is you have that character thinking/believing/saying/doing. Your task as a writer is to make sure that whatever your character (male or female) thinks/believes/says/does is believable and credible and genuine for that character. Out in the real world there is a man or a woman who will think/believe/say/do whatever it is you have that character doing. And there will be many men and women who would not think/believe/say/do that thing. Some of those people will understand fiction well enough (that is, suspend their disbelief) to accept that the character you've presented to them would be like that.
I think there really can be differences in some cases in perceptions - how a man or woman might tend to react to some things within gender norms. For example, I wrote a story now on smashwords in which the first person female character narrator views a video of a hetero couple who are into watersports/pee play. Are there real people into that? Absolutely. Although certainly it is only a small subset of homo sapiens who are into that fetish. She watches on the video as the couple have sex. They are on a bed, her on top of him. She pulls up so he is only halfway into her and she lets go, and her pee is coursing down his dick. This is very exciting for both of them. She pulls up farther so that his dick is out of her pointing straight up at her vulva and her pee is raining down as his cum is shooting up. Now, the perception part. In my view a man seeing that scene or reading about it would be more likely to say either 'Wow, that's hot!' or 'Yuck!' depending on his personal tastes. But the female narrator (echoing what I would think of perhaps a more female reaction) says (speaking in first person to the reader) 'Now, I know what you're thinking, and I thought the same thing. They make plastic mattress covers in king size?' A male might react first within his personal set of sexual preferences. A female (to me) seems more likely to go immediately to 'Holy shit! Their mattress must stink to high heaven.' (and then proceed to the mattress cover solution). But, again, I suppose you could find men who react like I think the woman would and women who would react like I think a man would.
I think you have to be careful about what you're referring to, shylass. You seem to be asking about the actual orifice from which #2 emerges. But people (and writers) also refer to the entire area.
So, for example, with Liz's suggestions: arse, backside, behind, bottom, bum, rear, and tush I think most people tend to think of those as a references to the large (or not necessarily so large - maybe we should instead use the term 'general') area of the buttocks. (There may be a national difference there, too. Arse and bum are used in British English and not in American English - I'm from the states - and I've always understood them to mean 'buttocks area.' But maybe they're more specific. I know in American English the others (backside, behind, rear, and tush) are used and refer to the entire area.
Her suggestions of pucker, anus, taint, o-ring, to me, refer to the actual orifice.
I suppose (as you've noted) that a lot depends on the context of the story: drama, comedy, etc.
In the right context, like Liz, I tend to like 'pucker,' but that's only because Kevin Spacey used it in The Usual Suspects.
I'm not too big on proofreading except on material from writers with very good grammar and mechanics. It can become quite a wilderness to slog through.
But post-proofreading I've done a good deal of beta reading and editing, so you can contact me for that.
I tend to stay away from proofreading, as it can be very laborious if the story isn't from a very practiced writer and great grammar and mechanics.
But a step down the road, after the proof reading is done if you'd like me to beta read or edit I'm happy to do that for you. I've done a good deal of it.
