I'm pretty sure Bioware lost every right to talk about quality writing as of Mass Effect: Deception. Although everything mentioned above is good advice. ... Actually, given the shit that passed as Baldur's Gate official novels, I don't think Bioware has ever been allowed to talk about writing quality. Ever.
David Gaider (the guy who wrote the article) did Baldur's Gate 2 and Knights of the Old Republic. Granted, he also wrote for Dragon Age and Neverwinter Nights, but I'm willing to forgive him that.
Okay, so hypothetical situation here. I, going through some wangsty crap for a couple of days in my college life, write a sappy chapter that doesn't fit with the rest of the story, introducing possible shipping when I had planned on almost no romance, just some friendly interaction between my main character and an extra. Feeling strongly about it, because it echoed my experiences or some shit, I post it after basic proofreading. Would you guys recommend that I completely redo the chapter?
Okay, thanks. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to fix that very not-hypothetical, very real situation.
I have a tip for authors, while not actually about writing, I think that authors writing anything longer than a one shot story should invest in a a good notebook, they are like 10$ for a good one and when your computer catches a virus and destroys all your files (It will happen to you) you wont lose all your notes and ideas forcing you to start over, which I hear can be heart wrenching experience for not only you but your readers as well.
Don't know if this is in here and every time I try to read the thread, I run square into writer's block or something. Anyway: Never use "seem", "seems" or "seemed" t0 depict an action that is obvious. "The wizard seemed to summon a huge demon", when the demon is twenty feet tall, spits fire, is red, has huge horns and a flaming trident and is blatantly visible, is inane! That's not an example, to avoid embarrassing anyone, but I've seen ones just as bad or worse. Just had to vent.
These three beautiful articles, written by an professional, should be recommended reading for any aspiring writer. Don't be deceived by the simplistic titles, because these articles go into depth about the construction of coherent, functional, high quality prose. How to write a sentence. How to write a paragraph. How to write a point of view.
The Extra Credits guys over at PATV have just started a series on The Hero's Journey. It focuses on using it from a game development perspective but I think it would be enlightening to anyone who is a new author who has never really studied this literary device in depth. First episode here: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-heros-journey-part-1
Only pansies pull their punches in their prose. Mean what you say, and don't mollycoddle your verbs. Amen, Brother Narf. Preach it.
Not even in that case, Arthur. Copping out with a 'seems' still falls firmly in the realm of bullshit, when you can pick from so many better methods of indicating an illusion that all have more visual and narrative impact. Seems (and all its cousins) remains a limp-wristed pansy word that has no place depicting action of any type in -good- fiction. I'm not saying you -can't- use it for the purpose of an illusion or whatever, just that it's still a cop-out. You can always do better than 'seems'. The only time I can truly accept 'seems' is in a first draft as a placeholder for something more effective if you couldn't come up with it at the time.
Then why does it exist except to use in situations like illusions or when you can mistake things? The word has a purpose. And just saying 'you don't like it' is really not going to cut it.
"seem", "seems", "seemed" and the like are still weak words. There's better ones for putting flavour in writing. Edit: How about "As if to rend and tear", if you want an example?
Just because some words exist, doesn't mean they have a place in powerful fiction. Passive sentences exist. There's even a place for them. That place doesn't share an area code with good fiction. Seems like it's the same way with 'seems' to me. (Alternatively: ) Good fiction doesn't truck with mamby-pamby words like 'seems'.
Please take care when writing fiction, to make sure that your changes will not result in the destruction of the fictional world, unless that's what you're aiming for. For example, taking any Buffy main character off the hellmouth will most likely result in the destruction of the world, unless compensatory (and likely non-canon) actions are taken.
That assumes that their absence won't inherently cause someone else to step up to fill their place. I'd wager that one of the leading causes of inaction is that someone else already has it handled. Take out a crucial component of that and people end up stepping up on their own just so everything doesn't go entirely to shit. We even see big bads in BtVS (your example) do so. Or the remaining heroes still overcome with a different plan of action due to taking the absence into account. I don't see it as inherently SoD breaking, unless you explicitly show that the same people, using the same plan, still succeeded without someone who formed a key part of that plan.
My point was that you don't need to show, much less mention those actions, unless they're relevant to the plot. SoD can handle the burden on its own.
The serial novel is a time-honored and rather enjoyable medium, in my opinion, and has been the original format of many of literature's classics. Personally I like it because it allows for easy encapsulation of plot, making each piece satisfying in its own right, while still allowing for the expansiveness absent in a stand alone short. It's a TV episode, in comparison to a movie. Hell, Poe even said that a good short (the basic unit of a serial) should be of a length readable in an hour, the length of a lot of TV episodes, so the comparison is an extremely strong one. Though it kinda breaks down on the movie vs novel end of things. (Unless you're watching the Godfather.)
