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Post by Resha Caner on Nov 5, 2009 8:45:32 GMT -5
Hmm. It seems our stories share some similarities - your dragon-kin and my "Graseq". You've got a different spin on it. In my case, the humanoid Graseq are basically innocent. It was the demons, looking for a way to escape God, who bonded with people to essentially create a new race, and now the descendants are seeking to escape that bond.
Anyway, I'm liking your backstory. I spent a lot of time developing my backstory, and then found that it is very difficult to tell. Either the details dribble out too slowly, and people are confused because they don't have enough info to figure out what's happening ... or the details come too fast and they're confused because they can't absorb them all.
I'll let you get back to work now.
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Post by beckyminor on Nov 5, 2009 9:42:48 GMT -5
I know what you mean...you want to hint at your backstory so that your world has depth, but you don't want to info-dump a whole bunch of non-essential stuff, and sometimes finding just exactly what is essential to the reader is extremely challenging. I have a hard time resisting putting all the "historical" details into the story, since I think they're cool and interesting. Just because I think so certainly doesn't mean my readers will! But with the short stories I'm writing, the temptation is a non issue, since I just don't have the word count to work with to dump any info. I end up, instead, falling into the pit-trap of being oblique. And no worries, you're not keeping me from working. Lots of other things are, but not this discussion.  |
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Post by metalikhan on Nov 6, 2009 12:05:18 GMT -5
Addendum about the writers' group at church:
All non-fiction. With great helpfulness and enthusiasm, they suggested I look for a group on-line.
The quest continues.
**sigh**
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Post by beckyminor on Nov 6, 2009 13:19:00 GMT -5
Oh, metalikhan, I feel for you. We weird folks are so outnumbered! There's been a little talk of a writer's group coming together here at the Anomaly, or at least consisting of members here,so maybe that's a dialogue worth having in a more concrete way. I guess it would require those interested to commit to a specific workload of contributing critiques. Any thoughts?
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Post by Resha Caner on Nov 6, 2009 13:38:19 GMT -5
I've been in several different writer's groups. The reason it has been several is because one must accept that, despite the best of intentions, life gets in the way and nothing lasts forever. On occasion I get busy, or I just burn out - and I think that happens to everyone. I've been in groups that fell apart while I was still chipper, full of enthusiasm, and ready for more. I've also been the one who had to drop out.
So, just grab the dragon by the tail and ride it for as long as you can.
I've seen several different schemes: point systems, word count, rotations. All of them involve the golden rule - critique others if you expect to receive a critique.
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Post by metalikhan on Nov 7, 2009 13:53:35 GMT -5
I'd be interested, but I imagine not much will happen until the MLPS and holiday hub-bub dies down. I would prefer it be a members only type group that we have to sign in to view or post. There have been a couple of things I had to ask the administrators to remove when I wanted to submit them for consideration for publication. The works were still considered reprints by the publishers; and I had to submit them as such. Some of the rules about what constitutes publication are so convoluted, it makes my little brain hurt; but some of it seems to come down to exclusive use of a work for the contracted time.
Since my experience with critique groups is soooo limited, I'm not sure about the nuts and bolts part of it. I could probably do a couple of crits per week without cutting into my work schedule. I suppose some of it depends on how much gets posted here to be critiqued.
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