hmmm? no
that was actual honest advice. If you don't like it doesnt mean I should adapt what I say to your taste. Sorry if my advice is trash. Its MY advice. Just like how any other authers advice won't work on other people because its a personal thing THEY did, mine is also mine. if you don't like smth then simply do not do it ://
what exactly will "me changing header" do here?
Yes try to rewrite and do a different approach, ot might give you a new perspective and even develop into something different.
I think if we were somehow able to transfer what pictured in our minds faithfully into readers', many will still cherrypick parts they like the most or getting the things wrong. That is a bold choice if someone want to police what readers should think or do, but it may not go well.
While I agree with some of the advice like 1 and 2, I do think the rest of the advice can be subjective according to each person. This is more of a each to it's own advice guideline.
The whole representation thing is mixed bag. I get there is a lot of bad writing surrounding representation. But if I learn one thing is that you can't really control what readers ship. That's why I got into the mindset that any readers can ship your characters whether you like it or not. I don't care much if people ship my characters for whatever reason, but that's just me. It's apart of the whole sharing your story and putting it out there with the whole culture around fandoms and fanfiction in all.
Don't get me wrong, it does get annoying when people focus on around shipping whether it is LGBTQ or not. I would take it to allow the whole shipping thing to happen just as long your readers don't demand for your story to focus around that. While I have some LGBTQ characters, I have yet to make a novel focused around them since in the current story. They don't have a huge focus enough for me to justify tagging the story.
that's exactly me. It wasn't an LGBT novel. it was a mystery novel with 2 girls that end up together.
hmmm...what about point 3? have you experienced it before?
Point 3? I can see the point about the ripoff thing. I used to write a story about magical girls because when I was younger, I was into the magical girls genre. That genre has have a lot of 'ripoff' but each magical girl story was different on its own way. But I know people get bored of rip offs a lot.
Therefore, I totally get people complaints about things being unoriginal as I used to be into that mindset with another long time writer friend of mine. We used to get frustrated about any of our stories or characters having the same ideas as other creators. We really wanted our creations to be special so when you have someone that almost the same idea or concept as you. It does get frustrating because you really want to stand out from the crowd. Nowadays, I'm mostly over that because it's literally impossible to have a complete original story or character these days.
So my whole point is writers should just focus on the execution of the story rather than trying to be "original". But I know the aim of trying to original is a mindset that it's hard for any creative to get out of. There is no shame for at least trying to stand out from the works a bit so I don't blame these creators for trying to be original.
Then I wouldn't call that harsh or decent writing advise. Like at all. I would call it more crippling yourself in an attempt at. ... Something. Reddit upvotes maybe?
Maybe.. the huge plot twist that changed everything in your most popular series you deleted... Wasnt that good and the cute girls part was the better written part. If that's literally all what the commenters was talking about. Food for thought.
Honestly its more immature especially dropping an entire work cus people """didnt focus on what you like""". Thats all series, fans like to focus on cute stuff. Straight ships, friendships, characters that they can see themselves in POCs, LGBTQ, disabled ect. Thats every series if you cant handle that then... you may not be cut out as a creator or a bigger creator
Honestly this less a writing advise thread and more "here's my takes" i dont recommend people following half of these if they are serious about writing.
Forced diversity isnt a thing...
FINALLY! FINALLY someone posted something that makes sense. You said everything I was saying for years. 100% agree. I suppose this will p*ss off many people but people just hate hearing the truth
At the risk of sounding like "That guy" i think when most (sane) people mention "Forced Diversity" they mean when say it's inserted in a way that doesn't service the themes or story the writer is trying get at if that makes sense.
Like say for example if I did something like Peanuts and had the white kids just hanging with other kids of different ethnicities like it's no big deal. That's not forced diversity, that's just how things be. Now if say every time said characters showed up, I grind the plot to a halt to sit the audience down for a lecture about how "racism's bad, mmkay?" even if the rest of the story wasn't about racism or the like. Then that would be considered "forced".
Now if say I was writing a story about how bigotry and racism hurt people, then it would be more okay to have lectures like that if that makes sense (though in a way that's natural to the story and not like I'm just sitting the audience down for a class lecture on the themes of the story)
Anyways, that's my thoughts on the subject anyways.
Of course! Like it’s forced if it doesn’t have to do anything with the story or the characters, that’s what I believe.
And this is the problem with your entire post; you undermined your points by giving them a sensationalist, edgy header, then make an entirely different point. "All inspirational advice is bs" is not in anyway the same as "don't use personal taste as an excuse to not improve". Especially when the "inspirational bs" is correct. The same way your forced diversity part isn't about forced diversity, it's about bad romance, which is not the same at all.
And (this is going to sound nasty but there's no nice way to put it) no one should take advice from someone who says art is objective. Art is entirely subjective. Now, there are aspects of art or writing that can be said to be objective, such as anatomy and spelling, but you can have perfect spelling all you want, if I don't like the piece, I don't like the piece, because taste is subjective. Just there are many terribly acted films that we love, or even non-anatomically correct animations or comics. Because art or writing are a culmination of their parts then presented to someone to like or dislike based on their personal tastes. The amount of times I've disagreed with judges and industry experts on things like portrait art awards, for example.
No, because it's happened. I've written really awesome (to me) complex plots and had people comment on them and then similar stories people ignore them for the ship. I revealed half the cast has been dead for chapters and got comments on the relationship not getting together yet or how unfair it was he was flirting with another man because he's got a boyfriend (who while endgame, they hadn't got together at this stage of the story) so I get that it's frustrating. But rather than whine about it, I go and look at what worked for one and what didn't work in the other. If the readers aren't taking away what you want them to, it's on you, not them. You're coming across exactly the same as those writers who yell at fans for shipping the hero and his rival who have an entire series full of chemistry and bonding, rather than the card board cut out love interest they shoved into a relationship at the last minute and didn't bother giving the hero any chemistry with, and think that's the fans fault rather than maybe thinking they should write a better love interest.
I always saw the term "Forced Diversity" whenever mainstream media just put whatever character who is X in and don't even bother with developing the character and just do it for "brownie points" for being diverse so the audience can praise them. Not saying that all mainstream media and creators do this, but it is trend that some of them do this which is a trend that should stop.
This just reminds me of all Disney's "first gay character ever" characters, who they make a big deal of in marketing only for them to have all of a second on screen, no speaking lines and then never be seen again. Or characters who's ever line is "hey btw, did you know I'm gay" and no other character traits. Which, yeah, is cynical and forced, but not at all what the OP was talking about, (which is my frustration with their post in general).
yes. But not entirely that's the whole point. As you said some aspects of it are...you're having a big misunderstanding here. I seperated the "storytelling" and "the writing"
what I meant by "improve writing" is "improve the technique" such as the spelling and your style. I wasn't talking about the "storytelling" part. It was the "writing". The storytelling is subjective but the writing, at least I don't go with that, and try to make it good as much as I can. The story is completely subjective.
what you said about the headers are true. Will keep that in mind. They were dumb, I agree.
And no, there were more reasons for me to delete the novel, people being people just kinda disheartened me a bit. And no I haven't DROPPED it. One of the reasons I deleted it was because of the rewrite. And no, it didn't have as much GL as you think it did, and the mystery WAS well-written, at least to me and my nerdy beta readers. I do get what you say. I like cute stuff too, but when I write something I value for something else entirely, I'll get disappointed when others don't see that value.
And about the other issues others keep pushing, "forced diversity" and "badly written LGBT" are both issues that exist.
a badly written LGBT is an LGBT story that is not well written.
Forced Diversity is "there HAS to be LGBT character even if it doesnt make sense" in recent movies and TV shows. Did you see the Death Note live action? They made L dark-skinned, The entire movie is basically giving a middle finger to the original author, saying "screw u we want representation"
imo LGBT and diversity should feel natural. I told you an example above. A bisexual or gay relationship should start and develop and be something beautiful, and have good character that have layers and care about each other. That's a great representation. just adding a black character doesnt solve things. That just feels forced, at least to me, idk about you. But yeah. "forced diversity" is indeed a thing that should be addressed. This is not coming from a homophobe. This is literally coming from someone who IS in the community as a pan.
Okay that's not forced diversity and the author mention loved the adaption. Although I dislike it for being badly written. """forced diversity wasnt the problem. Ironically what was the issue? all the actors were white instead of japnases, and those were not an issue? L being black was what stand out the most? The adpation change the setting to American (which you can argue whether or not its good or bad all day, but the point is it was less forced and more just a change in ins setting)
Ironically L's casting was the best part due to getting an actor I felt fit L. L being black was not a problem, in writing nor as story telling.
ahhh fine u do u ig
I hated it, and I do think it had forced diversity. It still exists, ya'll just turn a blind when you see it. The actor did do a good job tho, don't get me wrong, but still felt forced to me.
no point stretching this.when our views are this different. I said my takes and all the points I made meant perfect sense to me, and those were the experiences I had, sure I was snarky explaining my points but I'm not backing off. If you don't like it I don't mind really. All I did was give some heartfelt advice, or bs, or whatever you wanna call it. It's not like I have to perfect at it. That's what all writing guides do. None of them actually help, they're just the author's experience doing the writy thingy. Take them if you want. leave them if you want. Why waste your time arguing with me, really?
Clearly, you are not getting things across as well as you think you are, if so many people seem to be misunderstanding you're points. So I'm going to speed round this, because you seem to just be digging your heels in defensively rather than actually wanting to engage critically with people's views on your advice that seems more like a bad experience you want to rant about than actual advice. Reminds me of those people who always used to turn up here complaining that to get ahead on Tapas, don't write proper stories, write trashy cliches because that's all the top stories are.
TL:DR you seem to have an issue with getting across what you want to say and people apparently focusing on the wrong thing.
no I love writing stories, no rants here. That's actually what I follow. If you don't, then okay. This is advice from a certain someone. you don't HAVE to do anything. People who share the same ideas get something out of it. People who don't, don't.
Are you really still on this? I just said storytelling (the art) might be subjective but don't use that as an excuse to not improve your writing (technique); despite storytelling, writing is objective thats literally the whole thing. What else is there?
there were other reasons, I just didn't wanna go there. Also I was a newbie back then. It's from 2018-2019.
probably.
hmmmm...not quite. An unnatural relationship or an unnatural character or an unnatural representation can sometimes be an advantage to a story, because it gives room for development. A forced representation is when you add LGBT just to represent and have people say "woaah" and all that. It's forced when it does not contribute to the story at all
look I'm not saying representation is bad or anything like that. Its like how you see a ship in a series that makes you "ight this is a pointless ship thats just there for the lgbt" and I dont like that. I prefer get into a novel and get introduced to a really well-developed LGBT ship that I wasn't expecting instead of seeing 12 LGBT tags on a novel. This happens more frequently on Wattpad where people have more freedom with tags. They just keep adding LGBT tags and most of them are not done well, and it just feels like they're there to fill in the blanks and appeal to people who are into LGBT stories. I've seen so many good stories do so much more with just one tag, and without forcing things, letting the characters flow and the romance build up little by little, it feels honest and pleasing when I read it, I can't really explain it. When I see the character, its like they belong to that story, and that they have something to add. Now compare this to a story with 12 different LGBT tags with bad (or no) development. Personally, when I read that, I feel like its fake. I don't like it when a book tries to add everything to appeal to the majority, I don't mean all books do that, obviously.
I don't know if you get how I feel. You probably don't.
sorry but I'm not reading this. Call me a bigoted idiot, but I'm really not, since it'll definitely go downhill after this. I'm not arguing with you on this topic anymore. I'm not racist, and I'm not sexist. I respect everyone regardless of their gender and race. Don't pull me into this rabbit hole. I wasn't even talking about this in the first place. I just want people to be people without needing to prove anything. I would love dark-skinned L if he was originally one. He'd be badass. But when you already have an established character, changing them when you change mediums just seems fake. It's like you're forcing it. The original point I mentioned wasn't even about this it was about the flow of the story, so don't even think about escalating this topic. If you have anything to say about other points, be my guest. I'm quite curious about point 3, and if you have similar experience. But we have different views on representation and it seems like we won't get along if we keep arguing it. Fighting over that will be a waste of time
I accept that I didn't communicate my points well, but I won't be dragged into this. I rest my points, if you don't agree, then don't. If you think forced representation doesnt exist then that's cool. But I think it does, and that's cool too. So can we leave it at that and stop dragging that point on? Because idk about you, but I'm getting really tired of talking about this.
While I agree wholeheartedly with your 8th rule, the 6th just doesn't sit right with me, though of course this is only my opinion. I know you said not to take it too seriously, but I just feel a need to say this. > "A novel with smarty words and good vocabulary is automatically superior to the one with bad vocabulary" yes...this is the rule. A novelist should always be smarter than the majority of their readers. If we see storytelling as some sort of LIE, then to drown your readers in your lies, you need to be smart enough, and a way to showcase that, is by using good words."
Smarty words and good vocabulary can be a good asset to any writing, but they're not at all what "drowns your readers in your lies." It has more to do with style, imageries, metaphors, rather than vocabularies and dictionaries. You could find 10 synonyms for one word and still have your text read as somewhat shallow and lifeless. The secret for me is in the way you use these words. That's a more important technique I believe. Besides this point, though, your tips are very insightful and like I said I especially agree with the 8th one 
Although I used to read GL, I now avoid every new LGBTQ story because of this said phenomenon. Granted, not all stories force it and have it be the only personality trait of the characters, but most ones do, especially the new ones, from what I've seen. So yeah, I hope new writers who get into LGBTQ as a theme for their writings would do a bit more research on characterization and the way such a theme can be introduced smoothly within a plot.
