Автори споделят

[Adi]

Кратък клип на Патрик Нес, в който разказва за своя опит с писането, идеите и мотивацията.

А междувременно ArtLine се похвалиха във фейсбук, че можем да видим Патрик Нес на живо за панаира на книгата през декември! Само да успея да отида... *няма достатъчно шаваща емотиконка за чувствата ми в момента*

[Кал]

Once to a perceptive friend I was bemoaning the fact that there was a gap in my bibliography for 1940 to 1946. (Actually some stories were published during the period, but only one had been written after 1940.) What wonders I might have produced had I not been clutched up, I wailed. And he said no, be of good cheer. He then turned on the whole body of my work a kind of searchlight I’d not been able to use, and pointed out to me that the early stuff was all very well, but the stories were essentially entertainment; with few exceptions they lack that Something to Say quality which marked the later output. In other words, the retreat, the period of silence, was in no way a cessation, a stopping. It was a silent working out of ideas, of conviction, a profound selection. The fact that the process went on unrecognized and beyond or beneath my control is quite beside the point. The work never stopped.
I’ve held hard to that revelation in recent years, and no longer go into transports of anguish when the typewriter stops. I do other things instead, in absolute confidence that when the silent subterranean work is done, it will surface. When it does so, it does with blinding speed—a short story, sometimes, in two hours. But to say I wrote it in two hours is to overlook that complex, steady, silent processing and reprocessing that has been going on for months and often years. Say then I typed it in two hours. I do not know how long it took to write. I could only type it when it was finished.

[Кал]

When I’m working at the peak of my performance—when the lightning strikes me and I write like a god—all consciousness of myself as a man and as a writer burns away. Only in those moments of grace do I become a real Writer. Only then, in that lucid state, do I become the pure Poet who knows that poems are the dreams of the universe crystallized in words. As I write and the word storm blows through me, my small self vanishes and I become the hand and fingers of that divine author; my mind becomes his pen; my blood, the ink. Nothing of the outer “real” world exists for me: neither taxes nor time, neither telephones nor TV. I live in another world, with my characters. In a way, I become one with them, and I live through them, as they do me. Tat tvam asi—that thou art. I sweat and I slay, along with Mallory, Valashu, and Kane. (...) When Lo cries out in her joy of loving Nick, I cry out inside, too. When I breathe in, I absorb all of my characters’ hopes, fears, agonies, and exaltations. And when I breathe out, my dreams become an entire universe.

[Кал]

David Farland, дългогодишен администратор (и „първа цедка“) на конкурса Writers of the Future, споделя:

What Makes a Story Great?

I just finished judging the Writers of the Future Contest for Quarter 2 of this year. These are stories that would have been written near the end of 2016 when political passions were running high, and in response to this, I received some of the most intriguing and powerful tales I’ve seen in months—stories about governments betraying their people, tales of revolution. The authors obviously cared about what was going on and responded with tales that were deeper, more creative, and more powerful than what I normally see, and they strove to elevate their language and write the tales more perfectly.

Now, when you’re looking for ways to reduce the audience to tears, there are a lot of ways to do it. People can cry in relief. They can mourn a character’s loss. They can weep at the good fortune of a character that they love. They can and should shed tears of astonishment at a powerful insight (or epiphany) that a character has. The strongest novels will stack scene after scene at the end of the tale to get an extended emotional release.

When you as a reader get those moments of tears, your body actually releases hormones that stimulate your ability to remember, so that the tale becomes stored in your long-term memory.

[Кал]

Ако обичате дъъъъъългите списъци с препоръчителни елементи, отново David Farland ни се притичва на помощ:

“Boosting” Your Prose

... Честно, аз ако трябваше да мисля за дори една пета от тия неща, като пиша, с пръст нямаше да докосна клавиатурата... Та по-скоро бих препоръчал да ги мислите чак след като сте приключили с първата чернова. Поне докато не ви станат навик.

Ако въобще искате да ги слагате, разбира се. Моите герои в Юнакинските приказки например нямат никакви описания, понеже аз не желая читателите да ги свързват с определени физически типажи. Изборът е умишлен и нямам намерение да го променям, ако ще не Фарланд, а Зиндел да се казва горният Дейвид.

Надолу ще цитирам само онези въпроси, които на мен ми звучат интригуващо:

Setting

4) Do I suffer by having repetitive settings? For example, if I set two scenes in the same living room, would one of them be more interesting if I moved it elsewhere?

11) Do my settings have duality—a sometimes ambiguous nature? (For example, my character might love the church where she was married, have fond memories of it, and yet feel a sense of betrayal because her marriage eventually turned ugly. So the setting becomes bittersweet.)

Characters

22) What would my characters like to change about themselves? Do they try to change?

Conflicts

6) Do I have secondary conflicts? Most stories require more than one conflict. For example, a protagonist will often have an internal conflict as well as an external conflict. He may also have a love interest. He might have conflicts with nature, with god, and with his companions. So as an author, I must create a host of conflicts and decide how each one grows and is resolved.

[Radiant Dragon]

Ето едно откритие, което направих малко след като приключих с NaNoWriMo 2017:

Youtube channel: Terrible Writing Advice

Пичът е супер ироничен (и често самоироничен) и демонстрира много забавен self-awareness, подкрепен с нон-стоп Fridge Logic когато нищи подбраната си тема.

Каналът засяга бая писателски клишета, включително от "мета" естество (например, как да довършим една книга, или как изобщо да я започнем), погледнати през призмата на абсолютната тролщина и ще накара всеки, който някога се е занимавал с "плетене" на истории, да се скъса от кеф, а даже може и да научи нещо ново, напук на заглавието.

[Кал]

If the story you’re telling is a complex one—if the reader must understand the characters or the locale or some technical point to understand what’s going on—then you must use the simplest language. Your reader has his rights. Tell him a story and make him understand it, or you’re fired.

(...) If you don’t have anything to say, you can say it any way you want to.

Любимото ми правило за чупене. В „Да обичаш Сам Сама“ с Владо го счупихме отвсякъде. И счупихме главите на армади от читатели. :/

[Radiant Dragon]

Защо Terrible Writing Advice e всъщност отличен канал?

Защото е точно това, което рекламира че е. Добре, де, сред сарказма човекът всъщност дава и добри идеи за деконструкции/subversions/други неща, които наистина предлагат решение на хората, омотали се в сухи клишета.

Но след време забелязъл, че много хора с аспирации да пишат, се оплакват как историите им били пълни с всякакви клишета, независимо колко се опитвали да оригиналничат.

Отговорът на JP? The Nature of Cliches - Honest Thoughts.

Точно, ясно, подкрепено с няколко примера. Отлично за начинаещи, превъзходно схематизирано и визуализирано за ветерани.

Не знам дали ще стане велик автор (мда, той има вече [само]издадена книга), но за мен е майстор в занаята.

[mitseva]

Вдъхнови си ме тази статия - такова вълнение ме обзе докато четох статията, че...
Та, какви са предимствата да пишеш "през просото" без аутлайн: https://blog.stormwritingschool.com/pantsing/

Surprise Yourself; Surprise the Reader
I’ve seen it in many author interviews: when asked whether they plot a story ahead of time, the discovery writers among them say something like, “If I’m not surprised, the readers won’t be.” And indeed, if you’ve ever had that experience of being in the midst of drafting a scene and watching it take a direction you didn’t anticipate, you know it’s pretty exhilarating.

I can understand why pantsers would push for others to experience that surprise.

Can you plan out twists and surprises ahead of time? Probably. But it’s likely less fun. And pantsers would argue that pre-planned surprises are less authentic.

And as David Bayles and Ted Orland point out in Art and Fear, “Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.”

[Darth_Sparhawk]

Много харесвам тези съвети на писателя Греъм Мастертън.
https://www.grahammasterton.co.uk/rulesofwriting.html
Особено ме впечатлява:

LESSON ONE: Don't write, talk, and use your natural voice, as if you were telling the story out loud to a group of friends. If there is a knack to writing it is to tell a story without consciously 'writing' about it. So many amateur writers have a good tale to tell, but are too concerned about making an impression on the page. Forget the fancy similes and the impressive metaphors, just tell it like it is. But do learn your grammar, syntax, spelling, etc, otherwise your amateur status will really show. Just like a motor mechanic's amateur status would show if he or she didn't know how to fix an alternator.

LESSON FIVE: Be rhythmic, and sensitive to the balance of your sentences. That's why the study of good poetry is so important. It teaches you how to rearrange a sentence so that it reads more easily and yet emphasizes the words that you want the reader to pick up on.

DIALOGUE: Dialogue has always been a special interest of mine ... getting characters to talk believably, which is unbelievably difficult! I have spent years working on dialogue to try to make it 'sound' authentic. You can't actually write down what people really say verbatim, otherwise your characters would be going 'um, er, well, I thought I saw this, you know, like, er, thing sort of, well it was coming out of his mouth, you know what I mean and it was like I dunno.' So you have to write pretend naturalistic dialogue, which I write and rewrite and say out loud to get a naturalistic rhythm and the feeling of reality. I'm not complaining about doing it, it's very interesting and a great challenge, especially since so much dialogue in novels is so wooden.

Не, че някога ще имам умението да приложа това на практика, но понеже съм чел десетки книги от този автор ми беше интересно да видя неговата гледна точка.