Hi there! I'm Ksenia, and I write... a lot. Mostly in fantasy/fiction/sf/adventure and detective genres. Sometimes with a romantic touch, sometimes not. Short stories and novels. But yeah, not in English. Recently I thought it could be good idea to start translating all those hundreds of thousands words into English. I never felt my English was too bad - it was enough for everything: work, communication, reading. But as for writing, I'm not quite sure. So would greatly appreciate your advise on everything related to improving my writing. I know lots about storytelling, plot planning, writing a true detective, tricks on how to catch and maintain the reader's interest, etc. Would be glad to share!
Hiya Ksenia! Glad to have you around This place has been great for me (I'm a newbie here too) so far. Have fun!
hehe, thanks so far, it's my first day on the forum, and I'm a bit lost in threads, but already found some interesting ones. )
Hey Ksenia! Just now I noticed your introduction, so absorbed I am on my project, but it's an honor to give you a proper welcome to the forum. Your timing has been amazing, since it's the first time that I attempt to write a novel about detective genre (but it's really a mixed basket of fruits, to be honest) and even the advice you gave me has been very precise. Absolutely I'll look forward for your work, and appreciate your kindness on sharing your comments about my project. I always comment that my first language is Spanish, so any error on English could be spotted and corrected by other writers, and if you find any oddity on language just feel free to point it out. Again, be welcome, and I have already implemented your advice with great results. See you!
lol. now your mistakes in English make sense to me When I only started learning Portuguese (which is veerry similar to Spanish, as I can see from the fact that I automatically started understaning Spanish when I've learned enough Portuguese to communicate to people) I noticed how amazingly similar it feels to Ukrainian (which is my first language) in terms of how you build phrases, etc. So when I read your text I thought that I would make the same or very similar mistakes You did a great job on catching reader's attention, and that's one of the core things any writer should do, especially if you are trying to write a detective story. There are lots of other tricks, and I'll be glad to share them with you. It's funny, but my passionate love to detecives started with a story that I'm translating now. It was my first novel written as a standalone text, not a part of the game storyline, and it won a detective story contest, even though everyone kept saying it's not a "real" detective. So I started investigating what it is a "real detective", and fell in love with the genre
Have you explored the "Cozy" mystery sub-genre? Such books as The Man with a Load of Mischief, by Martha Grimes is a great example of the style. In my WIP I've a character who is a linguist and the difference between Spanish and Portuguese does come up... And welcome to the forum! “Both of you, hush. I’ll be fine tonight,” Valerie scolded. “Now then, let us see what delights Lazare has sent me... That one there, the box with butterflies on it.” Rosemarie picked up the box and examined the elegant script on the lid. “I think it’s from Spain.” “It’s Portuguese.‘ Hats most exquisite: sewn by the angels and painted with the wings of butterflies for your everlasting enjoyment.’ ” “My, that sounds quite poetic,” Rosemarie approved. “Someday I’ll speak a foreign language and talk like a duchess.” “Don’t make light of it, it’s how I entered into the queen’s good graces. It’s the kinder word that opens the iron door. I spoke Italian and it put her at ease. We became confidantes, and she sent me out into the world. I can’t sing nor write poetry, and I haven’t the patience to learn to play music, but I’ll have you know, I am quite the talented linguist.” “By the Devil she is. Madame is a master of many tongues,” Hugo uttered under his breath.
That's amazing! I started to draft tales around five years ago, but only attempted to put on writing at two. Never before had a proper review of my work, and in that regard, the writers around have been amazing. From the first day I made the account I was greeted very friendly, and began to post critics, mostly plot related (as you have guessed already, cant help on grammar at all ) I have learned a lot, and still I'm at very basic level of execution. But it's a work in progress, to learn grammar and proper mindset for writing. I began writing without minding at all about specifics on the genre; it was just a story I wanted to tell, and how it developed in an entertaining way; obviously, I found that wild writing, (specially in "dog English") provoked a ton of mistakes, redundancies and issues I had not paid the proper attention, and turned into bad writing habits. I'll have to fix a lot of former writing, but the detective story, even as genre, is really new, so it's a chance to get a model for further writing, without copying anyone in particular. And absolutely would read your story! I'm also curious about what your critics meant with "not real detective", and would love to know from where you started. Mine has a detective, but can't restrict it to that single genre, really. Congrats for the contest winning, by the way!
nope, but I'll check it out, seems interesting. Thanks! I'm not a lingiust (I know it's not good, but I'm used to show a bit of arrogant attitude towards people who are specialized in arts, not science, just because of the way they seem to lack pure locics in their way of thinking), but I like digging into linguistic stuff... Frankly speaking, I'm almost OK to concider linguistics to be a real science And even went as far as inventing a language for an alien race in one of my novels. It was quite a bit of fun At some point I was only able to tell Spanish from Portuguese when I noticed that simple sentences seem somehow hard to read for me. For example, when I've started reading a cooking instruction on a product and didn't pay attention that I was reading a Spanish version instead of a Portuguese one Now it's differnt, Portuguese sounds more "native", so I assume it was a beginner's mistake. haha. I had a friend who was a web designer and had a client from USA. Her knowledge of English was approximately the same as mine of, let's say... Hebrew (which means three words, two of which are not supposed to be said in front of true ladies). So she used a translation software to communicate to the client. It was more or less ok (back in the times google translate was alost an unreacheable dream, but at least, she could understand the task), until her client decided to take the conversation to a more informal level, and wrote about a romantic wedding of his friend he had attended recently. To this, my friend replied that "a romantic wedding in front of suppositories seems great" (the trick is that in Russian "candles" and "suppositories" is the same word ) So yeah, difficulties in translation is a great topic to exploit in stories
The first step is the hardest. You only need to keep on and never give up. the best if you could write at least 500-1000 words on a daily basis, disregarding on "inspiration" or whatever stars tell you . It's a hard work, and you need to realise that. That's a good thing to start with. Writing a couple of paragraphs/pages without thinking of further plot or genre is a great trick to "catch the mood" of you future story. After that, it's better to stop, make a step away, and take a glance from a higher perspective, make up the plan, etc. Thus you will avoid the hugest mistake that leads to graphomany: ending up with writing for the sake of writing.
One might consider candles to be at times suppositories... or leastwise, the prelude to some exchanging of suppositories of the fleshy variety. Seriously though, wordplay can be fun!
