Do you have an Achilles' tendon in regard to your writing, and if so, what are you doing about it? I've known for quite a while that my weakness centres around my seeming inability to express fully the internal aspects or subtleties of character interaction. I know and see what's going on, yet it's constantly the case that my actual writing fails to adequately transfer these aspects to the page. I think it comes from my background as an actor and playwright, where depth and nuance are developed during rehearsal. I have to give myself the time and freedom to connect fully with these areas and try to bring into fruition what lies beneath and between. Dialogue is fine and good, but I'm beginning to see how little it's held together without the finer aspects of described thought and emotion.
I can't describe a setting or person. It's just something that i have a problem with. If you can help, it would be nice.
I can't describe a setting or person. It's just something that i have a problem with. If you can help, it would be nice.
cheeno... fyi, the term 'achilles heel' has nada to do with the tendon named after the mythical greek hero, so to change 'heel' to 'tendon' in this context makes no sense... as the story goes, achilles' mother wanted to protect her son from danger and make him immortal, since it was prophesied that he would die during the trojan war, so she dipped the infant in the river styx, which was supposed to do the trick... trouble was, she had to hold onto him by one heel, so that was left unprotected... which is why, during the battle for troy, an arrow that only nicked him in the heel did him in...
If im writing about something i dont want to write about the ending will always suck. For example essays in school. I will perhaps write about six or seven pages on the beginning and end but spend about half a page on the ending as by then i have lost patience.
Pretty much. "Achilles tendon" is an anatomical term, "Achilles heel" is the saying. Anyway, mine's visualizing and describing scenery. I really suck at it.
I guess description in general, and dialog sometimes. The only thing I consider to be going well for me is the narrative.
I think I have 2. 1) Fight Scenes. I love writing High Fantasy and I often have fights between my characters and monsters and the like. I have a hard time describing the fight scene I have pictured in my head. I also fear that I would go into to much detail. I have been told not to over describe the fights, but give a general idea and leave the rest up to my readers. I guess I haven't found this balanced. Also I have a hard time including the scenery into the fight. 2) Interacts with more then two characters. I tend to only describe the actions of one character and ignoring the other. So I am still trying to get the hang of trying to work on this. Also I guess I have hard time making my character unique and trying to develop them through their actions and speaking. I just fear that sometimes my characters will come off as to flat.
I have a bad habit of either over explaining / detailing and bloating everything OR under explaining and confusing everything, depending on what I'm writing at the time. I just can't find the right balance!
Endings are my weakness, too, and it's nice to see I'm not the only one. I struggle between how I want to end a story and how a reader would want it to end.
Getting started. I'm a momentum writer, and when - as happens regularly - I have to put my writing to one side in order to accommodate other, unfortunately more important commitments, I lose that momentum. I can then spend weeks trying to recover my momentum. When I actually have momentum, I occasionally stumble into clichés it would be an idea to avoid.
I don't know what mine is yet since I'm only working on my first novel. I'll get back to y'all when I know!
I read my first draft very critically as I go, get frustrated at the lack of quality. If I were to choose from a list, though, I'd say inserting the dominant character's 'voice' into the tone of the writing. I can never do it subtly enough.
Hm, let's see... Everything? Honestly, actually finishing the story I'm working on is diffcult for me. I can plan everything out, or at least plot some points, but I can hardly ever finish. It seems I enjoy making webs and character sketches more than writing! I'm too much of a perfectionist and this screws me over. I tend to hate writing exposition. Also, I'm always concerned over making my characters multidimensional, believable people. Gah. Sometimes it seems that writing will kill me! Heh.
I don't find it hard to write fight scenes, but I do tend to find them boring to write. I can get stuck in the middle of a long fight scene simply because writing it bores me to tears.
1. I have trouble keeping the characters involved when there are more than two in a conversation. 2. Grammar and word indecision. I swear I could edit a line, wait two days, and edit it again back the way it initially was without ever knowing it. 3. Keeping character dialogue unique and in character.
My biggest problem is having character thoughts run through the story. I have a tendency to use description a little too much, rather then just have the reader, read through the thoughts of the character. Nothing that editing can’t fix when I’m finished.
Sometimes I have issues coming up with ideas. I often feel like writing a short piece but I can't think of anything to write about (or at least anything that I feel qualified to write about). There are others, of course, but that one frustrates me the most since I can't work on my writing without something to write about. I like to consider myself a relatively creative person, but when I'm brainstorming ideas to work on I usually feel that most of the ideas (at least in their basic form) that I come up with are unoriginal or have been done to death. Once I get started with something it usually flows pretty well, but sometimes I have issues with that.
I really suck at pacing out the story itself, of course I'm going to have to fix that up a bit [Since it seems like it's being rushed at the moment], but in order to fix this I generally just read other books/writings/tips on how to pace things out a bit better. So far the tips and reading seem to be helping quite a bit.
Villains. Most of my stories are Man vs Himself and so the main character is, in a way, the villian as well as the hero. When it comes to Man vs Man I still keep trying to focus on the main character's struggles and not the hero/villian dynamic.
