Writing Stories

Postby Kyle » Fri Oct 11, 2013 7:44 pm

I'm not sure if this belongs in this section or General Chat, so the mods can move it if they feel it belongs there.

For people who write fiction stories, how do you go about writing them? I was just curious about people's writing styles. Do you use outlines, just write it as it comes to you, plan it out, etc.?

Re: Writing Stories

Postby drawscore » Fri Oct 11, 2013 8:18 pm

Most fictional writing is usually based on personal experience, with a little (and sometimes, a lot) of enhancement and exaggeration tossed in for the purpose of making the story interesting and exciting to the reader.

Good writers attempt to capture the dialogue of their characters, often using non-words like "gonna," for "going to," understanding that, while the language is written formally, it is seldom spoken formally.

And some use an outline of the story they want to tell; others just make it up as they go along. Individual styles vary.

Drawscore

Re: Writing Stories

Postby Kyle » Fri Oct 11, 2013 8:26 pm

I get all that. Maybe I should've stated it "how do you personally write your stories?"

Re: Writing Stories

Postby sarobah » Sat Oct 12, 2013 2:48 pm

I devise a general outline in my head, but if it's a fictional story I let it evolve while I'm writing. So a story may take a completely different turn in transit between my brain and the keyboard.
This is not the most efficient method, and it can end up in an incoherent mess, but it maintains my interest, not knowing how things are going to turn out.
Words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.

Re: Writing Stories

Postby skybird137 » Sat Oct 12, 2013 3:19 pm

I generally start with working out the end first, and then I work from the beginning. I never have anything set in stone as that allows me to be flexible as I'm telling the story.

There are times when I'm writing a request story when the person has a clear idea of what they want in the story, and it is a matter of accommodating that.
Calling Fifty Shades of Grey a Bondage Story is like calling Titanic an Iceberg Movie...

http://skybird137.deviantart.com

Re: Writing Stories

Postby Jason Toddman » Sat Oct 12, 2013 8:32 pm

I just imagine an interesting situation and combination of characters and go from there. I don't plan ahead except for some basics, and just write it out as if I was watching the events unfold and doing a play-by-play as it happens. Sometimes even I don't know what's going to happen next in my own stories. Although it sounds like a recipe for disaster, it seems to work well enough for me.
Btw since we're presuming discussing how to write TUG stories, really this thread seems just good here as anywhere, so I see no real reason to move it unless you want me to.
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Writing Stories

Postby xtc » Sun Oct 13, 2013 4:08 pm

I usually start with an image that "just occurs to me". It is not always the first scene of the story but it is usually the first scene presented. There is then often a prolonged "writing" in my head of the entire story as an incomplete series of scenes. I must agree with Sarobah about the pitfalls of letting a story go where it will but I must admit that I often do it as well. I seldom post more than half of what I have already written in case I get written into a corner. There is nothing more annoying than not having an end to a story in sight. hat intimidates me.
Boxer shorts are cool,
but little speedos rule!

More by the same author: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22729

Re: Writing Stories

Postby Jason Toddman » Sun Oct 13, 2013 9:58 pm

xtc wrote: I seldom post more than half of what I have already written in case I get written into a corner. There is nothing more annoying than not having an end to a story in sight. hat intimidates me.

Though that sounds like a very wise and sensible thing to do, I just can't seem to do that myself. I always feel a need to post a chapter just as soon as I finish it - often unfortunately without carefully proofreading the darned thing first (that is (edit!) something (see?) I really should do something about)! I'm not a very sensible person when it comes to planning ahead, I guess. :oops:
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Writing Stories

Postby Chris12 » Mon Oct 14, 2013 2:08 am

Well, first I get an idea in my head for an event that could happen and then I come up with why it would happen. I think of an opening and slowly work up to the tying part. I usually make things up as I go along witch's sometimes gives me some good idea's but at other times I fail to come up with something after already starting the story.

Re: Writing Stories

Postby notlongerhere » Mon Oct 14, 2013 2:41 am

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Last edited by notlongerhere on Fri Jun 06, 2014 6:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Writing Stories

Postby Jason Toddman » Mon Oct 14, 2013 6:30 am

So far then it sounds like we're all (those of us who replied so far anyway) a bunch of risk takers when it comes to writing stories.
I wonder if that's related to our love of TUGs!
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Writing Stories

Postby KP Presents » Thu Oct 17, 2013 8:47 am

It depends on the story. For the two main series I write here, An Education and the Heidi tales, there are plans three or four stories in advance for both, and I have a rough idea of where the story will start and end. For An Education in particular, Tom Ford and William F Somebody along with me have worked out a whole back story of the characetrs and their families - not all of which has appeared here. :D

For the Mark and John request stories, I always work with the requestors to ask what they want, and then do the best job i can. For example, wait until your see Halloween Night...

It's the same for other stories at my site - I have a general plan in midn, but it can and does change.
Read stories of ordinary women in distress at http://www.kppresents.com

Re: Writing Stories

Postby Jay Feely » Fri Oct 18, 2013 4:26 am

Use my imagination and bring things you will not find usually
You will have to subdue me to restrain me. I been a bad boy so make sure you torture me too with anything but pain.

Re: Writing Stories

Postby drawscore » Fri Oct 18, 2013 5:41 am

Personally, I make it up as I go along, but I have an outline in my head. I write the complete story, from beginning to end, prior to posting. That way, I can go back, do the spell and grammar checks, and check for continuity errors.

Continuity errors sometimes are visual. "Daniel Boone" had a few, most notably in the episode "Hannah Comes Home," where a white woman, captured by Indians 14 years earlier, is returned to her people with a 13 year old son. At the start of the episode, the boy has jet black, shoulder length hair. At the end, after the boy has had a haircut, and has traded his buckskins for "white mans' clothes," his hair miraculously turns blondish brown.

The other one, was in "For a Few Rifles." Israel had been captured, and was being taken to a "hideout" by his captor. In one scene, he is sitting in the front of a canoe with his hands tied behind him, and facing to the back. The canoe disappears behind a boulder, and when it emerges in the other side, lo and behold, Israel is now facing forward, and his hands are tied in front of him.

Drawscore

Re: Writing Stories

Postby Jason Toddman » Fri Oct 18, 2013 5:55 am

Virtually any TV show or movie will have consistency errors like that; you just have to know where to look.
The ones that bug me more than simple mistakes like those are the ones when something happens that is clearly impossible, such as someone walking (or even running) out of a fiery crash that totals their car and which have should either killed or crippled them but they wind up without a scratch - such as the villains in virtually every episode of the A-Team.
Smallville was another major offender; it was fine for Clark to be invulnerable, but half the time something potentially lethal happened it was to someone else than Clark and yet they still didn't get more than bruised>There are dozens of examples, such as the start of season 5 when a Zod-possessed Lex hurled Lionel into a car windshield clearly at super-speed, and yet Lionel was only bruised and dazed. Or when Clark was supposedly as powerless as any normal human when he had a blue kryptonite dagger shoved into his chest at the end of Season 8 and yet survived a fall off a tall building.
Of course, I'm citing shows that require a major suspension of disbelief to begin with, but even so...
My point being; minor inconsistencies are difficult to avoid, generally are honest mistakes, and are usually forgivable even when noticed at all (which most casual viewers probably will not). Major mistakes that anyone can spot without even trying to spot any however are simply pure laziness on the writer's part and insult the reader/viewer's intelligence. To me at least that's a huge difference. And modern movies are rife with them. For some prime examples, check out the great CinemaSins site (everything Wrong with [movie] in [x] minutes or less:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Cho9We ... 5d2IIApNPj
Screen Junkies (Honest Trailers)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFKu_bwM ... 97FD3CACCE
or HISHEdotcom (How It Should Have Ended)
http://www.youtube.com/user/HISHEdotcom/videos
All of them are as funny as they are truthful about how flawed many movies are (two even dump on the 1939 version of The Wizard of OZ)! :big:
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Writing Stories

Postby xtc » Fri Oct 18, 2013 6:53 am

Jason Toddman: Of course, I'm citing shows that require a major suspension of disbelief to begin with, but even so...
Even so, such adventures should be consistent.

I don't know if Saturday Morning Cinema (Cinema = Movie Theater - yuk!) was an institution across the pond but there was always an episode of a serial where the ending of one episode often didn't match the start of the next. It was amazing how many secret doors appeared that were not present previously and other miraculous changes in what we remembered.
Boxer shorts are cool,
but little speedos rule!

More by the same author: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22729

Re: Writing Stories

Postby Jason Toddman » Fri Oct 18, 2013 7:33 am

xtc wrote:Jason Toddman: Of course, I'm citing shows that require a major suspension of disbelief to begin with, but even so...
Even so, such adventures should be consistent.

Precisely! :big:
xtc wrote: I don't know if Saturday Morning Cinema (Cinema = Movie Theater - yuk!) was an institution across the pond but there was always an episode of a serial where the ending of one episode often didn't match the start of the next. It was amazing how many secret doors appeared that were not present previously and other miraculous changes in what we remembered.

Not in recent memory, but I remember seeing old serials like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon as a young kid (also serialized on a weekly basis back in the early 1950s to mid 1960s). However, I was too young to notice (or at least recall) them at the time, though I noticed them much later when seeing them on PBS or elsewhere. In fact, the woman in the Stephen King book Misery (Annie Wilkes) makes a big deal of such cheats at one point.
(comparison of any member of this board with Annie Wilkes - however well the shoe fits - is not intended :mrgreen: )
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Writing Stories

Postby Kyle » Sun Oct 20, 2013 3:47 pm

Thanks everybody. I sometimes have trouble trying to write stories and wondered how other people did it. I'm writing one now that I have most of the story figured out apart from some minor details but can't for the life of me figure out how to start it that makes any sense. It's usually the beginning or the end that always gets me, although sometimes I get stuck in the middle if I try to write different sections of a story at at time and make them into a longer narrative later.