[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

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The player scrapbooks forum is literally a place for writers to warm-up, brainstorm, keep little scraps of notes, or just post things to encourage themselves and each other. Each player can feel free to create their own thread - one per account - and use them accordingly.

[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Silvy on October 13th, 2011, 9:56 pm

Wow what a powerful scrap and scrappy answer! All I can say on that is Currer Bell. ;)
Gender can and does play a different role in our lives and society as a whole. If we accept or reject a stereotype we're given, then it's our choice to do so and go on from there. If someone says this label has limitations, then again we actively choose whether or not to accept that. I'm a woman who plays two females and two males. I don't think I play Silvy any better or worse than I do Bolden. I think I give them the same effort and get different results because of roleplay reactions, not gender bias. It's been a glass ceiling thing for a long time and there are gender divides in many professions and hobbies. But then, happily there are exceptions to every rule!

Look at the strength of your writing on your own merit. Take away your personal gender, and that of your PC and let your talent and quality speak for itself. Just my two miza's worth because your scrapbook is utterly stalkworthy.

*had to add* Am I the only one who like Anne McCaffrey? Her writing is spectacular! I've been a fan of hers for longer than most people on this board have been alive--22 years! Yes, Ursula la guin and Elizabeth Anne scarborough as well. I've never really bothered with who the author was when I started avidly reading. My sci fi choices are based on the content, not author gender. I don't see how that's even a factor. But then the knowledge is there-like I said, Currer Bell....
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[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Caelum on October 14th, 2011, 12:44 am

For the record, I have always been a fan of McCaffrey. ;) And yes, fair point on Currer Bell.

- - -

For Laurel and you too, Mr. Powell. You too.

Most imagine their lives in linear form, years following years, birthdays celebrated in ascending numbers. They take time and unwind it. They prop it up against their experiences like a tape measure. Here, I was born. I walked one third through foot two. Next I read and on the first black truss mark I flew. But think, what if you never locked your tape measure? What if you acknowledge that you never can? Memory would walk with you, holding your hand. Déjà vu would be comprehended quick as lightning strikes. Time as philosophers have been known to suggest would coil and curve, places you have been, people you have known, dreams you have had all entangled. Is that not already true?

The sky is so blue it breaks my soul. I have drank two cups of coffee too many, unwise when attempting to dispel nervous energy. Paper crunches in my hand, twisted, folded, and hastily smoothed out again. Hyacinth colored ink stains my hands and a poor poet steps up to the microphone to take it all away. That was where I was this afternoon. I stepped out of my car on a quick after work errand and right into a yesterday entire feet down the tape measure. Clinton Powell had talked me into performing (“Performing,” he insisted, “Not just reading.”) at a poetry open mic night. There I had been for years (at least three good feet), first introduced by a frighteningly talented woman who went by the name of Sista V, listening and occasionally compelled to read some scrap of an idea I’d thought grand before scurrying hastily back to what I always tried to make a corner seat. It was after my performance that night Clinton invited me to join the ranks of those who had awed me in Spitfire Poetry Group. It was then still in its infancy, but in comparison I may as well still have been in the womb. Through the course of the next years I went from an intimidated teenager to a self-possessed performer. I performed at numerous events, attended more as a member of the audience, and for a while even co-hosted a spoken word/music open mic night with a wonderful singer and songwriter named Lauren LaPointe.

It was an hour in my life that has passed on the tape measure, but today I was back there, feeling everything all over again. I was holding a mic in the basement of a pool hall bar, swallowing so much stage fright that I all but screamed my first lines. I was bending over a table, words tripping in a rapid, inspired exchange with Clinton regarding rhythm and dust in the blood. I was hauling a speaker half as big as myself out of the trunk of a car, laughing along with my friends at the image and the irony. I was there. The taste of coffee was in my mouth and next that of craft ale. I was there with jittery fingers making meaningful looks at the clock and the sign-up sheet. Time worn wood creaked beneath stacked heeled boots and there was somebody taking over the world with a handful of words about lying down.

The tape measure eventually snapped back into place, revealing the long yawn of inches lined up between then and me. I let it go without longing, with no feeling of regret. It was beautiful then and it is beautiful now. Time can’t fade it for me because my tape measure is unlocked. As my departed friend would say (is undoubtedly still saying somewhere between five feet, eight inches and now), I took it all joy.



I was sipping on a Whiskey when I got the call
Yeah my friend Lex was lying in the hospital
She'd been pretty sick for about half a year
But it seems liked this time the end was drawing near
So dropped my plans and jumped the next London train
I found her laid up and in a lot of pain
Her eyes met mine and then I understood
That her weather forecast wasn't looking too good
So I sat and spun her stories for a little while
Tried to raise her mood and tried to raise a smile
But she silenced all my rambling with a shake of her head
Drew me close and listen this is what she said now

"You'll live to dance another day, it's just now you'll have to dance, for the two of us, so stop looking so damn depressed and sing with all your heart that the Queen is dead"

Yeah she told me she was sick of all the hospital food
And of doctors, distant relatives, draining her blood
She said "I know I'm dying, but I'm not finished just yet, I am dying for a drink and for a cigarette"
So we hatched a plan to book ourselves a cheap hotel
In the centre of the City and to raise some Hell
They waste to all the clubs and then when everyone else is long asleep
We know we're good and done

"You'll live to dance another day, it's just now you'll have to dance, for the two of us, so stop looking so damn depressed and sing with all your heart that the Queen is dead"
And South London's not the same anymore
The Queen is dead, and the last of the great has finally gone to bed

Well I was working on some words when Sarah called me up
She said that Lex had gone asleep and wasn't waking up
And even though I knew that there was nothing to be done
I felt bad for not being there and now, well, she was gone
So I tried to think what Lex would want me to do
At times like this when I was feeling blue
So I gathered up some friends to spread the sad sad news
And we headed to the City for a drink or two
And we sang

"We live to dance another day, it's just now we have to dance for one more of us, so stop looking so damn depressed, and sing with all our hearts, long live the Queen"
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[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Caelum on October 14th, 2011, 7:20 pm

The below I posted in a fellow player's scrap in response. It occurs to that it goes over some things I want to cover when next I have time to write more about writing. This is, thusly, a self reminder:

Katie, talk about description vs. clarity.

Until then -

--

You stated your biggest weakness as an inability to put what you’re seeing into words. That translates to me as flaws in the effectiveness of your communication. Sure, it can have something to do with vocabulary, but I doubt it is the vocabulary you know more than it is the vocabulary you actually utilize. It seems to me your strength has created your weakness. What I mean by that is direct, to the point writing is a strength. Clarity and eloquence are children of that style. Unfortunately, so are sterility and distance.

As I am someone who is likely of those writers you would box as overly descriptive, I might not be your best resource. However, in the end we can only talk about what we know; and this is what I know and how it relates to my writing.

I abhor an abundance of words. Wait, what? KATIE? I know, right? But I’m dead serious. Look at my face. This is Katie’s Serious as Shit Face. I do not like being overburdened with useless words. I cannot stand to read a piece of literature (book, game, or otherwise) that has a good four extra paragraphs of unnecessary verbiage. It drives me insane when players in Mizahar talk about post length as if a long post somehow equates better writing than a short post.

It doesn't. Period.

Hemmingway's technique of "every word must fall like a brick" is very true. You, sir, have a talent with this. This is a talent in cutting out the excess, in leaving out anything and everything that is not absolutely necessary to the story. It is an excellent communication vehicle.

So why did I say it seems your problem is communication?

“Necessary to the story” is ambiance, voice, feeling too. These things can be achieved without excess by using tools such as evocative language and motif.

Evocative language is most easily obtained by substituting the first word that comes to mind with a different one that says the same thing, but better. “Live” words, I think of them. The wind is blowing through the branches. The wind is weeping in the trees. The wind is snapping branches like elbows and knees. And so on. Each of these sentences ultimately just means the damned wind was up in the stupid trees, but word choice changed how the reader felt about them drastically. It set a mood and still kept it short and to the point.

Motif, well, I’m sure you know what that is too. You mention how you have rarely found it necessary to describe how a wall looks or how the air smells or whatever it is. I can’t say I blame you. On the other hand, insolong as you consider such things to be boring, they will be.

You can describe the way a shadow is thrown on a wall and alter the entire ambiance of a scene. The trick is not to be descriptive for description’s sake, but to use description like the cheap whore it is to both enhance and further plot. Write the description of how a man is riding a horse instead of stating how a man feels or what he is thinking. Make it communicate the same thing in the end. The exact same thing. Nothing extra. All pertinent.

- k.
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[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Caelum on October 19th, 2011, 2:46 pm

There are about twenty million truly awesome threads requiring a response from me. Okay, so maybe it is little less that that, but when I want to sit down and give them the credit they’re due and don’t have the time it feels like so high a number.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the inspiration bullet to hit my brain pan last night had to do with a PC of mine, not a mod thread, and on top of that it was the start of a new thread. I gave in. I’m glad I gave in, but I only shot off two mod posts yesterday. Two to one? Maybe it balances out.

Don’t take this wrong, Anonymous Fellow Player Who Might Actually Read My Scrap, I seriously adore my mod threads. I love them. I eat them like candy. I have crushes on my NPCs and even worse crushes on various PCs whom, without mod threads, I would not have an opportunity to play with. It also enables my plot brain to go a little crazy.

Bottom line is that I feel horribly behind and don’t want anyone to think I’m ignoring them or am not enjoying our thread. I am writing my way out of the thread hole steadily but the going is slow due to time constraints.

Also, I just saw my note to myself about language and description. It made me twitch with the need to write that RIGHT NOW. Why do I do that to myself?

By the way, does anyone know how to get a ring out of a bathtub? This is seriously disgusting. /new house fail

Peace out,
katie.
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[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Oracle on October 19th, 2011, 3:21 pm

Caelum wrote:
By the way, does anyone know how to get a ring out of a bathtub? This is seriously disgusting. /new house fail

Peace out,
katie.


Are you allergic to bleach? If not, comet cleaner is the best. It's gritty and goes right through the scum. It's also fairly cheap; however, it is made from bleach essentially so anyone who is allergic should stay away. Best thing to do is sprinkle the powder on a wet tub and let it sit for about half an hour, then just wipe away with a rag. Works for me every time. :)
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[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Bolden Denusk on October 19th, 2011, 4:04 pm

I go clean and safe with a cup of white vinegar and baking soda. My old cat can't take heavy chemical fumes. Just make a paste of the two, smear it on the ring and wipe off with clean water 15 minutes later. No fumes, no mess, super cheap and quick with almost no effort.
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[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Gossamer on October 19th, 2011, 4:28 pm

I'm with Oracle. I use Comet powder on everything - especially hard water stains and rings - and it just DEVASTATES them. I don't have the patience to use organic or mild when we are talking getting SERIOUSLY clean.
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[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Xalet on October 19th, 2011, 4:32 pm

As gimmicky as they are, my wife's had excellent results and swears by those Mr. Clean magic erasers in our own tub. Other than that though, we use Comet on just about everything as well.
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[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Caelum on October 20th, 2011, 5:27 pm

Thanks for the tips, y’all. I will tackle that bathtub ring this weekend. Various and sundry pieces of unexpected madness assaulted me yesterday complete with altered deadlines, so I never got around to it.



A Note On Language & Character Portrayal



A fellow player mentioned to me last night that they were having difficulty ascertaining the best way to both figure out the present day depth of their character as well as portraying it. They knew very well who their character was in the past, but were uncertain as to who he was in present game time. (Side note: The tense shifts in that last sentence hurt my soul.) They were concerned that the result of their efforts would be an unwieldy info dump more suited to a CS than a thread.



At twenty I had the incredible advantage of learning some aspects of the trade from the late Peter Christopher. They called him “the bad boy of fiction”. He did things like speak at workshops that people such as Chuck Palahniuk attended while warming up for Fight Club and said things like too much will never be enough and fuck the jugular, go for the whole soul. He trademarked the term “dangerous writing” that I swallowed into my self and forced to become a part of me. I will never let it go.



Twenty was a dark hour of my life and listening to him was one of the only things that woke me up, got me out of the cesspool of crap that kept trying to suck me under. I never should have passed his class. Disaster struck my life a week before our final project was due. It was worth one half of my grade. I never finished it. Instead I wrote him a note apologizing for that failure and thanking him for what he had taught me despite, saying how I understood that I would not pass but that I still had taken more from his workshop than any other. He deserved more from me than that, but it was literally all I had at the time.



I did not hear from him, but when semester grades were released, he not only passed me, he passed me with an A. The next day I received an email from him, one sentence long.



A century from now I don’t want to be the guy who failed you in fiction writing. – Pete.



It is still the largest compliment I have received, and one I’m still trying to live up to.



The most important thing relative to writing I took from Christopher was the concept of “dangerous writing”. Dangerous writing has multiple definitions and it can mean different things to different people or even to the same person in a different work. Distilled down to the core, however, it ultimately just means don’t censor yourself.



If it is ugly. If it is petty and mean. If is too base, too graphic, too raw, too honest, too real, too personal, too emotional, too anything, then it is probably of the best things you have ever written. Writers are too often afraid of what their readers might think of them, might assume, might opine, based on their work. This is not without base. A good writer can portray a character fifty years their senior, a thousand year in the future in a profession they have never held and still be bearing their own soul in the process. The only thing that works for me to overcome this natural fear is pretend while writing that my words will never be read. I keep telling myself that right up until I submit.

That is one aspect of dangerous writing. Another is not being afraid of your words. It is wholly possible to convey in description alone the mindset of a character from their emotional state to the very detail of their thoughts. Description for desciption's sake can be irritating, even boring no matter how eloquently it's composed. Description used like the cheap whore it is (I will repeat that over and over until it stops amusing me) is, on the other hand, a writer's most compelling ingredient.

The trick is simple. You hear it from everyone who ever tried to say anything about writing since the beginning of time. There is a reason for this. It's true. Show don't tell. There, I said it too. So? So you take out the excess. You write like Hemingway. Every word falls like a brick. Delete anything and everything unnecessary to the story and that means deleting lines of thought, eviscerating entire paragraphs and zeroing out explanations.

But these things are necessary to the story! You say. No, they're not. Not if you're doing the rest right. Not if you're using the hell out of description in showing your story. I mean evocative language as I briefed over in my post before last. I mean motif. I mean, I mean, I mean take the way a character walks into a room and make it say everything explanation and their thoughts would have. Compose a block of dialogue that tells everything the reader needs to know in what is not said rather than what is. Make it work. You're the writer. You have complete control.

The exception to this is obvious -- you earn in the course of your story the right to break the "show not tell" rule. How do you know when you've earned it? Come on. You'll know. If you're honest with yourself.

You take this and you plunk your character down into interactions with other characters. In game, you do this with NPCs or PCs. Doesn't matter save that self moderated NPCs over which you have control clearly make it easier for you to mold the communication with your reader. Why? Because without interaction with other characters, your character whom you put so much effort adding backstory and layers and facets and depth will come across flat. It is completely impossible to communicate all aspects of a character when they are alone. The saying that "actions speak louder than words" holds water in writing too.

I have examples, lots of examples, but I'm running out of time. This scrap was supposed to be a lot shorter and and I still haven't finished saying what I wanted to at the start. It is going to have to be continued...
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[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

Postby Rorugir on October 20th, 2011, 8:34 pm

You have literally just caught on to one of my biggest problems as a writer. Too often I find myself going on rants about my character's inner thoughts and then I think to myself, "...Why do I need to put this here?" Oftentimes, you can express the same thoughts, and better, just through your character's actions, something I have am still struggling with.

So, for expressing my exact thoughts so eloquently, you get -

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This is Rorugir's speech when he speaks in Common...
...And this is Rorugir's speech when he speaks in Isur.
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