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1. Never Rest on My Laurels.
When I started writing around age 11 or so, my dialogue was horrible, and I knew it. I went to work on it, reading books on dialogue, pestering writing teachers, highlighting dialogue in books. And that work paid off eventually.
When I started writing fanfic, dialogue was the element that usually earned me praise. And so I started believing I didn't need to work on dialogue as much I needed to work on other story elements.
Boy, has that come back to bite me in the ass. The beta for "Crows" brought tons of mark-up on dialogue. From the simple mechanics of puncuating it to the subtle "this sounds like the character" stuff, it all needed work. Way more work than other areas I traditionally screw up on.
Now, positive!Me could choose to believe that finally the rest of my stuff is coming up to the better-than-averageness of dialogue, and I do think that a little. But really, I think the dialogue issues came from me being content with it. You know, because my dialogue in the past has been good, the newest stuff must be good too, and doesn't need scrutiny.
Bad Opera. Bad.
And the super shameful thing about it is, I complain All The Time about how much other writers in wrestledom have de-volved in their writing, how writers who were once better than average are now laughably bad. I tsk-tsked them for being satisfied with their work when their work isn't nearly what it used to be. Pot. Kettle. Black. Sheesh.
Matt Hardy says: If you're not getting better, you're getting worse.
2. Ain't No Beta Like Time
This is a lesson I fought like the dickens against learning. Omg I finished a story! *postpostpost* Gimme feedback! Gimme feedback! And, add to that wrestlecanon's ability to move at lightspeed and make every single bit of a fanfic totally outdated.
But, man once I learned to sit on stories-- really sit on them, not just blithely wait out the week all how-to-write-fanfic advise writers to do--the number of I-know-better mistakes dropped dramatically. Extra commas got rooted out. Repeated words got stand-ins. Editing became easier; I was reading what I wrote, not what I intended to write.
Author's notes like "I wrote this up this morning" or "I stayed up all night writing this" make me cringe. The stories usually do too. They're full of simple errors-- ones I know (most) of the writers know better than.
And, my first, second, third, trillionth drafts contain just as many oopsies. I am not the Glorious Exception to errors made in the rush of creativity. The only way I can safeguard against presenting an equally mistake-riddled story is to sit on it and read it with fresh eyes.
That being said, I adore my human beta too. :)
3. Good writing goes balls out
When I've talked about this in the past, I think people took it to mean everyone should write as crude as possible.
No. I don't want that at all.
Good writing is forthright. That forthrightness doesn't have to barge into a room and get in a reader's face, honesty can be demure and elegant and tactful. Characters should own up to feelings, not that they have to necessarily express them aloud or anything-- shyness is allowed. I'm talking about situations like blaming arousal on various body parts. My eyes watched his ass is a cop-out against "I watched his ass". (Yeah, yeah, context and previous sentence structures might need a different arrangement, but if you bring that up, then we're arguing about different things, and a lot of breath gets wasted)
There's so much dodging in fan fiction. So much refusal to get down to the nitty-gritty of a character or a situation. And the nitty-gritty is where the interesting stuff is, the stuff that grabs you by the throat when reading.
Ever notice how there are plenty of slaps in fan fiction, but very few people deliver them? Two characters will be arguing, them bam! one of them feels a "stinging sensation" on his cheek. Did a monster-sized mosquito suddenly appear? Those scenes would be a lot more visceral if the slap had an owner. If the writer would let her perfect darlings be awful for once. If the writer was brave enough to write the slap instead of pussyfoot around it.
Edit: To better express what I was thinking
When I started writing around age 11 or so, my dialogue was horrible, and I knew it. I went to work on it, reading books on dialogue, pestering writing teachers, highlighting dialogue in books. And that work paid off eventually.
When I started writing fanfic, dialogue was the element that usually earned me praise. And so I started believing I didn't need to work on dialogue as much I needed to work on other story elements.
Boy, has that come back to bite me in the ass. The beta for "Crows" brought tons of mark-up on dialogue. From the simple mechanics of puncuating it to the subtle "this sounds like the character" stuff, it all needed work. Way more work than other areas I traditionally screw up on.
Now, positive!Me could choose to believe that finally the rest of my stuff is coming up to the better-than-averageness of dialogue, and I do think that a little. But really, I think the dialogue issues came from me being content with it. You know, because my dialogue in the past has been good, the newest stuff must be good too, and doesn't need scrutiny.
Bad Opera. Bad.
And the super shameful thing about it is, I complain All The Time about how much other writers in wrestledom have de-volved in their writing, how writers who were once better than average are now laughably bad. I tsk-tsked them for being satisfied with their work when their work isn't nearly what it used to be. Pot. Kettle. Black. Sheesh.
Matt Hardy says: If you're not getting better, you're getting worse.
2. Ain't No Beta Like Time
This is a lesson I fought like the dickens against learning. Omg I finished a story! *postpostpost* Gimme feedback! Gimme feedback! And, add to that wrestlecanon's ability to move at lightspeed and make every single bit of a fanfic totally outdated.
But, man once I learned to sit on stories-- really sit on them, not just blithely wait out the week all how-to-write-fanfic advise writers to do--the number of I-know-better mistakes dropped dramatically. Extra commas got rooted out. Repeated words got stand-ins. Editing became easier; I was reading what I wrote, not what I intended to write.
Author's notes like "I wrote this up this morning" or "I stayed up all night writing this" make me cringe. The stories usually do too. They're full of simple errors-- ones I know (most) of the writers know better than.
And, my first, second, third, trillionth drafts contain just as many oopsies. I am not the Glorious Exception to errors made in the rush of creativity. The only way I can safeguard against presenting an equally mistake-riddled story is to sit on it and read it with fresh eyes.
That being said, I adore my human beta too. :)
3. Good writing goes balls out
When I've talked about this in the past, I think people took it to mean everyone should write as crude as possible.
No. I don't want that at all.
Good writing is forthright. That forthrightness doesn't have to barge into a room and get in a reader's face, honesty can be demure and elegant and tactful. Characters should own up to feelings, not that they have to necessarily express them aloud or anything-- shyness is allowed. I'm talking about situations like blaming arousal on various body parts. My eyes watched his ass is a cop-out against "I watched his ass". (Yeah, yeah, context and previous sentence structures might need a different arrangement, but if you bring that up, then we're arguing about different things, and a lot of breath gets wasted)
There's so much dodging in fan fiction. So much refusal to get down to the nitty-gritty of a character or a situation. And the nitty-gritty is where the interesting stuff is, the stuff that grabs you by the throat when reading.
Ever notice how there are plenty of slaps in fan fiction, but very few people deliver them? Two characters will be arguing, them bam! one of them feels a "stinging sensation" on his cheek. Did a monster-sized mosquito suddenly appear? Those scenes would be a lot more visceral if the slap had an owner. If the writer would let her perfect darlings be awful for once. If the writer was brave enough to write the slap instead of pussyfoot around it.
Edit: To better express what I was thinking
