Writing Communities To Watch I: WritersCafe.org

When I jumped into the writing world, I immediately sought out a good writing community. In the past I wrote a lot of fanfiction, and a lot of it found its way to fanfiction.net, a popular site for that sort of thing at the time. However when I woke up one day and decided “I want to be a writer (more so than I have been before),” I knew that writing fanfiction wasn’t going to get me anywhere. A swarm of ideas buzzing around in my mind, I sat down and wrote two pieces of flash fiction that would lead me towards the start of my first original novel: Children of Solus.

That wasn’t long ago, and that novel is still long from completion, but the fact was that I needed to get myself out there. I needed to join in the hunt for new opportunities, all the while honing my skills and seeing what others thought of my work. To do that, I needed to find an online writing community to give myself an applet to show people what I could do. After all, sitting alone in a house writing silly stories that only I read to myself isn’t exactly the recipe for inspiration, encouragement, and personal success. No, I needed to put myself out there, one way or another. I plopped down on the office chair, spent five minutes or so searching for somewhere to upload my work (a long time for one with such a short attention span), and came across WritersCafe.org.

The site looked great; clean, well organized, eye-catching, and developed with writers in mind. I signed up and got right to work. First off, there is a high level of categorization when it comes to putting your writing where it needs to be. The list of genres to choose from and file your work under is extensive, and I think that’s an important thing when you’ve got a massive public database of writing. From metafiction to lyrics, WritersCafe has it all, and the upload system is simple to use and pretty self-explanatory. The site does not support file uploading, instead forcing you to copy and paste your work, but that’s not a big deal in the grand theme of things.

Once you’ve got your text in the editor and ready to submit, you have to option to tag your piece with keywords as lightly or as heavily as you’d like. You also can upload a picture with each piece of writing, which when clicked on later will popup in a fashion similar to when you click on a photo in Facebook. It’s a nice touch, and the site doesn’t force you to use only certain dimensions for your images. In addition to that, you can upload photos to an album, and even manage a simple blog all within the website, both of which can be viewed and commented on by others on the site.

Something nice about WritersCafe is its “newsfeed”, which is basically a simplified clone of Facebook’s newsfeed. Any other writers who you have added as friends will see when you upload a new piece of writing, photo, blog post, or even when you receive a comment on something. In return, you’ll see their activity. It’s smart to create a lengthy friends list, that way more and more people will see what you’re doing and read your work. As with most writing communities, there are a lot of common courtesies that come with this. If someone comments on (reviews) something of yours, it’s polite to review something of theirs. A sidebar on the main page will create a list of the last six or so people who reviewed your writing, suggesting that your return the favor. This easy access list and constant reminder creates a pleasant atmosphere where most will trade reviews without being asked.

The newsfeed is a nice feature, and very easy to use.

If you do want to ask for reviews or anything else more specific, WritersCafe also has a well categorized forum. The forums aren’t very active, but you’re likely to get answers to your questions sooner or later, and many are always looking to trade reviews with their fellow writers. If you want a bit more socializing, writers are open to create groups, complete with their own private message boards, and most groups are always looking for new members. On a similar note, writers are also allowed to create contests, customizing them to accept only certain types of writing (such as poetry, screenplays, or books), or anything and everything. Usually these contests follow a certain theme, allowing anywhere from one submission per writer to nine separate submissions. Most of the free-for-all contests become bloated with way too many applicants, but some of the more theme oriented ones find a reasonable number of applicants, giving everyone a fair shot at winning fun little awards.

The last unique facet of WritersCafe that I personally think is a great addition to the site is the presence of a section dedicated to writing courses. Anyone is allowed to upload courses, which within them hold a number of separate lessons. For example, I have my Breath Life Into Your Writing! course on WritersCafe, with each of its various installments uploaded as lessons such as “Part I: Personification, Part II: Metaphors & Similes” and so on. Readers are then able to go through the lessons at their own pace, with the option to subscribe to the course, which gives them a notification when the next lesson is uploaded. While much of the courses might be coming from novice writers, you’re sure to find a treasure trove of free writing tips and tricks.

There are courses on many different subjects, all at your fingertips.

WritersCafe sounds like a dream come true, right? Well, with dreams usually comes nightmares. WritersCafe isn’t perfect.

The most annoying aspect of WritersCafe is its server. During any given day, you will probably find yourself trying to load the homepage to no avail. Sometimes I can use the site with no problem all day, while others I can hardly load the main page once or twice. The site goes down way too often, and it’s been going on like that for years. Odds are it will continue on this way for some time.

Besides that, there aren’t too many negative points about WritersCafe. It has a few quirks that can be annoying, for example when you copy your writing over into the editor and upload it, the site will break all of your em dashes. For some odd reason, the site doesn’t like em dashes, and it turns then into quotation marks. This can be annoying if you—like me—do that a lot. It’s easy enough to fix if you just go through your writing in the editor and change your em dashes into two hyphens, but that can be time-consuming and a major annoyance when it comes to long stories and novel chapters.

Something else that can be frustrating is finding readers for longer pieces of writing. Poetry gets a lot of attention on WritersCafe, while books get almost none. It was months before my novel began receiving a good amount of attention, and only after I had a pretty large friends list, but that’s an issue you can focus effort into and conquer yourself through communication with other novel writers (who are also looking for readers) as well as groups dedicated to longer pieces of fiction. It takes effort to find the right people for this sort of thing, but at least you have a good community with similar interests and goals.

It’s time for a list now. Pros and cons, anyone?

Pros:

• Clean, organized, easy to use.
• Effective use of categorization and tagging for uploaded pieces.
• Easy access newsfeed that most writing community sites do not have.
• Friendly atmosphere encouraging review trading.
• Easy to use forums.
• Groups function complete with private message boards.
• User created contest section.
• User created courses section.
  

Cons:

• Server constantly goes up and down.
• Submission process breaks your em dashes.
• Little attention paid to long pieces, with most of the attention paid to poetry.
• $99 monthly subscription.
  

Just kidding on that last one; the place is free. I just felt like there were too many pros as opposed to the cons, so I decided to try and balance it out a little bit.

All in all, WritersCafe is a really great site. I’ve found the community to be pretty friendly, and the usability to be very high. It’s simple enough to figure out your first time using it, and detailed enough take time mastering. It’s got a lot of features, and they all work very well. I’ve been using it for awhile now, and I’m hardly ever disappointed (except for when the server goes down for six hours).

As for a rating, I give it a:

8.5 out of 10.

High praise? I guess it is, but I think WritersCafe.org deserves it. It might not be the most popular writing community out there, or the most professional, but it works. It was created with writers in mind, and as a writer, I think it’s a great way to get yourself out there, bolster your confidence, and hone your skills among fellow writers.

I couldn’t talk about every facet of the site, so go ahead and try it out for yourself. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Related articles

• Writing Communities To Watch, Prologue: How Can The Internet Help Your Writing?

I Got Published

Someone pointed out to me that all of my blog posts are like 500+ words long. Perhaps some people like that, but I imagine most of you sit down, start reading, and then say to themselves a few moments later “I don’t have time to read this, forget it.”

Maybe I’m wrong, but either way today I have a very short announcement: I got published. It’s nothing major, but it’s also not just something unimpressive like an online zine that is practically begging for submissions and will take anything with proper grammar. I talked about Ether Books before (check the link to my review on them below for more info), and that’s who accepted a short story of mine. It took about a month and half for them to get back to me, but that’s not too bad considering that they are a pretty big company, and are always growing.

Within two weeks my first published piece of fiction will be available to download through the Ether Books app on your iPhone (or smart phone?) or through iTunes. You can download the iTunes app to your computer here. The story is not available for download just yet, so in the meantime I’ll give you a short taste of the story “Company Girl”. Enjoy.

 

He’ll kill you, Johnny.

    The asphalt felt like jagged teeth against the balls of my feet. Clawing, digging, biting at my bare calloused flesh with each hurried footfall. The chill breeze nipped at my skin, goosebumps pouring down my spine. How long do I have? I couldn’t see the moon in the sky. Clouds veiled the luminary like shadowy fingers—as if someone jumped me from behind; a bag thrown over my head as they pulled me into the darkness. I could hardly see my own hands in front of my face. How did I get myself into this mess?
    The rustling obsidian walls at either side exhaled a devilish howl, the icy wind clinging to my bones …

 

Want to read more? I’ll be posting as soon as the story is available for download; I’d much appreciate your support!

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• Ether Books – A Stepping Stone In A Writer’s Career?

Writing Communities To Watch, Prologue: How Can The Internet Help Your Writing?

As an unpublished (or even published) writer, the internet can be a very useful tool. That thought may come across as “the internet will help you find job and/or get yourself published”, but while that can be true, that’s not what I’m referring to. Getting published and making money doing something you love is great—wonderful even, but something comes before that, in my opinion.

What am I talking about?

Writing + Internet = ?

It’s not a cement concept I’m talking about here, but in simple terms, the internet can help you grow as a writer. How exactly? That’s where the idea gets murkier. You have to choose wisely where to “train” your skills, so to speak, on the internet. When you’re uploading your own material for others to critique, anyone can say anything. In spite of that, as a writer you should be able to take positive points even from the most wantonly negative feedback as well as the positive. Some people may simply pat you on the back for what you’ve written. There’s merit in that sort of thing, but it’s rather small. Encouragement is key for new writers to grow. After all, if you don’t have faith in your writing yet, having someone tell you it’s good is a vital step in the growing process.

Of course, what you really want to find is good constructive criticism. This can be difficult to find, but odds are that if you’ve shown your writing to anyone before, it’s been your friends and family. Sometimes that can be great, but it’s hard to get unadulterated feedback from your personal acquaintances (unless your personally know a writer or editor). Whenever my mother or grandmother happen to read something of mine, there’s a disproportionate amount of positive as opposed to negative. That’s natural, and that’s why it’s key to find unbiased, educated feedback on your work.

If you write unopposed, you’ll never grow as a writer.

That sounds like an odd term to use, doesn’t it? Unopposed. I thought for a moment when I typed that, and I think the word fits perfectly. As a writer, you are trying to convince your readers that you’re good at what you do. It’s a battle of personal skill, and it never ends. Even established authors receive terrible reviews. The aim is to convince the majority of your readers that you know your stuff. You can never get everyone. Look at someone like Stephanie Meyer who wrote what is probably the most influential and popular book series of the modern generation. Some people absolutely love the Twilight saga, and some think it’s absolute rubbish. I don’t mean to argue for or against how skilled of a writer Stephanie is—the point is that she hit her audience hard. There will always be haters, but in the end, if the majority of your audience loves what you’ve done? You’ve succeeded in what you set out to do.

But what’s all this business about your writing being “opposed”? Like I said above, you’re fighting for your readers’ respect in a way. To be successful in that endeavor, you want to bulk up your writing muscles. Any skill is like a muscle, and writing is no different. You practice continuously—and eventually the muscle grows. However, if you want successful exercise in this sense, you need resistance, tension, something pushing back against your effort. This is where the internet can come in.

You’re not alone out here. There are thousands upon thousands of people who want to do exactly what you want to do. That’s a blessing in one way, and a curse in another. It’s a curse in that it’s difficult not to become lost in the flood; you have to fight to stand out. It’s a blessing in that you have many, many peers who are helpful and willing to aid in your growth as a writer. This input comes in many forms, but one of the strongest applets you have available to you is the public writing community.

If you noticed the title of this post, what you’re reading is a prologue. This will be a series, highlighting different writing communities across the web and the pros and cons of each of them. The purpose of this first post is to explain the merit behind using writing communities, while the installments following this will review various writing communities. Simple, right?

The difficult thing is using the internet in general correctly as a tool to improve your writing. It’s going to take effort and intuition on your part to find useful beta readers, critique, etc. On any given writing community, you can very well find a fellow writer who might be willing to read over your work in order to give you many forms of constructive criticism. Everyone is at a different writing level, so while one person may be able to help point out grammatical errors and minor things, another might be able to give insight into much deeper matters, such as character development and plot. It’s up to you to find the right person, and that can be a challenge in its own right.

I once talked quite a bit with a fellow writer—a young guy about a year younger than me. As soon as I met him, I could tell he thought quite a bit of himself. I can see that in people, because while I may not think “I’m hot stuff”, I can be relatively hardheaded and opinionated. I know how to be tactful, but at the same time, I have no problem telling people what I think. I’ve done a lot of critiquing myself for other writers, and I think I’m fairly helpful in that sense. I can sit down and tell someone “This is off”, but at the same time I can see why they wrote what they did. I can see the merit in it, regardless of execution. I always try to do something when I read over someone’s work to give them constructive criticism; I highlight how they can take the idea they are trying to convey to their reader, and make it stronger and more relatable.

This may or may not be him, but the idea of the attitude is clear enough.

When it came to this young man I was in contact with, like I said, I could see the kind of personality he had. Still, he wasn’t a terrible writer, and I’m open to all the criticism I can get. He read over a chapter of my novel Children of Solus and gave me some reasonable thoughts. At this point I thought “Hey, this guy is cool”, and a month or so later he messaged me, bored and wondering if I had anything that I wanted read over and criticized. Since he offered, I sent him a couple short stories. Awesome, right?

Not quite. In a setting where he had the Word document in front of him, and the ability to type his comments beneath each chunk of written story, his true colors were shown. I understand some critics are quite harsh, and I’ve received relatively harsh feedback. In fact, I like harsh feedback, because when I read it, I have to argue with myself why each comment against my writing is wrong. Sometimes those arguments in my head aren’t very strong. Sometimes they have holes. That’s when I have to take a step back and say “Okay, that’s actually a really good point”. In the end, it augments my writing and makes it better.

However when it came to this guy, he basically tore open every point he could possibly convince himself was “wrong”. To illustrate how petty he was, he wrote an entire paragraph bashing the fact that an eight-year-old said thank you, claiming that the simple phrase of “thank you” didn’t fit that age, and that it made the reader think the character was a teenager. He even ignored the fact that the child had a strict upbringing. No child says thank you, huh? All the while, he was so terrible at interpreting the simplest concepts that he didn’t even discern that the “thank you” he ranted about so much was said in a sarcastic manner. It was an incredibly simple concept within a story that was written in a very dumbed down fashion from a child’s perspective.

Still, any insight can be useful, and a few of the things he brought out I did consider into an ongoing second draft. Funny enough, the next criticism he brought out basically told me “You’re stupid and wrong” concerning the title of a certain therapist in the story. Little did he know I’ve personally been to psychologists and psychiatrists too many times to count, yet here he was telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about, and to do some personal research before I make things up. From this point alone, I could tell he was a know-it-all.

Still, like I said, even the most uselessly cynical of criticism can aid you in your writing—you just have to grow some thicker skin. I replied to him, explaining certain points that I did not agree with him on, explained my personal experience with therapists, and I thanked him for his effort and the points that he did bring to my attention that I agreed with (even though after the first section of the story, he decided “This sucks, you need to rewrite the whole thing” and didn’t even read the last three quarters of it). He came back at me swearing and generally being an ass, telling me my story was Jr. High level at best, along with a slew of other needlessly hurtful comments. The fact that I even slightly criticized his criticism just made him flip out. I can’t imagine how this guy takes criticism on his own stories.

Don't let overly negative feedback affect you.

Obviously I found someone who was not a very good critic. I knew my story had issues (I wrote it over the course of a single night), and certainly needed cleaning up, but the points he picked on were terrible. I could have read it over myself and created better arguments with myself. Still, the entire thing kind of shook my faith in myself. I know I’m a pretty good writer. There’s a lot of room for growth, but I know I don’t write Jr. High quality work. Regardless, I felt like crap for a few days after until I showed the story to a trusted friend of mine who not only writes, but also is a talented comic artist. She’s tough too, and she pulled apart things as well, but they were useful things. Through her input, I know that when I do sit down to create the second draft, it’s going to be a lot better.

That’s the thing when it comes to this subject. You have to glean good criticism from bad, and negative doesn’t equal bad. Odds are that facets of your stories suck. When someone points them out, hopefully they do so in a tactful way, but even if they don’t, you need to take their input with a grain of salt. Your writing will benefit. All the while, look for markers in the personalities of people who criticize you. If they’re acting like a holier-than-thou know-it-all, you’re probably not going to get very useful criticism. Looking back at my bad experience, the only written material the guy had online were political rantings and mediocre poetry. It’s smart to look at written work of someone who might review your writing. If their writing sucks, they might not be able to help you much.

In the next installment, I’ll talk about a writing community that I have quite a bit of experience in, called WritersCafe.org. Be sure to follow me or check back soon for an in depth review on the first writing community in this series!

Tekken: Movie Review

A movie review? Yes, I don’t know. This isn’t a movie review blog, but I warned you that I can be random. This is one of those times.

The other day, I caught the movie Tekken on TV. It was never in theaters (at least not in the US), and it’s adapted from the classic fighting video game, so I really didn’t expect much. Movies based on video games almost never work. Still, I had nothing better to do, so I sat down with my dad and watched it.

Simply put, I didn’t hate it. I was a child who played Street Fighter, Fighter’s Destiny, and Marvel Vs. Capcom. I never once played Tekken, and I while I immediately recognize the old dude with his white hair spiked up on both sides, I’m not familiar with the game or the story. As is typical with most movies adapted from existing stories, Tekken was not original to the game’s storyline. I’m sure it generally was, but when it comes to details, it only took a two minute search to find people complaining “That’s wrong!” Personally, I don’t care about that. That’s how movie adaptions are. If you judge them based on how different they are, you can never give a fair rating.

Still, the movie wasn’t amazing. The story is very cliche: Evil totalitarian militaristic “factions” take over a post-apocalyptic Earth, slummy terrible environments ensue. A massive fighting competition is endorsed by Tekken (a prominent faction) because… that’s what you do when everything goes to pot I guess. The main character lives in the slums, and was taught by his mother the ways of karate and whatnot. Violence ensues, the bad guy kills his mother, and he enters the Iron Fist (the fighting competition) to kill the bad guy ruler and avenge his mother’s death.

I won’t spoil anything. Even though the movie was full of weak dialogue, corny flashbacks, and a plot-hole here and there, I’d still recommend it to anyone who just wants to sit down to a heavy helping of good old fashioned badassery. The fight scenes might be corny sometimes, but the stunts aren’t bad. It’s all very entertaining if you come at it from the right perspective. You’re not going to find a gripping, well written, emotional movie that will leave you thinking. You are going to get a lot of sweaty bleeding dudes, revenge, and a couple scantily clad young ladies thrown in for good measure.

It’s a guy movie. It accomplishes that role, but not much else. I give it 3 bloody fists, because bloody fists are cool.

Storiad.com

Today I decided to talk about a site that I stumbled across awhile ago, and have just now been looking into more deepy. It’s called Storiad.com, and put short, it’s a writing community created with the purpose of connecting publishers and various other media professionals to writers.

The site is put together pretty well. I’m still learning the ropes myself, but it’s easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye. The founder of the site, a writer named Ramzi, launched it back in 2010, so it’s still in the beta phase and constantly evolving. It’s free for writers to sign up right now (I’m not sure if that might eventually change), so there’s really no reason not to go sign up and check it out. For media professionals looking for writers, it costs a monthly fee, which is actually rather fair. It’s a great resource for either side from the looks of it.

The focus of the site is to “pull” in a traditionally “push” industry. As a writer, you do a lot of pushing to get jobs. The idea behind Storiad is to create an environment that a publisher can come into in which they pull writers into job opportunities. Having your work speak for itself sounds nice, doesn’t it?

The profile setup is pretty detailed, creating something along the lines of a resume. Beyond that, you can fill out pages for each of your projects, adding tags for archival purposes, as well as a short “pitch” for your story just as you might include in a query letter. It’s encouraged that you post a portion of your story (the first chunk or so) so that scouts can read over part of your story, as well as your professional information and query letter behind the story, all without you having to do anything.

Sounds too good to be true, and with a slew of writers on the site, it might be a little difficult to find people just coming to you. I haven’t fully investigated and tested the process, but what I see looks good. There’s also a marketplace section of the site that lists various media companies who are looking for submissions from short fiction to screenplays. It looks like there’s a good community aspect of it as well, which I won’t go into because I haven’t experienced it yet for myself, but it looks like you can find critique from other writers on Storiad too.

Since I’m no expert on this matter, I’d suggest you check it out for yourself. Remember, any publicity is good publicity!

Breathe Life Into Your Writing! Part IVa: Dialogue

We’re getting deep into these now, aren’t we? I feel pretty fancy using Roman numerals beyond a series of “I”s strung beside each other; now I’m using “V”s! Stupidity aside though, if you haven’t read any of the first three parts, I’d suggest you start here. You don’t have to, but since this series is aimed to build your repertoire of skills to liven up your writing, every little bit helps. If you’re too lazy and just want to read this one? Well, that’s okay too. Let’s get started.

Dialogue sounds pretty simple. In a way, it is. Compared to the other points I touched on in this series, dialogue seems far more basic and structural. That’s true, because without good, meaningful dialogue you don’t have a story. The thing is, dialogue is much more than just a boring, structured necessity. Dialogue is something you can use to help your story soar or plummet to the earth. Use it correctly, vividly, and it might even carry your writing (which we don’t want to happen, but still). Use it incorrectly, and no one will keep reading your stuff.

Listen up; dialogue is important.

Not just a little important; dialogue makes your story. Without dialogue, your story is going to read like an essay, complete with mind-numbing blocks of exposition that no one wants to read forever. Without dialogue, you might as well be writing something like this. An article. People read articles to learn something, or to follow something someone did (in the case of blogs in general). When people read to learn, they do want to be entertained, but they’re reading for a different purpose. When people are reading a blog about someone’s life, what happened to them that day, etc, the entire piece moves because it’s a firsthand account of something that really happened. Even though it’s not dialogue, it comes across more interesting because it’s almost as if the writer has sat you down and is directly talking to you about what happened. It comes across stronger than simple exposition.

What about stories though? People read stories for one reason: to be entertained. That’s why fiction writing is so difficult. If you know a lot about a certain topic and you know how to write, it’s not that hard to write something like this; something instructional. When you’re writing fiction, you have to captivate your reader at every turn. You have to keep them guessing, but you can’t confuse them too much. You have to keep the story moving, but not too fast. You have to make the characters believable, but not too believable and boring. You have to make the story more realistic than real life, but still include aliens and vampires.

Fun, right?

It is fun, but it’s a juggling act. Society has a pretty short attention span, and you have to make a masterfully concerted effort to keep that focus. It’s not easy. What’s the point behind all this? Dialogue is likely your number one tool in grabbing people’s attention. Exciting, believable dialogue that moves your story along will go a long way towards interesting your readers. How can we create that dialogue though? How can we do it right?

That’s an extremely complex topic. I could probably write a whole new series just on dialogue. Instead, I’ll try to be concise here. I’ll try to highlight a few things that I think are the key elements of successful dialogue.

1. Understand your characters.
2. Consider where your scene is going.
3. Keep it real.

No kidding, that’s it. If you get those three points down, you’ll be a dialogue god. Unfortunately, not many have done that. I guarantee that even the greatest authors of all time still write a scene, read back the dialogue, and throw it in the trash. It’s a constant struggle. That’s not too say it’s hopeless; a lot of the time you can sit down and pound out a scene full of dialogue, read it back, and it’s perfect.

You have conversations yourself, so you know how people talk. When you try to replicate real speech onto the screen it often comes out sounding funny. Still, there will be a lot of times where it just flows. One character says something, and the next replies like anyone would, just like two people in real life. Hopefully you made sure to make their conversation mean something to the piece, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s go over each point in a little more depth.

 

Understand your characters

The point behind this is that you don’t want dialogue written that doesn’t match your character. If you’re writing the dialogue of a six-year-old, which spoken phrase would he use?

 

The sound of tiny feet against linoleum made Mrs. Parker turn towards the noise. The little boy tapped her leg patiently before speaking in an articulate voice, “Mother, my stomach is having pains.”

 

The sound of tiny scampering feet against linoleum made Mrs. Parker turn towards the noise. Her little one latched onto her leg—almost causing her to fall—and whined, “Mommy my tummy hurts!”

 

Obviously the first one doesn’t fit, unless little Timmy was abducted by aliens where they injected arcane knowledge into his little brain before laying him back in his bed. That’s the point here, dialogue needs to mirror your character’s motivations, goals, and personality. If you understand your character inside and out, you won’t make as many mistakes when you’re writing their dialogue.

If I could choose any of these three points to pick out as being the most important, it would be this one. I can get over a line of dialogue in a story that doesn’t have much purpose being there, or sounds a little contrived when I read it aloud, but when a character says or does something that just plain doesn’t fit them? That annoys me, and unless I’m really absorbed in the writing, I might not keep reading. Still, this is only one point. They’re all important; especially this next one.

 

Consider where your scene is going

This point is actually too simplified. Not only do you want to keep in mind the direction of the scene, you also want to look at the big picture. I’m talking about the plot, theme, and direction of the entire piece of writing. Dialogue in the first chapter might connect to something at the end of a book! Read the example below and keep in mind that this dialogue is placed a story titled… “A Shadow In The Deep” (if there is a real book called that, woops).

 

The smell of booze and saltwater drifted about the sleepy tavern, old neon lights above the bar humming a peaceful tune. A ratty old man, weathered and grey by the raging seas took a swig of his bottle and said to a man across from him, “Went out yesterday an’ caught me a whole mess of cod. Should have seen the nets full to bursting, ha ha!”

 

The smell of booze and saltwater drifted about the sleepy tavern, old neon lights above the bar humming a peaceful tune. An old man sat across from another, terror fixed on his wrinkled face as he whispered to the man across from him, “I think my days on the sea are over, Ted. Have you seen it? That thing? I swear, I saw it! Sliding beneath the waves, bigger than a whale! Someone’s going to get killed by that monster, mark my words…”

 
This one isn’t as obvious as the first examples with the little boy. There’s believable dialogue in both of these, and each example stays pretty true to a discussion between two old seadogs over a pitcher of ale. The difference here isn’t that one of these examples is wrong, it’s that the second one has a purpose being in the story and the first doesn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with a casual conversation between fishermen talking about their haul, but what does that tell the reader about the theme of the story? How does that move the story forward? It doesn’t, but when we read the second example, we see that one of the men is haunted by something he saw. He warns his old fishing buddy about what he thinks is out there, beneath the waves and waiting to strike, as he believes. When we read that, we’re given a glimpse of what’s to come. It creates suspense in knowing that as we read through this story, we’re slowly getting closer to learning the truth and meeting this monster face to face.

Don’t you agree that the second example accomplishes more, considering where the scene and story are going? This is a more difficult point, because we don’t want to load every line of dialogue too heavily with plot information, but we need for our dialogue to serve a purpose. Even if two of your characters have a casual conversation, it should serve a purpose, even if that purpose is just making the characters more comfortable around each other. Perhaps they shoot the breeze about sports in chapter three, and end up falling madly in love in chapter eight? The first small conversation served a purpose, and that’s the idea here.

 

Keep it real

The focus behind this point is pretty simple. We just want our dialogue to be believable. We want to be able to see the characters in front of us, and hear what they’re saying. That’s a difficult task you have as a writer, in that you’re trying to make words come across as visual. When your reader can picture what they’re reading clearly in their mind, you’re doing a great job. How can dialogue lend strongly to this, though? Lets look at another example.

 

When something doesn't sound natural, the emotion behind it is lost. You don't want to lose that emotion.

The slam of the door echoed through the house, shaking the walls as a woman stood facing the blocked doorway and said, “Abbie, you need to calm down. Open the door.”

“No mom,” Abbie replied. “You don’t understand me. I don’t want to talk to you.”

 

The slam of the door echoed through the house, shaking the walls as a woman pressed herself up against the doorway and pleaded, “Abbie! I’m sorry, I just want to talk, please! I love you…”

“You love me? You make me sick!” Abbie screamed back, her voice muffled through the thin walls. “You just don’t get it. Leave me alone!”

 
Do you see the difference this time? There’s nothing especially wrong with the first example. The dialogue stays true to the feelings of both mother and daughter, and it has a purpose. The problem is that it’s weak, robotic. Phrases like “You don’t understand me. I don’t want to talk to you.” tell the reader what’s going on and how the character feels, but they don’t sound natural. When you read that, you feel like you’re reading dialogue, not hearing it. It doesn’t flow like dialogue should.

In the second example though, it’s different. The dialogue is moving, active, raw. It fits the characters and progresses the scene, and it also sounds like a real argument between a teenage girl and her mom. You can feel the emotion here much more strongly than before, and because of that it’s much easier to hear it in your head as you read.

That’s the key behind this point: you want the dialogue to sound real. You don’t want your reader to read it; you want them to hear it. When your characters speak, it should sound as natural as if they were right in front of you having a conversation. How can you accomplish this? Well, it isn’t really that difficult. You’re human, you have family and friends. You talk. You know how people interact and converse, and when you create dialogue, you’re trying to mirror that. The subject of the written words can be anything, but the naturalness you hear in everyday speech needs to carry those written conversations. Beyond that, just read your dialogue aloud after you write it. If it sounds funny, you’ll probably hear it.

I hope all of that wasn’t too much information at once. Dialogue is an extremely deep and complicated process, but at the same time it’s very simple. There are a lot of ways to make your dialogue hit harder, but in the end, the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) policy works just as well. If you’re doubting some dialogue you’ve written, just ask yourself three questions mirroring the points above.

1. Would my character say that?
2. Does this dialogue serve a purpose?
3. Does it sound natural?

If you can’t answer yes to all of those questions, odds are you should probably work on the dialogue in question till you can.

Thanks for reading. If you didn’t notice, this is a two part installment, so keep your eye out for part B of the dialogue discussion. Also be sure to check out any parts of this series that you missed!

 

Related articles

• Breathe Life Into Your Writing! Part III: Symbolism
• Dialogue – a powerful tool! (madgeniusclub.com)
• Writing Believable Dialogue – 1. Less is More (bardicblogger.wordpress.com)

Why Do You Read This Blog?

As you can see above, I decided to ask you all a question. Why do you come here? I’d imagine usually by accident, woops! But if you did happen across my humble little corner of the web, what made you check it out? What makes you come back? Maybe it’s as simple as wanting something to read, or maybe it’s as serious as learning from the the tips and tricks I write about. Do you enjoy my writing; my fiction or my articles? Anything!

So don’t be shy, lazy, or difficult. Just click one of the options and press “vote“. If you’ve got a more specific reason, go ahead and type it in, or leave a comment here. I love to hear from my readers, and it’s nice to hear what people actually find interesting to read about here. Maybe the results will sway me to focus on certain aspects of the blog a bit more.

Thanks for reading everyone!

The “System-Check” Virus

The past two days have been absolutely ridiculous. I touched on what happened a little in my last post, but today I figured I’d delve into the details of what happened. It’s been an interesting couple days.

It all started two nights ago. I downloaded a handful of Photoshop brushes and a few fonts that day. So I brought em over to my writing/art laptop and started unzipping. Unbeknownst to be, one of them was gonna turn my computer into a virus playground. My old hard drive broke. I had the laptop for years, and then it just started freezing for no apparent reason. No viruses, no nothing, just freezing. So after a mess of time-consuming hardware checks, I learned the hard drive was basically just kaput. I got a hold of an uncle of mine who’s a wiz when it comes to computers, bought and sent him a new hard drive, had him load it up with programs through the company he works for, and bam. The replacement hard drive saved me.

Problem is, the computer was never online. I never bothered to update the antivirus or anything, so when I unzipped this “brush” that I got from a third party site (that looked completely legitimate and had no red flags), all hell broke loose. Everything froze, including my heart. I probably swore; I don’t remember. The icons on my screen disappeared, a Windows “System Check” box popped up and started scanning My Computer, the HDD, the RAM, and the registry. Wait, scanning My Computer and the HDD? Aren’t those the same thing? And why is the system check still running with my custom color barf theme I created? Why is there a little “System Check” shortcut next to the start menu? Why is it is discolored and odd looking?

 

 

Who cares! My computer’s exploding! I ignored all the fishy signs and paid full attention to this scan. It only took about five minutes. Wait, what? Five minutes to scan the HDD? I’ve done that before. It took two hours. Four errors in My Computer, four in the HDD, three in the RAM, four in the registry. “The C: drive is unreadable.” No! I pressed the “Repair” button and sat patiently unpatiently. Hey!—it’s fixing the problems now! Oh wait, it can’t fix the C: drive. Awesome. I try not to cry.

The entire encounter was lots of fun. By the time I got to the end of it, the window tells me that if I want to fix all the errors, I have to pay for the full version. Pardon my Caprican, but what the frak? I have to pay to fix my computer? That ain’t right. I shut everything down and got extremely depressed, but that doesn’t mean I gave up. I’m not a computer expert, but I know my stuff. I started the boot diagnosis and… waited. The entire process takes almost two hours, so I laid down and tried to sleep, unsuccessfully. When I trudged back into the living room, expecting the worst, a pleasant sight met my eyes.

“Nothing’s wrong with your computer, bro.”

Okay, the screen didn’t say that, but it should have. You have no idea what a relief seeing that message was. All was not lost! Still, my computer was crawling with viruses. Things were bleak, but my hard drive was safe. Turning the computer back on (and wading through this dang “System Check” nonsense) I was able to find my files. They weren’t gone. The virus hijacked the start menu, as well as the desktop. My Computer and My Documents got moved to the “All Programs” tab. Tricky, but only to someone freaking out and blinded by thoughts of “MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN“. Everything was still there, to my incredible relief.

I went to bed at around 4am, finding solace in the fact that the virus was more a trick than a destructive force. Here I was thinking I got hit by some horrible virus that blew my hard drive to hell, like Magistr or CIH. The next morning I set out to find out what I was up against. It only took a single Google search to find my problem. The “System-Check Virus”, I found it was generally called. It’s not your typical virus, it’s called a “rogue“, or “rogueware”, and it’s a part of virus family called FakeHDD. Basically it’s a big illusion to trick you into giving out your credit card number. Remember the entire “buy the full version” prompt? You get it. Mostly people get hit by it when they get conned into those “free virus check” sites, but that certainly wasn’t how I got hit. I quickly found a step by step guide on getting rid of it and got to work. (Go bleepingcomputer.com!)

The process was pretty complicated. The first step was to turn on the computer in safe mode; easy enough. I downloaded all the necessary programs and threw them on a thumbdrive, like a warrior with his armor and weaponry coming toe to toe with the mighty dragon. The first step was to run a program called RKill, which basically kills all the processes that the virus runs to stop you from doing… anything really. Realize that it crippled my actions on the computer so badly that I couldn’t right click, move things, or even press crtl-alt-delete! It took multiple tries to run RKill, and I was forced to change the name of the program to “iExplore.exe” for the virus to let it through. That’s right, this virus protected itself in a big way. Try to run a program to fight the virus? The virus shuts it down. This was only the beginning of my battle.

Finally, after countless tries, RKill ran. It shut down a slew of processes and my desktop icons came flooding back. So far so good. The next step was to run a program called TDSSKiller. The aim of this program was to find and destroy a piece of the virus called a “rootkit“. Not only was this rootkit the culprit for killing my anti-virus and blocking out my virus killer programs, it also royally screws over your internet. If your computer is infected by a rootkit, your Google searches will give you crazy results, and you’ll often be redirected to ads and all sorts of nasty stuff. I think it’s commonly called the Google redirect virus, but either way, I had more problems than just that.

The rootkit proved to be a very difficult foe. Like diamond-hard dragon’s scales, no matter what I tried, my blows were deflected. TDSSKiller—no matter what I renamed it—was immediately shut down by this nasty bug. Why? The dolts over at Kaspersky Labs decided to put a nice big “Kaspersky Labs made this!” inside the properties of the program. So when I tried to open it, the rootkit saw the inner workings and source of the program and shut it down cold. I was screwed.

The solution was to download another program called Verpatch that I could use to change those inner properties of the TDSSKiller. Problem is, Mr. Rootkit stopped that program in its tracks too. Formidable opponent, right? I found a link to a version of TDSSKiller without Kaspersky Labs’ idiot name all over it, but to my great anger and frustration, the link was dead. I set down my sword and decided to move on to the next step.

It was time to ditch the sword and pull out the bazooka.

Malwarebytes is an awesome program. Not only did it break right through the virus’s defenses and run the setup and updates without a hitch, it also found eleven different viruses in the system. Yeah, eleven. I was back in business, and stomping out the bugs left and right. Problem was, the rootkit was still in business, protecting itself from the program that could root it out and kill it: the TDSSKiller.

I redoubled my search for the version of the program that would slip through its defenses, and I found what I was looking for. Kaspersky redeemed themselves, they had made an alternate version without their brand name all over it. If you’re screwed like I was, go HERE for the right version of TDSSKiller (you do have to register to the forums to download it). You can thank me later. I didn’t even have to rename the program from “TDSSKiller” and it started up like a charm. There are many breeds of this virus that I had; it looks like the one I had was nasty indeed, smarter than most versions. It wasn’t even looking at the name of the program—only its inner workings. Sneaky, huh?

The TDSSKiller fired up and found it. Buh-bye rootkit. I was glowing. I bested the beast. I ran Malwarebytes again and it found another handful of viruses. The rootkit was hiding them? I don’t know, but I was glad that thing was toast. I decided to turn the computer on without safe mode before running Malwarebytes two more times (yes, I was paranoid). You can only imagine my joy when the results came up with a big fat zero both scans. I was virus free. The final step was to run a little program called “Unhide.exe“, since the virus goes into your system files and checks “hidden” on all of them. A weak trick, but still.

And that’s my tale. Probably not very exciting, but I thought I would share, and hopefully help out anybody who’s run into similar problems. If you’re going through a FakeHDD virus hit and are stuck, feel free to get a hold of me. I might not be able to help, because each situation is different, but who knows?

Dealt with a rogue before? Comment about it! Viruses today are worse and worse. I’m just glad I came out on top this time.

Related articles

• System Check Virus Removal Guide (bleepingcomputer.com)
• A Step by Step Guide To Removing The Google Redirect Virus From Your Computer (makeuseof.com)

Looking To Get Published?: Obsolescent.info

I had a fun morning today, and my work still continues. A rather nasty virus attacked my writing laptop (the one with my life on it, y’know), so I’ve been frantic to get it working again. Thankfully I think I’ve got it under control, and I also snagged a little job this morning,  so I decided to sit down and tell you lovely people about a publishing opportunity I came across today.

A weird one.

Obsolescent.info has an open call out for short stories. About what, you ask? About octopusses—er, octopi. I kid you not, this little press is working up an anthology of short stories focused on our aquatic eight-legged friends. Odd? Yeah, it is, but it also sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

This company is offering 20 bucks for each story. They need 10-15 of them, and they’re looking for stories about 1000-7500 words long. As for the contract, it looks like they’re only claiming non-exclusive rights, so basically they’re allowed to do what they want with your work, and so are you. What genres are they looking for? Well, basically anything. No kidding.

That’s about it. If you’re interested or just want to find out more, check out the page for submission guidelines below!

http://www.obsolescent.info/guidelines.html

 

Related articles

• Looking To Get Published?: Katherine Press

A Fever Dream: New Community For Artists & Writers

Today I thought I’d talk about a cool little forum with a laid back attitude: A Fever Dream.

 

The place is brand new—as in, it just started up this week, but there are already over 60 members. It’s close-knit and active, and whether you’re a comic artist, classical artist, or a writer, everyone is cool and constructive. Basically, if you’re looking for fair critique and honest opinion, you’ll probably get it here, and fast. Just be sure to spread the love.

In addition to feedback, you’ll find helpful resources, previews into the current projects of talented artists, and all sorts of contests. Currently there’s a “Draw Everyday” thing going on come February, a writing contest using prompts that’s going on right now, as well as an open call for a forum banner/header. All in all, the forum has a focus on creativity and fun. You’re not going to find that same easygoing, pleasant attitude on other large sites.

That’s about it—hope to see you there!