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Hosted by Pitas Email the owners: Skimmer Raven Archive Other blogs of note: Technomancy Nezumi Mooncalf Chaobell D Psuzan |
TO: Neal Stephenson Might this humble servant have the honour of bearing your children? Boom shaka, 02:57 p.m. Thursday, January 24, 2002
Nezumi said something interesting about writing - namely why would a reader read awful writing? I will willing edit stories that sound like the spastic results of drunken monkeys pounding on a typewriter with a small finch, if, and only if, the story has a good idea. And, as a bad movie review site said - I just like bad writing sometimes. I mean - I read the lowest ranking movie reviews first, and I read the lowest ranking book reviews first. Why? People stretch themselves when they explain why and how and where and when a story just falls apart. A good review usually amounts to "t'was nice." Nothing interesting there for me. So many good stories amount to beautifully polished cardboard. The characters slip from spot to spot with a metaphor and a binding symbol, and maybe a good line or two. Then they stop, staring at a petunia, and poetically mourn their collective losses before sweeping up into the end. It can be wonderfully done, authentic, real, and faithful to the genre and source. And I frankly couldn't care more. Give me a story with something neat. Sell me the idea. Make me love the characters. Make them real. Make the world live. Be brave. Step out. And if you fall, so what? At least you tried, and in that second of falling, there's something beautiful. So what if it isn't a perfect story. At least someone cared enough to try. Oh yes, I've read lazy stories, and horrible ones. And there's been times when I've gleefully written more then the author ever did on their works. The ones I love though are the terrible ones that make me pause my pen, and say, "This is awful, but -" And then you stop. Because, there's a gem in the mess, and a shadow of something that could be great. Your mind can see a thousand paths and possibilities. And most of the time it never happens, but the instant that you can see the possibilities. That's when I love to read. And write. And I always will. Oh, and the title? It means nothing. Just say it's a long day and move on. Raven, blathering as usual 08:52 p.m. Wednesday, January 23, 2002
Hmm - latest fun was installing X on my poor G3. Now, I'm attempting to replace the files that got lost in the process. Nothing that bad, really. Just lost some mp3s that weren't really mine, and some other stuff like that. Sometime I need to tackle some Mac expert and find out how the backgrounds work in OSX - it looks like you have no control of how the machine puts up your pics. If the picture doesn't fit the screensize, it's either stretched - nothing like getting a nice shot of an Angel Sanctuary kid's knee, or it's tiled. Right now, I've got a lovely shot of Dark from DNAngel - though all you can really see of him is his chest. Not that I'm complaining . . . it is a nice chest after all. I puttered a little and found out that my old options in OS9 are still there, but I daren't toy with them for fear that my computer will try to use two backgrounds. Moving onward - latest fun is looking for medical information on how sensative the body is to electrolytes and trace minerals. I'm toying with characters with saline sensitivity - a sort of semi-aquatic type. I know that a sodium inbalance can lead to medical problems, but I'm not sure about the specifics. Any medical types out there? Raven, who really doesn't want to read Levinas 04:19 p.m. Wednesday, January 23, 2002
You said something about wanting a collage or something along that line? Point me to some pics, and I can see what I can do. Now, I'll go back to packing. Soon, I'll have ethernet, and my own computer. Have I mentioned lately that I [heart] my Mac? Rav, who'll soon be eating nummy Mexican food 12:40 p.m. Saturday, January 19, 2002
I write, but I want to write more. I want to write without ever using the letter "s," or in second person present tense, or without a single contraction. I want to write blatant wish fulfillment with the characters not dying when they could and everything ending up where I wish it would. I want to write dialogue that's more melodramatic then the Romantic period. I want to ignore canon relationships and sail off on untrodden ways. I want to ignore punctuation and grammar and just write till the words stop coming. I want ten thousand characters - I want none. I want to write late at night with my eyes burning and the keyboard fading from sight. I want to write in the morning with the birds just beginning to sing. I want to write horrible stories - the sort that people shudder to remember. Not due to the topics, but due to the style. I want to write miles of description when it's not needed, and none when it is. I want to take a character and turn them three ways around and inside out and set them out as new people. I want to make you love this person. I want you to hate this one. I want you to set the story aside swearing never to edit again - even if you're editing in your mind only. I want to tell you about my dreams and nightmares. I want to complain about what I hate, and praise what I love. I will revise. And reread. And beg for readers. And revise again. I've done all that - and I'll likely do it again. Nobody's perfect. And then I want to write a perfect story where the words flow from one to the next like silk, and the plot is like a fine weave. I want every character, every scene, every incident, and every word to be vital. I want you to remember the characters forever, and to smile when you open the file. I want my story to be effortless to read, but hard to grasp completely. I want complexity in simplicity, and simplicity in complexity. I want you to scroll up again from the end, and read it again. But first, I have to learn. Everyone needs the chance to write badly. A writer once said that some people need permission before they write. A person, usually a teacher, that would tell them that they were a good writer. That they were getting somewhere. That it was good. That is was improving. And then, they could begin to learn. That doesn't mean that they became great writers - it just meant that they had the courage to try. They usually wrote something awful, and it would be ripped to shreds. And they would write again, and it would be a little better. And sometimes they gave up, and sometimes they kept going. And sometimes, they wrote beautiful stories that unfolded like flowers and shone like gems. Some people are scared in their writing. They hide behind masks and masks. Every plot is a 'safe' plot. They add words like "scarily" since they are sure that their writing can't show the fear that their mind sees in the story. Most of the time, there is no need. They're scared for no reason. I wonder what happens to the ones that aren't encouraged? Raven, who's feeling Zen - or tired 01:54 p.m. Wednesday, January 9, 2002
Skimmer would personally like to say that she doesn't quite *get* why so many people seem to think that Tolkein is a bad writer. Certainly, he skimps *horribly* on descripion. Yes, his stories are tremendously complicated. The former might be a problem; however the latter should not be. His stores are all teh better for being complex. No story exists in a vacuum. Real life has all kinds of elements that never get fully explored. Sandman managed to give the apperance of being a clsoed world, but it still had an obvious richness and the closed-world nature enabled the readers to connect more closely to the characters. That said, D was right: People who write Tolkein slash are on *crack*. More on this subject later. Skimmer, thoughtfully08:01 p.m. Saturday, January 5, 2002
I've read some bad stories in my Creative writing classes. And I've read some decent ones. Almost all of them have the same problems though. (start rant) If - I can switch the names of your characters or change the characters to other people and get the same story, you need to rewrite and fix your character development. Like, oh, add some. If - I can't tell if your character is male or female, alive or dead, awake or asleep, naked or dressed, and I cannot even pick them out of a lineup - you need to add more description or identifying details. If - Your character is purely a stock character with a cliche and a funny hat, you need to work on originality and adding vivid details that make your character believable. If - I can conquer the world your characters live in with a length of string and about ten minutes, then you've written an idiot universe and need to work on the why's and how's. Ditto for romantic conflict that could be solved with a good conversation or some plain commen sense. If - You have characters that are not your age, then please make sure they act their age. If they act differently then their age, then explain. If - You catch your character's saying, 'though I could have done this,' then think out what would have happened if they had, and explain their choice. Don't say the plot had to go one way or the other. If - You plot is all summed up in a breathless paragraph where everything is tied up and everyone laughs at the end - you were finishing this on the night the assignment was due, weren't you? Ditto if you killed all the characters. If - The average high school football player can find typos in the first paragraph, then you need to proofread. And nevr believe the spell checker. Also - don't use a 5 dollar word if your character wouldn't use it, and don't use a 'neat' word if you don't know what it really means. If - You write about wombs and spears and swords, you need to read Frued because that's where my mind is going. If - You can cut out half the words in a paragraph, and still have the sense of it, then do so. Almost always a story is better without the first paragraph. If - You don't know punctuation, especially dialouge rules, then please learn. Please? It's my sanity after all. If - You answer all criticism with 'That's my style,' then you need to experiment and stop listening to grumpy critics like me since you'll obviously not change. (end rant) Raven, who'll now go read book reviews 06:27 p.m. Monday, December 31, 2001
I'm not dead. Really. Well, I'm home and I'm sort of better. I've got my voice back, and my allergies are trying to claim that I've got another sinus infection but I'm ignoring it and combatting with Vitamin C. If it works, it works. Whee. Hmm - what haven't I mentioned lately? I [heart] the Trigun manga. There's joke covers underneath the paper slipcovers - book three features Wolfwood as a mermaid. My life is now complete. Or something. I've gained a fondness for H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) - WWII era poet. Loved Gnosticism, Egyptian mythology, and the tarot. Friends of Frued, and courted by Ezra Pound. She's a very interesting woman - and she fits my taste in poetry. I'll blog again later. There's a story idea brewing involving a sweetie werewolf character that I'm toying with, and I'm fighting out lunar months with Skimmer. Does anyone know the average number of lunar months for Earth and the standard dates that important holidays fall on them? The types of holidays don't really matter, though I'd love some way to calculate correspondences with solar events (solstice etc) with the lunar cycle. Nothing like plotting for a world that refuses to run a nice Earth standard calender. Raven, who's now hunting more tea 06:04 p.m. Monday, December 31, 2001
Regarding D's blog entry on browser compatibility:
End rant. Skimmer, sighing as usual12:19 p.m. Monday, December 10, 2001
The below rant should be modified in response to Arielle's reply: Agreed. Wholeheartedly. Mental illness is nasty and annoying. (Skimmer has no credential whatsoever on this issue, but she's read a lot of books about it, so the think she's at least got an informed lay opinion.) The only reasons people would want to claim it that she can think of are Muncahusen's by Internet (halfway down page) or the "romance." Yes, a lot of famous artists had mental disorders. However, most people with mental disorders aren't famous artists. As Arielle said - depression is selfdiagnosable. Schitzophrenia is not. The kind of mental disorder that utterly destroys your life, as a rule, isn't. Perhaps you notice that something is wrong and go to a doctor, but it's the docotr who figures out what's wrong. Now, informed guesses are possible, but the informed guess if you're figuring out your head should be something minor, if you're still functioning in society. Skimmer has done so herself - she read a psychology book, out of interest, and came away fairly sure that she had an extremely mild case of Schitzoid Personality Disorder, by the diagnostic conditions, but also convinced that said disorder was actually just an extreme version of introversion and not a disorder at all. And as she pointed out, her "muses" aren't seperate people; they're just artificially created points of view, and when she's acting a character, it's very like wearing a pair of sunglasses. Skimmer, still mildly vexed on this issue09:38 p.m. Wednesday, December 5, 2001
In response to Mooncalf's rant and more significantly, s00z's response to same, Skimmer has a few things to say on "the people in her head": She isn't at all fond of the whole "soulbond" thing, but she knows what people mean when they refer to the characters they write about as "people in their head." It's a matter of point of view. When Skimmer feels she understands a character well enough to write about them and from their perspective effectively, she's done so by constructing a viewpoint in her head - to be specific, their viewpoint. This enables her to view fictional events through their eyes, so to speak, and also, incedentally, allows her to view nonfictional events through their eyes. This is where the problems start. Skimmer has a tendency to leave her characters on, so to speak, as she goes about her daily activities; on occasion they are able to make insightful and/or humourous comments, which she finds relaxing. She knows that all these are are her own mind, automatically, looking at events through her points-of-view and feeding their conclusions back to the concious level. However, the effect is the same as that of "voices in your head" or "imaginary friends." Since these points-of-view are intended to be the points of view of other people - and distinct, defined other people at that - it's simply easier to label them as "people in her head." However, she still cannot understand *OOC* "musefics" or "soulbonds." After all, what's the point of creating a point-of-view if that point of view is your own opinions in disguise? Many of Skimmers's character agree with her most of the time, but that's because a lot of these characters were pretty close to her to begin with. For many, she's the origional author (or Rav is) so she feels entitled to mould them to her will. However, those taken from other sources would be useless to her as an author if she did not maintain them in their origional form, which is often wildly different than her own default point-of-view. It wouldn't be any fun otherwise. Skimmer, mildly vexed on this issue09:04 p.m. Wednesday, December 5, 2001
I don't remember poems. I remember bits of poems - lines and fragments. I remember something by someone alive near Browning that wrote, "We were young, we were merry, we were very very wise, and the door stood open at our feast. And in walked a woman with the west in her eyes and a man with his back to the east." Though that may not be accurate. Just thought of it as I was looking over a poem that I need to memorize for a test. Evil sonnet. I'm still sick. Sick for three weeks, no voice, no energy. And I'm still trying to write about Gnosticism, feminism, and Mary Magdalene. And, yes, Xenogears is indeed nifty. Now, I'll just wander back to attacking this essay - Raven, who's sick 06:26 p.m. Wednesday, November 28, 2001
Xenogears is an absolutely marvellous game and Skimmer likes it a whole lot. And she thinks Citan is really, really cool. That is all. Skimmer, cooing10:25 a.m. Tuesday, November 27, 2001
The fun part of being an author is playing God. No, really. It is. One can play with characters as if they were dolls, manipulate every detail of their lives, drop barrels on them if one ceases to like them. One can put them through unimaginable torture and then smile as they reach the blissful happy ending. However, there is an important caveat to this. One must be a detached god to work things properly. There is always the danger of deus ex machina. Therefore, the best thing to do is only set the inital conditions. Geography is yours, although it should seem realistic. Weather is yours, although only to the degree that random chance would affect the weather systems anyhow. A sudden snowstorm in a trompical climate is deus ex machina. Similarly, shape character not by divine decree but by influincing their upbringing. Nature takes a part, and nurture takes a part, and both are under the author's control, so the author must strike a balance. However, most good authors know this. This is not what Skimmer wishes to discuss. What skimmer wishes to discuss is simple: tectonic plates. It's amazing how many authors have created maps of fantasy worlds without apparent care for the effects of geology. How did the landscape get the way it was? If there is a large mountain in the middle of an otherwise flat plain, Skimmer will be looking for the degraded lava flows. A big river will carve out a deep canyon. It will also have a rivermouth or delta, and it will create a freshwater environment a distance into the sea. A island chain in a line is probably going to have a lot of earthquakes from being on a plate border, unless it was created by a hotspot, as with Hawaii. These are the detials that make a world real. A planet has a history, starting as a chunk of lava and ending as an inhabitable biosphere. The process does not have to be detailed in the book. Most readers don't even know it's there. But think about it a little, just a little, and make sure that it could happen. The trick to writing a good novel is to roll up your setup and let it unroll itself down to the natural conclusion. The plot will reveal itself. You are there to polish the details and set up the backstory. Be sure the backstory is set up right. Skimmer, who will discuss the polishing later08:49 p.m. Friday, November 9, 2001
Raven has poleplayed, or told stories, or scened for years. It amounts to telling a story, only with coauthors. According to Nezumi, I'm not half bad at sceneing. Not that I'm sure of it, mind you, but I know that some of the people that I've scened with enjoyed it. First of all - a definition. RPing, gaming, scening, whatever - it amounts to having people with characters. For example, in that plot bit I mentioned a while ago, there was a character named Williams, and a character named Trevor. I play Trevor, and Skimmer takes Williams. Most RPing amounts to letting one person voice one character, and the other voice the other, and then letting them talk / act through a scene. Usually, there's an overarching plot, and a vauge timeline. This is purely so you can decide what things and ideas are affecting the characters at the time. With me, standard RPing session amounts to checking if the other participants want to play, and then deciding on the set up. In other words, where, when, and who of the scene. Sometimes a scene can arise out of a question, or a plot idea as well. It depends on your style. Another example of set up is on this site's FAQ page - if references to yaoi unnerves you, don't click. Personally, I think half of what makes RPing fun is a good plot, and the people involved. But, with care, it can be fun. I'd blather about rules that I use, but I've gone on enough. Raven, who's cold 08:58 a.m. Friday, November 2, 2001
A response to the latest entry in Psuzan's blog. Screen resolution is far more important to webdesign than some people (who shall remain nameless) think. Everything has to at least be readable on all monitors to be useful. There are some cases where a site's functionality would be destroyed by making it fit a small screen, but these cases are generally "toy sites" such as the Requiem For A Dream page that aren't *intended* to be functional, but rather, entertaining. There are plenty of easy ways to do this, few of which are at all difficult. One other thing people forget is that not all people are using the same or browser. It's alright to make a page so it looks it best in one particular browser, but it should at least display in everything, inclusing Lynx. Frames are the devil's workshop; Skimmer has only ever seen about three pages with frames that didn't have the frames annoy her so much she couldn't be bothered to go into them. Here's what Skimmer does to avoid problems when designing: she sets her monitor to 640x480 when she's opening pages she's designed. That's righ, kiddies, 640x480. If you have to use both scrollbars at that resolution, it's in need of a redesign. It's normal to have to use the vertical scrollbar at small resolutions, but learn the uses of relative widths.
Also: Javascript is a toy, not a tool. Some people have browsers that don't support it, or have turned it off to free themselves of popups. If it's obvious to someone with a low-end browser that the site was designed for a high-end browser, it needs redesign. It's alright if something has a few little quriks in a text-only, but not so many it's difficult to use. And if you absolutely must show off your 1337 javascript s| Skimmer here. It's windy outside, very very windy. And she likes that very much, because she can watch dancing leaves outside her seventh-floor dorm room. Which she likes. Dancing leaves are pretty.
Of course, yesterday it rained, which reminded her of home.
She would like to make a comment about weather in fiction. Now, Mark Twain might be able to get away with mentioning weather only when it's a dramatic necessity. Most people can't. Weather enriches a scene and provides a backdrop. It also has a large although often unrecognized subconcious effect on people's moods, and how a person reacts to differnt types of weather can tell a reader a great deal about their character. A person who prefers sunny days tends to be a lot more sunny-tempred themselves than one who sulks inside on sunny days and would rather have it cloudy. It's details that make up the life of a story and the weather is an overarching detail.
Skimmer would like to announce the opening of a new website: Nezumi Works. She like Nezumi's writing. He's a very wonderful mousey. She doesn't know why she's bothering to announce this, since anyone who reads her blog probably already heard about it on TMsucks, but she's announcing it anyway. Anyhow, if anyone is reading this who hasn't already heard about it on the ML, please email her. Her adress is seven.sky@eudoramail.com. This is for statistical reasons.
As careful readers will notice, one of the reasons Skimmer is so proud of NezumiWorks is because she did the HTML for it. She likes to show off her skills. In fact, she'll do HTML for just about anyone. Anyone whose work she likes, that is. It's a bigger category than you'd think. |