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| Thread: The writing process |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · «PREV |
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JollyJoker
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posted August 24, 2009 09:02 PM |
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Ok, I wrote a novel that got published, a story that got published as well, and some fan fiction (in English - not my native tongue) for Homm 3. I suppose I'm qualified.
However, I'm pretty sure I'm not good enough to earn a living with writing ONLY, and since I have a pretty good job I've not that much time to really work on it.
Anyway, with me it starts with an idea, and if the idea is good, everything is falling into place. Writing is easy in that case, and things are playing out before my inner eye like a movie. That means that things develop their own dynamic.
Stephen King wrote, after he had published Cujo he got a lot of fan mail critisizing the fact that the boy was dead in the end and why he let him die. He answered, he wrote the story, and when the story was finished the boy simply was dead. It wasn't his decision or something - the boy was just dead.
And he is right, at least as far as I'm concerned: when you write something, things JUST HAPPEN, and you are as surprised about it when you write it down as the reader when he reads it.
On the other hand I have been asked to write a story for an SF-anthology - and did so -, but that was work. I HAD to come up with an idea, but when I said yes I only had half of it. I started writing the story, but at three quarters I saw that it wouldn't work the way I had planned it. I was pretty clueless then, and I didn't have much time to finish it.
I'm pretty good under pressure, and when the time really got short I came up with an idea and wrote the story within two days or so.
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Sinc you are Belgian, DG, in my experience, if you really want to know whether a writer is good you have to read the original. For Germany and German a good example is Stephen King. The translation of his books wasn't good, and reading him in English was kind of a revelation.
I think that Stephen King is really as good as it gets, if you want to have the equivalent of a tasty burger with ketchup and fries. His command of language is astonishing. His style seems deceptively simple and basic, BUT...
As a writer Hubert Selby took my breath away, he has written few but incredible novels (and in this case the German translation was great, but I read him in English as well). Requiem for a Dream has been made a movie as well as Last Exit To Brooklyn, but I think The Demon is as good as it gets...
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Shares
Supreme Hero
I am. Thusly I am.
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posted August 24, 2009 09:05 PM |
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Edited by Shares at 21:06, 24 Aug 2009.
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Quote:
Anyway, with me it starts with an idea, and if the idea is good, everything is falling into place. Writing is easy in that case, and things are playing out before my inner eye like a movie. That means that things develop their own dynamic.
Stephen King wrote, after he had published Cujo he got a lot of fan mail critisizing the fact that the boy was dead in the end and why he let him die. He answered, he wrote the story, and when the story was finished the boy simply was dead. It wasn't his decision or something - the boy was just dead.
And he is right, at least as far as I'm concerned: when you write something, things JUST HAPPEN, and you are as surprised about it when you write it down as the reader when he reads it.
Well done, I think! Not killing off characters that by logic should be dead is just stupid, mostly. And not doing it to please the fans seems inseecure to me. Don't be afraid to break the boundries!
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DagothGares
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posted August 24, 2009 09:37 PM |
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I agree that the original should be read. After a while, we on't read for the story anymore, but for other things, like the use of language and the themes of hich some times things may go lost in translation. Though it'll take awhile before I can read french or German novels in the original language... Despite the fact I'll be forced to read die Welle Pretty soon...
Anyway, I'm pretty amazed by the fact you're a published author, by the way. Not that I think you somehow abuse the english language merely by writing it, just the fact, you know.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted August 24, 2009 09:50 PM |
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@JJ
Quote:
I think that Stephen King is really as good as it gets, if you want to have the equivalent of a tasty burger with ketchup and fries. His command of language is astonishing. His style seems deceptively simple and basic,
I would tend to agree with you for the first half of King's career. The Stand is the single greatest "Burger-and-Fries" novel I've ever read. Cujo, Pet Sematary, Salem's Lot, etc., were all fantastic as well. Sadly, most of the stuff he's put out in the last decade (with the possible exception of Desperation) just doesn't compare and has been pretty disappointing to me.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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JollyJoker
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posted August 24, 2009 10:11 PM |
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Well, with King writing a book now it's like Tarrantino making a movie. Lots of hommages and stuff. That said, I liked Cell - it's Zombie all over again, but still it has a couple of fresh angles I like.
Apart from that, I don't think it's King getting worse, it's King not getting better. You get used to stuff, and eventually it gets old. I liked King being Bachmann, and I think I like Regulators better than Desperation. 
That said, if you never read him, try Joe Lansdale. That guy is just great. His Hap & Leonard books are hilarious - but the horror stuff he wrote is pretty tight - I'd compare it in style with Duel, Spielberg's first movie: pretty primeval and basic. He did a lot of interesting stuff, like Dead in the West, a mix of Horror and Western and other stuff.
DG, well I find it amazing as well.
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VokialBG
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posted August 24, 2009 10:17 PM |
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@Corribus: Try "Duma Key". Also "Under the Dome" is going to be great.
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Corribus
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The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted August 24, 2009 11:17 PM |
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Quote:
That said, I liked Cell - it's Zombie all over again, but still it has a couple of fresh angles I like.
Never read Cell. Maybe I'll pick it up.
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Apart from that, I don't think it's King getting worse, it's King not getting better. You get used to stuff, and eventually it gets old.
I'm not sure about that. I didn't read his stuff in chronological order. I just think his older stuff is better. The writing is tighter, the plots more focused and have more meat on them. I feel like his newer novels have the content of a 50 page story with about 400 pages worth of extra words added to them. Well, I guess you can't account for taste, so... bottom line is that King isn't just a hack like a lot of people (most of whom haven't read him) seem to think. Most of his stuff is pretty quality. Even the newer stuff is better than a lot of the dreck that's out there.
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I liked King being Bachmann, and I think I like Regulators better than Desperation.
Really? Interesting... Both were great. But I just couldn't put Desperation down once I started it. I didn't find the Regulators quite as much of a page turner.
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That said, if you never read him, try Joe Lansdale. That guy is just great. His Hap & Leonard books are hilarious - but the horror stuff he wrote is pretty tight - I'd compare it in style with Duel, Spielberg's first movie: pretty primeval and basic. He did a lot of interesting stuff, like Dead in the West, a mix of Horror and Western and other stuff.
I'll check it out, thanks.
@Vokial
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@Corribus: Try "Duma Key". Also "Under the Dome" is going to be great.
I read Duma Key and wasn't really that impressed. It was a neat idea but I didn't think that there were 600 pages worth of story in it.
Anyway, apologies to DG for going off topic there.
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DagothGares
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posted August 24, 2009 11:23 PM |
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nah, I didn't count on it reaching page three anyway 
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JollyJoker
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posted August 25, 2009 08:00 AM |
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For Stephen King I'd like to add - and I think, we may agree at this point, Corribus - that I really, really like his short stories and novellas. Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Everything is Eventual... great stuff in them. He CAN be tight, if he wants to, but that guy has so much to tell, it seems.
I like it slipped and laconic in style. I really adore Raymond Chandler, read him quite early, and I love that particular writing style (which Lansdale uses as well).
Still. Let me name Hubert Selby again. I've never read anything nearly as powerful as his prose. He's inventing and re-inventing speech itself, and if you didn't read him you MUST give him a try. I found this in a reader comment on one of his books, The Demon (which would be my suggestion to start with):
"Selby is just about the best author I have ever read. His books speak to me and make me believe what each page says more than any other author. There is a fundamental, and somewhat un-nerving, realism to his books that makes them highly uncomfortable reading, but it is this discomfort which makes me come back to his books again and again. Last Exit To Brooklyn blew me away, with it's picture perfect description of desperate, (an perhaps a little extreme) cases of inner-city slum-type living, and the psychological effects it can have upon it's street dwellers. Requiem For A Dream carried on a nasty, horrid-tasting tale of drug-related woe that Trainspotting could only begin to thinly paint. And now I've read The Demon, and this is another gut-wrencher, ready to pull you under life and show you how it REALLY works."
Another one has this to say (about The Demon):
"The writing is brutal and poetic, stripped down and lethally accurate in its meaning. Not one word is superfluous in this brutal prose poem."
Exactly my thoughts. "Stripped down and lethally accurate" is a very good description. In fact it's so stripped down, that you will have to alter your reading habits. He doesn't use speech marks, for example. I own Last Exit in Brooklyn in English, this is how the book starts (I'm copying exactly, not leaving out anything: for explanation, the book takes place end of the 50s).
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They sprawled along the counter and on the chairs. Another night. Another drag of a night in the Greeks, a beatup all night diner near the Brooklyn Armybase. Once in a while a doggie or seaman came in for a hamburger and played the jukebox. But they usually played some goddam hillbilly record. They tried to get the Greek to take those records off, but hed tell them no. They come in and spend money. You sit all night and buy notting. Are yakiddin me Alex? Ya could retire on the money we spend in here. Scatah. You dont pay my carfare...
Never read anything like Selby again and probably never will.
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Doomforge
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posted August 25, 2009 10:57 AM |
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I do write a lot. Wish you understood Polish, I'd throw some of my stories here. Most are about the dark side of life anyway. Like the story about a high school student who grew to rape and murder a beautiful and extremely uninterested in him girl from his class. Of course with graphical details. No part omitted!
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kipshasz
Undefeatable Hero
Elvin's Darkside
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posted August 26, 2009 12:12 AM |
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My "works" consist of several average fantasy settings and few modern setting sci-fi concepts. Most of them will never see daylight though, as I need to improve in quite a lot of areas.
I would say, I'd like to read some of your works Doomforge.
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"Kip is the Gavin McInnes of HC" - Salamandre
"Ashan to the Trashcan", "I got PTSD from H7. " - LizardWarrior
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