Frustrations found on yahoo answers.

I made the mistake of getting on yahoo answers to ask a question about research. Yahoo answers sucks me in, especially since I found the writing section and that I’ve been answering questions from that.

And here’s something interesting that I found there. A lot of people, and I mean a lot, posted parts of their story or something asking people to critique it. I don’t. The little bit I skim makes me think that it isn’t worth my time sifting through the mostly bad stuff to find the good points, and then I’m just going to hurt the person when I say, “This is wrong and this is bad and this you should question.”  But I find it very interesting that people actually do this.

Another thing commonly found on there is something along the lines of, “Help me with refining a plot/naming a character/naming a book/anything remotely related to rewriting.” I’d like to just get on there and smack them and say, “Dude, it’s your book. Write your own book already!” I mean, if you can’t figure out how to get a person to the ball, then either a) you don’t have a writer’s talent for plots (A writer can get anything to happen if they think long enough. Notice that last phrase. YOu have to think about it.) or b) they shouldn’t be at the ball. (Characters tell you much information that one should listen to.)

And really, do these people really think that I can help them title their book/story? Three sentences are not enough to know what the story is about, general themes, or anything. Let’s see:

An ace pilot, determined to throw off his unsavory background, tries to win the most challenging race of the galaxy.

If I were to tell you that sentence of my summary from Shad, you wouldn’t touch anything upon his discovery of himself, his realization that winning wasn’t his dream, or anything else like that. You’d go something with the race when, in reality, the race is a minor part.

It just makes me wonder sometimes how many people out there so strongly desire to be writers that they’ll try anything to do it. It’s like that book, something like, no plot, no problem, how to get you writing anyway. You need a plot to have a book.

I know. This is just one giant rant. And yes, finding people to help you in your writing path I think would be helpful. I’ve gone for so long without someone that I don’t know how to do it now. But I wish i still had someone to bounce off ideas and such. However, I don’t think that yahoo answers is the place for that kind of association.

On a side note:

SummEry vs. SummAry. Summery modifies summer, as in, the December weather was quite summery at 70º. Summary is just a brief statement about something, for example, my sentence about Shad was a summary of the book.

question of the week – 5/9

Last weeks question was:

How do you remember your plots or ideas before you can write them?

And although I warned you that you should answer it to get more impute, well, that didn’t matter.

Anyway, I’ve had a few ideas about how to save plots, and hardly use any of them.

• The most obvious one, that everyone says, is to write them down in a notebook. And although, yes, I have a notebook of a few plots, I’ve found that doing that is just too difficult. The notebook is upstairs, under my bed, and I generally get plots or refine plots downstairs. Although this probably sounds lazy, going upstairs, finding the book, writing it all down, and everything is really hard. (I do, however, have the original idea of Shad in that book. Scary what I thought it was originally.)
• Notecards. Don’t do this one but if you have a notecard box by your computer, then write the plot on a notecard and just save it.
• I’ve always wanted a giant whiteboard by my computer, so I could write down whatever I pleased, and keep track of all sort of things.
• Post them on your blog. (*slight snicker*) I actually had a plot, thought it was brilliant, wrote it up as a blog post, changed my mind about the brilliance, and did nothing. Recently, I went back and reread it and I actually think it might be doable.
• Then, of course, my favorite one, do nothing! The brain is a great storage device and two things I’ve heard in my eight years of writing. You will always have a lot of plots (unless you’re in college) and you will be changing your plot a lot before you finally place it on paper.

I’m sure there is also a way to do this on the computer, but I haven’t quite figured that out yet. I’m still thinking about that.

This week’s question is a two-part question actually. You can answer each part as you deem fit.

What attracts you to a particular title in general  and how do you pick a title for your chapter/story?

As always, I’ll be writing this sometime between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, but feel free to drop a reply any time.

naming characters

How do you name a character a unique name? Well, if a name doesn’t pop out at me, I go to my absolutely favorite website for names and either look up a general meaning in the name or use the random name generator. Because I like this website so much, I shall share it with you. Behind the name . com. I also ended up learning a lot of name prefixes and such, which is really awesome.

I will tell you that some of the names aren’t perfectly defined. They define my name  (Abigail) as “My father is joy” where as it means “My father’s joy” but minor technicalities.

This is also really great if you want the names to all sound similar in a story. In one story, I have Knntyo and Felix as brothers. That just doesn’t sound that likely. But having Avigayla and Keanu (both Hawaiian names) that actually sounds rather awesome.