Some Thoughts On Writing

[hwconundrum]

A writing-related question for anyone on my FL who has an interest in it, even if only from a reader's perspective: at what point does it become acceptable for a story to sacrifice or ignore internal logic in the name of style? Is it ever okay for a story to contain a few plot holes/illogical moments in the name of making the story more interesting

Comments

[allisnow]

Okay, well first thing is that don't beat yourself up over the plot sounding cliche. They all do when you boil them down, and there's nothing you can do about it. I can just imagine Shakespeare sitting down in front of his first draft of R&J, banging his head on his keyboard and crying, "It's such a cliche

[allisnow]

I just remembered that most of what I read on this topic comes from Orson Scott Card's nonfic "Characters and Viewpoint", which is one of my favorite books-about-writing EVA.

I don't know if this link to google books will work but let's try

[hwconundrum]

Thanks for all that info on the MICE stuff, that was really helpful, and quite a nice change of perspective since I've never really looked at it that way before. :) I suppose part of the trouble is that I'm not terribly sure myself what type of story I'm trying to write, and since I have no destination in mind it's going to be awfully difficult to me to actually get there, so I need to sit down and figure out what I want to do before I proceed any further

[allisnow]

Well there's nothing wrong with writing down the ideas that are in your head right now and just seeing what comes out. It may be that afterward or even during the process you will really decide what kind of story you want it to be. Then you can go back and tweak what you wrote. I think the reason I didn't mention that in the first place is because I loathe editing ;)

I was thinking about this other writing book I have, "A Story is a Promise". I forget the author but I'm sure you could google it. Basically he says that when you write a story, you start off by posing a question. What that question is tied a lot into the MICE quotient. If the first chapter of a book has people wondering, "What caused the crew to lose their memories and will they be able to find out the truth?" then the readers will be more prone to wanting the technical details -- assuming the details are technical and not supernatural.