Enemy of Entropy

Writing Bug

15 August 2008, 11:03 pm. 5 Comments. Filed under Reading, Writing.

I’m more and more tempted to write some fic­tion again. It’s been years since I did that. I’m good with char­ac­ters and envi­ron­ment, but not so good with plot. I don’t like to write about neg­a­tive things, or nasty peo­ple, which is rather prob­lem­atic when you need to have conflict.

I know part of it is read­ing books and think­ing, “Damn, I could do bet­ter than that.” But to be real­is­tic, any­body who has fin­ished a book is doing bet­ter than I actu­ally have done.

One thing that’s really get­ting to me is the num­ber of anti-​​fat state­ments that get thrown in to so many sto­ries. They have noth­ing to do with the story – they just hap­pen because of the authors’ prej­u­dice. Describ­ing a minor char­ac­ter as fat is a cheap short­cut, because most read­ers will assume the per­son is lazy, sloppy, and not ter­ri­bly intel­li­gent (or a hyper­fo­cused geek with no social skills if he is smart).

I know that start­ing out with a “mes­sage” is a crappy way to write fic­tion, though. Mes­sages are bet­ter expressed in essays, not stories.

Still, I have this itch. Bah.

5 Comments »

  1. avatar Adrienne. 16 August 2008, 2:23 am

    I was won­der­ing if I was just being over-​​sensitive to the fre­quency of the anti-​​fat stereo­type. Seems like I run across it an awful lot. I’m glad it’s not just me being finicky.

    I’ve wanted to do the same thing, work­ing size-​​acceptance into a story, but I’m afraid I’d take it too far. I tend to be a bit heavy handed when I start out with a mes­sage. I get prosy fast. :)

    If you scratch that itch and you like how it turns out, I’d surely love to read it.

  2. avatar cyn. 16 August 2008, 3:10 am

    No, you’re not being over-​​sensitive at all. I read two books by a new author today, and one of them had so much fat-​​hate in it that I decided not to even men­tion the author’s name any­where – I don’t want to give him any Google hap­pies. Sam called it right, though – I saw a photo of the author, and he’s chubby. Prob­a­bly has a lot of self-​​hatred.

    I vis­ited your site, but couldn’t fig­ure out how to leave a com­ment. I’ve seen that “south­erner” test, too. I am a life­long south­erner – from Alabama, for good­ness’ sake! – and I didn’t score very high on that thing when I took it at some point in the past. I don’t think it was writ­ten by a south­erner, and a lot of that stuff is more about social status/​class (the one I took, any­way) than any­thing else.

  3. avatar Hope. 16 August 2008, 8:57 am

    I’m tempted to write dragon smut, entirely because the first TCM book I read was really ter­ri­ble dragon smut.

    I’m still not sure how to write that review! I think I’ll write the best review I can with­out actu­ally lying, and send it to the coor­di­na­tor and see if it’s con­struc­tive enough to be used.

  4. avatar cyn. 16 August 2008, 1:39 pm

    The first one I got (the only Adult title I’ve asked for so far) was so bad that I just couldn’t go on after the first chap­ter. I was prac­ti­cally scream­ing, “SHOW, don’t TELL!” So I wrote to the coor­di­na­tor and explained that there’s no way I could write even a halfway pos­i­tive review, and she said that was cool. Some books, they just don’t review.

  5. avatar TigerTom. 19 August 2008, 5:13 pm

    Any­one can write. Mak­ing money from it, that’s the trick. If you get famous enough, you can sub that out, ‘though! [grin]

 

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