Your Flaw(s) as a Writer

Most definitely. I think what I write is usually easy to read, due to format, so it carries less weight than most books, in terms of pacing.

i never

finish

anything

In as few words as possible: Gleeful intellectual arrogance and egregious complexity addiction.

In more words: I have a nigh-incorrigible need to make things more difficult for myself—and, ultimately, my readers—than is strictly necessary, in the form of giving fairly significant plot importance to numerous distinct, non-condensable side characters; throwing in, at various levels, all sorts of peculiar recondite literary jokes and symbolic gestures, some actually rather crucial to the work; and, last but not least, writing many of my scenes in a rather baroque, stream-of-consciousness style that I know will alienate a vast number of people.

Then again, I'm pretty sure that my plot could put people off the work even without all the bells and whistles.

I'm not very creative in writing (I have a B in English) since I prefer to do the minimum possible for a decent grade. I also have some major ADD and I don't know how to stand still long enough to read a textbook. The latter is due to a caffeine addiction.

But does your English class provide very much in the way of creative writing? You could possibly just be bad at academic writing.

I never actually just sit down and put things to paper

I am doing one, but my tendency to drift can get in the way. I am in no way Book Dumb since I am overly obsessed with good grades. So far, I have B's in all of my classes (will be 1 A 4 B's)

I am doing one, but my tendency to drift can get in the way. I am in no way Book Dumb since I am overly obsessed with good grades. So far, I have B's in all of my classes.

Damn it, my browser crashed and made me double post.

I can't write a description to save my life and my pacing goes too fast.

My pacing always seems dreadful and I find it very difficult to transfer character and character change onto paper. It comes across as 'all of a sudden, they were friends for no reason!'

Besides never finishing jack, except for a few short stories when I was in ele-fucking-mentary school, I'm total shit at writing narrative and exposition. Action? I got it. Dialogue? In the bag. Characters? My strongest suit. World Building? You know it.

Narrative? Exposition? Fuhgettaboutit.

Maybe I'll just cut the crap and start writing scripts then.

I'm always paranoid about sentence structure. I think it comes from having a lot of journalism in my background—I'll get caught up in how the sentences fit together, when it would be better just to spit it out.

I have a slightly medieval/pre-1900s mindset. Like, I recently wrote a story set in modern day and daaaaamn it was hard to write. I'm used to horses and capes, not cars and windbreakers.

Oh boy, here we go.

• I can never actually get anything down on paper/typed. If I ever manage to, it's only a short sentence or two before I erase the entire thing.
• I can't stick to a single idea for very long, if I get an idea at all that is. Even then, it's heavily influenced by the work of a better writer.
• I'm unable to create characters and keep them for very long. This is worsened by my love of Loads and Loads of Characters
• I suck at world building. I might be better at this if I had some kind of structure of what to write, a template for instance, but I've yet to find one.
• Even if I do suck at it, I find more interest in writing the setting and characters than the actual writing work
• I always want to write stories for things that could work better in visual media, but since I have no skill in those areas, I can't write those stories
• I constantly rush. Whenever I have a concept that I like for only a short while, I jump the gun and try to advance it. One instance I had a story that I immediately wanted to turn into a webcomic, but I soon abandoned it while discussing it with the artist I was going to hire to draw it.

In short, I have no right to call myself a writer. I'm just a lazy screw-up who wanted to avoid the idea of the "School -> College -> Office Job -> CEO" bullsh*t.

When I'm not writing for worlds much unlike our own, I have a tendency to set things in high school, college, or a generic office. There have been times when I've rewritten things that had an academic setting into an office just because I wanted to be more grown up than writing about school.

My protagonists tend to be versions of myself, exaggerated in positive and negative ways, especially when the plot is something I came up with while working out my life problems. I take the same approach when acting, but acting someone else's script gives me more preset boundaries than writing.

I spent a long time reading a daily sci-fi flash fiction site, so my fantasy/sci-fi ideas tend to come in the "sketch of the situation, one development, shocking twist, no resolution" format.

Most damningly, I hardly ever write. I turn story ideas over in my head but I'm too lazy to write anything but my weekly review blog and whatever I've set myself for a blitz like Na No Wri Mo. I wrote more in school because I had creative writing assignments. I should join a writers' group, but I haven't because I generally work evenings, which is when pretty much all of them meet, and joining a group would mean I'd have to knuckle down and write more than once a year.

edited 30th Oct '13 11:47:03 PM by TParadox

I think I get too hung up when I write. I often have a premise and an attached Point Z, but I can never seem to wrap my head around the content of any of the points in between, or if the middle will even make sense. It's like, 'okay, I got the scene set, I know how it all ends; where the fuck do I go now?'

There's also that subconscious part of me that wants every word and tangential scene to be chosen with purpose and mean something eventually, thanks to English teachers that have said stuff like, 'it's not worth reading if it doesn't make you think'.

As mentioned above, Complexity Addiction. Too many side characters, plot twists and other elements that make me cry in my attempts to keep all the plot threads in my hands, and the reader cry in attempt to follow what the hell is going on.

More or less everything I write turns into a comedy at one point or another.

Also, a sort YMMV thing, but the tone of my writing tends to change often and quickly.

I include an overabundance of characters. I used to wrap up plots rather quickly but while I've improved on it, I still struggle with it at times.I also think that I rely a lot on Dialogue, too much perhaps.

I know that feeling. I have Loads And Loads Of Characters myself, almost approaching Bleach levels.

I could make a day long list of my flaws, but my biggest two are:

1: I usually tend to work from first-person perspective when I write, when at times I need to show more than one perspective.

2: The medicine I'm taking slows me down so I can't focus enough to ever complete anything. I wish I could, though. I feel like this is a flaw, I don't know if it would be one or not, but it feels like one to me.

Most of time I have no idea what to absolutely to write down. My mind draws a blank when I am trying to describe an area or a scene, it also made realize how little I actually know about stuff.

Well, my flaws I think are...

A) Procrastination

I have a lot of things I want to work on, but I really suck at actually working on them. I get distracted easily and once I do I'm either going to take a long while to go back to writing or I'm not going to at all.

B) Perfeccionism and low self-esteem

I always want to do everything perfectly and more often than not I can't even get close to it, not only that, but even after I finish writing something I look back at it and think "Eh, this doesn't really look very good, nobody would want to read this".

C) Descriptions

I suck at describing anything, appearances, scenary, actions, gestures, name any sort of description and you can be sure that I suck at it.

D) Small vocabulary

I have a rather small vocabulary to be honest, so I repeat word a lot. That could be easily fixed by just looking at a theasaurus or something, but again, I'm really lazy.