An excellent website about writing

A long time ago, me and my brother Kyle here before I knew of TV Tropes, I stumbled across the website Star Wars Origins. It explores the many, many potential influences on Star Wars, from the obvious (Flash Gordon, Dune, Lord of the Rings, Kurosawa films) to the much less so (Far-Out Space Nuts!) and everything in between.

It's not just about Star Wars, though; it has a section called 'storytelling lessons' that I think is amazing and definitely worth reading. It's been a major influence on how and why I write. This is probably old internet-news, but if you've never heard of it, take a look.

Umm... that seems kind of a high standard o__O

Nope, that sounds pretty much right.

Sounds like an exaggeration to me. In that you shouldn't ever get too attached to your writing, and that you shouldn't hesitate to cut it if it doesn't work. So maybe not 80%, but a decent number.

So yeah, I think it did have a point.

Yes, a non-literal reading of it also works. But I pretty much always cut most of what I write anyway.

Meh. Doesn't seem right to me. By the time I'm sitting down to write, the draft is already set pretty hard, so only minor details could possibly be cut or altered.

False dichotomy. Writing is not about cutting some percentage and keeping the rest — there is also this little thing called revising.

EDIT: Now that I've actually looked at the page, it seems for most of that section that the writer knows this and is including revising in the 80%, so that makes it make a lot more sense. But then the last sentence, "If you want to write a brilliant 200-page novel, write 1,000 pages and cut the least-interesting 800 pages", is complete nonsense. If you actually tried to write a novel like that, you'd have no coherent plot and those best 200 pages would lose a lot of their interest because everything in them would come out of nowhere.

edited 7th Jun '11 12:28:30 PM by Vilui

"8. A story is a big metaphor made up of lots of little metaphors."

really?

and how do you study metaphors exactly?

ive always had trouble with them, but i never thought it was relevent to writing

I generally cut about 25% of my writing just by getting rid of Word Cruft. You'd be amazed how much there can be even if you think you're being concise. Sometimes entire paragraphs, conversations, and scenes can be removed with no problem.

But yes, 80% is a gross, and mildly insulting, exaggeration.

Indeed that is a better word.

edited 7th Jun '11 6:46:35 PM by jewelleddragon

You could just read it as, "Boil down as much of your material as you can into the finest possible form." "Cut" is a poor word here; "refine" or "distill" is much better.

^ Definitely. I can imagine changing 80% of a work in the process of cutting, rewriting, editing, and generally just polishing it up. But out-and-out cutting it? Not how it works, IME.

As far as just lowering word counts on later drafts goes, cutting 10 percent of the word total, on average, is the most common advice I've come across.

Yes, much of the text in a rough draft will be altered by the time the manuscript's ready to submit. Throwing out crappy first chapters is also common. At least it is with noobs like me.

I end up far too beige on my first drafts; I have the scenes in my head, but I forget to tell the readers anything more than what's going on at the moment (dialogue, etc.). So I often have to go back and add description and end up lengthening my word count.

^That can work too.

Some writers prefer to write out a movie script style rough draft, then go back and fill everything else in. By movie script, I mean writing character dialogue and actions only. No thoughts or descriptions.

I know Gene Wolfe states his first drafts read like a synopsis, then he layers in characterization and better descriptions.

I think by 80% she (the site's author) means "of the grand total of sheer words of your work you write, you should get rid of most of them". The 80% figure is not "write a few drafts, get to a really good standard, then cut most of that draft you're up to"; it's "most of the things you write in first drafts will end up being unnecessary or bad for the work as a whole, so don't be afraid to jettison them at will".

Anyway, is there anything else people want to say about the site?

So Mary Sue characters are entertaining? I don't think so. I find that unless a character being special in a certain way is the Anthropic Principle of the work, it tends to annoy me.

It takes more than "Vicariously fullfil [my] fantasies" to make a Mary Sue.

I agree.in fact most characters dont.Mary dues ateore ondovidualused but none the less they are escapist characters

I would recomend to read this Analysis/Escapism

An Escapist Character is a character that fulfils the audience's fantasies. A Mary Sue is a character that fulfils the author's fantasies.

Big difference, although there are sometimes overlaps. Wolverine stands out as an example to me, what with creators sometimes being how they are.

But still, I've enjoyed plenty of characters that weren't fulfilling my fantasies. I find the characters I like best are realistic ones, not escapist ones. They're not some kind of super-special Chosen One, and they're not constantly saving the world, they're just a bit unusual and struggling to deal with the hand they've been dealt. Just like me.

Ettina, he didn't say that that's the only kind of character that people like. You're picking a nit that isn't even there.

But the site did say "most entertained by", so it's still a valid point. I, too, don't care much for escapist characters, although admittedly that's partially because standard Wish-Fulfillment fiction doesn't really match up with what Wish-Fulfillment for me would be. But still, I view realistic characters much more favorably.

"Wish Fulfillment" doesn't necessarily mean "unrealistic".

I tend to disagree, but regardless, my issue here is that the site apparently regards Wish-Fulfillment as the most popular type of fiction. I hold otherwise, and so do others (including, presumably, those who feel True Art Is Angsty - though I consider that worse.)

Assuming your wishes aren't something terribly easy to achieve, "wish fulfillment" means, at the very least, "improbable."