WRITING

Forget those writers who came from privileged backgrounds who said their family were against it, but still I write and right now my book is on the best seller list. Family disapproval does not mean anything unless they can do something about it.

If you had to work or did not get the proper education and decided now "I am going my University or GED and become a writer," unless those in your household steal your money, throw your typewriter or computer out the window, lock the computer so you cannot get it, hide your writing utensils, or do anything physical to prevent you from acquiring your goal, there is no excuse. You may have to keep the home in order and be reasonably neat so they can see writing is not a time waster. What I am saying is threatening words spoken on empty air do not mean anything unless accompanied by blows.

All right now we got down to the mean opposition, what about the subtle examples. Let me name a few.

You are a Japanese wife. You have been told, don't bring dishonor on our family name. You know that your grandfather was a guard in one of those prison camps. You feel you must tell a fictionalized story of World War 11 but if you do, your family will disown you.

The best idea has come to you! Ah that is the correct phrase, the way the heroine looks at the villain. I have to write it down or type it on the computer. Your son or daughter have taken all your pens and pencils, and "you know who" has to use the computer to type out that special report even though he had all week to do it. It has to be done this moment.


You have finished the best game of solitaire, and unknown to you, your partner sneaks in, watches, leaves, and goes out about his business. You start to write on your short story and only then does he say, 'what about supper?'. You think this is isolated, so you choose another time, but no matter what time as soon as you write a couple of words or get as far as a sentence, yours truly does the interruption thing.

You belong to a religious organization who says fiction story writing is lying,

I think the ones who are doing this opposing should ask themselves, "Were you proud of your grandfather torturing all those people?" "Why did you choose this particular time to use the computer, and why did you not have those writing instruments handy? " How do you expect your wife to improve her writing if she does not get enough time to write a paragraph? Do you want her to be, perhaps, senile? Will taking care of a woman in her old age who is devoid of her mental facilities make you happy? " "How do you know if the so called fiction writing is a lie or not?" Remember those movie credits with "any resemblance to any persons living or dead is truly coincidental?"

What is the result of this opposition? For one thing, your novel or short story will take longer to send out. It costs more. You may have to buy the file cabinets, book cases, and other essentials out of your own pocket, not to mention books on writing. There are people who still believe that reading is a luxury and because of this many potential authors go unnoticed; many an unpublished story lies hidden in a dresser drawer.

Now lets get down to how long or how many words to write a day. It depends on who you are. If you hardly go out, are not invited out, and are at the same place at the same time, then it is easy for you to use the time method of writing. That means, you will write from ten in the morning until noon because you are at home during that time and never go out.

However, if you are out of your house or apartment irregularly, it is best to use the so many pages a day since if you are like me, you will have the processor and the pages open so when you finished doing or got back from, you can get on with the writing. Now how many pages should you write? I would say at least three double spaced because that way the story will be flowing. With just one page, you may be just getting into the plot, the characters are having a conversation, they just arrived at the city, and with two, there is a bit more action, but not enough. Also you may have to back track because your character got out of his car, but there was no mention of him getting into the car in the first place. At least three double spaced pages, allows you to correct mistakes and also allows you to go back to the previous chapters and fix up what is wrong.

Borrowing

Sometimes a writer admires a character written by another author that he wants to mention that character or make reference in his story. Perhaps you want to make a phrase like "As I waited for the light to change, I saw that scuffy detective talking to that famous police psychologist. The latter had not changed his raincoat for weeks." Pretty sneaky way to mention Columbo. You are not saying who he is, but anyone who watches the series knows who you are referring to.

Unfortunately your character would have no idea who that scuffy guy in the raincoat is. He would probably think he was a bum.

Now suppose you want your character to say that he saw Spiderman crawling up a wall. After all, you read that comic book and you saw this man poking out the apartment window, looking up.

If it were reality and Spiderman was crawling up a wall, your character may have seen it so many times that he would have not taken any notice.

All right, you decided to be bold and write a story about a widow of a police detective suspected of corruption asking a detective of a famous writer who lives in the same town as you to investigate. Now suppose it was in November 1998. Unfortunately the famous writer wrote a story of the same time period, but he had not sent it to the publisher yet. In this, the detective of the famous writer is in Ireland, investigating the mysterious death of a relative and he left in October 1988 and is spending the Christmas holidays there as well.

Not to be perturbed, you make your character be related to an action hero of another famous writer. This hero in the writer's last novel was getting close to a certain young lady and there were hints of marriage. Okay the writer may have intended to make the character married but his audience would not accept this for now. And for reality's sake, would not the hero's employer's order him to fake his wife or his own's death, make a different identity like he was in the import business, etc. And would not those who hired this action hero make sure that any real marriage of his was kept secret, perhaps a fake one in his place, along with a cover story? Why if your character was related to this borrowed character, he would probably think that his father was a business traveler, salesperson, et cetera. Why he may think his father died, divorced, or a bum who left mother and I penniless.

All right you decide to mention that your character was in the same area when something happened, perhaps the action hero was chasing someone (okay Chinese Communist agent) and there was a big fight. You decide to play safe by mentioning not the city or state but it was "near Macey's around Christmas 1985". You researched and know that the author wrote a story called, "Danger Christmas". But your character would probably have been approached by the government, CIA, or whomever hired the action hero to keep quiet in the interest of national security

The safest way to reference a borrowed character would be at a distance, a character who could be but you are not sure, mention being at a certain restaurant when the action hero was getting in trouble with the waiter - "I hope this is not what happened the last time I was here. The waiter seemed to be arguing with this customer. Who? I don't know. He looked like military or something.

This is probably the safest way to write about the danger of using characters borrowed from other authors than to say "You would violate copyright and you would probably not get the author's permission.

REASONS WRITERS DO THINGS

No one has explained why a writer must take a certain amount of time each day other than, "it is a job like any other, if you were going to the office every day, you would spend eight hours, etc." But writing is not like any other job. No one has told me the reason why I have to increase my vocabulary to at least a grade twelve university level other than,"you do not want to sound childish." No one has told me why I should not let my family or friends read my work and critique it. No one has told me why I should keep all my writing books, and other equipment in the same room and have a private room or time to practice my craft. So I think I had better explain why.

You need a writing space with your equipment, books, et cetera on hand, because if you have your books, for instance, downstairs, everytime you run to get that obscure reference book, you lose valuable writing time. You also save on leg power. Someone may take your absence as an okay for them to get on the computer and play a game.

Your vocabulary has to be more than looking up in a dictionary because you have to know the nuances of the word in such a way that they became second nature. It does, also, make people respect you and expect more than a story of your tragic life when your father locked you in the closet even though he never did those things and was the nicest man in your city.

You need a certain amount of time because you must see at least a page or several paragraphs completed, not only a sentence. In connection, you should have a particular time period, preferably an hour at least, with no interruptions because if someone bugs you during your alloted writing period,you cannot concentrate because you are thinking that any moment now the phone will ring, the husband will want to play his game, the dog has to go out, and so forth. In other words, eventually you expect to be interrupted. It is sort of like those rechargeable batteries. If you stop too soon, the battery life decreases and you wind up writing, "See Dick Run." instead of "As I entered the room, I observed Mrs. Marvin, her head attached in a rather strange angle and her eyes glazed over — knowing that someone in the house had killed her, I immediately phoned the police, et cetera, et cetera.

You do not let friends critique your work, because they have different tastes in writing and that reflect on their judgements. In other words, they are asking, "why does she or he write about this lovely family and how they got to America?" "I love Romances." and fail to see if you used the passive voice a little too often, the hero in your story suddenly changed his name in mid stream from Barney to Howard, or other blunders.

You do not let family critique your work, because they confuse your writing with whatever you did wrong and have seen you on your bad days.

You only tell that you are writing, not the exact detail of plot, city, or name because in the first case, you might, say, suddenly decide to change to science fiction and would you not be embarrassed!

You do not give a copy to your friend because she may be a helpfuL aunt. What a helpful aunt does is to show the copy to as many of her friends as possible. (She is glad to meet a real writer ) Eventually it may wind up being stolen by an unscrupulous person masquerading as a friend who says, "Oh I am not interested" and then steals it from the coffee table, dresser drawer, and has it published under his or her own name.

As for me, I got sick and tired of people asking, "Why do you need this and could you not get, et cetera, et cetera." I thus to write it down. Hope that satisfies everyone.

My Thoughts on Prey and Pretender Fan Fiction:

pIs it all right to persecute those stronger and faster and smarter than us while not all right to persecute those weaker and less intelligent or less advanced than us? What classifies us as human? Are the 1.6rs considered human but a more advanced stage of humanity? Since in the series, they can have children with ordinary humans or homo sapiens, and the offspring are fertile, does this classify them as human beings? Does a species using the term "mate" for "spouse" make that species, animals, although a highly intelligent form. Why did the species suddenly appear in one part of Mexico, seeing that there were probably other settlements of white people, possibly artist colonies or expirates hiding from legal prosecution in other areas. What did the Dominants do to the people they killed? Did they use a ray gun or disintigrate them, did they bury their bones in various locations, did they eat them? The latter would be if these were a highly intelligent form of animals. Dld they kill all their prey or are some forced to work or become concubines so that the Dominants can breed more Dominants.

My Thoughts on Pretender

&nbspAre the Pretenders really Dominants but drugged so as not to use their true talents? I seem to think so.
All that chasing around and no one doing anything. Miss Parker doomed to chase Jarod until they both wind up in wheelchairs. Is that what you want? Enough of this nonsense.
&nbspWhat will Miss Parker do with Jarod if she catches him? Will she have to lock Sydney and Broots in a closet so as not to be disturbed? I can imagine this.
"I love you Jarod."
"You love me? You didn't act like it when you chased me. Say whats all that pounding?"
"Oh nothing, just mice."

What kind of work will they do once the Centre is no more? I was thinking of either Bails Bondsmen or Detective Work specializing in tracking down dead beat spouses. If that does not happen, will Miss Parker just keep Jarod and make him do thing for her? (Just imagine all the money she can save on not paying anyone to fix up her place, doctor bills, a driver, going to the pharmecy, etc.)

My Thoughts on Inappropriate Fan Fiction

I am not talking about racist fan fiction. For some reason, people nowadays seem to think racism is a more serious sin than any other. It is considered so bad that one may receive a more serious sentence if he killed someone considered to be of an oppressed race. This is not what I am writing about. I had to revise this paragraph because some scum ball looked at this site, decided that anyone writing about what I wrote about loves it and decided to send me some inappropriate junk mail. Writing fan fiction as an excuse just to show how to write sexually explicit scenes is wrong. The plot becomes minimal unless you are writing what he did to her, what her reaction was, how she felt when—, what he did later, what they did on the living room floor, etc. and that is no plot.
I assume that such stories are password protected so only adults can assess them. Those java scripts do not work by the way.
If the story has the characters having intimate relations, and you are writing it for adults who enjoy such stuff, think about the characters and write it with discretion. If the character has been thrust into the world without being raised by a family(and I use it in the strict sense of mom and dad/or widowed/divorced mom or dad with or without natural and or adopted children) or given a decent moral background, and he intends to make love with his girl friend, he is not going to wear any underwear at all or he will wear briefs. If he were raised in one of the family situations, he would get to know her first. The sex act, if at all, would come later. If he were raised in a family situation, the character would have sex with a girl that had a bad reputation or not at all until he got married.
You also have to be careful about pressing that the hero is wearing boxer shorts because on television shows, they always show boxer shorts because briefs look too sexy. So kill the boxer short insistence unless you want me to get very angry at you since you seem to be saying "The Good Looking Hunk can produce several children because I wrote him wearing boxer shorts and a man who wears briefs is practically sterile. so there!!!!!" If you want him to appear sexy, do like Mulder did in X Files when he said he wasn't wearing any underwear.

Where Do I Put My Fan Fiction?

You may have been adviced by your writing instructor, group, etc., that putting fan fiction on your site might be detrimental to you getting an agent in your new novel. Unfortunately, sometimes you get this advice too late (that is, after your fan fiction has been up on your site.) A story on a web site is considered first rights, which is a good thing to remember if you want to write several novels based on the Andromeda series. If you join a private egroup rather than a public one. Some egroups even critique your work and you do not have to worry if a publisher says "Say she's writing a story on Briscoe of Law and Order. We really don't like that! BLACKLIST HER!" .

Fan Fiction egroups have rules as to the classification they accept from general, to Pg 13,up to 18 and above. Unfortunately 18 and above means description of explicit sexual acts. It is also known as adult just as PG 13 and PG 16 has a lot of teenage angst. So you might have to join a group, see what's going on, and if the stories posted make you nervous, quit after a while and join another. Now if there were egroups that accept mature fan fiction and do not expect a whole description of what Lewis in Prey is doing sexually to that beautiful human captive, for example, I'd be happy. Also, those who want categories of where your fan fiction goes, they'd better have plenty of room, because what i write does not just fit into one category.

Suggestions for Fan Fiction

Okay before I put down a story, I would like to make a few pointers that I would not like to appear in fan fiction stories.

One: Taking the easy way out,killing off the hero, or making him sterile.
Two: Making the bad person good in one shot.
Three: Changing the particular group in the series because you cannot accept them for what they are
Four: Using euphenisms because of the character's ethnic background
Five: Having everyone in the fan fiction believe the same as you do. If you do not believe in evolution, and want to show your own belief by putting a character in who is, say, a Baptist, don't convert anyone to your beliefs unless the original writer in the series showed that he or she was already questioning evolution in the first place.
Six: Not taking in account the mores and values of the times
Seven: Not researching the series or watching most of it to see whether what you assumed at the beginning episodes was changed by a future episode. This assumes that you did not put in something like "this happened between episode three and four' where 'The Handsome Hero' had just learned about his alien origin."
Eight: Making a Minor Character important ot good because he happens to be Black.
Nine: Continuing on making the Villains the majority ethnic group and if they happen to have someone in their midst who is of a minority ethnic group, making him or her the hero, the good guy, the one who says 'Supreme Leader, you should not introduce poisonous chemicals into the drinking water' <> Ten: Making every child of the heroes or heroines girls all the time or most of the time especially if the hero happens to be white and it's a very good chance that he and his wife or sweetheart will give birth to a son. I know there are some out there whose husbands beat them, whose son is a thief, whose father abused them, etc.,but why not all white men, babies, or boys are evil and not all African American men, babies, or boys are good.
Eleven Making the characters on the fan fiction have your personality, your ideas.
Twelve In character summaries about Fan Fiction, giving a negative reason for the character's position in the Television, Movie, or Book.
ThirteenMaking an organization which is shown to be evil, good.
FourteenMaking the hero or heroine bad and the reverse.
Since one of my favorite shows was the Pretender, I'll answer this giving the Pretender as an example. These last two are done through a warped idea that you must never say anything bad about an evil organization (like the Centre in Pretender.) and perhaps thinking that Jarod could have changed it by not running away. Again you should really watch the series. He was a prisoner, a captive, put in a cell at night. Not allowed to go anywhere without supervision. Closely watched and guarded. Think of what you could do in that situation. Could you accomplish anything? No, in my opinion, the only way Jarod could get anything done, tell Miss Parker about her mother, etc. was if he did escape.

Definition of Fan Fiction

Fan fiction is usually based on a television series, movie, book m or comic series. You may not have the same beliefs as the writer, but it does not mean you cannot write a story based on that particular series. Here is a short list of my Favorite TV shows past or present that lend themselves to Fan Fiction.

"Prey", a group called either 1.6r because they are 1.6r better than us or 'dominants'. These Dominants (who were not Mexican natives by the way) suddenly appeared in Oxaca,Mexico, apparently because of global warming, becoming stronger, smarter, more vicious, and faster than us and trying to take over the earth by eliminating us. "Prey" was cancelled by ABC and is now being rerun on the Science Fiction channel which also carries Horror shows, so be warned.

"Above and Beyond" Marines go and fight aliens who are attacking human colonies on other worlds. If there were intelligent life out there, they are not necessarily all good. >

"The Pretender" is about a man Jarod stolen as a child by an organization called The Centre which calls itself "a Think Tank" (you may now laugh or guffaw at this point.) Having something called the Pretender gene, he can become "anyone he wants to be." Kidnapped as a child, he is kept in the Centre as a captive (although I could use another word: Slave) and forced to do hundreds of simulations. At last, he escapes, right injustices and searches for his family while being pursued by Miss Parker(the presumed daughter of Mr. Parker, a descendant of the founder of the Centre) and her cronies, Broots and Sydney (Jarod's teacher at the Centre.) Although not stated in the series, Jarod and Miss Parker may have had a child which might have been adopted or fostered out. The reason is that Mr. Parker sent his daughter to boarding school and made sure that Jarod was kept below in the subterranean level of the Centre.

"Law and Order" and the consequent series. Law being the police perspective, Order, being that of the courts.

Series such as 'CSI", and "ER." The first involves crime investigation and the second, the workings of an Emergency room in a hospital. In the second, although characters come and go, the premise is good and lends to many stories about the characters in their environment, although I have seen some fan fiction which would be considered off color, at least.

My opinion of cancellations? Cancelling a show at the cliff hanger is entirely wrong as is also cancelling show when you leave the characters hanging in mid air (I think of "Above and Beyond" for example) An excellent example of a show that had a good cancellation or conclusion was "War of the World, the Series."

Why your Novel changes

Most novels go through many rewrites and after the writer gets past the point where he or she does not make many grammatical mistakes, it comes to the point where the character takes over or the author understands that the character would not do that. Most start using their own experiences and their own personality. So the character is a reflection of you. If you are immature, the character becomes immature, if you hate mussels, the character also hates mussels. If you love to sew, the character is the son or daughter of a weaver. And this leads to the character sometimes doing things that you did not intend to or what makes him look stupid.
Another thing is taking out necessary conversation. One needs not ask how the weather is on the planet Xerion or shake hands with all the relatives, if it is not going to advance the story. So if your ship can only land on Xerion in calm weather or your hero is a spy, and that is the code phrase, you do not need to have that conversation. Consequently unless shaking hands with relatives is a way to discover that one of your relatives was replaced by a serial killer and that serial killer forgot that your aunt had a prominant wart in her right palm, it is no need to go through the "hi Bill," et cetera.
One that seems to be is making a preview, a story before the main story that gives the back ground of the story.
Another thing is practicality. If you plan for the hero to get back by Christmas at Vancouver, and you had your character be stuck in the LaGuardia airport on Christmas Eve, then you had better change his home location to Rochester, New York rather than Vancouver, Washington.

Now these are reasons why often the novel at the last draft is not the same as when it started. Usually when you first start, you record all the conversations instead of the ones necessary for the plot. You also have the characters talk long monologues without taking a breath ——at least i do, and have a character suddenly appear as by magic, or leave and then he is in the scene the next chapter, when he is up north somewhere or dead. Then there is the way his name is spelled.

By the time, the last drafts appear, you are finally getting things right and then you start cutting out unnecessary words and cutting out the extra sentences, and finding that the butler's name is not Hey you. By then, the fun starts and now you have to look for an agent, or if you have lots of money, publish it yourself.

The Slow Way to increase your writing time

After much turmoil, I decided that I had better increase my writing time. I had tried so many words, but without success, tried a certain time of a day but found that not all days are the same, and sometimes things go wrong. I thought of printing out my old draft and go over it, but that would not work, because I have one of those cheaper printers that are only suitable for article writing and short stories. - very short stories. So one day, I turned on my timer and wrote as much as I could without getting tired and wrote past that ten minute mark where the words start making sense.
The next day, I set the timer for one minute past that mark, and since then, every day except for Sunday, I started one minute later than the previous.
It is a slow way to increase my writing time, but it worked. I have tried to find the best time, and right now I am writing on my novel at one in the afternoon. However, I do not know what will happen when the snow melts and I want to go for a walk. I may have to go to bed early so that I am refreshed enough to write in the morning. Stores do not open until ten here, unless you count Walmart and Staples.

Fan Fiction a good way to write without worrying about First Rights

All right, you may think, well only teenagers write fan fiction. Once you get to be a woman of a certain age, forget about it. You are too old and dignified unless you are writing a Murder She Wrote fan fiction. Well I love to write fan fiction, I would love to write a story about NCIS, but have no idea whether Tony will fall in love, since I did write one about Law and Order: Criminal Intent and they did not follow my romantic inclinations, so I stick with shows that have been canceled or have not been around for some time.
I find in Fan fiction (I love crossovers) that if there are villains or space aliens, the Homo Dominants in Prey, that people love to even the playing field. Great, I watch a show and I see the people have no chance against these shape shifting aliens, so why suddenly make the aliens not being able to stand sunlight or all you have to do is to push them outside? Another thing I notice, that if in the story, the girl or boy who was raised by evil people, and then later on reforms and turns out to be nice, the reason was not that he or she came to his or her senses or someone convinced her that shooting everybody was wrong, but that she is really not the daughter of that evil person, but in reality the daughter of the handsome prince or the good doctor.
Now how do you make Crossovers? You have a connection. In some cases as in a future episode, the CSI team or rather Grissom has to go to New York to cooperate with the Without a Trace Team and even if it is not shown, or the show was canceled, you can use parts of each show to make the Crossover natural. For instance, I connected The Pretender with Prey, with two episode, Jarod jumping off a boat and swimming to shore, and jumping off a building onto Broot's car. Normally he would have died from that distance. In the same way, you can connect, since House is in Boston and since Boston Law is in Boston, if there is an episode where a lawyer has a sudden attack and taken to the hospital.
Now the good thing about Fan Fiction is that you can show your talent and practice on it. You do not have to worry that you are losing your first rights, unless you are given a contract to write a Star Trek or a Buffy, etc. story. You do have to tell everyone that the characters, other than the ones you made up, belong to the owners, the original writers, and to what station they gave them to, but that is all.
So get writing about your favorite Movie or TV characters in those spare moments and when you are not working on your novel and or short story.

Why OneTime a Day is Not Enough

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Now playing: 15-Elizabeth Harwood Quando m'en vo'
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: 13-Regine Crespin Un bel di vedremi
via FoxyTunes I am the type of person that if I stare at the computer too long, I get hypnotized by the monitor and soon I am falling asleep or at least, doing a facsimile thereof. I have tried the time thing, and found it did not work, nor did the word limit work. For one thing, sometimes I rush things so that at least I have the appearance of something being done, and another thing with the word limit, I might not have enough time. So I decided to do a little compromise
I call it the two period writing. The first one is I decide to write for an hour or so, just putting in the next two or more paragraphs and then go over them and check for those terrible reversal errors or passive sentences. Then in the afternoon or at night, I go over these paragraphs and try to make it much better.
Sometimes the second forty-five minutes becomes an hour, well because I am fussy. I am now more than half way through my novel and guess what, I found a better name for one of my characters, so the next revision I have to go through and change his name once again.

I find this much easier than writing all in the morning and then finding that I have not gone far enough because I spend a good deal time on one paragraph when I could be writing a whole page. So now I write a whole page (well not the 1000 word, but that will come back) and do a little correction, since I also have the page from my former draft and I am copying that plus also inserting and changing it around. In the evening, I have not had my former draft, so I can work on revising and correcting what I wrote that morning.

That is much better, but that does not sometimes work. I mean if I write in the morning, and there is something going on, then I find I have not written as much as I like. So I often wind up keeping the page open all day, and add a bit here and there. Then I check the word count to see if I get past my goal that right now is 500 words a day. That is what writing is like. You just cannot time it. Now if only I had a lap top, then I could write whenever I felt like it, not have to go to the computer room.

Fiction Writing:Confirming your ideas

I just got back from a trip across Canada to P.E.I. and through the States. Now while I was in Prince Edward Island, we went to visit the old forts that were now covered with sod, and read the plaque about the first French citizens who became the first permanent settlers of the Island. It was quite hilly and quite steep as we went from one top of the hidden fort to reach another top and it reminded me of the shows on England about the areas where the Britons had their defenses which now are covered with pasture and farmland, but if you are in a plane above can still see the outlines.

Well I did not see the outlines, us being on ground, but I am writing a novel about a man going into a strange land, and getting a feel how his legs and his heart felt as he went from one area to another, depending not on a car, but on his own transportation, be it horse or foot.

Now most research is done before the story starts. You go to a bakery and learn how they make bread, and then you incorporate a bakery in your story, but sometimes one can get understand how people's bodies reacted by later going through the same thing yourself or as much as you can take. And it also shows that you may not have been far wrong in telling, "how his heart almost burst and his shoulders ached as he climbed the crevice."

Fiction Writing: My Take on Critiques

I spent about half an hour looking for my Stephen King book on writing. I suppose he said something about critiquing, but I have no idea what it was. Anyway, my views are that for a beginner it is good, but as you get on, you become more selective as to who is to critique your novel. Unfortunately the ones whom you want is usually too busy.

You see, I was told you need to have a critique group to look at your work, but except for a nice author who gave me good suggestions about distances,, times and places and how to write a good first chapter, most of my critiques were crap. They made me disappointed, but I felt I had to have them, and for a time, I sent my work in and then I got On Writing by Stephen King and surprise! He did not like critiquing either. He did talk about creative writing classes, and if one could not take any, to get books on writing and study hard.

So now I go over a chapter at a time, and think does this move the story and it is much better than worrying about someone else's idea, because if I am not satisfied, neither is anyone else.

Fiction Writing: The Dialogue Thing

When I first started writing, the characters were engaged in some rather interesting conversations, interspersed with dialogs that moved the plot. However, most of it consisted of "hi, haven't seen you since last November," and "I think I feel a cold coming on," along with long monologues about their mission, whatever it was. I see the same thing on fan fiction stories where Jarod and Miss Parker have a long conversation, insulting each other. I was told that this was wrong, and wondered why. Surely character one does greet character two, and they do talk about the weather and stuff like that.

Instead I found that when you are writing a story, you are allowed so many pages and when this happens, you only put in the conversation that makes the plot go forward, also known as the dialog. So what you have is character one say, "Are all things in readiness for the invasion?" and character two replying, "Yes sir. The humans will not be expecting us. Hail Zerhx, our leader!"

So what does happen to the conversation they really would have? Well I suppose it goes into the description like this; Xery greeted Xerwe, his twin pod, speaking much about the weather on the planet Zerrx, the war with the Insect people of Wry, and the mating rituals that occurred in the month Qwer, the only time their race was fertile.

So in short, this is the difference between real life and fiction. In the latter, much of the conversation goes unsaid unless it is of earthshaking importance.

Fiction Writing; Who do You Kill

Sooner or later, one of your characters is going to die. Usually it is a friend of the main character or of the villain. Now in action adventure movies, it is someone the main character loves, for instance his wife and his children, but it does not matter what race or ethnic group the victim belongs to because the whole point is to get the hero so angry that he will finish off the villains in as violent manner as he can.

In other movies and in writing it is different. Race and ethnicity does matter, according to the movies I saw, and the novel I am reading. It seems that back in the nineteen seventies, even with black exploitation movies, the Black community got so angry at them being portrayed at being drug dealers, that they demanded to be portrayed as good and moral citizens even when they were bad guys. Thus many movies and some writers have followed suit. Not only did they make the African American as the one with the moral code, they made sure that his death was shown with more sorrow and regret, and if at all possible, he survived when others died. Yet this never happened to the Italians, Chinese, or Japanese. We still see movies where they are portrayed equally in a good light and a bad light and when they die, no one mourns long and hard. But this is wrong.

When writing your novel or story, forget about who will be mad and decide what is believable. If there is a massive explosion, the bombs kill indiscriminately, and do not decide what race the victims are., and it has to do with percentages. If the majority of those trapped inside were white, then the survivors are more likely to be white. If the story was about a building exploding in Harlem, the survivors are more likely to be black. So think of not what would be acceptable, think of reality and do not discriminate or make up for past discriminations. Think not of what others would want you to write, think what would be more logical.

Fiction Writing; The Necessity of Research

I am writing on a Christian fantasy novel, no no witches with super natural powers, no flying demons that can materialize as men, or anything like Obi telling Luke to "feel the Force,"— although it does have at least three monsters in it. But like most fantasy novels, one has to invent names for the characters and give them a history.

Now people assume when you write a fantasy novel, you can make up names like Feran Fainthearted or Lalia of the Limmering Light, but most fantasy are based either in the far past (like before the Flood), in the time of Conan the Barbarian, on another world, or in the far future after a nuclear explosion or other disaster has destroyed most of humankind and left the survivors, savages. These are being pursued by mutants, creatures who were made by excessive radiation — at least, that was what was assumed in the 1950s before they learned that there would be no horrible mutants, they would all have died.

Anyway depending on what era or what planet the Fantasy novel is based on, one has to make sure the character names fit. For instance, the past, you may have to go to a web site on the original Indo Aryan languages and make names that are pre-Romance and pre-German. If the character is, for instance, an English man from the Thirteenth Century who somehow was transferred to the future, you go on the website for Medieval England, and write it the way, he would, not the way we would write it. If you go into the future, you will have to make names that record the past, if they came from Earth, and if they survived a disaster, you had to marry who was left, so you mght wind up with a name like Jeavan, or a combination of Jean and Ivan. If your character lives on another planet, and is not descended from Earth people, you can get away with calling him Xerfry, or make any other alien name you want. But if you want your characters to have an Earth origin, you have to decide whether these were pre Norsemen or pre Latins, in which you have to get a book on ancient names or go to the website. The same applies if you are writing about characters who were kidnapped from ancient China before Genghis Khan or Nubians who were taken aboard a space ship before the time of Rameses the Second. In the first place, you cannot use any Mongolian names or customs and in the second case, the people will not mention Rameses the Second having trouble with the Hebrews when the great god took them into the sky.

That is why research is necessary even for fantasy and science fiction. You have to understand not only the name, but the food they eat, and the culture and any changes that you make have to reflect their origins. So go to the Library, get on the Internet, find those history books, your copies of the Illiad and get on researching.

Fiction Writing: Writing and Finance Savings

If you have a good paying job, or are in college, you probably have enough so that when you are ready to publish your novel, you just have to go to the Post Office and buy the stamps, plunk down the parcel and it is off. If it is rejected, you merely print out another 2000 or so pages, put more stamps plus the post card with extra stamps that they will send you back if it is rejected. In fact, you may be able to send it out to twenty before at lets say, a cost of $10.00 per send out or about $220. Now this is just a guess, the stamps might be $2.50 to $5.00, but even at that, for someone who makes $7.00 or less an hour, that is quite a bit of change.

So how do you get enough money and where do you put it? If you are an American, you may only need a savings and checking account, because most publishers are in the United States. I suppose it also applies to the United Kingdom and Australia, they have lots of publishers. However if you are a Canadian, although you can send your book to a Canadian publisher, you may find the most customers would be in the States. So you also need a good US. Savings account. Many banks in Canada have American money bank accounts and if you put so much a month, your interest and balance will add up.

It is also good to put money aside for unexpected, like the computer breaking down or you need a new printer. So instead of waiting until they die, why not take about $50 to $100 and put it in a high interest savings account? I will tell you what I did. I got a high interest savings account and I put an automatic deposit out of my pension. Not only that, I decided any money I got from myLot or any other internet went to save for a new computer plus a new printer. We decided to buy our paper in bulk instead of one at a time. I also decided to correct most of my work on the computer, thus saving paper except for the first two drafts. I got a basic American account to put money aside when I got a check and that was to pay for any stamps I would order. If my printer ran out of ink, I would get a refill rather than buy a new cartridge. I also decided to perfect my craft rather than send it off and get an automatic rejection. However that is going to take time because I am also working at home. Right now I can do one hour, but I am gradually increasing. So wish me luck.

Fiction Writing: Do you need a Creative Writing Course

Whenever you say you want to be a writer, there is always someone who tells you to take a creative writing course. Now if you are attending college or university, you can easily take one. The same applies if you are working and you can take a night school course. However not everyone has the time or money and if they did decide to go to school for an hour or so, it might mean the sacrifice of something necessary. In these cases, they might have to go to the library and get books on how to write. They also might have to buy books on writing or learn online. The point is there are many ways on learning to write. It is not creative writing or journalism or nothing. Writers Digest Book Club has many books as well as a magazine that would instruct you on how to write.

Now you may want to improve yourself later and take a course, but that is when you feel it is necessary or when you find you have gone so far and did not improve. But then again, even though you wanted to, you could not afford to. That is life. Do not worry about it, just do the exercises in that how to write book you bought and join an online critique group.