Whew. Finally managed to be productive. Finished the rewrite on the sci-fi/romance story I've talked about before, and submitted it for the anthology last night. Got a reply saying their editors would look it over and let me know what they decide in about two weeks. I'll be very surprised if they accept it, since they're probably looking for Harlequin-type romance stuff, and that's just not what I write. My story is a fairly humorous adventure with some creepy-horror stuff here and there, and a fair amount of action-adventure stuff, so it probably won't fit in with the rest of the stories. Still, I think there's a lot that makes it stand out. The main character is one I've talked about here before, the woman with one whole side of her face all scarred up. I decided to make the character much more positive than I originally intended--she's managed to retain a sense of humor and an upbeat attitude despite being disfigured, rather than being bitter and angry and depressed. She doesn't let things get under her skin, or if she does, she manages to get over it quickly. I think that sets the story apart in a good way, so who knows, maybe it'll be accepted just for being something different.
After working on several stories that at least give me a shot at making a little money, I decided to take a break and do a chapter of one of my just-for-fun projects. I'd neglected my latest Transformers Prime fic for about four months, so I wrote a new chapter over the last few days and posted it last night. The first scene was pretty emotionally intense (lots of discussion about the difference in life spans between humans and Cybertronians), so I started the second scene with some ribald humor to break the tension. I'm not sure how Miko turned into a sex maniac in these stories, but somehow it seems to work anyway. 
Arcee aimed a saucy grin at him. “Well, thank you, Miko. I just might need to find a private room here and, uh, perform a little routine maintenance.”
“Hah.” Miko grinned. “When I do it, I just call it masturbating.”
Arcee burst into laughter again.
A voice Jack didn’t recognize came from the speakers on either side of the TV – one of the kids in whatever online game they were playing, Jack guessed.
“Hey, Miko, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever masturbated to?”
Oh, no. Jack buried his face in his hands.
“The new trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road.”
Silence fell and stretched out for at least ten seconds before the voice returned.
“I can’t decide what’s more horrifying – your answer, or the fact that you didn’t even hesitate.”
“I’m with ya, bud,” Jack muttered.
Heh. And then the scene veered off into some creepy-horror stuff involving Unicron. So, hooray for mood-whiplash, I guess.
What's funny is, I posted a copy on FanStory.com and this afternoon it got a comment from a 68-year-old woman who gave the chapter a 5-star rating and a positive review. 
Which seems to happen fairly often on that site. Somehow, the stuff I write attracts quite a few women around that age group.
Now I need to dust off the novel I've had on the back burner for months and months. I've only been working on the thing for four or five years, so I need to get it finished and move on to something else.
Jeebus, this page of the thread has almost become a 3-man show between myself, Stoob, and Kerns, lol. Also with cameo appearances by Yuri and Gamer!
But yeah, yay for catharsis! I have to believe that it's half the reason I write at all. A lot of the emotions I felt I needed to work through got resolved in my past two Mass Effect fics. I think that's partially why I've taken so long to develop my current one. It doesn't help that this interim period has given rise to a multitude of fanfic ideas. Work and school further muddy the waters, and there's the ever-present gaming and anime to further distract me!
I really need to invest in good dictation software, just so I can narrate and transfer the stories to my computer on my long drives from work and home.
Just doing my part. 
I tend to write mainly because these stories just kind of click together in my head and reach a point where I need to write them or I might have an aneurysm or something. But the catharsis does happen every now and then. Back when I worked in the one-hour photo lab at Walmart, I had plenty of things driving me off the deep end, and I'd often use them in a novel or fanfic. One particular customer got several scenes in my second novel, and one of the protagonists beat the crap out of him and caused him to soil his pants. And I've used the people I saw in that place as inspiration for all sorts of nutjobs and perverts, such as the character named Weird Walter, who has been mentioned several times in my TFP fics. A resident of Jasper, Nevada, who has a few screws loose. His antics include trying to return a box of condoms because they didn't fit. Though Miko thinks his crowning moment was the day he got high on embalming fluid and tried to have sex with a picnic table.
When running into irritating and bizarre people, it's always good to file them away in the back of your mind. You never know when you can use one of them to ... add a bit of flavor to a scene.
Dictation software...not a bad idea. I should see if I can find a good voice recorder app for my phone so I can dictate notes....
Not really surprising that fan fic gets a bad rap. That scene in the BBC's Sherlock where it starts out seeming as though Sherlock and Watson are about to kiss... then it turns out it's a fan writing fan fic about the famous detective. That's the mainstream view it would seem, that it's all lemons, rule 63, and wish fulfilment.
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I tend not to mention my writing fanfiction to my RL friends. Only one of them ever saw any of it, and that was about twenty years ago, when the stuff I wrote was crap. He hasn't mentioned seeing any of my more recent work, which I'm much happier with. Some of the people I worked with a number of years ago stumbled onto some sample chapters from my novels and talked a bit about it, but it kind of faded away. I haven't talked about any of my writing with them or any of my other RL friends, mainly because I was a complete failure at getting anything published until my third novel was accepted two years ago. I keep thinking I should finally start talking about it and posting updates on Facebook (most of my friends there are my friends in real life, people I've worked with and grown up with). It might draw in a few dozen more readers, but I'm very nervous about any of them finding out I write fanfiction, even though like I said, I'm really happy with the way my TFP and ME fics have turned out. Just because of that image people have of it....
Dictation software during your drive to and from work? really? you must be a much calmer driver than me! if I tried dictating while driving, there would be way too many "are you blind? you almost ran me off the road! try using a blinker a##clown!" and "jesus, the speed limit is 35! I'm going 40! get off my a##, jerkface!" and especially "median! it's there for a reason! don't hit your breaks before getting over you moron!" or the most oft-used "learn to drive or stay home!"
yes. I am an angry driver. but in my defense, 99% of the people on the road should have their licenses revoked and be permanently limited to walking or taking the bus, with no appeal or chance of overturning the limitation.
but anywho, good on you stoob, kerns and seracen for bringing conversation back to the thread! *applauds* I stop by to read it regularly but sadly don't have much to say since I've done no (story-related) writing in a couple of months. and now school has started up again, and what little free time I have is spent with the worlds greatest girls (my sisters) or playing DA:I or Alien: Isolation. so sadly I don't have anything to contribute.
but on a totally non-writing, off-topic question... have any of you ever met someone whose general tone of voice and manner of speaking makes them sound insanely condescending? sort of like they believe they're perpetually speaking to 3-year olds? because I have a teacher this semester who (seems to) talk down to everyone, all the time. just her tone of voice is what I'd associate with a parent trying to explain adult problems to a small child. and it genuinely makes me want to slap that brittle, disingenuous smile right off of her annoying, resting b#tchface.
I know what you mean about drivers. After two years of living in Tucson, my only complaint about this place is the way people drive. Everyone tailgates. Everyone. Every single street I drive on, there's always someone nearly touching my rear bumper no matter how fast I'm going. It just drives me insane when the limit is 25 mph and there's some redneck in a gigantic truck less than six inches from my bumper and everyone in the other lane is passing me like I'm racing in the opposite direction. Especially since there's at least one car crash here almost every day. Everywhere I go, I'm always finding roadside memorials for people who were killed in car accidents, and I'm always driving past the scene of an accident. You'd think people would learn after a while, but they never do.
As for incredibly condescending people, yeah, I've met more than my share. Almost all of them when I worked at Walmart. I worked in the one-hour-photo department and the camera department before they combined it with electronics, and I was constantly meeting people who didn't have enough brainpower to light up a single LED, yet they always thought they knew more about everything than I did and spoke to me like I didn't even have two synapses to rub together. (which made me wonder why they were asking for help in the first place, if they knew so damned much about it). I even had people who would actually stare down their noses at me. A coworker had a customer flat-out say to her face that all Walmart employees are idiots. Meanwhile, every day I had customers asking me how to turn their camera on, and I'd point to it and say, "See that huge silver button with the word ON next to it? Yeah. Push that." The worst was the copyright violations. Had one or more people every single day come in with professional photos trying to copy them, and having to explain to them that it's illegal without a copyright release. And since at least 95% of that little town's population were complete and utter a-holes, they'd immediately launch into a yelling, screaming tirade and say I was lying to them and whatever else. Kept having people telling me that it wasn't a professional photo even when it had a watermark on the front or the words PROFESSIONAL PHOTO -- COPYRIGHTED -- DO NOT COPY on the back. Had a guy trying to print an anime character and when I explained the copyright law, he looked down his nose at me and said, "That's an American law, but this is a Japanese picture!"
Now that I think about it, I had a few managers in that place who acted like that. Not the department managers. The store assistant managers. Most of them were absolutely infuriating. One of them had to be told how to turn a camera on ... repeatedly. She'd come in a day or two later and ask how to turn the same camera on. Yet she always acted like everyone else was beneath her.
Stuff like that is the main reason I was so desperate to leave that town. Almost everyone acted like that, so even if I'd quit that job and gotten a job at another store, it would've been a different toilet but it would've just been the same old crap.
So a reviewer sent me yet MORE links to smut fanfiction, perhaps in the hopes that I would turn their favorite ME coupling into a full-fledged harlequin romance! It's amusing. I really don't know why they think I would do some amazing job of it. I'm somewhat flattered, and YES I DID have some steamy scenes in my story. However, personally I get fatigued on the over-use of ANY kind of scenes, much less sex and violence. That stuff is fun, but only when used properly. If there's anything I overuse and don't mind, it's character interaction and dialogue (although one could argue that this could also get boring, so I try to reign it in, with varying degrees of success).
I wrote a story once that had fighting in every freaking chapter. I eventually got tired of writing it, and even some of my readers suggested I focus more on the storytelling. This was the "turning point" I spoke of before, in terms of my writing. I got a really good review, telling me how the story was interesting, but weighed down with all this pointless action. I eventually realized I was being too indulgent with the story, and ultimately dropped it. I had an outline for the ending, but I was no longer motivated to write the thing, it had become too cumbersome. This has informed my writing ever since.
As for the sex, as I've said before, I am more interested in the ROMANCE element, and emotional payout. If it's nothing but rutting, it's worth a cheap thrill, but ultimately falls flat. I've read nonstop sexfics before, and quickly became bored. The best I've managed, with this recent "suggested reading," is to read the dialogue between the sex scenes for emotional content, and skip the sex entirely. The author actually had some compelling content, and made the baseline emotional connections required, so I was interested. But I couldn't be bothered to read YET ANOTHER scene of mindless "action," whatever form it took. It's sad when you begin "fast forwarding" through the "good parts."
Which brings me back to the point I always make: make sure your scenes have a point, and use your "big guns" sparingly. Character death, consummation of relationships, epic battle sequences, all these things are tools in the arsenal. You don't want them to get rusty, but you don't want to wear them out either. Bah, I am on the soapbox again!
Heh. Fortunately, I haven't had that happen very often. I remember one reader sent me a link like that, and I admit I was curious since the story was about Dude-Shep and a female version of Garrus. I pulled the ripcord during the first sex scene because the dialogue was so goddamned stupid it made me burst out laughing. Another time, someone asked me to read his story, and I got as far as the description before bailing out. One of the words in the description was "incest." As soon as I saw that, I just went, "Nope!"
As for writing nothing but sex, or nothing but action, or whatever, yeah, that gets tedious when there's nothing to interrupt it. I try to balance it as much as I can...after a long dramatic or horrific scene, I think it's a good idea to slip some humorous dialogue in to break the tension every now and then. Or intersperse action scenes with quiet scenes, and so on. The only time I really wrote wall-to-wall action was the ME one-shot I did a few months ago --and that was just something I needed to write down while it was fresh in my head and had just finished clicking into place. Two quiet scenes at the beginning, then nothing but the protagonist tearing through hundreds of mercs for the next 10,000 or more words. Since it's a plot I'm planning to work into Freelancers later on, it'll be much more balanced, with dialogue scenes and humor and scenes that flesh out some of the characters more, and so on. But I needed to get it out of my system...so there's the catharsis again, heh. Most of the stuff I write has quiet scenes breaking up the tense or action-packed ones. For some reason, I kind of gravitated toward writing action-adventure stuff, to the point where another writer asked me to teach her how to write it ... but I'm wondering if it's the interspersing other kinds of scenes with the action that makes the action seem more effective than it would otherwise. Without it, I'm pretty sure readers would get sick of it pretty quickly.
As for 'keeping one's powder dry' I've got a battle sequence due and 'Oh boy!' am I dreading it. After several chapters of conversations, changing back into 'action mode' is going to be jarring but my main worry is trying to get it done in time. My last comparable effort was 'Three Little Words' which ended up around 5k words, took a couple of months, and I'm still not overly happy with the result... 
Maybe I'll come up with a work-around? 
Anyway to my real motive for coming out of the woodwork! (Sorry folks!) I'm looking for a really good Saren quote for the highlighted section, preferably from the close of ME when he was, pretty much, husk-like but not Sovereign's sock-puppet. Something that could wriggle inside Shepard's head and give them nightmares or would I be better served by not using a direct quote and just say something about how K's appearance reminds Shepard of Saren? Personally I'd like to use a quote, but if it's not working then...[click]...maybe it's time to follow hot_heart's advice?
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The vibrant red hair that Shepard remembered had been cut, shaved away, leaving only a short and patchy fuzz of re-growth; and in the bald patches the Spectre could see a faint glow from the cybernetics hidden just under Kelly's skin. But it was Kelly's eyes that caused Shepard to grip the helmet in his hands so forcefully; the youthful, vibrant, green that had always held so much life had been replaced with metallic orbs. Cold, blue, orbs that haunted too many of Shepard's nightmares.
“...a vision of the future of all organic life. This is our destiny. Join Sovereign and experience a true rebirth!” For all his claims Saren had, in the end, been just another husk. Unable to defy the Reapers even by dying – and now Cerberus had done the same thing to one of their own.
“She's still in there. Somewhere.” Jacob said as he gripped Shepard's shoulder, the sudden contact breaking the Spectre's horror, “[Brynn] and the others are working on a way that might remove some of the implants–”
“Some? Jacob, look at her!” Shepard interrupted, the helmet in the Spectre's hands shook, “Look. At. Her.”
“I have.” Jacob's voice was calm but the former Cerberus soldier's own horror wasn't completely hidden, “Believe me, I have.”
Shepard's next words choked in his throat as Kelly's armoured hands met his own, gently reclaiming her helmet from the Spectre's trembling grasp before returning it to her head. As the cold metallic eyes once again disappeared behind the blacked out visor, Shepard shrugged off Jacob's hand and stood up.
“Kai Leng claims that will happen to Miranda too.” Shepard's voice was hollow as he stared at the occupied hard-suit sitting on the bed.
First off, that's a marvelously eerie scene. Good job. 
I don't have any ideas on quotes, but for action sequences, if you're interested, I somewhat recently did a breakdown of action scenes in the one-shot I mentioned above, with detailed notes inserted into the narration. Might give you some ideas. 
And Seracen's suggestion of daydreaming is an excellent idea. It's how I came up with most of the action scenes in that one-shot.
Welcome Back! As for the action sequence, best of luck! As I've said before, daydreaming was always my favorite tool for such things, and I'm not above referencing movies and TV to inspire me. If you'd like some help though, I'm more than willing to throw a fight scene your way to work off of (although I understand if you decline, I was wary the few times I had a beta help me with a chapter or two, "artistic integrity" and all that).
[SNIP]
On another note: getting some more links to other peoples' stories, under the pretense of "providing inspiration" for potential approaches to my current project. I appreciate the dialogue I am having with some of my fans...but some of those stories start out fine and end up CREEPY AS HELL!!! I am grateful that I've managed to avoid some of the freakier parts of the "kink meme" facets of ME fanfiction.
I'll admit this about the matter: I like a bit of cheesecake in stories, I even find it a useful and desirable culmination of various aspects of a story. There's a difference, however, between a good bit of fluff/smut...and other...things... I'm not even talking about my attention span checking out from fatigue here. My brain just refuses to process certain things at all...I went through entire portions of a story just saying "nope nope nope" to myself until I deemed it was safe again.
Still, I must admit that I was amused at my own reaction, looking back on it (also b/c I didn't have to read the source of my abhorrence). I will note one positive from this exercise, however: I am far less apprehensive about any writing proclivities I might have. At least when I cringe in terror at my content is b/c it's SUPPOSED to freak people out.
Well, except from when my writing is exceptionally BAD of course, haha!
Daydreaming does work quite well, I've found. As mentioned above, it's how I came up with most of the stuff in the one-shot. And I also get a lot of inspiration from TV shows, movies, and video games, for action scenes in particular. As an example, seeing one of the trailers for Saints Row: Gat out of Hell sparked an idea for a fight scene for Valeria, which I detailed here. Basically, the trailer had a bit showing Johnny getting rid of an enemy by sweeping his legs out from under him and plunging a knife into his chest while he was still falling. I took that and embellished a bit, adding a couple of additional goons for Valeria to take out, having her knock one guy off his feet and stab him before he hits the ground, and then whirl around and throw a knife at another guy and hilt it in his skull from across the room. So, that's kind of how I work in a nutshell. I see something cool and it inspires me, and then I add to it and expand on it.
As for the stories that turn creepy as hell...ugh. I'm really glad that I haven't had that happen more than once or twice. When it does, I just get this look on my face like a krogan just farted near me, and say to myself, "Yeah...NO. That's not happening in my story."
It's exactly like you said, it's the romantic element -- the emotions of the characters -- that matter. As an example, when I started writing my TFP stories, one of the reasons I thought the idea of "Jack/Arcee" was interesting was specifically because they couldn't have sex, since she didn't have the right parts. I thought the idea of writing a teenage character who wasn't driven by hormones was kind of unique, and liked the idea of someone being in love even though they knew they couldn't do everything that other couples take for granted. But then I ended up writing myself into a corner when I added some Pretenders to the story, most of whom simply wanted to live in peace after losing their homeworld...but there were a few who were still full-throttle evil. Just because the idea made my skin crawl, I had one of my OCs find out that her husband had been killed a week before and replaced by a Pretender, and she never realized it until the body was found. It's one of the most horrifying things I could imagine happening.
Then I realized that, with Pretender technology available, sooner or later someone would start clamoring for Jack and Arcee to use it to hump it out. (And a bit later on, I did get a few requests/suggestions for exactly that.) Since I had to deal with it somehow, the second story had Arcee end up severely damaged and needing to temporarily link up to an "empty" Pretender shell just so she could stay in the fight until her real body was repaired. Then I just kept thinking up excuses for her and Jack not to "do it" even though it's entirely possible for them now. Four stories into the series, and I'm keeping the progression of their relationship slow. They're not just skipping straight to the sex. They're holding off on it because they know they're not ready yet. (It's actually such an alien concept to Arcee that she was kind of grossed out by it at first, and has only recently begun to get her mind around it.) And when it finally does happen, it'll be "off screen" after one of those "fade to black" moments and a scene transition. Because I figured their relationship should be about how they feel about each other, how they interact, how they work together on the battlefield, and what they do when they're just hanging out with each other. It shouldn't be about, "Hey, now you've got a body that has all the right equipment -- we'll bang, okay?"
And if I'm really feeling puckish, I might write a few scenes with them deciding to go for it, but then they keep getting interrupted by someone shooting at them, or whatever, until they give up out of frustration.
And I should wrap this up here while my brain is still functioning. Getting late and there's still stuff I need to catch up on ....
Retour en haut
(Unhappy DA:I PC owner) 
