ds_workshop | Recent Entries

ride_4ever

Posting to show activity in the comm.

ride_4ever

Here to get the URL for a new dS writer, and figured I'd post while here to show activity in the comm.

ride-4ever.livejournal.com

New to LJ, and DS is my OTF.I saw the 2010 comment about posting here to prevent purging of community, and then didn't see a 2011 post, so I decided to BE the 2011 post.

Maintain the right!

\0/ Ride

sprat.livejournal.com

But just in case they're still purging inactive communities, ha! We are active!

luzula

I've always been fascinated by dogsledding, possibly due to an overdose of "Call of the Wild" as a child (the Jack London book, that is, not the due South episode or the Robert Service poem). When I first saw the pilot of due South, it was the dogsledding that drew me in as much as, well, other things.

Recently I went dogsledding for a week, and I thought I'd share what it was like. The purpose of this post is to describe the practical details, which can be important if you want to write post-CotW stories. It's not about winter camping or cold-weather survival, though--we stayed in cabins, and it's April, so it wasn't very cold.

Keep in mind that I'm not an expert in this, and I'm sure there are many ways to dogsled--probably I am influenced by the opinions of the musher who was with us as a guide. I did look up all the English terms, though, so they should be accurate. The pictures look kind of small, but if you click on them twice, you'll get bigger ones so you can see the details. Thanks to

isiscolo for beta-reading!

( Equipment )

( What are the dogs like? )

( Caring for the dogs )

( Driving the sled )

( Weights, times and distances )

( So what about Fraser and Kowalski? )

verushka70.livejournal.com

Firstly, my apologies on the tardiness of this piece. I was supposed to go a week or two after

nos4a2no9. Riiiight. *sigh* Anyway, here we go!

The original question was:

“What's the best way to structure a story that doesn't use a conventional A-B-C plotline? I want (desperately) to write a story that manipulates time and incorporates a lot of flashbacks/flash-forwards but I'm not sure how to go about it, or what to avoid. Can someone help?”

I've broken up the answer into parts, including
Why this question took so frakkin’ long to answer

Writing a story vs. Telling a story, and about the DS stories, and movies, analyzed here

Learning the rules so you can break them: Chronological narratives with causally dependent plot events—the conventional story narrative

How to write chronological narrative stories

“Post-modern” plots which are actually narratives, underneath all their fancy dress: Pulp Fiction, Memento, Run Lola Run

Non-narrative/non-chronological plots that actually are narrative/chronological, Part I: Examples in DS fanfic (“Tell Me A Story”; “More Than You Know”; “After”)

Non-narrative/non-chronological plots that actually are narrative/chronological, Part II: Examples in DS fanfic: (untitled Post-It notes story; At The Time Of Writing)

Complicated or multiple narratives within the same story: DS fanfic example (“Acharnement”)

How to write a truly non-chronological, non-narrative story

A note on truly non-narrative, non-chronological “plotless” stories (and DS fic comparison: The Fraser Record (Excerpts))

Finally, complicated or multiple narratives within the same story, with flashbacks and/or flashforwards (DS story examples: Stop Me If You've Heard This One; Thus Every Feather Obeys The Wind)

In summary

( Kindly head this way for the workshop piece and plot analyses! )

nos4a2no9.livejournal.com

Hi everyone!

I promised ages ago to write a follow-up post to my first workshop piece on Life In Northern Canada.

sageness and a few other folks had specific questions they wanted me to address, hence the sequel. If you're looking for more general topics about northern Canada, such as landscape and geography, weather, the role of the RCMP, shopping and dining, education and healthcare, I covered a lot of that material in the original post. However, I'm always happy to answer any questions you might have, or go into more specific explanations if you need them for a post-"Call of the Wild" story.

Again, I should make the caveat that I'm not an expert in Canadiana, and a lot of my knowledge is anecdotal. I grew up in a fairly large city in northern British Columbia, and so most of my observations come from spending summers in the communities further north, or taking trips around the region with my parents. Don't take anything I say as gospel, in other words, and if something doesn't sound right or you want me to clarify, please feel free to ask in the comments, or shoot me an email at nos4a2no9@gmail.com

Alright, on to the questions! Most of these are from

sageness, because her brain is shiny like that.

( 1. Fraser's childhood: Canada in the 1950s and 1960s )

( 2. Teens and free time: what are the kids are doing? )

Which brings us to possibly the best question ever...

( 3. What about the sex industry? )

( 4. Is there a stigma of any kind attributed to being from the far north? )

( 5. What about the oil industry? )

( 6. How much racism, segregation, and integration is there between First Nations and whites in the community off the reservations? )

I wish I had something a little cheerier to end on. If you have a question that I haven't yet addressed, or you'd like to discuss some of these issues in more detail, please feel free to comment here. I hope some of this is useful for those of you trying to compose a post-CotW story. Or we could, y'know, talk in person at

bitchinparty!

nos4a2no9.livejournal.com

Hello everyone! I'm Nos, your friendly resident Canadian liaison, and I'm here to kick off a shiny new round of

ds_workshop posts with a discussion of everyone's favourite para-military force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Due to a number of reasons that don't bear exploring at this juncture (except they kinda do, so I'll go into them a little later) the RCMP is conducting an aggressive and unprecedented recruitment drive at Canadian high schools, colleges and universities. I happened to get wind of an RCMP Information Night at my Olde Institution of Higher Learning, and like a good dS fangirl I had to stop by. And take notes. And then share my findings with you.

I'm sure you all understand the basics of Mountie history and how the organization works in Canada. I'll be providing some of that information here, but I'm hardly better able to explain than the Wikipedia article on the subject. If you want a true primer on the Gendarmerie Royale du Canada I'd suggest you start there: I'm here mainly to fill you in on some fun and surprising details I learned courtesy of the Information Night. And away we go!

( The Basics )

( So you want to be a Mountie, eh? )

( What's with Depot? )

( Do you really keep all of that in your hat? )

( And what is that you do, exactly? )

Well, that's the RCMP training and recruitment process in a nutshell. There's another information session being held in early March, and since I had to duck out of this one a bit early I hope to attend and actually ask some questions during the Q&A. If you've got a burning question about the RCMP, please ask it in the comments below, and if I can't find an answer I'll ask at the next info session. I hope I've provided at least a few new details and tasty facts here that will, hopefully, lead to some plot bunnies.

Happy writing, folks! And many thanks to

kill_claudio for her very able beta assistance.

sage

Hey all! Guess what? DS_Workshop's hiatus is over! We'll be starting off a new series of Workshop posts next week with a post from

nos4a2no9 about the RCMP. YAY!!

What we need now are volunteers to go in the weeks after Nos.

How to volunteer:
1. Go pick out a question from the master question list. There are still LOTS of craft of writing/DS-specific questions there that haven't been answered, or you can take a subject that HAS been answered and discuss it from another angle. Also, if you don't find anything you want to lead a discussion on, you can add a new question to the list (by commenting to it) and then volunteer to answer your own question (sneaky, eh? *g*).

2. Comment below claiming the topic you want to cover.

I'd love it if we could go back to having people post once every week or two.

Last, if anyone has any questions about how this works or suggestions for making this a better workshop, please either leave a comment here or email me!

Thanks, everybody!! ♥

sage

Several people seconded an off-handed mention of doing a post on writing villains -- and LOTS of us are doing either Due South Seekrit Santa and/or Yuletide this holiday season, so this is hopefully a very timely and relevant post. Feel free to pimp this far and wide because I'd love to get a good range of discussion going in the comments.

First I'm going to share my meandering thoughts, and then I've got a bunch of questions for us to consider.

( wherein I think about bad guys )

So let's talk about how to present well-drawn bad guys. What awesome bad guys have you read or seen onscreen? Name some -- from fic, novels, movies, television, comics, pop culture, whatever. What makes them effective villains?

What characters still creep you out, months or years later? Why?

What different sorts of villains are there? How can a writer use different sorts of villains in the same story?

Do you like villains better when we understand their motivation all along (and can maybe empathize) or when they're faceless blanks to be revealed at the end? What kind of story is served by each format?

What experience have you had writing bad guys in your own fic, and what pitfalls did you have to deal with? What do you know now that you wish you'd known then?

Obviously, no one has to answer everything, but I'd love for this to be a round table discussion. Please jump in with whatever grabs you, whether your examples are Due South-related or not.

Thanks! :D

sage

Hey everybody!

I've been a little swamped with getting DS_Match underway with

china_shop, so the Craft Series has taken a little hiatus. However, just because *I've* been swamped doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else has. *g*

So...THIS post is the volunteer call for the next round of the Craft Series. Here is the master question list. If you have new questions to ADD to the list, please do! If you'd like a reminder of what makes a good Workshop Question, please refer to this post (but don't comment to it; it's been superseded by the master question list).

All clear? Okay, who can tackle a question?

(The way it works is I'll email you to confirm you're up next. Then you'll have about a week to post. Then, when the first person posts, I'll email the next, and so on, easy as pie.)

Sound good? Have a look at the master question list, claim a topic, and comment below with what you'd like to cover!

Thank you! &hearts ♥ ♥

p.s. You CAN pick a question that someone else has already done! All you have to do is come at it from a different angle or talk about some aspect of it that the first person didn't. :D

texasbek.livejournal.com

In "Seeing is Believing", when Ray K reveals that he wanted to be a father, I saw him in a whole new light. I certainly know a lot of men who want to be fathers, but probably not any who would end a marriage over it. So this strong desire of his to have children says interesting things about his personality. At the very least it gives you a canon lead in to writing him as a father. For the most part I read F/K and there is certainly something appealing about a post-COTW happily-ever-after that includes fatherhood. ( Kidfic, due South style )

Current Mood: accomplished

ultra-chrome.livejournal.com

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s most likely to mean Dief in this fandom. There’s just not that much Turtle fic out there. In fact the only one I know of is

elementalv’s Mortal Enemies. It’s only a drabble, but I’m of the firm belief that it’s more than enough to instill a deep and abiding respect for The Turtle Mind.

So let’s stick with Dief for now, shall we? And while I’m at it, I haven’t seen nearly enough Dief fic, either, so links to any memorable ones would make me love you long time.

I guess the first thing you need to decide is whether your Dief is actually deaf, or if he’s got selective hearing. Fraser swears he can’t hear a thing, (even though he talks to him constantly) but if you watch Dead Men Don’t Throw Rice and Mountie on the Bounty, you get a couple of Dief’s ear accounts of what he hears and it’s just a little muffled. You can choose whether you want him to be able to use that or not.

The part that’s going to be the biggest challenge is sorting out how Dief interprets the world around him. Dogs don’t care much for the things we think are important. Dogs don’t worry about money or if the people next door can hear them having sex. They don’t care if Snuffy down the road told Brutus a block over that their new collar makes them look fat.

On the other hand, if Snuffy is in season at the time, her spending any time at all with Brutus is going to be major blow. (Although the Dief in my head is as fussy as Fraser and would never deign to breed with a diamond studded lapdog. Ante doesn’t count. She’s like a supermodel with brains, ok?)

I’ve had a lot of dogs in my life, but the one who has taught me the most about what makes them tick is Riff Raff. He’s half Dingo (Australia’s answer to the Wolf.) and as a result I’ve had to battle the wilder side of him to end up with the joyous companion that he is most of the time. Riffy gives me about as much grief as Dief gives Fraser, but without the fluffy.
( Things I've Learned From Riffy. )

I could go on for days about all the neat and not so neat ways that Riffy is like Dief, but I actually need to post something that isn’t going to bore you to sleep, so I’ll move on to some other, more important issues. Like the physical differences between Us and Them. Well, the not so obvious ones.
( No mention of opposable thumbs. ) ( Other Ways Dief is Different from Fraser's Other Buddies. )
That gives you a lot of room to play with your Dief POV. He can be well spoken and articulate, or he can use plain language. So long as you’re consistent with what you’ve decided for him, Dief’s pretty easy to write. He’s actually a lot of fun.

Now if you want to know how to write Fraser’s horse? That’s going to need a whole new post. But I could be bribed.

primroseburrows.livejournal.com

Hello, all. First time here, hi!

I'm a little late posting, mostly because my uploads were on the slow side and Windows Movie Maker kept crapping out on me. Also, a caveat: I'm really wordy. I'm trying to cut down. Please forgive me if I ramble or go on too long.

When I volunteered to talk about writing Fraser I had no idea what I was going to write and for a while there I thought I'd never come up with anything. I know Fraser is really hard to write for some authors but I wasn't sure how to try to make it less frustrating because Fraser comes really easy to me. It's like he lives in my head or something. I'm not as articulate in speaking as he is, but my writing style is a lot like Fraser's spoken conversation. It's actually the inverse with me: sometimes I have to really work at making my other characters NOT sound like Fraser. We also have similar issues around politeness and hurting people's feelings, and I get the part about a lonely childhood (although I'll argue that huge parts of Fraser's childhood weren't lonely at all).

So anyway, here goes:

First thing, and I do mean FIRST THING: ( Don't forget about canon. )

With a good base in canon, it's not only fine to read fic for inspiration, it's encouraged. There are some amazing authors out there who get Fraser so well it's like reading an episode of the show. I don't have room or time to rec them all here. You all know what your favourite Frasercentric fics are (or even other-centric; Fraser's voice and personality can be shown off really well by another character).

So. We have canon and fic to inspire and inform us. Now it's time to make a list (mental or written; written works better for me because I'm good at forgetting things): ( What makes Fraser, well. Fraser? )

nos4a2no9.livejournal.com

Hi all,

A little while ago

ximeria posted about writing fanfiction from different cultural/linguistic perspectives.

ximeria is a fan from the Netherlands, and her post addressed some of the challenges she's encountered when writing American or Canadian characters for whom she has few cultural reference points. In my reply to her post I'd said that as a northern Canadian, I experience the dS fandom a little differently than folks from, say, Texas or California (or even Toronto or Halifax ). Our fearless leader

sageness then asked if I'd discuss some of the less obvious aspects authors might want to consider when writing post-Call of the Wild stories set in Freezerland. So here we are! Consider this your primer post on writing post-Call of the Wild stories for due South!

( But First, Some Qualifications )

( The Culture of Northern Canada )

( The Economy, Shopping, and Dining )

( The Weather )

( Education )

( Healthcare and Emergency Services )

( The RCMP and the North )

I've included some links below to blogs and other firsthand accounts of life in the Canadian north, as well as some handy research sites behind the cuts.

( Blogs )

( Other Resources )

Well, that does it for

ds_workshop this week. I hope I've provided some useful information about various aspects of life in northern Canada, and I'm ready and willing to answer any questions you may have to the best of my limited ability. I'd like to do a second workshop post on northern Canada soon, and so if you have a question, a comment or you want me to explain something further please let me know and I'll include the answer in the next post. Good luck with those post-Call of the Wild stories, and please feel free to post questions or comments below.

brynnmck.livejournal.com

Hi! This is my first time, so please forgive any lack of expertise/finesse. ;)

I'm here to blather at you regarding the following question: "How do you manage to keep the guys in character when they keep wanting to develop personalities of their own?" (I'm going to focus primarily on the characters' behavior here, since the lovely

sageness already covered the character voice side of things quite well.)

This is kind of a difficult question to answer, since there is no real concrete "This Is Character X" checklist out there; the unique beast of fic means we're all writing in the same world, but none of us created it, and therefore we all see it a little bit differently. (I mean, think about this: effectively, we're writing a massive, ever-changing collaboration with hundreds of different authors. It's a miracle we manage to get to the same place at all! GO US. \o/) So there's a fair amount of room for interpretation going on before we even sit down at the computer or the notebook. Which can be a good thing; there are many times when I've read a fic where I think the voices or off or the characters aren't quite how I see them, but there is a line or a moment or an overall feeling that's just so dead-on perfect it goes right to my heart and makes me willing to be flexible about the rest. Finding an author who portrays the characters exactly as I see them, note for note, reaction for reaction, is pretty rare (though awesome for me when it happens), so we've all got a little bit of wiggle room.

That said, though, if I'm reading along and I get to a passage that involves Fraser, say, kicking a puppy, it's probably going to make me scratch my head. Or laugh and close the tab. Or both. So there are some basic objective characteristics that make these characters who they are, and sometimes it's easy to lose those in the ebb and flow of the writing process, so here are a few things I use to keep myself honest when it comes to characterization.

( A short characterization checklist )

So those are my thoughts.* What works for you? How do you tell when your characters are wandering away from you? How have you fixed it? What signs do you keep an eye out for? What do you do when the canon isn't consistent (besides cry a little on the inside)? Please school me in the comments!

*I would also like to congratulate myself on getting through this entire essay without ONCE exhorting anyone to "check yourself before you wreck yourself." I assure you, this has not been easy, but I have DONE IT for the benefit of EVERYONE. You're welcome!

dragonflymuse.livejournal.com

( Ever have that dream where Fraser and Vecchio go to the corner bakery to buy some cherry-filled donuts for Dief – you know the ones I mean, the kind they make with real cherries and not that fake gooey stuff, dusted in about half a pound (‘That’s 550 grams, Ray…’) of confectioner’s sugar? )

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: The Dresden Files

chesamus.livejournal.com

How can you write a convincing narrative voice from RayK's POV, and balance his canonical plain talk with the needs of your story?

( RaySpeak )

Current Mood: calm

sage

Okay, let's get back on a roll with the craft series!

Here is the master question list! Go forth! Find a question you can answer based on your experience with writing fic! And come back to this post to volunteer! \o/

(More guidelines are back in the older volunteer call posts if you have questions, or you can comment here and ask.)

Today's Monday, so the next post should go up within about a week. If you want to claim a topic for a week in the near future, you can do that, too!

THANK YOU!!! ♥

Current Music: The Faders - No Sleep Tonight

sage

Several people requested a post on how successful foreshadowing works, so here goes!

( Dropping Hints: keys to effective foreshadowing )

Also, a brief admin note: The next volunteer call post will go up shortly. Please sign up if you can! :D