New Year! New Mod! New Series!

[sprat.livejournal.com]

Hey, hello, it's been a while. Offline commitments have meant that gurrier and I haven't been able to do much with this community for the past...while. But sageness (one of the organizational genii behind such crazy schemes as out_of_con_txt and rat_jam) has come up with an idea for how to wake things up again, and we liked it so much that we're handing her the keys to the comm for a while. (And I'll be sticking around to help out, too, because this sounds like too much fun to miss.)

I'll let her explain...

sageness writes:

New Series!

We are happy to announce a new project here at ds_workshop! We're beginning a CRAFT OF WRITING series to be designed by YOU. Think of it as a "How do I...?" Q&A session in a writer's workshop. Everyone is invited to ask questions so that all of us can learn to write better stories.

Here are some examples:

What goes into writing a good kiss?
How do I use setting in _________ circumstance?
How do I avoid writing generic sex scenes?
How do I organize casefic?

We want to focus on questions that are specific to CRAFT, so it would be better to post things like "How Victorian IS Fraser?" and/or characterization issues in other communities more geared toward fannish meta. A character question that WOULD be appropriate here would be, "How can I show Thatcher's softer side and still keep her in character?"

Once we have some questions to choose from, myself, gurrier, or sprat will post asking for a for a volunteer to ANSWER one of the questions on the list. If you've written a fair bit in DS and you feel like you can answer a question, comment to claim it. Hopefully your post will spur some discussion of different techniques for solving the specific writing problem, given different styles of writing, and we'll all learn something new. :)

The series will be open to all types of writing technique questions: Gen, Het, Slash, Femslash, and OT3 topics are all good. Adventure fic, case fic, crack fic, long and plotty fic, short and drabbly fic, porn fic, romance fic, Dief fic, Dead!Bob fic, Turnbull fic, Stella fic, any kind of DS fic. Ask questions. We'll find answers.

Sound good? Okay! Sage will probably do the first post, and after that, we'll have an Admin post calling for a volunteer to do the next Answer Post, and so on.

What we need NOW is for you to comment with questions below. As time passes and topics are addressed, please continue to add new questions to the comments of this post. :D

Comments

[mergatrude.livejournal.com]

\o/

Writing kisses is something I'm all in favour of learning more about. Writing sex scenes as well.

How to break up the endless internal monologue, or showing instead of telling.

[ultra-chrome.livejournal.com]

Great idea!

How to deal with so many "he"s in a sex scene without leaving the reader confused or sick of both character's names.

[china_shop]

1. How to make plotty police-work type plots go. /forlorn wail

2. Titles. Where does one find a title? What makes a good title?

3. Also, story openings, ditto. How to hook the reader from line one.

4. How to know when you've reached the end. I often cut off as soon as I see an exit sign, but sometimes that's too early, but I don't figure that out until much later.

[buzzylittleb.livejournal.com]

1. Something about case fic pretty please.

2. Something about plot development.

Can I ask for something about OCs in longer fic? I mean, witnesses, police officers etc.

I suck at expressing myself.

[fspider.livejournal.com]

Something about developing voices/dialogue? You hear about writers "hearing" a character's voice, but how do you reach that point lacking a lightening bolt?

[isiscolo.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?

[sprat.livejournal.com]

1. Is it possible to write exposition in a graceful, unobtrusive kind of way? If so, what's your trick?
2. Long/short, substantial/spare, warmfuzzy/coldprickly: how do you find the balance point between the extremes?

More when I think of them!

[dessert-first.livejournal.com]

I'm thirding (or fourthing?) the request for advice on the plot/crime/case elements. Are there useful sites for things like ranks and hierarchy within the CPD and/or RCMP? How much is writing purely non-case-related fic justifiable as focusing on characterization, and how much case-action is needed to remind us of who these guys are and what their duet was originally based on--which is to say, how can I show them working well together without having to show too much of what they're working on, which is not really where I want to focus?

And did any of that make sense? :)

[bluealbertaskys.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a fab idea for a lurker/reader like me who wants to get into the writing aspect.

How do you manage to keep the guys in character when they want to take on personalities of their own?

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

How can you pull off a reveal, when the character who's POV you are following DOES know what's going on?

[custardpringle.livejournal.com]

How to write action scenes and chases and the like-- things that don't have much dialogue in them.

[bathsweaver.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've got questions about setting up/casting AUs, what's kosher or not (given the assumption that everything is acceptable, but some things are more acceptable than others).

Names, for example. If you're setting up an AU in--ah, bah--the Irish Potato Famine (examples are hard!), does it really make sense to have characters with Italian and Polish surnames? And familial relationships--is splitting up/fusing characters' families (Vecchio and Smithbauer are brothers! Frobisher is RayK's dad! Turnbull and Thatcher are siblings!) simply not done?

Or a better question, is there a way to make it work, without asking too much indulgence from your readers?

[china_shop]

How do you figure out what the theme(s) of your story is/are?

[china_shop]

Also:

1. How to make parallel timelines work.

2. How to show that your narrator is unreliable.

3. What does it take to write a good misunderstanding fic?

4. How to construct a plot outline (for a plotty casefic).

[vienna-waits.livejournal.com]

How to do good foreshadowing--noticeable but not over-the-top.

[ximeria.livejournal.com]

Writing in a language that isn't yours and a setting in a place you've probably never been to. How to still write it, avoding pitfalls and other crevasses.

[umbrella-half.livejournal.com]

Maybe someone has done this already, but:

What is life like in the wilderness: what are some of the issues you might need to deal with regarding writing genuine post-Call of the Wild fics?

I'd love to know!