2008 craft of writing series kick-off! \o/

[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!! ♥

Comments

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

I would love to post about how to avoid a generic sex scene!

[luzula]

Hi, I'm going dogsledding for a week in the beginning of April, so after that I could post about how dogsledding works. If you think it would fit in here? *unsure* I mean, it's not exactly a "craft of writing" topic, but it is something that comes up a lot in dS fic.

[nos4a2no9.livejournal.com]

Sage, did I confirm that I'd put up that "Part 2" post about northern Canada? I was all distracted in chat and, y'know, busy talking about Ray Kowalski, Fireman. (Witness my attempts to publicly pressure you into writing that story. PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE!)

If you have space I could post sometime in the next week or two weeks; otherwise it'll have to wait until mid/late April. Between bitchinparty, final essays and end-of-semester exams, late March is a bit packed. And I really want to give the whole, "Where does Benton Fraser buy his pornography?" question the attention it deserves.

non-conventional plotlines, flashbacks/flashforwards

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

While wandering about this site, I ran across this question:

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?

While I've only done this non-narrative flashback/flashforward type story once (Don't Look Straight At It) (http://community.livejournal.com/ds_flashfiction/583846.html), I got some quite useful comments from readers that leads me to believe I may have a clue, at least somewhat, about writing this way.

I wouldn't only reference myself, of course; there are other non-narrative / non-chronological fics out there which I would also reference, although I can't speak to the authors' techniques -- only to what seems to "work."

Also, I think it needs to be said that writing this type of story can be tricky because right off the top, you may lose some of the audience -- in the way that my mother, and many other people, can not follow non-chronological movies that have Tarentino-esque or Memento-esque plots, and eventually become so confused they become frustrated and stop watching.

Reading this type of fic -- like watching that type of movie -- requires a certain amount of concentration and interest on the part of the reader/viewer. In other words, it requires a reader who is willing to do "the work" of reading the story. The reader must be willing to commit to it. This means you have to "hook them" from the start so they're willing to commit (but hooking the reader from the start is addressed in another question, so I wouldn't answer that entirely).

If the reader is looking for light entertainment, and you're giving them a more complicated, non-narrative story with flashforwards and flashbacks, they may just skip over it in favor of something that doesn't require as much "work" to read.

Well, let me know if responding to this question would be okay.