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Article Team Suggestions and Feedback

MineOwnKing

Maester
Okay,

I can shoot some more ideas out.

These are just some random ideas off the top of my head. Some of these may have been covered already.

1. How to recognize and develop your voice.

2. Tips for making voice and style blend fluidly with prose.

3. Give the reader credit. (Avoid unnecessary explanations that slow down pacing.)

4. Learn to fall out of love with a chapter. (Finding courage to wield the editorial ax.)

5. Writing for the future. (How to keep up with the evolution of prose.)

6. The modern face of fantasy. (Dissecting the sub-genre giant.)

7. Grants for writers.

8. Avoid clichés. (A list of clichés that will get your manuscript rejected.)

9. The art of relaxation. (How to make dialogue fun.)

10. Beer. ( I like beer.) :)
 

Butterfly

Auror
Motivation and Celebrating the Small Successes

Maybe a series of articles that study the genre tropes, like elves, fairies, dragons, dwarves, zombies, vampires, etc. And another looking at mythical creatures or legends from around the world, including some of the lesser known ones.

Where current trends in the genre may be heading.

The importance of looking after your health and body while spending so many hours writing and sitting.

An article looking at whether a good or poor diet can affect brain function and creativity - might take a bit too much research though.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
1. Challenges of multi-volume writing

2. World-building resources. This would need to be broken down into narrower topics. Grabbing some recent topics from the forum: geography, philosophy, religions, economics. Each of those could spawn multiple entries.

3. Book production specific to fantasy. I can think of a few elements: cover art, interior art, maps, ancillary information (we're famous for character lists, glossaries, appendices), and blurbs (with particular attention to sub-genre-specific blurbs).

4. Un-famous races -- an article on fantasy races (not just individual monsters) that have been created by published authors. That is, not just takes on elves or dwarves, but wholly invented races. Could be fun.

5. Fantasy Tech -- articles on the practicalities of, well, just about everything. We already have long threads on things like swords and armor, but we've also talked about money, carts and wagons, horses, ... the list would be endless. It would be sorta cool if Scribes became the go-to source for such stuff.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I've got this idea for a series of articles where I try to take an old trope or cliche and try to explore different creativity techniques to do something creative and fun with the trope.

What I'd like to know is . . . does anyone have a trope they'd like to see me try to tackle first?
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
First trope is The Chosen One

:frown2: I was afraid someone would name that first. That's okay, it's probably the right choice, if not for the very first one, for one soon after it.

For names I was thinking:

Let's Get Creative: Chosen One

Trope Challenge: Chosen One

Creative Necromancy: Chosen One
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I actually really like the idea about referring to the dead horse. "Resurrecting Dead Horses: Chosen One" is a slight modification and implies it's a series.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
upvote on Svrtnsse. My only hesitation is length of title. If we have a long subtitle (after the colon), it could easily get cut off. It'd be great if we could use RDH with an onMouseOver event that would bring up the full text. Would it make sense to reverse the order?

Chosen One - Resurrecting Dead Horses

That way, the more significant information would always be visible. But I do like something that implies a series.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
So I've been thinking about it, and I think the series name needs to be short. That way the "creative" part can be focused on the actual topic. For example, something like this:

Rechoosing the Chosen One: Trope Challenge

The Once and Copied Kingdom: Trope Challenge

Magic, a Gathering Of Cliches: Trope Challenge

Something like those.
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I must've missed something. It's a writing challenge?

I was hoping to kind of accept challenges from the comments section on which trope to do next, but maybe that's confusing. I'll keep thinking.

((edit))

Maybe "Trope Reboot"? As in:

Culling the Horde of Dark Lords: Trope Reboot
 
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skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
A re-read of the thread made it clearer to me. I like Trope Reboot. We do the suggesting but you do the writing, right?

There were a number of other suggestions on this thread. Any legs for any of those? Is this more a case of, well if I like it, I write it?
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
There were a number of other suggestions on this thread. Any legs for any of those? Is this more a case of, well if I like it, I write it?

I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I need to write about topics where I feel like I have something to say. And for a lot of the topics I've written about, I feel like I've covered them to the best of my ability. The area, for me, where I feel like I can keep going is on being creative, and that's why I want to do this series. If anybody has suggestions for articles in that vein I'd be happy to consider them, but I think this series should cover it pretty well.

Incidentally, my broader articles on creativity are here:

How to Hack the Habit of Creativity

How to Balance Creativity with Story
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I need to write about topics where I feel like I have something to say.
I'm with you here. I don't mind doing a little bit of research to make sure I get my facts straight, but I want the overall topic to be such that I'm confident writing about it. The suggestions here in the thread are great, but in many cases they are in relation to things I'm not comfortable writing about in an "instructive" way.

When writing an article I feel like there's a bit of pressure on me to write something that's got a bit of substance and that's worth reading. It makes more nervous about picking my topics than if I were to post something here on the forums where I'm just musing on potential possibilities of something.

So it's not that the topics suggested are bad, more that I don't feel like I have very much to say about them - that's interesting enough to expect others to read.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Yeah. I'm not good about creativity. I don't feel I'm at all original. All I know how to do is to riff. I think I'm pretty good about that, but I have to start with something that is outside of myself. That's why I write alt-history fantasy. Original fantasy, like what most of you folks do, is an utter mystery to me. And I don't offer to write articles mainly because I feel so overwhelmed by my own fiction writing, I feel like any "outside" writing is, well, extra. It takes away from what I ought to be doing. That's probably a dumb attitude, but there it is.

In short, I would love to write about how to use history in your fiction writing, but I'm afraid to commit to anything. So I shall sit down and politely listen for a while. Hey Devor and Svrtnsse et alia, you should write articles! <blush>
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I should point out that just because I'm not comfortable writing about exactly anything, it doesn't mean I don't appreciate the suggestions. Their main benefit for me is that they get my mind going and that they give me a starting point to go from. There's a suggestion about health/workout for writers, and while I didn't write about that specifically, it got me on to the track about writing on how walking spurs creativity.

So, in other words, it's really good to get suggestions. :)
 
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