Really Frustrated Right Now · 3:05pm Jun 9th, 2016
So yeah, as the title says I am really frustrated right now. I have a toxic enough environment that I live in, but no matter where I turn online it seems every single community that was once peaceful and friendly, or should be so considering the subject matter, is turning toxic as well. That right that has been strangling my creativity a lot lately though I try my best to ignore it.
Then I actually post my story here and I get a lot of advice that is good as well as a lot of people pretty much saying not to have secrets in my story and that I should pretty much explain everything at the beginning. I have read a lot of novels and watched a lot of anime and movies and TV. Not many of them do this and in my opinion the best ones explain the stuff more when it becomes relevant with some foreshadowing and slight mentions and hints of what is to come. Yet I tried my best to comply with all requests, good and bad, and I'm really starting to wonder if it is worth it. I love the first chapter rewrite, but each consecutive chapter is looking worse and worse. I mean I have over twenty thousand words spread over four chapters just to show and tell what I did in the original chapter two.
Then I get a lot of suggestions to get an editor and I had someone in real life that backed out in the last moment since they have a similar situation to mine. We both live with families that highly look down on homosexuality. You may be wondering how that comes in to play when talking about My Little Pony. Well, I have nothing against homosexuality though I am straight though my brother who is disabled is nice...usually. When something that doesn't align with his world view though comes up, he can be the most hateful and spiteful person on the planet. And to him even watching My Little Pony means that you are homosexual. So yeah, I do my best to keep my viewing and reading habits hidden though that also means I missed pretty much all of season five so far and I haven't seen much of season six yet.
To get back to the point of editors, after my first pick decided they just couldn't do it I had a couple others who wanted to. I went with the one who pretty much matched my needs perfectly in that using GDOCS wasn't a requirement for me. I could just send the chapters to them through email since I wrote them on Microsoft Word and saved them on a flash drive I keep tucked away since this is a shared computer. All I asked was that they tell me if they didn't want to do it anymore. I was patient with them as I understood real life sucks at times and it could take time to edit. Yeah it was frustrating, but understandable. They haven't been answering my messages for a couple weeks now, not even a short one asking if they were okay. Yet checking their page a few times showed that they were logged in so I don't know what to think or do. If they don't reply by this weekend I will probably post what I have and go from there. Though with as much frustration that this story is becoming I am really starting to lose any drive I even had for it.
I haven't seen any of season six
I hope you will continue the story/fic(whatever you tend to call it) and get through your hurdles in life. It's a cruel and random world after all.
*hug* sorry, you looked like you needed it.
so I've had your story in my Read It Laters and I read what's there just now - I think if you want to keep secrets to be revealed later then you should. It's about balancing exposition and mystery: it's hard to get into a story without knowing anything
even though that's my preferred style of writingbut it's boring reading about a world as a static state before anything happens in/to it. That said, the best thing to do is not info-dump, esp in places that are particularly inappropriate (example: describing what your character looks like should happen when they're not doing anything, not in the middle of a fight scene).I don't know if this is your first story ever or simply your first story on the site, but my best advice for how to proceed is to go with your gut. If this is your first story ever, then use this experience to learn about what works for you as a writer - it's tempting to appease your readers, but at the end of the day you are the one who has to plan and structure your own piece. And what's the point if you don't like what you're doing?
It's unfortunate to live in a stifling environment. I hope you find a viable outlet. Maybe going to a library yourself to watch/work on MLP things? Life is a long journey, things will change for you.
If your editor ends up not being able to help you, I offer my proofreading - feel free to PM me after the weekend.
Not sure if I'm correct with that, but I think the main reason people disliked the "missing info" in your first version was the fact that you were writing about a character already familiar with the readers. When introducing new characters, it's fine not to immediately explain their whole life's story. With familiar characters, however, you risk alienating your audience because your writing clashes (possibly violently) with the image of the character people already have in their heads. Worst case, you might come off as writing the character completely out of character because, well, he/she is (from the point of view of the readers). You, the author, may know why Sunset was written that way, but your audience is clueless and confused.
I hope you don't lose your enthusiams for the story (or even writing in general) due to this. The idea is great, the first version wasn't that bad and your second version is really good.
Haters are always gonna hate no matter what. Personally, just ignoring the hate and proving to be better than them is far more satisfying than you think. If your parents look down on homosexuality then ignore them and do your own thing. If you let them get to you...trust me you do not want that to happen, I almost committed suicide twice when I was younger due to my stepmom and I constantly arguing and screaming.
Step one: Tell you brother to go F himself and watch whatever you want. Sorry, but there's no way around this. You can't live in fear of someones shadow.
Now on to your problem. You should not 'explain everything at the beginning' but you also need to have some information to bait the readers interest and some well placed foreshadowing. As long as your secrets don't come out of know were you should be good.
Getting feed back on how to improve your story is good, but just remember not all feed back is good and you don't have comply with all the requests you get.
I hate it when editors agree to do a story for you then drops off the face of the earth. I understand RLI but you would think that they could take five minutes to PM you can say "life sucks I can't edit for you."
I'm not much of an editor, but if you need speed I could likely get the story back to you within a day I get it from you.
I thought you were doing a fine job explaining things, exempt for that book, I haven't figured out much about it. But that should probably be international.
I never was a huge fan of evolving everything before we get started stuff. I mean, in D and D, surprises and unknown stuff is half the fun!
4011660 A day is a lot faster than I could do, it would be a week, maybe two if I was to edit.
4010990 I'm going to try, my nerves has settled down a lot though since I posted this earlier. Thanks, life does suck sometimes and life can get in the way of things you enjoy doing at times, but it is best to try and work through it even if it really gets to you at times. I guess I'm not the only one missing the new stuff, but I did see Flurry Heart at least even if I didn't get to see the whole episode.
4011088 Thanks, I was pretty frustrated/angry/upset/pissed off when I wrote the blog earlier. I feel lots better now though so thans again.
Thanks, I kind of want to keep some stuff kept back because there is no way I can justify explaining every single change in the story in a simple chapter or two. I didn't want to offend anyone if I did or if I misunderstood some of the advice, but even feeling better there is just no way I can figure out a way to actually do that. So some things will have to stay hidden until the importance of them comes up because there is just no way I can see to fit them in without making it look forced or out of place. Believe me, I tried. So going to take your advice and not info dump like that as I just can't make it look clean.
I've written stories for fun before, I'm not nor do I pretend to be a professional or even a semi-competent writer though. I want to do this for fun, something to work my frustrations out into and relax. Some of the stuff I have dealt with admittedly sucked some of the joy of doing it out of my writing, though I'm going to do my best and work through it. It's exactly as you said, what's the point if you don't like what you are doing? That is one of the best points that I have seen.
My library is a small library in a large town and they don't take appointments for the internet so it is almost impossible to even get one. And with summer now here and school being out, it will be a lot worse. And since our computer is a desktop so I cant take it with me. I'm kind of regretting building it now instead of getting a laptop, but then again since my family uses it since we can't really afford another one right now it probably wouldn't have helped.
I don't want to offend anyone or hurt anyone's feelings, but so far with the luck I have had with proofreaders I'm going to have to really think about if I want to try again or just post and if I find any errors as time goes by go back and fix them then.
4011142 I truly do understand that, but I was kind of thinking the Alternate Universe tag would take care of the warnings about it being different than canon. I also understand that the readers are going to be a little lost, but I really don't see a way to info dump all of the information that they wanted and giving spoilers for background to the story which would have been covered soon in the story didn't seem to help in the comments or blogs. If I explained everything in the story at once it would be a huge mess as there is still things not even mentioned in the story yet. I just really don't see a good way too make everyone happy and keep the story clean and flowing decently. I'm going to try my best, I just don't really know how it would be possible to info dump everything. I just hope that everything turns out well as I really want to finish this story. I'm glad you like the idea for it and enjoyed the original, but I have to give credit to my editor for the Chapter 1 rewrite since they made some suggestions and cut a few things out that really sounded stupid when rereading it though at the time of writing sounded good in my head.
4011429 Sadly that is too true as there are always going to be trolls. My brother's attitude when something he disagrees with or hates comes up is part of the reason I hate trolls. I don't mean to, but I admit I kind of snap at some comments sometimes if I am in a bad mood and they look trollish. I really try to control it, but I know being in a bad mood doesn't exactly excuse it. I really think putting up with some of the crap is starting to get to me more and more.
I'm really sorry that you almost committed suicide. it has been something I thought about a time or two though I won't. I completely understand the fighting and screaming stuff and hope things are better for you.
4011660 You have no idea how tempted I am to do that very thing at times. The problem is he is disabled and needs help and doing so will pretty much make sure he doesn't get the help he needs as I am the only one here who can drive. It really sucks at times. My family, especially him, really piss me off with their attitude at times but they are family and I do love them and want what's best for them. It's why I try not to watch anything openly or leave anything where it can be easily found about stuff that will get a bitching session started.
I will try my best to do that, it just seemed with everything everyone wanted everything explained at once. I appreciated all of the suggestions and everything, it just started getting to me lately since I tried to follow all the advice which caused chapter 2 rewrite to end up over twenty thousand words split over four chapters. Since my editor doesn't seem like they are going to answer or anything, I'm doing my best to go over it again and make some final edits myself and hoping for the best. Hopefully there will be a good balance of information and secrets that will keep the story flowing and not clog it up with info dumps trying to explain everything.
I'm going to take that advice to heart because trying to do something I'm not good at is making it harder to write and making some stuff seem more forced. So I may not have the perfect chapters, but they will be the best I can do without clogging the story up.
I do to, and one of the first things I even said to my editor was if you ever don't want to or can't continue editing that all they had to do was say so. I wouldn't be mad or upset if they just say so. The time since the last reply I got from them though and now is looking more and more insane when I see them often on on their home page here. Couldn't even answer my last message asking if everything was okay. I can't help but feel as if I was jerked around which does piss me off. It isn't the fact that they don't seem t want to do it anymore, but the fact they can't just say so, or say anything really, has me kind of pissed off over it.
I really do appreciate the offer, but I'm just not too sure if I'm going to go with another editor. I am going to think about it, but so far I've had bad luck with them.
4012001 Thanks, and do you mean the books Sunset is writing making her money? Sorry, I was going to explain it a lot more when Sunset introduced Twilight to the human world's media and admitted the books were based off legends, fantasies she had when she was a filly and other stories and personal experiences from Equestria. The cartoon was based off Luna being the ruler while Celestia was the one sealed away since Sunset does know about her, though changed the names. They basically center around the adventures of her three students that is based off Sunset's daughter and her two friends learning magic and going on adventures. They are done under a pen name so nobody knows the real author other than a few people. It's supposedly so popular that Sunset is making a killing from all the deals that are coming in for spinoffs, merchandise and all of that stuff.
I've never really read anything that explains everything first off and I try to use the styles from books I like when writing which may or may not be working for me. It doesn't really help that I admit I'm no professional and don't plan on becoming a professional writer since this is just a hobby for me. Something free to do that was fun, something to relax me and enjoy sharing all of my ideas for different worlds and paths for MLP. All of the recent frustrations were threatening to kill that for me, though I'm going to try and work through them and continue on with this story the best that I can and really hope for the best.
4012315 Hey, don't worry this was years ago. Besides my dad and her are divorced since then.
4012315 If your going to try and edit yourself let me get you a link to a free tool. Basically, it will let you listen to your story and pick out any error you may have missed. Best of luck.
Hope things get better. Really liked the story and hoping for more.
4012315 Glad you're feeling better!
The thing about everything ever in life is that it's just not feasible to make everyone happy at the same time because even if you do, it will be at the expense of your own happiness/peace of mind/sanity. Don't be a martyr, you deserve to be happy too.
It sounds like you're very close with your family and
in spite of some different opinionshave a fairly good relationship. Forgive me for asking, but is your brother mentally disabled?'cause otherwise, I'm with Dr-Fluffy.Editing your own stuff is great, you can learn a lot doing it. No offense taken, we're all friends here! My inbox is always open - for anything. To be honest, I'm too self-conscious for an editor/pre-reader/proofer so I end up rereading my own fics to death. If you use Chrome, Grammarly is a great tool.
I don't want to piss you off or anything but...
People are seriously asking you explain EVERYTHING at the begnining? rather than let it be explained or revealed when its relevant or important? or even if its aprt of a mystery?
these people should not be lsitenened to. they obviously do not know who writing works and as such their opinions hold no water.
Also, really, do NOT listen to people telling you how to write your story. Trust me, I made the same mistak early on. write what you want to write, and only listen to good advice, such as ones that expand your storytelling or worldbuilding skill.
4012331 I'm glad you are doing better then.
4012337 That would be great, I use Microsoft Word so if it can help in that it would be awesome. I don't have very good luck with GDOCS doing what I want, for some reason no Google products ever seem to work right for me except for the search engine and sometimes android, which is why I shy away from them. Thanks.
4012430 Thanks, I actually just finished going over chapter 2 and will be posting it very soon.
4012439 Thanks, that is pretty good advice. As for my brother, yeah most of his problems are mental though physical ones have been starting as well. I am close to my family for the most part despite feeling hurt sometimes when he goes into one of his moods, or pissed at some of the things he says. I try not to aggravate things by not flaunting stuff that I know he has problems with around him. If he didn't have all these problems and I didn't care about my family I would have told him to go to hell and left. I'm pretty much the only one to get him to all of his appointments, which is a lot, and make sure all of his medicine is picked up.
Thanks, I'm going to attempt editing my own stuff and hope it doesn't come out as too dry sounding. As for the tool, I write in Microsoft Word since me and Google don't get along very well. At first I couldn't even get the email set up and when I actually did, GDOCS just hates me.
4015386 Thanks, it can be frustrating as I do wanted to make everyone happy at first, but there is just no feasible way to explain everything without an even bigger info dump that the rewrite already is so some of the reveals will be waiting a longer. I do love any advice I get, but some of it just doesn't seem to work well with me no matter how hard I try to use it while other things seem to just click easily and work great. I don't really want to become a literary prodigy, this is just a hobby for me, but good advice on improving is always good.