Acknowledging Your Weaknesses and Strengthes · 3:41pm Apr 28th, 2019
Eyyyyy!
I am writing this while waiting to drive my dad to the airport. It may not seem like it but it’s fine because it’s time I get with him.
I’ve been festering over writing this blog because I would like for it to be a discussion about the blog’s title.
Ever since my flurry of blogs last week, I got a good amount of traffic for my stories. King’s Cage was the most attracted one (I think) and one reader added it to their “Masterpieces” library, and another commented about how the story really cut deep.
This prompted me to reread the story I wrote. And sometimes it is good to be surprised by yourself. It also made me ponder what one person in a discord I am a part of said who read King’s Cage. He told me that the story was good, but there was a lack of word choices; my vocabulary was somewhat lacking.
As I skimmed through my creation, I did notice the lack of flowery words. And I must admit, it is my weakness because I do want to have more words in my bank of synonyms and exposition. I do use a thesaurus, however, sometimes it feels like it would be better to have said word ready and known (one of my favorite words is abhor).
Despite this weakness, it did not hinder me for much long. And as I continued, even I proclaimed an “oh!” when the feels struck me. As I said, sometimes I do surprise myself, and that is not to sound arrogant.
My strength that I have noticed in my writing is conveying and creating emotion; making both the characters feel real and making the readers react emotionally. Ever since I was a kid, stories that made me feel happiness, nervous, scared, etc for a character always kept me engaged. I wanted to do that in my own stories.
The best example I can give is A Bug’s Life. Flick is a character who wants to help but fails spectacularly. I know what it’s like to want to help but mess up (not as bad as Flick, but hey, details). He wanted to make a difference as did I. When Hopper sent Thumper onto Flick, my heart and gut flexed with every hit Flick took.
I felt his character, his ails. I wanted to replicate that emotion I felt. And I would think that I did a good job throughout most, if not, all of my stories.
It may be hard not to look at your weaknesses and not be weighed down by them. Sometimes it’s best to see them, then see what you are best at.
I bring up my weaknesses because it is what holds me back sometimes. It’s easy to be blockaded by something you aren’t good at. But strength is a much lighter weight and shows how good you are now, especially when that weakness becomes a strength.
I never once thought I would write stories as I do today. I failed the high school exit exam writing portion three times. Now I excel much better than my teen years.
Work comes first, improvement follows. What are your writing weaknesses and strengths? Or what are your weaknesses and strengths in general?
If you just wanted to read this, commented or not, have a good rest of the weekend. I got things to do.
Freak, out.
Personally, I think my issue is that I find it hard to not just go off when I write. When I start a multi chapter story, I make a vague outline and then fill in each chapter's outline as I go. the problem with this is that means I only have a few things I actually need to get done, and the rest just comes out as whatever I feel like I want in there. This leads to me sometimes writing stories that literally go day by day as to what the character(s) do. It's not a bad thing when it's just a couple days, but sometimes it covers a week and that results in 30000 word chapters. One of these days, I'll have to learn how to manage my word count and I do not look forward to that.
Interesting topic.
If I'd guess my weaknesses - Plot driven personalities (aka. somehow flat and unnecessary complicated) and a rather poor understanding of fleshing them out. While I have so much stories inside my head I barely focus on some things inside of them.
And my strenghts... huh - I think inner confict and plot twists if that counts.
I'd have to write more to fully understand the issues.
What's funny is that my strengths and weaknesses are the exact opposite of your strengths and weaknesses. I would like to think that I excel in using a varied vocabulary in my stories, never running short of a word to say to keep every sentence and paragraph as sweet as possible. Even in my comments, I always try to not use the same word twice. I have Thesaurus.com opened at almost all times so I can look up synonyms to a particular word that I would like to see. But my biggest weakness is when I try to convey emotions, I feel as if the emotions of the characters I write don't come of as I intended too because I may have used too much words or used too little, or the character archetype I chose doesn't resonate with my readers. Either way doesn't change the fact that I have immense trouble when trying to convey the feeling of my characters onto my readers.
5050621 I’ve seen a writer do something similar as they have their character just do simple daily life things. Having that type of exposition is fine, but there needs to be a cut off at some point. I fall into the motion of not getting to the point at times, so you aren’t alone.
5050636 Are you referring to adding the details for your characters and ideas?
5051068 You might think that my weakness isn’t as big of a deal, but there is the chance of someone’s emersion being broken and have them saying, “you say (insert word) a lot.”
5051399
Something like that.
They feel sometimes stiff, it's a bit hard to describe, because I don't exactly know what I dislike - it just 'feels' that way to me.
I want to improve overall, since I tend to be very critical about my writing.
5051606 Something I have noticed about stories, which is quite obvious, is it starts with the idea. Concepts can be unique and that is how some stories here gain traction. The issue I have noticed is the question, "where do I go with this" or "what do I do now?" Because there are times where I write myself toward a wall and have to ponder how to get around it.
5051649
This. Exactly this.
While I know most of the stories inside my head and have a bunch of lists with notes, there are sometimes problems where I need to adapt to get around an issue.
That's common I'd say.
5051653 I’ve had people tell me that they started a story and had a general idea as to how they wanted to go with it, but that wall came and presented an obstacle that contradicted their premise.
I tell my readers that I want to make sense with everything. And that takes time to get skilled at.