Being a Better Writer Topic Call: What Do YOU Want to See? · 7:20pm Apr 8th, 2022
Surprise! This isn’t an ordinary Being a Better Writer bit. Many of you likely guessed that based on the day (Friday versus the traditional Monday), and you’re right.
That’s because this isn’t your usual BaBW post, it’s a Topic Call!
What’s a Topic Call, you may ask? It’s an opening of the floodgates for readers to suggest their own writing topics they’d like to learn more about for future Being a Better Writer installments.
In other words: What do you want to see Being a Better Writer talk about? What writing topics do you wish to see addressed or brought up? What sort of questions do you have about, well, writing?
Topic List #19 is about exhausted, which means that it is time to start assembling a new list. I’ve got ideas for forthcoming articles, but what about you?
This is your chance. If there’s an aspect of writing you’d like to see Being a Better Writer discuss (or, if it’s been more than five years since the last post on a topic, revisited), what is it? Post your suggestions in the comments, and get your question answered in a future BaBW post!
My polymath friend is working on a script inspired by her life for like a sort of 20 minute short film and I was giving her riding advice and help and I told her someone on film fiction has a bajillion being a better writer post. That person being you
Do you have an index of them? Or happened to remember off top of your head what ones you feel would most apply to script writing? Or are about climax? Because it's just a small section of an imaginary version of her life, she's struggling with figuring out a climax
(Context, emotional struggles and journeys of woman who is learning archery with man who is amazing but struggles to open up.
If it were larger In scope it would probably end with the fictional version of her setting three national records at the archery championships in New Mexico last year after only being an Archer for about a little over half a year), but that would make it more like an hour long movie
(I introduced them IRL lol)
I really really fucking wish knighty would implement being able to put blog posts in libraries too because then I and others could collect all the great writing blogs in one spot and even have like separate libraries for stuff on character writing stuff on story plotting stuff on getting yourself to write consistently, stuff on editing, etc
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Do I ever! Well, okay, not as a giant list, but close. Every single BaBW post has been tagged as long as I've had the website running, and every one of those tags is clickable, delivering the searcher to a page that's nothing but posts with that tag.
In addition, I've got a search function on the sidebar as well (though for whatever reason, mobile disables that, so if your friend is on mobile, have them set their browser to desktop mode so they can search). For example, I searched "Climax" and the third link it brought up was an entire post on "Nailing the Last Third." One of its tags was "Endings" and clicking that brought me to this, which may be very helpful to them.
Unfortunately I've never done anything about script writing, because that's an almost entirely different beast.
I hope that helps!
I had a thought, and thought your thoughts on my thought would make for an interesting topic. The thought: The value of unanswered questions.
One of my favorite genres is the Weird Tale. It is a story in which the questions are more important than the answers. They come in a wide range of genres, but dark and frightening tales are among the most common. After all, humans want to know the answers. To hear a story without answers is unnerving, and some authors play to that. Many of Lovecraft's works qualify. A much more modern example may be the Welcome to Nightvale podcast, which it might be argued is a long-running celebration of the unknown.
Which leads to my point: creating a question without an answer, resisting the urge to create that answer, and using that unanswered question as a tool in a story. How do we determine the value in that? When is it important, and when should it be avoided? Do the characters really need to try and answer the question, or is the story benefited by it being an accepted extra layer of mystery never to be sought after?
All of humanity exists in a continuous pursuit of answers. Perhaps it is good that we don't always attain them.