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clicked-in · 1 year

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The Attraction Trip-Wire That Awakens a Man's Deepest Longing for Love

Trip Wire: “A hidden trigger that sets off a series of explosive events.”

Deep within the heart of every man is an intense longing to be someone's hero.

This longing has ancient origins.

You see, the cause of this longing is written into the very fabric of his DNA. And there it lies, dormant… until one day, the right trigger unleashes its power.

I'd like to show you how to become that trigger, and how to awaken the full force of your man's bonding instinct.

But first, a story. It's the story of human connection.

(Or you can see how this works now by skipping to the online video here)

Before we can care deeply about someone, we must know something about their life story. Because stories evoke empathy. Stories allow us to picture ourselves in someone else's shoes.

Stories form the foundation of all human connection. They create the sensation of one shared life experience.

It's strange, but true, that we can even find ourselves rooting for thieves and criminals so long as we see their story unfold. Movies like Ocean's Eleven and The Italian Job illustrate this well.

In the movie, Ocean's Eleven, actors George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon make for a cast of likeable thieves. But beyond their good looks, we get pulled into the story.

We discover what's driving Danny Ocean's motivation to rob a casino. A casino that just happens to be owned by his ex-wife's new lover.

We can empathize with Danny Ocean's pain. And by the end of the movie we are actually rooting for him to get away with it.

To steal the money and disappear into the sunset with his ex-wife, Tess, by his side.

Perhaps stranger still is the way we respond to fiction in the first place.

A skilled novelist can have me on the edge of my seat, rooting for a person who doesn't even exist in real life.

Literary critics may scoff, but I actually liked the twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. I think my hand was actually trembling from adrenaline as the Volturi began to march across the field, intent on destroying Isabella's daughter.

But wait, that's all make-believe. So how could it cause a physical reaction in my body?

The answer, of course, is the power of story.

Since ancient times, stories have been the primary means by which humans communicated important information.

Because of that, our minds are literally wired for story.

Stories influence our emotions. They are at the heart of communication. Allowing us to feel connected to each other.

When I reach the end of my life, I know which people I will want by my side. It will be those who have witnessed my life story.

The friendly, pretty nurse may be a wonderful person. But if she is a stranger to me, it doesn't matter what positive attributes she has. I will still feel alone.

She does not know my story, and I do not know hers.

Knowing this instinctively, she will expend great effort to quickly summon my friends and family. The people who know my story.

To trigger a man's deepest feelings of attraction, you need to become a special part of his story.

You do that by revealing your needs, and allowing him to help you meet them. Why? Because it triggers his hero instinct.

Here's the formula for triggering a man's hero instinct:

Story + Need = Activated Hero Instinct.

A man's hero instinct compels him to seek a relationship that lets him take on the role of a provider.

That's why guys fall for a woman who knows how to trigger this attraction tripwire. It sets off a series of reactions in his emotional world.

It makes him happy in a way that's hard for women to understand. Because they do not share his deeply rooted instinct to become someone's hero.

Many women are vaguely aware of a man's desire to see himself as a provider.

They understand, for example, why he may become depressed and pull away from others during a period of unemployment.

But these same women fail to recognize the power of the opposite effect...

Make a man feel like your hero, and you unleash his desire to commit to something more.

He can't help it. He just starts to see you differently.

It's as if your relationship unlocks a version of himself he has always longed for. It feels right in a way he can't put into words.

It unleashes his protective instincts, the noble aspects of his masculinity, and most importantly, his deepest feelings of love and attraction.

If that sounds good to you, click here to learn more about this relationship enhancement tool. It's something you can learn once, but then use for the rest of your life.

You already have needs and desires.

Why not learn how to translate those desires into requests that trigger his hero instinct?

Ready to put this idea to use? Great! Because I've recorded an online video to show you a set of triggers you can use to get explosive results with this one simple technique. Click here now to see for yourself.

Creating Deeper Love

After watching this video, many women are surprised to learn a man can actually feel more deeply in love when he feels more deeply needed.

That seems strange, doesn't it? And yet that is the reality for men.

Many of us have a tendency to buy gifts of the sort we would like to receive ourselves. It can be like that with love.

We try to love our partner the way we want to be loved.

So you make him feel special. Yet he seems unaffected by that. You speak your own native love language to him. Apparently, he speaks another.

But I'm here to tell you about one incredible, universal method you can use to grab his attention by triggering his hero instinct.

Click here now to discover an unfair advantage that works with all men, in every phase of life. Help him finally see you as the one.

Wishing you all the best,

James Bauer

References:

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heartschoicegames · 4 years

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Heart’s Choice Author Interview: Melissa Scott, “A Player’s Heart”

Find love, fame, and intrigue on the stage of the city's all-woman Opera! Put on a show, survive drama on and off-stage...and win your lover's heart. A Player's Heart is a 222,000-word interactive lesbian romance novel by Melissa Scott. I sat down with Melissa to talk about her upcoming game, and the vicissitudes of romance writing. A Player's Heart releases this Thursday, February 13th for Heart's Choice. This is your first piece of interactive fiction, but not, I think, your first romance novel. Tell me a little about your other work. This is indeed my first piece of interactive fiction, but in my other life I'm mostly known as a writer of science fiction and fantasy. I have written two fantasy mystery series with strong romantic elements—the Points series (Point of Hopes, Point of Knives, Point of Dreams, Fairs' Point, and Point of Sighs), which I began with my late partner Lisa A. Barnett and continued after her death; and the Mathey and Lynes novels (Death By Silver and A Death at the Dionysus Club), which I wrote with another Choice of Games author, Amy Griswold. The Points novels are set in the city of Astreiant, where astrology is a complex and important science, and center on the professional and personal relationship of pointsman (a kind of police officer) Nicolas Rathe and ex-mercenary turned guardsman Philip Eslingen. Each novel is a stand-alone mystery, but the development of the relationship is a major part of the ongoing story. The Mathey and Lynes novels are set in an Edwardian London in which metaphysics — magic — is a respectable profession akin to law or medicine. Metaphysician Edward Mathey has just purchased his first practice and rekindled his connection with a former schoolmate, Julian Lynes, a would-be consulting detective, when they are thrust into dealing with a series of mysterious deaths that risk outing their forbidden relationship. My most recent novel, Finders, is far-future space opera about a trio of salvage operators who stumble into a discovery that may destroy their civilization. Beyond those, I've written more than 30 science fiction and fantasy novels, most of them featuring queer themes and characters. I've won the Lambda Literary Award in SF/F four times (and been nominated four more times), and have won the Spectrum Award three times. I've written everything from near-future cyberpunk to far-future adventure to space opera in which the "science" is based on neo-Platonic magic, and the starships harness the music of the spheres to travel between solar systems. I've also written tie-in materials for Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Wars Rebels - and one more that I'm not allowed to talk about yet! What did you find most challenging about the process? Writing a branching narrative, editing it, or handling the code? Technically? Handling the code, hands down. That's not something I'd ever done before, and, while mercifully ChoiceScript is more language-like than mathematical, I still feel as though I'm "speaking" it at a kindergarten level. On a conceptual level, though, the most difficult — and most rewarding —part of the process was learning to leave enough space at the center of the story for players to create their own character and experiences. The whole point of novel-length fiction is to put readers into characters' heads, to show the world through that characters' experiences, but that's the exact opposite of what interactive fiction does. The writer doesn't dictate the interpretation; you can only suggest and steer, and let the players make their own story happen. It was a hard leap to make at first, but once I'd gotten there, it was really fun to tell a story that way. In some ways, it suits my natural style — I prefer to create character indirectly, and allow readers to draw their own inferences — but it's conceptually a very different kind of story-telling. This is the first lesbian romance we're releasing for Heart's Choice and we would have loved to have it ready for the initial launch, because having a romance game for everyone is really the whole idea. Are you primarily writing for a lesbian audience in your other work? I was sorry it wasn't ready for the initial launch, too. I wouldn't say that my work is written for a lesbian audience—I want as wide an audience as I can get—but it is all definitely written from a lesbian perspective. I mean, it really can't not be! It's a huge part of who I am. But I've been an out lesbian writer since the 1980s, and that perspective has meant different things and received very different reactions over those decades. It's a lot less fraught than it was when I started, that's for sure! And of course some of my stories are addressing issues that are most directly relevant to and subject to debate by a queer audience—the Mathey and Lynes novels, for example, are partly about creating and maintaining queer community—but I also hope they'll be accessible to a non-queer audience as well. Tell me a little about the fictional world of A Player's Heart. A Player's Heart takes place in Tristendesande, the rich, sophisticated mercantile city at the mouth of the great river that runs the length of the country. Everyone and everything of importance eventually comes downriver to Tristendesande, or so its inhabitants will tell you; they have nothing but disdain for the people of the rival industrial city of Castago, at the river's headwaters. But Castago's power is in the ascendant, and Tristendesande is ruled by a foreign-born regent in the name of her toddler son. Even if its power is waning, however, Tristendesande is a beautiful city — imagine fin-de-siecle Paris or Vienna, carved stone facades and gilding and gaslight. It's a center of the arts, and at the center of that artistic world are the Theater, where all the roles are played by men, and the Opera, where all the roles are played by women. Devas play female roles, dragons play male roles, and the artifices are responsible for special effects, costumes, and all the other technical pieces. The Opera's shows are generally bright and frothy, full of song and dance and sparklingly witty dialogue, but often there's serious point hidden among the frolics. Of course there are also cabarets and other venues, led by the upstart Electricity Theater, where — scandalously! — men and women perform together, on the same stage and in the same skits. Did you have a character you most enjoyed writing and spending time with? I think the most fun was creating four love interests. They're very different women — the best friend, the sparkling rival, the powerful society hostess, the scandalous lead of the rival Electricity Theater — and there had to be good reasons for someone to fall in love with each of them. However, it did create a certain amount of mental whiplash. Just when I'd gotten really comfortable with one of them, and knew exactly why she was wonderful, I'd have to switch to one of the others — and convince myself the she was the perfect lover! The other "character" that I loved was the Opera itself. I really enjoyed creating that social world. from the semi-retired Elders who manage the company and decide on the performances to the students who take walk-ons as they work toward joining the Opera proper.

What are you working on now? I can't yet talk about the project that's currently eating my life (I hope to be able to say more by the end of the month), but beyond that I've just completed a fantasy novel, Water Horse, about the queer king of a beleaguered kingdom fighting to twist free of the prophecies that threaten his people. Next up is Fallen, a sequel to Finders, about a weaver of webs for forbidden AI who has to chose between saving her lovers or seeing her people fall into the Long Dark.

#heartschoice #choiceofgames #romancenovel #interactive fiction #choice of games #hearts choice

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bookenders · 5 years

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Good Metaphor, Bad Metaphor, Who’s to Say?

I’ve seen some advice posts about this goin’ around and thought I’d add my two cents.

[All images in this post are line breaks.]

What is a Metaphor?

A metaphor is a literary device wherein one thing is compared to/equated with another without using the words “like” or “as.” So, rather than saying “it was hard to get to know her,” one might say “she was a closed book.”

What Makes a Metaphor Good or Bad?

Good - fits tone/narrative voice, often in character, tells us something, accurate

Bad - inaccurate, cliché, forced, does not fit with the tone/theme

In simple terms, good metaphors aren’t noticed (or, rather, noticed in a good way) and flow with the rest of the writing. Bad metaphors don’t work and take the reader out of the story.

It’s like puzzle pieces. The blue goes in the sky, not the lava.

[Continued below the cut:]

Basic examples of in character metaphors (ft. my improvised prose):

If I’m writing about a person who loves space, their pulse would skyrocket, their thoughts would orbit one topic, their confusion would be nebulous, and their smiles would burn bright like distant stars.

If I’m writing about an accountant who was passionate about their job and hated art, I wouldn’t say that they did things in broad strokes, or painted their paperwork with the sweat of their brow, or minded their calculations as a modern Michelangelo, everything planned and ready to bleed black and white on paper canvas.

I’d say that their mind clacked through figures the way a gray matter abacus operates, exacting and precise. I’d say they held their clients’ futures in their Atlas hands, dedicated to keep them afloat in uncertain times.

[I’m gonna look at accurate and tonal metaphors in a minute, so hang in there until then, because they need context to be understood.]

BUT.

Because there’s always a but.

If you’re consistent, it can work out just fine.

It’s all about tone and mood, really. If you’re writing about trees, don’t compare everything to race cars unless your character is a former driver who is now a lumberjack trying to fit in and make sense of his new job, or you compare everything to race cars. That sort of thing.

Douglas Adams can write Douglas Adams metaphors because that’s his absurdist style of humor. Unless the voice of your story is like that, or your POV character thinks that way, it’s probably best that you don’t pepper in absurdist/surreal metaphors.

Okay, But How Do You Write a Good Metaphor?

If I had the answer to that, I’d never need to edit my work again.

But let’s take a stab at it, eh?

To reiterate, a good metaphor is accurate, is fitting of the tone/voice, reveals information, reveals character, and/or echoes the theme of the story.

Alrighty, let’s look at some good metaphors (in my opinion, anyway) and examine why they’re good:

“Every night I stunned myself with gin.” (Jac Jemc, “A Violence”)

First of all, it’s accurate. I can see it in my head even without knowing the exact context. Getting black-out drunk is a sort of stunning. There’s a “person vs. self” conflict in the story, as well, and a theme of self-punishment, which this metaphor mirrors. That’s what makes it work: it’s accurate, flows with the tone and theme, and doesn’t pull you out of the story. You read it and think, “yeah, that fits, that makes sense.”

On a side note, if you wanna take a look at acoustics really quickly, there are all those elongated “n” sounds that bring a numbing sensation to the sentence, like your tongue is falling asleep just reading the words. It’s practically a borderline hum.

This metaphor works because it is accurate, mirrors the story’s theme, and reveals information about the character and their relation to their world.

“Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest, // You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.” (Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric”)

Poetry is a little different than prose in this case, but it is also where some stellar metaphors can be found, since poetry is a true home of figurative language. I mean, look at these lines. A woman is the creator of life, the bearer of life, and the exit of life. “The gates of the body,” going in and out. Gates of the soul, finding and leaving. It’s all a bunch of very clever ways to refer to a woman’s sexuality and body separately, but also at the same time.

He calls attention to both the concrete, with gates, and the abstract, with the soul and rest. Which is what the entire poem is doing. He’s “singing the body electric,” praising all the body can be in both an physical and metaphysical sense.

This metaphor works because it is accurate, tells you how the speaker feels/reveals character, and fits the narrative tone.

“It surprised [the protagonist] how fond he had been of his teeth. His tongue, a flat sleek seal, used to flop and slide so happily among the familiar rocks, checking the contours of a battered but still secure kingdom, plunging from cave to cove, climbing this jag, puzzling that notch, finding a shred of sweet seaweed in the same old cleft; but now not a landmark remained, and all there existed was a great dark wound, a terra incognita of gums which dread and disgust forbade one to investigate.” (Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin)

I admit, I love Nabokov’s writing. And look how gorgeous this is. Now, I haven’t read this novel so I don’t know the context, but this is an excellent extended metaphor (which means it’s a metaphor that goes on for a while and explores several different aspects of the comparison).

A tongue as a “flat sleek seal”? Accurate, visceral, visual. The following description mimics the motions a tongue makes when running over the teeth, picking things out of them, examining them from the inside. “Finding a shred of sweet seaweed in the same old cleft” is like finding something between your teeth. And when a tooth is pulled, it does feel like something great and wide is missing. A “terra incognita of gums” - the undiscovered area, what was hidden from your tongue’s previous explorations and a place you don’t really want to touch because it’s weird and kinda gross now.

This metaphor works because it’s accurate, echoes the theme of the passage, and tells you something about this character and the way they feel.

“Put out the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me: but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.”

William Shakespeare, Othello v.ii

Let’s get classical for a minute. This is one of my personal favorite Shakespeare metaphors. I’ll take this one beat-by-beat because Middle English.

The first line refers to both the lantern he’s holding and Desdemona (his wife’s) life. First he puts out the flame he’s using to see, then he kills her. He goes on to say that if he puts out the light that is the flame, he can light it again no problem, but he can’t do the same with her life. This is the point of no return for him.

The extended metaphor here is the candle and light. There’s fire language (flaming, quench, heat, light, relume, etc.) and direct comparisons to said fire. And we have a direct allusion to the story of Prometheus, the Greek titan who created humans and stole fire from the gods to give to them, with “Promethean heat.” Putting out a candle = putting out the light of her life, the fire gifted by Prometheus, but Othello can’t light it again because he is not Prometheus and cannot find it again. There’s also a running theme of passion throughout the play, and what happens when passion is stoked too high (there’s another metaphor for ya) and spirals out of control.

This is also an example of how a cliché can work in your favor. There’s no direct reference to passion in this passage, but passion is often compared to heat and fire. By using fire as a comparison for life, Willy is using that cliché to his advantage by allowing the audience to connect life and passion via this metaphor. Clever, yeah?

The metaphor works because it’s accurate, it fits the tone, and echoes Othello’s character.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, shoot me a message! I’m always happy to help!

Some extra sources if you’re looking for a more in-depth look at metaphors and more examples:

Metaphor: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

How to Avoid Clichés and Bad Metaphors

Grammarly: What Is A Metaphor? (Also Metaphor vs Simile)

Want more original fiction? Take a gander at my original writing tag and my short stories tag!

For writing advice and observations, check out my advice tag.

Want info on my WIPs? Have a look-see at my WIP page!

Do you like the way I put words together? Consider buying me a Ko-Fi! (Link in my blog description!)

Want to be added to my original fiction tag or my WIP tags? Let me know! 😊

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aroworlds · 6 years

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So I was just kicked off of a famous ace blog chat room for saying Ebeneezer Scrooge is Aro ace , they told me to not headcanon gross characters Aro ace and I was like “ it’s not headcanon it’s fact “ he’s Aro ace coded , they got so offended they kicked me instead of discussing author bias against Aro aces , it’s not Scrooge’s fault dickens made him such a jerk to justify his villianization . I just ... I hate myself for not being socially acceptable around sensitive people

Anon, I am so sorry that you had to experience this awfulness. I assure you, this is not a case of people being sensitive. I’m also glad, selfishly, that you’ve sent this in, because it’s a wonderful excuse to talk about how current attitudes towards representation are running the risk of enabling bigotry more than preventing it.

This is a case of people engaging in clear, bold, specific aro-ace erasure and using the language of social justice to justify said erasure. It’s out-and-out aro-ace antagonism in the vein of denying an aro-ace person ability to express identity within the context of a well-known character and it is not okay. In fact, it’s downright reprehensible, to the extent that I could joyfully employ the thesaurus in finding alternate ways to discuss how despicable I find this–both the initial response in denying you identity/connection with a famous literary character and the resulting response in kicking you out of the ace community because you won’t fall in line with their ignorant ideas about representation.

You aren’t the problem here, anon. You never were the problem here. You do not deserve to hate yourself because you have been a victim of other people’s erasure, prejudice and dismissal. You do not deserve to hate yourself because you have been denied access to the asexual community for the crime of relating to a fictional character. You deserve to be angry, furious, outraged.

It’s hard not to feel this way when people are telling you that you don’t get to exist, when you have been kicked out of a community for daring to be yourself and express an connection for a character. It is absolutely not a failing in you that you feel the way you do–I want to be clear on that. We tend to direct the hate given by others towards ourselves, and that’s a normal human response. But it is not deserved.

It is not okay to tell a marginalised person that they cannot relate to a character coded like us. It is not okay to deny a marginalised person, often with few mainstream characters that depict anything close to our lived experiences, connection with a literary canon just because it isn’t good or idealised representation.

Scrooge–very aro-ace-coded to me, I must say–isn’t good representation. How can he be, given the context of his creation? That doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t relate to him, create headcanons, write fanfiction or draw fanart, make meta posts, discuss how we connect to his life. On the contrary, transformative media is about taking a character like Scrooge and making him meaningful, supportive, positive representation despite the canon. Fandom has always been for taking the failings in the source material and transforming it into something that celebrates us–that moves beyond simply being relatable.

We can connect to, celebrate and discuss a character in their canon without it being cast as good representation. We can understand the difference between good representation and connection with a character--that connection does not have to mean endorsement of the canon approach. In a world where there’s little mainstream representation to speak of, we have to fall back on the latter. Where do we exist without it? Nowhere.

To tell us that we cannot do that, that we have to wait instead on characters who fit the narrow box of idealised, intentional, pure, perfect representation, is erasure. It’s silencing. Because it’s so tangled up in social justice understandings (and performances) of representation in a culture where representation is valued and consequently stripped apart, it is also disingenuous and dangerous. In how we’ve come to consider and understand representation, we have handed people a weapon to dismiss people while sounding as though they’re not engaging in explicit erasure–usually targeting people of intersecting marginalised identities, like aro-aces, disabled a-specs and a-specs of colour (as a very incomplete list).

I’m sure folks who’ve followed me for a little while have realised that I’m not a fan of how it has become fashionable to discuss and conceptualise representation, and anon’s story is a very clear cut example of why. People understand that it is damaging to marginalise-code a villain/antihero/antagonist character (or make them specifically/intentionally of a marginalised identity). People understand the need for marginalised people to see themselves in positive/protagonist characters. We no longer, though, have any sense of grey space where a character is not good representation but is still relatable and allowed to be discussed for that alone.

I’m going to use Garth Nix’s Clariel as an example. Clariel is dreadful aro-ace representation, in my opinion: in her own story (Clariel) she’s a fairly-sympathetic anti-hero protagonist who makes some awful decisions in the name of trying to solve a difficult situation, but she becomes a series antagonist who carries out murderous actions (seen clearly in Goldenhand but alluded-to throughout the series). The aro-ace character steals young women’s bodies to house her own spirit. She is terrible, terrible aro-ace rep. But that doesn’t mean a-spec folks can’t or shouldn’t relate to her experiences as an aro-ace character. I can dislike her as representation because of her position as series antagonist while at the same time connecting to her disconnection from social interaction and preference to live alone (the autism-coding is significant!) and there is worth in discussing that connection.

I don’t see how characters like Scrooge are any different. You’ve made it clear that you’re discussing him in terms of coding. You’re not painting a picture of Scrooge as good, idealised representation. You’re just saying you see him as aro-ace, that Scrooge is a character in a long-line of aro-ace-coded antagonist-ish characters, and you just want to talk about that with other aces. (Since when has it become a problem to talk about the antagonism directed at aro-aces via aro-ace coding, anyway?) It isn’t a crime to even want to reclaim Scrooge, to build something positive out of a faulty canon, to talk about what he means to you as an aro-ace character. That’s what fandom is for.

We can, should and must discuss characters and properties that are damaging representation or are not representation at all (just coding) in ways that acknowledge the problems of their being rep (or that they’re not rep at all) without dismissing the fact that people will still connect to and wish to enjoy and share these characters. We can discuss problems in coding and representation for a certain property or character while still giving people space to discuss said connection.

The idea that I should only express connection for characters who are perfect, pure representation of my marginalised identities is bigotry. It’s erasure in social justice clothing. It silences the people who do not yet have the privilege of mainstream/readily-accessible representation while privileging those who do have increased access to representation, and we cannot allow or accept it. Your ask exemplifies this: we have a culture where many parts of the broader asexual community have a habit of seeing aro-ace as the wrong way to write asexual, and now there’s one less aro-ace character acceptable to talk about in an ace community space. That isn’t a coincidence; the people who have least representation will always be most harmed by this. Always.

Again, anon, I’m so sorry that you had to endure this. If you want to fill my inbox with your thoughts on Scrooge, go for it.

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sometimesrosy · 6 years

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story idea anon here! Im not 100% about everything I said exactly but to recap: I have a story idea for basically a series (5 books) and I’ve had it for awhile. The thing is, it’s sci-fi, which pretty much needs plot driven writing. I’m not good at that. It doesn’t make me wanna write. I’m good at character/feelings/relationship driven writing and that’s what makes me want to write and move the story forward. But I don’t wanna give up on the book just because I don’t know how to adapt.

(2) Obviously, because in order for things to happen, the plot is the thing that needs to move forward chapter to chapter in this kind of fiction. I know that. But it doesn’t seem to excite me, at all. I get excited about the slow burn I have mapped out, the story lines that will go on and complete each other from the first to the last chapter, the twists, the romance, the friendships and unexpected partnerships, the cliffhangers etc. All of it. But writing the things the characters are doing?

(3) As in plans and action scenes and fighting and bad guys and whatever? Nothing. It just seems like a chore and makes me procrastinate on moving forward. But I’ve had this idea for so long and I really like it and I really want to tell this story, I just don’t know how to do it right. Do I make it more character/feelings/relationship driven even though it doesn’t necessarily fit the genre? Do I power through the parts I don’t like even though it will make the process last longer? Do I change

(4) stuff? Do I try to change myself and my style? I don’t wanna just give up. Please help. (also i dont know if i’ve been on anon or not cause i just kinda started typing and didnt really stop)

Okay. Sorry for not answering this yesterday when I asked you to send in the missing #1 ask, but I had to do all sorts of other stuff and didn’t have the focus. Now it’s morning and i’m in writing brain, so let’s go.

All right, so it seems like you are struggling with the conflict between what you WANT to write and what you think you’re SUPPOSED to write.

The key to this struggle is to always let the WANT win over the SUPPOSED TO. Oh, well that sounds like I’m advocating complete and total writing anarchy! Who needs plot! Who needs structure! Nah I’m not. Not really.

BUT I am saying that you need to write the story you NEED to tell, the one that’s humming below your skin. Write the story you want to tell. Write the things that make you passionate. Write the things you’re good at.

Now this doesn’t mean ignore the plot or genre or the things you’re bad at. Facing the frisson of your fears and insecurities and struggles adds a tension to your work and leads you into new places that will surprise even you. So one of the things you can do when stuck between WANT and SHOULD is learn how to BALANCE them.

Okay, that doesn’t sound like letting the want win, but that’s how I work.

FIRST. FORGET ABOUT GENRE REQUIREMENTS. I mean, don’t. You know the world you’re writing in and the rules you have to follow. You know what you love about it, work with that. But it’s not as strict as you’re thinking it is. You get to BEND the rules, without actually breaking them. Sure, we love sci fi because of the action and ideas… and sure, i personally might have given up on the literary fiction genre because I was SO bored of it, but if you take the character and language driven style of literary fiction and combine it with the plot and concept driven style of sci fi, what you have is a DAMN FINE STORY. You see what I’m saying? You can use the best parts of BOTH to make your story better. BALANCE.

You don’t have to sacrifice who you are as a writer to write a particular genre. It’s part of you and it’s your voice and what makes you unique. I’ll tell you a secret. I’m actually a poet. I don’t write much poetry anymore, but I take my poetry and put it into my science fiction and fantasy. My whole writing style is based on, basically, the poetry of the world. I may not give each sentence the attention I would a poem, but the impulse is still there, even if the genre is miles away from what I’m writing. And that makes for a better story. Sometimes I think I’m a better fiction writer than poet PRECISELY because I use my poetry IN my fiction.

You aren’t WRONG as a sci fi writer because you like to focus on emotions and characters and relationships. You’re a sci fi writer with character driven stories. I guarantee you that people like that. Not all people. And some people will complain that it’s not hard enough or science fictiony enough or too girly or whatever, but, honestly, WHO CARES? Don’t write for everybody. You can’t please everybody. Write for yourself.

I personally prefer my science fiction to be character driven and I prefer to have some element of love in there, and I need to be able to connect to the characters emotionally. I think this is one reason why I prefer women writers. And one reason why I stopped listening to male critics about “What makes sci fi sci fi.” Because frankly, I’m more interested in how society works and how characters move within society than I am in whether or not my FTL space travel could conceptually work or the intricacies of war and weaponry. If boys want to play technology war in space, they can. I want to find out how that war affects my characters when it’s over and they have to keep living. Now what?

Oh. In case you didn’t catch that, there is definitely a gender driven status thing within the sci fi community that invalidates women’s stories and glorifies men’s stories, so please make sure that’s not what’s in your head while you are critiquing the kind of story you want to tell. Because if NK Jemisin’s THREE consecutive Hugo awards, and the backlash against her winning them, is not proof that we WANT the different stories, and how some people don’t want us to tell them, then I don’t know what is.

The sci fi and fantasy genre is always changing and shifting to allow for new ideas and ways of writing. That’s what it’s for. It’s speculative. And we like new ideas. There is lots of room for experimentation. There’s lots of room for alien thinking. lol. you see what I did there? The point is, sci fi is about new and different concepts and where they could take us. Go ahead and invent your own genre. Or maybe you’re not inventing it, and it’s already there as a subgenre and you never noticed. There is actually a sci fi romance subgenre, and it’s a subgenre of romance I think. I don’t tend to prefer it because it follows the tropes of romance rather than sci fi, but you can also write sci fi that focuses on romance, like Sharon Shinn. Her stories are very romantic. But definitely sci fi.

Okay, so that’s some conceptual stuff I want you to think about in regards to your writing process and style. But I also have some practical suggestions/tips/hints that might help you get over your hump. I’ve got two in my mind right now, lets see if I can come up with any others as I go along.

One trick. What I do sometimes, is to set up the overall, grand scheme plot, and really have no idea how I’m going to get there. Like that part you��re talking about, writing about what the characters are doing? None of that is set up. When I get there, I enter into the character motivations. Feelings, thoughts, backstory, personality, goals, desires, fears. ALL of these things are what move my plot forward. Because what I keep asking is, “how would this character react to this situation.” Now if I’ve done my job with character building then I will KNOW because I know my characters history and personality, and I can power the story with their growth and struggles. The question is always, “What Would MC Do?” I drive my plot forward by following my characters through the world I set up and basing their decisions on who they are. Some of them are emotional. Some of them are logical. Some of them are angry, some are pacifistic. All those characters are interacting with each other and shifting the story this way or that. This causes tension and gives us problems to solve and ways to solve it. You pick the ones that get you to your endpoint. Sometimes I think I’ve taken myself AWAY from my planned ending and I’m like, oh well, I guess I need a different ending. And then I get to the ending and, like magic, everything I set up starts falling into place and what I originally planned and thought had failed has been building all along. (GOOD JOB, SUBCONSCIOUS!) That has happened to me TWICE in the past year.

Another trick. This came from a twitter post where someone was saying how she wanted to just write stories about WLW in love, but she didn’t have a plot. And I said. What do you mean you don’t have a plot? That’s your plot. Love is the answer. Love is the goal. Obstacles to love are what your characters need to fight through. Love is how your characters find strength. I said, make love the super power. Make the villain be the one who is trying to kill love, whether individually or on a universal level. For sci fi there are so many ways to do that. Maybe they’re trying to create a solely logical universe. Maybe they’re cyborgs. Maybe they want to kill a planet that the MC loves, IDK. Use your imagination. Fit it to your story. Don’t create an obstacle and plot that doesn’t connect to your desire for character and relationships and love. MAKE YOUR PLOT ABOUT THAT LOVE. It’s sci fi, you can invent the technology to make it real. Or magic if you’re doing fantasy. IMO it’s the same thing.

Oh here’s another thing. Maybe you need to stop listening to your doubts and internal editor so much, telling you that what you’re writing isn’t right. The thing that helped me get over that obsession with doing it wrong was actually nanowrimo, which I did for the first time in 2006. If you’ve done it before, or if you haven’t, you might be ready to take on this challenge to write a novel in the month of november this year, for this project. You’ve been thinking about it a lot. It sounds like you’re ready. And if you have to focus on getting the wordcount done, and you start focusing on character instead of plot, you won’t have time to get worried about whether you’re being too charactery and not ploty enough. (how is charactery a word but ploty isn’t? anyway.) And then by the time you’ve written it, you can read it over and decide if your plot is thin or it doesn’t move you forward enough, and THEN you can ADD IN THE PLOT ELEMENTS that you don’t write in your process. WHAT? Or you can remove some of the slower character driven stuff and just use it for your character development. Or even take it out and turn it into a short story. THIS is the writing process. The revision process. Just write your little heart out, and then go back over it to add in the elements you’re missing and remove the things that don’t move the story forward.

TL;DR Whatchutalkin’ bout nonny. You’ve got a plot. You’ve mapped it out. It’s character driven. Stop doubting yourself. If you want more action, stick it in there. Make it relationship/character driven. Don’t change yourself. Make it work.

ps. i answer questions here about writing, no problem, but i have a writing blog where i try to collect posts (mine and others) about writing, and art and creativity @rosy-writes so if you want to follow or scroll that it might be more focused, although this blog is more active.

#writing advice #rosy-writes #amwriting #writeblr #writing sci fi #plot #character driven #writing practice #internal editor

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ctechnology · 3 years

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The Attraction Trip-Wire

That Awakens a Man's Deepest Longing for Love

Trip Wire:“A hidden trigger that sets off a series of explosive events.”

Deep within the heart of every man is an intense longing to be someone's hero.

This longing has ancient origins.

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You can see how this works now

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