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Comicality

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  1. Comicality

    Story Parallels

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Story Parallels If ‘this’…then ‘that’.
    When I’m writing or even creating a new idea for a new story in my head...that’s always a part of the process. Always. Not only from beginning to end, but involving the characters that exist within the plot and the world that I ultimately built, just for them. There is just something that gives the story a very personal level of depth for me, and it’s become a permanent style when it comes to my writing in general. Everything has a cause and an effect in life, depending on how you feel about it...and those effects can vary according to who you are, and not just the circumstances that are surrounding you. That makes all the difference, you know? And it has been both the light and the darkness of everything that I’ve written so far.
    I definitely take pride in that. Both through the good times and the bad.
    But there’s a certain dichotomy that naturally add to all of my stories that just exists as a sort of empathetic view into what’s really going on there in my story overall. (Keep an eye out for my article on the empathetic gateway...coming soon!) With all of the content that I put out there, there is a contrast between my main protagonist and the people or situations that he is forced to deal with in order to navigate his way around certain obstacles to find the love that he is longing for. In “A Class By Himself”, for example, the main character is trying so hard to fit in with the other rich kids at his school, and getting knocked down, time and time again. But his love interest, Tanner, is actually much more excited about the life that our protagonist lives in, and would much rather be a part of that instead. In the story, “On The Outside”, our protagonist learns the value of living in a world where his love interest is out of the closet, and begins to wonder what it would be like to live life with that level of honesty and freedom, teasing and bullying be damned. There’s a comparison and a contrast to everything that I do, because it’s a natural part of who I am. Someone who’s straight versus someone who’s gay, someone who’s rich versus someone who’s poor, someone unfathomably beautiful versus who thinks of themselves as just being plain and ‘normal’. There are always parallels in what I write, and I just love being able to explore the whole idea with my fiction the way that I do.
    Writing with parallels just means having the ability to see most situations from two different points of view, which often times ends up appealing to a wider audience and even inspiring discussions between them on what they think about the events happening and what’s going on and why they think that way. These conversations show that people are really thinking about the things that you’re writing about, and they are truly invested in one side or the other.
    Now, naturally, we’re not dealing in a black and white, good and evil, type of world anymore. Everyone has agendas and motivations and self guided journeys towards what they want out of life...and being able to place the main theme of your story between those two extremes and allowing it to grow and thrive that grey area is a very intriguing and engaging place to be. You know? This is what keeps your readers awake, and forces them to chose sides...each side with it’s own set of rewards and consequences. I’ve always thought that these were the building blocks of a truly amazing story, because it personalizes the struggle within it, and makes your readers a part of it.
    Without giving out any spoilers, just in case...I think Marvel’s “Civil War” is an excellent example of writers using this idea to their advantage, and truly sticking the landing at the end of it all. You’re being given an in depth look at both sides of the conflict, and how it is totally in line with both characters and personalities on either side of that wall...and then you have this truly violent, but understandable, clash between them. PERFECTLY done! If you haven’t seen it...you might have to go on a long journey through all of the Marvel movies in order so you can get the full effect. Sorry. Hehehe! But if you HAVE seen it, then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about, and will hopefully agree.
    These are still ‘movies’, sure...and they’re different from what I grew up with...but I’m sure you can read my stories and immediately see why I always credit comic books with teaching me story and character and how to write if you watch that movie as well as a number of others in the MCU!
    But ‘parallels’ are the point here. An action with an equal and opposite reaction. A positive versus a negative. I really do believe that it makes for an amazing story, whether your readers actually realize them or not. How can I say this in a way that makes sense? Hehehe….
    Hold on a sec...
    Ok, you know the old cliché moment where you have the main villain and the main hero in the same room, sort of squaring off against one another...and the villain (Prepare for the overworked phrase) says, “We’re not so different, you and I!” Ok, that’s it. Right there. But don’t be so blatant and weird about it when you write it out! LOL! If you’re wondering whether or not people are sick of hearing it...th answer is yes! We’re tired of hearing it. But that doesn’t mean that you have to abandon the actual parallel between both of the characters. Just...try not to say it if you can get around it. And, hey...I understand...there’s not always a way to get around it! I get it. I mean, if the straightforward approach is what is going to work best for you as a writer and for your readers in that particular situation….then go for it. There’s no SHAME in it...just don’t use it as a lazy way out if you can help it, that’s all.
    Like, in “Gone From Daylight” (I won’t give any spoilers if I can help it), it’s like my main character, Justin, has a truly dark and abusive past. On that put him on a path where he internalized it and allowed him to become suicidal in the process. That was a major part of his transformation into who he was bound to become later on in the series. His pain and suffering has become a permanent part of who he is. And then, later on...readers are introduced to ‘Rage’. And Rage is meant to be a direct parallel to who Justin is as one of his main antagonists. Rage is who Justin could have become if all of his anger and hatred, instead of taking it all upon himself and becoming suicidal...what if he lashed out instead? H is the equal and the opposite of my main character, but there are many ways to show that without having to have either side say it verbally. It’s just a matter of taking two pieces of a puzzle and creating a situation where they simply don’t fit anymore. This is the genius of the story parallel.
    Imagine Batman...being the world’s greatest detective...being pitted against the Joker...who is simply insane and it’s nearly impossible to figure out what he wants, or if he wants anything at all! How could you find a more formidable villain than that for the main hero, who’s an expert at constantly trying to make sense out of what’s going on in someone’s head facing who acts with no rational motivations at all? Genius. But a perfect parallel, nonetheless. And I love it!
    For every character that I create, for every event that I put into motion in my stories...there’s something there to counteract it or balance things out in a way that creates one of two things...sincere understanding…or shameless hypocrisy. Either way, it becomes an important issue that has to be discussed and dealt with in the story. In “New Kid In School”...you can’t be jealous of your boyfriend having a cute friend and occasionally flirting with him, when you’re guilty of doing the same. And worse. That can’t work out until the issue plays out in the story, and this creates secrets and intrigue for your readers to be even more involved in. Again, it’s the parallels that add a little bit of spice to your story, and keep people from both sides of the argument fully involved.
    I wrote a story called “Save Or Sacrifice” (https://gayauthors.org/story/comicality/saveorsacrifice) after a painful experience of my own where two friends of mine...well, let’s just say, I was heartbroken from the whole situation, and I just couldn’t hold onto the hurt of it all anymore. It was tearing me up inside, and I just wanted to get rid of it. But I was trying my best to understand it all, and I wrote the whole miniseries as a story parallel. Where you got to see things from three different points of view, and could understand why these things happened the way they did. I mean, obviously, I didn’t know any of these things for sure, but I didn’t want to demonize anybody, and I tried not to let my current emotions overpower the story in a way that felt selfish of cruel. That’s not what any of that was about. I was just hurt. Deeply hurt. And allowing my feelings to see things from different perspectives and make sense out of it all...really helped me out in the end of it all. And once people read it all from beginning to end, the comments they left behind were really special to me. Like...they ‘got it’, you know? And that’s more than anything that I could have asked for. I cherish “Save Or Sacrifice” as one of my favorites, for that very reason.
    Writing parallels into your story is developing to put two ideologies, two opposing feelings, or two contrasting situations, against one another and putting them at war with each other until one of them comes out on top….but still seeing the value and empathy on both sides of the equation. Having an understand of the other side, and incorporating that into your fiction. If this...then this. It’s not just the event itself, but how the characters you’ve created handle the event that creates the ‘split’. It’s easy to most people to figure out right from wrong, moral from immoral, good from evil, in their own heads...according to their upbringing and understanding of these concepts...
    ...But what will your audience think and feeling when they get a peek at the motivations and rewards to be had from the other side of the equation? Inner conflict creates tension and anxiety...and that keeps people reading. If this...then that. Keep that in mind. Make it a mantra. Cause and effect. What you gain, may be a loss for someone else...and vice versa.
    I keep parallels in my stories because they end up being the most relatable parts of my fiction. People understand need, loss, temptation, envy...and the story can really thrive off of adding the antithesis of all of those things in the frame of another character or environmental obstacle. Something that you can dive into to provide insight and reason into the balancing out of the equation. If that makes sense, despite the weird way that I tried to explain it all...then awesome! You’re well on your way to having another literary weapon in your arsenal!
    If not...ummmm...questions? I’ll try to answer them as best as I can. Promise!
    Anyway, happy writing, you guys! I’ll seezya soon with more, but until then...just know that I love ya lots! And I’ll be seeing ya soon with more! ((Hugz))
     
  2. Comicality

    Immersion

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Immersion Something that I think about, mostly for science fiction or other genres of fiction outside of my normal fanfare, is finding out how to really pull my readers into this new world that I’ve built, often from scratch, and find a way to truly keep them immersed in it from beginning to end without having it feel like some sort of ‘trick’ or an illusion. You know how you have those really weird dreams that you don’t really recognize as dreams until you wake up, and you think, “What the fuck made me fall for that craziness when I KNOW that I’m a fully rational person and not completely insane? Hehehe, yes...I do that all the time! But during the dream, it seems like a perfectly logical set of rules and fears and choices for me to have and pursue until I wake up the next morning. Sometimes...THAT’S the quality that I want my stories to have! And I feel that I’ve gotten really lucky in the art of pulling that off over the years with a few of the stories that I write. Not always...but, let’s just say that I’m proud of my ‘success to fail’ ratio so far. Hehehe, and that is more difficult that most nw writers might think it is. So take heed, rookies! Let me and any other GayAuthors who want to comment on this guide you into the light! Because it’s a special skill to have when you’re writing, and even more so when you’re just getting started! So pay attention! ((Hugz))
    For me, the whole idea is to pull my readers away from their everyday lives and trade it all in for a world of my own making. Absent of mundane tasks and brainwashed rules of civil engagement. All while erasing the feeling that it’s just a fictional story that they’re reading. It’s something more than that. It’s a transport to a whol other life through the eyes of someone who is living the life you always wanted to live if you could go back and do it again, knowing what you know now. How different would your life, or all of our lives, be...if you could go back and prevent some of the mistakes that you made growing up? And by ‘growing up’, I’m not just talking about childhood here. I’m talking high school, adulthood, family life, retirement years...hindsight is always 20/20...but you fiction is your time portal to explore all of those ‘multiversal’ parts of yourself where you made different choices, fixed some of those regrets, and imagine what could have been if it weren’t for...’whatever’. Hehehe! It doesn’t have to be super dramatic, depressing, or anything like that. It’s just you writing out your fantasies about what might have happened if you had been on the journey that you are on now and had maybe taken a few different forks on the road along the way. I mean...don’t you ever wonder about it? I do! All the time! And it’s a major focus for all of the writing that I do online!
    Well, there are plenty of readers out there who share that sentiment. Some of them even ache over the regret of not making those different choices when they had the chance. I’ll be honest...I do too from time to time. It hurts to think that my whole life could be totally different right now if I had only asked that on cute boy out on a date. Or if I had been writing stories instead of being so afraid of what people would say about it all. Or if had continued my acting career instead of getting discouraged when I was younger. So many questions, it’s crazy. But that’s where my writing frees me! That’s what I draw from as my greatest strength, and use it to build the kind of stories that I wish I could have lived through while I was curled up in the corner, sooooo scared of coming out or being exposed for liking other boys. I mean...looking back, I KNOW some of those cute boys were gay, and probably would have been thrilled to know that they weren’t alone! But I made the mistake of being too afraid to make a go of it. And now the rest is left up to the pointless fictional romances in my mind.
    Where is Comsie going with this?
    Hang in there. Hehehe, because adding theses elements to your writing can really pull your audience in and give them even more reasons to read and follow your work for long periods of time. No matter how long it takes. There’s no WAY that you can’t say that I’m a self proclaimed expert in this field! Hehehe, so don’t click away just yet! There’s a bit more coming!
    This is the goal, folks. And the goal is reader immersion.
    One thing that I’ve learned over the years when it comes to achieving this miraculous feat is by getting them to experience the story the way that I experience the story.
    Don’t worry. It’s not really difficult for any practiced writer to pull off if they want to do it. It just takes a slight tilt on the whole the ‘reader empathy’ idea. It’s a method that will bring your audience in and get them to lean a few inches closer to their computer screens (That’s bad for your eyes, ya know? Hehehe!) and throw a large chunk of their reality away for an isolated piece of your adventure...even when times in that world are going downhill in the worst way. As I’ve said in previous articles...it’s all about involving them in the process of the story itself. And, in this particular case, that all comes from surrounding your premise, plot, environment, character motivations, and story arcs around a single important question. Just one.
    How does this relate to you?
    Developing and building on that question is what is going to attract and hold onto your audience in ways that other stories won’t. So it’s definitely an important part of the process, and one you should practice until it becomes a subliminal part of you simply doing what it is you do with your writing. So, let’s get into it, shall we?
    Immersion is a skill that can’t really be taught, it can only be developed over time. It can only be understood...and the deeper your understanding of it goes, the easier it becomes. Otherwise, everything that you write is just words on a page. Great words, educated vocabulary, proper mechanics and structure, all placed in a certain sequential order with a particular rhythm and cadence to it...it can make for a decent story. But how will it make you feel while you’re reading it? What does it inspire in you? What moves you? Sure, it can deliver everything that you need to know to have it make sense...but so does the instruction booklet for whatever your latest gimmicky purchase was. If you ever look at your own work and wonder what’s missing? The answer is ‘immersion’. You’re not one with the story. It exists outside of you, and therefore outside of your readers. It’s just well written grafiti spray painted on the wall for other people to glance at as they walk by. The true ‘experience’ has been lost. But, worry not...this can be fixed. You just have to make it an automatic part of your process. And that can be done by keeping three rules in mind.
    Let’s all take a moment and be honest here...we’re all selfish. Hehehe! It’s true! Selfish beings, constantly trying to deny that narcissistic streak inside that wants everything to be all about us. Especially when it comes to our escapism and our entertainment. So...let’s start there. The three rules of truly engaging an audience begins with that one simple question...
    How does this relate to me?
    We answer this question with the stories we create. The three rules are as follows...
    - Common Desires
    - Common Fears
    - Common Obstacles
    If you can hook your readers into those three parts of your story, plot, and main character...then you’ve got the winning lottery ticket. Pretty much with anything and everything that you write from that day forward. They may seem vague in description, but that’s the beauty of it. Because even if your audience hasn’t been through this particular situation, whether it be a joyful reward or a devastating hardship, they can still relate to it because you’ve spoken to a part of them that goes deeper than that. That is what makes it work so well.
    When I talk about a ‘common desire’...it doesn’t have to be a precise part of your storytelling. Let’s say that you’re a gay man, with an infatuation for someone special to you, taking care of your little nephew after his parents died, trying to promote your band and gain funding for a new album. Now, that’s a pretty specific situation to be in, and there are very few people who can relate to that kind of thing. BUT...what they can relate to are the common desires of that story. Being infatuated, falling in love, caring for and nurturing a child, following your passion in life, and trying to elevate your station through your work. Don’t bury those parts of the story. If anything, you should be bringing them to the forefront. People can zoom in on the themes that you’re working with, and that will increase the level of immersion for your readers. Like, “Omigod...it’s like this story was written just for ME!” I do it too. On some level, we all do when it comes to the stories we really love and get a kick out of. The memorable ones that we quote on occasion and think about when we get a few quiet moments to ourselves.
    The same thing applies for the other two rules. Common fears should be written in and expressed. We all feel scared sometimes. Love is intimidating, unfamiliar surroundings create anxiety, threats of violence or even just ridicule triggers a ‘fight or flight’ response on a biological level. Why not on a mental or emotional level as well? What would you do in these situations? I mean...it’s easy to read a story and then sit back and think about it, and then complain about how you would have written it differently after the fact...but how would you have responded right there in the present moment? When all logic has been tossed out the window and your faced with, what feels like, a life or death situation? Bring your audience into that exact moment. Even if they come back hours later and complain about what they WOULD have done...hehehe, maybe, maybe not...but for those few brief moment, I had you locked into MY reality! And things here work MY way! So deal with it!
    The rule about common obstacles? Same instincts are put to work here. Obstacles likes social norms, like possible embarrassment, like poverty, like gossip and rumors, racism, homophobia, forbidden love, or simple insecurity about your looks, your age, your weight. These are all issues that people are forced to deal with on a daily basis. And even the ones who haven’t experienced it for themselves...the very concept of having obstacles in the way of you living your best life without judgement and harassment is enough for them to understand, and therefore bond with your story. They’re immersed in it now. And that will carry you much further than all of the poetic words and flowery metaphors ever could.
    Readers don’t just ‘read’. They embrace and personalize the fiction that they absorb. Like I always say, the success of any story isn’t just about the writer. It’s a symbiotic relationship between the author and their audience. What you write and what they feel have an equal part in this madness. Hehehe! So don’t just ‘tell your story’...bring them in. Extend an invitation to be a part of its success, and allow them to see what you see. Feel what you feel. Taste what you taste.
    Hehehe, that last one might be fun!
    Alright, that’s all for now. Some more food for thought as I try to explain my methods and share them all while I’m still alive and kicking. It’s actually been a fun exercise, trying to explain myself after 26 years of playing everything by ear. I like it. Sometimes, I think that putting this stuff into words makes me pay more attention to what I’m doing, and I’m learning the same way I hope you guys are.
    So happy writing! And I’ll seezya soon with more! Love you lots, folks!
     
  3. Comicality

    Beneath The Surface

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Beneath The Surface There are many different ways to tell a story. And these are all stories that mean something to us (I’m assuming) on some deeper level that anything that most readers are able to pick up on right away. Even when the idea seems to be really obvious on the surface...there may be a lot of deeper meanings underneath it. And that can truly affect your readers in a fundamentally powerful way...even if only on a subconscious level. And that can end up being a very influential weapon indeed when you have something to say that many might find uncomfortable or difficult to deal with. Your fiction may have something that it really wants to say without really saying it...but the message can be delivered just the same if you know how to do it.
    The truth is...nobody wants to be ‘taught a lesson’, even if it’s good for them. No one wants to feel like they’re being preached to from an elevated pulpit, and told how to act, think, and feel. Even though a majority of people live that life anyway, they don’t want to feel it. Hehehe, yeah, I don’t get it either! But...whatever.
    However, if you can take whatever is on your mind...your joy, your sadness, your outrage, your personal philosophies...and put them within the context of a well written story...you just might end up reaching many more people than you ever thought you could have. And it’s all in the simple task of using metaphor to deliver your ideas beneath what’s being displayed on the surface of your average story. Now, I’m not talking about trying to push forth some kind of heavily determined agenda with your work. Hehehe, no need to be a bordeline fascist about it! But I totally understand the concept that sometimes writers just have something that they feel they need to say with their art. Sometimes it subtle, and sometimes it’s not so subtle. It all depends how you, as a creator want to place it on the scale. It’s your right to do so, so why not leave a courageous footprint behind that puts it out there the way that you see it? You know?
    I hope that I’m not inspiring anybody to write anything truly despicable with this article. That’s not the point of any of this, I swear. What I’m saying is that there are ways to approach certain issues by writing them into your stories in an almost ‘sneaky’ way. Let people know how you feel. How can you entertain an audience without any authenticity to self? It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible. Isn’t it?
    Please don’t use this as a license to be a total douchebag. If you’re one of those people who constantly get banned from Facebook or Twitter...then you’re probably taking your ‘freedoms’ a little too far over the line. So, you know...don’t do that.
    Let me use the show, “Them”, as a prime example of what I’m talking about here. Now this is more of a heavy bash over the head approach to the theme of the series, but I felt that it was expertly done. The show is all about an up and coming black family that moves into a really nice affluent suburb neighborhood back in the 50’s...and are looking to build a better life for themselves. And the current residents can’t let THAT happen, can they? Ugh!
    But the whole story is told through a lens of extreme frustration and madness that comes from having deal with that level of hatred, day after day, and whether it’s even worth it for the family to stay where they are, or if they should let their enemies win by chasing them away off of the property that they legally own and paid for. (People are SO fucked up sometimes!) I’m putting the trailer down below, and a scene to demonstrate how the story was being told beneath the story being offered on the surface.
    “Them” takes a very dark turn...being a combination of “The Conjuring” and “The Shining” in the long run. It’s a fascinating series if you’re interested in watching it. I highly recommend it. It messes with your head in a major way. From the racist neighbors, to the haunted house, to the horrific ‘Pennywise’ level, minstrel evil clown that pops up to push the patriarch further into madness. It’s crazy, and I LOVE it! A very underrated series, in my opinion.
     
    000 Now this is a story about racism and life back when this sort of behavior was accepted and embraced. Maybe even celebrated. But the lingering effects of it on the people being discriminated against is being told with an overlying theme of it being a haunting ghost story. It’s like the theme of the fiction shines by giving it a bit of a creative ‘tilt’ that is both intriguing and mysterious. The main message is clearly being delivered either way...but as a writer, you can send it in a way where people can consume and digest it without really being conscious of it being the main point until later. It’s like a pitcher unexpectedly throwing you a curve ball. It gives your story an added layer of depth and meaning, and being able to interpret and discuss what’s really going on underneath the surface of the main story increases it’s longevity overall. Because every person that reads it will see it in a different way, pick out different highlights, and will want to talk about it with other readers in order to compare and contrast their own thoughts and feelings with them. Not to mention the urge to re-read the story from the beginning to pick up little breadcrumbs that they might have missed the first time around.
    All of these elements help to immortalize your stories in the hearts of your audience. And longevity is a good thing. Hehehe!
    Another example of a layered story that was extremely well done and not really ‘hidden’, but woven into the fabric of another story entirely...was Marvel’s Netflix show, “Jessica Jones”. Now, I sort of remember Jessica Jones from the comic books (Mostly from the Avengers nearly beating her to death! LOL! Long story…), but her story here involves her recovering from a long standing relationship with a villain known mostly as ‘The Purple Man’. Someone with the power of complete mind control. Like...you’re conscious of what you’re doing, but are unable to stop yourself from doing it, regardless. Which sucks in this case, because he happens to be a bit of a sadist about it.
    The whole first season is incredible if you ever get a chance to watch it. But the layer underneath? It’s basically a rape story. Rape and manipulation and abuse in a toxic relationship. It’s an edgy comic book show, sure...but you can easily see the underlying themes shining through in every episode. The idea of being controlled and forced to do things against your will...and the inner damage that it does to you over time. Jessica Jones is a truly intriguing and broken individual, and as a character, both vulnerable and standoffish at the same time (Played brilliantly by Krysten Ritter)...she shines brightly from the very first episode all the way to the last. Almost like a damaged, alcoholic, version of Wonder Woman, hehehe!
    And yet...superhero vibe aside...it’s a story of rape and domestic abuse in a lot of ways. That deeper meaning is the real heart of this series, and it touches a core part of anyone who has ever felt trapped in that kind of relationship. Which is probably why it did so well when it was first released.
     
    000 The stalking, the control, the intimidation, the pursuit of friends and loved ones...you definitely notice it when you see it, but there’s a part of you that still sees it as a comic book flavored story of a hero being pitted against a very formidable villain at the end of the day. As a writer, you have the ability to take what you really want to say, and change the meaning, the context, the genre, or the dramatic effect of whatever it is that you’re trying to create. That’s a huge part of the power and the joy that comes with being able to do whatever it is that you do. So, whether you’re trying to do this professionally, or just pursue it as a fun hobby in your spare time...enjoy it for all that it’s worth.
    Your mind is the only limit you have when it comes to this stuff. Hehehe!
    All you have to do is fully embrace the context of your story before you get started, and make little tweaks and changes here and there until it begins to take on a different shape. Stories about bullying, domestic abuse, drug addiction, love obsession, or loneliness...can end up being different stories entirely without hitting your audience over the head with your content. Another story that I truly felt was an excellent example of this technique was a movie about severe loss, fatigue, and frustration...but it was basically told in the form of a horror story. And that movie was “The Babadook”...which, if you’ve seen it, then you probably already know what I’m talking. The lurking ‘evil’ of the film’s main monster ends up taking a backseat to a bunch of other issues that come off as much more relatable and engaging to any audience that has ever experienced the kinds of feelings and exhaustion that’s going on here. Even if you’re not a horror fan, you won’t have to worry about gore or anything disturbing your ability to handle it. I suggest you give it a look, and take a few moments to further study what’s going on beneath the surface here.
     
    There is an almost infinite number of ways of saying what you have to say without saying...but, you know...still saying it. Hehehe, if that makes sense! There are times for heavy blatant, heavy hitting, drama...and times for intimate subtlety. (Look for my article on “David And Goliath” soon!) The key is knowing the difference, and developing a natural instinct for when and where each option is most appropriate, and the most effective. It’s something that you have to think about and ultimately play around with until you get it right...but once you do, it doesn’t take much effort at all to bend it to your will and have some real fun with it. Give it a try some time!
    Try telling one story under the guise of another, and see if you can still have it work. It’ll be awesome. You’ll see.
    Alrighty then...I hope this gives you some insight on how I structured some of the stories that I’ve written over the year. I don’t want to list them here as it kind of ruins a bit of the effect, but I’m sure if you check out a great deal of my work, especially the sci fi or horror stuff, you’ll be able to pick out a great deal of underlying messages in there somewhere! I do enjoy them a great deal, after all.
    Have fun writing, folks! And never pass up an opportunity to expand your skill set with something that you’ve never tried before. Because, win or lose, there’s always more growth to be had.
    If you’ve already tried this out before, or just did it naturally, feel free to shar your experiences down below! Take care! And I’ll seezya soon!
     
  4. Comicality

    Geek Chic

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Geek Chic Now, I have to tell you all...I have always had a real soft spot in my heart for a boy who is a little bit of a geek. Hehehe, always have, always will. I mean, I love intelligence, I love a shy guy, and I love to laugh...so that’s like hitting the jackpot to me. They can just be soooo sweet sometimes, and I think they can be extremely fun to write as well. So have some mercy on me.
    I think that one of the elements of ‘geek chic’ that has always stood out to me is the fact that it can really be relatable to an audience, no matter what it is that you’re writing. Mostly because, whether people find they’re particular stride at a really young age, or don’t get through it until they’re older (if ever)...we all had to start out as a geek at one time or another in our lifetimes. Hhehe, and don’t you dare pretend that you didn’t! We all had to ask someone to dance for the first time in our lives, or ask someone out on a date, or lean in for that very first kiss...and it makes for the kind of moments that I really love to bring to life in my stories and for everybody reading. How can a story that cause memories like that to resurface again and not captivate you now like it did back then? These are memories that we’ve all come to cherish to the best of our ability and when we can read from any author who capture that feeling just right...then we’re almost immediately invested. No matter how it is used as a part of the story. Whether it’s the protagonist, the love interest, or a side character...it’s been my experience that they always end up standing out in the end. Sometimes more than anybody else that I’m writing about.
    I think there’s something very personable about characters that might come off as being a bit nervous in a story. A little awkward, a little clumsy. Finding that appeal in one of your main focuses seems to add an adorable feel to your cast. It takes your readers’ invested emotions and it taps into their most nurturing instincts, creating a bond and an engage that needs protecting at all costs. Basically, it triggers the ‘underdog’ appeal, and they become someone that people want to root for...whether it’s for good reasons or for bad ones.
    So, whenever I add an Ariel to “New Kid In School”, or a Preston to “Shelter”, or a Dylan to “Gone From Daylight”...they almost always steal the spotlight. Almost to the point where I have to find plausible reasons to send them somewhere out of the spotlight so some of the other can characters can get noticed too. It’s TRUE! And if you read any one of those stories where one of the side characters come sliding in with that lovable ‘geek chic’ appeal, I usually have to make sure that they’re out doing something else entirely if I have other important stuff to do with the main focus of the story. Otherwise, it all falls into the background. Hehehe, Ariel needed his own STORY to keep him busy!
    Now, things are obviously much different when the so-called ‘geek’ happens to be the main love interest of my story. Then I can keep his adorable presence around as often as possible, and it becomes a truly enjoyable part of the project as a whole. This is where I don’t mind having him take a lion’s share of the attention away from anything and everything that’s going on, and that adorable vibe can be used more to my advantage than as a distraction. Now I can really have fun playing around with all of those cut puppy dog antics and use them to create a more engaging character that was actually built to be the main focus of my story, and if readers fall in love with him...then great! Mission accomplished!
    And of course, for a more personal view of the geek chic narrative (Mostly because I almost always write in the first person)...I can adopt as a major part of the protagonist’s point of view instead. This has a much a different feel to it, because the focus on his constant thoughts and awkwardness is practically the entire idea of the story itself. It becomes the lens that all other characters, events, and one on one dialogue, is seen through. Something that I also have a lot of fun writing, but if you’re going to do that yourself...you have to understand that this is going to set the tone of the story, and the story arc, and it’s something that needs to remain consistent all the way through until something changes or their character arc helps them to grow out of it. So you have to make sure that that’s the story that you want to tell before getting started. Because flipping back and forth...will make for a sloppy and unfocused story.
    That being said...it can be great to have your protagonists play this role, and really enhance the feelings that go along with it with your readers. Those nervous jitters, those embarrassing accidents, those uncomfortable silences...you remember the excitement and the terror that came along with them, don’t ya? Hehehe, give them some thought. Think back to when it was you. It’s not really difficult to recreate if you can personify the feelings behind it, and try seeing life through that lens all over again. Sometimes high school, or getting a new job, or moving in together to start a new relationship, or going through your first big break up...it can be a really nerve-wracking experience for most people. Coming out of the closet, your first gay bar, bringing your partner home to meet your family...think about all of the things that could go wrong, and all the hard work you went through trying to avoid those things. Hehehe, congrats! You’ve had your geek experience! Now put it into words and translate those feelings for your audience to relate to and enjoy. That’s all this is. Not much more.
    Geek chic can be used for lighthearted comical moments, or it can be used for periods of tension and angst...some use it for drama, some for sad moments of self reflection, and some as a lone obstacle that has to b conquered so your characters can win the day. Whatever you decide to use it for, or what kind of character you give it to, I think it’s important for it to have some sort of a subtle purpose in your writing. Like...it’s great to have lovable characters, but you might want to have them actually do something in your story to earn their spot in it. All of your cast members should have a reason for being there, right? So always keep that in mind.
    What you want to decide is whether you want that purpose to be on the bright side...or on the dark side. Because there is definitely a dark side involved (unfortunately), and as sweet and cute as they may be...not everybody has the same experience with their position just outside of the circle of the ‘popular’ people.
    I want you to watch the clip down below, which I think displays both sides rather well. And it accomplishes its display of both sides in the same scene, which is kind of brilliant. It goes from “Awww!” to “Oh no!” to “Awww!” again to “Oh no!” again! This is the very beginning of a slasher horror movie called “Valentine”. Check it out...and see if you can see both sides!
     
    While I’ve spent almost all of this article talking about the lovable side of adding a somewhat charming and interesting klutz into your story to bring about a bright and fun appeal to whatever you’re writing...geek chic can also be weaponized into something much more depressing or even sinister as well if you really want it to. That sort of interaction with other people can also lead to mistreatment, bullying, being stolen from, rejected, taken advantage of...and if that is the story that you want to put out there, these become emotional torture methods that you can still use to your advantage. Because….watching the clip above...isn’t there still a part of you who’s rooting for him? Even if it means a horror movie about vengeance and death? That’s the power of geek chic’s darker side. Even when they’re bad...there are a lot of people who love these characters anyway. Whether it’s Syndrome from “The Incredibles” or Steven King’s “Carrie”….there’s still a yearning to see the underdog win the day, or at least geet some payback. So if you ever want to use that particular personality trait to heighten the intensity and increase the impact of these scenes or stories...this is a method that you can use for that distinct purpose.
    I’ve seriously seen some really dark movies pull this off in amazing ways, and they’ve got me, hook, line, and sinker, every single time. Of course, for the stuff that I write for the site, I usually hover around the brighter side of the equation and I’m looking cute moments and giggles...but...if you wanted to go dark with the whole idea? It makes for one hell of an origin story. And sympathetic villains kick ass. So try it out. You might like it!
    Alright folks, that’s it for this geeky little group hug of ours this time around. A few nervous giggles, some humiliating mistakes, a touch of truly awkward dialogue, and some seemingly forced isolation, can go a long when it comes to building a geek chic character. If you’re writing a darker story, the same method can be just as effective...depending on the surrounding circumstances and the way other minor character might treat them. And if you don’t want to cast a shadow on the more potent parts of your plot, make sure you give those characters something to do so as not to distract readers from everything else you’re doing. K?
    That’s it for now! I hope this helps you guys out with your writing, and maybe inspires a few new ideas for you at a later date. Enjoy yourselves! And best of luck!
  5. Comicality

    David and Goliath

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    David And Goliath A few weeks back, I briefly mentioned the difference between being more brazen and direct with the content of your stories, and the subtle grace of tenderly sliding it past your audience...along with developing the natural instincts to know which is which. Well, here we are now. This time around we’ll be talking about when it’s best to just be straightforward and bluntly say what you need to say, and when that’s the best plan of action for certain parts of your fiction, where it hits hard, its aim is true, and you deliver a heavy blow when one needs to be dealt out to your audience. Sometimes, you just need a sledgehammer to make your point, you know?
    But there are going to be other times, when skill, experience, and finesse, is the better way to go. Not to avoid making your point, but in order to have it penetrate and seriously shine when many of your readers don’t even see it coming. You can’t always be so heavy handed with it. Use some style instead. It works too.
    There’s a balance that you have to set up for yourself and maintain in your fiction for the sake of consistency and solidarity of characters and events as they move forward on with another. This might vary from writer to writer, so please feel free to put your two cents in and add any tips from your personal experience down below. Me, personally...I like to try to create a balance of both whenever and wherever I can. It really depends on what I’m writing and how heavy the subject matter is. Even then, I attempt to keep both the power and the finesse methods as a part of my story, and I use them when I think they’ll suit me best.
    Before I get started, I wanted to use this as a metaphor to demonstrate exactly what I’m talking about here. Now this is a legendary martial artist by the name of Donnie Yen, and he’s going up against the legendary boxer Mike Tyson! Now...style and finesse wise? There is absolutely no WAY that Mike Tyson could win in a fight with Donnie Yen. He could dance circles around him all day long. It’s just not possible. Hehehe! BUT...going toe to toe with Mike Tyson, blow for blow, with his strength and aggressive approach….forget it! He’d break every bone in Donnie Yen’s body! LOL!
    I remember seeing Mike Tyson matches when I was younger and he was just hitting his prime...and JESUS! I wouldn’t wish that on anybody! But this is the pure representation of what you can do with the themes and messages in your writing if you work at it. Expertise and flourish can take you a long way, and you can win with that...but every now and then, one giant, POWERFUL, haymaker punch can really make one hell of a difference! And sometimes, the fight is over right then and there!
    Even though both styles were so different...they respect each other, and can be more compatible than most would believe...knowing which one to use and when can make all the difference.
    So this is what I’m talking about when it comes to being light handed or heavy handed. Being slick and tactical or skillful and lashing out with raw power. If you guys read stories of mine that are a bit more comical or romantic in nature...I think a light handed approach works better more times than not. So, I get a chance to say what it is that I want to say with the story, but there’s no need to clobber my readers over the head with the idea of two boys having a serious crush on one another and wanting to build that up so that it can eventually become something more. I do that with a bit of fear and worry, with a little bit of insecurity sprinkled in for seasoning. Hehehe! But they’re not racing towards each other with their horniest impulses on full display and expressing their undying love within the first few days of meeting in the cafeteria. I mean...I’m not going to say that kind of thing never happens...but romantic fiction’s sake….where’s the fun in that? Its 2023. People can swipe right on their cell phone and get that now. There’s nothing magical about it to me, you know? Why even bother writing a story, or even a short story, that’s no more involved or nuanced than the moving thumbnail on your favorite porn site?
    The would be heavy handed. And I know there’s a huge audience that just wants a quick, five minute story, to get off to and then simply rollover and go to sleep for the night...but I want more. And I’m always striving to create something that will give my audience an experience that they can remember when it’s over. Something that they might read again some time, or possibly recommend to someone who’s looking for the same. When it comes to simple themes and easygoing storylines and plots...I find finesse to be my best tool. It doesn’t have to be hardcore, you don’t have to be overly graphic with it, or struggle to really hammer home any points that you feel need to be made for that tale, unless you feel it’s a highly essential part of the story itself. Look at and analyze your content and story length to figure out whether you need to make it anything more than it is. It’s not always a good move to complicate a simple ‘boy meets boy’ story. Let it breathe, and be what it is. It may be exactly what someone out there is looking for at that particular moment in time. Allow them to have that without polluting it with a whole bunch of ‘extra’. Remember...there are going to be times when simplicity is key. We all have to learn to teach ourselves when those moments arise.
    Now then...if the overall genetic make up of my story is centered around a much bigger issue or a particular theme that I’m trying to speak on and bring to the forefront, even though I have my more ‘surgical’ parts where I’m dealing with it in a subtle fashion...if it’s something that I to burst through and become something much more significant in the narrative that I’m putting together at that moment...then there are going to be times when that blinding haymaker punch is going to really highlight whatever it is that I’m doing and add power and urgency to the message that is going to run throughout the entirety of the project. My best example for this practice would be in my completed series, “My Only Escape”, where the main theme is focused on the struggles and difficulties of a teen boy who is dealing with horrific domestic abuse from his own father. Now, this is still a love story, and there are many rewarding moments being offered in the story concerning the boy that he has fallen so hard for and is giving him hope better days in the future...but the abuse is definitely there in the story. If anything, it’s practically another character, having a huge influence over what does and doesn’t happen from the first chapter until the last. I can’t treat that with kid gloves. Those are times when the hard hitting slam of a sledgehammer is needed. Do you know what I mean? The story doesn’t have the same realism or the same impact if I just glance over the fact that this kid is dealing with horrible situations on an almost daily basis, and write a story that simply tells the ‘candy and gumdrops’ part of it all instead. It wouldn’t be saying what I want it to say. And it wouldn’t make much sense without the series of sucker punches that this story delivers throughout the protagonist’s journey towards getting through it.
    We struggle in search of triumph. Without the second part...it’s just gratuitous violence with no rhyme or reason. And it just doesn’t land the same way.
     
    https://imagine-magazine.org/store/comicality/
    This is not to say that using a bit of finesse isn’t useful to you as a writer, because it most definitely is! It’s essential! Everything can’t be all black eyes and bloody noses, hehehe! That’s just ridiculous. What I’m saying is...if you can tell a simple story without a whole lot of excess drama weighing down...then go for it. You don’t need to have everything be a major epic story of man’s inhumanity to man and a commentary on the social condition. Some story’s are just stories...and that’s more than enough. Let them be what they are, and leave it at that.
    However, if the very core of your story is tackling subjects like suicide, homelessness, substance abuse, severe bullying, racism, or the loss or death of a parent...then how can you possibly ever hope to tell that tale by mere scratching the surface and not really digging deep into the emotions and involvement of your readers? Sometimes you really have give issues like that a much harder hit than some of your readers will be comfortable with. And then hit them with it a few more times. If you’ve got something serious to say, then say it seriously. It’s too late to beat around the bush.
    If you don’t use your sledgehammer when given the opportunity, then people are going to start wondering why you backed down and started pulling your punches now. Go hard, or go home, you know?
    So when do you recognize the need to use it or not use it? Well, as I said before, that really changes from writer to writer, and it also depends on what kind of writer you are. Some authors prefer the more direct approach, where others may find that be a bit too much like pushing an agenda on your audience and being manipulative when it isn’t necessary. Then again, other authors like to speak in metaphors and weave their deepest thoughts and feelings into their stories undetected. But occasionally, their readers may see that as being fearful or speaking in riddles in order to dodge the biggest, and possibly the best, parts of the story by mincing your words and needlessly fogging up the story when a bolder approach would serve you better. They key is to try things out and find yourself a comfort zone in the middle ground between the two extremes, and do it all within the context of the theme that you’re writing about. I hope that make some kind of sense. Hehehe!
    Anyway, just experiment a little bit with your writing and see how it feels. What can you come up with? How would a few of your favorite readers feel about it? It’s the only way to snuggle your way into a comfy little ‘pocket’ and use tactics like this one in ways that you never thought possible before. It’s all a part of your evolution. It goes way beyond mechanics and sentence structure. Way beyond character creation and world building. Most of you are in the advanced honors class now! Hehehe, you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. So it’s time to start looking at the art of storytelling in three and fourth dimensions. And I know that sounds weird, but I found that to be true over the years. And soon...your creativity and skills will start to feel limitless in the process. Trust me on this one!
    Take care, folks! I’ll seezya soon! And, as always..stay beautiful! K?
  6. Comicality

    The Switch Up

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    The Switch Up While I definitely have a great deal of fun writing short, one time, stories whenever I can, and they’ll always have a very special place in my heart...I think I still prefer to write stories that are a little bit longer even more. I like having the room to breathe, you know? To explore my own characters and develop them a bit more so they end up becoming a bit more three-dimensional in my mind, and they’re a lot easier to work with once I get a chance to know them a little bit better. The unfortunate part of my personal process is that I end up getting to know them a little TOO well, hehehe, and then I don’t ever want to let them go. So the journey gets longer and longer and before I know it, I’m fifty chapters deep in a story that was only supposed a fraction of that size.
    What can I say? I love my characters! Even when they’re being brats and giving me a headache. So sue me...
    However, one of the worst things that you can do to your own series is allow it to become a one note journey and stretch it out longer than its welcome deserves. You readers can very easily burn out over time if you keep using the same scenarios again and again with similar outcomes. Especially since I write mostly teenage protagonists and love interests...there are only so many alleys that I can have them travel down before it becomes monotonous. Only so many jealous feelings, so many worries about coming out, so many parties or trips to the movies, or private conversations in those high school hallways. Every now and then, depending on how long your story is and how many chapters you’ve got ahead of you...you’ve got to switch things up a little bit. Reinvent the feeling of the story and restore a certain level of freshness to it, while still having it be familiar and connected to the audience that jumped in and got all invested in you work in the first place. That switch up can be really helpful when continuing forward with new storylines, characters, and events, in future chapters. It breaks the monotony, without shattering the blueprint. So adopt this technique into your repertoire. It comes in super handy when you can’t stop snuggling your fictional people, chapter after chapter. Hehehe!
    When I first began writing “The Secret Life Of Billy Chase” (https://imagine-magazine.org/store/comicality/), I never thought that I’d one day be heading towards my 500th chapter! They just kept coming, and I kept growing closer to all of the characters involved, so I continued to find new parts of their personalities to explore and bring alive to all of the readers out there who were looking for reasons to stick around and find out how much there was for them to discover too. However...this is where ‘switching things up’ first became apparent to me while I was writing.
    In shorter stories, I had an end goal to reach, and the events included within simply escalated towards that goal. It was a straight shot that I could follow. But I couldn’t do that with “Billy Chase”. Not for THIS many chapters! Hehehe, I mean, where am I escalating to? “Billy Chase Goes To Space”??? But I still had so much more left to do with that character and the steps that he’s taking towards slowly getting older and wiser with every conquest and heartbreak he has to navigate his way through. But how can I do that if most of his life is dedicated to school and homework and hanging out with his friends, all while drooling over all over the cute boys that he wish he had the courage to talk to? That set up can only last for so long before it get stale and becomes so predictable that my audience begins to drift off, and eventually tune the story out completely.
    Naturally...I don’t want that. Not when some of my best ideas are still yet to come!
    So...switch it up, Comsie! Read the title of the article! Geez!
    When I say that, I’m talking about setting up new challenges, new problems, sometimes new characters, and new goals for my main protagonist to reach for, all while having a connect effect on all of the other characters surrounding him. It keeps readers engaged and glued to the story as it moves into new territory that hasn’t been introduced to them yet...all while being familiar enough where they can remain invested in the characters that they’ve come to know and love without abandoning any of the treats that came with starting the story off in the first place. It’s an all around win.
    But the most important part of using this technique is to make the changes in your extended series match up with everything that came before it. You’re not writing a whole new story here. You’re simply altering the aspects of your current work to keep things fresh and relevant. You’re basically adding a bit more salt or a pinch of garlic to a sauce that’s already hot and bubbling. You want to ‘enhance’, not completely revolutionize. I say this because there are writers who try to invigorate their long running stories by pretty much tearing them down and starting all over from scratch for the sake of re-inventing them...thinking that readers will appreciate this brand new take, or reboot, of their beloved saga. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a coin flip in that sense, and if you get it wrong or stray too far from the original ‘feel’ of the series...you could end up derailing the whole effort and ruin the appeal. Again...that’s not what you want.
    You want to maintain the emotional connection between your fiction and your readers. That counts more than anything. You want to expand the boundaries of what you were writing before, but still let your audience know that you plan to keep your unspoken promise to deliver them the story that you told them you would. The way that you accomplish this is by being fully aware of all of the events that came before, which ones went over well with your readers, and continuing on that path while merely changing the situations surrounding them. If you’re writing a heavily character driven series, that familiarity needs to be present. Even if they change over time as a part of their personal character arc...those changes should be a building experience for both you as a writer and to others as readers. Why the change? What’s going on? Why is this character not the same person that they were when I started reading? These are all questions that should be gradually explained ahead of time. Let it rise and escalate naturally. Nobody just changes overnight like flicking a light switch. They may try...but there’s a story in that need for a change as well. Build up to it in previous chapters...so when it happens, it’s not like slamming your readers into a brick wall.
    So...how do you pull off a big ‘switch up’ in your story? I would narrow it down to three big methods...
    All using “Billy Chase” as my example, but I’ll try to avoid spoilers as best as I can if you haven’t read it yet.
    1- New characters. This is a technique that I would advise you use sparingly, but it does work. Obviously, you can’t introduce a new character to your story every single time you want to make things a little different. That would be ridiculous, and after a while...it would just become repetitive and predictable. So use it only if you really think that it’s necessary. When is it necessary? For me...it’s when I want a new part of my main character to be shown to the readers that was lacking before. It answers questions like...how would this person deal with possible temptation? How do they deal with heartbreak and loss? How do they deal with bullying? What is their home life like? How secure are they in their sexuality? Adding a new character that is dealing with something similar, or maybe even something completely opposite, can help to present a new dimension of your protagonist’s heart and mind to themselves...thus presenting it to the audience. It adds another layer that wasn’t there before. With “Billy Chase”...what if had a shot at a boyfriend for the first time? What if he had a rival in love? What if he found a girl that was interested in him? What if he had a friend dealing with alcohol addiction? How does he process these things and react in general. New characters can bring out new facets of your main character and put them front and center in your storyline. Create a character that embodies a new part of your protagonist’s journey, and have them sort of play off of one another to revive some of that energy that your readers felt when the story was brand new.
    2- New environment. With “Billy Chase”, I knew that the whole thing couldn’t take place in high school forever. (Even in his weird ‘time warped’ version of it all! Hehehe!) So sometimes I changed up the rules with his environment or in the life that he was leading. He’s still the same old Billy, but I might take him out of the high school setting for a while and change the environment around him to let people see how that affects him and his behavior. Let’s see what Billy does when he’s on Summer break. How does he react to having his very first job? What happens if he really does go into space? LOL! Kidding aside though, changing up the environment changes the rules, but keeps the main characters familiar and relatable to the people who are already invested in them. Remember, you want to stick to your framework, but you want to elevate it to the next level. Put your protagonist in a new environment, have them interact with new people, show your readers how they use the lessons they’ve learned thus far to adapt. Subtle but different, re-invented but familiar. That’s the mantra to keep going on in your head. Listen to that inner voice. It knows more than we do.
    3- New Perspectives. This method is dependent, mostly, on the build up and the personal ‘history’ of the character that you’ve been nurturing from the very beginning. This is when you use a major event to alter the current flow of the story, and force your protagonist to deal with it in ways that they probably never had to deal with anything prior to it. A death, a heartbreak, a betrayal, being outed at school, or at work, a virgin experience with sex, a sudden windfall of money, a divorce, a painful break up...all of these situations that might change your main character’s outlook and approach to what’s going on around them. So Billy may get his heart broken, or might become suspicious that he’s being cheated on, or he might have to sacrifice something dear to him in order to fight for the greater good. All of these situations will affect him in different ways. How will he navigate his way through it, and what will it do to him emotionally? How will he see it? With sadness and depression? With anger and envy? Will he head down a darker path? Will he fight to head for the high ground? Will he fly or will he fall? All of these things add a new dimension to what’s going on in your narrative and will keep your fanbase highly involved as new questions, challenges, and possible outcomes, are introduced into your story. This is a method that you can use for almost anything that you’re writing, and you can continue to use it over and over again as long as it doesn’t move into the realm of being overkill. And it’s always a breath of fresh air in a long running series. Just remember to give it time to breathe, k? Otherwise, the storytelling comes off as cluttered and clumsy. Take your time. Your natural instincts will guide you in the right direction. You just have to trust yourselves.
    Alright, folks! That’s it for now! Remember...switching things up can make even the longest running series stay fun and interesting until you finally reach the end. You know those movies like “Avengers: Endgame” or “Avatar: The Way Of Water” or a number of others that have a runtime of three whole HOURS or more? And you doubt that you’re going to be able to sit through the whole thing at the beginning...but when you watch them, it hardly seems like it was that long at all? That’s the ‘switch up’ technique at work! Just when you think that you’ve had enough and need a break...the characters, environments, or perspectives, change...and then you find yourself all invested again. It’s the same reason that people can binge watch an entire series on Netflix in a single night, or spend three hours on Tik Tok! Your extended story follows the same principles. Same rules. Remember that...and write to your heart’s content!
    Take care, folks! I love you lots! And I’ll seezya soon!
  7. Comicality

    Time Jumps

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Time Jumps I think if I had a time machine, and went back about ten to fifteen years to meet my older self, I kind of wonder whether either one of us would really recognize one another at all. It’s a weird idea, but I don’t think we would. I certainly don’t think we’d get along. LOL! That was still the undeniable ‘work in progress’ part of me, and me now? I probably wouldn’t come off as being much fun at all. That would be crazy.
    The thing is, I know that a LOT has happened in my life since then, but nothing that I would ever think that I could put into a cohesive story that other people could read and make any really sense out of. It wouldn’t have any sort of real linear pattern or entertaining path because, just like everybody else, I was just winging this whole ‘life’ thing and trying to get it as right as I could possibly manage. So, if I was trying to craft the story around just those years alone, and wanted to make them interesting and easy to follow, I might leave out a lot of really good times and great events and experiences...but ones that don’t line up in a way that makes for good for fiction.
    Or...I could sort of have an extended preamble for everything that happens beforehand, and then pick up the story from here and now, where I’m paying more attention and life is a bit more focused than it was way back then. And the best way to do that in fiction? Time jump.
    Sometimes, it’s best to take your time and try to figure out where the focus of your plot is going to be, and close it off to focus on what’s most important for that particular narrative. Something to concentrate on. Like...let’s say the "Star Wars" movies. There is a lot of time and tons of major events that happens between "A New Hope", "The Empire Strikes Back", and "Return Of The Jedi". So much so that the famous opening crawl became a standard to explain it all. We’re talking about skipping over years worth struggle and triumph and betrayal and defeat...it almost seems as if the series shouldn’t make any sense at all by today’s standards. Hell the entire "Rogue One" movie was based on just one event that was alluded in that thing! Nowadays...you miss one episode of your favorite Netflix series and you might find yourself being totally lost, while your mom’s favorite daytime soap opera can go on for decades without her really much at all if she goes two or three weeks without keeping up with it. Hehehe, it all depends on the time jump and how it relates to the content.
    With "Star Wars"...the time jump may last for years and years, but that one opening scroll tells you what happened in between the time you left your heroes behind and are now expected to pick up where they are now. And you know...you really didn’t need to see all of the stuff as far as the main story goes. I mean, it didn’t have to be "Lord Of The Rings". It’s concentrated around a small group of protagonists, and their adventures together. Many of the events do not only really NEED to be shown for the story to work, but some of the crawls actually tell parts of the saga that might actually detract from the rest of the story.
    These are from the original trilogy. Read through the scrolls, and pay attention to all that’s going on here...
     
    0000 Can you even IMAGINE how long those movies would be if you had to ‘show and not tell’ through all of those events. Look at how much happened before Luke Skywalker even shows up in the first movie? You don’t have time for each of them to have their own backstories, go on their own adventures, and accomplish their own goals, before they even meet one another. That would have a severely damaging effect on your pacing and character building along the way. Would it be interesting to see? Maybe. But how much screen time would it take to show the rebellion getting into trouble, having to hide out on an ice planet, explore the area, and build a base there? And even if you went for playing the long game...how much interest would your readers have in it? Where is everybody? What happened with Darth Vader? Is Han Solo there? Come on, let’s get back to the meat of the story already.
    Sometimes, if done right...time jumps can solve that problem. It allows you tighten things up a bit and get them to work a little better, in my opinion.
    When I decided to continue on with the "Shelter" series about the zombie apocalypse (https://imagine-magazine.org/store/comicality/), I really wanted to bring a sense of humanity to each and every individual character that was a part of the main story. But, in order to do that, I’d have to go back and use a heavy dose of flashbacks, or an unbearable amount of long and drawn out exposition that would ultimately drag the entire series down to a crawl. So my personal solution was to go back just a little bit, and create solo stories for each of the main characters to be presented on their own. To show what they’ve been through during the initial breakdown of society in general as the infection first began...and then "Shelter" (my main series) picks up a few weeks to a month later. Meaning that all of the spinoff stories pretty much have their own resolutions and character arcs as they fight to survive in their own way...and then…?
    Time jump!
    Now, there was obviously a bunch of stuff that happens between the end of their individual stories and the beginning of their presence at the shelter and their future struggles that they’ve got ahead of them...but they don’t really matter much. Not as much as the main story. You don’t want to spend time writing distractions. If you want to deliver some add information or fill in a couple of blanks that would ultimately support the story as a whole, then so be it. But only if it’s necessary, and only if it’s going to have sort of impact on the plot or on the character themselves. Otherwise, use the time jump to your advantage and simply allude to the fact that time has passed, and it wasn’t a complete snore fest. Hehehe! You can do that, you know? Just do it in small doses.
    So what is the science of creating an effective time jump in your story? It’s all about how long the jump is, and how much you need to happen within that amount of time.
    For example...let’s say that you’re building a post apocalyptic world for your story. Maybe the bomb dropped, maybe the aliens attacked, maybe the demons came up through the cracks in the ground and began devouring everything in sight. Whatever. Now you’ve got your protagonist wandering through a world that has been completely obliterated, with very few survivors, and a heavy growth of vegetation has covered the entire landscape. Well, if that’s what you’re going for...you can’t just pick up six months after the inciting incident took place. The whole world and civilization itself can seem to be pretty fragile at times, but I’d hat to think that the whole thing could be transformed into a barren wasteland in just a couple of months. Hehehe, give us a little more credit than THAT! So, if you’re going for a short jump forward in time, the events that you skipped over should match that in some way. If a nuclear bomb went off while your main character was locked in a bunker...they’re not going to just wake up a few weeks later and go walking around in the radioactive fallout. Not unless you want to tell a very quick and very tragic short story. Those events don’t match up with the time jump. You’re going to be down in that bunker for a long LONG time, buddy! So get comfortable!
    However, at the same time...you don’t want to jump too far ahead either unless you really need to. Examples would be like having a young Conan the Barbarian grow up to be a full grown warrior, or have a young Bruce Wayne suddenly com swooping down years later as Batman. As long as such a significant amount of passing time is deemed necessary. Don’t have ten years pass by and your protagonist comes back to the story in the same space and pretty much as the same character as they were before the time jump happened in the first place. If you’re going to skip over all of that time, there should be some changes made. Some growth. Or perhaps a hardening fall from grace. Just have it match up with your earlier depictions of your character in enough ways where it’s easy to see that they’re the same person at their core...but the span of time has definitely separated their early version of themselves from their current version. Always keep in mind that the time jump and the current events or current environment has changed quite a bit since you saw it last. K?
    Time jumps can be a helpful skill to have in your author’s utility belt, just do your best to figure out how it’ll best work out for the story that you’re trying to tell. Too short of a jump, and you’ll find yourself limited with a lot of the changes that you may want to make in your story. Too long a jump, and it’ll seem like nothing happened over the last five, ten, or fifteen years at all. Which will make your audience wonder why you felt the need to throw in a time jump at all. Both sides can be equally destructive if you’re not careful. So, like...be careful, then. Hehehe!
    Keep these things in mind...and you can’t go wrong.
    I truly hope that this helps you guys out with your writing process, and becomes a natural part of your personal magic. Cool? Have fun! And I’ll seezya soon with more! Best wishes!
     
  8. Comicality

    Vocabulary

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Vocabulary I think that a truly important part of being a good and effective writer comes from having a decent and flowing vocabulary at your disposal for all occasions. Now, I have mentioned this briefly before in other articles before, but I never really went into depth about what this means and how to develop and expand it in ways that will be useful to you in some way. You see, what you want is to allow your word usage to grow and change and evolve over time...all while still sounding natural when you type it out on the page. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but it’s not as difficult as it sounds either. It’s something that simply grows in its potency the more you get used to it.
    So that’s why we’re here today. Vocabulary is that special added flavor that enriches the whole project, and you’ll keep getting better at it once it becomes more of an involuntary part of your process.
    I do peek in from time to time at Myr’s “Word Of The Day” in the Writing World section, and occasionally find a few words here and there that I might decide to pick up along the way. Hehehe, where he finds so many useful pieces for the kind of writing that I do, I’ll never know. But they’re out there, and they come in handy when I’m staring off into space...looking for just the right way to phrase something for one of my stories. And once I make that a part of my vocabulary, then it just gives me a big palette to work from when working on my digital canvas. It always feels good to have a decent number of choices at my fingertips when it comes to stuff like that.
    Now, you might realize that I said the word ‘useful’ here. Let me explain...
    While I get a real kick out of words in general, knowing what they mean, and how to put them in a sentence...that doesn’t mean that I can us them all. Many, I might never use at all. When I put a story together, I write the way that I speak. I want it to feel as though I’m telling you guys the stories out loud, unscripted, with my usual speaking voice shining through. Now, I write all the time, so I’d like to think that I have a rather ‘expanded’ way of expressing myself in my everyday conversation...and for the sake of my fiction, I certainly don’t mind ‘flowering’ it up a little bit to make it sound a bit more poetic...but I, mostly, just make it sound like me. And that means that there are many words that I know for a fact I would never use in casual conversation. And if that’s the case, chances are...it will feel awkward if I tried to use it in my stories.
    If it feels awkward in my heart, it’ll feel awkward on the page. And sometimes, simplicity is better.
    For example...whenever my characters laugh, I have a ton of synonyms that I can use to describe them. And I can vary them up depending on how hard their laughing. I might bring it up to laughing or cackling...or bring it down to giggles and snickering. When used in context, the words you use can change the overall image and emotional impact of the scene. You would think that they would all have an identical ‘feel’ to them, but they really don’t. Not to me, they don’t. However, other synonyms could be used like ‘guffaw’, ‘chortle’, ‘snigger’, or ‘tittle’...which are synonymous, yes...but I would never be talking to somebody and use any one of those expressions to tell somebody a story in real life. I’m happy to know that they’re there and that I know what they mean...but the chances of me ever writing them into my fiction is very low. Probably never. So to me, personally...they’re not really useful when searching my vocabulary to create a scene.
    Those words are just more tools for the toolbox.
    If you find yourself looking for the right words, and you don’t want to keep using the same ones over and over...searching for other synonyms can be very helpful to you. I used to actually use an old thesaurus that my grandmother got for me when I was a teenager to look up other methods of delivering the same message. An actual book that was super thick and almost too heavy to hold in my lap. Hehehe! But, even though I’ve gotten in the habit of doing it online now for the sake of speed and maintaining my current mood for as long as currently possible...I still go back and do it the old fashioned way from time to time to this day.
    “But, Comsie...why on Earth would you do that???”
    I’m glad you asked! Hehehe, either that or I’m hearing phantom voices in my head again. Either way, it’s easy enough to explain...
    With an actual book, turning physical pages and looking for the word that I was originally searching for...I would sometimes come across a word that was even better than the one I was originally seeking out. It’s something that always stuck with me, and I use it when I’m online too. If you use a word from your vocabulary and realize that you may have already used it before...maybe even many times before...and the synonyms aren’t giving you many useful options to help you say it another way...take a moment to see if maybe you can find another word or phrase that might give your structure a little more variety.
    Say that I want one of my characters to blush...and I’m turning pages in that giant book, looking for it...before I get to ‘blush’, I might accidentally come across the word ‘bashful’. Hmmm, ok...
    If a synonym for ‘blush’, and phrases like ‘turning red in the face’, are seriously limited, or maybe just sound a bit weird...I might go back to see what I can find for ‘bashful’. Words like shy, reserved, timid, insecure, sheepish, or nervous. Now, do these words actually explain or be used to replace the word blush? Not really. But with a little clever rewording, you can change the way that you’ve written that part of the scene and use one of those vocabulary choices instead...where the blush is pretty much implied. Do you know what I mean? And if you really really just want to use the word blush in that particular sentence at that particular time...thn you can go back in your writing to the last few times where you used that word as a description and maybe rearrange one of them instead. Either way, it will keep you from sounding repetitive, and it can help to get you out of a jam when you’re working with a part of your vocabulary that can only really stretch so far before you have to phrase things in another way entirely.
    There are times when I worry about repeating myself too. And I’ll go back and try to see if I can change things up a little bit so it doesn’t stand out like a deep bloodstain in the center of my living room carpet. (The voices told me to do it...so it’s fine) But while some words and phrases can be explained a million different ways...there are only so many ways for me to use the word ‘kiss’. ‘Laugh’. ‘Cute’. And when I was trying to expand my vocabulary to be a bit more secure with my stories...those are the ones that I tried to work on first. Adopting whatever I could find and trying them out to see how thy looked and hear how they sounded to me. The ones I found useful, I held onto. The ones where I was like meh, I keep them in the back of my mind somewhere, but if I’m really struggling for a new way to say an old thing...I know those words will be there to save me in the end. Hehehe!
    Basically, as authors...your vocabulary is your best friend from a structural standpoint. It gives you space and freedom that you wouldn’t have if you hadn’t built it up over time. The next time you get a chance...type out a few random sentences on a blank screen without really thinking about them. It doesn’t matter what it’s about, it could be about anything. Even better, go back to one of your older stories and pick a small passage or paragraph at random. Pay attention to the words you used to describe the scene, the characters, the fantasy, or the action, or the emotions involved. And then...go through and see if you can find other words to replace the ones that you have written there.
    You don’t want to change up the feel or the vibe of the passage...you want it to basically read the same way for a new audience as it would for your original audience, just with a more experienced vocabulary. Try it out. You just might surprise yourself.
    While re-editing and rewriting most of my ebooks, I look back and I’m like, “I could have made this soooo much better the first time around if I knew then what I know now.”
    But in a very short amount of time, you’ll feel everything become more natural, and you’ll have a lot of new words that you can use, pretty much, on autopilot without worrying too much about repeating the same expressions or descriptions multiple times in your project.
    Hehehe, Myr’s Word Of The Day does help a lot too. You might find whole new expressions entirely that you didn’t even know were out there before. Give those a try! An online thesaurus also helps (just Google the word you’re looking for and add ‘synonym’ behind it), or use a paperback/hardback thesaurus like I do sometimes. Keep the words that feel and sound natural to you...tuck some others away for later if you really need them...and get rid of the rest. Voila! You’ll be a scholar in no time.
    The idea is to always keep growing and evolving. It never has to stop unless you let it stop.
    As always, I hope that this little tidbit helps you guys out when you need it. The rest is up to you! Take care! And stay beautiful!
  9. Comicality

    The Pick Up Game

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    The Pick Up Game Soooo...I have to admit to being truly intimidated by a project that I’ve been working on for almost two years now...but if I don’t just dive in head first and friggin’ DO it...then I’ll never get it done.
    I’m well aware of the fact that I have been, and always will be, my own worst critic. There’s no side stepping that. it’s just a part of who I am. And while it can scare me out of posting and letting people see what I’ve written on most occasions...it can also be considered as an inspiration to step up my game and give this project everything that I’ve got to give to the point of absolute exhaustion. Which could end up in helping me achieve another level of writing that I couldn’t have if I didn’t at least give it a shot, you know?
    It’s a rough frame of mind to be in...but I’d like to think that I was up to the challenge, and was able to create something that lives up to the ambitious goals that I had for this particular project.
    So...let’s talk about the ‘pick up game’ this time around, and feel free to leave your comments down below. Good or bad. Or anywhere in between. Because I really think this is one of the most stressful projects that I’ve been a part of since I first started writing so many years ago.
    For those of you know me best, my site’s anniversary is on June 19th every year...and to celebrate, I always try to do something completely different to exercise whatever talents I’ve got and what I’ve learned over the past year to evolve and to move forward into new territory and prove that I had more to give my audience outside of the typical ‘Comicality’ story. The first year’s offering was “Gone From Daylight”, and that went over so well with my readers in such a MASSIVE way, that it kind of became my annual push for all of the years that followed. (Including the ‘Rainy Day’ update, and the ‘Seven C’s’ update) And I’ve really enjoyed stretching out and showing my online fans what I was capable of, all while delivering a few surprises along the way. So far, they’ve all be extremely successful! But...challenge isn’t about guaranteed success. It’s about risk. And there are times when I feel like the mountain is a bit too high for me to climb, you know?
    And that’s where I want to start this conversation. Because I’m curious to know if any of you guys would feel ok about picking up a story from another author, and possibly finishing it off from where they left off? Especially if you’re a huge fan of their work. It’s a lot more difficult than you might think...and I learned that the hard way, despite the honor of personally working on it, myself.
    Full disclosure...last Summer (2022)...I wanted to post my continuation of another author’s series...and I totally chickened out. Hehehe! It’s true! I did! I was SO scared that I was going to screw everything up and get a tidal wave of backlash that would totally obliterate me! And I let that intimidate me out of posting it. But again...I want to give it a try, and I want to give it my all. I just had to toss my insecurities aside and find the strength to put my own ideas in effect the way that I imagined them. All I can do is hope and pray that fans of the original story will accept my take on what’s going on and follow me through to the end that I have in mind.
    Now, I’ve been writing so many stories for so long now, that many people would think that I wouldn’t get intimidated by much at this point...
     
    ...And I can say that I’ve enjoyed my touch of internet fame because of it. But nothing could be further from the truth. Trust me. I was really flattered by the offer, but quickly found myself terrified at the idea of actually going forward with it. I was keeping it a secret for a long time, but I was asked to finish off one of a few Dom Luka’s stories on GayAuthors. “Leave The Pieces” was unfortunately left unfinished at the time, and I have always been a huge fan of Dom Luka since he started writing. I think “The Long Way”, specifically, is an instant classic! (https://gayauthors.org/story/domluka/thelongway/) That story just touched me, personally. And he was one of the best writers on the site. The emotion and the heart that he brought to his characters and his stories was immaculate, and gracefully done. Dom Luka is one of GayAuthors’ favorite authors of all time, and I feel that the praise is well deserved. Applause all around.
    But, even with all of the successes that I’ve had of my own over the years...how do I follow that? I mean...I WISH that I had the ego to think that I could take one of his stories and finish it with any level of skill that would give his story a satisfying ending. That’s just crazy to me.
    Nobody that I know of has spoken to Dom Luka in years, and I have no way to contact him to talk to him about it or to even ask permission to add to one of his masterpieces. It hardly seems fair. And the pressure that I felt on my shoulders was almost too much for me to tackle this story head on. Once I really got into it...I began having serious doubts, started comparing my work to his, and basically shutting down to the point where I felt like nothing that I could possibly write would ever be good enough.
    So I stressed myself out. I procrastinated. I made false promises to post it and then backed out at the last minute. Hehehe, it really did a number on me, because I respected him as a writer and I didn’t want to tarnish his work with my ‘voice’ when I felt his voice was the one needed to tell this story. But, I had to take a series of deep breaths, had to build up some confidence in my instincts and my abilities...and I had to give this a try. Win or lose...at least I didn’t chicken out, you know?
    So….what did I learn from this experience? Rule number one….RESEARCH!!!
    If you’re going to continue somebody else’s story...you’d better know what you’re doing! I have an entire mini notebook dedicated to this one story. Character names and interactions, ages, events that happened, certain exchanges of dialogue, dramatic moments...I’ve got it all handwritten on paper so that I can flip through it and maintain the same feel and consistency needed to keep the story going while making myself invisible at the same time. Character histories, motivations, personalities...I went through to make sure that I could keep the continuity going, while still allowing a bit of my own voice to seep in here and there to become a part of the progression towards, what I hope, will be a satisfying ending. So, if you find yourself in the same position...research the shit out of all of those previous chapters, and get a real feel for the characters that goes beyond what you’re reading on the page. There’s plot, and there’s story. The plot lies within the story. The story exists way outside of the plot. So create these characters in your mind. Their backstories, their emotions, the depth of their motivations. Bring them to life, and they will ‘tell’ where the story should go from that point on.
    Rule number two...stay true to the theme and the tone of the story overall. Take your time to recognize what the original author was doing with their story and try to fit into that same frame of mind. Try to analyze the story enough to find out what’s being said here. What’s the message? What’s the emotion being expressed? Where are these previous events leading up to? There are a million questions that you can ask yourself here, but the most important part of you picking up where another author left off is respecting the original text by seeing it for what it was, and continuing on from there. Whatever you felt reading it...you should feel writing it. I definitely tried my hardest to keep that whole vibe in tact while I was writing. NOT easy, considering the content!
    Rule number three...lead, don’t copy! I definitely had the urge to try to copy what Dom Luka was doing, style wise, at first...but it wasn’t working for me. I felt like it not only lacked authenticity, but it was also insulting his efforts to build an honest story for the site. Like...this is something that he wanted to say, but I couldn’t say it for him, you know? Nor did I have any right to try to. I decided that, if I was going to take this story on, I was going to let his voice be his, and my voice be mine. He never had to mimic me to create it, so why mimic him trying to continue it. It would be different, but I cant see Dom having it any other way.
    Years ago, we were planning to collaborate on a story together in secret and then release it all at once. Like, “WHOAH! Dom Luka AND Comicality, on the same story???” But his schedule and mine just refused to line up so we could talk about it and get it done. But I regret missing out on the opportunity. Hehehe, it would have been one of my dream ‘duets’! I’d still like to make that happen! (Looking at YOU, DK! Hehehe!) But lif gets in the way sometimes. So I get it. No worries.
    I’m not exactly sure what happened to Dom Luka, and I really hope that he’s ok and doing well. And...if he’s around to read my take on his story and progress on from there...I truly TRULY hope that he’s ok with me doing that, and that I was able to capture the feel and bittersweet beauty that he was going for when he wrote the first eleven chapters. Because I really loved that story, and wanted to do it justice.
    It’s never an easy task, trying to complete someone else’s personal vision. Especially when it’s someone with so much love and support behind them. But I definitely did everything that I possibly could to show that I was a good choice to finish off a series that deserved to be the classic that it was built up to be. I guess it’s up to Dom’s fans to decide that now. But I will definitely take a victory lap and grin from ear to ear forever if I even came close! Hehehe! I just hope that Dom will see this some day and come back to show us what his true vision was all along. I think that would be awesome.
    Anyway, that’s it for now. You guys know me...I worry! And nothing makes me more vulnerable than my writing, so trying to stand shoulder to shoulder with a legend is rough on me. Hehehe! But we’ll see how it works out from this point on. Love you, Dom Luka! And if you’re out there, please come back to us dude! The world needs ya! The more angels, the better!
    And if any of you are looking to complete a story that went unfinished for a long time, possibly indefinitely...be sure to ask for permission first if you can get in contact with the original author. And if not, make sure that you show the utmost respect to the story that you’re working with. And nothing less.
    I’d like to think that if I suddenly walked outside and got struck by lightning or something, that someone would step up and finish off whatever stories that I had left open for them to do so. And I’d hope that they’d stay true to the original work and give it the kind of ending that I would have approved of. I’d applaud a creative perspective on anything that I wrote, and I’d encourage writers to take certain liberties if they felt it was necessary…as long as the ‘feel’ of it stayed in tact. Easier said than done. But if you read “Leave The Pieces”...I hope that it would be something that would make Dom Luka proud.
    If you get a chance, go and check out the remaining chapters of Dom Luka’s “Leave The Pieces”, and see if I was able to stay true to his genius. And if not, how would you do it different? I’d b interested to know. It was a hard decision to make. Everything that I DID with that project was a hard decision to make, honestly. But I had to take a leap of faith, you know? So enjoy!
    Plus….hehehe...love you David! Mwah! Omigod, he so cute!
     
     
  10. Comicality

    Sadly Never After

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Sadly Never After It’s a blessing to be a true optimist at heart when it comes to love sometimes. A real romantic. A weaver of good fortune. And since you’re actively creating your own fiction now, you can pretty much have the future of your own beloved main characters tailor made to be the bright, awesome, world that you always wanted it to be. One full of happiness and joy and guaranteed triumph over wickedness and pain. At long last, life as a whole can be all glitter and rainbows the way you always wanted it to be, right?
    Well...not always.
    I mean, let’s be one hundred percent honest with one another right now...every day is not a happy happy day for everybody. The good guy doesn’t always win, the nice guy doesn’t always get the love interest in the end, and sometimes the worst villains in our lives never get the comeuppance that they really deserve after what they’ve done to the rest of us. It sucks...but that’s just the way life goes sometimes.
    To say that love always wins would be a very naive perspective on life in general, actually. I don’t say that to make you guys feel bad or increase any sense of anxiety that you may have about it...that’s just how things are. It would be delusional to ignore that. If writing all happy endings is your way to escape that fact...then is it really an escape? Change it up every now and then. I’ve, personally, dealt with ths kind of thing enough in my life to know that everything can’t come up roses one hundred percent of the time. ::Shrugs:: But, hey, it’s honest. And sometimes a not so happy ending can be a much needed switch for any author who feels as though they’ve gotten themselves into a rut when it comes to penning a believable conclusion to their fiction. But I also think that this comes in degrees of effectiveness that still work to make for the best outcome.
    While some stories don’t have the happiest of endings, you want to find a middle ground that doesn’t dash your readers’ hopes to the point of feeling...’rejected’ by the endgame. If that makes sense. You want it to be dramatic without having it be overly depressing. You might want to have it be frustrating without it being overly angry. Even if it involves a certain level of heartbreak, I’ve always felt that it was a mistake to end a story on such a sour note that it completely destroys the entire narrative that has been built up beforehand. Because, if your writing is doing its job and your audience is thoroughly involved in the lives of your main characters and the world that you’ve built around them...then they will be rooting for everything to turn out in a positive way for their new fictional friends. So, if you’re going to snatch that away from them...I’ve always found it best to do so with a touch of caution and finesse. Otherwise, they’re left with a feeling of helplessness and a broken heart. Remember...the ending of your story is going to be the lingering feeling that most readers keep with them regardless of everything that you wrote before it. So tread carefully.
    You can have a sad ending...just make sure that it means something. That’s the key.
    One thing to remember is that a lot of romantic fiction is ‘dream work’. You’re actually creating and fulfilling someone else’s fantasy with the stuff that you write. We’ve all been disappointed before. We’ve all been hurt before. For a lot of readers...your story is a way to avoid those scary feelings of loneliness, pain, and loss. BUT, I don’t say that to demonize the idea of a not-so-happy ending! Not at all. I’m just thinking that the art of crafting a sour ending needs to be done in a way where it not only makes sense in terms of the story itself, but can still be accepted and seen as relatable by a majority of your readers simultaneously. You know?
    Approach it with a sense of hope and possibility...but when things don’t work out for the best, that same sense of hope and possibility still carries on through to the very last sentence and beyond. I’ve written stories to completion that don’t have the kind of happy endings that people were expecting at the time, but even with those bittersweet endings, they were able to go back and understand why I made the choices that I did, and why they were a realistic turn of events that they could nod and embrace without feeling like I was out to deliberately dash their hopes and drown their dreams in misery. Hehehe! That’s how sad endings work for the best, I think. And they stand out in people’s minds when they think back to reading it for the first time...but in a positive way.
    The first level of writing a not so happy ending is the ‘sour but sweet’ method. This is probably the easiest one to start with if you’re learning to write something like this...but don’t go thinking that it’s easy overall. This is an outcome where both the protagonist and love interest (for romantic or erotic fiction) don’t end up together in the end, but have a certain mutual understanding of what happened and where it all went wrong. If ‘wrong’ is what you can even call it. One of those situations where they both agree that “I love you and care about you, but we just don’t work together.” You know? It happens. And sometimes it makes for a really insightful and inspiring story to take this mature look at relationships in general. Even though it’s basically a sad outcome...there’s this emotional balance that allows the idea of hope that exists outside of the end of the story. That feeling of, “Ok, things didn’t work out...but I’ll eventually heal, and I can start again. Next time it will be better.” This is a narrative that provides a certain ‘padding’ to the sucker punch of falling short of the ‘happily ever after’ that your readers might have been cheering for from the very beginning. You have to write it in a way that is balanced in a way where both the protagonist and the love interest are both losing something, but are also gaining the opportunity to find what it is that they’re truly searching for. That balance is what creates the feeling of this being a satisfying ending, even if it isn’t a happy one.
    The second level of a sad ending gets a little bit darker, but can ultimately feel more empowering for both your main character and your readers alike. This is where you, as a writer, throw off the balance and tilt the scales in the favor of one character or another. It’s like...your protagonist gets cheated on and his heart is completely broken in half, but throughout your story, you show his love interest in an unfavorable light and prove him to be an unlikable character as a whole. So when the big reveal happens, the sad ending feels more justified than anything else. Even if the main character is deeply hurt by what’s happened to him during the complete obliteration of his loving relationship...your audience are still on his side, and will jump to his defense to shout “You’re better off without that asshole!” This way, you can craft a sad ending to your story but still have it come off as more of a triumph than a loss. I’d love to add some examples here, but I feel like it would be spoiling the stories or movies that they’re built on. So I’ll keep from doing that. But there are some stories that do a brilliant job of creating this particular vibe when it comes to not having a dreamy rainbow ending in their fiction.
    This also goes both ways. Because, sometimes it’s your protagonist that really screwed up. And ultimately ends up missing out on something truly special by doing something stupid or giving into a pointless temptation for the sake of instant gratification. These endings can also be very powerful in the hearts and minds of your readers, as it can be difficult to argue that the person at fault didn’t deserve what he got in the end. Karma never loses an address, after all. And what is our number one rule about reader sympathy when it comes to their actions? Justice...and injustice. Always keep that in mind when it comes to putting the events of your story together in your head. It means a lot.
    Third level? Now this is where you have to be careful. These are the stories where your main character ultimately ends up losing everything, or becomes a sacrificial lamb for whatever big cause they believe in. And that takes some skill to pull off as a writer, but it can really deliver a massive impact if done right. So learn the rules and find out how to execute this in the most effective way possible.
    In order to do this, you have to focus on creating a sense of true empathy for your main character (Look for my article on ‘Gateway Empathy’, coming soon) and really dig deep into the injustice of being done so wrong by someone that the protagonist cares about. Again, this is a reality that people are forced to deal with on occasion, but may be reading your story to escape from. So it’s something that you have to write with that in mind. Or, at least want to write with that in mind. That’s my opinion. It’s what I think about, but if any of you feel differently about it, then more power to you. I just feel the need to use different techniques to build an ending that doesn’t ultimately result in tragedy most times. Not unless I think the story calls for it. (And sometimes it does)
    Then, of course, you’ve got the really depressing way to go. One where both hearts are broken, or someone gets really sick, or the main character dies, etc. There are ways to write an ending like this and have it all make sense in the story that you’re trying to tell...but it really is a difficult task to do so without leaving your readers with a sour stomach in the long run. I think there’s a very delicate line that you have to walk concerning this kind of an ending, because, as I said before...it has a major impact on everything that came before it. The last thing you want for your project is for the ending to steal away so much of the story’s shine and impact that nothing leading up to that ending ceases to matter anymore. It deconstructs your plot and takes something away from the characters themselves. You know?
    It can be done, sure. And it has been a really effective tool in the hands of an experienced writer. But be careful. A sad and sullen ending to an otherwise fun and heartfelt story can end up being a heartbreaking experience for people who weren’t emotionally prepared to deal with the sick feelings they may feel after being so deeply invested in your main characters for a majority of the story. So treat this method with a bit of finesse if you’re going to give it a try. Pull it off...and you’ll be a legend for it! Hehehe! But if not, you may end up with a story that people enjoyed at first, and ended up disliking it in the end. Like I said...it’s a very thin and delicate line to walk sometimes.
    Anyway, feel free to give your thoughts or share your own experiences down below! This has been my own experience with the idea so far, and I thought I’d let you guys know about it. Some food for thought when you’re writing! Hope it helps!
    Take care, and remember...just because it’s fiction, that doesn’t mean that everything has to come up roses in the end. Just make sure that your story gets the love and attention that it deserves, from the first sentence to the last.
    Love you lots! Seezya soon!
     
  11. Comicality

    Author Experience

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Author Experience There are many different talents and unique gifts that go into being a really great writer, and you have to eventually learn how to master them all over time. That pretty much goes without saying. You have to be able to create compelling characters, write engaging dialogue, have an understanding of plot points and strategy, add details, pay attention to themes and tone, build reader empathy so you can get your audience to invest the time and energy that it takes to make your story work, and still maintain a sense of literary cohesion and continuity. You don’t really understand how much work goes into making a story from scratch until you take the time to break it all down and pay attention to all of its moving parts in order to understand the difficulty of how much creative genius it takes to manipulate all of these elements to create something special while still making it look easy. All of these things not only have to be a part of your common writing discipline, but they have to be added to your work with a certain sense of ‘balance’ that will hold it together and (hopefully) have it all make some kind of sense in the long run. It’s not a cake walk, not by any means...but that doesn’t mean that it has to be something that you as an author have to dread and continuously struggle with either. Experience takes a lot of the pain and agony out of it. And it will happen. Hehehe, I promise.
    One of the two major rules that I always stress when giving out any kind of writing advice is to practice, practice, practice! Practice every moment that you can get, and then take a break, come back, and practice some more. It’s the only way to hone your craft. You can never practice enough. Build up your experience and enjoy every opportunity that you’re given along the way.
    The second major rule is a direct extension of the first. And that is to enjoy yourself and feel comfortable with your writing. Comfort isn’t something that can be taught, it simply has to be found. It has to be earned. It’s there within you, but you’re going to have to dig for it. So dig! Relax and try to let your talent flow as naturally and as spontaneously as you possibly can, until that comfort can be felt by your audience in ways that I can’t ever hope to explain...but I can tell the difference. And so can they.
    The thing is...these two major rules are important principles that build off of one another, and it all boils down to writer experience. Nothing else can replace experience when it comes to bringing life to your work. It is the magic cocktail that will combine all of the best parts of everything that I mentioned above and it grows bigger and becomes more fine tuned every time you write a new story or try out a new approach in your work. So the more often you do that, the stronger your skills will automatically become.
    Now, the thing about writing is that it can keep on ticking for as long as you do. A boxer might lose a few steps over time, a basketball player may have a younger guy on the court who can run circles around him, a singer’s voice may fade after years of intense performances...but writing never has to stop or grow tired unless you want it to. You, literally, have your entire life to build up all of the experience points that you could ever need to be the very best there is. Be proud of that. It will escalate your writing to levels that might surprise you.
    Why? I thought you might ask that. Hehehe! Let me explain...
    When I started writing, I was young, and hungry, and passionate...I was doing things back then that I probably couldn’t even conceive of doing now. There’s definitely something to be said for jumping into something like this when you’re all headstrong and ready to take on the entire world with the limitless potential you’ve got laid out ahead of you. But...could I outperform a younger version of myself today if I really had to? Oh God, yes! Hehehe! I think so. Easily. I’ve gathered so much information and technique and nuance over the years where I know that my younger self wouldn’t stand a chance trying to go against me. (Hehehe, that’s my ego talking. Mostly kidding, but not entirely.) The thing about experience is that it brings you a comfort and a sense of self confidence that allows a lot of the rules, the mistakes, the constant push to be the best, and the paranoia that comes from knowing that you’re not the best, to simply fall to the side. They cease to exist for you in any real state of importance. If that makes sense.
    I think that a certain spontaneity comes with experience that simply isn’t there when you’re still learning, or growing, or trying to evolve. You can still stretch out and do new things, but you’ve already been working hard to maintain a comfort zone that you can draw from any time that you want to. And that’s extra energy. The eager need to prove yourself is still there, but it isn’t always in turbo mode. It’s….ugh...let me see if I can explain it this way...
    This is a clip from the movie, “Tap”. Now, it has some of the most talented tap dancers to ever do it. And Gregory Hines was one of the best at that time, but this scene involves him matching up with some of the greatest of all time, including Sammy Davis Jr, who has never spent a day in school! He was a performer from the age of three, and was a legend among entertainers the entire time. He’s done routines that were once thought impossible, and then surpassed them. Here, he was in his 60’s, and unfortunately passed the following year from cancer...but all of these incredible artists were able to take Gregory Hines to task, despite being almost twice his age! It’s actually kind of crazy when you think about it. Because there’s no WAY he could have taken Sammy on when he was in his prime! Hehehe!
     
    I’d like to think that if I could still keep doing the ‘Comicality’ thing for another ten years or so...I could reach the point where that would be me. LOL! “Comsie doesn’t have any typing fingers anymore!”
    “WHAT?!?! No typing fingers??? Bring your ass to this keyboard and let me teach you something, youngster!” ::Giggles::
    The point is...there comes a point where all of the skill and technique that you’ve learned and worked so hard at in the beginning becomes an almost automatic response to what you’re doing. It’s second nature. You don’t have to think about it anymore, it’s simply a part of what you do. You know how it works and how to use it to your advantage without even breaking a sweat...and that gives you all the room in the world to improvise and take risks where other authors wouldn’t. This is why practice is so very important. Because the less energy you have to use adhering to writing formulas and mechanics, the more energy you have to put towards your natural instincts and spontaneous blocks of fiction that you never thought you’d be able to write before. Basically, that entire uphill battle that you struggled through in order to learn your art...is now a flat line. It’s just something that you do. You don’t have to ‘think’ about breathing. You don’t have to ‘retrain’ yourself on how to ride a bike. You don’t ‘forget’ how to swim. These are skills that are always at your disposal when you need them...and they don’t take any thought or effort at all. So all of that extra energy can go towards to achieving new elevated levels of expertise that you didn’t even know were there before. And that’s the beauty of experience.
    Hehehe, there have been many times in the chatroom where I playfully come up with a scenario or a new idea and write it out spontaneously right there in real time...just to show them that I can. Now, of course, an actual story takes a lot more time and planning and editing to make it complete...but at the same time, I’ve had enough experience over the years where creating a short passage on the fly has become so easy that it barely takes any thought or effort at all. I can do that part for fun. I know how to put words together. I know how to use descriptive words to paint a vivid picture. I know how to invoke certain motions and set up scenarios that will ‘show, not tell’ to express the thoughts of my main character. Structure, vocabulary, plot twists, story planning, dialogue...I’ve done it enough to have these things step in for me without even needing to think about them. It’s just something that I do. So all of my energy is free to do other things with every story that I write.
    Every part of the writing process that you conquer...becomes a natural ‘reflex’ action. One that you can trust and depend on.
    This is a martial artist, Donnie Yen, who I’ve been a huge fan of for many years now. And he’s playing Ip Man, one of the greatest fighters and revolutionaries of his time. But look at this scene! This is what I’m talking about! He doesn’t have to think or concentrate or put extra focus and energy into what he’s doing. He’s simply got so much experience that every block, dodge, and parry, comes naturally to him. He knows what’s coming next. He knows how punches and kicks work. He can see the entire ‘chess game’ of fighting twelve steps down the road. Why? An insane amount of practice. The only time he really has to expel any extra energy is when he has to deal with something unpredictable or out of the ordinary.
    Writing can work the same way once you’re comfortable enough with it.
     
    Now, I’m not saying that you have to put in an entire lifetime’s worth of hardcore daily writing in order to be as good as you want to be. Not at all. I’m saying that you work to take the writing challenges presented to you...find your own way to master them...and then allow them to become second nature to you so you’re not focused on them anymore. Like I said...every part of the writing process that you conquer, becomes a reflex action. The less you have to ‘think’...the more you’re allowed to ‘feel’. And the feeling is what people are going to remember most about your story. So try out a few new ideas, and keep at it until you get it right and feel comfortable with it. It might take a couple of weeks...it might take a couple of years. It depends on the writer and what they’re hoping to achieve with their work. But experience to the point of total comfort is key to really creating an amazing story in my opinion.
    There are still times when I’ll look back at something, or someone will quote something from a chapter, and I’m like, “Wait...I wrote that???” It’s because a lot of what I do now has become an involuntary expression of whatever it is that I was feeling while writing or adding to that particular story. So when you’re putting your thoughts out there, and wearing your heart on your sleeve...be a dancer! Be a martial artist! Know what works, what to look for, what’s coming next...and make it a part of who you are. And when you find that comfort zone...go searching for the next level. It can be the path towards being one of the greats!
    I hope this helps you guys out! A little something to think about when working on your next project! Take care, and thanks for listening to me babble for a while! More to come! I’ll seezya then!
     
  12. Comicality

    Against The Grain

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Against The Grain You know...as you get a bit older...you begin to see a bunch of ‘re-runs’ in the world. Or, at least in the world that the mysterious ‘they’ want to present to you. Hehehe, I’ve never understood the fascination, to be honest...trying to control public perception when reality is just….ummm...reality. It just seems so utterly exhausting to me. It’s like going through all of the trouble of kidnapping somebody, chaining them up in a basement with no windows, and soundproofing the whole room...just to tell them that it’s not raining outside when it’s obviously raining outside!
    I’ve heard it a million times before at this point, and it simply doesn’t affect me anymore. Rap music is going to cause the downfall of society. Pornography will destroy the kids. Comic books will rot the minds of the youth. Violent video games, and horror movies, and Dungeons & Dragons, and witchcraft, and marijuana, and...and...and...
    Ugh! There’s always SOMETHING to be absolutely terrified of at all times. With the very convenient exceptions of the dangers that make people insanely rich. I’ve seen it all...and it gets more tiresome every single time. But I digress….as a writer, there are going to be times when your heart rally wants to express itself and possibly talk about something that you really love and care about...but feel as though you can’t. You may want to tell your own personal story of your battle with drugs, or suicide, or physical or sexual abuse...and there goes that pesky peer pressure, looking over your shoulder every single step of the way and trying to scare you out of your sharing your voice. Not only that, but it’s constantly working on building an army of other people to view your art the same way...and I’m not going to lie...sometimes its going to suck. It really is.
    Believe me...I’ve been hurt, ridiculed, and banned, more times than I can count online for that very reason. Even though the stories I write are about first love and are meant to be seen as a nostalgic return to what young love was like. Not just for me, but for what I expected it was like for all of us. And no matter how many positive comments, emails, and ratings, I’ve gotten over the years...that pressure is always there. Desperately exhausting itself, searching for ways to tear it all down and punish me for it all over again. Hehehe, it’s kind of funny when I think about it now...but nobody can say that ‘Comicality’ hasn’t taken his fair share of lumps for these stories over the years. Especially in the very beginning. Oh God, did some of those attack hurt! I’ve lost a lot of hard work, been insulted, publicly humiliated...like I said...it sucked. And I had to deal with that venomous shit for a long long time. In fact, if it wasn’t for GayAuthors finding me, offering me they’re support, and believing in me and what I was trying to do...I wouldn’t still be writing today. I wouldn’t even have a website right now after being blindsided by quite a few shutdowns and pointless witch hunts. But that’s just how hard this random backlash of strangers was working to see me fall. And I’m still here. I sort of look back on those times fondly now. In fact, if I had to go back and do it all over again, I doubt that I would change a thing.
    That’s one of the downfalls of occasionally going against the grain when it comes to your personal expression. Especially when dealing with emotional issues that are very close to your heart. As I’ve mentioned before to many of you...while “My Only Escape” was a very difficult story for me to tackle and finally finish, seeing as it hit so very close to home...it wasn’t my first attempt at trying to write about my own experience with childhood abuse. I tried to approach it at some point in “New Kid In School”, and also in “Gone From Daylight”...but the pressure for me to stop intimidated me into shying away from the reality of it all. It was hard to hear those comments, but I had to buckle up and really tell my story the way the way that I felt it needed to be told. And that’s when “My Only Escape” was born into existence.
    I understand the backlash from a bunch of readers concerning this series, and if you read some of the comments...it was pretty severe in some cases. They didn’t want to hear it, read it, see it, acknowledge it...many people told me that they refused to keep reading, I got some emails that were borderline threats concerning that story. But you know what? It needed to be told. And I was going to tell it. Period. The rest of the world, be damned.
    Sometimes...going against the grain is needed. And that series has helped more people deal with their own trauma than you could ever imagine. I can take pride in that. Because I could have caved in and cut it short, never to write it again. It would have saved me a lot of anguish and been soooo much easier. But when has anything truly worthwhile ever been easy, right?
    Please understand, a few years ago I wrote an article about ‘Writer Responsibility’...so I don’t want any of you to think that I’m not fully aware of my position on this chess board of writing stories just like the rest of you. I’m very cautious about crossing any lines that I think might do more harm than good. Especially when it comes to stories with my kind of erotic content and often being seen by a younger audience than some of the other authors out there have doing the same. So I don’t just write whatever I want to write without keeping that in mind. I would never want to inspire anyone to commit any crimes or acts of violence. I don’t want to lead anyone astray, or glorify self destructive behavior, if I can help it. That’s not my goal at all...and it’s definitely a part of my thought process when I’m even planning a story out in my head, much less writing it and making it available to people who may find themselves vulnerable to the subject matter. Even my darkest stories have lines that I try not to cross if I think they’ll be taken too seriously. I don’t glorify gun violence or promote promiscuity with strangers or encourage suicidal tendencies of any kind. Even if those concepts make their way into one of my stories, I treat them very carefully. That’s a part of expressing yourself as well. You don’t want to put any bad vibes out into the world if you don’t have to.
    And yet...silence isn’t the answer either. It never has been.
    There’s a rapper named Vic Mensa who once said that it was an artist’s duty to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. And I believe the same thing. You can’t keep the world from seeing the rain forever. I don’t care HOW much pressure you put on us...seeking truth is human. Instead of playing pretend, how about you hand me an umbrella and teach me how to be careful out there? You know? It’s a lot less impossible.
    I think that...if you really have a part of yourself that you want to share, a story to tell, a perspective that you think might open the eyes of some of the people in your audience...then tell that story. Do it. There will be times when it feels a little scary, and there may be comments that will try to intimidate you out of speaking your mind...but these are the times when you have to ask yourself the question...
    ...Am I going to try something safe and go with the flow...or am I ready to deal with possibly going up against the grain?
    And I mean what I say when I mention ‘being ready’. Because sometimes it takes a bit of practice with some less controversial subjects to sort of get your head in the game and tackle the big fish. (Hehehe, what kind of metaphoric jumble was that??? Maybe I need some more practice myself!) That would be my advice, but...if you just have a deep story burning you up inside and you want to shout it out while the fire is still in you...then go for it. At the end of the day, its all up to you. The key is to thoroughly examine the thoughts and emotions in your head, and deliver them in a way that creates that emotional gut punch that you want it to have...while still being able write with a sense of tact and grace. This is much easier said than done, depending on how close you are, personally, to the subject matter. But that’s where being ‘ready’ comes into play here.
    I can remember (during one of my life long re-runs) when the AIDS virus was running wild all over the place, and by the time I had gotten to high school...there were people all over, in the media, and the church, and politics, and the papers...who were just SCREAMING for everybody to be abstinent! No sex! Ever! Sex is bad! Gaaaahhhhhh!!! And anybody who disagrees is a full blown criminal!
    Hahaha...an abstinent 14 year old ‘Comsie’...that’s hilarious!
    But I remember music and movies pretty much fighting back against that idea. They went against the grain. Because...’fuck off’. You want to teach sexual safety, then cool. But don’t tell me that sex is bad...you’re not going to win that argument. Rap music was rally getting popular around this time and more mainstream...and there were a bunch of songs encouraging safety and condoms and intimacy...but they didn’t demonize sex in general. And this was seen as a huge insult to the powers that be who were trying to control the narrative.
    ::Shrugs:: Sorry. You failed. Again. Just like you did with everything else.
    One of these songs was “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt N’ Pepa, and it was catchy and fun and delivered a good message without devaluing or dismissing the beauty of sex as a whole. It was going against the grain, but like I said...it was doing it with tact and grace. And that’s how you can get a controversial or even a socially unacceptable message across with minimal threat, and thus...minimal backlash.
     
    This would be an example of using a little sugar to help the medicine go down, as they say. Again...if you’re going to do something that may cause backlash or trouble with people absorbing your story...you have to have enough self awareness to do so within reason. You can’t just spout off whatever you want and expect your readers to stand for it. I’m talking about extremes here, and dancing on those lines that you’re not supposed to cross when writing your narrative. It’s not about self censorship. It’s about being able to effectively get your point across to your audience. Period.
    When your subject matter is deliberately creating discomfort or anger in your readers...you begin to lose your ability to communicate. People’s defenses go up almost immediately, and what you end up with is an audience that is more focused on fighting back against what you have to say than they are trying to find some meaning within it. And that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Having your readers understand?
    Pushing too hard or trying to be too edgy or controversial can only end up working against you at some point. Let me repeat it again...tact and grace. Say what you have to say, but don’t forget your manners, lest you lose your fanbase to something that they might get more enjoyment out of. Readers and writers have a symbiotic relationship, remember? So always remember to play your part in that.
    If you want to maybe challenge your audience to accept certain ideas or concepts that they probably wouldn’t normally...it may take a few extra pokes and prods...but don’t lose your footing in the process.
    I remember listening to Madonna’s “Human Nature” over and over again early in my writing days when I just wanted to find my confidence and keep writing some of the stories that I knew I was going to have to hear some bullshit about at some time or another. Specifically, “Untouchable”...which was a constant grief for me at the time. Then again...any sex scene that I wrote either got rejected or completely ignored by people who didn’t want anyone to know that they liked it. Ugh!
    But I kept writing anyway. And I refused to stop doing it my way. I used tact and grace, so what was I so worried about? They’re love stories...with sex in them. Deal with it. Hehehe!
    These lyrics helped me through a lot...
    You punish me for telling you my fantasies
    I’m breaking all the rules I didn’t make
    you took my words and made a track for silly fools
    you held me down and tried to make me break
    Did I say something TRUE?
    OOPS! I didn’t know we couldn’t talk about sex!
    Did I have a point of view?
    OOPS! I didn’t know we couldn’t talk about YOU!
    And I’m not sorry!
    It’s human nature!
    And I’m not sorry!
    I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me!
     
    Now, will this keep you safe from all manner of backlash and criticism? Hahaha! Hell no! You wish! You can tell people that they have some lint on their shirt, and they’ll throw a full blown tantrum over the horrendous offense! All I’m saying is that I realize that some of you, maybe even most of you, have a very personal story to tell. One that is full of struggle and strife, heartache and pain, and any number of any other harsh experiences that you might want to write some day. You might even want to start today. And it might be uncomfortable for some people to hear it. But as long as you’re able to write that story without judgement, anger, some overpowering agenda, and without losing your audience or sense of responsibility for what you’re doing...then you can not only craft one hell of a powerful story, but you can end up making a real difference in the lives of your readers. And that’s something that lasts forever.
    Take care, my beloved peers! I hope this helps! And I’ll seezya soon with more! ((Hugz))
     
  13. Comicality

    Sexual Intimidation

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Sexual Intimidation I do realize that there are those of you who simply love to write great stories, and whether they be with gay characters or not, they may not be overly erotic in nature. Even if it’s a romance. And that’s awesome! Keep going, and build your story up to be whatever you want it to be. I admire that and definitely enjoy a good romance myself from time to time without a bunch of naughty bits thrown in when they’re clearly not necessary for the story to work. I grew up on sweet romantic stories too, just like everybody else. The sexy stuff came later, hehehe!
    However, there have been authors that I’ve talked to over the years, and some of them recently who are working on stories of their own...and I’ve noticed that there can sometimes be a bit of a ‘hang up’ for them in the writing process that I’d kind of like to talk about today. And that is the idea of sexual intimidation when it comes to gay fiction. I understand that it can feel a bit awkward for some, and downright dirty for others. Trust me, I get it. But it’s not as difficult to work around as you might think it is. There are levels that determine what fits and what doesn’t. Words that can give a sex scene a lewd and ‘hardcore’ feel, or a more intimate and tender feel. There are fans out there who go searching for both, so it really depends on how you want to work it out and match it to your own fantasies and fetishes...whatever they may be. Timing, pacing, descriptions...all of this goes into creating the sexual experience that you’re looking for your characters to have, and what kind of audience you’re looking to entertain. What I’m adding here are some techniques that you can learn and master rather quickly if you decide that you want to try it out...but don’t get all skittish about adding sex to your project if you really feel that it’s something that you want to be there. If you’re going to do it...you have to develop a feeling of confidence and engagement. Otherwise, the sex falls flat, and the scene is wasted. If anything, it will end up taking some of the life and realism out of your project more than anything else, and that’s not what you want. I’m not kidding when I tell you that readers can detect these things through your words alone. A writer needs to be as invisible as possible for the fiction to work, otherwise, they’re concentrating more on you and your input than the story itself and what the characters are going through during these tender moments. So let’s discuss how we can work through this, and talk about the downfalls that come with holding back on a sex scene or writing a scene out that comes off as timid and out of sync with the rest of the story. Cool?
    Your very first order of business, however, is figuring out whether or not your narrative actually needs any kind of graphic sexual descriptions at all. While I started out writing my own stories thinking that this was some kind of unspoken rule...it really isn’t. It is totally possible and respectable to write an entire story or a series without any heavy sexual descriptions at all. Or, if you want to, you can simply allude to a sexual encounter and fade the virtual screen to black. Then come back the next day where the reactions of the main characters and a few vague mentions of sexual activity is more than enough to get the point across. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it would be a bad thing to try to force sex into a story that you’re really not vibing with. Sometimes, it’s simply better left unsaid. You know? Eroticism is a lot more than swapping fluids, ya know? Hehehe! So figure that part out first and if it’s what you want, we can move on from there.
    Seeing as this particular article is focused on sexual intimidation in your writing, I’m going to assume that those of you who are still reading actually DO want to add effective sex scenes into your story with some graphic details added, but you might just feel a bit weird about it. Understandable. It happens. So let’s get into the methods that you might be able to use to make that happen. And that begins with figuring out what it is that makes you shy away from sexual content in the first place.
    Don’t take that as an insult or anything. It might end up being a real part of the block you may be dealing when it comes to this stuff. It could be a lack of experience, it could be a fear of not being good at describing a sexual act, it could be because of a bad sexual experience that you had in your past...and all of these things matter. The question is, can you overcome them in order to put sex in your story? Or are they better left along until you feel more comfortable slipping them into your narrative? If you’re worried about writing sex...you have to find out why. It’s a process. Not an excuse or a simple answer for somebody else’s benefit...no. What is it within YOU that is making you hesitate? You want to add sex...but you can’t. Nobody can break down that barrier but you. So take some time and think about it, k? There’s no wrong answer here. Just the wall between you want and what you’re willing to do to make it happen.
    Now...you’ve been reading other stories with graphic sexual content, right? You’ve watched porn online before? You might have seen some explicit pics of models completely naked and hard? Ok...so the interest in carnal pleasures is there and ready to go. Am I wrong in assuming that? Please let me know if I am.
    So...where is the disconnect? At what point do you stop and get nervous to go any further? Ask yourself...what happens if you go further? How do you imagine this scene taking place? Have you sort of planned it out in your head? Some oral? Some anal? Some kissing and rolling around? Who’s on top? Who’s on the bottom? Which one represents your protagonist or your main point of view? You’ve thought about it before, right? C’mon...be honest. Shhhh, I won’t tell. ::Giggles::
    You claim to want sex in your story. You’ve seen sexually explicit material elsewhere. You know how to set up a scene of intimacy between your characters and have sort of thought about how the whole scene will take place. Cool. So...why not write it? Where does the wall pop up to stop you from going any further? That’s the magic question here.
    Talking to many other authors with issue, the anxiety surrounding it often comes from having other people know and possibly judge the writer for describing these acts in great detail, and that can be an extremely vulnerable feeling, especially in front of complete strangers. It’s a very intimate part of our lives, after all. So how can you not at least feel a touch of embarrassment if this is your first time putting those thoughts in a story where other people have unlimited access to them? I’ve been there myself. And there are times when I still question how far I should go with certain scenes and certain characters depending on the story. But when I hold back, those stories don’t always get as high ratings as the ones when I go all out. So I’ve learned to toss that whole concept out of the window first before I even get started. I mean, why not, right?
    Sorry! I LIKE! I don’t force it into stories where it doesn’t belong...but it belongs in a lot of my stories. So why not pour my heart into it and make it as hot as I possibly can? Who’s going to complain? I mean...seriously.
    In Chicago some years back, there was this liquor store that used to open up at 9 AM. And I was working super late hours, plus I was an insomniac on top of it...so sometimes I would stop in and grab something to enjoy myself, get some Comsie work done, and then get worn out enough to go to sleep. And we used to tease each other after a while. Where he’d be like, “Why are you buying alcohol this early in the morning?” And I’d be like, “Why are you SELLING alcohol this early in the morning!” Hahaha, don’t judge me, bitch! Well...adding sex into your story? Same deal. The people who came across your sex story were looking for a sex story, and chances are that they’ve seen stuff a lot more crass and dirty than anything that you’re writing. So what is there to feel weird or vulnerable about? I mean, I get it...but come on. Do you guys have any thoughts on this personally, because I’d love to know. Nobody is going to be like, “How dare you have this sex scene in the sex story that I was looking for on this sex site.” That’s just ridiculous. So...if that’s what has been holding you back, take a moment to think about the hypocrisy involved in that situation and just write what you want to write. As little or as much sex as you want to toss out there. Chances are that nobody who finds your story is going to mind. And anybody who might mind, isn’t going to find your story. So take some time and try to break yourself out of that mode of thinking. You’re holding back for nothing. So lose the paranoia and get to business. Let’s get them naked already! Hehehe!
    Also...you can be more creative and downright poetic with your language and vocabulary when describing a sex scene if you think that will help it to feel less ‘naughty’ about it. I’ve found that it helps some authors get past the stigma of writing about sex while still writing about sex. You know what I mean?
    There are a lot of words that I simply don’t use in my stories anymore, because they have more of a lustful impact on the act of the sex itself. And I’ve noticed that my older stories with that lewd language sound a lot more ‘selfish’ to me now. Here, let me give you an example.
    One of my earlier stories might have been written like this...
    “I tried my best to be as patient as possible, but his sexy hole was so fucking tight! I was shivering from the feel of it wrapped around my boner, and pushed forward again to see if he was ready to take more of me. He gasped out loud, but it felt so hot as I slid more of my cock into him that having him wiggle only turned me on even more. He was face down, breathing hard...that tight, round, ass of his presented to me in a way that kept urging me to give him more. I needed to fuck him so bad...”
    While, even when in an incredibly horny mood, I would write that same scene as a mutually pleasurable moment for both partners, and with a softer tongue. Like this...
    “And I let him adjust for a few minutes before I was compelled to push in just a little bit further. I could feel the erotic stretch of him as he did his best to accept as much of my length into his warmth as he could, his breath heavy against my sheets as he struggled a bit to find some added comfort. Welcoming my intrusion with caution, but with a reckless level of lust still yearning for more.”
    Which is the same scene, but the way it’s worded lessens the overall sexual frenzy of it all. It seems a bit more romantic and less self gratifying in its presentation to me. To someone who is worried about sounding too vulgar or obscene in their descriptions, there are many ways to deliver the same message without diving into the gutter. Then again...even if you did...would that be a bad thing? Again, it depends on your audience. The point is...you can’t write a sex scene as though you’re getting ready to read it out loud in front of your local pastor at the church picnic. If you’re going to go in this direction...then do it. I know that we all have defenses against being so open and brazen about this sort of thing, but that doesn’t mean that those walls can’t come crumbling down if we really want to break through and express our desires in a way that will satisfy us, as well as our readers. Right?
    You need to find out what it is that you really want to do with your ‘erotic’ story (Yes...EROTIC story), and whether or not that really speaks to who you are as a naturally sexual being. There’s no other way to attack this situation. You want sex? Dream about sex? Fantasize about sex? Then write it out. If you like a lot of kissing...go for it. Have a fetish for sexy feet? Throw that in there. Like leaving a hickey on someone’s neck? Why not? Do it! Hehehe, this is your playground. And chances are...somebody out there shares your particular attraction or kink to a degree where they’ll write and tell you how incredibly HOT that scene was! So try to open up a little bit...write it out...and if you feel weird about it later, then you can edit it down or take it out of your story completely. But don’t be intimidated by expressing sex in your story in a totally healthy and normal way. There’s an audience out there for that. You’re not the first person to find sucking on someone’s fingers erotic. You’re not going to be the only person turned on by dirty talk, or a little hair pulling, or anything else that you might come up with. So let your art be a part of you, and don’t b ashamed of it.
    In the original version of Stephen King’s “IT”...all of the teenage kids have a full blown ORGY! Hehehe! No...I’m not making that up. So, no matter what you think of, I’m willing to bet that you’ll be ok.
    That’s it for now! I hope this helps. And I know that it’s a process, trying to overcome certain hurdles or get past a few insecurities. We writers work from a very vulnerable source, and to be able to do that isn’t just a matter of writing and practice...but you have to put a significant portion of your mental health on the line. It’s a lot to ask. But the more you pierce through that veil...the better a writer you will become. I’m still finding out new stuff about myself all the time, so the same goes for me too.
    Just give a shot. Get comfortable with it. And then see if it’s something you want to continue, enhance, or get rid of altogether. K?
    Happy writing! And stay beautiful!
     
  14. Comicality

    See It

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    See It It can be a really difficult concept to grasp for a vast majority of people, you know? Especially those who don't find themselves driven by a certain creative passion.
    I mean, I used to think..."Well, yeah. Of course there are going to be a few people who don't understand the idea behind it, and there's no way for me to effectively explain it to them in a way where they can truly absorb the concept in the same way that I can." But after years and years of looking for kindred spirits online and offline...it became clear that most people have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about half the time when it comes to my writing or why it means so much to me. And this goes from my closest friends, to my family, to my own mother. When I talk about writing and how deeply it runs inside of me and how much I wish I could do it every second of every day...they really don't get it.
    This used to really baffle me at first. Sometimes, it would even frustrate me to the point of being really ANGRY that they didn't seem to want to understand what I was telling them and made a deliberate effort to keep it that way. It was like they discarded or trivialized one of the most important parts of my personality, my heart, my mind, my life...and didn't seem to feel any remorse about it. How can this be? You know? What is so complicated about what it is that I'm trying to tell you right now?
    But...the truth is...
    It IS rather complicated. To them it is at least. And what was once such a frustrating burden that made me feel isolated and disenchanted with the whole process...became a truly liberating feeling that I wasn't really paying attention to before. And if you can see I for yourselves, and truly tap into it, you will be able to raise your storytelling abilities beyond anything that you ever thought was possible before. But it takes a shift in your thinking to make that happen, and a sincere appreciation for a skill that was never meant to be explained or taught to other people.
    That being said...
    Let me take a shot at explaining this and teaching it to other people! Hehehe! See? We're making progress already!
    Somewhere early on in the "Gone From Daylight" series, I shared a true story of something that my art teacher once told me at a very young age. Being a huge fan of cartoons and comic books and my head full of all of these stories that I wanted to tell...I used to rally get upset and mentally punish myself for not being able to draw things and have them look the way that I wanted them to look. She could see the bitterness on my face and she would tell me to relax. Mostly because I was trying too hard and getting upset to the point where discouragement was beginning to settle in. It's at this point where a lot of people give up on something that they might end up being really good at if they can just hang in there and stick with it. And I was reaching that point at lightning speed. And I'd crumple up my paper, rip it in half, or scribble stuff out to the point of almost tearing a hole in the page. Hehehe, I was a passionate little brat. Don't hold it against me. And there was a day when I just came right out and asked her if she could just teach me how to draw. I mean, she's a teacher, right? That's her job. And even after all these years, I remember what she told me. She said, "Nobody can teach you how to draw. But I can teach you how to see." Now, I think I was in the fifth or sixth grade at the time, so that took a lot more explanation and working with me on her part, but I eventually got a hint of what she meant...and everything else began to slowly but surely fall into place after that. Not all at once, of course...but I was able to make enough progress, day after day, to keep pushing forward to see if I could get even better instead of just aggravating myself for not getting it perfect on the first try.
    That still sticks with me to this very day. You have to know your talents, your advantages, and the tools at your disposal. You have to know them better than anybody else out there. I'm not talking about memorizing certain rules or writing formulas or tips and tricks of the trade. You have to find, recognize, and believe in your ability to do what you do best. Seek it out. Every memory you have, every emotion you've ever felt, every interaction that you've ever had with other people (both good and bad), is something that can be mixed in with the core elements of who you are as a person. And you have no idea how brightly that shines when you find a way to pour that heart and soul into your writing in a naturally fluid and captivating manner.
    Hmmm...I feel like I'm losing my focus here...
    You know how you can walk around in your house in the dark with hardly any trouble at all? It's easier with the lights on, but you know where the couch is. You know how far the coffee table sticks out, where the light switch is in the kitchen, or how to feel around for your alarm clock even when you're half asleep. You don't have to really 'guess' at what you're doing. There's an inner sense within you that can allow you to see it without even seeing it. When you sit down at your keyboard with an idea in your head...your writing isn't all that different. You know, in your heart of hearts, exactly what it is that you have to do. Take a moment and think about it. 'See' it.
    I know people online who have been infinitely helpful to me online, because they can look at a computer code and figure it out as if it was easy as reading a children's book. People who can draw a million times better than I ever could when they're just absentmindedly scribbling on a piece of scrap paper to pass the time. They can play the piano, or the guitar, or match the colors of an outfit, or cook a gourmet meal, or look at a car engine and see any flaws or problems with it in a matter of seconds. If those people had to explain to me what they do and how they do it...it would be a difficult task to pull off. It's just something that they know how to do. It comes as second nature to them. How do you translate something that comes so casually to you into words that somebody else can actually understand and apply with any level of skill to their own projects, even with years and years of training? And even then they might not be able to reach a level of being unique or standing out as one of the greats. It's something to think about.
    But if writing is your passion...then recognizing the almost intangible nature of creating your own stories out of thin air is a way to find and sharpen your greatest instincts. Even if you never realized that you had them with you the whole time.
    Hehehe, why am I suddenly imagining Dorothy in "The Wizard Of Oz" clicking her heels three times to get back home?
    Take a look at the two videos below. This is a very very young Justin Bieber displaying a natural talent for playing the drums and keeping a steady beat. A LOT of people really cannot do this...but in the first video, he's two years old. TWO! And in the second video, he's only nine! You can't say that he's had years of instruction or formal training to be able to pull this off, because not even old enough to make that claim. BUT...he can look at a surface, get a beat in his head, and when it comes to pulling it off...he can just 'see' it. Everything is laid out right in front of him, and his brain just processes the act of manifesting that sound and creating that rhythm by allowing himself to full engage with whatever it is that he has to work with in that particular moment. It's not really what I would call a thought process...it's more like being able to identify the colors in a rainbow. You see them. You know what they are. And whether you can explain them someone else or not, you can automatically translate into something more concrete for other people to pick up on. And it only gets better with time.
    Just look at this for a moment...
     
    00 Now, what you should notice right away is the fact this isn't just some rehearsed routine with rules and guidance and limitations. Somehow...what's happening here is that he is actually able to see the limitless 'colors' in his pallet when it comes to building a beat, and he's able to recreate them in a different form. One that we can hear and enjoy. There's something inside of him that he knows how to bring it to the surface for the rest of us to experience in a way similar to the way he experiences it. You can't ask him how he did that or get him to really teach you much more than the basics...but if you sat down and practiced your ass off at those basics, you might be able to see it too. Not the rules of drumming, not the rhythmic cadence needed, or how to mimic someone else's solo...but there's a barrier that you can eventually break through and understand whatever it was that Justin Bieber was able to understand as a two year old.
    Writing is no different, in my opinion. But you have to be able to see it. You have to be able to feel it. In your mind, there are millions of conversations, movie quotes, special moments, deep thoughts, song lyrics...ask yourself what they meant to you and why? But don't just concentrate on the translation of someone else's vision...focus on how it made you feel, and think about how you would translate that emotion into words of your very own. It takes some work and some soul searching...and there may be days when the appropriate words won't come to you right away...but don't take shortcuts. And don't feel discouraged if you have to struggle with finding a way to say what you're trying so hard to say. Visualize it. See the aura surrounding your expression and cross that bridge into making it concrete so other people can feel it too.
    The more you work at it, the clearer that vision will become. You will find ways to tap into a part of the creative process that many authors simply can't. Naturally, I have to go back and edit and fix up my word mechanics and check my story continuity and all of that...but that's not where the power of my story is going to come from. I'm always trying to make sure that my ideas are executed as effectively as possible...but being able to 'see' the story is the core of the story itself. And the emotional wallop is the most important part in my eyes. The rest I can fix in post. Hehehe!
    I have had a bunch of people tell me that they couldn't understand why I can't toss chapters out faster than I often do. They look at it like, "How hard can it possibly be to type out 3000 to 3500 words a few times a week?" And it can be really hard to get them to understand that I'm not just typing...I'm WRITING. There's a huge difference. And if they can't figure out what that difference is...I really don't know how to explain it to them. It will just have to remain my own little personal mystery until they figure out how to apply the practice to something that they're personally passionate about. It's the only way that it'll ever make sense.
    That's it for now! But if this made some kind of sense, and stimulated some writer's growth for you guys, then I'm glad! Feel free to add your two cents down below if you have anything to add or just want to share your own experience! It's always good to hear from a variety of perspectives, after all!
    Take care! Stay beautiful! And I leave you with a late teen Justin Bieber as he evolved even further by being able to see and translate his art for the masses. Some passions just become a vital part of who you are over time. So never give up! And look for my article on 'Writer Experience' a bit further down the road. You'd be surprised what's possible when you reach the higher levels!
     
     
  15. Comicality

    How To Ruin A Series

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    How To Ruin A Series Let’s say that you have yourself an amazing series online that you’ve been writing for an extended period of time now, and you can’t help but to have a blast working on it. You get excited sitting down at your keyboard with your juice or your coffee or your ‘miscellaneous’ cocktail of choice, and you’re ready to dive back into that world and continue the adventures of your readers’ favorite characters, ummm...’Slappy’ and ‘Hammy’! Hehehe!
    How can you go wrong? It’s the most popular series that you’ve ever written, right? Everybody is probably waiting with baited breath to see what’s going to happen next, and you can’t go wrong by reigniting interest in your work by blessing the internet with another Slappy and Hammy adventure.
    Actually...you can. In fact, one of the biggest let downs of any big series is having it slowly wind down, only to fade away with a whimper instead of being completed in the way that it was intended. No matter how popular or well beloved a fictional series may be...an author can ruin the emotional effect and lessen its overall impact if they’re not careful, and that’s going to waste soooo much of your previous hard work and all the time you put in to make it something special. It’s something we all have to look out for sometimes as writers, and it’s better to stick to the plan and go out on a high note then to just let the batteries run down and have everything grind to a halt while you try to figure out ways to make it seem like that’s what you meant to do all along. I believe, from time to time, it’s important to revisit a list of things that could potentially ruin a series. Just so we can always remember to keep it in the back of our minds for when we feel ourselves going astray. It’s a good thing.
    I can remember having a talk with some of my friends at work a few years ago...and we were trying to come up with movie trilogies that actually worked all the way through. Even if some of them came back with a fourth one later on and stumbled...we were only counting the first three. And you...it was extremely difficult to come up with more than a handful of options. The first one was great, the second one was great...and then third part of the trilogy just...ugh! Like, what the hell happened? Now there were SOME decent candidates that made the list, even though there were a few disputes here and there. The original “Star Wars” trilogy, “Indiana Jones”, “The Bourne Identity”, “Back To The Future”, “John Wick”...But there were some of my all time favorites that just could not get three solid movies together without somehow getting things messed up and practically taking away from the two movies that came before it. Not “X-Men”, not “Terminator”, not “The Matrix”, Not “The Godfather”, not “Jurassic Park”...it’s like...a curse. You know? How hard could this possibly be? Geez! You couldn’t have a better set up than the one you were given...what happened?
    Thinking back on those conversations, I realized that it might actually be a lot harder than it looks if you don’t know what to look out for, what to avoid, and what to be honest about when it comes to your own work. It’s a bit of a challenge, and not ever series makes it all the way to the end. Granted, Hollywood’s main goal is to make money, and that might be a part of the failing process...but that doesn’t mean that your stories have to fall into that same pit of murky quicksand. What my bit of studying has shown me over the years, and what I’ve been trying to stick to ever since, has been broken down in to five basic rules here for you all so that you can keep your best successes from turning into utter disasters just before truly realizing your potential and using it before those murky waters come to seek you out. Five rules that I’m trying my best to abide by, and hopefully you will to.
    Here they are...
    #1 – DON’T try to outdo the earlier chapters of your own story! Please don’t. That’s a no no. Hehehe! Now, as rule number one...this may sound like a weird way for us to get started. Because you’re supposedly building up to a big ‘climax’ in your writing, right? It seems counterproductive for me to tell you to not raise the stakes with every chapter leading to that big moment that everybody has been waiting for. But, listen to me...attempting to constantly build on the chapters that you’ve already used to set up a strong foundation for your story to stand on and use them as a comparison for what’s going on ‘now’ can eventually get tiresome for your readers. Sounds crazy, right? But it’s true.
    Now, writing romantic gay teen fiction for this many years, I’ve seen a lot of other writers go down this path to excess...and it almost always ends in disaster in the end. It simply doesn’t work beyond a certain point. They have a really sweet ‘boy meets boy’ story happening in the beginning, and then add a few conflicts, and then some increased sexual content...and then the chapters keep coming. Then you have a break up. Ok, it happens. Then you have them get back together. Alright. That works for the story. I’m with ya. Then there’s a need to ramp up even further on the naughty parts. Then a third party gets involved. Now you’ve got a threesome. Then somebody gets killed off. Then somebody gets...cancer or something. And then...and then...and then...it just keeps going until you find yourself with such a tightly packed and convoluted plot that by the time you’ve reached the intended climax of your original story, it seems kind of lackluster in comparison. And that’s considering that people have continued to read through death and melodrama and enemas and boy orgies. Stop it. Take a moment and remember what the center of your story is, and stay focused. You can’t just keep coming up with bigger and bigger events until the whole series begins to feel cartoonish and out of line. If every event is a BIG event...then what is a big event worth? Every fight can’t end the relationship. Every intimate moment can’t be THE most intimate moment ever. Writing as though you have to somehow ‘one-up’ the previous chapter every single time you sit down at your keyboard has consequences that will begin to show themselves further on down the road. So try to pull back a little bit and build up to your major events with context and character depth as if they were all parts of their own story. Not just as an escalation of the earlier chapters that came before it. Use emotions to surround these moments and trust that they’ll have the proper impact when presented to your readers. If your last big event was at a ten...don’t keep trying to reach for an eleven...and then a twelve...and then a thirteen. It becomes exhausting, and some readers will lose interest before hitting the end of your series. Save the big sucker punches for your climax, and wind down from there.
    #2 – Don’t overstay your welcome. I can’t stress how important this is when it comes to writing a series. I know that you love your characters, and I definitely love mine too...in fact, go back and read my “Neverending Story” article on this. But there comes a time when you simply have nothing else left to say involving these characters and what they’ve been through. Do yourself and your audience a favor...and let them go. If you’re dragging a series out for the sake of familiarity...chances are that your entire narrative is going to end up fizzling out like a defective firecracker, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what you had in mind when you started.
    You’ll know when your series is beginning to lose steam. Either because you’ll begin repeating older conflicts that you had before, you’ll go searching for new characters or situations that will continue the narrative while adding nothing to the actual series itself, or you’ll simply find yourself not knowing where else you can take these characters in a new direction that will breathe new life into the story that you had originally intended. This is why having an ending in mind, even if you take a lot of spontaneous twists and turns and liberties along the way. It’s so you have a compass to lead you in a certain direction that will help you figure out exactly where you want your main characters to be when the story is over and done with. Seriously...look at your own work, and no matter how much you may love it, or how much you might fear having to start over with another story and set of characters from scratch...you’ve got to be brutally honest with yourself and know when it’s time to bow out gracefully. Wrap it up, and let the story exist as a moment in time before future lackluster chapters begin to sap the strength of the genius you initially created.
    #3 – Don’t go astray or lose sight of your vision! This is something that I’ve seen a lot of in some of the fiction that I’ve read in the past. Also, I’ve seen it in movies like, “28 Days Later”. This was a movie that I was really into for the first half, or maybe even the first 2/3rds, as I was watching...and without giving away any spoilers, everything sort of took a massive detour from what the movie was originally supposed to be about, and I was lost. More than that...I was disappointed. Like...WTF? Yeah, if you’re writing a story about a certain relationship, a theme, a vibe...don’t suddenly pull a bait and switch and throw your audience off and try to make it about something else. I am seriously not a fan of that at all.
    Reader/Writer trust is a must when it comes to investing emotions into the stories that we’re all trying to tell, right? Trust. If you start out getting your audience entangled with characters, themes, and storylines, that you set out for them...only to break everything apart and go a completely different way with it? Some may see that as being edgy or super creative or whatever...but to me, personally, it’s a broken promise. I came looking for one thing, and you lured me in with the bait of that promise...but then you just changed your mind and decided not to do that anymore? No way. That can end up being the total destruction of a series if not done carefully, and not as a part of the original plan. So be super cautious with this one. It can ruin an entire series in a single chapter or two if you’re not.
    #4 – A sudden stop. Now...I understand that in some narratives, this can be a really effective of a series, even a long running series, if done right. But if you’re going to take this approach, then it had better be one hell of a shocking finale. You have to not only build up to it throughout the entire series, almost from the very beginning...but you have to make sure that all of your loose ends are all tied up and everything has been dealt with in a way that comes full circle and makes that abrupt stop in your fiction a satisfying ending for your readers and for your characters as well.
    Don’t bring up a bunch of issues, leave a bunch of open ended questions, and then have your main character suddenly drive off of a cliff for no reason. Like...’Boom’...done! What is that? If that’s the ending that you have in mind, then you’d better spend a majority of your story building up to that point, with your protagonist talking about how he’s going to do exactly that...and how he just wants to leave the rest of the world behind. That still doesn’t mean that it’ll be a satisfying ending for your audience, but at least it won’t feel random and weird. Like the ‘writer’ (Yes, that’s you) just got tired of writing the story and needed a quick way out. Chances are, you’re going to piss off a lot of people. Remember, your readers are spending time, effort, and energy, in getting used to these characters. They’re embracing the people that you write about and want to involve themselves in their lives. So cutting the off without warning without so much as a ‘happily ever after’ ending? I’m just saying...it’s kinda rude.
    And ending without an ending is NOT an ending. Don’t pretend that it is.
    #5 – Don’t be caught off guard. Meaning...when you started this story, based on a solid idea...you actually did have an ending in mind, right? We talked about this! Hehehe, readers can actually feel you wandering aimlessly when you’re not exactly sure of where you want to go. You know, like...when you’re driving around in circles and looking at street names out of the front window, and thee person next to you is like, “You’re lost, aren’t you?” You may think you’re fooling your audience, but you’re probably not. Hehehe! Trust me, I’ve tried with a few chapters of my own. It doesn’t work.
    I totally understand the practice of just writing what you feel and seeing where it leads you, and that’s awesome. But at some point, as your story morphs and changes and begins to take on a more solid shape...you need to start thinking about where all of this is going and how you’re planning to bring it all to a close in the long run. Otherwise, your prose is just going to come off as driftwood in the river. Just gliding along without any real direction or destination outside of where the waters decides to take it. This is snatching the control as a writer right out of your hands and setting it adrift. Never a good practice. Take a moment to take some notes, figure out what your goals are, and guide the story down that path. No one is going to be entertained for very long, watching you flail about with nothing to look forward to. Not having direction is another way to take your fun and creative series and its characters...and crush them down into the mud. So always remember to ask yourself if you’re on the right track, and try not to stray too far from the master plan here. K?
    So...those are my top five advice tips that I hope will help you guys avoid the pitfalls of ruining a series that you’ve worked so hard on for so long. Keep things ‘in the pocket’, and remember what your goals are. It’s just that simple. If you find yourself drifting off to the side...do what you can to pull yourselves back to the path you started on. And when your story is over...no matter how short or how long it might be...let it be over. Box it up, wrap it up with a shiny bow and a heartfelt card to say ‘thanks’, and then let it go. There will be other stories, and other characters. Other successes and other failures. But passion and challenge is forever intertwined, right? So you can’t help but to love it!
    That’s it for this go round! Enjoy, folks! And stay beautiful!
     
  16. Comicality

    Wreckage and Redemption

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Wreckage/Redemption I, honestly, can’t help but to love a story about character redemption! We all do to some degree, don’t we? There’s just something about it that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Considering that we all have fears and insecurities, flaws and weaknesses...it’s extremely easy to relate and empathize with characters who find that special moment in time when they’re able to overcome the odds and find the courage to grow and evolve and navigate their way beyond what’s been holding them back all this time. Especially if it’s an underdog. I mean, it’s a seriously fun part of the whole hero’s journey, isn’t it? We all love to see that in the stories we allow to take a special place in our hearts, and we all secretly wish we could find those special moments in our own lives that would allow us to achieve the same level of rebirth. Who wouldn’t, right?
    And yet, at the same time…I definitely have my darker side. Hehehe! I mean, anybody who’s ever read some of my “Gone From Daylight” spinoffs (https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/world/gone-from-daylight/) or my ebook exclusives like the horror themed “Darkness Waits” or the first two books of “The Boys Of Widow Lake” (https://imagine-magazine.org/store/comicality/) already knows that my mind can go to some really dark places sometimes as well! In an entertaining way, of course. Hehehe...ahem! So I also have quite the affection for stories of someone being totally wrecked as a human being. Something that I’m sure happens a lot more than any of us would like to believe, and could possibly happen to any one of us at any time. I mean, it just makes for a compelling story...seeing someone completely fall apart to the point where it’s just like, “Fuck the world! The rules don’t matter anymore!” It’s one of those ‘stare into the abyss’ situations, and I’m always intrigued by tales of people being pushed over the edge beyond the point of no return.
    So what is it about these types of stories that makes them so engaging for readers, how do we create the allure for them, and why is it so difficult to combine the two themes together when it comes to building a project around both of them at once? That’s what we’re going to tackle today. So grab some popcorn and your drink of choice...and let’s get into it.
    The thing about writing a good ‘wreckage’ story is that you want your audience to actually relate to the main character and find some sort of mirror between your protagonist and themselves that will allow them to fill in the gaps and find some level of understanding that they can follow along with, and maybe even respect on some level. This is key when it comes to a good wreckage story. You have to take someone doing some very BAD things to people...and somehow paint them as the hero of this story simultaneously. Well, maybe the word ‘protagonist’ is a better term to use here. This may sound like a difficult task, but to be honest, it’s actually pretty easy. Hehehe! I mean, I’ve always been a die hard optimist, and I do have a lot of faith in humanity...but a lot of people suck. Seriously. And don’t tell me that it hasn’t crossed your mind on a weekly, if not daily, basis!
    Have you ever watched a compilation of those frustrating ‘Karen’ videos on Youtube videos, and thought to yourself, “This bitch needs to get punched in her fucking mouth and dragged out of this store by her hair?” Like...how do adults get away with acting like this in a civil society. You can call me wrong for saying it out loud, but I won’t take it back. FUCK those people! Hehehe! But...would I be the ‘good guy’ if I were to haul off and throw this loudmouth brat through a plate glass store window? Probably not. But I’m willing to bet that people would applaud me if I did it anyway. People have limits. Everybody knows it. And the entitled pieces of trash who get in people faces without expecting any consequences to follow their outrageous behavior...a lot of people would cheer to see them finally learn a lesson about how to treat other people. If you’re writing a wreckage story...that’s the exact emotion and feeling of harsh justice that you need to tap into. Something that’s needed. Something that feels deserved. Even if the actions of your protagonist are irrational and possibly even criminal...your readers will be intrigued and cheer them on anyway. That’s your ‘in’. Think about what really aggravates and disgusts you about certain people in general...and translate that into conflicts and stressful situations that will get your audience to side with the ‘villain’ of the story. It’s like watching someone getting bitten by an angry dog after they’ve been poking it with a sharp stick for an hour, just to cause it harm and hear it holler. When that guy gets a bloody bite taken out of him...it’s like, “GOOD! That’s what you get, asshole!”
    The idea of instant karma is a powerful tool when it comes to stories like this.
    I think a couple of great examples of an awesome, well written, wreckage story...would be Michael Douglas’ “Falling Down” and Kevin Bacon’s “Death Sentence”. Watch both of those movies! Amazing! And again...they’re doing some really bad things, but you can’t say that (on some level, maybe on many levels) it wasn’t justified. You actually understand why they’re doing what they’re doing...bad guy or not. And something about that taps into a part of you that makes you root for them the entire time. It’s crazy.
     
    000 With these movies you get to bear witness to the breakdown of someone who has, basically, been leveraged out of their sanity in a lot of ways. It’s almost like watching a road rage situation unfold, where people could have just left them alone and gone on with the rest of their day. It’s a dark ideology for sure, but it isn’t one that readers can’t understand once you’ve gotten them engaged in the thick of it. Accomplishing this just comes from really going into detail about the ever present pressure on your main character and the people he or she cares about. And how that pressure seems to be swelling to the point where it almost becomes unbearable for your protagonist to deal with. I truly believe that there’s a trigger within each and every single one of us that can be flipped when we’re pushed beyond our limits to contain the fury that comes from being pushed and pressed against the wall one time too many. But if you’re going to make this a major part of your story...you’re going to need to take some time to explain, in detail, why it got to that point. Otherwise, your protagonist looks like some kind of an unhinged psychopath. And that’s fine, if it’s the vibe that you’re looking for...but if not, you get the readers on your side by getting them to understand why their questionable actions could be considered an act of ‘justice’. On this side of the equation...’justice’ is your focus. K? That’s your bonding agent, right there.
    Now, when you swing the pendulum back the other way, and decide to tell a story of triumph and redemption...the opposite is true. In this case, it the ’INJUSTICE’ that needs to be the focus of your project, and how unfair your protagonist is being treated. It may sound backwards to some of you, but it really isn’t. By using injustice and struggle and pain as the main tools in your fiction, you tilt the path that they’re on upward, making it an uphill battle...something that seems insurmountable. A task so monumental that your main character has force their way through to the top and win despite all of the obstacles that are working so hard against them. The big the obstacles, the bigger the wins.
    The obstacles can be homophobia, domestic abuse, being exploited at work, sexual harassment, nuclear fall out, poverty...something that isn’t easy for your main character to ever hope to beat unless they can find strength within themselves that they never even knew was there before. This is where the injustices included in their situation connects your characters to your audience and creates that same bond that you’re looking for.
    A few great movies to check out as examples for this one (Out of many) would be “Colin In Black And White” and “Unbreakable”. It’s a great feeling to see someone fighting against the whole world, and to keep fighting until the world itself begins to struggle to hold its power, and is eventually forced to yield.
     
    000 One thing that you may notice is that these examples all share something in common. They have a heavy ‘Man Vs Society’ feel to them. Which, in my opinion, is the best way to tell both a wreckage and a redemption story. I feel as though it is a much more dramatic way to go. How do you fight the whole world? When it just keeps pounding you down over and over and over again? That’s not to say that you can’t apply the same ideas to a much smaller arena when writing fiction like this and writ something just as dramatic. You can narrow the conflict to a single group of friends, a family feud, an office full of cubicles, or just two or three people. I just think the whole society thing is a bit more grandiose, so the stakes feel bigger. That’s just me, though. Hehehe!
    The last thing that I want to talk about is the idea that you can have both a wreckage and redemption, or a redemption and wreckage, theme in a single story. However, if I had to give a tiny bit of advice...I would say that you should change your theme from one side to the other...and then leave it there. Don’t start off as a redemption, have it spiral down into the abyss, and then try to redeem your main character again afterwards. The reverse is true, starting low, surfacing up to the light, and then going dark again. I’m sure that it can be done, and I was trying to think of an example or two that I might be able to use...but I couldn’t. I think it’s kind of a tricky thing to pull off in fiction. If you guys have any ideas, let me know.
    The thing is, you can start off with a noble character and have them fall to the dark side...but when you try to bring them back, it can be done...but you’ve already demonized a big part of that character’s redemption. Even when you think about Darth Vader, it’s like...hehehe, well...
     
    See what I mean? Takes on a bit of a different feel when you spend any time thinking about it. And, the other way...if you start out dark, then go to redemption route...then stay there. If the protagonist falls a second time, then the theme behind the story is ‘he failed’ in a lot of ways. And if that’s how it ends...”He tried to go straight, but had to fall back into his worst habits in order to get things done”...then it’s almost like you reward the behavior. And it saps all of the light and triumph out of the short while that your main character struggling to do the right thing. So be careful if any of you guys try mixing the two extremes. It can make for a destructive concoction if you’re not careful.
    Anyway, I hope this helps you guys out! And remember that there are always exceptions to every rule. So if you think you’ve got the answer and can work things out on your own, by all means, go for it! I’d love to learn, myself. Especially since I’ve experimented with it a few times in the “Savage Moon” storyline, but I tread carefully between having my protagonist travel too far on the wild side so I can still retrieve him when I need him to come back to his rational mind. Hehehe! So, we’ll see how that works out in time.
    Take care! Love you all! And stay beautiful, k? Seezya soon!
     
  17. Comicality

    Jekyll And Hyde

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Jekyll And Hyde Something that can really stand out in a story while you’re reading it...and not in a good way...is the flip flopping nature of the characters that are supposed to be carrying the whole project on their shoulders and moving things forward. You see...there’s a point when the characters use the story to grow and evolve, and times when the story uses the characters to grow and evolve. The problem comes from writers who don’t keep it in mind that these two motivations have to be able to work together in order to create a full experience where neither side is really visible. And when they don’t...what you get is a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde situation that creates plot holes, conflicting information, and inconsistency of character voices. That last one is the most notable.
    So, today, I’d like to talk about consistency being maintained on both sides of this equation, what the equation is, and how to have them work together for the best possible presentation of your fiction. It isn’t really all that difficult, n fact, many writers do it naturally without putting much thought into it at all. But sometimes it helps to know what to look for and how to bring out the best in your story. It’s all about learning where to focus your attention when you go back and read it over again. If it only makes for a super tiny bit of a difference in the final product, at least it will be a positive one.
    Let’s get started...
    Let me begin with the two sides that we’ll be working with in this article. To some degree, you really do need both, in my opinion. You can’t really have your character take on a definitive arc without a story that allows them to do so or is willing to explain why it happened in the first place. Well, why did they find the strength to fight the high school bully? Why did they decided to end their relationship after dealing with it for so long? Why did this once selfish character decide to stop and do something charitable for a change? How did they learn the spirit of Christmas? Whatever it is...there has to be a series of events in your story that will lead them up to that point in a logical way. Through those events you can depict a variety of results from the character interactions, whether positive or negative, that will lead them in that direction. This is an example of the characters using the story to evolve. They are the focus. They are the driving force in all this. This is one of those cases where they story sort of moves them around with the rewards and the obstacles that are being placed in their path in order to get them to where they need to be by the time the story is over.
    On the other side...you can’t have a story created simply from a series of events and not focus the burden upon the shoulders of the characters that you happen to be writing about. Your characters are the relatable sparks that you can use to get your readers to identify with their plight and feel as though they’re a part of their adventures as the story goes along. Without characters that people can engage with and form emotional attachments to...the story is just not as interesting. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happens. No rhyme, no reason, no stakes. It’s like watching a garden grow in real time. Hehehe, doesn’t make for the most thrilling of reading experiences. This means that the story needs the characters to help it grow. It needs direct motivations, it needs mistakes, it needs triumphs, it needs emotional investments, it needs action...and it uses your characters to achieve that.
    Alright...so I hope that makes enough sense for us to move forward. The story is there to push the characters along, the characters are there to guide and focus the story. Cool?
    Now, the big question is...what happens when these two sides are completely out of sync? This is where we get some major conflicts of interest, and both sides can end up suffering from getting yourself trapped in that pitfall.
    This isn’t to say that story and character always needs to be perfectly balanced in every story you write...but I think it’s extremely important to make sure that they’re consistent. Unless it happens to be a deliberate trait of one of your characters...do whatever you can to avoid the Jekyll and Hyde syndrome. It ruins the immersion for your audience and forces them to stop so they can readjust their feelings about what’s going on. You don’t want that to happen. Believe me. Because the only thing worse than throwing your audience off with a distracting curve ball in your narrative is trying to bring them back in and come back to what you originally intended the first time around. Jerking people back and forth gets exhausting pretty quickly.
    If I was writing a story about a boy who is painfully shy and in the closet, and then somebody trips him in gym class...I might approach that as a point of humiliation for him and he would lower his head, brush himself off, and would probably hurry off somewhere to be alone where he didn’t have to face the stares and hear the giggles of his classmates after such an embarrassing display. I would make sure that this even is consistent with the rest of the story (Not the first time he’s ever been picked on or laughed at). And, from the description that I gave you above about his personality and his role in the story, his character’s behavior would also be consistent. Both the story and the people in it are acting in a way that feels familiar and doesn’t distract from the way I originally built them up from the beginning.
    However, if things were out of sync...it might come off as confusing or way over the top. If the story never mentioned him getting picked on by his peers before that very moment...and all of a sudden they’re tripping him in gym class for the sake of a story plot point...it feels like it comes out of nowhere. It’s like, “WTF? Why did they do THAT?” In the same respect, as a character, if I had the shy boy suddenly ball up his first, pop back up with an angry snarl, and go into full attack mode on the boy that tripped him...that would be seriously out of character for him to do that. The story never built that up effectively, so why would this be treated as though it was the ‘last straw’ where he just snapped and couldn’t take anymore. Again, this is out of sync of what we know about the story as a whole so far, and a departure from everything that you set up from the beginning. Congrats! You’ve just gotten yourself stuck in the quagmire of a Jekyll and Hyde situation. And if you think it won’t be that hard to get back to the shy boy and a non-hostile environment again without anybody remembering what just happened...you’d be wrong.
    You have to focus and be aware of what you’re telling your readers and what you’re not telling them. If you wanted this event to take place in your story, then you should set up the bullying aspect of it all early on in your fiction. Have it build, and escalate, until things boil over to a point where even your bashful protagonist is forced to take action in order to make it stop. But readers should know how your main character got from point A to point B. What happened? What has he learned along his journey that made him react this way? It had to be something, right? Put that ‘something’ on display so that the story and the character compliment one another in a way that doesn’t through the narrative out of balance. Flip flopping or having things happen without any prior set up or reason can be a bewildering experience for your readers, since they may not know the story like the back of your hand like you do. They have to work together, these two sides. Support one another. You’d be surprised how quickly even a simple short story can be turned into an utter mess if you lose that connection. It’s important.
    A few examples before I wrap this up. Watch this video down below, and pay attention to the character and the story, and ‘feel’ how they’re basically working in tandem to tell a short story while keeping things consistent throughout.
     
    If you notice, the son’s attitude is pretty steady from beginning to end, even when the story element takes over and begins to guide him into an entirely different situation. You never feel like he’s acting in ways that he wouldn’t act normally, even at the very end. It’s an excellent example of holding everything together and making sure that it all stays in line to a certain degree. The story and the characters involved remain true to what we, as spectators were introduced to in the very beginning. You know? It doesn’t stray, and the story may take unpredictable twists and turns here and there, but the way the characters deal with them is consistent with what we know about them. Even if our knowledge of them and their relationship is in limited supply.
    Now, take a moment to watch this short film. (Same main actor) Both the story and the characters sort of waver a bit in their behaviors or what you might be expecting from them and what you were introduced to initially...BUT, there’s still a feeling of believable action and reaction there. Nothing really feels too out of of place, nothing feels over the top or random. It’s concentrated on all of the elements that it should be, and it never throws you off with events or character behaviors that feel out of place.
    There’s a growth and an evolution here...but not at the expense of making any logical sense.
     
    Now, you may think this is a Jekyll and Hyde story...but think about it...is it really though? You’ve got characters that, even though they change and offer up some surprises here and there...there’s a build up to it. It makes sense. The story of their forward progression from who they are at the beginning towards who they are at the end...makes perfect sense. The change has been supported by the story, and the movement towards the surprise ending has been supported by the characters. Had either one of these been written without that subtle balance in there somewhere...it might have come off in a very different way. And a less enjoyable way, to be honest.
    Anyway, hoping that all of this makes some weird kind of sense as you guys mull it over and apply it to your own work in your own ways, you may be able to find small opportunities here and there in your writing where you can take advantage of this little tip and teach yourselves how to think about melding the worlds of story and character together in ways that some writers never contemplate, and some readers never notice. But that’s the beauty of the art, isn’t it? Hehehe, making it all look easy when it’s not.
    I hope this helps you guys in some small way! Avoid sudden changes in character behavior and story theme and tone when you’re writing. It can be a stumbling block for a lot of people. So avoid those Jekyll and Hyde situations at all costs if at all possible. Your work will be better for it, and once you know what to look for...you’ll be doing it on autopilot in no time flat!
    Take care, folks! Love you lots! And I’ll seezya soon with more!
     
  18. Comicality

    Rough Drafts

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Rough Draft When I first began writing stories for Nifty, my very first gay themed stories ever, everything that you see in the Nifty Archive are all first drafts. For the first two or three years, in fact. I didn’t have a whole lot of space, didn’t have a lot of privacy, and I didn’t have a lot of time. Plus, I was working out how to write and format using HTML code for the very first time, and even though I had a pretty good idea how to structure and put a story together...to say that I had no real practice with that particular aspect of writing that much and that often would be a severe understatement. So I would try to get my thoughts together, take my little notes in tiny little handwritten phrases and abbreviations (I was still terrified of having somebody read it over my shoulder or figure out what I was doing)...and when I had the time, I would sit down and type and entire chapter, and sometimes an entire story, in the body of an email. Then I’d go back over it really quick to see whatever big mistakes I could catch with my eyes through a super quick scroll through, and then I’d send it off and pray for the best. Hehehe, and there it was...my rough draft.
    And they were ROUGH! Believe me!
    But I was truly grateful for every last one of them. I still am to this day. Of course, on the site, I went back through a great deal of those stories to fix them up, and still find mistakes here and there that still need correcting so they’ll read better. Then, of course, I really put my nose to the grindstone and work even harder for the ebook versions to make sure that they come off as being a more professional effort. But if any of you guys are just starting out or are looking for a way to go back to your roots and revamp your style and dedication from scratch, going back to those rough drafts can really benefit from keeping this a constant part of your writing process. Not just for practice, but for the many lessons that it teaches you along the way.
    After all this time, I still think that there’s perfection in imperfection. So let’s figure out how this works.
    When it comes to your rough drafts...there is one rule that you want to keep in mind. And it sounds simple, but it really isn’t. So expect to slip up every now and then. That rule is...’Don’t get it right...get it done.’ The reason I say that is because any one of us can easily end up spending the next ten years trying to write the perfect story...and it’s not going to turn out to be perfect anyway. So what are we doing other than wasting time, you know? That’s just me being honest here. The first goal is to have a finished project under your belt, right? Ok then! Figure out where you’re going to start, where you’re hoping to finish, and what major events of your story are going to be strategically placed between the two sides. After that...start writing. Don’t overthink it...just get started, and stay disciplined long enough to get it finished. You don’t have to rush yourself or write until you burn yourself out...just relax, let the ideas come to you, and write them out to completion. But don’t stop and retrace your steps over and over again during your rough draft. That will take forever, and can sometimes frustrate you into a state of perpetual writer’s block. So don’t do it if you can help it. This part of the process is all about your deepest feelings and your initial gut instincts right now. There will be plenty of time for editing and adding and subtracting and tweaking everything else later on. For right now though, learning to push yourself forward to a completed rough draft without putting unnecessary pressure on yourself to create something revolutionary, sentence to sentence, can actually be a really liberating exercise. And it’s one that I miss every once in a while.
    One of the major pluses that a writer can get out of appreciation of the rough draft writing process is the fact that you get a literal view of how your story is going to read and how it ends. You can actually look at it in its entirety, and examine it as something more than a few floating thoughts floating around vaguely in the back of your mind. Finish it and make it something solid. Something concrete. Read it. See what’s missing. See what needs changing. Figure out what’s weakening your narrative and get a feel for what parts you can strengthen with just a few extra sentences. This is the best time to get your truest emotions and ideas out there...and then study that landscape, first hand, to improve it and make it even better. You will b able to clearly see places for added detail, opportunities for character growth, and discover places where you obviously began to get off track or wander into territory that you didn’t need to be in for the sake of telling the story you want to tell. Having an actual blueprint laid out in front of you helps you see the flaws in your work, and it provides a vision of your story that you can clearly analyze and fix to better represent what you had in mind. Try it out a few times. You’ll see what I mean.
    Another advantage of completing a rough draft before going back to re-edit and scrutinize over every word you’ve written, is that (for most creative minds) it inspires confidence and strengthens your spontaneity when it comes to your fiction. It most definitely does for me. See, even now, I have a habit of reading my own words and thinking about them as I’m writing. But I’m my own worst critic, which is a huge bias that is constantly working against me. I keep thinking that I could word something differently, or write it out better, or I should stop and wonder if I need this sentence or not...and I keep going back over the same paragraph over and over and over again...and you know what I discovered? Most times, I would have bee better off just following my first instincts and just writing it the way I had it the first time. I mean, sure...I might come back later and change it if I truly think that it’s best for the story...but more often than not, when I’m writing, I do so in the moment. Spontaneity is key. That’s when all of the ‘right’ words just spill out of me with little to no effort at all...and they’re usually just right to fit the emotion that I’m trying to convey during that part of the story. It might have flaws and imperfections...but at least it’s honest. In the purest way that it can be honest. So...sometimes, trying to come back and review the text with more of an analytical mind kind of ruins what made it flow and feel the way it did originally. And that’s a huge disadvantage in my book. Because if my stories are all about feeling something real, then trying to artificially mold it into something that it isn’t, spoils the effect. Am I right?
    What is one of Comicality’s MAJOR rules when it comes to your writing? Be comfortable doing it. Be inspired. Does squinting your eyes and staring at a blank screen and feeling like it’s harder to think up what to say next than it is to just shut your laptop down and go watch TV instead sound ‘comfortable’ to you? Listen...your heart is speaking to you. Right there in that moment. What is it saying? Keep it simple, straightforward, and ‘comfortable’. For me, when I get in a certain zone...writing my feelings out all at once feels like a huge release for me, and not a chore. Now, it’s really hard for me to not slow down and backtrack to rewrite something to make it sound better...so I won’t claim that I don’t do it. But I try to curb that habit as best as I can and get my emotions out while that inspirational fire is in me. Because, for me, it’s the emotional connection that lasts longest with my audience. And I want to capture that more than anything. I can straighten out the mechanics of it all later on.
    So if I get in a verbal fight with someone, and it’s raining outside, and my bank account is empty, and I’m hungry but don’t have any food in the fridge...I might sit down and relay that message to everyone reading. In a fictional way, sure...but with real life emotion lacing every word. I just keep writing out all of my deepest frustrations, and it’s like I can feel the knots in my stomach slowly beginning to unwind as I pour a great deal of myself into the story and let go of it. I just want to capture the fire of it all...and when I’m done, and the other side of my brain is ready to take over again...then I can go back later and fix up my spelling errors, my writing mechanics, add a little something, take a few things out, and edit with an open mind that isn’t so emotionally biased. THAT’S when I’m able to get everything right. That’s when I try to make it look good with a little spit and polish so I don’t sound like a total madman to my audience. Hehehe!
    But, at least now I have a visible framework to work from, and I was still able to get those feelings out of me while they were still fresh. There’s nothing more daunting for me than trying to breathe life into stale emotions. That’s why I’ve always been so incredibly hurt whenever I’ve written a story with my whole heart and it gets erased or lost or my computer crashes. Because all of those spontaneous, truly special, emotions can’t ever be recreated in the same way ever again. Those moments are gone for good. It would be like finding out that your wedding photographer had the lens cap on the whole time, you know? It sucks. However, if you can capture those feelings in the moment while they’re still potent in your rough draft, knowing that you can always go back and fix it later if you have second thoughts about anything, it makes writing it out to completion a much more relaxing experience in my opinion.
    Like I said before...when I just write and let the words flow through me without putting too much thought into how it’s going to translate or look to other people...I can sit here and write all night long. Even when it comes to these shorter writing tip articles, I get in a frame of mind where everything just seems to come out right. Of course, I also have nights when I second and third guess myself, hehehe, and I end up putting certain topics off until later or tossing them out completely. So don’t think that this is going to make writing any easier for any of you. And even if it could, it would make the editing process that much harder afterward. So it balances out.
    But think about it some time. Give it a try. Throw your analytical thoughts to the side and just write. Take what you’re feeling, what you’ve got in your heart and in your head, and just type it out with a stream of consciousness that you don’t have to worry about polishing up until you’re done getting your feelings out on that keyboard.
    Don’t get it right...get it done!
    Hope this helps! Happy writing to you all! And I’ll seezya soon with another dose of whatever tidbits and breadcrumbs I was able to pick up along the way on my way to getting where I am now, and where I hope to be in the future. Sky’s the limit, after all! Later!
     
  19. Comicality

    Period Pieces

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Period Pieces
    I don’t think it was until I began to really play around with the many spinoffs surrounding the “Gone From Daylight” vampire mythology (https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/world/gone-from-daylight/) that I found a true love for the challenge in writing stories that don’t all take place in the current day. It’s something that I think every author should probably try, at least once or twice, just to get a feel for the skill behind it and see if they like the idea or not. There’s a completely different ‘feel’ to it that I don’t experience when I’m writing my other stories. So...seeing as this was something that was a little off center for me personally as a writer, I began to take a few moments to shuffle through my own feelings about different periods of time and figure out what it is that I find so appealing about how they work from a storytelling aspect.
    I’ve been this doing for quite a number of years now, and I’ve collected a bunch of ideas and inspiring thoughts about the practice of writing something outside of my own growth experience and how and why it’s a cool approach to take in my work from time to time. You know, if for no other reason than to change things up every once in a while. And now...I share some of that writer experience with all of you. Ready? Good! Hehehe!
    I believe that my very first attempt at writing something that took place in ‘the past’ wasn’t that much of a leap of faith. I did it for the sake of the story, and I was trying to rebuild the current world that I was living in at the time with a world that existed a full decade earlier. Not a BIG difference that would come off as being all that radical or even noticeable in many ways...but it was my first few baby steps. Hehehe, give me a break. That story was “Taryn’s Song” (https://gayauthors.org/story/comicality/tarynssong/), which actually acts as a prequel to the “Gone From Daylight” series (Read “GFD” first though. It’ll be better that way!). The main love interest is a vampire, and had already been living in darkness for ten years before running into my protagonist in the first chapter. Now...as the story began to move forward, a lot of readers began to ask questions that weren’t really covered in the original story itself. I mean, there’s a rich backstory involved with Taryn’s life, who he is, what kind of life he comes from, and why his heart reached out to main character, ‘Justin’, in the first place. I allowed some information about his past life unfold little by little through their interactions in the story, providing a few glimpses into his memories...but it wasn’t enough to truly embrace the drama and intimate nature of what really happened to bring him towards the decisions he made, leading him to leave the daylight behind him forever. So I was caught in a bit of a dilemma...
    I didn’t want to leave those parts of his backstory out of the series, because a lot of those elements come into play in future chapters. I didn’t want to draw it out for too long and affect the pacing of the story when it’s obvious that two boys who were so in love would probably be talking to each other on a personal level all the time without restraint. It wouldn’t be believable to think that these major issues simply never came up in their late night conversations. At the same time, I didn’t want to deliver Taryn’s whole history as a huge info dump of exposition, weakening the reader’s investment in Justin, who’s supposed to be the main character of this story. So I grabbed my notebook and a few pens, and I began to make plans on how to structure and tell Taryn’s story in full. Or at least enough of it to be really intriguing to readers and fill in some of the missing pieces of the puzzle that a great deal of my audience was looking for. These were details that I always had sort of swimming around in the back of my mind when I first created the character, but didn’t have any plans to develop on its own as a separate story. That was going to take more depth and insight, and...most importantly...would take a time machine back a decade to when these events originally happened.
    I know that ten years doesn’t really seem like that much of a jump, and that the world wouldn’t be all that different...but as I began thinking more and more about it, ending up with quite a few scratch outs on the page and having to think about replacing certain elements of the story with something more ‘time appropriate’, I began to understand that the presentation of the time period was just as much of a character driven part of the story as the character himself. And it was going to take a bit more work than I thought it would.
    Technologies advance and evolve, so does speech and slang, so does music and entertainment, and media and the world at large. Also, certain jokes or sarcastic quips wouldn’t work anymore. How could they? They’re making references to events that haven’t happened yet. The style of dress was different. The view of public opinion changes as well. And since I started “GFD” waaaay back in 1999...then that meant going back to the late 80’s early 90’s. A time period that wouldn’t work now...if I was going to try to keep things consistent. So, just like in the science fiction movies...you have to be careful when you play around with time travel. Hehehe, it can end up being a problem if you’re not constantly monitoring it in your fiction and keeping a keen eye on whatever details you use to build your story. Writing period pieces can be both a blessing and a curse at times. And I’ve found that the closer the era is to current day...the more difficult it is to distinguish the two from one another.
    We’re talking about period piece writing this time around! Let’s get into it! And please feel free to share your own experiences with this down below if you like. It might be of help to us all in this arena!
    If you were to look at yourself in the mirror right now...you may not see anything all that unfamiliar than what you’re used to seeing every morning when you wake up or every night when you go to bed, right? When you were a teenager, you might not have noticed how many inches you’ve grown in such a short amount of time. If you shave, you may not notice how much scruff you’ve got under your chin, or how long your hair has gotten until you are actually due for a haircut. These are changes that happen gradually, and can easily be worked into a story without you having to put much of an adjustment in how you create your current world and how your characters interact with it. However...the further you get away from your current state of mind...the more the world seems to change, and the more you have to pay attention to what you’re doing and what choices you might be making to make the whole ‘time’ aspect of your story seem authentic and true to form. You know?
    It’s not just about how the people walk, talk, and dress. Always keep that in mind, and try to remember the culture and the world as it was during that time. The characters that you’re creating for your period piece are going to be more than just an existing member of your personal cast of characters...they’re going to be living, breathing, products of their environment. Not your currnt environment...but theirs.
    There a few videos down below that I want you guys to take a good look at as examples of how many things have changed, and how many have stayed the same.
     
    Hehehe, now there’s nothing really malicious or insulting about what’s being said in this clip when you place it in the appropriate period of time. This is what the world’s perception was like as far as he was concerned. So, if you’re going to write a story that takes place in the early to mid 60’s in suburban America...a lot of your ideas and approaches to certain situations may have to change in order to fit the time period that your characters exist in. The era is now an active participant in your ability to build your world around it. If that makes sense.
    Now...if we jump ahead about ten to fifteen years...times have changed again. And you’ve got an entirely different framework to build off of, even with subjects and feelings and arguments that feel familiar. When writing a period piece, you have to keep that in mind. There are core bits and pieces of all of us that exist in everybody. Parts that we can all recognize and identify with in some way...but the era is different. Which means the conversations, approaches, and solutions to conflict, are all different as well. Take a look.
    Hehehe, have we really been having this same conversation for THIS long?
     
    Different, yes...but still dated. Something else goes into a period piece that goes beyond some fashion and hip lingo for the times. The entire environment is a factor. To be effective at writing something from a certain era in history, this should always be top of mind for any author looking to do it right. Even if you have no personal experience in that time period yourself...some research is definitely needed.
    One thing that I think the series “Stranger Things” (especially in the very first season) got absolutely perfect was capturing the 80’s in it’s purest form! Hehehe, I was blown away, like, “Omigod! I remember that!!!” And the references were always there, but were never overdone in my opinion. The nostalgia was overwhelming. But even though that series could probably have taken place in any current era of time...the 80’s nostalgia was the perfect touch that set it apart from everything else that everybody else was doing at that time. So that was a definite win.
    Yeah...the 80’s was a very specific time in history. Hehehe, sorry to all of you younger guys who missed it. (Then again...there are college kids who don’t even remember 9/11...so what am I even talking about right now?)
     
    The key is to have just enough era influence to give your story a certain flair and dated feel...but still keep those unifying core elements of storytelling present that will appeal to anyone watching, whether they have a personal attachment to the time period or not. Imagine all of the stories written about Al Capone’s Chicago, World War II, Ancient Rome, or during the building of the pyramids in Egypt! You’ve got thousands of years to play with...just make sure that you stay true to the customs and beliefs of that piece of history if you want it to feel legit.
    Me, personally? I always do some research, but I’m sure that I slip up from time to time. And sometimes I’ll catch it in an editing marathon...but sometimes I won’t. So be careful of that. The civilizations that came before us weren’t as advanced as we are now, but they were nowhere near being savages either. Like I stated above, events that happened just fifteen to twenty years ago may seem completely foreign to the younger generation today. They’re looking at these past events almost as if its fantasy in some cases. But you can bond the current day readers with stories from the past by simply relying on staying true to those core elements that keep us all united as human beings. Finding love, securing shelter and a dependable food source, protecting our friends and family from harm...envy, joy, vengeance, loneliness...the entire human experience revolves around these things, no matter where you are or what era you lived in. Take those core elements and practice feeding them into the mindsets of different cultures and time periods to examine what’s different...and discover what’s the same. Cool?
    I hope this helps you guys out when it comes to branching out with brand new stories of your very own! Give it a shot. It’s a lot more fun than you may think it is. Especially when you play around with more than one era, or with one or more genres. I get a kick out of it, myself.
    Take care, you all! And stay beautiful! Seezya soon!
     
  20. Comicality

    The Neverending Story

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    The Neverending Story Last Summer (In late June, early July)...I lost one of the best friends that I’ve ever had before in my life. We had known each other since the fist grade, and shared a life of late nights, movies, video games, and laughing until we fell over holding our stomachs with tears in our eyes. He was the kind of friend that you only make or twice in a lifetime...and one day, he was just...’gone’. Went to bed, heart failure in his sleep, and that was that. A huge part of me was gone without warning, and there was nothing that I could do about it except move on.
    Sometimes it still doesn’t feel real. I see or hear something funny, or want to talk about what’s on my mind...and even now, almost a year later...I pick up the phone and I forget that he’s not there. It hurts. I won’t lie, I don’t think that hurt will ever fully go away. I’ll be able to function, sure...but my life won’t ever be the same again without him here. Way it goes, I suppose.
    Why do I bring this up for the sake of posting a brand new writing tip? Because of the very idea that his ‘story’, at least from my personal perspective, is over now. It’s done. I have an idea of his beginning, his middle, and now his end. Sometimes it’s exactly what a story needs to truly have a meaning and a position that gives a story...no matter how short or how long it is...it’s impact. Everything is wrapped up in a neat little bow and then it’s gone for good.
    But I do have one or two stories that don’t exactly follow that formula in the same way, and that’s what I’d like to discuss here today. Especially when it comes to stories like “The Secret Life Of Billy Chase” and a few other series that actually do have endings planned out to finish the tale, once and for all, but have taken years and years worth of hard work for me to get them out there as quickly as possible. (Hopefully, I’m doing a lot better these days. Hehehe!)
    So, let’s see if I can get this alternate method of putting a story together to make sense somehow to a point where you might want to try it out for yourselves someday.
    It’s no real secret that it takes me forever to finish off one of my series, despite my best efforts. Trust me, I know. And even if I managed to somehow forget over time, I’d be reminded of it with every new chapter that I post.
    “When are you gonna finish this story, once and for all?”
    “I hope we don’t have to wait another YEAR for a new chapter!”
    “Now if only you could finish that other story that I like!”
    “Why don’t you just end this story right here? It’s the perfect spot to just stop writing, and I can finally have some closure!”
    Well...writing these stories takes a lot of time and effort and emotional energy to create and put together just way so that I can get them to look and read just the way that I want them to. You guys can easily tell when I rushed older chapters or short stories in order to toss out something new at the expense of using that heart and those ideas for something more fulfilling. Or...at least I can. If I happened to sneak one of those stories by you, then...GOOD! Hehehe! I got lucky on that one!
    But, “Billy Chase” isn’t really a story in the strictest sense. Do you know what I mean? I mean, I have an idea of how it ends and all of the events that will eventually lead up to that ending...but there’s no set structure in place to guide Billy through a divine maze and then just end the whole thing with a kiss and type ‘The End’ for the sake of everybody having closure. “The Secret Life Of Billy Chase” is more like an ongoing memoir, detailing the life and times of a gay teen trying to figure life out one step at a time and hopefully find himself while a lot of my younger readers were doing the same. Racing towards a definitive ending is like...racing towards death. That’s the ending. The idea is to love, enjoy, and appreciate the time that you get to spend with him while he’s still here, and I understand that this is difficult for some people.
    Hehehe, sorry. You can’t eight hour binge this one like a Netflix series. It’s meant to be a story that I created to be enjoyed in the present. Moment to moment, where readers are simply looking to see what happens next. How one problem gets solved while two or three other conflicts are left hanging in the balance. While this may aggravate many readers to tantrums of insults and rage...it was this very style of writing that made the “Billy Chase” series so addictive in its presentation. Especially when it came to the ebooks...where people who were finding it for the very first time would read the very first book and immediately grab all of the books to follow all at once so they wouldn’t have to take a break between them if there were any questions left unanswered at the end of whatever they were reading at the moment.
    There’s a certain joy and charm that comes from writing a project like this, and it has a lot of benefits that come along with it. For example...the emotional investment in the story and its characters becomes soooo powerful. Readers get a chance to go through so many problems, enjoy so many triumphs, and share such a historical bond, with your characters that they feel like old friends. Ones that you would never want to let go of. So the reader involvement is going to continue to grow as time goes on, and every new chapter strengths the attachment without fail. Always a plus, and it inspires reader loyalty as well as excitements for each new step forward.
    Another benefit? You have an entire lifetime’s worth of material to play around with, and it never has to get tired or boring. Like...if you read the “Twilight” series or the “Harry Potter” books, they are all connected, but every book has an ending. The Dark Lord wants to kill Harry Potter in book one...and in book two...and again in book three...etcetera. The stories are all different, sure. And they’re all connected, yes. But how many times can that same formula work before it simply doesn’t anymore? You know? Even Batman has to fight more than just the Joker every issue. In order for these storylines to continue and remain relevant. Every story, no matter how well written, needs a change up from time to time. But...like I said, “Billy Chase” is not a story in the same way as many others. Every ‘Book’ ends with enough questions and anticipated events to keep things going forward. Now...you easily could stop at ‘Book One’ and never pick up another one. Hehehe, but most people don’t. Just saying.
    The audience has just spent the past fifty chapters getting to know this ‘imaginary person’, and even though this one particular part of their journey has come to an end...this ‘person’ still exists outside of their current view. Each book is left with a few questions unanswered, a few conflicts unsolved. It creates an anxiety that goes beyond the plot of that one project and leaves people questioning, “But...what happens after that? And what about this? And I can’t forget about this!” This isn’t a story that they’re reading to the end and putting to rest at the end of the day. This is someone’s life. And a very small piece of it at that. Barely a taste worth mentioning. Writing a ‘neverending’ story may feel like it’s not heading in a specific direction, even if it is. And that’s where your readers will grab and hold on the tightest. It’s no different than having a friend or loved one in real life. They can’t just walk away in to the cornfields of ‘happily ever after’ when there’s so much more to discover. So many more adventures to accompany them on. So many more laughs to share. This method of building a narrative can really be an exercise in developing character and creating lingering feelings that last long after the story is finished.
    Speaking of exercises...that’s another benefit to writing a story like this. It teaches patience, pride in your work, and a fullness of expression. The story grows with you as a writer and as a person. There is an infinite amount of room for you to get your feelings out, untangle your own thoughts, and build confidence and stay in practice the entire time. Writing “Billy Chase”, “New Kid In School”, “A Class By Himself”, “My Only Escape”...it made have taken me an ice age to finally get everything out of my system and get them finished or this far along...but I wouldn’t change the experience for anything. I wish I could even put into words how much of ‘me’ exists in those stories over such an extended period of time. It’s insane. But I learned a lot of my best tricks by simply focusing on the thoughts and feelings of my main character over constantly trying to balance those introspective moments out with the dire need to concentrate on heading towards the ultimate destination and maintaining a certain level of pacing along the way. If anything, it was stress relief for me. A writer’s palette cleanser of sorts. Hehehe! So, if nothing else, it’s a great way to sharpen your skills on character building and connecting them with your audience.
    Listen, I really do know that people want an ending to the stuff they read, and a vast majority of my stories can and have delivered on that promise over the years. Then I have other series that may have been going on for years and years, and I get an occasional email from a reader saying, “Omigod...I was just starting high school when I started this story! Now I’m out of college, and it’s still going! Wow!” But those have endings too, and they’ll be coming your way faster than you may think. So keep your eyes open!
    But I still have those few stories that were meant to enjoy for what they are while they’re still around. Maybe I’ll start to run out of ideas and figure that it’s better to end those stories on a high note instead of letting them burn out and fade away after all the time and hard work that I put in. But until then...the end of their story means the end of them. And if Superman and James Bond and Dracula and Freddie Krueger can live forever...why can’t some of the people in my life that I wish I could hold on to for a little bit longer. You know?
    Anyway, that’s the lesson for today, folks. Give it a try some time. Even if you don’t share it with the public at large...it does wonders for exploring that part of the writing craft, and it’s a skill that will trickle down into your other works once you learn how to use it to your advantage.
    Take care! Love you lots. And stay beautiful.
     
  21. Comicality

    Wordy

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Wordy Whooo….now here’s a challenge that I can wrap my head around.
    How to write an article about being ‘too wordy’...without, in fact, being ‘too wordy’. Hehehe, wish me luck with this one, people! ::Fingers Crossed::
    One repeated bit of constructive criticism that I often get when it comes to my writing has been pretty consistent. And that is...I am too wordy in all of my stories. And it’s the truth. I definitely have to concede defeat when it comes to trying to defend that desperate need to get all of those feelings out of me at one time and digitally scribble them out on this screen while I’m still caught in the undertow of it all. Strike while the iron is hot, as they say. I know that it may come off as babbling or overdoing it sometimes, but trying to cut it short seems like such a waste of a moment. It’s like going to listen to a band, an orchestra, or a vocal choir...and hearing a series of flat notes the whole time. It, like...bugs me. Hehehe!
    But I do notice it, myself, on occasion...and while I should be trying a bit harder to correct my desire to talk too damn much when I’m writing...I’ve kind of been fighting harder to maintain my own personal sense of a personal ‘voice’ in my work than I have trying to get some better mechanics working in my favor. Is that a bad thing? A good thing? Hard to tell. It’s just how I write. My worst habits are the hardest ones to break.
    Annnnnnd...even now I can feel myself getting wordy again. So let me just assume that I’ve thoroughly explained my point and move on without lingering on this any longer.
    Please let me know if any of you guys ever run into this problem yourselves, and if you have any personal ways of solving it. It’s never too late for me to pick up a few extra tips myself, after all.
    Ok, so one of the things that I believe contributes to me writing too much when something simpler might actually serve the story better by itself, is the insecurity of me truly fleshing a scene out to its fullest without completely translating the message that I want to send to my readers. I tend to look at every emotional scene as a three dimensional sphere. I can practically see it in my head. So, in order to faithfully describe it or translate it into words, I have to completely surround it and turn it around so that I can attack it from all sides. Maybe ‘attack’ is the wrong word to use, but I hope you get what I mean. For me, I feel my emotions very deeply. Love, anger, sadness, joy...whenever they ask me to take notice, I feel this intense curiosity to explore it from all angles. This is something that I try to add to my stories so that my audience can feel and explore it for themselves.
    Sometimes, it can really work and not feel like it’s too much. But then there are times when I go back and read some of my older stuff later on, and I feel like I sound like...
     
    That is a bit much, don’t ya think? Hehehe! But all of those extra words and descriptions have to come from somewhere, and they’re all focused around that one moment in time, so it feels totally natural to me when I’m typing it out. It isn’t until I go back after my brain stops buzzing and my rational mind has returned to its somewhat normal state that I can see the flaws and overly wordy descriptions that makes everything else feel out of balance. And then I find myself chained to the old editing anchor until I find ways to tone it down a bit. Especially when it comes to my ebooks. I’m constantly doing all I can to make sure that those are my best efforts on display for anyone who stumbles across them who doesn’t have a history of Comicality errors behind them. So...more writer confidence, I think, helps a great deal when it comes to restraint and keeping my experience simple and effective. That’s the key word there...effective. Everything else is garnish.
    Say what you’ve got to say, trust in your instincts to have said it right, and then move forward before you get too wrapped up in adding a bunch of details that your story may not really need. It looks nice, but without the right balance...I can see how it could come off as wordy.
    Something else that I’ve learned, but doubt I’ll be holding back on any time soon...is repeating myself in my fiction. I’ve trained myself to cut it waaaaay down from how much I used to do it before, but there are still times where I can’t help myself and it just feels necessary. Otherwise, like I said before...it’ll bug me.
    I have a tendency to phrase a certain emotion or sensation one way...and it won’t feel like it’s enough. Which probably ties into the whole insecurity thing, but I’ll look at what I wrote in that particular moment and I’ll go back and phrase the exact same emotion or sensation a different way. One might be more of a simple statement or everyday description written with ‘easy prose’. The second way may be a bit more flowery in its language, with some metaphorical flare thrown in to enrich and enhance the picture in some way. It will be a more exquisite version of the sentence that I wrote before it...but, once I enter that territory, I end up possibly doing it again. Especially when it comes to situations like heartbreak or fear. Or trying to find the inner strength needed to combat your own demons. I end up describing these emotions in various ways, and they’re all deeply connected to that one three dimensional sphere to a point where even during the cutthroat self editing process...I don’t want to cut anything out. So I get stuck, and I leave it in there. Thus...making my story a bit more wordy than it has to be.
    Now, understand...it’s not my intention to make you guys paranoid about the number of words that you use to tell a story. Hehehe, you can use as many or as little as you feel you need to get your point across. That’s up to you as an author, and I think that you should do whatever it is that makes you comfortable. I’m just letting you all know that I can be a bit extravagant with the details myself, and it’s obvious that readers over the years have noticed. So if I can find reasons to explain why I do it, and maybe find ways to shave it down a bit, then maybe I can find a new balance that will allow me to keep my own unique style of writing and not sacrifice my fans’ enjoyment of what it is that I have to say.
    Something else that I’ve gotten better at trying to avoid is going off on tangents when I’m writing a certain scene. I don’t think that I stray too far off topic, but a little more focus can only help, right? At least, that’s I’m thinking. Allowing yourself to wander off or your thoughts to go astray can end up eating away at the strongest elements of the scene that you’ve built for your readers to dive into. It takes away from the impact, maybe? I’m not really sure. But when I go back to my older work to re-edit stuff that I’ve written in the past, even the recent past, I end up having to make a lot of sacrifices that I never noticed before when I was all zoned out in a different frame of mind. It helps to streamline my work a little bit more. Not by a ton, but it’s more focused than it was, I believe. Then again, I can be my own worst critic most of the time. So tightening things up here and there can only be a good thing, right?
    Anyway, I promised myself that I would try to write this article with as little ‘fluff’ as possible. I was going to try to have the confidence it takes to know that my message is being read and received, I was trying hard not to repeat myself in any way ( a further extension of rule number one), and I resisted the temptation to slide off into any other tangents that might get me sharing stories or experiences that I had in the past with stuff like this.
    Did it work?
    Well...hehehe, I saved myself less than one thousand words. So...not really. Ah well, I tried. And one thousand words is nothing to sneeze at in terms of making improvements in my writing process. (Comsie says as his every additional word eats away at his own minor achievement! LOL!) But I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! Do you ever think that your stories are a little word heavy? Or have you found the perfect balance that you were searching for and have become most comfortable with?
    Or...does it matter at all? I don’t know. I just work here, man.
    Take care, and I’ll probably go back to blathering away again in the next article regardless of this experiment. But, hey...I gotta be me!
    Stay beautiful, you guys!
     
  22. Comicality

    Present The Problem

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Present The Problem I’ve often felt that the key to drama and anxiety for a lot of people who may be reading your stories, or just from life in general came from something very simple. And that’s the constant idea of ‘choice’. Better yet, a dilemma. The more that I played around with the idea of it all in my own fiction, the more enamored I became by the power of it all. You can use it to put pressure on your audience, and create a much more stressful situation out of a fictional that may seem like a very easy answer, created by a spontaneous reaction to the moment. Learning how to use this tool in your writing can force readers to see the fork in the road, and realize what might happen by following either one. How do we do that? By presenting the problem through the thoughts and actions of your characters. Expressed openly, clearly, and allow your audience to weight their options against with whatever it is that your characters are going through. Just make sure to balance out all sides and let people wrestle with their own questions and get further involved to see how it all turns out.
    One thing that can create a boring and disengaging story is the act of filling it with uninteresting questions that all lead to uninteresting answers. When we do that, it dulls the experience to the point where reading through it is just a matter of going through the motions. It’s like that feeling you get when you’re watching a movie, and you reach a point where you’re simply not concerned at all over how it turns out...but you’ve already invested so much time into what you’ve watched so far, you surrender to the idea that you might as well sit ther and make it to the end credits. Hehehe, obviously, you don’t want anyone to think about your story in this way. Especially if it’s their first encounter with one of your works. It’s a slow and painful death for any author to deal with, believe me. Ugh!
    How do you get around this?
    With a touch of cleverly exposition, that’s how! Hehehe! Now...I know, I know...some of th rules that I’ve talked about before can occasionally seem as though they’re in direct conflict with one another, but you’ll quickly learn that any rule that you’ve taught yourself to adhere to when writing will tend to waiver, morph, and shift, as the need calls for it. So don’t worry about it too much. The beauty of art comes from its flexibility sometimes.
    Now...if you’re an engineer or a computer programmer...the same rules do NOT apply! That’s just asking for a tragic collapse to happen. With fiction? Not so much.
    See...every time that you present a choice to one of your characters in a story, you want to make that choice one of significance. Something that will possibly have a major affect on how the story moves on from there, both for your protagonist and for your readers. But I find that it helps to actually get in my main character’s head and actually think through the pros and cons of both choices before making a decision between them. I state it openly and do what I can to follow their thought process in a way that allows my readers to know what the stakes are. What are the possible rewards? What are the potential consequences? What’s the probability that things will go the way your protagonist wants them to once they choose one or the other? What obstacles are in the way? How does their personality or their past experiences affect this equation? And are the X-factors that they may not even be thinking of right now? If you’re writing a ‘choice’ part of your story, I think it can be a really effective practice to tackle all of these questions on screen where your readers can see them laid out. And here’s why...
    I have written soooo many stories in the past where a lot of the feedback has been so incredibly different from person to person that I couldn’t help but think that we weren’t all on the same page at the same time. Now, I’m fully aware that every story is going to be interpreted differently by each individual reader based on who they are as a person and how and where they grew up. That’s a given. But these responses were extremely scattered in ways where I found myself going back to look at my own work to see if it was an interpretation or if that’s how I actually wrote it. Because it does happen, you know? Sometimes I might write something that comes off in a way that I didn’t mean for it to, in which case revisions may be necessary to get the appropriate message across. But as I went through the comments and emails and the like, I discovered something. People were choosing sides and courses of action without having me paint a complete picture as to how the rewards and consequences might be severely out of balance. Looking back, I would have certainly made different choices in how that fork in the road was depicted in the writing. And I would have done that by expressing answers to the questions that I listed above.
    Hopefully I haven’t lost you yet! ::Giggles::
    Check out this video down below. It comes from a movie called, “Ladybugs”, which is a silly guilty pleasure of mine! LOL! Always has been, since I was in high school. Plus, I mean...Jonathan Brandis. Sighhhh! (RIP) This is an exaggerated example of what I’m talking about here, but watch this clip and look at how the problem is presented to us, ‘the audience’, as the weirdness begins.
     
    Now, watching the whole movie will give everybody more context as to what is going on with the character ‘Matthew’ dressing up like a girl to play on the girl’s soccer team and not having his cover blown, but if you’re watching the clip...do you see how the predicament is simply put out there on display to keep everyone together on what’s going on and what they stakes are. What the consequences might be if he’s caught on either side of the equation?
    It can just be a comedic scene of a teen boy and his crush, and hiding from his mother while changing clothes and racing up and down the stairs...but then you have parts of the audience saying, “Why doesn’t he just get his mom to leave the room?” Or, “Why doesn’t he just sneak out of the door with his girl crush while his mom isn’t looking?” Or any one of a thousand other options that might be presented to them in the midst of all this unnecessary chaos. Suddenly you have one hundred different perspectives looking off in one hundred different directions, and a bit of the story’s cohesion gets lost in my opinion. It feels much better to me to bottleneck some of those points of view and guide them in a certain direction where I’ve got a bit more control over the narrative and the questions don’t get to be too distracting. It’s not always possible, but it helps to make an attempt.
    With my stories, I always had comments pop up from some readers who would be frustrated with my protagonist. “Jesus! Why doesn’t he just go up and ask him out on a date already? He OBVIOUSLY likes you! Just do it already!” Well...who knows?
    I do. That’s who.
    Maybe this boy thinks his love interest is way out of his league. Maybe he’s bashfully shy to the point where it’s an almost crippling experience to talk to the boy of his dreams. Maybe ‘coming out’ isn’t an option for him for fear that he’ll be bullied or disowned by his parents. Maybe he’s been abused his whole life and his confidence is barely enough to allow him to love himself, much less someone else. There are answers to all of their questions when it comes to making one choice over another...but those answers aren’t doing my story any good just rattling around in my head. In “A Class By Himself”, Derek feels inadequate financial and has nothing of real value to offer a love interest who is so much better off than he is. In “Jesse-101”, Tristan was recently dumped and had his heart broken by someone he thought he could trust, and now he has doubts about going through that again. These are things that I think about when I’m writing for one of my characters, and now I try to make it a point to take their big choice moments and write them out for my readers to actually see. Just to let them know that my characters are actually thinking logically, weighing their options, and trying to assess the number of threats on both sides so that they can hopefully pick the road of least resistance. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong. Such is life. But they ARE thinking with a rational mind. They’re not just making whatever decisions I force them to make for the sake of story melodrama, there’s a process going on here. Hehehe!
    So, as I began to experiment with this method of adding weight and depth to the choices my characters make, I found myself feeling better about the results of my work, and I noticed that people (while some of them could still feel frustrated from time to time...hehehe, which is ok. I get it) began to understand the story situations and the characters themselves with a bit more patience than they ever did before.
    Bottom line...some people came out of the closet when they were only thirteen years old and had no problems at all. Some went through hell and were outed against their will in college. Some were already married, then divorced, with a couple of kids, before they felt comfortable being themselves. Some people grew up in a large, accepting, and all inclusive, metropolitan city. Others grew up in small rural towns where everybody knew everybody else and spent every Sunday in church. All of these elements form who they are as people, and you’re never going to be able to please everybody. Don’t even try.
    But...if you can take a few paragraphs, or even just a few sentences, here and there to explain to your readers why they might be leaning in one direction or the other when it comes to the pressure of making the next big choice in their journey towards the end of your fictional rainbow...you build a sense of understanding between the two. They might be able to say to themselves, “Well...I would have just told my parents that I was gay and let them deal with it...but I can see why this character might see that as being a bad idea.” And it helps to have your audience connect with your project on that level. It’s more realistic, you know? Not everybody has been sharing your personal experience. Not everybody is seeing the world through your lens. How can they possible make choices based on a set of rules and inner conflicts that they know nothing about?
    Anyway, as always, I hope this draws some attention to a few techniques that you guys can use to further enhance your work in the future. I really do enjoy sharing this stuff with you guys, as I think only other writers would really be able to make much sense out of it. Hehehe! Just remember to present the problems in your character choices in as short and as clever a way as you can. Your readers should always be asking themselves what they have to gain, as well as what they have to lose, at every turn. No matter what road they decide to choose...they’re going to have to sacrifice something in the end. Even if it’s only a few awkward moments of discomfort.
    Got it?
    Cool.
    Seezya soon! And stay beautiful!
     
  23. Comicality

    Catharsis

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Catharsis Every now and then, I like to ask my fellow writing colleagues on this website or in my emails this question, because it really does vary from person to person, from age to age, and from culture to culture. And sometimes, depending what era of time we happen to be living in can make a huge difference. Emails and online forums have given way to text messages and social media, hot encounters of fictional sex and shallow beauty has given way to extended and meaningful storytelling and depth of character. It happens. Sometimes things speed forward towards the horizon, and sometimes the pendulum swings back the other to return to the days of old. So how new ambitious writers look at creating a story of their very own, and how older more experienced writers look at the same process may be very different right now. So it keeps me curious, you know?
    The question is...why do we write?
    I understand that the complexity and nuance of this question takes a lot of thought and time to answer...but when it comes to my own personal reasons for writing stories like the ones I’ve posted online, I think that having everyone here not on think about this question and contemplate your answers...I would love to see you guys write it out for the rest of us to see. Not just for me, not just for the rest of us, but for you as well.
    Hopefully by the end of this article, you’ll understand why.
    One of the things that I’ve really taken a lot of love and joy out of writing stories online and getting a chance to hear feedback and talk to the people who enjoy my stories and are wiling to open up a little bit about themselves in the process, is getting to hear about their lives and their feelings and some of the life stories that they have to tell me in return. I can’t even explain how much it helps to be given so much insight and knowledge into a world and a perception that they know much better than I ever could on my own. And I’m sure there have been parts of my life that I’ve added to my own stories that have done the same for a great deal of my own audience as well. But, above all else, I always found myself telling them, “Dude...you have a story to tell! Why not tell it?” And you know what? Many people just...don’t. Like, ever.
    But why not? That baffles me to this day, even after all these years. They’ve convinced themselves that they can’t do it. They don’t have the talent, they don’t have the words, they don’t have the time...but...you JUST told me the story and sent it to me like five fucking MINUTES ago! If you take what you just wrote to me in an email, add some detail and dialogue, and give your characters a couple of names...you’ve got a solid already done right here and now. There it is. THAT’S your story! What are you doing? Why toss it aside and not share it?
    I will honestly say that once I started writing stories of my own, I was immediately addicted to the idea of having a voice and being able to put it out there for other people to read and enjoy at will. The weird thing is...if you had asked me why I was willing to do that, back then...I don’t know if I would have been able to give you an answer. I just know that I was compelled to do more. As often as humanly possible. Once I found a way to touch that little spark of passion in my heart...there was nothing alive that could stop me. That’s all there was to it. I can’t even fathom how upset I’d be with myself if I had given up and let all of these wonderful stories die with me, never to have been read, appreciated, or absorbed, by anybody. I can honestly say that it would have been the biggest regret of my life. And yet...there’s still more to it than that. I know that now.
    And if asked that same question today, I’d like to think that I had a decent answer to give.
    I write to make sense of the world. I write to make sense of myself. This is more than my passion and my talent, but it’s my therapy. I use writing to translate my emotions and organize my thoughts in ways that I was never mature enough to do when I first started out. And that might be why I’ve changed so much since then. I mean, there’s a lot to be said for life experience and age and adversity that I’ve faced in that time...but emotionally, I doubt that I would even recognize the man I used to be before ‘Comicality’. And figuring out my very reason for writing and trying to use it to help guide me towards a purpose for all of this weirdness...has truly been a cathartic experience for me. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. And when I look back at my own stories, it’s like I can feel my heart, mind, and soul, sort of working together in tandem for the first time to actually figure things out.
    I know that may sound weird to a lot of you guys right now, but hang in there with me for a few minutes.
    During those email conversations with other members of the Shack, friends, family members, co-workers, whoever...I became really aware of how vague and ominous most people are when it comes to their own emotions. Now, that may be, in part to the fact that they were holding something back from me personally...and I get that. Nothing wrong with it. But ask yourself, how many have you known someone close to you who was in a really bad mood? Or just frustrated and angry? Or down in the dumps and depressed? And you ask them what’s wrong...but it’s like, “I don’t know. I’m just not myself today.” Or, “I’m just sad.” Yeah, but why? I’m definitely not a therapist, and far from being a mind reader...but I can’t help but to wonder what triggered that particular feeling on that particular day. It doesn’t have to be anything major. It could be a nasty comment, it could be a bad review on something you wrote, it could be the memory of a particular heartbreak from the past...hell, it could just be boredom, to be honest. No need to feel bad about it, or look at your current state of mind as being something petty, paranoid, or insecure. You feel how you feel. Period. That’s all there is to it. All of this is ok, so don’t try to ru and hide from it. It’s a natural part of life. For you, for me, for all of us.
    How does this psycho-babble fit into one of Comicality’s writing tips? Hehehe, don’t worry! I’m getting to that right now!
    The thing about writing from the heart and really channeling your emotions into your stories, your characters, your dialogue, and every word that you type out on your screen...it all comes from a place where your deepest emotions lie, if you’re willing to dig deeply enough to find the treasures that already exist within you. Not just to entertain others, but to find yourselves. Not to find the right answers...but to find the right questions. There is SUCH a difference between the two extremes.
    Often, when I’m writing certain scenes...I’m working things out in my own head. You guys just get the luxury of being able to read those struggling thoughts without having to deal with the horror of having them bang around in your heads day and night the way I do. Hehehe! But my constant need and craving for writing stories comes from my desperate need to make sense of things. To find answers, or at least a somewhat decent explanation that gives me hope for maybe finding answers some time in the future. If you can look at your own work, past and present, and recognize your own stream of consciousness being spoken through the words you put down on the page...it suddenly becomes one of the most addictive practices that you’ll ever know.
    Going back to “I’m sad” or “I’m in a bad mood”...and can’t explain why? When I start writing my stories, especially during certain scenes...you’re actually reading and bearing witness to my ongoing search for ‘why’ in the text. Making it fiction allows me to detach from it slightly to speak freely, sure...but more than anything, my stories are my way of working through my anger, working through my fear, working through my sadness, working through my sexual frustration (Those are the fun ones! Hehehe!)...but I get to build a narrative that’s specific, logical, and worded in a way that not only will I be able to understand it, but so will my audience. They’ll be able to tune in to my particular frequency and see it the way I see it. Feel it the way I feel it.
    Writing your innermost thoughts and feelings down in this way forces you to recognize what’s going on in your own head and in your heart. And the more that you do it, the better you get at it. There’s a creative ‘shift’ that happens over time, and it works its way into your daily discipline as writing your thoughts out becomes your main form of expression. What are you thinking about? What are you feeling? Who’s involved? It’s easy to just let a bunch of worries or problems sort of stay vague and undefined where they just exist as this dull ache in the back of your mind where you can bury it and figure that you’ll just deal with it later on when you have the time or the energy to do so...but writing doesn’t allow you to do that. Not if you’re being honest with your words. Sometimes you have to dig into the hurt and see what you find there. Why are you sad? Find an answer. And if you don’t have one, just start writing about the ache in your heart...and keep writing about every aspect of your current situation and how it makes you feel until you find an answer. Even if it’s only a temporary one. To me, personally...seeing this in an author’s work is one of the most exciting and satisfying parts of anything they could ever possibly write.
    I realize that I’ve been told that I can be a bit ‘wordy’ at times with my own work, and I have tried to find a better balance where I’m not just mauling my readers with introspection and self awareness all the time...but during those times when I do feel like digging deep and organizing my thoughts and emotions in a way that I think would truly reflect the feelings of my main characters and would benefit the story as a whole...I don’t hold back. Not at all.
    That might be why sometimes someone will quote a story or tell me what I said in something I wrote a long time ago...I’ll be like, “Really? I wrote that?” LOL! Because I don’t remember at all. It wasn’t a part of the master plan, it was probably just me working through stuff in my own head, and I was probably finding those same answers the same time that you were. It’s just a relieving part of my writing process. And if you’re one of those writers who finds themselves searching for ways to approach the rest of the world with a perspective and understanding that can, hopefully, be translated into the written word...then don’t ever sacrifice that. Not ever. K?
    I can honestly say that writing these stories online have helped me to find sooooo much more of myself than I ever could have found on my own. Parts of myself that I wouldn’t have even found the guts to explore if they hadn’t been mixed with the freedom of fiction and a fanbase that was willing to support and cheer me own every step of the way. So use your writing to entertain YOU too! Reap the rewards of pouring so much of your heart into something that’s so difficult for so many other people to even attempt, much less accomplish. Readers share your passions, your pains, and your questions too. And if you keep digging...you may find that you have just as much ability to help them out as you are to help yourselves.
    Anyway...that’s my big spiritual guru moment for the day! Hehehe! Take it to heart, or take it with a grain of salt. That’s up to you. But this is a MAJOR part of why I do what I do online! Why do you do it? Let us know some time! I’d love to hear it.
    Take care! Keep writing! And stay beautiful! MWAH!
     
  24. Comicality

    Read The Room

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Read The Room When it comes to a writer having their own voice in their fiction, it sort of becomes a signature for fans of their work. It’s easily recognized, not just by the words being used or the particular flow of their storytelling ability...but sometimes it can be through the content alone. Writer’s bring a deeper part of themselves to the table. Their memories, their sense of humor, their feel for drama...both their attributes and their occasional flaws. It can be as easy to pick out of a line up as the vocal sounds of a singer or a band when you hear them. And sometimes...you don’t have to hear their voices at all. For example, I’ve heard a LOT of people play the harmonica in their music...but I KNOW when I hear Stevie Wonder play the harmonica. It’s unmistakable. I’ve heard a lot of people play the piano, but there’s something about the way that Elton John plays it that just hits different. It can’t be imitated or reproduced...there’s just a part of him that is so evident in every key.
    Listen for yourself. Stevie Wonder and Elton John. If you’re familiar with either one of these artists...just listen. Neither one of them says a word...but you know it’s them. You just do.
     
    000 That being said...the point is...we write what we write, and we’re good at it. Again, being comfortable with your art is a big part of being able to manipulate, take chances, and make educated and skillful choices as to what you can do with whatever you create. Readers can tell on a subliminal level when you’re at ease with your craft. It’s a good thing. A GREAT thing!
    However...
    (Hehehe, you knew that there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you?)
    Despite getting a great deal of enjoyment out of your craft, your themes, your thoughts, your cast of characters...as an artist (and to a certain degree, an entertainer)...you have to be able to ‘read the room’. It’s an important part of writing fiction that I think some people overlook from time to time, and it doesn’t often end up with the best of results.
    I posted an article on niche writing not long ago, and I definitely encourage authors to make that a fun and pleasant part of the whole writing experience...but when it comes to writing anything in what you would call ‘mixed company’...knowing your audience is going to play a major part on whether or not your audience is going to truly enjoy your writing, or immediately get turned off and click away from it. And that is really bad, especially if it’s a first time reader. Chances are they’re going to judge you on that one piece of work and not come back to check out anything else of yours, expecting more of what they didn’t like about their very first experience with your writing in the first place. This means that you’re alienating your audience right off the bat, and your connection...that much needed reader/writer symbiotic relationship, is instantly broken. Once that happens, it is very VERY hard to get them to give you another shot. So always make sure that you’re putting your best foot forward. And that means developing a sense for who your audience is and what they came looking for.
    I understand...it’s very easy to find your writer’s voice and pursue it with some varying degrees of success, and even build up a decent sized fanbase because of it, to the point where you sort of get enveloped in that personal bubble of, “This is what I like. This is what I write. And people will love it no matter what.” But, let me tell you...nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to certain circles. Believe me, I know. At the risk of sounding insulting...that’s ego talking. There’s a huge difference between reaching out to readers, and having readers reach out to you. This is something that you need to keep in mind, no matter how much of a genius you may be at putting words together. K? Sometimes, you have to take your signature voice and practiced methods out of the equation and examine the landscape that you’re working in before rushing in blind. Because not everybody wants to hear what I have to say. I have to be prepared for that.
    More on this in the “Touch The Nerve” article, coming soon!
    When I first got the idea to write my own stories like, “New Kid In School” (https://gayauthors.org/story/comicality/newkidinschool), “A Class By Himself” (https://gayauthors.org/story/comicality/aclassbyhimself), and others...I decided that I wanted to post my stuff on the Nifty Archive. Now, I had been reading the stories posted there for quite some time before ever trying to do my own thing, and it was pretty much the only game in town for stories like mine, so I pretty much got the gist of what was going on there and decided to give it a shot. Boy meets boy, both are cute, find a reason to get them along with each other, and then have them bang like a couple of jack rabbits. Done and done. If you read a lot of my earlier work, you’ll be able to see that pattern playing out in almost every post that I put out there up until about “On The Outside”, I believe. Was I just super horny and sexually frustrated when I wrote them? Hehehe, of COURSE I was! But that wasn’t the only reason that I structured my stories in that way. I was a fan of the site, I had been reading a lot of other offerings from a lot of other writers, and I took a lot of mental notes on what kind of stories existed in that space, what was constantly being posted, and what was most popular with Nifty readers. So when it came to my first shaky tries at writing my own additions to the archive, I made sure to keep that in mind. I wanted something that would stand out, be extremely hot, but still have some heart and actual story to it.
    Basically, I wanted to have my writer’s voice to be heard in its truest form...but I also wanted to be aware of my audience at that time and what they might be looking for. When I started, a vast majority of Nifty’s stories was comprised of jack off stories and quick chance encounters. There are a lot of stories that I write now that would NEVER had garnered much attention way back in 1998! You guys should thank the stars for places like GayAuthors that we have now! Hehehe! ((Hugz)) Thanks Myr and crew!
    My stories on Nifty back then would have been too much story, too long between graphically described sex scenes, too much dialogue and teen angst...I don’t think many people would have had the patience to skip ahead to the ‘good parts’. Of course, the landscape has changed dramatically since then, and writing full stories with believable characters who aren’t always stripping down naked and screwing each other every chapter is much more common. But it wasn’t when I started. The reason that I was able to gain the love and support that I did at that time was...I was able to read the room. I was aware of my audience. I got to write what I wanted to write from my heart, but didn’t mind coating it with a little bit of fictional ‘candy’ to raise a few eyebrows here and there.
    That little bit of sexy homework could have been the difference between having a ‘Comicality’ and not having a ‘Comicality’. So trust me when I say that knowing your audience is ESSENTIAL to how your story is received by the people you’re sharing it with.
    Don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all saying that you should pander to anybody for the right to be liked or appreciated. No. That’s not necessary. I’m telling you that being aware of the kind of readers that your work is being presented to before you even begin to type those words out on the screen is going to give you an advantage by the time it’s finished and released to the public. Themes matter. Amount of sex matters. Depictions of sex matters. Language and vocabulary matters. The ages of your characters matter. Genre matters. All of these guiding lights come into play when it comes to sharing your projects with whatever group you happen to be in league with at that time.
    If you’re writing for a younger preteen audience...you can’t submit something graphically or overtly sexual. If you’re on a site for modern love and romance stories, submitting something that edges more on being a grotesque horror, blood and gore, story isn’t going to play well with a majority of your audience. If people are looking for something adhering to a certain theme or a subject, you cant just barge in with something completely off topic. And so forth and so on. I mean, those are extremes...but there are subtle differences to be noted as well. Take that little bit of extra time to look at the other writers’ offerings around you, and see if your particular voice fits into the layout of what everybody else is doing. Like I said...take ego out of it. Take a moment to see if you can adjust and adapt your own abilities and instincts to still maintain your beloved and recognizable style to what this particular site/contest/anthology/publication is asking for. It’s not a difficult task at all. Not for any experienced writer. You’re a writer! Figure it out! I do it all the time!
    The difficulty comes from authors who are too shielded or defensive of their personal voice to notice that the idea of, “I’m just gonna write whatever I want” isn’t always the way to go. It might make you stand out...but not always in a good way if readers can’t draw a connection between what you’ve written and what the task at hand was. Make sense?
    Versatility is the key. Sometimes what you want to write doesn’t quite ‘fit’ into what everyone else is doing. And while it’s cool to be different and original, there are still guidelines that you have to set for yourself and use your voice to tell the story that’s being asked for. Something that is structured to blend in with the current environment that you’re trying to be a part of. There’s a big difference between having an original take on a common idea, and just forcing your ideas upon a group that is looking for something else entirely.
    You’ve got to teach yourselves how to change things up every now and then, if for no other reason than to keep from being labeled a ‘one trick pony’ in terms of your content. Really take some time and think about where you are and who your readers are going to be. It’s not a trivial part of being an author, it’s a part of being a part of a community. No one is asking you to compromise your voice for the sake of a ‘herd mentality’. If anything, it’s a chance to flash your skills and bring your own unique flavor to the table when it comes to creating a new presence where you didn’t have one before. Always an awesome experience!
    True story...when I wrote the first chapter of “Waiting Outside The Lines” years ago (https://gayauthors.org/story/comicality/waitingoutsidethelines) it was for a writing contest that I was asked to be a part of online! And...if I may take an ego moment, hehehe...I WON that writing contest, and turned it into a series! One that is coming to an end soon, but I’m very proud of it. Anyway, guidelines gave me three cute celebrity boys to get together and basically just told me to build a story around it. And that’s exactly what I did. That’s the story that you can read right now to this day.
    Now...there was a second contest that I was also added into...and that one was a little bit out of my depth for that one. Hehehe, but the guy who was running the contest told me to ‘figure it out’. Now this one involved Chandler Riggs, Chris and Liam Hemsworth, and some sex toys, etc. Now that’s not the kind of stuff that I usually write, but hey...hey! Challenged accepted, you know?
    I wish I could show it to you guys, but I honestly don’t have a copy of it anymore due to a computer crash. But if any of you guys can find it, I’d LOVE to read it again myself! I think I surprised myself. Hehehe! How did I deal with the more hardcore presentation of it all? I had Chandler get sick with a nasty flu, and while he was in bed, he was watching the Hemsworth brothers on TV, I think...and the whole thing pretty much takes place as a horny teenage boy’s fever dream. Sex toys and all. Proving that a little ingenuity can get your particular voice heard and still have it blend in with the assignment that you’ve been tasked to work with.
    Seriously, I don’t remember the name of that one! But if one of you guys has a copy, PLEASE send it to me! Hehehe! I’d love to go back and look at it again some day! ::Giggles::
    It doesn’t take a whole lot of research to read the room, folks! Figure out what the vibe is, and do what you can to match it. Just do it in your own way. MAKE it yours, and show the world what you’re made of. Cool?
    I hope this keeps your brain bubbling over with new ideas and inspires you guys to keep pursuing your art! We always need new stories in the world! Whether it be on a laptop screen on painted on the walls of an ancient cave...we’re all storytellers at heart. So buckle up, and show us your best!
    Take care! And I’ll seezya soon!
     
  25. Comicality

    Exposition Part III

    By Comicality,


    Writing Tips
    Exposition Round III - Are we back for one more round, hehehe! Yes, folks! I believe that we are!
    When it comes to exposition, that is an entire book in itself. Learning what it is, how to use it, when to use it...when it’s too little, when it’s too much...it would be an absolutely exhausting effort to try to fill you guys in on all of it at the same time. And that’s just with the limited amount of experience that I have had with it, personally, over the years...most of it being stuff I learned through a LOT of haphazard trial and error. So I just tired to tackle the subject from a completely different angle in multiple parts whenever I got my head screwed on right and felt confident that I’d be able to make some sense out of the whole thing for anyone who was looking for a fw eta tidbits of knowledge here and there. Everything else has to be learned by just embarrassing yourself enough times to get it right. Hehehe!
    But we’re all creative people here...so we already know that it’s the best way to go more times than not.
    So make a few sandwiches, grab your particular drink of choice...maybe bring some porn along with you, as long as you’re willing to share, hehehe! And let’s get back to the ins and outs of the art of using exposition and how it can help or hurt your story, depending on how you decide to use it. Cool?
    If you haven’t read my previous two articles on exposition, you can find Part One at https://gayauthors.org/blogs/entry/17506-exposition/ (Dealing with what exposition really is, and what is needed and not needed for the sake of brevity and pacing) and Part Two at https://gayauthors.org/blogs/entry/18119-exposition-round-2/ (Which deals more with being able to deliver information through visuals and detail instead of just speech alone). So check those out for some of the other parts of the process that I’ve spoken about in the past. They both, basically, deal with the art of being able to say what you need to say...without saying it. On many occasions, this can be accomplished gracefully, and your story can really benefit from it. But, the question we’re tackling for Round Three is...what happens when you’re not really given much of a choice in trying to navigate your way around just coming right out and saying what you have to say so the story doesn’t stall and your attempts to avoid it become awkward and weird. I mean...sometimes it happens, you know? Prepare for it. And when it comes time to ‘tell’ over ‘show’...you want to make sure that you’ve already figured out an effective way of doing so.
    I have struggled with this in the past myself, and it can sometimes lead to long periods of frustrated stares at this blasted blank screen, hoping that some sort of random stroke of genius will somehow fall in my lap and free me from the temporary block. I get stuck between lacking the clever answers I was hoping for and the desire to simply cheat and skip over it so I can get back to the ‘important’ stuff...hehehe, but it is important. It isn’t going to work one hundred percent of the time...but the lack of a challenge will lead you down the road to laziness, every single time. So never give up trying.
    That being said...there are going to be times in your writing where the simple approach to the problem is the best one. Some important details can’t be delivered to your readers in subtle and nearly invisible ways without you having to slow everything down considerably and taking an unnecessary scenic route that might ultimately bore and frustrate your readers. Sometimes...just plain ol’ exposition is best. What you need to think about most is which forms of exposition are stronger, and which ones are weaker, in terms of delivering the same amount of information in your fiction. That’s not to say that they won’t work...it just means that you, as a writer, should always look for the strongest ways possible to get the job done.
    For example...
    How many movies have you seen in the past where a certain piece of information has to be delivered to the protagonist of the story...and they just happen to be in a bar, or a restaurant, or a convenience store...and the info just so happens to be playing on the news on a TV in the background? And they run up and tell the bartender, “Hey! Turn this up!” And the bartender actually does it, first of all (Hehehe! “Sure, random stranger!”), and everybody around them gets quiet so he or she can hear the news broadcast clearly? Not to mention that they turn up the volume at the exact moment that the newscaster repeats the news that needs to be given? Or someone calls them on the phone, like, “Are you watching the news?”...and they turn it on just in time to get all the details without interruption?
    Does that happen in real life? I don’t know...maybe. But I’d think it was unlikely. Now...you can easily deliver information to your audience in this manner, but I’d like to think that this is one of the ‘weaker’ ways of doing so. There’s really nothing wrong with it, per se...but I’m willing to bet that you guys already knew what I was talking about from one hundred movies you’ve seen and stories you’ve read a million times before...and that makes it cliché in a way that you might want to avoid. I’m thinking that you don’t want that.
    Why is it weaker? Because it feels as though it’s a story contrivance that comes out of nowhere. Very fortunate for the protagonist, but not to anyone reading. Therefore...not to anyone writing it either. If it were me, I would use the whole news broadcast thing as a last resort...but I would still use it if I thought it served the purpose that I needed it to serve. Because it really is a quick and easy way to give the main character (and thus, the audience) the information that they need to have for the story to move forward. And that’s why this form of exposition is used so much. Because it’s very useful.
    I hope that doesn’t sound like a conflicting flurry of advice in this article. Just keep in mind...this isn’t about good and bad uses of exposition. It’s more about stronger versus ‘not so strong’. K?
    As many of you guys already know, I am a hopeless insomniac, and always have been since I was a little boy. So much so that my mom just kind of gave up on trying to force m to go to bed at ‘bedtime’, and just tried to stay with me until I fell asleep naturally. Hehehe, even then, my brain was buzzing with so many ideas that I couldn’t quiet my thoughts long enough to relax. SO...I grew up watching a lot of old black and white movies and TV shows on television, and they always stuck with me. And if there was ever a long road trip that w had to take somewhere, my parents used to play these old cassette tapes in car to sort of keep me captivated by the stories and all the entire time. I still have some of those old cassettes! I would listen to the original “War Of The Worlds”, and “The Witching Hour”, and more. And one that I always had a specific fondness for were episodes of “The Shadow”! God, I know som of those old tapes by heart! Hehehe!
    The thing about these ‘story tapes’ is that they were played on the radio, in a time where there wasn’t a television in every household. No pictures. No stage. Nothing. Just the words you heard, a few sound effects, and a couple samples of music added here and there. Everything else? It’s ALL exposition! Every word! The rest was left up to your imagination. Back then, they didn’t really have much of a choice. But the overall effect is absolutely brilliant.
    I want you guys to listen to the audio of this particular episode of “The Shadow” for a few minutes. You can listen to the whole thing if you like, and find huge block of episodes on Youtube if you find you have a taste for it like I do...but I’m sure that just listening to the first five to ten minutes or so will give you more than enough context to understand the idea that I’m talking about.
    Check it out...
     
    The beginning of the broadcast is just the opening to introduce you to the protagonist, theme music and all. That’s exposition. This is the info you need to know in order to follow the main character on whatever adventures he plans to take you on. But listen after that. It’s just words and a few sound effects...filling in everything you need to know. Who is The Shadow? Who is he with? Where are they? Snow? Werewolf? What’s a werewolf? How long has this been going on? All of this is being given to you with words alone, in an interesting and entertaining way, without showing you a single picture. With a radio broadcast like this, way back then, you wouldn’t have the luxury of the kind of subtlety and visuals that you would have with a TV or a movie screen...but you wouldn’t have the inner monologue and narration of a full length novel either. This lies somewhere in between. Everything has to be spoken aloud in order for the rest of the story to make sense. It’s practically narration...but without the narration. Does that make sense?
    This is one of the reasons that I’ve always felt that one on one dialogue has always been one of the strongest methods of delivering information in your narrative, as opposed to any number of other methods that might be effective...but simply don’t deliver the same ‘punch’, you know? I guess it really depends on what kind of story you’re writing, which methods you decide to use. For example, if you’re writing a mystery from a detective’s point of view...finding clues, photographs, reading news articles, etc...might be the way to go. But if you’re writing about two college Sophomores flirting with one another at a party...I’d think having them talk and trading some witty (or perhaps some nervous) dialogue would fit better when it comes to finding out who these characters are and what their background is.
    I’ve been writing a gay teen story that takes place during a zombie apocalypse (How’s THAT for a way to start a paragraph! LMAO!!!) called, “Shelter” (https://gayauthors.org/story/comicality/shelter/) where the teen survivors are walled in and protected by the military in a high school that was made out to be a fortress for refugees from the outbreak...but teens are the main protagonists of the story. And something that I’ve found it difficult to do is to deliver the proper amount of information to them without them constantly having to ‘overhear’ conversations from the officers or doctors or civilians all the time. Once or twice, is fine. But seeing as it’s a serious situation and everything is being sort of kept as a secret, I really haven’t found many ways for them to figure out what’s going on without them just ‘happening’ to be hiding out in the right place at the right time. It’s what I’ve got to work with right now, but I’m constantly struggling to find other ways for them to be in the loop without having to hear everything second hand.
    Maybe it’s just me, but after a few times of using that trick, I feel as though it’s beginning to weaken the narrative a little bit. I’d rather find a few different sources of exposition if possible.
    Still….it works, and it’s effective...but I want to be as strong a writer as I can be. And drifting over to that ‘lazy’ off ramp is OH so tempting sometimes! Hehehe!
    Just something to think about when you’re writing. You can use exposition quickly to get your point across without having to strain yourself too much to find clever ways around...as I said before...sometimes, simplicity is best. But use it sparingly, and try to strengthen your presentation if you can.
    Having your protagonist looking for information and just hearing it on the news can be a bit weak. If they need to look up a specific sort of demonic possession and they Google it and it’s like, the third result on the page? Weak. Trying to find someone who can’t be found, and suddenly running into their ex-boyfriend on the street with their name and address in their phone all cued up for you? Weak.
    I truly believe that informative dialogue is the way to go, and that’s exactly what I learned from listening to old cassette tapes of classic radio shows in the car as a kid. So grab your influences wherever you can, and take the best parts to heart. In my story, “Gone From Daylight”, I was lucky enough to take the whole ‘fish out of water’ approach to the situation, where everyone around him was a vampire and he wasn’t. So I was able to effectively use dialogue with his companions in order to teach my protagonist (and thus the readers, remember?) how this world works and what the rules are. That takes your readers on a journey with your main character, as opposed to just following breadcrumbs from whatever knowledge you decide to drop in front of them from a journal entry or an overheard conversation. It keeps your main character driving the story forward, as opposed to simply being a passenger or a witness to what is going on around them.
    Also...if you go that route...please don’t reduce your protagonist to a ‘parrot’. That’s not good either.
    Meaning, you’ve got everybody else doing the talking, and your main character just says, “Why?” And then they dump the info on him and he says, “How?” And they dump some more info on him….rinse and repeat. Always, always, ALWAYS, have your protagonist driving the plot forward! It’s awesome to have him absorb a lot of information and use it to get the rules in order...but don’t let him drift out of the spotlight. K? Even the strongest bit of exposition can weaken your main character if your readers don’t feel like he’s directly involved anymore.
    Alrighty! That’s it for tonight! I hope this helps you guys out while you’re writing your next big masterpiece! We’re all just on brilliant opus away from a legacy we can be proud of, right? Hehehe! So go out there and grab the trophy!
    Love you lots, one and all! Take care! And stay beautiful!
     
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