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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #181 - "Adrift"

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C

Cyan

Banned
Theme - "Adrift"

Word Limit: 2200

Submission Deadline: Friday, Jan 29th by 11:59 PM Pacific.

Voting begins Saturday, Jan 30th, and goes until Monday, Feb 1st at 11:59 PM Pacific.

Grace Periods: Each of the above deadlines will be followed by a 6-hour grace period. Submissions made after the end of the grace period will be ineligible, and votes cast after the end of the grace period will not be counted. Remember that these are grace periods, not extensions of the deadline--you should still submit your work or cast your vote by the deadline set above.

Optional Secondary Objective: Differentiate Character Voices

Make your characters sound different! Someone suggested I work on this in the last thread, and as long as I'm doing it I might as well drag you lot with me. This is not a strong suit for me, so I'm hoping some of you will have pointers on doing this effectively. :)

Submission Guidelines:

- One entry per poster.
- All submissions must be written during the time of the challenge.
- Using the topic as the title of your piece is discouraged.
- Keep to the word count!

Voting Guidelines:

- Three votes per voter. Please denote in your voting your 1st (3 pts), 2nd (2 pts), and 3rd (1 pt) place votes.
- Please read all submissions before voting.
- You must vote in order to be eligible to win the challenge.
- When voting ends, the winner gets a collective pat on the back, and starts the new challenge.

NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge FAQ
Previous Challenge Threads and Themes
 
N

Nezumi

Member
Love, love, love the theme. So many different directions to go in. Secondary is also something interesting to do consciously.
 
J

John Dunbar

correct about everything
Nezumi said:
Love, love, love the theme. So many different directions to go in. Secondary is also something interesting to do consciously.
Click to expand...

one definition of adrift is "without direction or purpose," so you can write pretty much anything you want.
 
M

M52B28

Banned
This challenge made me think of this song - "Adrift" It's really poetic to me.

Anyways, I will consider doing this. 2,200 words is a lot to me.
 
V

Valhelm

contribute something
En-ou said:
Nice! A lot going on.

FD?
Click to expand...

Nah, Joyce! I've actually never read Dostoyevsky, although I should when I've got the time.

I've been reading (and loving) Ulysses, so I drew from his very charming stream-of-consciousness style.
 
R

Red

Member
I'm at 400 words. I hope this one stays under the limit. The theme sort of putzed out as I went. I might finish this one up and then start something else.
 
E

En-ou

Member
Valhelm said:
Nah, Joyce! I've actually never read Dostoyevsky, although I should when I've got the time.

I've been reading (and loving) Ulysses, so I drew from his very charming stream-of-consciousness style.
Click to expand...

Been slacking on Joyce. Thanks for reminding me.
 
R

Red

Member
Cyan said:
Ok seriously though, anyone have any good tips or resources on the character voices thing?
Click to expand...
You are a solid writer but I have no idea what you do as a profession, or what your history is. Have you ever taken a creative writing course? There's an exercise that tends to come up over and over, an investigation into how people speak. You go out and record some found conversation (at the supermarket, at work, at a restaurant, and so on), then transcribe it. You will discover a lot of fluff and dead ends. Try to cut down the conversation to the essentials. That does not mean get rid of all mistakes, excess words, or tangents. These can be representative of character.

The same exercise comes up in acting and improvisation courses. You'll find that even from short minute-or-two snippets there is a spirit in most people struggling to burst out. That's what you want to capture.

Also check out writers of dialect like Claude McKay, William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison. Phonetic spelling may be out of fashion, but there is still much to be learned from the writers who pioneered it.

It's not horribly difficult to differentiate voice by establishing a particular vocabulary for each character. And if cliché ever had a place, it's in the mouth of a character.

And of course, malapropism is often a widow to the sole.
 
D

dangerbyrnes

Member
I have my story written. Yay, exactly 2,200 words. now on to revising it.

Cyan said:
Ok seriously though, anyone have any good tips or resources on the character voices thing?
Click to expand...

I won't claim to be a great writer, but i feel like ive had some success at this. I Personally struggled with it, and still do all the time. but there's no one way to do it.

go way overboard, make you're characters sound wildly different on purpose. over exaggerate their personalities, then go back and tone it down. generally this has worked for me.

Other things I've tried:

Michael Crichton was pretty good at this, so i recommend reading his good books like Sphere, or The Andromeda Strain, and really study how he differentiates his many characters. unfortunately don't go overboard like Crichton did with his later books, where the characters turn into caricatures.

a lot of writers will say its a bad idea (for some reason), but it worked for me. essentially i listened to a lot of tv shows (aka, turn on netflix, but don't watch it, just listen), where a lot of this stuff is over exaggerated, and then i practiced writing those characters, and what makes them sound different. then tone down the voices, make them sound more human, and less scripted. it doesn't matter if the show is amazing or just good, someone had to write the lines before they were spoken, there's no reason it cant work backwards.

Actually attempt to speak the lines. if you are at all good at pretending to talk like other people, try it. get a microphone and record yourself. heck, record family members/freinds reading something. you'll notice that even among your own family there's a vast difference between how you talk.

age has a huge factor, listen to younger people talk, listen to middle aged people talk, listen to children talk, listen to old people talk, this can give you insight into how an older character might talk to a younger character, and vice versa.

Listen to other accents, like a lot. if you want different nationalities represented, try to find real conversations, or interviews, or political meetings, etc. they might be boring, but they'll generally help you get an accurate representation of other accents. obviously don't use phonetic accents, eugh, but remember different names for things. example in the northeast we have rotary's, but everywhere else they're called roundabouts. Dandy Crocodiles link talks about this a bit.
 
R

Red

Member
I'm at 1600 words. Getting nervous about length.

Re: character voice. Gotham Writers' Workshop's Writing Fiction has a couple of good sections. Page 130, the section titled "Illusion of Reality" discusses something like the found dialogue exercise I described above. Page 139, starting with "Dialogue and Character" describes how character might be exposed by dialogue. These two sections are available in full through the Google Books preview. There is even a section on dialect starting on page 148 (unfortunately only partially available in the preview).
 
R

Red

Member
Finished, at 2233 words. Did not turn out exactly as planned but I am surprised I could get it done at all with this word count. I might write another one to try and stick more closely to the theme. Maybe, maybe not.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
For our newer folks, just so you know, we always have a writing hangout on the Sunday during the challenge, 2 PM Pacific time, going for 2 hours. I'll post more details later, but just be aware that it's happening if you're interested!
 
A

Ashes

Banned
Cyan said:
Ok seriously though, anyone have any good tips or resources on the character voices thing?
Click to expand...

Personally, I think your characters voices thing is fine.

I do think *some* of your characters have historically lacked depth though. I say historically, as this has improved a great deal from a while back.
 
R

Red

Member
I am going to try to catch the hangout tonight. I need to rework some things and it should be cool to put faces to names around here.
Ashes said:
Personally, I think your characters voices thing is fine.

I do think *some* of your characters have historically lacked depth though. I say historically, as this has improved a great deal from a while back.
Click to expand...
Character depth can be tough with the typical word counts we have. Of the stories I've read, Cyan seems to strike a good balance. He tends toward fable and fairy tale which is well suited to this format.
 
M

mu cephei

Member
Totally haven't given up on entering these regularly. Last week was an aberration.

Also, 91%* of sci fi ideas were explored by the end of the 70s. The next 7% by the end of the 90s. And the other 2% is covered by obscure sci fi books no one read.

Of course most of these books are written with outdated social mores, amongst other things, so there's plenty of room for exploration.

*random meaningless %
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Hangout in a little over two hours! I'll post the google hangouts link and some additional info a half hour before it starts.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Hangout starts in half an hour. Standard quick recap: it's on Google Hangouts, and the format is ten minutes of chat, then thirty minutes of writing with mics muted, repeated until we've gone for two hours. Webcams aren't required, though several of us will have them. Mics are recommended but also not required, as you can use the text chat.

The hangout link is (quote to see):

Note that Google Hangouts recently moved to a new format, which doesn't include the text chat. If you want to switch back, hit the three dots in the upper right corner and choose the option to switch to the old version.
 
D

dangerbyrnes

Member
pretty productive hangout session for me. i cant remember who due to name differences on hangouts, but whoever suggested to think about what happens after the ending really helped.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
dangerbyrnes said:
pretty productive hangout session for me. i cant remember who due to name differences on hangouts, but whoever suggested to think about what happens after the ending really helped.
Click to expand...

Awesome. I think that was flowersisbritish.


I didn't get a ton of writing done, but I did enjoy the hangout. Nice to see some new folks, and fun to meet Crunched's babby!
 
R

Red

Member
He was screaming at me the first thirty minutes which is why my mic was off. But I'm sure he enjoyed meeting you all too.

I think I am done my story. Will sit on it a few days. Managed to chop it down to 2200 words exactly. Kind of feels like a botched surgery, but we'll see.

Do word counts include titles?
 
F

Fluvian

Banned
So all I have to do is write a story fitting within those rules, and link it to this thread? do I have to use a particular program to write with?
 
R

Red

Member
Fluvian said:
So all I have to do is write a story fitting within those rules, and link it to this thread? do I have to use a particular program to write with?
Click to expand...

Write it in anything, share it however you can. I use google docs to write and acrobat pro to password protect. Everyone has a different workflow.
 
A

Azih

Member
Fluvian said:
So all I have to do is write a story fitting within those rules, and link it to this thread? do I have to use a particular program to write with?
Click to expand...

You can link it from somewhere else, you can post it in any format as long as it's easy to open and read, you can even just put it in right into a post but then Evilore owns it or something like that.
 
F

Fluvian

Banned
Crunched said:
Write it in anything, share it however you can. I use google docs to write and acrobat pro to password protect. Everyone has a different workflow.
Click to expand...

Oh okay, I think it's a bit late for me to participate in this one, I certainly want to try for the next one. Is it weekly or monthly?
 
D

Dandy Crocodile

Member
Fluvian said:
Oh okay, are there specific dates or does the guy who makes this just start a thread every fortnight? is there a way for me to know right away when the next one starts so I'm not late to the game like for this one?.
Click to expand...

Sort of specific dates? Due dates are Fridays and voting dates are Mondays so if you wanted to you could calculate it out months in advance.

You can subscribe to this thread and when the next challenge is posted it will be linked here.

You're really not too late unless you just don't have time to write it in the coming days. More than half of us (including me) either haven't started yet or only have a little written. :p
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Fluvian said:
Oh okay, are there specific dates or does the guy who makes this just start a thread every fortnight? is there a way for me to know right away when the next one starts so I'm not late to the game like for this one?.
Click to expand...

While it sometimes changes, the vast majority of the time we stick to the schedule.

New topic on Tuesday, between mid-morning and late afternoon
Writing period from Tuesday for a week and a half, ending on a Friday
(Sunday hangout in the middle of this period)
Reading/voting from Saturday to Monday
Votes counted Tuesday morning, a winner is chosen, they come up with a new topic
Goto start

So if you come back here a week from tomorrow, there should be a new topic sometime that day. There's always a link left in the prior thread so that everyone can find the new one.

On the other hand, you've still got until this Friday for this one. While a few people have already submitted, most of us are still working on ours. You've got loads of time to get something written!
 
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