Sorry your browser is not supported!

I enjoy writing, a lot. I get ideas and constantly have these little short snippits of writing, but never expand on them, mainly because I dont know what a good cross between detail/explanations and just expanding on ideas is.

An example:
It was a cold day on the distant battle station in the Alpha system; Gary thought the heaters were probably overloaded again. The only thing that kept him going on the dreary work of watching interstellar space lanes for pirates and Mars ships was the considerable pay for his job. Forty credits an hour, working 12 hours, for every day in a pay cycle (A standard Earth month of 30 days), he thought it was sweet. Just had to sit and look at dots on a screen and request Earth ID tags (EIDs) from all vessels that didn’t auto transmit them, it was the life. He popped open a fresh bottle of compressed vitamin water and went to work. Suddenly there was a peculiar appearance on the topmost screen.
“Hmmm…this can’t be right” Thought Gary, seeing 40 red dots appear near the station.
Gary slid over with his chair to the phone system to contact the Commander of the station.
“Commander Dennis” Gary said to the stations computer that operated the phone system. Within ten seconds Gary was connected to the Commander.
“Commander on the first sector look closely at the top section; Do you see around 40 enemy id tags?” Said Gary in a frightened tone.
“Ensign…I do” Said the Commander in obvious shock.
Suddenly the phone disconnected, but the intercom system started blaring with the automated alarm, which meant that there was an attack on the station. Gary’s job was now to monitor positions of all ships coming on the inbound towards the station, and report them to the computer so that it could help automate the escape trajectories if boarding became a likely situation. Gary realized he was part of the first interstellar war in a century. So it goes.

What would be a good way to expand on the ideas, but without making it too bulky in lengthy sentences about nuances I have stuck in my head? Anyone that could help would be appreciated.

example of Nuance:

It was a frigid day on the distant battle station in the Alpha system, where the Trinary star system shined light, but the armor of the gigantic A-class Battle Station "Aurora" shielded the precious human cargo aboard from the light, heat, and radioactive waves emmitted from the star system.

Is it bad to go into that much detail, or do I want to, because some people have told me they dont enjoy reading the lengthy sentences that could be shortened to a normal size.

I like sentences with just enough detail. I don't really like long descriptive sentences that go on about how water tastes, for example.

Its beeter to be short and to the point, in my opinion.

I think you need to describe things in great detail if they're something the person can't relate to. So if you talk about the new Fraggle Amagoid Robotoz Plum Beast, then since nobody knows what the foop that is, you need to give us a good picture.

If it's something we can relate to, then you don't need as much detail. So as higgins said, we all know what water tastes like, so we don't need the author to tell us, unless is has a particular significance.

Also, you don't need to describe things that aren't important. So you might think it necessary to set the scene visually so the reader knows what it looks like, but that's only really necessary if the scene is important. So if two lovers are gazing at sunset, or you just want to portray a romantic scene, you need to describe the sunset. But if a character is talking to another about something unrelated to and unaffected by the sunset, then you really don't need to describe it in any detail.

@Fallout: I think that will really help.

So for example, if that "Battle Station" is only used as a plot opener, and wont be used the rest of the story, you dont describe it in overwhelming detail, but if it is the entire point of how the story revolves, you describe it a lot, ie "The Battle Station was the size of a small continent, with a reflective metal battered by berrages of meteors and debris. The station itself was a quarter of a century old, with armaments of everything from magnetic powered rail guns, to lasers using intense focused light. The Station was the corner stone of inner system defense for Earth and all of the inner colonies outside of Martian territory. The Station also acts as a Carrier, with the ability to hold up to Frigate class warships and thousands of fighters."

Descriptions can go on their importance, if the reader is very familiar and action and story telling is important, but what's in the environment matters to bring the reader into the whole experience, but never over do descriptions, especially when actions are occurring. Characters need some form of introduction, even if we're not supposed to know anything specifically about them, we need something to build to them 'Jimmy attacked Benjamin' - who the hell is Jimmy, he appeared out of nowhere! . Though 'no information' can be useful when used skilfully, in The Remains of the Day by Ishiguro, the most important character to the narrator 'Lord Darlington' is assumed we know who he is, because he's a famous guy (though a fictional character) - in his 'Never Let Me Go' the narrator/character immediately assumes you know the way of life in the setting - though it is something difficult to do effectively.

Another thought is the use of language, personally I think the English Language is a beautiful thing, it won its fight against Latin in both religion and literature - so you have a 1000 ways to say one thing, so how you use your language is very important into how the reader feels, I feel a skilled writer is one that not only tells us imagery and not even just showing it to us, but uses the language masterfully to help them read through and present the imagery in the best way possible. This means knowing a bit about how you use your sentences. An example will be passive vs active voice, if you don't know, passive is when the subject is the receiver of the action in the sentence (Jill is struck by Jack) and active make the actor the subject. (Jack strikes Jill) Of course there's other things to consider like Simple past tense vs progressive past, auxiliary verbs etc. With the passive and active, by placing someone the subject brings the reader's focus straight to them, this is very useful in forming an emotion for/opinion of the subject, the active, we focus on Jack, we may think 'You abusing git' and are shocked by it, but if the pass, the reader has sympathy for Jill, 'Oh you poor thing, you should stand up to yourself'. It's something newspaper writers do as well when they want to sway the reader's opinion.

With punctuation, one thing that makes English such a good language, is the complexity that it can be used at. Some people are very full stops and commas, but I think that's pretty plain as punctuation can essentially 'season' your piece of writing and acts as a catalyst to the flavour of your writing. When use well you can really vary your language. It may sound daft and rather too philosophical for little marks. But each punctuation mark changes how the reader breathes, the speed of reading and how the brain takes the info. Long sentences should be broken up by punctuation because readers like mini breaks so they can consume more information, saying that, try watching a long monotonous program, the lack of breaks tires your brain to say 'no more! I cannot pick up any more information!' Incidentally, a moment of suspense, use short sentences to speed up the breathing; when relaxed - lengthen the sentences but leave little bits for breath and breaks in the punctuation. Also, on the 'breathing', it's just not the lungs that breathe, but the brain, hence it's best that you consider that.

And of course there's a lot more that can be said and much much more advice that can be given and should be taken step by step as story writing is quite complex - even writing a story for a 4 year old is complex (As you're language has to have the right purpose, if it doesn't have a purpose, then it doesn't work in a kids story, same for the illustrations...notice how in a kid's book the characters in pictures tend to move from left to right, like how we read)- even if Dylan Moran's and Bill Bailey's characters in the comedy 'Black Books', disagree.

Right, if it'll help, I'll analyse your piece here into a way I would do it. Remember these are my opinions, with criticisms of writing there is no right or wrong, just people's experience and opinions - even if the vast majority of society say something isn't that good (Like they sort of did with one of Ishiguro's books, then a critic came a long and said it was really good.)

YOUR PIECE:
-----------------------

It was a cold day on the distant battle station in the Alpha system; Gary thought the heaters were probably overloaded again.

-You've gone straight into the story without telling us much, this is an environment we're not at all familiar with. Battle station, what battle station? Where are we? Are we near earth? Is this an alien place. Give this place a paragraph or two of introduction and description - perhaps a little bit of background knowledge. Gary? Who's Gary? Perhaps we seem him doing something or standing somewhere and his character is introduced there, then instead of the narrator knowing it's cold, Gary makes a gesture or we know what he feels, showing that it's cold and the narrator could tell us his thought then.-


The only thing that kept him going on the dreary work of watching interstellar space lanes for pirates and Mars ships was the considerable pay for his job.

-This probably could be broken up a bit, you might need to re-write the sentence, perhaps we could have the job description, make that the focus and then add (separated by punctuation) that the only thing that drove him was his money, or the other way round, though I'd go for money last as money is the subject of the next sentence, it should make things flow more smoothly (active vs passive )

Forty credits an hour, working 12 hours, for every day in a pay cycle (A standard Earth month of 30 days), he thought it was sweet. Just had to sit and look at dots on a screen and request Earth ID tags (EIDs) from all vessels that didn’t auto transmit them, it was the life.

-Good, you've extended on his motives, with the stuff in brackets, I wonder, perhaps (Which consists 30 day; based on an earth month) and (Also known as EIDs) From 'Just had' - rather than 'that', as it elongates the readers wait for a breath, why not use 'vessels, which didn't' of course the next comma is too close, 'as it was the life they lead' or if you're meaning the other context that 'it was the life' could be use, '; it was a life worth living' (Or 'one that he loved' - there are several ways you could express that meaning)-

------------

That should give you an idea, if you want I could look at more of it and extend my comments. Though I'd probably advise you read comments I've left other people.

Here is one piece of writing I analysed deeply(ish) on another forums, other comments this girl got should, of course be noted.

My comments should be near the bottom of the page, now hers is one that needs some work doing to it and is based on the fantasy genre (which to me leads into the same sort of area as science fiction)

http://www.writingforums.com/fiction/82556-gaias-heart.html

I would note that you should look into the Sci Fi genre, I've never read a Sci Fi book, so none of my comments are directed to the norms of the genre.

[edit]

Perhaps a little golden rule, everything needs a purpose, so if you pick an adjective, you don't pick it because it sounds love or because you feel the need to describe, but simply because you want the effect it gives. Equally, if you decide to omit some 'typical' features in writing, like the level of detail, it needs to be done for a reason (target audience? effect? etc)

@Seppuku: Wow, thanks! Its times like these that make me hate skipping English in High School.



Would this work for the new paragraph:

It was a cold day in the distant Battle Station “Aurora” in the Alpha system. The Battle Station was the size of a small continent, with a reflective metal battered by barrages of meteors and debris. The station itself was a quarter of a century old, with armaments of everything from magnetic powered rail guns, to lasers using intense focused light. The Station was the corner stone of inner system defense for Earth and all of the inner colonies outside of Martian territory. The Aurora was stationed close enough to Earth to act as a first warning of attacks from the independent state of Mars, but far enough to protect the inner colonies around the system of Sol. This is why Ensign Gary, of the Earth Alliance of Colonies Naval Division, decided he wanted to work here. Out of all the places he could have chosen, this was the most comfortable. Vital Supply Lines intercepted here, making it sure to never be out of supplies, and yet thanks to the Trinary, or three stars, system creating enough gravity to destroy any planets which might have formed, it had none of the traffic associated with planetary systems. You see, Ensign Gary was a Space Lane Director, assigned to monitor all vessels and ask them for the specially assigned Earth ID Designators, or EIDs. But of course this day, the heating system had failed in the Ensign’s cubical-isk office. The reason that the Ensign did not mind these issues was the pay of his dreary job. Many people did not wish to become Traffic Directors because of the Tediousness of sitting for hours on end staring at dots on a screen and occasionally asking if they would transmit signals. Gary however knew a secret; the job paid well. The job paid forty credits per hour, while he worked a shift of twelve hours every day. Gary thought that the job was most certainly worth the long hours, and he found that the distance from planets was quite pleasant.

Maybe it's because it's 2am or because I've just spent a good amount of time already reading other stuff, but I took in about as much from the above paragraph as my body can take Vitamin C out of goat poop. The stuff leading up to the part explaining how much money Gary made was a blur. It's just all too much, too fast. All this stuff is thrown at you to remember. I mean, if you're writing a book that takes place NYC, 2007, than you obviously wouldn't need to detail out what a car and a building and a subway station is. But all this sci-fi stuff? I mean, I'm a guy pretty connected with sci-fi terms, due to a lifelong of watching sci-fi and playing sci-fi games and just being an all around geek, but that stumped me!

Man, or maybe it's just me and I'm tired. Good writing anyway.

It's better, but it's not quite what you need. I'm actually pretty tired to give it any thought, I was woken up early, didn't get the best nights sleep and I have to look after a pregnant cat who's going to have kittens today, so I'll just give you other advice rather than an analysis.

Firstly, re-drafting is the who;e fun of writing a story, and you've got to be able to analyse your work as you go through and as your proof-read with all your purposes and what you need to do in mind. First drafts are never good, I like to think of them as 'idea gathering', you're creating a general discourse of the chapter and adding all you want, as you proofread it, you go around strengthening parts and making it good and you do this more than once (I've redrafted my prologue 5 times and it still needs work, chapter 1 will probably under-go less because I'd be acquiring in mind mind exactly how I'd be writing it.)


One thing you may need to do in writing is research around the subject, I used a waterfall in my prologue and that would mean I'd need to remember last time I went to a waterfall, though it would probably be better that I visited one. Research can help with how you write it, so really this is an excuse to watch loads and loads of Sci-fi Though you don't take ideas from there, but think about the environments and the overall effect caused by the sci-fi genre and anything you can use with out 'stealing' ideas. Though say your characters are on a planet, and you have certain environments, it's good to actually experience them, if that's not possible, like say a Jungle, then find as many documentaries on Jungles you can watch, there's an episodes of 'Planet Earth' that is focused on the jungles around the world and luckily you can watch them online. Though you're not going to pick up as much.

As I said in the other writing thread, never force writing, it'll turn out goo and the mistakes will be noticeable, you've got to write when you've got the inspiration, if you find you can't write anything, an experience that's likely to occur, find ways to cure writer's block.


I actually picked up a book on story writing, I've only read the first chapter, but I think it contains some useful advice. One of which should help plan out and structure your story efficiently as well as to act as an aid to avoid/overcome writer's block. These solution seem quite active, but I'm sure implementing what you can will be useful.

Taken straight from the book:


Another thing from this book may help you with that extract there.

Of course, note the difference between a plot and story, you want this to be a plot. An example of differences could be:
'The king died and then the queen died' is what would make a story - a series of events arranged in a time sequence. The plot would be:
'The king died, and then the queen died of grief.' Here the is that time sequence with an emphasis on causality. Though this was one man's comparison. This is basically one event makes another event happen. Plot's work better as something satisfying to the reader - with it there are usually questions and then incidentally answers (if needed) like, why did the King die? What did she love about him so much to be that grieved? Or your general 'What happens next?' (The key question to suspense) or 'how did we get in this mess? (A key question to mystery)

Then the book goes onto talking about 'process', which is an event which occurs in time and has three aspects (Though pretty obvious) the beginning, middle and end (Though I always think 'climax' is between middle and end as it generally ties the two together, but I dunno, the climax wouldn't be in a set place ) Here they extend the Queen and King example - which based on that simple line extends the story a bit further:
"The queen died, no-one knew why, until it was discovered it was through the grief at the death of the king." Typically this small bit follows the plot-line (The beginning: Queen dies. The Middle: The investigation. The end: the discovery). And there already is the marking to a murder-mystery with a romantic twist.

Of course the plot should be complete. If you like to think of things as lines, a story is a straight one, a plot is one with a series of loops that often come back on themselves through the journey in order to complete it. But that doesn't mean tie up all of the loose ends, just the reader needs to be able to answer the majority of the questions raise through-out. Like in this instance - Why did the queen die? Then the answers don't need to be explicit (She died through the grief of the king) as it all can be implied. If when given all the information and the reader can't answer the question, they'll be confused, so keep your readers happy.

Hope that helps.

LOL u can tell you lot like writting by the size of the posts

My advice for anyone who wants to get into story writing is take an evening course in it. They don't teach anything at school level about how to write a proper story, well not my experience anyway