Kat’s Comments (group member since Jan 25, 2011)

Kat’s comments from the The Five Ghosts group.

I may not be able to read it this month because school is an angry transvestite with a twelve inch strap on and I am her prison bitch. T_T In other words, we have to have all the animation for our film roughed in less than three weeks or we're doomed.

I FAIL AS THE BOOK CLUB MAKER PERSON

I MUST READ THIS LOL

I say yes :P

I still gotta go get it xp

I'd actually like to read The Way of Shadows too... assassins are cool 8D

Alrighty, so, suggestions for March? I have one book I would like to read, it's called 'The Knife of Never Letting Go' by Patrick Ness. So that is my suggestion :) Now everyone else make one lol XP

We should probably make a thread for March suggestions, yes :D I will do this :)

There are a few good fanfiction authors, they are always just nigh impossible to find. I'm not even as picky about the actual STORY so long as the characters remain in character, but so many people turn them into... completely different people. I can't understand this in the slightest. Isn't the point of fanfiction to give yourself and other people the characters they love so that when they run out of manga/anime/whatever they can still enjoy reading about their favourite characters' shenanigans? It doesn't make sense to then CHANGE THE CHARACTER'S PERSONALITY D8. And realistic sex scenes are almost non-existent. In 90% of them at least a) one person is a virgin b) they will cum at the same time c) they will say 'I love you' even though it's the first time/they haven't been together that long/there really wasn't enough development for it to feel that meaningful. It becomes so formulaic. Blow, bang, orgasm, 'I love you.' There, now you don't have to read 90% of what's out there 8| I'm not anti-erotica obviously, but jesus, people need to get creative.

Admittedly... a friend linked me to a fanfiction for Naruto that was GaaraxLee. I was SO dubious about this. I was like 'nowai.' Then I read it and I was like 'YESWAI.' GOOD fanfiction authors can make you believe shit that at first makes you roll your eyes. Truefacts.

Unnecessary character death does it, yeah. If I feel like the death is justified, like it fits the story and I don't see any way around it, then I am fine with that and I'll be sad but I'll keep watching. But a lot of tv shows kill fan favourites for the sole purpose of making the watchers cry it seems 8| Death Note did me in last time. After one of the main character deaths I said 'fuck this noise!'

So far my spree is going strong. Finished Ouran today. It's my favourite of all the ones I listed so far. It's so funny but the characters are actually interesting and aren't the stereotypes that they originally seem to be. I WANT TO WATCH IT AGAIN FOR THE LULZ!

The other thing that makes me stop watching... dumb romance developments. Romance is great when it's done right 'n all, but sometimes authors are so dead set on getting their 'OTP' together that they forget to mention WHY these two are better together than the characters are with other potential people in the show/novel/whatever... ie Harry Potter where I was like 'EXPELIEPLIOGUEIS' 8|

I wish... that it was easier to find good fanfiction. Why do people bother if they're going to make the characters ooc? POOP

I go through 'sprees.' I just watch everything I can get my hands on until BAM I find out that makes me rage quit so hard that I don't watch anime for another three years O_o By then people have found new ones that are actually good and finished. I don't usually watch ones that haven't finished yet, it's always a toss up whether it'll be the never ending stuff or what.... Next on my list is FLCL.

I've recently been watching a lot. I just blew through all of Soul Eater, Baccano, Samurai Champloo, and now I have to episodes of Ouran left XD Ouran is kind of geared toward a female audience, but I know some guys who find it funny anyway. I actually really enjoyed all of the ones I've watched, despite the fact most didn't have very satisfying endings (with the exception of Baccano). It's kind of a trend that I notice with anime, that they rarely ever have an ending that provides sufficient closure 8| Samurai Champloo made me go "HUAAAAAAHHHH WHAT!?"

It's not, it's an anime XP A comedy that sorta makes fun of a lot of the cliches of anime. It's got a lot of interesting characters. I find it hilarious XP

It is predictable. That was my one qualm too when I reviewed it. Somehow it still kept me pretty hooked though.

Right now I've become distracted by Ouran High School Host Club XP

Uglies is a story about a futuristic society where, at the age of 16, everyone is required to get an operation which makes them uniformly beautiful. During their teen years before this, they are referred to as 'Uglies' and generally brainwashed into believing that this operation is the thing which keeps their society stable and healthy. With everyone looking the same, there's no discrimination or jealousy going 'round. The premise of the story is that the main character, Tally, is blackmailed into finding a secret society of runaways called the 'Smoke' after her friend, Shay, disappears. If she doesn't do this, she will never be given the operation. One of her best friends lives in 'New Pretty Town' and has already had the operation, so she's got a lot of incentive to want that, but she doesn't want to betray Shay... That's pretty much the gist of the premise. It's pretty well done. I couldn't put it down.

The Hunger Games is fantastic. Everyone I've recommended it to since reading it has loved it.

I think I read Animal Farm in high school. It's more of a 'classic', but it's enjoyable enough, if a little... hmmm. Infuriating. XP But a good book.

I'm so glad you liked it too. It's been a while since I read something that affected me this much.
Just went to the bookstore today and picked up the first two of his Sandman graphic novel volumes, along with a totally different book called 'Uglies' which I've been seeing around a lot, but never picked up till now. I should be banned from bookstores for the sake of my bank account...

What I'm sorta prodding at is that the execution of back story is crucial. If it's consistently being told through dialogue or dream sequences, I start to get frustrated that the author can't come up with a more active way to show what's happened. If so much of it is THAT important to the story, why not just start the story from that point onwards? The other commonly used method of backstory execution I've seen is where they flip between timelines from chapter to chapter. If done well, I enjoy this a lot (Baccano), but more often than not I find myself not giving two shits about what happened THEN and only caring about what's happening NOW or vice versa (Immortal, that badly written crap I've mentioned in past posts). It gets even more dicey if you're flipping the focus or perspective from character to character... each has to be just as interesting as the last or I skip entire chapters about a character I don't care for. What it comes down to is this: does the reader NEED to know what you're telling them for the main spine of the story to make sense or is it more like the flavourless mint you get with your tab after the real nourishing part of the meal. If it's just fat, trim it. If no one in their right mind should care except you, trim it. If it's necessary for the comprehension of the story, then keep it. Stephen King calls it 'killing your darlings.' It's great that you have this backstory as a means for better understanding your characters as the author, but the truth of the matter is that unless it's needed for the reader's understanding then it's NOT needed in actual narration on anything but a subtextual level.

Some of the best back story I've ever seen never actually describes the event that shaped this character to such an extent, it is only darkly hinted at and the characters are never forthwith about it. One such story is about the generations of this family, and in particular a daughter who is molested by her father, but the molestation is NEVER shown, talked about, anything... it's just subtly hinted at through character behaviours and once the reader is given the final clues, it makes everything that much more horrifying to consider. Much of the time it is what we don't see, rather than what we do, which terrifies us and has the greatest emotional effect.

Actually, I really believe exposition or back story should arise from conflict too. Exposition is a tricky nut to crack, and should never be used for the sake of character development alone. An experienced reader will smell contrivances a mile away - if the exposition or backstory is not necessary for their comprehension of the story, they will know, and they will feel belittled that you must stuff this down their throats when it isn't necessary. Revealing ONLY the exposition which the reader needs and wants to know is the key to avoiding bad back story.

Make your audience desperately WANT to know the exposition before you give it to them, or they will sense that it's nothing more than authorial masturbation... Make them curious. Drop hints, have your character behave in such a manner that would seem strange to an observer, but makes sense once you understand the history linked to this behaviour.

Going to use a very recently watched anime as an example. Have you ever watched Baccano? It's a very rare thing they've done, to smash a story into so many pieces and only reveal little bits to the audience at a time. They do it in such a way that you understand NOTHING, but you want to, and only after more and more of the exposition is revealed do we understand the events of the present day. They only managed to do this by relating parts of the story with no chronology bit by bit. The style may not be for everyone - it has twenty characters so if you like to cling to a specific character and go along for the ride, it won't be your style, but it's really a masterful thing to watch. They manage to include characters of varying personalities and get the audience to fall in love with some of them despite how disjointed the story is. It would not have worked if the story was told chronologically, and it made sense to jumble the audience's comprehension because most of the characters are no more knowledgeable about what is taking place than you are. My point being - it's their masterful use of keeping the exposition hidden until you NEED to know to understand, and you WANT to know because they've made you curious, which makes the story that much more successful.

Another example, from another anime, is the character of Chrona from Soul Eater, who behaves in very strange and unpredictable ways, and who exhibits certain unique traits. His backstory, which explains his neurotic behaviour, especially toward the villain of the series, is only revealed much later when one of the main characters does a very literal 'soul exploration' to revisit his memories and see why this kid is messed up - and she only does it because if she doesn't manage to 'tame' the beast so to speak, he will very likely kill her, so there is much at stake and a lot of conflict driving the exposition. There are other layers of conflict in this alone, but I won't get into it because I don't think it'd make no sense unless I explained all the rules of that universe.

Exposition shouldn't come out in a bland talk over coffee where character's spill their secrets. It's contrived, it's boring, it doesn't make any sense. The more meaningful and relevant the exposition, the more tightly the character should guard it - or he will simply appear a puppet miming the words to a history he feels no attachment to. Only when the character is under pressure (ie conflict) should the exposition come to light anyway... Which brings us full circle. Conflict, even in the case of exposition, STILL drives character development. Conflict drives the narrative and holds the reader's interest, and it should motivate whether or not there is necessity for exposition.

There are so many important aspects of a story that it's hard to focus on just one without bleeding into the others, but today I'm going to tackle my thoughts on conflict and it's importance to the story.

It probably goes without saying that conflict is a necessary component and that, without it, you really don't have much of a story to tell. However, the difficulty in inventing conflict is that too often we are lured by the most obvious answers. The word 'conflict' invokes images of war or two lovers screaming at each other, but there are quieter and no less interesting facets of conflict that add layers of depth and meaning to any one scene.

I'm going to use Harry Potter as an example because most people have read it and it's the first thing that comes to mind right now. I'm still frozen from outside, shhh.
First, the three main types of conflict: character vs. character (Harry vs. Voldemort), character vs. self (Harry's struggle with his capacity for good and evil), character vs. environment (Harry vs. Hogwarts castle trapping his leg in a trick staircase). I used ONE book as an example here because the best stories incorporate all different types of conflict. Character vs. Environment can be situational, or nature-driven forces (Twister) or the struggle in a Dystopian society (1984) as well, while character vs. self and character vs. character are pretty self-explanatory.

That said, one or all of these forms of conflict should be present in every scene, every line, of your entire novel, or it is not driving the story forward. One might argue, 'but what about character development?' The truth of the matter is that character development and conflict go hand in hand. Your character's favourite food or hobbies don't tell us who this person is; we only truly come to understand a person when we observe their ACTIONS when put under pressure.

My main character's brother betrays him: does he forgive him, ostracize him, give him a second chance with a warning? How he conducts himself given this scenario will define whether he's a benevolent man with a huge capacity for forgiveness or whether he's the type to hold a grudge, or whether he's guarded in his trust since this betrayal. Nothing will define your character better than his/her own decisions. The more pressure he/she is under, the greater depth of understanding we'll have of this character's nature. Conflict IS character development.

The different layers of conflict I mentioned can be multi-faceted, there can be the conflict on the surface and multiple other conflicts going on subtextually that may be hinted at, but the audience isn't told the full story. This manner of layering conflict will lead to a much more satisfying climax, as the problems we KNOW are there battle against the ones we can't see, and all is revealed in the end to give the reader a revelation which makes them reevaluate every scene that came before it. This 'twist' ending result is what many movie-goers and readers alike seek in a story.

Ultimately, readers evaluate the conflict and immediately develop expectations concerning the resolution of said conflict. For example, in a romance, the conflict could revolve around the various things preventing the main couple from being together. As writers we hope to evoke emotion in the readers so that THEY want what the characters want - they feel that desire just as viscerally as your fictional characters - however, simply handing it to them will not get the results you hoped for. If the solution is too easy or predictable, the reader isn't satisfied. The key to conflict (and it's resolution) is to give the reader what they want, but not in the way that they expect.

Conversely, there are stories that DON'T give the audience what they want. These are usually called tragedies, and you toe a fine line between provoking the reader's tears or their rage if you don't treat it properly. The key with a tragedy is to build the conflict in such a way that the reader not only KNOWS this can't end well, they feel on some perverse level that it shouldn't and it wouldn't be right if it did. This is how I felt about the Hunger Games - while many complained about the lack of fairy tale ending, I felt that books of such a nature were deserving of something much more bitter sweet. A fairy tale ending would have seemed contrived, given all the characters had been through.

These are just some of my thoughts on conflict, I'll have to update this any time I think of something else.

I think, since this club isn't too serious, that if a convo goes off topic then that's okay ;) Maybe I'll post something in the writing tips section to make up for it though XP

Exactly, poetic language sometimes has it's place, but personally unless it serves a purpose for the atmosphere or story of the novel then it's useless.

Here's my take on it: if the writing is so verbose, flowery or awkward that my focus is on the writing and not the story, the writer has failed... The best kind of writing, to me, is the kind that doesn't attract attention to itself, it just tells the story and tells it well. If I notice the writing, that means it's taken me out of the story, which means it's not doing it's job. Personally, I don't read books for the words, I read it for the feelings these fictional worlds, characters and tales can elicit in me.

I'm not saying 'don't use big words,' if a specific word is precisely the thing you wish to communicate, by all means, but don't go all purple prose if the scene doesn't call for wordy descriptors. I've read some really bizarre renditions of 'she/he smiled,' for example. If your character smiles, just SAY it. The worst I came across was 'the smile impaled itself upon her face.' Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. I picture a pair of lips stabbing her in the face.