Writing Passionates discussion

wow i do that too!! my characters are always like "... or something" or "just..." or "i mean..." or they say "um" before every sentence. lol. XD i also get annoyed at myself for starting so many sentences with "but" or "and". and this might sound random but i think i describe ppl's eyes too much; i'm always writing about what a person's eyes are doing, if u know what i mean. and the conversations i write are always filled with pauses and silences; i'm always writing, like, "there was a brief silence" between every piece of dialogue. yes so those are my annoying writing habits (that i can think of so far...)

hmmmm i'm not sure i write how i really talk. i don't think i do, really. not sure. i'll try to pay more attention to that and find out. ;D i don't think my characters necessarily do what i would do in the same situation. as a matter of fact, i'm always sitting there saying to the characters over and over, like, "omg, you're such an idiot." cuz i make them do the stupidest things sometimes; but they have to do the stupid things or the story wouldn't be interesting. lol. XD

i have this habit of writing every little detail. Especially in detail. Ex: "blahblahblah,' he said, movies his arm from its position on the table to an uprgiht position so he could rest his chin on the hand.
"Yeah," she replied, her eyes following his arm and the mimiking his action.

Yeah... it can get bad and prove for very long dialogues.

Me...? I tend to talk really fast, especially when I'm excited? Does that count? And I talk a lot. I went to talk with my dad, adn I talked for 40 minutes, leaving him only 5. it wasn't very good, but I felt like what I had said was worth while. Whether anyone else agrees, I guess I'll never know. (see what i mean? I talk TOO much! Look at this post...)

Hmmm...I seem to write that my characters sigh a lot. And I hate saying so and so said...yada, yada, yada. I guess my character's do sometimes talk a little bit like me, I'm always trying to joke around and make things funnier, and I really enjoy saying yada, yada, yada, and now my characters do, too. My characters can be REALLY stupid sometimes...and I just laugh at them. I can't think of very many specifics at the moment, though...

My stories are often slow in the beginning...... Or they have a few major events filled in with nothig inbetween....... Or they don't get finished. That's a big one. It happens a lot. Umm..... I'm not sure if my characters talk like I do.

I absolutely hate the fact that I can't get enough description into my story when I write it the first time. It makes me so mad that I only write the dialogue and who says what and how, but nothing else of description. It bugs me on end!
And the fact that I can't say everything that I want to say.
If you want a conversation to go a certain way, you have to make sure that one word doesn't change the whole conversation, which happens to me a lot.

i put too much description. so much that i get totaly off subject and have to look five pages back to see just what i was talking about, just to find that it has nothing to do with the last thing i wrote. its annoying and a huge waste of paper and ink. its worse than my own thoughts jumping around, and that gets pretty annoying by itself.

I wish I could describe so much more, because I know I can do it, but I can't get it on the page!!

want to trade?**

wish I could! "D

i know *sigh* oh well.

yeah . . . too bad.

yeah. wonder what i could do about that.

oh yeah, my characters sigh a lot too. XD
i also have a problem when i write dialogues; they always seem to write themselves. i intend for something important to be said, and then the conversation starts totally wandering away from the intended subject, and takes twists that i didn't expect it to take. not that it's necessarily a bad thing; it's just that occasionally, i forget to make the characters say something that i really needed them to say. if u know what i mean.

i totally know what you mean!! that happens to me all the time. i always get off topic. like for fake secret, i just started chapter two and theres this super important conversation that is supposed to explain everything, and i left out this huge part. so i had to go back and change it.

my characters always sigh and it bugs me that i write that!!!!!!!

sigh, said so and so.
nodded,
smiled
grinned
said
growled
hissed
that's basically all I use, what others are out there????

exclaimed, yes, I don't think I used interjected or interrupted in my entire story.

i use interrupted a lot, but never interjected. im really descriptive in those, too. like "Really!" she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, an eyebrow raised in defiance.

i think its a problem with my mind, being too vivid, and afraid that the readers arent going to get it unless i put exactly what i see. im paranoid that way. like, another example: "You've got to be kidding me! You're kidding me right?" she said, not laughing anymore, her eyes looking for a weakness in her friend's defense. but anna was staring her down,her depthless green eyes unrelenting, daring her to deny it.

see what i mean?

oh, thanx.

Recently I've noticed that I've been using the words "vaguely" and "belatedly" a lot.
But I always use ellipses too much. You know, ending sentences with "..." Every other piece of dialogue just trails off - it's like my characters can't finish a sentence, ever.

I love being wordy, but my mom says that sometimes the only reason she keeps reading is because she loves me and I asked her to.

I never ever put too much description in. It's always too little. Especially in essays for school. Everyone else will have written three pages and I barely wrote a page. And the comment always is to "put in more detail" or "expand on this". And I can't! I write succinctly. I can't help it.

OMG!!! i use WAAAAAY too many ellipses too! my characters are always trailing off...... lol. XD
and i use a lot of dashes and semicolons where they're not really necessary. :P

haha! i don't usually use too many ellipses in my stories, but in every day life I do! I guess I'm just so spoiled being around my best friend and sister that finish my sentences that I've forgotten how! and anyone who has read my comments on this site, there are always some... haha! it's addictive!

Haha... my teacher used to read my essays in school, but they'd be like four pages so she just started reading paragraphs. She didn't mind, though. just warned me about the direct writing assessment... over and over. I barely fit it all on those two small pages!

sorry, and now I'm off topic... AHHH! I'm seriously going to stop with the dot dot dots... i swear!

I use lots and lots of ellipses. I use them a lot in my comments, too. XD idk why; i don't even think about it. oh, there was another semicolon... AAH! and another ellipse. see what i mean? XD
I have that problem too, with writing too much. hahaha. Like, I meant for Soul Stealer to be, like, a novella. I thought it was gonna be short. But even after i edited it like THREE TIMES; if it was, like, a published book, it would be about 360 pages long. oops. XD

My characters are not very creative. They always do the same things, over and over again. They sigh and gasp a lot, and whenever there's a shocking or scary situation, they always do the same things...(they always get the same symptoms...) plus, I use the same word choice a lot, although I try to not use "said" every time someone says something. And I also describe people's conversations in way too much detail.

Yeah, Brigid, that also happens to me- There's important information I need to include in dialogue, but it keeps veering off course and gets off-topic. Gah! XD

Oh yeah and I also use a lot of ellipses. It's always like 'blah blah blah...' Grr.

AAAH!!! sometimes i drive myself crazzzzy!! :P lol. XD

Me too! I guess it's a common writer's trait...lol. XD

yeah. good writers are crazy. i read it in this book about writing. it actually said that most writers are pretty much insane. :P lol.

one of my favorite quotes:

"writers were made to be eccentric. if they weren't they'd have a hard time writing."

that is my motto.

(yea!! another comment without ellipses!)

There's this one quote in inkspell that totally describes how I feel at times with my writing,


"Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie!" Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm its creator!"

-Inkspell; Fenoglio. Cornelia Funke

wow... that hits right on the dot. (dang it! i hate you dot dot dots!!!!)

I know!

totally. ;D

Yeah I know that's perfect! XD

Writers were meant to view the world in different perspectives, or else it wouldn't be fun. If that makes sense. My pet peeve is that I always address the reader, like: I'm not going to tell you! Okay, maybe I will.

I have the same problem with perspectives! I'll be writing something and decide that it should be told from a different character's POV, so I cross it out and begin to rewrite it.

Or, I have multiple character perspectives... but one is always flat. Like, I just can't get into the character, so they pretty much just stand there and say things occasionally to move the plot along. So annoying!

Oh, what happens to me sometimes is I'm writing something, and if I'm long past a point and suddenly I realize that I left something really big and important out, or something happened without any explanation, or something couldn't be, and I have to go back and change everything from that point on. You know what I mean? Like, for example, in the story I finished a while ago, The Morte, I was re-reading the Epilogue when I realized that my main character suddenly had a sister that we never heard about before. I would have had to either find a way that the sister could be there without us knowing before, or find somewhere to sneak the sister in earlier pages. I ended up making the main character the right amount of years older than her sister so that she was born in the stretch of time between the end of the story and the epilogue. Still, I hate when I forget something important like that!

omg!! i do that all the time!!

me too!

oh yeah i leave really important stuff out all the time by mistake; i always intend to mention something important, and then i'll randomly forget all about it. :P then i have to go back and add it in, which is annoying.

Same here.

sometimes i have that problem, but not usually. most of the time i spend days writing a scene in my head before i actually write it. so i pretty much know why it's important to the story, its purpose, the dialogue, so on and so forth. that doesn't always happen, though, and thats when i tend to forget stuff. but, if it's not "writen" already, the generally means i don't know the end of the story yet, so I don't know anything important that i need to say. and i'll just have to come back anyway to revise and edit and revise and edit and edit and edit and edit and revise.

oh! generally my big problem is when i foreshadow, and then i never follow through! that's when it gets annoying and i have to worry about adding stuff. : )

i do that too, sometimes. or i add some plot twist and then i forget to resolve it. XD
i also have this problem with time. like, sometimes a day in my story will be fifty pages long... then sometimes i make a day pass in half a page. weird. :P

I hate people touch my writing stuff.

Same here.

haha. i have the OPPOSITE problem; i can't get my family to read my writing at all! i'm like, 'pleez read my book!' and they're all like, 'i'll get to it eventually...' siiiiigh. that's why i like goodreads so much; i actually get some appreciation for my work. lol. :P
i mean, my parents are happy that i write and all, and i guess they're pretty busy, but it's still nice just to get some feedback. ;D

my dad reads mine.