What don't you like to write?

[Incognito]

I mean in terms of any subject, style, etc.

My personal concern has been writing emotions - I have some love-interest sub-plots in the current work, and sometimes I feel very uncomfortable writing the character feelings. I would much prefer just to communciate what they are thinking through body language and dialogue. Writing character emotions sometimes seems to skate too close to melodrama.

Love is definitely the worst of the emotions to deal with - I'm not keen on this aspect - but the worst is definitely anything sexual. I'm simply too self-serious a person to normally write anything vaguely sexual and be able to take it seriously. And if I can't take it seriously I can't write it.

Funny, though - I seem to be naturally writing hints of it in the curernt work - nothing overt, but certainly sexual tensions that I would have difficulty with normally.

I do have to be careful with it all, though - I have to remind myself that I'm writing scifi, not a Mills and Boon romance. So long as I ensure that I keep careful with respects o melodrama than perhaps I'll be okay.

[knivesout]

I was going to reply 'all that stuff that I have to write for a living', but I thought it might be more useful to actually give a serious answer.


When I write a story, I find it very hard to describe places. Basically, I'd prefer to sketch the setting in as quickly as I can and get on with the story. I've tried to tackle this by setting myself exercises where I visualise and describe a place, but so far I keep describing these dingy taverns!

Dialogue is another problem. When I write it down, it just looks like a string of the worst cliches you can imagine. I'd much rather just report conversation in indirect speech but that tends to kill a story.

Interestingly, I find that working around these 'discomfort zones' rather than trying to tackle them head-on has lead to some of my better pieces. But they are more by way of internal narratives or stream-of-consciousness chronicles than actual stories.

I'd like to find a way to sustain this kind of writing over longer passages and build stories

[aftermath]

the hardest thing i find doing is some how giving the history of each character that is required for story to make sense. for example, one of my characters is an elf that was banned from the elves several centuries before hand and had a spll placed on him so he could no longer use elven magic. afer he was banned, he was every pissed off and convinced the Master human wizard that if he kills all the elves that the humans will gan the elves powers (the elves are considerably stronger with magic then humans) well, all the elvs are dead now except for a half elf (the main character) and the elf that was baned (the master wizard of the humans). how in hte bloody hell can i tie that in?

[littlemissattitude]

I also hate writing descriptions. I can never seem to get them quite right. Either I go overboard and describe everything in minute detail (which is not good, I know, because I hate reading that kind of description), or else I write next to no description at all (which is also not good, because it is necessary to have some description so that the reader will not be left all on his or her own to figure out what a place looks like).

Descriptions of characters are the worst, though. I personally dislike too close a description of a character in books I'm reading. I don't know how many times I've cast the role in my head, then some point of description comes along that makes it so that my vision of the character just cannot be correct. So, when I write a description of a character, I have to wrestle with just how much I want to give and how much I want to leave to the reader's imagination.

Something I really hate when I read other writers' descriptions of characters is the inevitable "He (or she) was incredibly attractive". Well, how is that supposed to help? I know for a fact that what I find attractive in a man is quite different from what my friends find attractive. (To use an example from the world of actors, I have a friend who thinks that Nicholas Cage is just the best looking man in the world, while I think the poor man is butt-ugly. Same thing with Tom Cruise - I understand that a lot of women think he is very attractive, but I just don't get it - yeah, he isn't ugly, but he still doesn't do anything for me.) Yet, I find myself falling into the same trap when I don't want to describe a character too closely, the trap of just describing him or her as "attractive" or "good-looking" or some similar wording.

So, yeah, I have to say that I hate writing descriptions more than just about anything else.

[knivesout]

Descriptions can be the most contentious element to deal with. I see no reason to make any character I write about seem incredibly attractive, unless I'm describing another character's perception of them.

I like to drop in little details about a characters' appearance in the course of the story - suppose, for the sake of an example, I've introduced a person who is piloting a spacecraft. I might mention her eyes in the context of her concentration on her display screen. Perhaps a little later,when she gets up to do something else, I might give a brief description of her height and build. Maybe she removes her helmet later on. This is when I might mention the length and colour of her hair.

This seems a little trite described in this way. What I mean is that I like introducing descriptive details incrementally, because that's also how we actually perceive people. We don't scan every detail of their appearance at one shot, we take in the details bit by bit, maybe even over days or weeks. Not just that, it also gives the reader a chance to sort of build their own cumulative image of the character out of a collaboration between their own imagination and the little hints I've been giving.

Naturally, this means I can't leave out something as important as 'and oh, by the way, that starship pilot? She was an orangutang.' until much later in the story! Unless of course it's one of those stories....

Describing places really foxes me though. I don't have a terribly good spatial sense in general, and I find it hard to visualise settings very well.

[littlemissattitude]

Yes. I also like it better, as a reader and as a writer, when the characters' descriptions are revealed gradually. And I too have an aversion to every character in every story being just ravishing-looking. Real people are not like that in most cases (although I did once work with the most attractive man in the known universe - and that's another story), and I like to write about real people - people who are not all beautiful, not all young, not all perfect physical specimens, not all unbearably witty. Just my taste.

[Astalon]

I have a tendency to want to include, in some way, shape or form, a deeper philosophy or worldview of the characters. Of course, the last thing I want is a series of monologues or drawn out debates. But I do feel that one's outlook on the greater aspects of life will dictate most of their opinions and actions. The problem is, communicating this without the character directly stating it. Most readers, myself included, do not like to have to be blatantly told every detail about a character's thoughts and views. But revealing them indirectly and discreetly can be tricky some times.

Plus, I tend to be an action oriented writer. So usually, I write at a very fast pace until I get tired or bored. Then later on when I read it, I realize it is very thin and moves too quickly. So, like painting, I write in layers. Direct plot and actions first. Then I go back to develop dialogue next, then add fuller descriptions, etc.

Of course, my greatest bane is losing interest and not finishing. I probably have two dozen half finished stories on my computer, and everytime I think I'm going to finish one, I get bored or get inspired with a new idea and start on something else. Anyone else have that problem?

[I, Brian]

I absolutely love the philosophical stances of the characters I write - sometimes I make it the raison d'etre for a particular (and pivotal) character. One of my favourite moral conundrums is: would you kill a man to save a million?

And if you say yes to that - how many people would you kill to save a billion?

It's not an easy question to answer, and I demand that characters have different personal approaches.

Linking with the topic of character voice raised elsewhere - I always make chaarcters define their own world view, without my intruding. For example, in a series I'm working on, called "Chronicles of Empire", much of it was written while I was a celibate tee-total vegan. That didn't mean to say I had to define my characters by my own personal outlook - I could write of them getting drunk, eating meat, and trying to have sex, and be comfortable with it, because I was being honest to the characters, and that came first. Not least because the characters were very entertaining, anyhow.

[knivesout]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

I absolutely love the philosophical stances of the characters I write - sometimes I make it the raison d'etre for a particular (and pivotal) character. One of my favourite moral conundrums is: would you kill a man to save a million?

Just on a slight tangent, the Ursula Le Guin short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas that I'd mentioned in the Le Guin thread elsewhere deals wth a very similar conundrum in a very cool way. I guess the title suggests what Le Guin's answer is - but the way it is fleshed out through a story that is more a description of the imaginary town of Omelas than a narrative about any specific person or story is truly impressive. I'd have wound up trying to flesh out characters and getting bogged down in plot details and loosing the point.

I was once working on a story that addressed a conundrum that touched on the main character's core beliefs. I realised that his decision would be the opposite of mine and I'm sad to say that I never finished the tale because that would have been the whole crux of the story and I didn't want to write a story who's conclusion I fundamentally disagreed with. These pesky characters...