Announcment and an awful addmission!
Sep. 4th, 2011 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombat posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
writercon_ukOK - I am a prime example of a problem we have here at Dreamwidth - the Community have two accounts. This is becuase the current committee began this one when Live journal was having major DOS problems in mid2011 without realising that an earlier committee had done the same thing!
So - I managed to post my write up of the recent Event, and my challenge to the rest of the community, on the wrong one...
So - firstly,
These are my thoughts after contemplating three of the talks at WriterConUK – namely the talks on the use of prompts, music in fandom, and the sense of smell in fanfic.
I tend to use all three – but the talks made me consider how I do this.
On the whole my long stories are only prompted by my own curiosity. The question “What would happen if…?” “How did they cope with that?” “How would that look to X?” or “What happened next?” So it was interesting to hear how others use prompts.
brutti_ma_buoni spoke of, amongst others, the sort of prompts that basically say ‘red’, or ‘silk’, or ‘red, silk’ – or even ‘red, silk, beheading’…!
I can at least write short stories and drabbles for quite a lot of prompts like those – I've done one a week for over two years fortolkien_weekly - but I cannot cope at all with the prompts that are complex requests from people. The sort that say, ‘Write me an all-human AU story of the Fellowship, set in an English Boarding school in the 1950s. Sam is Frodo’s fag and they are both in Gandalf’s house. You must include the words calamari and suede’.
I tend to think ‘if you are so sure of all the details, go write it yourself!’
But she also spoke about kink challenges - and the way that ones worded 'How would A feel about XYZ?' were more likely to be answered than 'Describe A doing XYZ'. I think I can understand that.
I began to consider how thought of using prompts might fit with talks on the use of music, and the sense of smell?
I use both of these others – I was really flattered thatdaiseechain used a quote from my story ‘Brotherhood’ to illustrate the use of smell in a story, and I will sometimes use music as background whilst I write to help me get in the right mood. In fact I have just written a multi-chapter story (in the process of being posted) that uses a verse of a different Runrig song to introduce each chapter. I really enjoyed picking suitable verses – except that really it was the lyrics that I was using, rather than the music…
I decided that perhaps I could use both music and the sense of smell more in my stories than I do. If you really think about the world you write in, smell is as much a part of it as sight or sound; remembering to use it should help readers feel as if they are there...
But it can be difficult to easily justify using music I know when I am writing about Middle Earth. I am quite envious ofspeakr2customrs’ stories (Tabular Avatar and the related others) where he has Giles living in a fantasy setting and being what is basically a Spellsinger as per Alan Dean Foster. My Dawn can, occasionally, remember a song from her short time in California – but it does leave me hampered by them having to be songs that a Californian teenager would have known before early summer 2003.
I have found my thoughts returning to these particular talks a number of times since I got home – and it actually seems to me that ‘prompts’ could well interlock with both the others. Perhaps, I began to think, a particular smell or a particular piece of music would make a good prompt.
And so, after a committee meeting at the weekend, I have permission to issue you all A Challenge; Go and write anything prompted by the recent Event and post it, or a link to it, on the community before November 1st and, as promised previously, there will be a shiny award to frame and put on your mantelpiece, or to display on your journal, your Facebook, or wherever else you want. (wildecate has already earned one…)
But here is the new bit; you now have prompts - there are a number of options for you to choose from - use more than one if you want!
Write any style, and fandom, any length, or do an art piece – and post here or on Live Journal before November 1st.
Go on - you know you want to...
I promise that I will!
Secondly - if you have the dreamwidth community writerconuk on your reading list it might be as well to delete it so that you only see the current community - namely this one.
So - I managed to post my write up of the recent Event, and my challenge to the rest of the community, on the wrong one...
So - firstly,
These are my thoughts after contemplating three of the talks at WriterConUK – namely the talks on the use of prompts, music in fandom, and the sense of smell in fanfic.
I tend to use all three – but the talks made me consider how I do this.
On the whole my long stories are only prompted by my own curiosity. The question “What would happen if…?” “How did they cope with that?” “How would that look to X?” or “What happened next?” So it was interesting to hear how others use prompts.
brutti_ma_buoni spoke of, amongst others, the sort of prompts that basically say ‘red’, or ‘silk’, or ‘red, silk’ – or even ‘red, silk, beheading’…! I can at least write short stories and drabbles for quite a lot of prompts like those – I've done one a week for over two years for
tolkien_weekly - but I cannot cope at all with the prompts that are complex requests from people. The sort that say, ‘Write me an all-human AU story of the Fellowship, set in an English Boarding school in the 1950s. Sam is Frodo’s fag and they are both in Gandalf’s house. You must include the words calamari and suede’. I tend to think ‘if you are so sure of all the details, go write it yourself!’
But she also spoke about kink challenges - and the way that ones worded 'How would A feel about XYZ?' were more likely to be answered than 'Describe A doing XYZ'. I think I can understand that.
I began to consider how thought of using prompts might fit with talks on the use of music, and the sense of smell?
I use both of these others – I was really flattered that
daiseechain used a quote from my story ‘Brotherhood’ to illustrate the use of smell in a story, and I will sometimes use music as background whilst I write to help me get in the right mood. In fact I have just written a multi-chapter story (in the process of being posted) that uses a verse of a different Runrig song to introduce each chapter. I really enjoyed picking suitable verses – except that really it was the lyrics that I was using, rather than the music…I decided that perhaps I could use both music and the sense of smell more in my stories than I do. If you really think about the world you write in, smell is as much a part of it as sight or sound; remembering to use it should help readers feel as if they are there...
But it can be difficult to easily justify using music I know when I am writing about Middle Earth. I am quite envious of
speakr2customrs’ stories (Tabular Avatar and the related others) where he has Giles living in a fantasy setting and being what is basically a Spellsinger as per Alan Dean Foster. My Dawn can, occasionally, remember a song from her short time in California – but it does leave me hampered by them having to be songs that a Californian teenager would have known before early summer 2003.I have found my thoughts returning to these particular talks a number of times since I got home – and it actually seems to me that ‘prompts’ could well interlock with both the others. Perhaps, I began to think, a particular smell or a particular piece of music would make a good prompt.
And so, after a committee meeting at the weekend, I have permission to issue you all A Challenge; Go and write anything prompted by the recent Event and post it, or a link to it, on the community before November 1st and, as promised previously, there will be a shiny award to frame and put on your mantelpiece, or to display on your journal, your Facebook, or wherever else you want. (
wildecate has already earned one…)But here is the new bit; you now have prompts - there are a number of options for you to choose from - use more than one if you want!
- Your prompts are up to three of the following words; “Red, silk, beheading”.
Or; Go to the last two things you wrote - finished or not, up to you. How would the first person mentioned in the most recent feel about being tied to the bed by the last character mentioned in the other one? If both are the same - use your imagination.... - Put your music player onto shuffle – your prompt is the first piece of music you hear. Here is mine – if you want you can share and just use this piece of music,as your prompt.
- Smell – I wrote a list and rolled a D20 (yes – we do have lots of polyhedral dice in this household) to randomise the four smells. They are bacon cooking, furniture polish, seaweed, and warm oil. Use any one – or more.
Write any style, and fandom, any length, or do an art piece – and post here or on Live Journal before November 1st.
Go on - you know you want to...
I promise that I will!
Secondly - if you have the dreamwidth community writerconuk on your reading list it might be as well to delete it so that you only see the current community - namely this one.
