DISCUSSION: Progress & perseverance: how far we've all come

[unrepentantAuthor]

@Misfit Angel, thanks for sharing something from the dawn of your authorial history. I haven't read your contemporary work, but I'm aware that you are somewhat accomplished on the forums. It's good for this thread to have examples of writers who are active, well-recognised moderators now yet with humble beginnings the same as all of us. I like that your super protagonist was explicitly not the chosen one; it's an angle I can see myself enjoying if written well.

@kintsugi, thank you for writing up such a comprehensive post! I have to say, the concept of "elementally powered protagonists called Incarnates" is straight up exactly the premise of my first fanfiction, from '06/'07. Remarkable coincidence, that! I wonder if we both had the same root inspiration.

I must say that your earliest excerpt is at least technically competent, even though the attempt at being charmingly meta doesn't quite do it for me! ;P Congrats on coming so far with your work, and forgive your own prose's purple shades. There's an audience for that.

 

[Misfit Angel]

I like that your super protagonist was explicitly not the chosen one; it's an angle I can see myself enjoying if written well.

Well, there is a bit of a double edge to it: the bad guy was actually the "hero of legend" who basically held Excalibur, and my plucky young teen hero managed to defeat the holder of the most powerful weapon in the universe by himself (his harem of girl travellers stood by helplessly on the side, cheering him on). While it was a decent twist on the trope, it wasn't without its problems.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Back in 2015, I thought that internal monologue about the protagonist's uncertainty counted as characterisation, couldn't pace things properly to save my life, and could barely write a chapter over 1,000 words. What's worse is that I knew I had these problems, but there was one person I kept asking for advice on one story, and she kept telling me it was "perfect".

The worst instance of my bad pacing is in a story called Eighteen Elements, where a character pokes a sleeping Aggron for no reason. I eventually abandoned it because I didn't like where it was going. Which is a shame, too, because I got a really nice cover made for it.

I've tried to adopt the "ScytheRider approach" of making every chapter a self-contained story. While the pacing in The Tides Have Turned is still pretty spotty because I always rush chapters towards the end, I at least like how I've been emphasising the protagonist's resourcefulness. Honestly, my biggest gripe with it is how the My Little Pony aspects feel like the means to an end (ie: being the setting the characters end up in) instead of something fully realised. I worry that if I'd published it the old-fashioned way on Fimfiction (ie: a staff member has to approve it) instead of sending it to the fast queue (ie: if you've already published a story, you can publish it without it having to go through moderation), it wouldn't have been approved.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

@Misfit Angel, oooh, can I take it back? Ouch! ;P

@Nitro Indigo, thanks for sharing your foibles as a writer. I'm glad you're recognising your weaknesses and improving on them — writing is a craft of practice more than talent. Keep working and you are certain to improve.

Also, I believe that "perfect" is the worst thing you can tell an author. It's nice to hear, especially about passages that really stand out, but as a catch-all review? It's almost less than useless. I'm not a harsh critic. I hope that some of my peers here will vouch for my ability to land my blows gently. I don't believe in tearing people down (although my genuinely helpful beta reader is exceptionally brutal, just short of actually insulting!) but it's pretty much essential to any kind of development as an author and as a person to hear some commentary besides "you're perfect! It's perfect! You don't have to concern yourself with improvement!" You get the idea.

I, for one, will always be grateful to those who've shown me the flaws in my writing, even when it was hard to swallow, because my writing is better for it, and I'm more humble for it.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I was digging through a group on Fimfiction looking for a thread, but got sidetracked and opened a lot of other threads. One of them contained a comment about my desire to improve in 2016.

 

[BackSet]

Jesus christ I used to suck as a writer.

I don't actually have anything to show you because I lost all my old stuff in a mass docs delete to clear space but just to give you a sense: Very little description. Lots of telling. Improper formatting of dialouge (it was all crammed into one paragraph). God I sucked.

Now I'm better... ish.

 

[MisheardWhisper]

Whoof... okay. Let's see what I was writing in 2010. There's some older stuff around somewhere, but I can't find it and what I do remember is legitimately too cringy to want to find. In 2010, though, 15-year-old me was writing... this (original, not fic):

Spoiler

By the time Joseph Hart tripped the eighth booby trap, he was beginning to get annoyed.

A glint of light, the tiniest reflection from a light somewhere behind him, flickered in and out of existence in front of him. Instinctively, he ducked his head, barely evading the strand of razor-sharp wire that came whipping down the hallway at neck height. He could practically hear it whistle as it sliced through the air millimetres from the top of his head. A fresh wave of adrenaline surged through his body, spurring his feet onwards.

Bullets buzzed through the air around him like angry hornets, drilling into walls and floors as Joseph swung around a corner, stumbling on the loose, plush carpet, before taking off again in a random direction. As his foot hit the ground, he heard a soft mechanical click and automatically threw himself to the ground as a wicked-looking blade that would have sliced him in half sheared through the air instead. Joseph hit the ground awkwardly, landing on his shoulder and sending a sharp lance of pain through his arm. He rolled to his feet with some difficulty and took off again.

Yes, he'd deliberately tripped the security alarm on the way out, having done his job with disappointingly little resistance. There was no fun in sneaking in, slitting throats and sneaking out again. It was the thrill of the hunt that made the job worthwhile, and if his prey refused to run, Joseph was forced to take on the role of the hunted himself. So, having broken into the manor house of one Carlos Ramirez and left the erstwhile Senator lying in a pool of his own blood without a sign of security, Joseph had felt a little unfulfilled. After a few quick seconds of searching, he had come across Ramirez's panic button and pressed it quite happily. He had been expecting perhaps a few dozen burly security men, but what he had not foreseen was the multitude of booby traps that had been set to activate at the pressing of the panic button. As a result, Joseph was constantly being slowed down by devices that would have been more at home in an ancient Egyptian tomb than a rich mansion in Central America.

The interior of Casa Ramirez was a veritable labyrinth of opulent, dimly lit hallways, seemingly identical in every way. Joseph had only a vague idea of which way he was supposed to be going. A fresh hail of bullets hammered into the wall beside him as he passed another T-junction without turning. The blood pounding in his ears, he rounded another corner only to be greeted by another blade slashing upwards at his throat. On pure force of instinct, Joseph threw himself backwards, avoiding the blade by a whisker. As he landed on his back, he saw that the blade was actually being wielded by a diminutive black-haired man in a tuxedo. Stepping back, the man blocked Joseph's path forward, sword at the ready. As Joseph got to his feet, his shoulder more painful than ever, he saw the large double doors of the house in the gloom behind his assailant.

“I'm going to have to ask you to move,” Joseph said, drawing his gun from the holster on his belt. Carefully, he eyed up his opponent's weapon. It was a long, narrow sword, more than a metre and a half, and slightly curved backwards. Joseph frowned. The man shook his head.

“I'm afraid I can't do that.” He raised his sword slightly, and Joseph immediately levelled his gun at his head.

“Don't move,” he said flatly. The other man laughed humourlessly.

“Move, don't move. Make up your mind, Romulus.” At the mention of his alias, Joseph made up his mind. He didn't like witnesses who could identify him.

“Tell me your name before I kill you,” he said.

“It's McDougall, but I'm going to have to disagree with you there.”

“I don't think so,” said Joseph, and then shot him in the head. Or at least, he thought he did. The gun discharged, but McDougall wasn't there. By the time the bullet left the barrel, he was already behind Joseph. Joseph ducked, feeling rather than seeing the sword slice through the air above him. McDougall clearly knew exactly how to use the sword he was wielding, and he was impossibly fast with it.

Joseph whirled around and came up firing, letting off two more shots, but the bullets hit only air. McDougall had moved again. In the gloom of the hallway, it was almost impossible to see the diminutive figure. Joseph cursed and leapt out of the way as the sword came cleaving through the air – once, twice, three times. The third swing nicked his coat, tearing a gash in it, but missed the skin beneath. Joseph fired again, but the bullet drilled into the floor where McDougall had been just seconds before.

“Stand still, damn it!” he yelled, aiming another shot. This one clipped McDougall on the shoulder before he could do anything about it, and he dropped the sword, yelling in pain. Joseph grinned, aiming his final round at the small man's head. He paused for a moment, his finger hovering over the trigger.

A round of machine-gun fire shattered the silence, causing Joseph to jump. The bullet went wide. Swearing, Joseph dived past McDougall and made a bolt for the door, bullets humming through the air around him all the way. He dived for the ornate bronze handle, and to his surprise, it turned freely in his hand and the door opened, ejecting him onto the manicured front lawns of Casa Ramirez. The cool night air hit him like a hammer, rushing into his lungs and suffusing him with a strange sort of calm.

Shouts were being raised throughout the grounds, and half a dozen uniformed guards appeared from around the side of the mansion, firing indiscriminately.

“Amateurs,” Joseph muttered dismissively, watching the first round of bullets go so wide that he would have been more worried if they had been aiming for the house. Suddenly, a round buried itself in the gravel by his foot, kicking up a spray of grit. Eyes widening in mild alarm, Joseph dashed off down the garden path.

The wall surrounding the estate was only a couple of metres high. Taking a run up, Joseph vaulted comfortably over it, landing easily on the road outside. After ascertaining that he was alone, Joseph straightened up, brushed the grit off his coat and strolled calmly into the woods that surrounded Casa Ramirez. By the time Ramirez's security charged through the main gate, there was no sign of him. Romulus had disappeared like the wolf that he was.

...I think it's evident I'd been reading too much Black Cat at the time of that year's NaNoWriMo.

Honestly I'm not sure my writing has improved much since then - mechanically speaking, at least. I've certainly gotten better at assembling stories that aren't derivative cliche-ridden disasters, but honestly the prose doesn't sound too dissimilar to stuff I've written in recent years.

Oh, I use far fewer adverbs now, though. That's one piece of advice I took to heart. And less idiotic wisecracking.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

God I sucked. Now I'm better... ish.

It sounds like you've made progress and recognised opportunities for improvement. Well done, and thank you for sharing your experience. No need to denigrate yourself though — when we are cruel to ourselves, we limit our growth and sadden those around us. Be gentle with your inexperienced younger self, I'm sure they gave a good effort too.

Honestly I'm not sure my writing has improved much since then - mechanically speaking, at least. I've certainly gotten better at assembling stories that aren't derivative cliche-ridden disasters, but honestly the prose doesn't sound too dissimilar to stuff I've written in recent years.

Oh, I use far fewer adverbs now, though. That's one piece of advice I took to heart. And less idiotic wisecracking.

Improving your authorial voice is one of the hardest and most ephemeral challenges facing a writer, and I wish you luck with it! Thank you for sharing, and congrats on the improvement you've made to your craft.

 

[BackSet]

It sounds like you've made progress and recognised opportunities for improvement. Well done, and thank you for sharing your experience. No need to denigrate yourself though — when we are cruel to ourselves, we limit our growth and sadden those around us. Be gentle with your inexperienced younger self, I'm sure they gave a good effort too.

I think it mostly had to do with my younger self having good ideas, but not executing them properly. That and also he didn't write organically like I do now, taking ideas and branching off from them to create more ideas. Instead he took ideas that didn't mesh together too well abd mashed them together.

I have an old minecraft fic so,ewhere but since I left middle school I can't access it due to it being on my school account.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

So, yesterday I finally updated DE again after a hiatus of almost a year. That in itself is progress over the last hiatus, which was six years.

Chapter Six (link in sig at time of writing~) is about Salem, a purrloin-human hybrid, waking up outside of a laboratory tank for the first time as a pokémorph. Her body is alien and confusing to her, and she struggles to come to terms with her full colour vision, significantly greater mass, different bodily structure, and so on. She can't walk or talk. I think this rendition of her experience is rather better than the first time I wrote her "first day" as a morph. Let's compare, shall we?

Salem's first reaction

And then she froze, tail fluffed, ears flat and teeth bared in a silent scream at what she saw, at what she now was. She frantically struggled to move, writhing desperately against the straps holding her still, screeching and wailing all the while. She finally managed to squeeze one foreleg free and ran her paw over her face. Her warped and twisted face.

She opened her eyes. Blinked against the bright — Not brightness. Colours?

The world was different now. New colours. Bright colours. Her eyes swivelled in her head, jolting from one alien hue to another. Now that shirt; now that hair. Colours she had never seen. Never could have imagined. To see many of them, all at once — too much to take. She didn’t even face towards them, her eyes just raced — she was dizzy. She felt sick. Too strange. Too new! Too much!

[...] Her arm. Her hand. Right? She raised it. It took more effort than usual. It was too heavy. It felt like someone else’s limb. Held still for a moment. Then started to shake with the effort. She tried to splay her fingers, and they twitched in front of her. Useless. [...]

She tried to flip onto all fours, something she’d done countless times. Pain; failure. Her body lurched and spasmed; her muscles screamed at her. She gasped, fell back with an audible thump, flinched, cried out in a voice that wasn’t her own.

First off, we have the initial reaction of each version of the character to her situation. On the one hand, I do like that the 2012 version has some horrified feline body language, but Salem is pretty much immediately able to conceive of herself as something of a freak and use her arm and paw at once. She also flips out, because she's in this weird in-between state where she doesn't recall consenting to the procedure, but is only superficially restrained to prevent self-injury. I guess I was going for an angsty vibe back then and wanted any excuse for characters to hate themselves?

Salem in 2019 is a rather different case. She can't start to form an opinion of her own appearance because she's too busy having a meltdown over way too much sensory input. She can't wriggle out of a strap and feel her face because operating her arm is very different to how it used to be and she's never used her fingers before. When she makes noise, it doesn't sound like herself. She's also exhausted and hurting, because growing to ten times your original size really takes it out of you. Her reaction also isn't over in like, two paragraphs. It's a big deal.

Salem tries speaking

“…Salem,” she whispered.

Salem felt a tiny shuddering thrill run up her spine at having spoken. She’d spoken, in human tongue, clearly and without awkwardness. She grinned. The facial movement was awkward and unfamiliar, but it seemed to come naturally.

It came out as indistinguishable vowels, a messy and useless noise. That wasn’t right. Was she not trying hard enough? She tried again — a strangled yowl. Her throat burned both from hot, angry shame and from the dry air rushing into her aching lungs.

Originally, I didn't have a solid idea for communication beyond spoken English language. Other writers use English right out of the gate, so I did as well. Why on earth should that be possible? How could a cat, suddenly finding herself physically able to speak, possibly know what to do with her mouth to make sounds? Hell, why would she grin, when cats don't grin and grinning is a learnt behaviour?

The newer version has Salem try to speak before anything else, as it's her most important discrete desire, but it's messy, and useless. She needs speech therapy before she can speak, and she'll likely have an "accent" her whole life from being a goddamn cat put in a vat of science juice and not a homo sapiens. Also, she has an intense emotional reaction to this, seeing as it's honestly life changing to have the ability to speak and she just can't manage it.

Salem tries walking

Salem nodded, and took a step. She’d tried walking on her hind legs plenty of times before, so it wasn’t totally unfamiliar to her. A few paces later, and she could take full steps without losing balance. A few more, and she’d stopped wavering entirely. She shrugged off the supporting arm of the human and took her first unaided step. Despite herself, and the strangeness of human expression, she smiled.

They were shaky, difficult steps, but her swelling pride made them worth it. Her chest heaved as she tried to keep up the energy to take her own weight. Unsupported walking, let alone running, would have to come later. Not only did she have to learn how to walk on her new legs, but there was very little strength left in them. No strength at all, in fact.

Her near-collapse wasn’t long in coming. Her legs shortly gave way beneath her like so much jellied fish, and she slid to the floor, despite her best efforts to cling to Alisha’s shoulder.

Salem in 2012 was a meowth morph, and one meowth in particularly famously walks like a human. The thing is, he needed to train for an extended time to manage this, and he wasn't in a brand new genetically altered body when he did. Not to mention, he's a cartoon character. Salem shouldn't be able to walk even with help at this point, let alone unassisted. Salem in 2019 is confined to bed, despite practically throwing herself onto the floor in her eagerness to prove she can do a human thing so soon. Even a human who's walked their whole life would have trouble getting out of bed and walking around after months floating in a tank of liquid growing to several times their size. Salem is tenacious, but there's no way she can walk.

Conclusion

2012!DE wasn't bad, exactly. It wasn't even rushed. But from sheer naivety, I don't think I thought through what I was actually writing. I went for spectacle over consistent, plausible characterisation. Hopefully the new chapter of 2018!DE will be well-received, and readers will buy into Salem's confused and terrified experience. The fact that the prose is rather more solid should help too.

Closing Thoughts

All this to say that while quality prose matters and you should be proud of yourself for developing your skill at crafting sentences, thinking through the experience of your characters, their emotional state and their physical capabilities is also of great importance. In other words: shit should make sense!

Best of luck, all. May you always be improving!