Miscellanea
Jul. 17th, 2012 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frogs_of_warI am in the editing stage for Wings, my story with a gender neutral main character. I've found typing in/editing this story much more complicated than I'd assumed. I kept writing (and then not noticing as I was reading) he/his/him instead of ne/nir/nem. I think I finally got all of them (thanks to find and highlight). But I find gender neural pronouns, even this very neutral one, to tilt female. Ne is totally neutral, nir tilts female, nem tilts male (I feel the last letter is the one that counts here, especially when the vowels are short i and short e as in my part of the world they tend to be pronounced the same). Possessive determiner pronouns (her, his) are used three times more often (in my writing) than the Objective (him, her). This was driving me nuts, but then my daughter pointed out that since androgyny tilts masculine as a whole (a person with an unknown gender tends to get masculine pronouns) that the feminine tilt of the GNP just levels everything out and makes it even more neutral. She's probably right.
I tried to come up with something for the Day of Porn, but I'm not porny at the moment. Even trying to think out the stories Peregrine paints lead me to conversations rather than sex. Now if I was far enough along in Harmonies to write Sam/Markus/Jad, that would have lots of porny goodness (I'd hope), but in my recent work I've tended to fade to black. Maybe it will come back when the kids go to back to school. It's been a long time since I wrote anything really juicy.
I wrote another The Size of It (Good things starting with F) story a few months ago where Aksell meets Micah's brothers and I thought for sure that I'd typed it in and posted it. Does that sound familiar to anyone? I couldn't find a copy on my computer so I typed it in (again). The only think keeping it from being posted is that I need a word a wel-to-do adult (raised rich) would call his younger brother when he has done something embarrassing. My place holder word is doofus, but that sound so middle school. And jerk is a bit harsh. I need something in the middle.
I considered again recently just how much choice, or lack thereof, effects characters in a story. A few months ago my family watched the first few episodes of Stargate: Universe and Stargate: Atlantis in the same week. We found the former so much more compelling. Both have groups of people that end up far away from Earth and are unable to return. Both groups have power struggles and complainers and fights and people using the skills they have in situations they've never faced before. That is my kind of story.
But the first group were only grouped together by accident. They were sent to the far off ship to save their lives during an attack. They ended up with a super smart slacker and a senator and his daughter, plus a lot of the ground crew and they were missing several key people that were supposed to be there. Their fights and struggles were understandable. They successes are an underdog's win.
The second group were handpicked with advance notice and all the time in the world to pack. They shouldn't have run out of anything. They shouldn't fight or have power struggles. They were handpicked. Someone up the line obviously didn't do their job. All the internal stuff was eyerolling and I wasn't very impressed by their aliens either.
SG:U was all about the internal stuff and the characters and I believed every second of it. The first season was split into two parts and we waited weeks for the second half. We are still waiting for season two. Maybe we have rare taste since SG:U was canceled while SG:A had several seasons. Maybe SG:A gets better. I don't know as I have no compulsion to watch any more. I kept wandering off while watching the episodes we had. SG:U, though, kept me on the edge of my seat. Sometimes I would forget to crochet/knit the project in my hands.
I have noticed this choice/lack of choice is several other books/shows. Age of the character works the same way. When screenwriters decide to age a kid up from eleven/twelve to seventeen (which happened twice that I know of in the last couple of years) and they forget to make the characters truly seventeen, they ruin a perfectly good story. What a kid can do/think/say as a naive preteen, they can't get away with six years later.
Someone wanted to buy one of my stories the other day. They just messaged me out of the blue on FictionPress. I was kind of happy, but very skeptical. The first message did not give me a website to look at or even the name of the publisher or the last name of their representative. Plus they promised a lump sum payment of $200. I asked for more info. That's when I got the name of the publisher. So I asked what the two hundred was buying. Publishing rights, publishing right in select languages (this place was in the Philippines, I think) or did they want buy it outright with no rights reserved for me the author? I'm guessing that latter as I have not heard back from them.
I tried to come up with something for the Day of Porn, but I'm not porny at the moment. Even trying to think out the stories Peregrine paints lead me to conversations rather than sex. Now if I was far enough along in Harmonies to write Sam/Markus/Jad, that would have lots of porny goodness (I'd hope), but in my recent work I've tended to fade to black. Maybe it will come back when the kids go to back to school. It's been a long time since I wrote anything really juicy.
I wrote another The Size of It (Good things starting with F) story a few months ago where Aksell meets Micah's brothers and I thought for sure that I'd typed it in and posted it. Does that sound familiar to anyone? I couldn't find a copy on my computer so I typed it in (again). The only think keeping it from being posted is that I need a word a wel-to-do adult (raised rich) would call his younger brother when he has done something embarrassing. My place holder word is doofus, but that sound so middle school. And jerk is a bit harsh. I need something in the middle.
I considered again recently just how much choice, or lack thereof, effects characters in a story. A few months ago my family watched the first few episodes of Stargate: Universe and Stargate: Atlantis in the same week. We found the former so much more compelling. Both have groups of people that end up far away from Earth and are unable to return. Both groups have power struggles and complainers and fights and people using the skills they have in situations they've never faced before. That is my kind of story.
But the first group were only grouped together by accident. They were sent to the far off ship to save their lives during an attack. They ended up with a super smart slacker and a senator and his daughter, plus a lot of the ground crew and they were missing several key people that were supposed to be there. Their fights and struggles were understandable. They successes are an underdog's win.
The second group were handpicked with advance notice and all the time in the world to pack. They shouldn't have run out of anything. They shouldn't fight or have power struggles. They were handpicked. Someone up the line obviously didn't do their job. All the internal stuff was eyerolling and I wasn't very impressed by their aliens either.
SG:U was all about the internal stuff and the characters and I believed every second of it. The first season was split into two parts and we waited weeks for the second half. We are still waiting for season two. Maybe we have rare taste since SG:U was canceled while SG:A had several seasons. Maybe SG:A gets better. I don't know as I have no compulsion to watch any more. I kept wandering off while watching the episodes we had. SG:U, though, kept me on the edge of my seat. Sometimes I would forget to crochet/knit the project in my hands.
I have noticed this choice/lack of choice is several other books/shows. Age of the character works the same way. When screenwriters decide to age a kid up from eleven/twelve to seventeen (which happened twice that I know of in the last couple of years) and they forget to make the characters truly seventeen, they ruin a perfectly good story. What a kid can do/think/say as a naive preteen, they can't get away with six years later.
Someone wanted to buy one of my stories the other day. They just messaged me out of the blue on FictionPress. I was kind of happy, but very skeptical. The first message did not give me a website to look at or even the name of the publisher or the last name of their representative. Plus they promised a lump sum payment of $200. I asked for more info. That's when I got the name of the publisher. So I asked what the two hundred was buying. Publishing rights, publishing right in select languages (this place was in the Philippines, I think) or did they want buy it outright with no rights reserved for me the author? I'm guessing that latter as I have not heard back from them.
