Creative Writing

[nudge+]

Do we have people interested in creative writing? Novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, any genre, whatever floats your boat. Has anyone been published or has self-published any work, or has ambitions to do so? 

[Whiskey]

In school I used to love creative writing, and English was one of my favourite subjects for that reason. One of the exams that I actually loved was where we had to submit a story. 

Growing up, the creative stories have unfortunately dried up but I have always wanted to get back into it. One of my Grandfather's was in the Merchant Navy and had tons of stories about his time there, I always had the idea to mix the facts of his stories with mythical surroundings, with sea creatures and the likes. I actually started writing some ideas and then my daughter was born, so the idea is on the back burner.

Would absolutely love to publish a novel though, I would consider it a real life achievement.

[nudge+]

9 minutes ago, Whiskey said:

In school I used to love creative writing, and English was one of my favourite subjects for that reason. One of the exams that I actually loved was where we had to submit a story. 

Growing up, the creative stories have unfortunately dried up but I have always wanted to get back into it. One of my Grandfather's was in the Merchant Navy and had tons of stories about his time there, I always had the idea to mix the facts of his stories with mythical surroundings, with sea creatures and the likes. I actually started writing some ideas and then my daughter was born, so the idea is on the back burner.

Would absolutely love to publish a novel though, I would consider it a real life achievement.

That sounds absolutely brilliant, and I hope you'll do it some day! I'd definitely read it

I'm kind of in similar boat; always loved storytelling and had endless stories going in my head most of the time. Actually wrote an adventure scifi "novel" that was inspired by my favourite authors when I was a kid; it's a pity it didn't survive until today, although it's probably for the better I also loved creative writing at school, and even earned a decent amount of money writing essays for my schoolmates as an ongoing gig Then just like you said, the creative stories dried up for a while, and I only recently re-discovered my interest in it a few years ago. 

I finally have an ambitious idea in my head now, and have started working on it whenever I get a chance - which is sadly not very often. But I do hope I will finish it one day.

[Inverted]

I used to like creative writing in school but I think 5 years of law school beats it out of you, slightly.

I enjoy writing, and for my work it’s important to be handy with words (particularly when you’re trying to break bad news or tell someone a problem is their fault), but I feel that any ideas I have for something I would be interested in writing would all be factual. Like an essay or a column.

[Azeem]

We had an English class test, writing a letter to your local newspaper editor about any local issue. 

I wrote how the principal of this school is an abusive motherfucker who tortures kids, involved in corruption of school funds and should be arrested.

[Stan]

Same as Whiskey. Absolutely loved English and did it all the way through to A-Levels. Was my favourite subject throughout school. 

Won a few awards during school for creative writing but I think I lost the passion for it, ironically for studying it too long. 

I remember I was late to a GCSE English exam. Thinking it was starting PM instead of AM. I got there late, teacher still accepted me in. Was a nervous wreck, head's gone all over the place thinking I was going to fail as a result of my lateness and carelessness. Did the exam, finished later than everyone for obvious reasons. Can't remember the exact question but it was to write a story of a true event but dramatise it. Completed it, went home and just forgot about the whole day, more out of annoyance than anything else looking back. 

Results day. Needed an A to get through to do it at A-Level. 

A* achieved. Nailed it. Somehow!

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

In the past, I really thought about writing a book when I left the army and the closest I got was about 80 pages about a terrorist attack in Southend-on-Sea and I even did a bit of research on what the book would be about, so I eventually set the story around this.

Off the Southend sea-side, you can see a ship tower whatever (look at the link below and you will see what I mean as we can't put pictures in atm) of a munition ship, the SS Richard Montgomery, that sank in August 1944 loaded with 6,000 tonnes of munition, and to this day it still sits there as they say that is far safer just leaving it and too dangerous to try and remove it and if that explodes it would have an awful effect.

So I started writing and as far as I can remember I wrote around 80 pages where terrorists were going or trying to explode it and the authorities had got hold of the information and were trying to catch the terrorists before it happened, the pages I wrote are bloody buried somewhere in a box or whatnot and I will have to see if I can find them.

Link.

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/17/fresh-fears-ss-richard-montgomery-wartime-wreck-kent-explosive-munitions

[nudge+]

4 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

In the past, I really thought about writing a book when I left the army and the closest I got was about 80 pages about a terrorist attack in Southend-on-Sea and I even did a bit of research on what the book would be about, so I eventually set the story around this.

Off the Southend sea-side, you can see a ship tower whatever (look at the link below and you will see what I mean as we can't put pictures in atm) of a munition ship, the SS Richard Montgomery, that sank in August 1944 loaded with 6,000 tonnes of munition, and to this day it still sits there as they say that is far safer just leaving it and too dangerous to try and remove it and if that explodes it would have an awful effect.

So I started writing and as far as I can remember I wrote around 80 pages where terrorists were going or trying to explode it and the authorities had got hold of the information and were trying to catch the terrorists before it happened, the pages I wrote are bloody buried somewhere in a box or whatnot and I will have to see if I can find them.

Link.

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/17/fresh-fears-ss-richard-montgomery-wartime-wreck-kent-explosive-munitions

That sounds like an interesting premise! A proper thriller... You should find those 80 pages and continue writing  

Given your life experiences, you should also consider writing it all down, like a memoir... Bet you have lots of stories to tell.  I've been bugging my dad to write down his stories as well, as he has tons of them, but he doesn't particularly like typing and the memories sort of pop-up not in chronological order, so I just got him a voice recorder so that he's able to record whenever he feels like it, and I will do the typing for him later on... 

[Azeem]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

That sounds like an interesting premise! A proper thriller... You should find those 80 pages and continue writing  

Given your life experiences, you should also consider writing it all down, like a memoir... Bet you have lots of stories to tell.  I've been bugging my dad to write down his stories as well, as he has tons of them, but he doesn't particularly like typing and the memories sort of pop-up not in chronological order, so I just got him a voice recorder so that he's able to record whenever he feels like it, and I will do the typing for him later on... 

That's what Ibn Batuta did. He just got a guy to write down whatever he could remember from his travels. Mixed up characters and dates but it's epic

[nudge+]

5 minutes ago, Khan of TF365 said:

That's what Ibn Batuta did. He just got a guy to write down whatever he could remember from his travels. Mixed up characters and dates but it's epic

Do you know if there's a decent English or German translation? I'd love to read that.

[Azeem]

4 minutes ago, nudge said:

Do you know if there's a decent English or German translation? I'd love to read that.

Didn't read the English translation of his travels but there are plenty. You know about books more, will get a decent one easily.

Best thing about I like about reading/hearing of stories explorers, travellers is it can be the only source of information or certain perspective from that time period & location. One you won't find it in history records. 

[CaaC (John)+]

31 minutes ago, nudge said:

That sounds like an interesting premise! A proper thriller... You should find those 80 pages and continue writing

If I can find it lol, I even wrote or started to write a western story in Germany when I got married and Liz started to read it and asked me when I would finish it as she was enjoying the read, fucked if I can find that either, it's just that I had a typewriter when I was young and I love going into a book shop or stationery and having a look around and I love the smell of books.

In Australia, they had a great big library, museum and I would go there and sit for hours where it was peaceful and quiet and spend hours just reading books, mainly of battles, wars, past & present, maybe that's why I ended up as a clerk in our Regimental offices when I joined the army, typing & writing.

I could tell many a story about my army days and I have already mentioned about the fight I got into and slashed with a razor or knife and falling off the battery flagpole and spending 6 months in hospital in another thread in here.

I remember one particular time I had a 16-hour duty clerk nightshift in which when all the Colonel & others left I had to lock the stair iron gates and the only person that I was allowed to let in was the night shift duty officer, even if a Sgt tried to get in you could tell him literally to "FUCK OFF", I loved that bit. 

This night I had a packet of cigarettes but I had forgotten my box of matches and for hours I was gasping for a cigarette, all the windows had bars on them and when I looked out I saw the wife's young cousin Victor going to a Disco in the camp, he was a David Bowie fan at the time and was a right 15-year-old nutter and I yelled out to him if he had a light as I had no matches and I was gasping, well, he threw the box of matches up for me to catch with my arms through the bars but I could not grab them and they fell back down and ended up in a drain, I just looked and asked him did he have any more matches and he just laughed, shook his head and said "Sorry Uncle John, that was all I had" waved to me and walked off laughing with his mates. 

So I spent the whole bloody night with a packet of cigarettes in front of me and nothing to fucking light them with. 

[CaaC (John)+]

Maybe in the wrong forum but have you read books by the Danish author Berge Willy Redsted Pederson who goes under the pen name Sven Hassel, it was set around WWII and was supposed to have happened to him in and he wrote everything down and turned them into novels, there was a bit of a debate if he was telling the truth or not but I have read all his books from The Legion of the Dammed, Wheels of Terror, the SS General etc and, to me, they were great reads with the characters in the book Sven as himself then The Old Man, Porta, The Legionnaire and Tiny (or Little John).

Some of the things he wrote in the books consisted of horror, terror but a mixture of humour and some of the things that Porta and Tiny got up to had me pissing myself laughing, I do reflect back to my army days when I read the books but not as gruesome as when they were fighting in Europe during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Hassel

https://www.svenhassel.com/characters/

[nudge+]

17 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

Maybe in the wrong forum but have you read books by the Danish author Berge Willy Redsted Pederson who goes under the pen name Sven Hassel, it was set around WWII and was supposed to have happened to him in and he wrote everything down and turned them into novels, there was a bit of a debate if he was telling the truth or not but I have read all his books from The Legion of the Dammed, Wheels of Terror, the SS General etc and, to me, they were great reads with the characters in the book Sven as himself then The Old Man, Porta, The Legionnaire and Tiny (or Little John).

Some of the things he wrote in the books consisted of horror, terror but a mixture of humour and some of the things that Porta and Tiny got up to had me pissing myself laughing, I do reflect back to my army days when I read the books but not as gruesome as when they were fighting in Europe during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Hassel

https://www.svenhassel.com/characters/

Haven't heard of him or his work, will have to check it out!

[CaaC (John)+]

3 minutes ago, nudge said:

Haven't heard of him or his work, will have to check it out!

Wheels of Terror

http://www.dansmith.info/hassel/books2.asp?Book=2

[CaaC (John)+]

42 minutes ago, nudge said:

Haven't heard of him or his work, will have to check it out!

@nudge, read about the Arse Slap Game in Wheels of Terror 

https://www.svenhassel.com/wheels-of-terror/

 

[nudge+]

1 minute ago, CaaC (John) said:

@nudge, read about the Arse Slap Game in Wheels of Terror 

https://www.svenhassel.com/wheels-of-terror/

 

Well that's not gay at all...

[El Profesor]

I´m currently writing a novel. I have already around 100 pages, it´s a historical fiction novel, set in Rio de Janeiro during the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship. It´s written in portuguese.   

I´ve always wanted to do it, started multiple times but always gave up due to insecurity. This time around though, I´m taking it to the end. 

[nudge+]

Just now, El Profesor said:

I´m currently writing a novel. I have already around 100 pages, it´s a historical fiction novel, set in Rio de Janeiro during the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship. It´s written in portuguese.   

I´ve always wanted to do it, started multiple times but always gave up due to insecurity. This time around though, I´m taking it to the end. 

How do you plan your writing? Do you map it all out on paper, with some sort of timeline, main events, etc? Or do you just have a general idea of the plot in your head and simply go with the flow, with the intention to edit later? What about character creation? How detailed is it? Any other procedures? 

[El Profesor]

17 minutes ago, nudge said:

How do you plan your writing? Do you map it all out on paper, with some sort of timeline, main events, etc? Or do you just have a general idea of the plot in your head and simply go with the flow, with the intention to edit later? What about character creation? How detailed is it? Any other procedures? 

I have a general idea of the plot in my head and then I sit down to write daily, around 30 minutes per day. But after I finish it, I intend it to "marinate" it for some time. I´ll read it several times down to each phrase and will make the necessary changes. 

The character creation is one of the most important parts for me. 

The book deals with the espionage, politics, crime and war. So I want to create an universe of morally ambivalent and cynical characters. But at the same time, in this grey world there will be that kind of character who despite being a crook, you can´t help but love.   

I´m a big fan of Patricia Highsmith, I love physochological thrillers, so the dialogues will be key, perhaps more than the facts themselves, as they will move everything that happens on the book. 

[nudge+]

5 minutes ago, El Profesor said:

I have a general idea of the plot in my head and then I sit down to write daily, around 30 minutes per day. But after I finish it, I intend it to "marinate" it for some time. I´ll read it several times down to each phrase and will make the necessary changes. 

The character creation is one of the most important parts for me. 

The book deals with the espionage, politics, crime and war. So I want to create an universe of morally ambivalent and cynical characters. But at the same time, in this grey world there will be that kind of character who despite being a crook, you can´t help but love.   

I´m a big fan of Patricia Highsmith, I love physochological thrillers, so the dialogues will be key, perhaps more than the facts themselves, as they will move everything that happens on the book. 

My problem is the scope of the story I want to tell (covering hundreds of thousands of years), so I think I inevitably have to map it all out, as I will be completely lost in it otherwise. Another problem is finding balance between accuracy (it's supposed to be a sort of a crossover between scifi, history, and anthropology) and actually enjoyable fictional story, so while I'm deep into research trying to be as accurate as possible, I'm afraid to make it too dry and full of techno-babble with too much scientific details...

[El Profesor]

12 minutes ago, nudge said:

My problem is the scope of the story I want to tell (covering hundreds of thousands of years), so I think I inevitably have to map it all out, as I will be completely lost in it otherwise. Another problem is finding balance between accuracy (it's supposed to be a sort of a crossover between scifi, history, and anthropology) and actually enjoyable fictional story, so while I'm deep into research trying to be as accurate as possible, I'm afraid to make it too dry and full of techno-babble with too much scientific details...

Writing an enjoyable story is also one of the things that concern me the most. One of the ways I use to improve in that aspect is reading books from best-selling authors and also watching TV series that I find to be well written, watching it with subtitles to focus on the script. 

[Eco]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

My problem is the scope of the story I want to tell (covering hundreds of thousands of years), so I think I inevitably have to map it all out, as I will be completely lost in it otherwise. Another problem is finding balance between accuracy (it's supposed to be a sort of a crossover between scifi, history, and anthropology) and actually enjoyable fictional story, so while I'm deep into research trying to be as accurate as possible, I'm afraid to make it too dry and full of techno-babble with too much scientific details...

I'd say that Neal Stephenson has made a fortune finding this balance. Maybe check him out if you haven't already. I love his books. 

[nudge+]

21 minutes ago, Eco said:

I'd say that Neal Stephenson has made a fortune finding this balance. Maybe check him out if you haven't already. I love his books. 

See, I don't particularly like Stephenson's writting style. Like, he comes up with some very innovative, unique ideas and interesting concepts, but the way he then writes about them is kind of all over the place? And I'm not sure about balance; some time his work can feel like a huge infodump released onto you 

[Eco]

31 minutes ago, nudge said:

See, I don't particularly like Stephenson's writting style. Like, he comes up with some very innovative, unique ideas and interesting concepts, but the way he then writes about them is kind of all over the place? And I'm not sure about balance; some time his work can feel like a huge infodump released onto you 

Ah - I love his info dumps, so maybe I'm not the best to judge then. 

There is one book that I thought was just him trying to prove to the world how smart he is, but overall I really enjoy his writing and how he writes a story wrapped around complex topics and ideas.