[Specific Location/Time or Not?]

A story doesn't need to be in a specific time and place, but it does need to be set clearly enough so that the reader has a good idea of when and where it is, and therefore what the people and places are like.

I agree to a point. But the fact remains that I'm hard-pressed to think of a single memorable novel that doesn't tell me exactly when and where it takes place.

My mind keeps taking me back to the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (which started as a fine novel before it was a movie), where they not only tell you you're in Phoenix, Arizona, but it tells you exactly what time of day it is, as a title. I was always struck by that, and my gut feeling is that anything the writer can do to make the story more real is a good thing.

So far, none of you have come up with a reason as to why omitting the details of the location (or time) is a good thing. In both my novels (here on the website), I touched on street names, local landmarks, and all the other details that I felt added to the story I was trying to tell. If you've read either of them, I hope you'll agree with that.

That having been said: when I was editing Keith Mystery's stuff, he and I got into some knock-down drag-out discussions in email on how much "local color" is too much. My joke with him was, he kept trying to tell "the history of Boston and the surrounding area," which he'd sneak in whenever his characters were driving around the old neighborhood. What he did was still done very well; I just felt it worked better cut down by 2/3.

[Specific Location/Time or Not?]

I had an interesting discussion with another writer in Email recently, and I think it's something worth debating here.

This author wrote a fairly-decent story, which -- aside from my usual complaints that the story's pace was too slow and doesn't get to the point fast enough -- was very well-done, with interesting situations and well-drawn characters. What I didn't like was its lack of location or a specific time. We have no idea what city or state (or even country) in which the story takes place, nor do we know *when* the story takes place.

His excuse was, if he leaves the name of the city blank, the reader is free to imagine his or her own place instead and identify with the story better. He also didn't feel that the specific time was necessary, although it's obvious from the context that it's sometime in the last 5-6 years (presence of cellphones, DVD players, etc.).

I couldn't disagree more. All of the published authors I read and enjoy the most -- among them Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Anne Rice, and a score of others -- devote pages and pages to inciteful descriptions of the precise time and location in their stories. Establishing the setting is an extremely important part of fiction; it makes the story more real, and helps the reader visualize the surroundings much more vividly.

In this story, we have no real mental image of what the high school looks like, or what most of the various characters' homes look like. We know the lead character's boyfriend lives in a nasty part of town, we know it's up some stairs and only has a couple of rooms, but that at least gives us some clues. Everything else is a cypher.

The key to me is to use as many of the senses as possible when establishing the setting, so the reader can see, smell, feel, and otherwise sense the place. I'm not saying this has to be done in a long or tedious way. Just two or three sentences, inserted a couple of times here and there, makes all the difference in the world. If you doubt me, read these two books:

SCENE & STRUCTURE

by Jack Bickham

Writers Digest Books (ISBN #0898799066)

and

SETTING

How to Create and Sustain a Sharp Sense

of Time and Place in Your Fiction

also by Jack Bickham

Writers Digest Books (ISBN #0898796350)

Either book, particularly the latter, will make a far better case than I ever could as to the importance of establishing when and where the story takes place. Bickham's point of view is that to NOT do it is simply lazy at best and a disservice to the reader at worst. He presents many examples of what works and what doesn't, and I think 90% of what he has to say is right on the money.

Don't get me wrong; I think there are cases where the setting is not important or even appropriate, particularly in short stories -- I'm thinking particularly of fantasy or science fiction, where the uncertainty of the location or time might be the point of the story, like in Harlan Ellison's famous "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." But I think giving the reader a thumbnail sketch of exactly where and when the story takes place is absolutely mandatory in a lengthy character-driven novel.

With my own work, I see these stories like little movies, and I feel honor-bound to put as much detail as I can in them, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the plot or the characters. But that's just my opinion.

What's the consensus out there?

[First Person or Third]

So there's something like, Omniscent first person. Where "I" know what someone else is thinking or feeling.

I don't buy that. To me, there's 1st person POV, and there's 3rd person omniscient; there is no inbetween, in my opinion.

To me, the choice is simple: if you need to tell a story solely through one character's eyes, you go for 1st person. The problem is, you can never know what's going on outside this character's own world, either in terms of story or other characters. (And I don't buy multiple 1st person POV stories, which to me are total amateurville except in the hands of master storytellers, which omits all of us.)

If you need to tell a story where you can show the thoughts and actions of different people, even those far away from your lead character, go with 3rd person.

Orson Scott Card, in his excellent book Characters and Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Writing), goes into this in great detail. He proves in several examples that it's possible to tell almost any story in 3rd person, but admits (as do some of the others in this conversation) that writing in 3rd person is more difficult to master. There are other books on writing that make the same point, but none do it better than Card. I strongly encourage all budding writers to read this book.

If I can offer some suggestions: Jagged Angel was the first (and so far, the only) 3rd person POV story I've written. I found it was important not to get inside the heads of multiple characters in one scene, because it gets very complicated, very quickly. I only showed other people's thoughts at a scene transition, usually when the lead character entered or exited the room, so the reader could then understand the other character's point of view.

The other great thing that 3rd person does is that it allows the author to comment directly on the events of his or her own story, in the role of the "unseen narrator." This gives you the ability to set up the mood and feel of each scene, using language far more articulate and, well, poetic than your characters. Think of the unseen narrator as like a camera that can instantly crane up or dissolve to any other location -- something you can't do in 1st person, where you're stuck with just one character.

I'm currently writing a story for which I did decide that 1st person POV was appropriate. But in this case, it's a time-travel situation where we have a modern-day teenager confronted with the events of 150 years ago. I felt in this case, the "fish out of water" plot would be better appreciated by readers if we saw things totally from a modern point of view. Getting into the head of a character in 1865 is too much of a stretch, for a story that already stretches credibility. I figure this keeps things much more simple.

[Serialized Story v Novel]

I agree with Graeme above. The problem with stories like this (IMHO) is that they tend to run out of steam at some point.

To me, before you begin writing any story, you have to ask yourself: what's the point of this story? What am I trying to say here? All the famous writing textbooks emphasize the importance of having a theme, or at least an underlying message or purpose for the story.

They advise that if you have trouble summing up your entire story in one or two sentences, then you have a problem. I had to mull over it for awhile, but I came up with an easy one for Jagged Angel: "Honesty is the best policy." Trite and simple, but it pretty much sums up the story. The lead character's life goes to hell and back, basically because he can't come to terms with being gay. Once he accepts it, his life goes a lot easier.

The theme was more complex for Groovy Kind of Love: first, "True love is worth all the risks," and secondly, "you've got to find a way to carry on, no matter how hard life gets." Again simplistic, but it boils down everything to one sentence (two in the case of the latter). The lead character there realizes at the end that even if he had known the love of his life was doomed, he would have loved him as best he could, for as long as he could. Make the most of what you have, as long as you have it.

The problem I see with serials is that they wander all over the map, to the point where you don't know who the characters are, what the focus of the story is, and really what the central plot is. The old line, "don't bore us -- get to the chorus" comes to mind.

I know there's an audience for soap operas, but I don't think they work in story form. At least, I have yet to find a long continuing story that's held my interest. (Under the Hoodster's story Perry & Jesse comes closest, and has some interesting moments and characters, but even that sometimes tends to ramble too much for me.)

I say, if you're going to tackle a project like this, consider doing it as a series of connected novels, like the Harry Potter stories, Anne Rice's vampire tales, Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, or J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Each of those books works individually as well as being part of a longer work, and I think that approach is far better than a long "serialized" story that seemingly has no end in sight.

TV shows are in a separate category, because each episode can stand alone. Of course, there's always the danger for those who missed a previous show, and have no way to make any sense of the existing characters and conflicts. West Wing juggles these elements very well, and I find you can miss a few episodes of this show and still dive back in and have no problem following what's going on. I've never experienced that with a long serialized novel, especially one on the Net.

[The Last 'Queer as Folk']

I've actually *worked* on Six Feet Under on several occasions, but I have yet to see a single finished show. The last piece I saw was a gay couple who were adopting a kid, but that was a few months ago.

I agree, it's a good show, but there's already so much stuff I don't have time to watch on TV as it is. I have a Tivo stacked up with about 200+ hours of crap I haven't had time to see yet... I missed most of Lost because I was out of the country for several months last year, but hope to catch up on the series via the DVDs that just came out.

But I always made time for QAF, just because of what it represented to me, and also because of how well it was done as a TV show. I'm still blown away (no pun intended) by the fact that Gale Harold ("Brian" in the show) is 100% straight. He deserves two Emmys for "The Best Impersonation of a Gay Man in the History of TV." :)

[The Last 'Queer as Folk']

Just caught the final episode of this Showtime TV series tonight. As I feared, they kind of went out with a whimper and not a bang. A few loose ends were left dangling -- will Justin find happiness and success in the NY art world, or will he return to Pittsburgh? -- while other elements were dealt with fairly realistically: Brian and Justin call off their impending marriage when they realize they're both doing it for the wrong reasons, and the girls leave town for gay-friendlier Toronto.

Despite my nitpicks, I really enjoyed watching this show over the last five years, particularly in that it was one of the very few honest portrayals of gay life on American TV. My partner and I have frequently wondered out loud, "man, what would our lives have been if we could've grown up and watched a show like this as teenagers?" But times are different now; one hopes it's better and more tolerant in some ways, though certainly more stressful in others.

QAF premiered at a strange time in my life. Both my parents passed away within six months of each other, plus my career went through some changes as all the magazines I used to write for dried up and blew away. Only a few months after the show premiered, I got inspired to write my first novel, and I'm convinced I might not have had the courage and inspiration to sit down and try it, had QAF not existed.

Anyway, here's a virtual toast, a glass of a petite Merlow, to the creators of this terrific show. Even when QAF failed to live up to expectations, I for one am glad the show was around. The characters were very real and vivid to me, and I'll truly miss seeing them every week in new stories. I hope the positive effect the show had on the world -- especially here in the U.S. -- will last a long time.

[My little rant]

Wow! Great response by WriteByMyself. I couldn't have said it better myself -- excellent job.

The only thing I have to add is that there are still kids getting harrassed for being gay (or even thought of as gay) in school. Don't tell me gay people are accepted everywhere, because it just ain't true. Hell, I work in the entertainment business here in LA, and I still occasionally hear anti-gay crap from people I encounter at work. When it's appropriate, I tell them I don't appreciate stuff like that, but it's not always possible to take a stance.

Quick example: I worked for years on many animated shows for Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears in the 1980s. Once, a producer and a writer were lamenting about network censorship and other problems while I was working on their show. One quipped, "the network wants us to have positive role models for every minority in this show! They even want GAY role models, for god's sake! How could we put those in this show?" They laughed about that for a few moments.

During a lull in the conversation, I piped up with, "well, maybe the gay kids watching the show need role models, too."

The room got very quiet after that, and I went back to putting the show together for air.

We got a long way to go before gay people are accepted 100% in all parts of society. I figure we're at where blacks were in civil liberty, circa 1962. We got miles to go before we can say, "free at last, free at last, great god amighty, free at last."

[Houston, We have a problem]

Hey, James, I'm on the road to the same thing. My opthamologist says I have "slightly high" pressure in both eyes, and may eventually develop glaucoma. But he told me there's drops you can use and even an operation that can get it back to normal in most cases. Not a big deal, at least according to him. Here's hoping you only have a mild case...

Speaking of eyesight, I'm one of the morons who went out and got Lasik eye surgery a few years ago, and lemme tell you: this crap ain't perfected, not by a long shot. I went from being horribly nearsighted to slightly farsighted, so I still have to wear closeup glasses to read or use computers. My eyes are also a lot more sensitive than they used to be. The good news is, I can get along without glasses about 90% of the time (like at the gym in the shower); the bad news is, the doctors lie to you as to what the risks are, and how good your eyes can be. Watch out for this. Check out LasikDisasters.com and see what can go wrong.

[Aaron got caught with his pants down]

My dad uses that old saying about getting caught with your pants down. I feel like I've been caught, big time.

I was told by a friend of mine who recently published a book through Houghton-Miflin that they have five different people read through the galleys over a weekend to weed out every last typo before it's sent off to the printers. And even then, you still see professionally-published books today with typos. That almost never happened in the 1960s or 1970s. I blame a lack of education and care, and it's a sad sign of the times.

I think I saw a typo in the American edition of Harry Potter book 5, but I think it was just an omitted period. The current book has no typos, but it does have a ton of run-on sentences and weird grammar. Too many Britishisms for me, and I'm usually immune to that stuff.

[Emphasis in dialogue]

I have been told to use italics to indicate this emphasis. Naturally, it should be used sparingly, as many times people don't place a lot of emphasis in their spoken speech -- at least to the degree where it can make a difference.

I think what you said at the very beginning of this thread is the most important comment. There's a bad tendency to overuse italics and other typographic elements in writing, and all the books on writing that I've read have stressed that "less is more."

That having been said, I use italics for about four different things:

1) to clear up any ambiguity in dialog (as infrequently as possible): "She told me there was no there there."

2) for internal thoughts or unspoken dialog: That's odd, I thought. He's not wearing any pants.

3) for titles of books, movies, or TV shows: I put down my paperback of Hound of the Baskervilles and raced downstairs.

and 4) for the (rare) foreign phrase stirred into the dialog: "Yeah," I mused. "He caught us in flagrante delicto. We couldn't get our clothes on fast enough."

Beyond that, I think using italics or bold starts looking too much like a "hey! notice me!" thing.

[Cliffhanger Theory]

Now, I've read stories where every chapter ends in a cliffhanger. It's great for building tension, but I find it becomes incredibly annoying, especially if chapters take time to be published.

Because I've worked in TV for so long, I tend to think of stories as being divided up by commercials (or at least places where commercials would be).

Granted, this makes the work episodic by nature, but I don't think it necessarily detracts from the entertainment. I just finished reading the new Harry Potter book, and it used similar cliffhangers throughout to keep the interest going. I have no problem with that, as long as it's not used to excess.

Generally, what I've tried to do is end chapters at a resolution of an event. That way, it doesn't so much end at a cliffhanger, but instead ends when the problem (or situation) is resolved. In a TV situation, you'd obviously move the commercial position earlier, to force viewers to stay tuned to find out what happens.

Bottom line, I don't think a cliffhanger distracts from the work at all, as long as the climax of each chapter has a point, and it doesn't come across as being forced or obvious. If the cliffhanger prevents the story from being boring, even better.

[A T-Shirt to inspire you....]

And if you want a T-shirt to freak people out with, check this out:

http://www.tshirthell.com

I thought the one "on sleeping with frat boys" was fairly cool. Too bad they didn't have the two T-shirts I always admired from Queer as Folk: "God Made Me Gay," and "Nobody Knows I'm Gay."

[Moral Obligations as Authors]

Do we, as authors, have a moral obligation to ensure that our stories are not seen to promote or glamourise what we consider to be irresponsible things?

No. Not to me, anyway.

Our only obligation is to write entertaining stories at the limits of our abilities.

Some criticized the drug use in my story Jagged Angel (including the Dude, who was initially put off by it), but I felt to avoid mentioning the drugs wouldn't be true to the story, because it reflects what's actually going on in California high schools (particularly in sports). As far as I'm concerned, I barely touched on drugs in terms of how serious a problem it is. My gut feeling is that I didn't glorify it -- I just showed that it existed, kids do it, and in some cases, it fucks them up.

But at the same time, my personal beliefs are that drugs are wrong for me, yet I think most of them should be legalized. I think a lot of stuff like drugs falls into the "victimless crime" category, and I think the U.S. would be a lot better off to legalize all soft drugs and go after the real problems we have.

But putting heavy anti-drug, anti-smoking, or anti-drinking moral messages in fiction (or movies or TV shows) is total bullshit to me. To me, it's preachy, it talks down to the audience, and it's condescending. It also pretends that the writer's opinion is the only one that matters, and I don't buy that either.

To me, I think people have to make up their own minds. As long as they don't hurt other people doing what they do, I say they should have the freedom to do it -- within reason. (That doesn't permit opening up a crystal meth lab next door, or selling crack to elementary school kids on playgrounds.)

[How to improve?]

I was not trying to denigrate my current work, or to complain about a writers block, but simply to say that I can see a qualitative difference between what I'm writing and other authors, and I'm trying to work out what to do to reach that "next level" of quality.

I was a reader long before I tried to write anything. The first time I had an inkling that I could write was when I took a junior college-level writing class (when I was a freshman), got hit with a pop quiz, and wrote an essay on a book I had never read before.

The next day, the teacher handed back our papers and gave me a C+ with the comment: "It's clear to me that you didn't read the material, but you did such a good job faking it, I gave you a C+. You've got some talent; you should be writing more."

I spent the next 20 years having two simultaneous careers -- one in LA working on bad movies & TV shows, and one as a technical writer for various magazines. I also began to read Net fiction in the early 1990s, but was astounded by the relative lack of good material.

When I did run into the rare good erotic gay stories, they often shared several common elements:

1) there was a solid plot there, beyond just the sex and relationships

2) the story veered off into directions I couldn't predict, holding my interest and keeping me surprised and wanting to read more

3) the characters grow and change as the story progresses, so that by the end, it's clear to see they're very different people by the conclusion

4) the stories were full of conflict -- not necessarily violence or arguments, but real drama that came out of the situation, and not something contrived, thrown in for effect. (You may not always like what I write, but I guarantee you, it ain't gonna be boring.)

and 5) there was an element of poignancy, maybe a sense of loss. I found the stories that stuck in my head were often those that weren't necessarily flat-out depressing, but at least left you with a sense of wistfulness at the end.

With both my novels, Groovy Kind of Love and Jagged Angel, I strived to get all of the above into my own work. It took many months of work, along with advice from friends and fellow writers (some of whom are here on Awesomedude), to edit the stories to the point where I was satisfied with them.

So, cutting to the chase, my advice is: see if you can distill what elements attract you in those stories written by others. Make a list, and dissect the stories to see how the author achieved those results. Then, come up with an original story idea and write it, bearing in mind the story and character points you want to make.

[Writer's Manuals and Referance Guides]

It seems that with this being a writing forum, we should have a list of useful reference texts and books for writers. Please post your recommendations and maybe we can collect them together into a sticky or FAQ-type post.

Gee, I kind of did that over a year ago with my How to Write Gay Fiction piece sometime back.

The problem with books like Strunk & White and the style guides is that they're as dull as goddamned dishwater. They don't really apply so much to the creative writer as they do to writers in general, particularly English students writing term papers. To me, books like these aren't specific enough to help those of us who are here, trying to write fiction.

That having been said: a good dictionary and a good style guide (and even S&W) do belong on the shelf of any writer. At the same time, they're not the types of books that compel me to pull them out and re-read them. The ones I cited in my article, though, are far more instructive, more entertaining, and more useful, plus they hold up well if you read them more than once.

To me, knowing how to spell and knowing basic grammar are given. The hard stuff is gaining the skill to construct a plot that makes sense and creating characters that grab the reader's attention.

[Blue Asks a Damned Good Question]

When will i be able to write a story and not have to worry about whether it will be looked upon as a positive or negative influence by an audience that so desperately needs an affirmation?

Gee, call me crazy (and many do), but I don't see any comments posted above that directly relate you to or your work at all.

Blue just posted a general question about the reasons for having negative themes in gay stories. I see no problem with having a discussion on something like this, and it seems like a reasonable topic to me.

Hell, I have all kinds of ongoing negative themes in my stories, beyond the usual "gay harrassment," including murder, blackmail, drug abuse, violent car wrecks (several), and the death of literally dozens of characters. But I see no reason to get "weary" having to discuss anything, and it's not a question of defending your choices as a writer.

If you don't want to participate, that's cool. But don't slam the whole discussion because it makes you "tired."

[Blue Asks a Damned Good Question]

What I was trying to point out is the need for more stories that offer positive gay people and relationships, healthy stuff, people helping others, that there *is* a way to achieve that.

Sure there is. But if a story is all sweetness and light, there's no adversity for the hero to overcome. Without conflict and drama, you don't have an interesting story. You wind with a very bland series of events where nothing really happens, where everything is happy and beautiful all the time. As nice as that might be to experience, it's not pleasant to read. That's an ongoing critique of mine with a lot of amateur fiction on the net.

Granted, that doesn't mean every piece of gay fiction has to have extreme emotional roller-coasters where the hero is perched on the ledge of disaster, ready to commit suicide at a moment's notice. I think a balance can be made so that things don't go too crazy.

BTW, Blue, if you want to practice what you preach, show us something you've written. I think you've got a good head on your shoulders and some good ideas, and I'd like to see what you say be put into practice. Instead of telling us you'd like to see more positive stories, WRITE one and show us exactly what you mean.

One last point: I was recently reminded why I get so turned off by a lot of gay "literature" out there, even among such highly-acclaimed authors as Armistead Maupin and Gore Vidal. I recently bought and read a few classic collections of gay fiction published over the last 40-50 years, but was appalled by the overwhelming negative tone of most of the stories. Many of them ended with the hero on the verge of suicide, or (literally) dissolving into death as the story concludes. Others were just terribly downbeat and depressing, either with the hero rejected by his lover, or the lover dying, or otherwise getting rejected, without a single optimistic note. (The recent acclaimed novella Brokeback Mountain suffers from the same problem; well-written, but uplifting it ain't.)

[Spelling and Grammar Q&A]

He [Capote] may write a good story but he is NOT a good writer. I will fight you to the death on this one.

Silly me! I guess my mistake is assuming that if one can write a good story, then you're a good writer.

For someone like me who is fluent in both versions of English and can writer either way, the book was doubly valuable.

Lynn Truss points out in the introduction of the American edition the many problems between British English grammar (and punctuation) vs. Americanized English, so I'm well aware of that. Being fluent is one thing, but I find a lot of those British-isms annoying and clumsy. [Yet there are books I prefer to read in their original British editions, like the Ian Fleming James Bond novels and Jo Rowling's Harry Potter.)

Still, seeing dialog punctuation placed outside of the quotes makes me absolutely nuts. Speaking as a guy who has read the Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style, plus having actually written stylebooks for two magazines (including the late, lamented Video Review back in the 1980s), that one's etched in stone for me. Lapsing into a Comma is another fairly cool discussion of the subject, though with a decidedly American bent.

(BTW -- note how I never mentioned your misuse of the word "writer.") :twisted:

[Spelling and Grammar Q&A]

These do not belong in a well written story. Never. If you need to use a parenthetical statement to explain something, you've not written it well to begin with.

I wouldn't be so fast about that. One place where I think it might be permissible would be for a first-person novel told as a biographical piece. I seem to recall reading a Truman Capote book a few months back that used this technique, and it didn't bother me. Capote's a better writer than you and me, and I suspect he could make it work.

In general, though, I agree with much of what you say here about punctuation. I used to drive my magazine editors crazy about punctuation, and I had some very definite opinions as to when to use (and not to use) a semicolon. I did a lot of that just by gut instinct; after reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves last year -- a book that I found hilarious and also very informative -- I understood why my instincts were right. About the only time I disagreed with the author was when she veered off in a Veddy British direction, pointing out situations that were wrong in England, but textbook-perfect in America.

[Plagarism vs Inspiration]

Or compare Heinlein's The Rolling Stones  and David Gerrold's Star Trek  "The Trouble With Tribbles." -- I have a copy, now packed in a box, of the box he wrote about writing that episode. He realized in the middle of writing one of the episode drafts that the story was a lot like Heinlein's book, which he'd read, and he got so concerned about it he asked Heinlein, who said the stories were different enough, and talked about how authors borrow things as opposed to plagiarizing. Last I looked, Gerrold's book was out of print, but it's well worth tracking down.[/i]

I know David quite well -- he lives about five miles from me, out here in Northridge -- and he has lots of stories on the Tribbles episodes that he's told for decades now.

I think the Heinlein characters were called "Fuzzies," but my memory's kinda dim on these things. David's book on the making of "Tribbles" is still out-of-print, but Amazon's got 75 used copies out there very cheap. You can find them here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books

BTW, David's excellent time-travel novel The Man Who Folded Himself, was recently reprinted. It's highly recommended, not only for its occasional gay themes, but also because it's extraordinarily well-written -- possibly the best story of its kind I've ever read.

[Just Write...]

As an author, if you need to keep the characters, locations, venues separate to avoid confusion that is all well and good, but it should be your own working private list ? something of a ?cheat sheet? for you. (Save the papers and someday you can sell them on e-bay when you become famous). But there is really no reason to share this with the reader.

I agree 100%. Two things that have helped me in my stories are: first, a timeline to tell me when and where every event takes place in the story. That way, if I have a character say, "hey, didn't you see her last Thursday," I know it was actually Thursday and not some other date. Keeping a sense of time straight in the story is important, at least to me.

The second is character bios, which I jot down just to remind me who everybody is, what they look like, and what their background is.

Nobody ever sees either of these two things except me; as far as I'm concerned, this is all part of the behind-the-scenes machinery that makes the magic work. Sort of like the hidden gears and motors at Disneyland.

Oh and as far as reader suggestions? They can write their own stories or alternate versions of yours if they don?t like what your doing? If you are not writing the story YOU want to write then lay that pencil down boys!

I agree to a point. But I have had some instances where either I made a major logistical error, or I made a bad decision in a story, and I had enough readers write me about it (in advance of the story actually being posted) that I went ahead and changed it. In some cases, I may not have done exactly what they wanted, but it was kind of a serindipitous thing where the original story went one way, the readers wanted it another way, but the final draft came up with a third compromise that I felt was better than either.

One case like this was the dog in my story Jagged Angel. Everybody, including The Dude here, was aghast that I killed a dog in one pivotal chapter. They convinced me that readers wouldn't stand for that, and so I reluctantly had the dog simply be "badly wounded," and eventually recover. This wound up being a much better choice, dramatically, and even worked its way into the very final lines of the story.

So, yeah -- sometimes readers know better than authors. On the other hand, then there are the readers who are upset when certain key characters depart the story. I've done this for very, very specific reasons, and my decisions are in stone on all of those. Still, it's gratifying to get email from readers who are practically crying over the death of a major character. You know when that happens, you've managed to craft a character who was good enough that they lived vividly in the mind of the reader, to the point where they felt a very real sense of loss when the character dies (or goes away).

[Reviewing]

This is a explanation of the "report card" and I will then provide two sample reviews of a couple of stories that I like. Is this fair? Am I missing anything?  

I don't think that art, certainly not fiction, can boil down to a bunch of bullet points and numbers.

To me, I think you gotta judge from your gut. Is the story good or not? Do the characters involve the reader or not? Does the story surprise you and hold on to your interest?

Much more than that is just a buncha BS, in my opinion. Sure, you can start delving into technique and grammar and so on, but I can overlook many of these elements if everything else makes me want to read more.

And I agree with WBMS elsewhere that the top rating should be used very sparingly.

[I hate Gay Stories]

Pecman: RusticMonk is Gabriel Duncan. If you check out his stuff, you'll find that he is indeed samauri.

Ah, that was my confusion. I did glance over Angel, and it looks very well-written.

The only thing gay about my story The Cool Green Sea is the author.

That's cool, but did I say otherwise? I'm confused. :oops:

I certainly don't think a writer has to be gay (or straight or black or anything else) to write a good gay story, even from a viewpoint radically different from his or her own. Within limits, I think the same is true of actors -- though, I guess if a white teenage male tried to portray [black female equality pioneer] Harriet Tubman in a play, that might be a stretch. But I have no problem with gay actors playing straight characters, or vice versa. The same should be true of writers; they should be able to tackle the whole bredth of human experience, including all the shades of grey -- which, to me, are what make life interesting.

BTW, be careful how you quote other people in your messages. Things can get very confusing, very fast if you quote much too much material. Just a sentence or two is enough for a quote. (And watch out for "their" and "they're" -- one of my pet peeves.)

[Characterization]

If you want to reveal something important about someone, have them act on whatever character trait it is that you want to illustrate. Action is always stronger than exposition.

Amen to that! I wish more people would understand that.

Nothing drives me up the wall faster than when I read an amateur net story where the first chapter begins, "let me introduce myself. My name is *blank*, I'm so-so tall, I have this kind of hair, etc." Jesus, totally amateurville.

I think not only do the characters actions help define who they are, you can let the other characters describe your leads so we get at least a little sense of how they look. Have one character actually say, "dude! You changed your hair! What's with the blonde highlights?" That kind of thing. There's a million ways to do that.

I think having a character do something brave, stick his neck out where he didn't need to, or make a controversial stand for something he or she believes in... any of these things is worth 50 pages of dialog. It's the classic "show, don't tell": we need to find out what makes a character tick by what they do, not just by what they say.

[Dramatis Personae?]

I will use the Dramatis Personae as a developmental tool for Broken but I think that I will leave it out of the final version.

I agree with WBMS: I think putting lists of characters and descriptions in the story talks down to the reader, and I also think it's kind of an amateurish cheat. You gotta figure, J.R.R. Tolkien had about 100 speaking characters in Lord of the Rings, and he didn't do it. (Of course, Tolkien was also a brilliant writer, and I don't think that many of us are even qualified to sharpen his pencils.)

I do agree with you that jotting down a complete list of the characters and a brief bio of each is an enormously useful tool for the writer. To me, if the story is well-written enough, the readers will be able to figure out who everybody is. And if you can't find a way to do it, then my advice would be to combine two (or more) characters into one and do some rewriting and simplifying. Five or six lead characters is probably going to be enough for most novels -- though there are always exceptions.