That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

To be honest with you, Sze, I was under the impression that parts of the letter were meant to be repetitive and/or weak.  It seems to me like the character is slowly forced to admit over the course of the would-be scathing letter that she is in need of growth, and her denial of that path is what causes the thing to fizzle into weakness.  It didn't make the work any less entertaining to read, though.    Is it possible you might be being slightly too hard on yourself?

 Hey Sze, would you mind either moving this to the writing workshop forum or giving me permission to do so?  It has a lot of good thoughts in it regarding how we do tend to approach our blogs.

Hell, I know I'm repetitive, but generally about the sappy things. =P

_________________________________
The Haven Moderator of Many Names

If you need me, find me here:
Neesy - Alliance main
Ineesa - Healer Alt
Lorith - Retired Alliance main
Artisania - Horde main

Take your pick!

We are prisoner to our characters flaws.

This was a letter from Szeharia, not YOU. It should sound like Szeharia, not you. It works.

Well this is food for thought.  Reading it made me slightly uncomfortable, which is enough to suggest that I am probably more than a little repetitive and predictable myself and just don't like to face up to it   ;)

I would say, however, that it is probably permissable to be a little more repetitive in the Haven-blog arena.  Unlike a novel or a short story, the audience is inconsistent and can often peck sporadically at a blog here or there.  New readers might benefit from themes that, although familiar to longer-term followers, are vital enough to the character or characters that they bear repeating.  Or am I just trying to make myself feel better?

HAVING said that......and regarding your 'less is more' comment.....I know that I for one could seriously benefit from learning HOW to write *less* (and with few ellipses and asterisks for that matter ;) Ooh, and emoticons too).  I ramble constantly in a vain attempt to try and put into words the series of images that is playing through my mind.  To address your final statements I think anyone who puts 'critique welcomed' should be at the point of accepting being told that a sentence doesn't work or that the character is stagnant or predictable.  Whether or not I'll get brave enough to put that tag on my own stuff is an other matter  ;)

See, I've rambled again.  Basically I think you've brought up some very good points here, and using your own work to show examples was useful (and sacrificial!).  I for one will try to keep this in mind in future blogs, although learning how to accomplish the improvement might take some work!

((

Hello Szeharia.

First, I'd like to second Shryn's comment.  Especially when writing in first person, the words put on the page are words from the character, not a writer sitting on the other side of the computer.  In our everyday lives, I don't think we strive for strong, powerful paragraphs and simile.  We just say what needs to be said, whether happy, sad, or just generally whining "Woe be unto me."  For instance, when Fezret writes, it tends to be choppy, a bit disjointed and fleeting, and laced with ... ahem ... colorful metaphors.  This isn't how I would write the story in third person, nor is it how I tend to think/act/talk OOC.  That being the case, write it as your character would, and don't care about strong or weak passages, just care about how your character would write it.

In terms of actual stories, I feel that I've made some progress, albeit not near enough to compete with a lot of the folks in this community.  My biggest problem for previous characters is that I pretty much designed them as exagerrated brick walls.  If they were good, they were EXTREMELY good.  Spit on them.  Kick them.  Call their mother names, and try your best to convince them to do something mean.  They would not do it.  The reverse was true for my evil characters.  They were the ultimate in evil.  Every breath was cruelty, every thought tuned into their diabolical plans.  There never needed to be more than one vicious scheme, because that scheme would always work, and they would always succeed.

I think if we look at ourselves OOC'ly, you'll find there isn't any white or black, just shades of gray.  Now, I'm definitely not Dudley Dooright, but at the same time, I'm not the Osama bin Laden either.  Just like everyone else, I float between them, hoping favoring Dudley.  I'm making this point because I think that things "get old" when you see so many horrifically polarized characters scheming and un-scheming.  I'm pointing fingers at myself here too -- Karnakh was too damn good, Sharaneth too damn evil.  Their stories got old, because angels and demons are about the most worthless characters known to Azeroth.  They are so limited in what they can do.  And then, when you take this supremely nice guy and try to make him evil -- well, it comes out looking like Dudley Dooright on crack.  Such polarized characters are good as props for illustrating how your character isn't one of those, but beyond that, they just don't work.

So Fezret is my own personal grand experiment at RP'ing and writing about the "fence sitter."  Obliviously she's not sweet, but at the same time, hopefully people can see that she isn't horrifically evil either.  Confused?  Misguided?  Bad role model?  She really does try to do good, but affects change in Lich King style, because her membership in the Scourge was the most powerful event on her during her extremely formative years.

And with people like her, who dance on the terminator of light and darkness, I think every day, every entry can be a surprise.  Given any scheme or quest, she might have a unique take on the task, and do something unexpected.  The same old grind, spun correctly, can turn into something completely new and make the joke funny again.

 ))

------

Kill. Them. All.

A couple of observations:

While too much mayhem will bring an eventual response, the keywords here are "too much" and "eventual".   Acceptable violence levels vary from time to time and place to place.  Early modern Britain, for example, had a murder rate that was 6-7 times the current one and an acceptance of casual violence that most of us would find appalling.  One thing to note is that responses to violence are more likely to come from the injured parties and their families than from official sources. 

The format that most of us use here; that of multiple short posts at varying intervals, forces a great deal of repetition.  Unlike a longer work, one can not assume that the reader is familiar with the character or much that has gone before.  This is exacerbated when we're dealing with a story that is scattered over multiple characters and postings.

In regard to Sze's letter.  I would expect her to throw her wealth and beauty into Llew's face.  Repeatedly.  As Shryn noted, this is a trait of the character and not of the author.

---------------------------------------------------------
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of truth.

((

I think you make some good points, although I am not a skilled enough writer to address them meaningfully.

As for this:

"In the world of the Haven, if a writer has opened up their post for criticism, is it fair to say 'that sentence does not work'? Is it acceptable to say of a character, ''we've seen this already, move on'? Or is even the suggestion too harsh?"

As far as I am concerned, as long as the criticism is both desired and constructive, it is welcome on Haven, but as soon as I say that, I am sure that someone will think of a way to prove me wrong. ;)

))

--
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.

((Right, we know Szeharia is wealthy, famous, and dazzlingly beautiful. Do we need to be reminded of this?

I have a habit of reading novels in a series all in a row once the series is done or, at the very least, well underway. Every series will re-describe the characters in each novel because a) there may have been a significant chunk of time between someone reading one book and the next and details get forgotten or b) someone may have picked up book three without having read books one or two. In either case it's warranted; the only reason I notice is because I'll read many of them in a short span of time.

The same goes for stories here. Do you want each of your posts to stand alone, capable of being understood and enjoyed by anyone who happens to stumble upon it? Or are you assuming that your audience is composed of people who already know the background? Knowing which is your aim will give you the answer to your question.))

The paragraph you cite makes me think of a snobbish lady who is really REALLY mad and all she can do about it (for now, at least) is prattle on like that. While it may not be perfect or to the point, you really get a strong sense of who she is and what she is trying to do with this letter. Now, there are one or two missteps in the flow of the paragraph that do detract from the overall punch, particularly the run-on sentence one or two lines from the end where she starts talking about the aristocracy - but overall, the exaggerated tone is perfectly believable for the character.

I, like Arnora, believe there is a fine line to be drawn for writers, particularly when all of your audience may not be familiar with the characters or story at hand. This is especially true for us  since alot of our storylines unfold in-game and off the page (or screen) - but just as true for authors who may need to 'remind' a reader of a character when bringing them back after a long time. You need to do some rehash - which can come across as repetition - but there are creative ways to do that without totally boring your readers who are more familiar with the story and characters.

I think there is one nuance that is being side-stepped here: is it always the same detail(s) or emotion being repeated? For example, one thing you bring up is "does everyone have to be reminded [Character X] is beautiful?" - well, yes, it can be useful to redescribe a character at some point, but why are they always beautiful? Does everyone see them as beautiful? Does the character always view herself as beautiful? You can subtly manipulate different perspectives and nuances of details or events to rehash a description or event without making it sound too repetitive. If you are continually just saying "I am so beautiful!" or "X was so angry at me that time", yes, it might get rather hollow. Details, particularly descriptive ones, can be crafted in such a way to impart one meaning while actually explicitly saying something else entirely. I have a good example of this in one of my manuscripts, but I don't have it on hand at the moment.

As for my personal take on "less is more", I've always used the Gustave Flaubert approach in my published writings - and to a lesser extent on RP-haven stuff since I don't really have as much *content* to work with. RP-haven stuff, for me at least, tends to be more vignettes. Flaubert said he would always vary his sentences and wordiness based on the emotions or the passage of time he was trying to convey. Short, to the point sentences help give the reader a more staccato feeling and make it seem like things are moving quickly...while when the character or narrator starts drawing things out, it changes the feel entirely.  TLDR: I try to vary the "repetition" and sentence/narratorial structure to correspond with the mood I'm trying to create.

Which is why, in the paragraph you cite above, I commented that the repetition really helps to create a mood.

The only time I get worried about repetition (and I tend to be rather compulsive when revising drafts - I try to limit myself to one draft review for RP-Haven...) is if it's not believable for the character or scenario - or the repetition itself is too overt. Wordiness is not a good thing if it's not used with intention, but as long as you are using it carefully and with intention, I don't see the problem. But a red rose isn't always red, you know what I mean?

And alot of the stuff people post on here is stream-of-consciousness and first person narrative/letter, so repetition actually works very well. If I found a paragraph like the one you cited above in one of my own third person narratives, it would get a big fact X over it and a revision >.> but it works for more personal writings.

 I just had a thought about this thread a moment ago that I thought I'd put down here.  While talking about writing styles and what we should and should not repeat in our writing is all well and good (and depends very much on voice, mood, preference, etc. as has been discussed) what struck me in thinking about this is more the motivation behind the repetition.  Something I've noticed often in Haven blogs as well as in in-game RP is often the player's *insistence* about certain aspects of their character - aspects which they feel are so important that they must not just mention them once, or RP these aspects in plain sight, but must do so repetitively to make sure it's getting through to everyone else.

I think we've all met characters who "shine with holy light" every time they enter a room (and multiple times within blogs) or characters who ooze hatred or evil.  It's not that these aren't completely worthwhile character aspects to RP and to persue, but there's a fine line between having that character trait and pushing it into everyone else's face all the time.  Even characters who are more middle-of-the-road can "push" their middle-of-the-roadness, or push their innocence, their nobility, their peasentness - really any quality, and again, it doesn't matter what the quality is, more what the player feels about its importance.

We all want our characters to be considered unique personalities, all of them special in some way and different than the hundreds of other similar avatars running around the world.  But I've always found a subtle hand to be most effective in creating riveting RP.  Likewise in blogs, we can come to know what makes a character special or unique, or what a character truly feels most strongly about, not through repetition of these ideas or qualities but rather through the character's actions, choices, and objective descriptions. It never hurts to remind the audience what is most important about the character, but there's reminding, there's preaching, and there is beating over the head with a lead pipe.  You don't have to prove anything, you don't have to convince completely, you don't have to wave it over your character's head like a huge flag.  Everything naturally comes out in the end anyway, at least most of the time.

_________________________________
The Haven Moderator of Many Names

If you need me, find me here:
Neesy - Alliance main
Ineesa - Healer Alt
Lorith - Retired Alliance main
Artisania - Horde main

Take your pick!

Something about repetition which Ineesa's post made me think of... and that's archaic deliberate repetition. Rosy-fingered dawn. The wine-dark sea. Gray-eyed Athena, ox-eyed Hera. These are examples from Homer. Homeric epithets were applied to certain figures regularly in order to hammer home who and what they were for an oral epic poem. By modern standards, they're repetitve, but over the ages, that's how we know certain things, and how poets described certain things. Hera is ox-eyed with white arms; either epithet is ALWAYS attached to her name in the poems of the ancient world. In 1911, my thesis topic, WEB Du Bois, used the typical Homeric epithet-in-translation completely off-handedly: blameless Ethiopians.

"Ζεὺς γὰρ ἐς Ὠκεανὸν μετ' ἀμύμονας Αἰθιοπηας χθιζὸς ἔβη κατὰ δαῑτα..."

That translates as "Zeus went yesterday to the blameless Ethiopians for a feast". It's from the Iliad. Interestingly, modern scholars no longer apply 'blameless' as the correct translation for the epithet, but for centuries, that's been the standard. So in a sense, poetic or Homeric repetition has its place historically in spades, even and perhaps especially in a lengthy work. I actually deliberately use certain epithets as repetition, because they seem to particularly SUIT some aspect of a character, and neatly embody in very little space what I wish to convey about his or her emotion/appearance/attitude. For Ythgar, the usual epithet is to consistently describe his eyes as "burning". That could refer to the blue flames of his death knight-dom. It could refer to constant hunger for life/love/etc. It could refer to rage or fury. It's ambiguous, and deliberately so, but it contains sufficient hints to convey what I want it to. Aktarin has the epithets "masklike" with her face, "icy" or "white" describing her overall. It's a bit more specific, and more habitual than deliberate on my part, but with a couple of words, it conveys the general coldness and control of the character.

I suppose that's my two cents, or two drachma given the ancient Greek above. Repetition is not necessarily a bad thing, and the ancient world neatly solved the problem of identification of a repeatedly introduced character by providing them with ambiguous yet revealing epithets.

Family man; His patience tried
Put a torch to his home and warmed his hands by the fire

Well between the French and the Greeks you lot are so intimidating I may never pick up a pen again!

No, I don't mind the thread being moved, although I am not sure how to do that offhand.

I don't mind my writing being criticized (in fact, I welcome it, and would be thrilled if people did tear it to shreds), but I would rather discussion focus less on the examples I posted and more on the general ideas at hand.

It never hurts to remind the audience what is most important about the character, but there's reminding, there's preaching, and there is beating over the head with a lead pipe.

Artie's definately saying what I am trying to get at. The blog format does present the writer with an interesting challenge. Few readers are likely to read all of a character's blogs, and even fewer readers will have witnessed the emergence of a character & followed them over a lengthy period of time (as several people have suggested here); yet some characters are fortunate enough (or perhaps unfortunate) to draw a readership that will be invested in the character and familiar with the themes surrounding them. They don't want to see the same images over and over, do they?

To return to my example momentarily, I don't feel Szeharia herself is being particularly repetitive in her letter; it has a lot of momentum, a great deal of intensity - hence its effectiveness, especially from a character we associate with lethargy, indifference, & coldness. For the most part, it works very well as her letter; but as an object that we encounter as readers, I think we have to ask what new this tells us about Lady Everbloom. If it merely rehashes Szeharia's thoughts on her beauty, while it may be true to the character, it risks becoming wearisome to the reader. The entry avoids that pitfall in the main, but even touching on that theme can risk piquing the reader, which returns to Artie's comment on the lead pipe; if we've seen something once, twice, three times and nothing seems to be developing, the reader may become bored or, depending on how involved they are, annoyed & even offended by the writer's heavy-handedness.

So do we need another scene showcasing Artisania serving tea and demonstrating how ordinary a life she lives despite the absolutely insane people she finds herself paired off with? Do we want to watch the Countess/Millicent castrate another man she deems a threat to womankind? How often does displaying character merely degenerate into self-indulgent writing, and, should we as readers take it upon ourselves to point out to the writer when we feel it has reached that point?

   Shorok Morien, Mist Walker;   Void Knight, At your service.....

"This is way off subject, But I feel like saying it..

YOU ARE ALL FREAKING AMAZING! LIKE WOW!   I'm struggling to write Shoroks story, I repeat flaws and strengths like no ones buisness. I've improved greatly from what I once was..But compared to the Gods and Goddess I see on this site I am but a Lesser before you all!!"

How often does displaying character merely degenerate into self-indulgent writing,

A lot.  Like what you said about the "evil schemers"; people tend to fixate on their own character and archetype and just beat the crap out of a dead horse until one blog resembles any other and it gets boring to read.  Not just resembling their own character's blogs either, but every other type of character similar to theirs and it's like "again, with the scheming."

should we as readers take it upon ourselves to point out to the writer when we feel it has reached that point?

If it says Critique Welcome, definately.  Writing can be difficult, but not so difficult as to become miffed should someone follow the advise given in the post and throw down some critique.  In the end, it'll help someone out a lot more than a gold star will for every post they make.