A Cruel God Reigns

I'm really impressed with this manga, which recently showed up on MangaFox. Here's the very first part of the summary-

"Jeremy is a sensitive teenager who is happy for his mother when she remarries. However, the sweet-talking man who is his new stepfather turns out to be a serpent in disguise -- he's a sadist and a pedophile, and it isn't long before he makes Jeremy his target. After months of horrific, systematic abuse, Jeremy's mind becomes unstable and his thoughts turn vicious. He decides to murder his stepfather in order to get rid of him."

Justin Plank

 

Let Us Discuss Troy AKA Triton! (i.e. I've made a huge tiny mistake)

Ok, so where to begin?

Leviathan! started from an open call for submissions, which required 25,000 words. I wrote about 1500, and then promptly forgot about it. A few months later, I found the doc, reread it, and decided why not? I should just post the thing. Polished it up, and the rest is history.

Unfortunately, I did not account for my particular preference when it comes to characters. More specifically, I had just created the type of character that I find most boring, and then even worse, managed to accidentally interject a side character (Rage) who had more chemistry with Levi than Troy did. As much as I'd love to seem all-knowing and genius, this was completely not intended. In fact, Rage was supposed to be NOTHING, he wasn't supposed to go past that one scene (the very scene in which I regrettably made Troy a little too pushy.) 

EVEN WORSE, I somehow managed to make the (so far nonexistent) relationship between Volt and Kraken more interesting than Troy/Leviathan. This is like Brad/Zero vs. Orin/Riley all over again.

Anyway, enough with the whining. My goal, and responsibility, now is to make Troy an awesome lead, without completely retconning his character, AND build up some fire between him and Levi. I'm not giving up control of this story, and I'm confident that I can come up with something to make up for my fumbles so far. Wish me luck :) 

Writing Tips / Frustration with Writing Slash

I don't retain information well, nor can I recall it very quickly. This leads to a lot of issues while writing... I revert back to a bunch of bad habits that should already be gone by now. Several problems I deal with to this day are: fighting with then/than, where comma breaks should be, and general sentence formation. Also, pronouns are an annoying side effect of writing slash- you can only use "he", which leads to A LOT of confusion.

He stepped towards Justin, and held his hand as he trembled.

Yeah. It's annoying as fuck. Who's trembling? We're left with using descriptive nouns that sound a tad silly: larger man, stronger man, shorter man, the slim man, etc. If there's some solution, grammar-wise, I'm not aware of it. 

So, those are my problems, but what are the tips? Well:

• AVOID INFO-DUMPS: I admit, I did, and sometimes still do this. It's where you have a paragraph (or three) detailing a person, place, or thing.

Kyle Winters was a delicate teenager with soft skin, and plush lips. He loved going to school, since no one figured it was worth bothering him. Sometimes people thought he was a girl, maybe because he liked flowers, chocolate, and the color pink. He hated horror movies, but loved romcoms. He was seventeen, and spent his entire living in the small town, and a cute cottage that his grandfather built. He loved the house, and his family, who were all a little weird. His sister liked collecting dead bugs. 

Ok? Info-dumps will go on like this forever, covering every single aspect of Kyle's life. By the time you finish reading about him, you'll have forgotten everything. Think about when you read other stories than your own; what do you skim over? What do you find boring? It's probably the stagnant parts that are laden down with too much information.  

• SENTENCE VARIATION: Don't start with a noun in every sentence, it gets repetitive. 

He got on the swing. He looked over his shoulder as he swung. His friend had already left. He started to cry. He decided to go home. 

You understand? 

• CHARACTERIZATION: There's where you want the story to go, and then there's what the characters you created would actually be willing to do. I find that when I'm stuck in a story, it's easier to think about what the characters would do next, than try to come up with more plot. They drive the story; their feelings, their motives, their actions, etc. The plot is happening to them. 

• CHARACTERIZATION PART II: This seems obvious, but have characterization! DO NOT create a Mary Sue. I've always been suspicious of the tenant that romance novels should have the main lead be as bland as possible, so the readers can imagine themselves in the roles. What fun is that? You want two leads with equal amount of personality and emotional weight so that they can play off each other. 

• PLOT: Yes, I did say rely on your characters. However, that doesn't mean you should write 200 pages of them yelling at each other, and then having hot make-up sex. There should be 200 pages of them yelling at each other, then having hot make-up sex, AND PLOT. The easiest way to stick something in is have a problem develop in the beginning, and the ending is when that problem is solved. The meat of the story should be how the characters solve the problem. I mean, if your story is straight up romance, the problem can be their relationship. 

• EDIT: I... don't do this, but I should. Nothing will break the reader's concentration, i.e. flow of reading, like an incomplete sentence, typo, or random word. 

She walked to the a door, and knocked. 

Holding the door open, he was her standing there.

He lifted the bowel to his lips. - I did this. 

If you're trying to gain readers, at the very least you can make it easy for them to follow along by presenting a cleanly edited piece.

• NO HALF-ASSING: I can't tell you how much I regret some of my chapters. They were badly written, had no charm, and were basically just filler. If you don't feel extremely confident about a chapter, don't post it. 

• READ, A LOT: I'm not talking about other FP stories. I mean, don't forget about those professional, published books. Alas, I'm aware that the internet is a vast and wondrous place, not to mention the endless stream of mindjunk coming from VH1. However, never forget about books! Cut yourself off from the electronics for an hour, leave the cellphone in another room. You might find that an entire afternoon has passed without even knowing where all that time went. I recommend: Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, and crime novels/whodunits (Cornwell, Grafton, Grisham, etc). Sometimes it's better to branch out from slash for a while. 

- RDH

        

Deja Vu- Did I talk about this already?

It's so slashtastic.

Retro Slash: "Rope"

This will be a new feature in which I recommend older movies with gay themes.

 
I'm going to say first, if you think you'll be bored by this movie... you probably will. No one can force someone to like an old movie, but I'm going to try.

"Rope" was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and stars one of my favorite classic actors, Jimmy Stewart, as a well-liked teacher. Now, moving on... this shit is fucked up. The story was (supposedly) inspired by the murder of a kid in 1924 by two men who were believed to be lovers1. While the motives were used for inspiration, I would say that none of the events of similar.

The movie starts with the murder- two men, who happen to live in the same apartment, kill an old school friend of theirs in the opening shot. They stuff in the trunk, and the subsequent movie involves the two hosting a party with the father and the fiance of the school friend in attendance. Sick, right?

The movie is about twisted beliefs... how the two "friends" took a teacher's philosophy to heart, and decided to kill someone. Meanwhile, the teacher was also invited to the party because Brendan, the more controlling of the two roommates, wants his approval.

I won't ruin the movie, but suffice to say, it gets quite thrilling. Now, on to the slash- it is basically common knowledge that the two roommates are lovers, Hitchcock meant for the subtext to be there. "Rope" isn't a romance (duh), but it's amusing to see Brandon show all the signs of a forceful seme. On a more serious note, this does not show gay relationships with a positive light.

So, aside from the whole murder thing, I bet people could get some pretty good fan fiction from this.


-RDH

Existential Crisis

...not really. However, I am starting to feel conflicted.

How did this start? Sherlock Holmes 2. I haven't seen it, but the reviews say it's bromanc-ier than the first one, which is quite the feat.

I'm a feminist, and have been identifying as such for about three years. One thing that was never apparent to me until learning about feminism is that bromances is movies occur because the female characters are two-dimensional and boring. The two men of the "bromance" are seen as such, with their chemistry, because they are put on equal footing with equal character development.

I LOVE me some bromance, but I can't help but wonder if I would be more into het fiction if the women had some depth. I find it ironic that I write slash, considering that all I want is for more interesting female characters getting media representation.

Anyway.