The Role Of Writing Forums

TL;DR FOR GODS SAKE

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[SIZE="2"]I've often wondered why writing forums exist.

The first reason why I've found this idea intriguing is because writing forums do not provide any form of practical help in real life application to the reader or the writer. There are many different forms of writing. However, the one that most people have a trouble with are usually five-paragraph [intro, three-body paragraphs, conclusion] expository style writing formats.

This is usually not covered in any writing forum I have seen unless it is an "English-class tutorial" type writing forum. The type of writing that usually dominates with so-called "writing forums" are usually fantasy-fiction centered types of writing such as on the majority of forum sites; i.e.: fanfiction, MegaTokyo, SW, Southperry, ect.

Because many people cannot write research format papers, expository papers, scientific papers, ect. in a satisfactory manner, they often choose to treat these types of writing as being "pointless" and "trivial." They often think that the method of writing is suffocating and in a sense "blocky" in terms of format structure. Granted, to a first time writer who is exposed to these foreign concepts, it will probably seem extremely structured. But the fact is, writing is an art. And with all things artistic, even the most structured formats can smoothly blend into one another if the reader makes steady transition and logically explains their creatively original ideas every step of the way.

Even though it is usually inappropriate to include some fantasy-based literary elements in a "practical paper," creatively original ideas are heavily rewarded. How you present it in a five-paragraph manner and carefully connect it is where the "work of art" comes in.

If someone cannot write a "practical paper" then they will surely have trouble writing a "fictional story." Fictional elements serve as parodies to the modern world. Even though they seem to be cleverly original, they basically stem from cliched ideas such as "magic, gothica, violence, love, hope, despair, retribution, ect" that bears a great similarity to current society. In this sense, fiction appeals to people because it repaints old social issues in attractive colors. Pulling the reader into something they think is "genuine" but really sticking in the same ideas in a different colored jacket.

Fiction-writers do deserve to be heavily patted on the back for their ability to repaint social issues in a different light. But if a normal "writer" does not possess the ability to craft a satisfactory five-paragraph essay, then I have no choice but to be skeptical on their ability to write a novel on a constantly spanning-imaginary universe. The lack of interest in basic-grammar tutorials or working on fundamental structure undermines the foundations of fiction as fiction is rooted in reality.

The second reason why I do not understand why writing forums exist are purely from a cost-benefit perspective. As stated before, writing is an artistic skill. A good author is able to string words together in a manner that evokes images and emotions from the reader. A good-author also constantly revises their work to the point of anal obsession.

When a reader reads an author's work, they are seeing a finished piece of work. They have no idea the struggles the author went through in determining what type of perspective to use (first person, third person limited, third person omniscient), how hard the author worked to make the text seemed like a natural flowing dialogue

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[SIZE="2"](Jen watched in astonishment as Jimmy's innocent baby blue eyes turned into a cold accusing glare, "What are you looking at!" Jimmy sneered. Compare that to this: Jimmy said to Jenny, "What are you looking at!"[/SIZE]

and the types of social-connotations the author chose to use within their story.

The time investment to write a good piece of fiction is staggering. When your work can easily be stolen on the internet and when the only form of thanks you will get is, "that was a good story, thanks. Please post more! I greatly appreciate it," why would good writers want to continue writing? Especially when a majority of readers can only handle paragraph information and nice colorful pictures sourced from photobucket.

And even though this is not an issue on the Maple-story based forums, some other forums have a writing staff that is highly pompous and based in old-community bias. New writers are heavily criticized and hazed to the point where there is no longer any point to writing. Why would you write for people who don't appreciate your tone of voice?

One of the many special exceptions is when several good writers all devote a lot of time into writing stories and share them with one another via public access on the net. The fact that other good writers will contribute something without much incentive leads the writer to try to match another writer's moxy and to escalate the quality of writing.

Many writing forum boards attempt to "fake" this method in order to promote future writers. But you can't trick superior writers into believing something which is undeniably "crap" is not "crap." Good effort deserved applause. Half-assed effort is simply half-assed effort. An individual's status quo should not be lowered simply because there is no one else writing something of equivalent quality. Even though if one must be a heavy critic, they should have written something that is agreed by the community to be superior.

As internet lingo and uncompleted sentences becomes more and more of a dominate status quo for forum boards, it is an undeniable fact that the quality of fiction provided to the audience is also limited. It is also an undeniable fact that internet-writers and professional writers alike will continue to be a minority since their craft is one which is not commonly appreciated by the growing-illiterate community.

The role of writing forums seems to serve as more of a historical reference to the growing tragedy of modern writing rather than a positive counterforce to the decadence of the artistic profession. However, I will concede that I am not a good writer as I have yet to write anything that has been published by a notable company and that I do not understand abstract poetry. In fact, I personally detest poetry. But that is a personal bias that probably stems from the fact that I am a technical writer. Thank you for reading, well, not really.[/SIZE]

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[COLOR="Magenta"]It is often writers wish to submit their stories and receive feedback, like myself. We post our work, see the reactions of people and try to improve it. Some individuals like to display their hard work to the public; perhaps some just want to show their abilities. It's all a writer's decision.

The main purpose of the Shady Tree is to express yourself freely with literature. Only a few wish to do this and those that do present their work, want people to enjoy it. This forum has two MapleStory writing sections, figures since this is a MapleStory forum. It's not like you could go to the library (for most countries) and get a Maple comic or such, so thankfully, we have talented writers that can prodecure work that is both interesting and of our likings. [/COLOR]

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Thanks for your thoughts, Schrodinger. I have oft and repeatedly wondered the same. If it comes down to it, many institutions in the English language are artefacts and exist only because there is a social agreement that "this is the way it is supposed to be." For a long time people used to say that it was "ungrammatical" to end sentences with prepositions. (I think we have come to realise that this is false, but as with all other human creations such as the significance of writing forums, such beliefs take an awfully long time to reform.)

However, I - also not being a published writer, and being fully aware that all my efforts are little more than having fun with words - as I say, I see no harm in connecting with other people with similar interests. If the order of the day is writing forums, then I will gladly dive into a writing forum. If it is mailing lists, let it be mailing lists; if conventions, then conventions. I have mentioned elsewhere on the Southperry forums how isolating the writing process is. This applies to fiction just as much as non-fiction, as I have repeatedly seen with my fiance, who is a blogger + medical journalist of sorts.

I am, perhaps only subconsciously until you had said so, painfully aware that the cost-benefit analysis is not optimistic! Food for thought, for me . However, in addition to connecting with other writers, seeing other styles, and seeing with pleasant immediacy how others react to your writing (even if it is not well thought out), I am the first to agree that competition with other writers is a major motivating factor. I'm not sure about other people, but I am atrociously prone to procrastination. The writing group reminds you that there is a massive body of beautiful things still being written, that you could contribute to. Even if you might get a bunch of "Cool 10/10"s, or "Nice story"s, there is the inherent pleasure of knowing that you have created another piece; even, dare I say, improved your skills through practice. After all, you get better at writing by writing.

(EDIT: I'm going to reiterate my comment about the cost-benefit analysis. I agree with you very strongly - perhaps unwisely? - regarding the nature of a forum. Forums are subject to their own peculiar politics and conventions, not all of which support writers, for example opinions on free speech, or to what extent the writers serve the forum vs the forum serves the writers, etc. I won't expound further on this, it gets too murky for my taste. However no forum is perfect, and even if I speak from an entirely selfish perspective, I would still rather bear with an imperfect mode of communication to the end of improving my writing, than risk isolation. There is nothing so perspective-giving as a big slice of humble pie - a valuable attitude, I think.)

Regarding your comment about "tricking" the community, I'm not sure if I have observed this as a deliberate act. I probably need to visit more forums! However I do take some comfort in the fact that established writers know what is and isn't good, and I personally believe there is nothing new on the face of the earth, and that the craft is in no danger of truly falling apart. We are too self-obsessed to let that happen!! All joking aside, good writers existed thousands of years ago, and they exist today, and they will most probably continue to exist tomorrow too.

Concerning the issue of "growing illiteracy" I have exceedingly mixed feelings (I would wave a flag cautiously from the descriptive linguistics camp)... but I may post my thoughts on that later for fear of too much text

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[SIZE="2"]Thank you for very much iiMarik and especially Sign for your thoughtful responses. iiMarik I thought you made a good point when you offered that South Perry and perhaps SW are two of the only forum sites where Maple-Story fan fiction can be found. It is often interesting to see how forum posters compensate for the lack-of-story within Maple Story by providing their own interesting twist to the genre. Unfortunately, I wish their was more or an original flair in the writing process rather than working within the bounds of "Maple Story." Often times, Maple-Story fan-fiction writers feel obligated to talk about maximum damage and in-game stereotypes. For example, the "job people" just often serve their role as arbitrary "job people" and then disappear from the development of the story. Some possibilities are them serving as

Some creative ideas I think in "original twisting" off the top of my head would be: Henry and Beatrice both attend the prestigious Lockwarts (similarity intended) school in Ellinia. Henry is a natural genius and understands everything while Beatrice works hard everyday just to do well on all her assignments. Beatrice detests Henry and his flamboyant ways of partying and not putting any effort into anything. They eventually get into a magical confrontation and the headmaster Grendel the Really Old is forced to break up the conflict. Grendel the Really Old attempts to find a way for both of them to understand one another. Looking in his old tattered spell book, he finds a spell to switch their souls. He switches Beatrice into Henry's body and Henry into Beatrice's body (in some psuedo-Freaky Friday spin off.) Henry at first continues with his lazy behavior and uses Beatrice's feminine wiles to have the boys in the Academy do his (or rather "her") work for him. Beatrice is infuriated at Henry for "using" her body and for being "out of character."

"Henry! What do you think you're doing!" Beatrice screamed in Henry's deep-manly voice. As Beatrice approached her former-body she felt vaguely disoriented. She was looking at herself, but it wasn't her. It just wasn't her! Everything was off! The high-heels, the tight skirt that hugged her smooth round curves, and the sexy low-cut blouse that tightly hugged her delicious B-cup breasts. Delicious? Sexy? Beatrice mentally smacked herself, "C'mon girl. Don't let these male hormones control you."

Henry sauntered over to Beatrice. As she walked every step, her silky thighs caused Beatrice to become uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. "I'm only being myself Henry." Henry slid Beatrice's dainty hand and began to slowly press her pert lips extremely close to Henry's mouth, "After all, it's my body."

Beatrice couldn't protest. The male hormones overwhelmed all voice of reason and her "little soldier" began to begin the march. And just as soon as Beatrice was ready to get raped by her former body, Henry latched off. But not before using Beatrice's fine manicured finger to gently trace over the obvious erection inside Henry's pants. "Ta ta," she smiled with a Cheshire grin and sexily strolled down the hall, leaving Beatrice speechless and in pain as her "little soldier" had yet to fire.

Sign, I agree with a lot of points you made as well. What is considered "proper English" is highly debatable. I don't want to read someone speaking in the dialect of William Shakespeare. Maybe some people do. But I just want my emotions to be piqued. I understand that emotions are highly subjective and only a great piece of writing can pique the interest of the entire world.

Cost-benefit analysis is a pessimistic method to look at the world. But for certain writers, I cannot understand why they choose to have such an endless well of altruism for their readers and for themselves. Just the fact that they are writing under an anonymous pen-name and may never get their work published is simply boggling to common sense.

I think that good writers who continue to write without any benefit should be highly respected. But often times I feel that they do not receive their proper due for their time and effort.

I understand that I have created an impenetrable buffer. I criticize the idea of a forum board and yet I claim that I'm not a good writer. I will not deny that this is a "defensive bullwark" to block me from accusations of being the very "elitist" that I state that I hate. But these opinions are also sincere. I do think that "tl;dr" and "ftw" are atrocities. Even though they may have practical usage in sparing half a minute, writing is not a practicality, it's a passion.

Sign I honestly don't deserve your respect at all. The English courses I have taken are: Scientific Writing, Research Writing For Science, Research Writing For Philosophy, Expository Writing, and Research Grant Proposals. Even though I might chug out an English minor after four years, my core concentration is in the field of Genetics. In my spare time, I re-hash and destroy fiction stories that don't go beyond page thirty. I only have a few stories that I have determined are acceptable only after working on them slowly for years. I do not deserve the respect which you have given me and I'm surprised by the quality and the kindness of the posts which have followed my original rant.

I used to leisurely write fetish stories for a 35+ community. I have learned a lot about evoking emotion but not nearly enough to be able to fluently draw out the purist of human ideologies: innocence, sympathy, love, and respect. I often have trouble with fluid structure and I often treat writing as if I was Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Writing can be fun as well. But I personally feel a lot of posted works can still go through another round of revision.

- I've basically said all I've wanted to say. Thank you. -[/SIZE]

lol after reading 1st post now i get it