>>371796>>371817Video is actually pretty solid. Several of these points are things I've pointed out repeatedly in reviews I've done, so I feel a bit vindicated. If ever I'm in doubt, I at least know that I'm as qualified to give writing advice as some numale on YouTube.
> I don't like the word "writing" or to describe authors as "writers". I prefer "storyteller" and I think the distinction between them matters.Definitely two separate but interrelated crafts. Writing is the act of constructing a written document, and it's mostly a technical process. Storytelling, or maybe "storycraft" would be a better word for it, is a more nuanced skill that is harder to teach or explain.
Crafting a story is about not only putting the events of the story together, but understanding who your characters are and why they are doing what they are doing. I generally agree with you that storycraft is the more important of the two, as it determines whether or not the story speaks to the reader or moves them. Writing is the act of communicating it to the reader. Someone who can write well but can't put a good story together isn't likely to move anyone regardless of how prettily they can write.
That Chatoyance Kafka thing I reviewed earlier is a good example of this. By Fimfic standards, Chatoyance is actually a pretty good writer, but his storycraft leaves a lot to be desired. His characters were mostly bland and forgettable, the story wasn't all that interesting or moving, and it suffered from pacing problems.
That said, I wouldn't say that writing should be entirely discounted. Even if you have a great story with great characters and you can see every scene clearly inside your head, if you can't communicate it to people in language they can understand, you'll never be able to make the audience see what you see.
Rainmetall is a good example of this issue. The author clearly had something epic in mind, but between the ESL and the bizarre formatting, it was just too damned hard to understand. Most of his vision was lost in translation.
The ideal is to have both skills, but if you're going to be strong in one and weak in the other, being proficient at storycraft and deficient at writing is better than the other way around.
>I struggle with the language barrier and with overwriting.>My struggles with the language barrier includes: A lack of vocabulary, faulty grammar, and spelling errors.To be perfectly honest, this is why I let you slide on a lot of things that I would hammer other authors over. As I've said before, you have a pretty good instinct for building a story, you mostly just struggle with actually writing it out. Quite a bit of this is probably due to ESL. I agree that you'd probably be better off using simple language that conveys what's happening, rather than trying to get too fancy. However:
>>He cycled past a bunch of houses.>I'd probably write this instead:>>He pedaled in a steady rhythm past a bunch of blue houses with climbing vegetation sticking to their porches' fences.and
> if we followed the advice that characterization is a always a plus. However, if I force characterization on character who's only purpose in my story is to fight in an action scene, I'm not using my time on what makes me passionate about my story. Something to keep in mind here is that sometimes these details do matter. The important skill you'll want to develop is learning to sense which details are important enough to include. Sometimes the color of the houses or the type of vegetation are important to the setting.
For instance, in
Absalom, Absalom Faulkner spends a lot of time talking about wisteria, and climbing vines on the sides of the plantation house, and shit like that. The little details don't matter to the plot, but they do help paint a picture of the natural environment of the American South, which actually is essential to the story.
Likewise with characters. If a character just fills a perfunctory role in a single scene, he probably doesn't need any serious characterization, and it would be a waste of time and space trying to cook up an elaborate backstory for him. However, it's worth keeping in mind that the character is still a distinct personality, and that for this imaginary person, the moment he appears in your story is the culmination of his entire life up until that point. Evil Ninja A might serve no role in the story other than to throw a few punches for Anon to deflect before getting knocked unconscious and tossed off the roof. However, he has a distinct personality and a past, and all of that factors into why he is where he is, and why he is trying to use his sick Ninja skills to try and beat Anon into submission. Thinking about your characters in this way and trying to understand them will actually make it easier to write them in a more simplified way: if you know exactly who Evil Ninja A really is, then you should instinctively know what he will do in the story and thus won't need to spend any serious page space explaining his actions.
It's worth noting that, while this technically has to do with execution, it's a storycraft concept more than a writing concept.
As an aside, one of the things I've been trying to work on recently is developing a distinct narrative voice in my stories, instead of just narrating events. For instance, the last thing I did on Fimfic is a story told by an old pony looking back on a formative event that happened when he was young. The events of the story would play out the same one way or the other, but the way it's told adds an interpretive layer that otherwise wouldn't be there. The older version of the character is able to reflect on these events and see them in a way that his younger self wouldn't have been able to at the time, thus the narrative voice is actually part of the story.
As another aside, I've resumed work on The Muffins of Madness, and I'm trying to do something similar with narrative voice in that one.