Fiction writing support group/Participants

Introduce yourself and your fiction writing goals.

User:JWSchmidt. I've been an amateur writer of fiction for about thirty years. I enjoy using fiction to explore and play with new ideas. I'm particularly interested in hard science fiction, social science fiction and alternate history. I write fiction in order to explore ideas about how thinking creatures can arise and evolve, become aware of their place in the universe and then develop technology that allows them to shape themselves and their surroundings. I'm interested in using computer technology to explore new ways of producing and sharing fiction. I'd like to experiment with Wikiversity as a place where strangers can meet and collaborate on fiction writing projects and the development of new software tools that facilitate such collaborations. I think fiction writing has a bright future as part of Web 2.0....a future in which many more people will become creators and sharers of fiction rather than consumers of the few stale plots and stories that dominate a commercial market.--JWSchmidt 21:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Angelica Klosky. I've been a fiction writer for most of the time that I've known how to use a pencil, but only in the last six months have I embarked on seriously writing a story that I intend for strangers to read. (My first attempt at this was a novella which died, incomplete, around the 20 thousandth word. The second, which is currently in progress, is going much better.) My goals are mainly to get all of the ideas driving me insane onto the screen. (The ideas for my latest story keep me up at night, and absolutely beg me to type them at 74 WPM.) Both of these stories were/are being released serially through The Internet, because I just couldn't pull these characters out of the video-game-universe that inspired them, darnit! (How this relates to Wikiversity: If anybody would like to help me reform the story so it's entirely original material in return, I would be infinitely grateful, and will totally try to help you with your fiction projects to the best of my ability.) --Angelica Klosky 22:34, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Luai lashire. I've been making up stories in my head for as long as I can remember, and sometime in my early school years I began to write them down. Most of what I write is novel-length fantasy, generally aimed at a young adult audience, though I dable in other genres and also write a lot of poetry. My work is driven by intricate worldbuilding, which often interests me much more than the plot, although I try to have engaging plotlines too. I like exploring ways societies would have developed differently with the powerful resource of magic to draw on. I've had work published in literary magazines three times and am currently finishing my first novel, titled Sapphire Eyes (I'm currently at roughly 40,000 words and about two chapters from the end). I would really enjoy sharing what I know about writing, getting useful critique, and collaborating with other writers to make a finished work. --Luai lashire 19:00, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Bryan See. I've been started making stories in my head for years, and sometime in 2005, particularly after the release of Star Wars Episode III, I started on the story of Fan Wars with the same plot from the 1999 fanfilm of the same name but with a different setting: Fans invading an apartment building, and the good men in the military and the government agents are trapped with no way of calling backup, as well as worldbuilding in my universe of which Fan Wars set in. My Fan Wars is right now in development hell, and yet most of my family are not in a position to help me in creative fiction writing right now. I like exploring the uses of realism and "naturalistic science fiction", a term coined by Ronald D. Moore, creator of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, because I believe it is perhaps the only way to take science fiction out of space opera, in which Star Wars and Star Trek are parts (I am a Star Wars and Star Trek fan). I didn't read books as of now, and I don't know about interesting, believable, compelling, and popular character building and creation, as well as most of the fiction writing itself. I like to share what I know about writing, getting useful critique, collaborating with other writers to make a finished work that will someday turn into a film, and need some writing advice and guide. Bryan See 16:09, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

User:KirbyPuckettFan. I have wanted to be a novelist since I was ten years old, and I like to think I have sufficient enough talent for it (I think dialogue is my strongest suit). But I have a few weak points that I'd like to work on as a member of this group, the most discouraging being "discipline." I just don't have enough of it to sustain writing like I should. I have literally hundreds of opening sequences for stories that I've written and abandoned. I'll get a flash of inspiration one day and just knock out one, two, three, four paragraphs (sometimes even one to two pages!) on the spot. When I'm in the zone, writing, developing an idea, it's the best natural high ever. But then I either run into a wall with the plot or lose interest in it all together. When I come up with story ideas, I get lots of broad, sweeping ones that I think will be great, but once I try to fill in the specific details, I really struggle. I need to find the structure and discipline that will prevent my stories from dying before they've even had a chance to live. My other huge problem is a lack of "thick skin" and distance with regard to receiving constructive criticism of my work. I need to work on separating myself from what I write, so that I no longer feel that someone pointing out a flaw in my story is somehow saying that I'm flawed as a person. This is probably due in part to the fact that a lot of my main characters are fictional derivatives of my real self; I use fiction as a way to place myself in a more desirable state than the one in which reality has put me (I'm handicapped in a wheelchair with Cerebral Palsy). My fiction allows me to escape my physical confines and live through my characters; I've lived a rather sheltered life and writing helps me use my imagination to escape it and reflect on it. I've been told my writing is crisp and clear when I avoid abstractions and don't gloss over the details of a scene. I'd like to work on improving as a writer.--KirbyPuckettFan 22:42, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Davichito: I have been an amateur science fiction writer for six months but in this time I have written one novel, started another and wrote 3 full short stories. I like hard science fiction but I can include esoteric plots into it. See The search for Kalid, for instance. I like to write novels in collaboration; I have written one novel along with JWSchmidt. --Davichito 15:54, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Trinity507: I've been writing pretty much as long as I can remember, primarily fiction. Originally my interests were in historical fiction, then they shifted to fantasy, and now rest primarily in science fiction. I've had a few of my reviews and poems published and have short stories in the works, as well as two full-length novels. Unfortunately my story attention span is very short so I'd like to improve my focus as well as my writing! :-) Trinity507 05:14, 17 October 2009 (UTC)