Goldie's Words of Wisdom
Goldie's Secrets to the universe and all of that.
1) Believe in the something greater than yourself.
2) Believe in others.
3) Believe in yourself.
4) Helping others is a path to a greater you.
5) Pay it back and/or pay it forward.
6) Keep your word.
7) Don't believe the lies.
8) Fuck AI.
9) Don't feed the bears. (Trolls)
10) The free market fixes all ills.
11) You have the skill. You can do it.
Goldie's Keys to success
Persistence and Attitude
Goldie's Rules
1) Write Everyday.
2) Finish it.
3) Don't seek feedback till its finished.
4) Don't beat yourself up.
5) Review the crap out of other people's stuff.
6) Don't let the bastards get you down.
7) Give the story what it needs.
8) Write with courage.
9) Write it true.
10) Less is more.
11) Write for meaning.
Goldie's Quotables:
1) Words on page beats thinking about words on page.
2) The rough is the outline.
3) Your growth is not dependent on their skill. <--Meaning, even bad writers and bad reviewers can still be used to sharpen your tools.
4) Write it ugly. <--Give yourself permission to...
5) You can't edit what isn't written.
6) One in hand is better than two not written.
7) 300 words a day is better than 0 a day.
8) No one ever got better at writing by not writing.
9) If you allow those who would be offended impede the story that needs to be told, it will never be told.
10) Inexperience is easy to fix. Just start writing, and then the experience magically appears.
11) Its an Art and not a Science. Art is a lifelong passion. Have passion and practice follows.
12) The book is put down when the mystery ends.
13) If the book you are writing does not make you want to get up in the middle of the night to write more, its not worth writing.
14) Make it matter, meaning if you gonna put it in the story, make it matter that it was there. Otherwise, why are we including this?
15) The question is never, is the work hard? The question is always, do you have a passion for it or not?
16) 'It Depends' is secretly the answer to every forum question.
17) Begin a story at the moment when everything changes.
Some Wisdom from Others:
1) Way Point Writer: "I know where I'm going, I know where I'm starting, and I know of the key plot-points in between." ~ Demesnedenoir
2) Rule of Cool: "If it breaks the rules, but its cool, go for it." ~ A. E. Lowan
2a) The Holdo Maneuver--where sometimes one might think its cool, but really its not and it ruins everything. Don't do it.
3) On World Building: "Character first, world second." ~ Prince of Spires
4) On Art: Art will never take a back seat to rules and regulations ~ the Xena Scrolls
5) Escapist fantasy: where the MC are pulled out of retirement for one last job ~ Adray
6) Finished work belongs to readers ~ Jennifer Luke
7) The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist. ~David Hockney
8) 'More like guidelines than actual rules' ~ Capt Barbosa, POTC
Jargon to help things along:
1) Tag On's: Little bits of sentence that are extraneous and can be removed. The dog bit John on the leg. <--'On the leg' is a tag on.
2) Word Stuffing: Stuffing in extraneous words to make the work look fatter and more filled out.
3) Blowing me over: Coming in with so much action, or zany activity, that I am supposed to think 'wow, that's a lot of character', when really, it is all empty.
4) You do you (or some version thereof...): This phrase has no place on a forum site, where people are posting for the commentary and scrutiny of others, and the atmosphere of members reading and commenting on other members is the currency of the site. If 'you do you,' is your thing, you are in the wrong place.
5) The Rule of Three: When I use the rule of three, I usually mean it to mean, everything gets three descriptors. The mountains were (1) tall, (2) cracked by ice, and (3) shining like dull grey spears against the silver sky. OR, his sword of was of bright metal that (1) gleamed in the sun like a hot brand, (2) lit with flame, and (3) bearing sigils.
Why does three work? I dont know, but it rings with the right amount of beats and resonates pleasantly on the reading ear. Four is almost always too many, and two is often not enough.
But the rule of three appears in many other places as well. Three acts to a story, three pulls at the well. If you set up a joke on act one, you can hit it again in act two and again in act three. Though each time it should come differently, and build on what was left, Three, I think, it the right number of times to pull at it.
The rule of three is a real thing in writing and a good measure to follow if one is wondering if enough is enough. Writers should have this in their tool box.
6) Belief and False Belief: Belief and false belief is one of those tool that just make writing cool. It explore growth and brings the reader along with it. What is it? Essentially it is whatever the character/s believe that is not true, and they have to come to grips with in the span of the story.
An example might be a character who believes they are not worthy of capable to defeat their monsters. That they are not physically strong enough or skilled enough. The Karate Kid follows this, when Danny is beaten down in act one, and doubts himself over his bullies, and then is beaten again after much training in act two, but in act three, sees his way through to the true forms and defeats his tormentor by staying true to what he has learned. His false belief was that he could not, but what was true came out instead.
Books that helped me along the way:
1) Fantasy Reference - Not sure if I have exactly this one, but I have one like it.
2) You can Write a Romance - There are a number of books in this group by Writers Digest. You can write a Romance, You can write a mystery, You can write a ____... Short and to the point. I liked them. (And now that I am looking, there are some more, so I may buy another).
3) First Five Pages - I liked this book a lot when I was just starting. I think I have another by Mr. Lukeman, but I dont remember the title.
4) Elements of Style - There are many style guides, but I am old school. I defer to this when there is a question.
5) Art of Styling Sentences - I think it is this one. Another short and to the point (Notice a theme?)
6) English Grammar and Composition - The one you had in College
7) Mythology - I have many books on Mythology, but Edith Hamilton's was the one I had in school
8) Dragon Grammar Book <--had to buy this cause of the dragon. Quick and to the point. I like it.
9) Emotion Thesaurus <--Bought this, but have not really looked through it yet. Still looks like it would be good to have.
In looking for these, I came across some others I might buy in the near future.
Uncovering Mythology Collection
Fantasy Writers Handbook
How to Write Fantasy - Looks similar to the writers digest ones. Maybe....
Dear Writer, you need to quit - Okay, title grabbed me
Writing Voice - Voice always holds a strong interest from me.
Self Publishing Empire - But of course...
Though, if I am being honest, I am not expecting to get much out of these anymore.
Ones I did not like.....
Steven King's how to write book. Had a few good parts, but too much Steven King
On writing by Zinser? Hated this one. Too long winded, not enough getting to it.
Hero of a thousand faces. Kind of the bible right? I did not care for this book. Erudite is how I would describe it. Saying a lot while also saying nothing.
Trope Thesaurus <--I would avoid anything that uses the word 'Trope' like the plague.
That's enough. Good luck with them.
Goldie's opinion on Tropes:
Tropes are nothing more than that something on the page, is something, someone has noticed, is similar to something that happened in another story before...similar, but not exact.
This propensity to look for patterns is ingrained in the human machine, and so it is not surprising that many find it, and then think it meaningful.
While it is sometimes a fun activity to go through various lists of tropes, and talk them up or talk them down, the tropes themselves are nothing but empty vessels, standing in for things with more meaning, but themselves having none.
A more accurate position is that these things are nothing more than phantoms of the uninvestigated of our craft. The musings of those who want to seem to dig deeply, but never really break the surface. Stories are not made of tropes. They are made of greater elements like plot, theme, character, setting and so on. The meaning of the story comes from the creators vision of what they trying to tell, and their execution in telling it. That some things occur that seem like other things that occur in other works is only to be expected. It is the nature of things, that once conflicts are set in motion, and character choices begin to take hold, they will stumble into areas that others may have also stumbled into. That does not make them the same, because around those events and occurrences, is everything else about the story.
While tropes may seem a fun topic, they are more the exercise of mental masturbation, a pretending to have great insight into something, when there is nothing to have insight into. Story matters, tropes only lay upon them like leeches trying to be of worth.
More simply, to focus on tropes like they matter is to miss that they do not matter at all.
But, tropes have a second aspect to them, which for me, is why I think Authors ought to avoid and disavow them. And that is, it is belittling to the work and effort we put in. Many of us take years to write our stories, and the pieces of them were never pulled from some grab bag of 'tropes', but instead are the thought-out, anguished over, choices of the author to include the stuff that tells their story in the best way they can, and keeping out of the story all the stuff that is not helping it. To look at your own, or the work of others, and reduce them to 'tropes' is to remove the human art behind them. To, in effect, discard and dismiss them as not having a worthy voice, and not being anything more than something constructed from a grab bag anyone could have pulled from. That is wrong, and should not be the way serious writers approach other writers, or other works.
And so my hope is, as we mature, we will evolve and transcend, and leave all thoughts of what is a trope and what isn't behind. A trope is not what writing is about. In fact, it is just a lot of nothing.
What is better than thinking in terms of tropes?
Writing it true!!!
I doesn't matter what people think of it. You have to write the story and the characters as they are, and let them have their strong and weak moments. Is your girl a damsel? So what, let her be a damsel. Is your boy a farm boy suddenly on a heroes quest? so what, lets explore who he is.
The trouble in writing does not come from having or not having tropes, it comes from artificial efforts to write things that don't ring true. That may upset some people's wishful thinking about the world, but writing things false will become a harsh teacher. Write it true, and you are Golden
Goldie's thoughts on AI?
Answer: Don't.
AI is surely a useful tool, and in many aspects of many people lives, will provide a great benefit.
But...we are here to be artists, and writers. There is no room in art for AI.
Art is the highest endeavor of one's spirit and calling. To put ourselves in our craft and to reach out across the eons of time, that we had something to say, and we said it. To remove that spirit, to invite a robot in to do it for you, is to kill what is best about our human quality. If this is your path, I will not go on it with you.
I do not care what shortcut you think AI helped you achieve. If you are using AI to do your writing for you (even a paragraph), you are taking the humanity, and yourself, out of the equation, and making dead your word on page. I have no interest in it, and if I know you are using AI, I will not help you.
I would instead challenge you, and everyone else who sees this, to aspire to something greater than regurgitated AI spew. Aspire to be the artist you really can be.
But...Goldie, what if I just used it for...X?
Don't come to me calling yourself a writer if AI is doing your writing, or planning, or organizing or whatever for you. Learn the craft, put in the effort, and be something worth following.
But AI Voice, and AI Book covers...
Honestly, I wont balk too much at these, other than, AI is probably stealing someone else's work to make them, and its an easy step from using it here, to using it everywhere. I want to matter because I matter. I want you to be the same.
AI makes you not matter.
But...But....
Make your own choices. Own what it makes you.
Link to my website: www.pphersongreen.com
Read my stories: The Eye of Ebon <--for sale on Amazon!
Questions or comments? PM Box
Goldie's Secrets to the universe and all of that.
1) Believe in the something greater than yourself.
2) Believe in others.
3) Believe in yourself.
4) Helping others is a path to a greater you.
5) Pay it back and/or pay it forward.
6) Keep your word.
7) Don't believe the lies.
8) Fuck AI.
9) Don't feed the bears. (Trolls)
10) The free market fixes all ills.
11) You have the skill. You can do it.
Goldie's Keys to success
Persistence and Attitude
Goldie's Rules
1) Write Everyday.
2) Finish it.
3) Don't seek feedback till its finished.
4) Don't beat yourself up.
5) Review the crap out of other people's stuff.
6) Don't let the bastards get you down.
7) Give the story what it needs.
8) Write with courage.
9) Write it true.
10) Less is more.
11) Write for meaning.
Goldie's Quotables:
1) Words on page beats thinking about words on page.
2) The rough is the outline.
3) Your growth is not dependent on their skill. <--Meaning, even bad writers and bad reviewers can still be used to sharpen your tools.
4) Write it ugly. <--Give yourself permission to...
5) You can't edit what isn't written.
6) One in hand is better than two not written.
7) 300 words a day is better than 0 a day.
8) No one ever got better at writing by not writing.
9) If you allow those who would be offended impede the story that needs to be told, it will never be told.
10) Inexperience is easy to fix. Just start writing, and then the experience magically appears.
11) Its an Art and not a Science. Art is a lifelong passion. Have passion and practice follows.
12) The book is put down when the mystery ends.
13) If the book you are writing does not make you want to get up in the middle of the night to write more, its not worth writing.
14) Make it matter, meaning if you gonna put it in the story, make it matter that it was there. Otherwise, why are we including this?
15) The question is never, is the work hard? The question is always, do you have a passion for it or not?
16) 'It Depends' is secretly the answer to every forum question.
17) Begin a story at the moment when everything changes.
Some Wisdom from Others:
1) Way Point Writer: "I know where I'm going, I know where I'm starting, and I know of the key plot-points in between." ~ Demesnedenoir
2) Rule of Cool: "If it breaks the rules, but its cool, go for it." ~ A. E. Lowan
2a) The Holdo Maneuver--where sometimes one might think its cool, but really its not and it ruins everything. Don't do it.
3) On World Building: "Character first, world second." ~ Prince of Spires
4) On Art: Art will never take a back seat to rules and regulations ~ the Xena Scrolls
5) Escapist fantasy: where the MC are pulled out of retirement for one last job ~ Adray
6) Finished work belongs to readers ~ Jennifer Luke
7) The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist. ~David Hockney
8) 'More like guidelines than actual rules' ~ Capt Barbosa, POTC
Jargon to help things along:
1) Tag On's: Little bits of sentence that are extraneous and can be removed. The dog bit John on the leg. <--'On the leg' is a tag on.
2) Word Stuffing: Stuffing in extraneous words to make the work look fatter and more filled out.
3) Blowing me over: Coming in with so much action, or zany activity, that I am supposed to think 'wow, that's a lot of character', when really, it is all empty.
4) You do you (or some version thereof...): This phrase has no place on a forum site, where people are posting for the commentary and scrutiny of others, and the atmosphere of members reading and commenting on other members is the currency of the site. If 'you do you,' is your thing, you are in the wrong place.
5) The Rule of Three: When I use the rule of three, I usually mean it to mean, everything gets three descriptors. The mountains were (1) tall, (2) cracked by ice, and (3) shining like dull grey spears against the silver sky. OR, his sword of was of bright metal that (1) gleamed in the sun like a hot brand, (2) lit with flame, and (3) bearing sigils.
Why does three work? I dont know, but it rings with the right amount of beats and resonates pleasantly on the reading ear. Four is almost always too many, and two is often not enough.
But the rule of three appears in many other places as well. Three acts to a story, three pulls at the well. If you set up a joke on act one, you can hit it again in act two and again in act three. Though each time it should come differently, and build on what was left, Three, I think, it the right number of times to pull at it.
The rule of three is a real thing in writing and a good measure to follow if one is wondering if enough is enough. Writers should have this in their tool box.
6) Belief and False Belief: Belief and false belief is one of those tool that just make writing cool. It explore growth and brings the reader along with it. What is it? Essentially it is whatever the character/s believe that is not true, and they have to come to grips with in the span of the story.
An example might be a character who believes they are not worthy of capable to defeat their monsters. That they are not physically strong enough or skilled enough. The Karate Kid follows this, when Danny is beaten down in act one, and doubts himself over his bullies, and then is beaten again after much training in act two, but in act three, sees his way through to the true forms and defeats his tormentor by staying true to what he has learned. His false belief was that he could not, but what was true came out instead.
Books that helped me along the way:
1) Fantasy Reference - Not sure if I have exactly this one, but I have one like it.
2) You can Write a Romance - There are a number of books in this group by Writers Digest. You can write a Romance, You can write a mystery, You can write a ____... Short and to the point. I liked them. (And now that I am looking, there are some more, so I may buy another).
3) First Five Pages - I liked this book a lot when I was just starting. I think I have another by Mr. Lukeman, but I dont remember the title.
4) Elements of Style - There are many style guides, but I am old school. I defer to this when there is a question.
5) Art of Styling Sentences - I think it is this one. Another short and to the point (Notice a theme?)
6) English Grammar and Composition - The one you had in College
7) Mythology - I have many books on Mythology, but Edith Hamilton's was the one I had in school
8) Dragon Grammar Book <--had to buy this cause of the dragon. Quick and to the point. I like it.
9) Emotion Thesaurus <--Bought this, but have not really looked through it yet. Still looks like it would be good to have.
In looking for these, I came across some others I might buy in the near future.
Uncovering Mythology Collection
Fantasy Writers Handbook
How to Write Fantasy - Looks similar to the writers digest ones. Maybe....
Dear Writer, you need to quit - Okay, title grabbed me
Writing Voice - Voice always holds a strong interest from me.
Self Publishing Empire - But of course...
Though, if I am being honest, I am not expecting to get much out of these anymore.
Ones I did not like.....
Steven King's how to write book. Had a few good parts, but too much Steven King
On writing by Zinser? Hated this one. Too long winded, not enough getting to it.
Hero of a thousand faces. Kind of the bible right? I did not care for this book. Erudite is how I would describe it. Saying a lot while also saying nothing.
Trope Thesaurus <--I would avoid anything that uses the word 'Trope' like the plague.
That's enough. Good luck with them.
Goldie's opinion on Tropes:
Tropes are nothing more than that something on the page, is something, someone has noticed, is similar to something that happened in another story before...similar, but not exact.
This propensity to look for patterns is ingrained in the human machine, and so it is not surprising that many find it, and then think it meaningful.
While it is sometimes a fun activity to go through various lists of tropes, and talk them up or talk them down, the tropes themselves are nothing but empty vessels, standing in for things with more meaning, but themselves having none.
A more accurate position is that these things are nothing more than phantoms of the uninvestigated of our craft. The musings of those who want to seem to dig deeply, but never really break the surface. Stories are not made of tropes. They are made of greater elements like plot, theme, character, setting and so on. The meaning of the story comes from the creators vision of what they trying to tell, and their execution in telling it. That some things occur that seem like other things that occur in other works is only to be expected. It is the nature of things, that once conflicts are set in motion, and character choices begin to take hold, they will stumble into areas that others may have also stumbled into. That does not make them the same, because around those events and occurrences, is everything else about the story.
While tropes may seem a fun topic, they are more the exercise of mental masturbation, a pretending to have great insight into something, when there is nothing to have insight into. Story matters, tropes only lay upon them like leeches trying to be of worth.
More simply, to focus on tropes like they matter is to miss that they do not matter at all.
But, tropes have a second aspect to them, which for me, is why I think Authors ought to avoid and disavow them. And that is, it is belittling to the work and effort we put in. Many of us take years to write our stories, and the pieces of them were never pulled from some grab bag of 'tropes', but instead are the thought-out, anguished over, choices of the author to include the stuff that tells their story in the best way they can, and keeping out of the story all the stuff that is not helping it. To look at your own, or the work of others, and reduce them to 'tropes' is to remove the human art behind them. To, in effect, discard and dismiss them as not having a worthy voice, and not being anything more than something constructed from a grab bag anyone could have pulled from. That is wrong, and should not be the way serious writers approach other writers, or other works.
And so my hope is, as we mature, we will evolve and transcend, and leave all thoughts of what is a trope and what isn't behind. A trope is not what writing is about. In fact, it is just a lot of nothing.
What is better than thinking in terms of tropes?
Writing it true!!!
I doesn't matter what people think of it. You have to write the story and the characters as they are, and let them have their strong and weak moments. Is your girl a damsel? So what, let her be a damsel. Is your boy a farm boy suddenly on a heroes quest? so what, lets explore who he is.
The trouble in writing does not come from having or not having tropes, it comes from artificial efforts to write things that don't ring true. That may upset some people's wishful thinking about the world, but writing things false will become a harsh teacher. Write it true, and you are Golden
Goldie's thoughts on AI?
Answer: Don't.
AI is surely a useful tool, and in many aspects of many people lives, will provide a great benefit.
But...we are here to be artists, and writers. There is no room in art for AI.
Art is the highest endeavor of one's spirit and calling. To put ourselves in our craft and to reach out across the eons of time, that we had something to say, and we said it. To remove that spirit, to invite a robot in to do it for you, is to kill what is best about our human quality. If this is your path, I will not go on it with you.
I do not care what shortcut you think AI helped you achieve. If you are using AI to do your writing for you (even a paragraph), you are taking the humanity, and yourself, out of the equation, and making dead your word on page. I have no interest in it, and if I know you are using AI, I will not help you.
I would instead challenge you, and everyone else who sees this, to aspire to something greater than regurgitated AI spew. Aspire to be the artist you really can be.
But...Goldie, what if I just used it for...X?
Don't come to me calling yourself a writer if AI is doing your writing, or planning, or organizing or whatever for you. Learn the craft, put in the effort, and be something worth following.
But AI Voice, and AI Book covers...
Honestly, I wont balk too much at these, other than, AI is probably stealing someone else's work to make them, and its an easy step from using it here, to using it everywhere. I want to matter because I matter. I want you to be the same.
AI makes you not matter.
But...But....
Make your own choices. Own what it makes you.
Link to my website: www.pphersongreen.com
Read my stories: The Eye of Ebon <--for sale on Amazon!
Questions or comments? PM Box
