Monday, May 27, 2013

Inspirational Monday! Tvtropes and Patience

Technically the first Monday of every month is inspirational Monday but I forgot this month because the first Monday was the sixth. So instead I'm doing it on the last Monday of the month. Surprise!

This is another one about tvtropes. The last one was about Tvtropes curing a writer of delusions of originality. ( You can read it here) This one is about how it can teach patience. As seen in the quote at the top of this blog, it will be framed in the duality of Creation and Destruction.

When writing and especially revising, the writing process can be frustratingly slow. Sentences sound like trash, the scenes come out awkward, and every revision reveals more typos and more areas to improve. Tvtropes is a terrific place for learning the finer points of revision and developing the patience to endure them.

As a volunteer book reviewer I create tvtropes pages for books if I like them enough. I recommend all authors do this because filling up a trope page forces one to think about the nuts and bolts of storytelling. The plot and characters and setting are compartmentalized into aspects such as "The Chessmaster", "The Reveal", and "Medieval Stasis". Individual scenes are sorted into exposition, awesome, and nightmare fuel.  Analyzing a story and researching tvtropes long enough to accomplish this requires a time and continuous effort and so it will help you develop patience. Furthermore your knowledge of storytelling will expand and your understanding of storytelling will increase.

As a volunteer wiki editor I skim tvtropes pages looking for misuse and incorrect formatting. This involves looking for incorrect trope usage, gushing, natter (conversations outside of forums) and other things.  I call it training from hell for an author because it is boring, monotonous, frustrating, and there can be a thousand and one tiny things wrong with a badly misused page.  After a list of five hundred where you have to wade through a sea of stupidity and complaining and gushing where each wick could be misuse for five other tropes, revising one's own story looks easy and relaxing in comparison.

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