[OT] SatChat: What do you do in your writing that you feel is unique? (New here? Introduce yourself!)

[u/MajorParadox]

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What do you do in your writing that you feel is unique?

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[u/a15minutestory]

I've never responded to one of these, but I guess I'll introduce myself!

But first, what makes my writing unique...

I've been told that I'm skilled at painting a picture vividly within someone's mind without bogging them down with too many details. Make of that what you will =P

My name is u/a15minutestory, and I'm a 29 year old male living in the southern United States. I've been redditing on my main account for... pshh... over a decade at least? I've been writing at Writing Prompts for a long long time on my other account. I'd drop in once every couple of weeks and dust off the ol' keyboard. I recently made the decision to to try to get a collection of my short stories published, and having made that decision I decided to write more of them. I created a new account and established a subreddit for the stories that I write during my fifteen minute break at work. I pretty much exclusively write here, but I do have a few favorite authors on here that I'll read if I see they've responded to a prompt I'm interested in.

I've been writing for... wow. It's been a really long time. I started drawing my own comics during elementary school. I met a kid who also liked drawing comics, and so we became one another's readers. I later got involved in a creative writing text-based adventure game called Hyrule Adventures, and it was an offshoot of an old web forum called The Desert Colossus. There were probably 20 dedicated players and I learned the bulk of my writing from those guys. Most of them were older than me and their writing was just so good. I wanted to be as good as they were, and I wrote alongside those guys and gals from age 13 to about 25! Everyone grew up and started getting jobs and having kids, and our little game kind of just died in obscurity.

My motivation has changed over the years. Initially, I felt that I was good enough to be an author and I wanted to make money doing what I loved. But what I learned last year, while working like crazy, was that I actually suffer creative backup if I don't write! I become genuinely unhappy until I'm able to get creative and write something- even if it's something nobody else will pay attention to or enjoy. I pretty much just write all my stories in reddit's browser. If my story is long enough, I'll plug it into word to make proofreading faster.

I can type almost 60 words a minute. It's how I'm able to cram so much story into 15 minutes when I want to.

If I were to want to advertise anything, it's the writing prompt I responded to called: “You’ve reached 911. This service is no longer operational. All citizens are advised to seek shelter. Goodbye.”

The readers took an interest in it and enough people asked for a part two that I wrote a second part. And then a third. And a fourth. And soon enough I was wrapping up part 30, and taking a break before the beginning of the second arc. I'm posting part 31 tomorrow, and I'd absolutely love and welcome more people to follow along. I just crossed the 50,000 word mark and I'm only halfway through the second arc. The third arc will probably put me in the 100,000 word range, which is pretty much a novel the size of To Kill a Mockingbird. I have full faith that this story has legs and will be scooped up by a publisher and I couldn't be more excited.

Thanks for reading! Love you guys!

[u/MajorParadox → u/a15minutestory]

I've been writing for... wow. It's been a really long time. I started drawing my own comics during elementary school.

I did the same thing when I was a kid! What kind of comics did you make?

Also, would you like some user flair for your subreddit?

[u/TilDeathIWillFight]

I’m not sure if it counts as unique but I try to keep the endings of my stories more realistic. I guess that’s really not the word for it since happy endings can be realistic as well, but I choose to make most of mine a bit less like a happily ever after. In fact, most of mine are sad. I like making my readers feel things and although there are other emotions besides sadness, I find that darker themes tend to get more of a reaction and causes the reader to latch onto those moments. A nice morning in the sunlight with your friends is a wonderful memory but you’re sooner to forget that than the night your best friend died. I want my endings to be memorable and make you feel something intense. I know that my favorite stories are the ones that made me cry

[u/MajorParadox → u/TilDeathIWillFight]

That makes sense!

[u/Orion-The-King]

Well my grammar sucks both in English and in my native language so I guess that makes it unique

[u/MajorParadox → u/Orion-The-King]

Aww, keep at it and you'll improve, though!

[u/Phaedra74]

Hi folks, 40yo male here from Edinburgh, Scotland. Been an off-add-on redditor under various usernames for a few years, just discovered Writing Prompts quite recently when a couple of posts came up in r/all.

Tried some rough writing to four or five prompts so far, and hoping to do a lot more. Civil servant by trade, so that gives me plenty writing experience too (albeit in very dry corporate-speak!)

Aiming to take creative writing more seriously in the coming years, so at the moment just figuring out what I want to do, what my strengths are etc. Guessing that character writing will be one of my weaknesses, so keen to sharpen that up.

Also wanting to discover my own voice and not be derivative. My biggest formative influence has to be C S Lewis, especially the Cosmic Trilogy. The main things I read for pleasure nowadays tend to be weirder writers like Philip K Dick and Thomas Ligotti, so don't want to copy their styles (for one thing, it would be a terrible imitation). Do want to write fairly strange, fantasy/sci-fi/philosophical-speculative stuff, if I can work out an original way of doing it.

Nice to meet you all!

[u/MajorParadox → u/Phaedra74]

Guessing that character writing will be one of my weaknesses, so keen to sharpen that up.

That's good you can recognize that and work on improving it! Good luck!

[u/AslandusTheLaster]

Honestly, a lot of the quirks of my writing are partly unique, but I doubt any of them are wholly unprecedented. I think the most unique thing is probably the blend of antipathy, warmth, and humor that soaks into most of my writing. I'm not sure the exact numbers, but I'd wager at least half of my writing includes things like systems not working like they should, characters being kind of unpleasant and/or flippant, and making bizarre decisions due to personal knowledge or scruples.

At the same time, there's also undercurrents of people fond of each other sharing a trust and understanding that's often absent in fiction, and society tending to work with or around flaws instead of utterly collapsing when they're encountered. I don't know if I'd call it realistic, but it definitely has a charm to it that most of what I read doesn't really offer.