Tell all Tuesday · AI Pro Writers Studio

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Tell all Tuesday

I had a different idea for today but it'll slide until next week.

I'll eventually settle down to regular offerings you can look forward to each day ending in "y" and expect the same but for now I'm Wild Westing it and shooting from the hip (accurate to about 10 feet or 3 meters for you folks that do it right - we even do math weird in America).

I'm cross posting this from the Ink & Echoes Discord Server for a couple reasons. First to share my take on BIAM and using WCP this month and second for some critique on WCP's look and feel.

I was asked "Should we use Colm's prompts or our old one's"?

My take on this relates to how we learn. If you want to join a group project and learn a new method to do something you really should follow the method until you decide whether it is for you or not. Very few things in life are set in stone "DO IT THIS WAY OR ELSE" There are a few I can think of that I wouldn't want to be the first to experiment with. Ordinance Disposal is the first that comes to my mind--I was offered that job once. Turned it down because I really like my hands where they are.

"Writers Write, Always." I thought this was by a famous writer, I had to do some research. It's actually a paraphrase from the philosopher Epictetus, but the actually phrase comes from "Throw Momma from the Train". Which I found insanely funny that the source comes from there.

Write for yourself.

Write for your family.

Write for your friends.

Write for your culture.

Write for you Audience.

Write for your fans.

Write for your genre.

Write for your time.

Write what the money.

Have i forgotten any? That's NINE separate audiences that hopefully if you want more success than "I did it" overlap. Very few can make all nine happy, so why worry about it? YOU get to pick your direction, you get to decide what it means to you. I think most of us are here to try to be more productive and successful.

So WHO do you write for and WHY do you write?

My answer to this: I primarily write for me, to get stories out of my head that I've been writing snippets, scenes, and doggerel about for 5 decades (since I learned how to write and put coherent thoughts together). If people actually read it, like it and it makes me some cash, well I think that would be a pretty awesome thing, but i truly doubt I will ever be able to eat off of what I write. Thankfully that is not my goal and not my source of happiness with what I do.

ah. yes "That is the right question?". My favorite line from the I,robot movie that is nothing like the original book. I recommend them both. I've said this before. I've been IT and customer service since I was 12 years old. That was 1980. This thought only really gelled in my head in the last couple of years. and poignant today as it is my 5th year anniversary in my current IT job. What do I really do? "My job is and always has been to keep other people working". I finally know my place in life and I'm pretty damn good at it most of the time. That's what brought us here. a culmination of my life's purpose with something I am passionate about as my next career. Just narrowing my supporting niche to creatives.

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My answer to the BIAM Question was this:

Depends on how you want to work (always) There are no real rules to writing other than keeping your audience happy and some don't even care much about that.

In this case. I'm actually doing this three ways now in three book files. My idea may be too complex for Colm's prompts so I ran with it in WCP using the 4 phase system and I'm building my characters now and love the story.

I have a second book setup using the setup i posted above ONLY using colm's prompts and using the same logline as a seed. its a similar but much different story that may be just as good and has some really interesting stuff from his prompts that I really like (fell asleep on the couch last night reading through and editing the results. I'm going to follow his system as closely as i can with this one.

and the third I'm going hybrid using the outputs of his prompts and tossing them at story development to see what they do with it.

The end result should be at least two interesting books, possibly three in which case I guess I just get a new pen name and publish 3 instead of 1 or two? yay me?

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