I once read a book about a teenager who attempted suicide. The whole story was about him dealing with the disability caused by the failed attempt and all the psychological effects it had on the people in his life. It was fascinating. I wish I could remember the title.
@@fguzman1030 That's not it. The main setting is his neighborhood and regular school, not a psychiatric ward. I looked at the author's other books. They don't match either. But I think it was published about the same time as Funny Story.
Related to the "I just want to be normal" trope, I don't see enough "character has life-long goals and the whole magic thing legitimately gets in the way." Like, what if Alice has always wanted to be a doctor and has been working hard at that since she was a kid? The fairies expect her to drop everything and be their queen, but she is studying for her MCATs. Or Leo has always dreamed of opening a business for assistive technology, but aliens abduct him the week before a big presentation. Basically no one "just wants to be normal" but plenty of people don't want the goals they're working toward to be interrupted because all the rules suddenly changed.
That... Actually sounds pretty interesting tbh 🤔 I usually get around the "I just wanna be normal!" trope with my patented method of "Geez, these magical powers are awesome! But this world _will_ kill me eventually, so pleeeaaase just let me go home!!"
@@midnight8341 My teenage protagonist doesn't want magic due to her disability, she's already had to fight to be recognized as a human being so it kinda sucks for her but she does want to be the person who has a huge purpose and now she does its just way more of a cost then she thought it would be.
Or you could make it darkly ironic, like Edgar always wanted to be a detective, but he's failed at that and now just wants to get by in life, but he can't because now he's forced to be friends with a violent madman while investigating whatever magical weirdness is corrupting him.
Yeah, I mean, having the responsibility of being "The Chosen One" pushed onto you, particularly if it costs you something, is not always fun. Remember how Aang's friends didn't want him to play in their ball games anymore after they found out he was the Avatar? And how sad that made him? Now imagine how somebody would feel if they realized they are likely to have to sacrifice a lot of their personal happiness in order to safe the world. It CAN suck. But of course it needs to be written convincingly, not just for cheap whining.
To those of you who can't even keep up a constant tense, fluctuating chaotically between present and past, living the constant struggle to keep your writing consistent: I feel your pain. You're not alone.
I'd be happy if someone would tell me WHERE I'm fluctuating between past and present tense. I know I use past tense for paragraphs and present for dialogue, but other than that I get complaints about my writing.
@@meganthompson6676 That's a pretty solid rule of thumb; present tense for speaking, past tense for everything else. When I screw it up, it's usually that I've been writing dialogue and have forgotten to switch back. It is a huge pain to fix it, but more because it's an hours worth of delete-one-letter-type-two-letters than anything else. Let whatever you've written sit for a week or two before you edit it, and you'll be much more likely to notice any mistakes you've made, including tense shifts.
I've been trying to develop a secondary character who is something of a flamboyant, pirate, jokester, warrior who speaks in a very upper class British accent. When I heard this line I immediately thought it would a be perfect line of dialog for him. 😀 I was just working on this character's profile yesterday, and when I heard Jenna say that line, it clicked in my mind that is exactly something my character would say, and exactly the way he would say it.
In middle school, the class was making person cut-outs and we were supposed to decorate them. My friend wanted to color a shirt and pants on ours, but then I loudly said "NO, I LIKE HIM NAKED". So thats quite an out-of-context quote, if the awkward stares I got were any indication.....
I think the day I write this also needs one, so here's the first line of my book that is currently being written: Alright, just to make it clear: when I said I want to leave this earth as I came, screaming, covered in blood, I did not mean it LITERALLY!
I guess there’s an odd one in every group. As a teenager I never wanted to be noticed. I didn’t stand out. I kept to myself and quiet. I actively hoped people would not look at me and never tried to draw attention to myself in class. I purposely avoided doing projects that made me stand in front of the class and when I had to do them with a group I volunteered to hold the big the poster board so I could hide behind it.
I think a lot of teens at least want to fit in. And the ones trying to stand out are often doing it in ways that are socially trendy or lauded, so they're still trying to fit into what society thinks is "cool."
@@VictorSnider If I did get them I wouldn’t advertise. I’d use them as an outlet to express my feelings, kind of like a journal. And if they ended up getting tired of listening me, I wouldn’t have blamed them at all.
@@joelmavity1467 maybe I’m taking this too seriously, but I totally get not advertising the powers. Like, it depends on what the powers are, but I’ll use telekinesis in my example because they’re the best power. If offered telekinesis (assuming there’s no immediate detrimental ramifications, like I run the risk of exploding my brain) I’d probably say yes. But now that I have them, if I show them off, what happens? Maybe the government tries to study/clone me, maybe I’m standing in the street and a car accident happens and they sue me because “she totally caused this with her mind powers.” It would be safer to keep them hidden from general public, but at the same time, I don’t know if I could keep myself from trying to help people if I have the power to (the age old “with great power comes great responsibility” dilemma). Which is technically vigilantism which is technically illegal and also I doubt I’m smart enough to not get caught. Which means I’d have cool powers but basically never get to use them and also worry about being a lab rat and possibly wracked with guilt from not helping that person who fell off that ladder and so forth. I’d still almost definitely have telekinesis if I could though, it would make chopping onions so much easier
Hey buddy. There's no such this as a disabled writer. In front of a laptop, or whatever instrument you use to write, all of us are writers. Whatever obstacle that is hindering you right now, I know that you can get past through it.
@@alvarezcharlesjoshuah.8086 No, no. I'm disabled. I have cerebral palsy. That's a disability. I use a wheelchair. Not a hindrance. I speak with a communication device. Not a hindrance. Disability is a part of life. Not a hindrance.
@@sarapyszka, I'm sorry to have make it more complicated. I must not have chose the right words to convey the essence of the message. (Well, it is something that I need to work on) By the way, I wish you more success in life.
As someone with a disabled mother it was so incredibly damaging growing up and seeing every fictional representation that looked like my mum die. Every story. Every time it was "inspiring" suicide or "noble" sacrifice and it was so horrific as a teen. I still get very animated about it. I'm ND and just swerve a bunch of fiction for that as well, but the inspiration porn was the most harmful for me when I was younger.
@@FaithTheFallen Neurotypical people tend not to like usage of abbreviations before revealing what they are. Please take this advice in consideration for next time.
@@marlonmoncrieffe0728 Hi! I appreciate you thinking this is helpful and am going to assume this has come from a good place. It isn't helpful though. I know NT (neurotypical) people who are not used to dealing with the rest of us can find jargon and shorthand confusing. This is good though, because that means you get a sliver of our experience dealing with an over aggressive social expectation of understanding unspoken and undefined rules and emotional cues which are actually highly personal but no one chooses to explain. We have to Google things - you can too! There is a whole online autistic community that will assist with that as well, if you come in with a healthy level of respect and not talking down to people. I expect you didn't think you were talking down to me, but you are asking me to do labour for you, which you could have done in the same time it took to type your comments, for some reason. Consider what that reason may be. You are also "informing" me of what you consider to be broad preferences, which again I will assume comes from a good place but it assumes I am not used to dealing with people. My mother is disabled and I am a carer. I am used to dealing with people, I just expect them to keep up with the basics. Consider how you speak to people next time.
@@FaithTheFallen ...Do LABOR for me? It is simple consideration to not use an abbreviation before establishing what you mean. Not only does it spare the reader confusion but also your time in explaining. ND could mean many different things after all. I do not know how much or little you dealt with people. I was just saying that you should consider establishing the definitions of abbreviations first. P.S. For the record, I do not mind abbreviations and use them myself; it is just inconsiderately confusing not explaining them first.
The last point reminded of a guy that i saw who was proud of himself bc he never read YA novels, not even as a teenager and that he went straight up to contemporary Adult books when he was like 12. He kept acting like YA was inferior and that people who preferred YA novels had less reading capability. Needless to say everyone was annoyed by him.
To be fair, there's a lot of bad and medicore YA and a decent part of the YA that gets popular and ends up in the library or in physical stores is pretty bad. So while I do agree that writing novels for a certain age group off entirely is pretty arrogant, it's very possible the main exposure he had were bad books which he then assumed was the whole of YA which is understandable.
6:23 "Have you met a teenager? They are constantly stand out. To get noticed. To be famous." I guess I was the exception. I was perfectly happy not standing out and I hate the spotlight IRL.
Yeah, I think that’s her personal bias showing. A lot of people were perfectly content to fly under the radar. It’s the nail that sticks out that gets hammered down.
Same, though I think for teenagers it's a blend of "trying to stand out" and "trying to blend in." Like, there's a certain criteria for teenagers to "stand out" among their peers that they're trying to blend in with. Curious little paradox.
If I well remember my only year in children psychology studies, it's more of a cycle, varying from one another. You try to find the pieces of your future self in others, then you try to make something unique with them comparing the results with your surrounding; gathering pieces; building; gathering; etc. The time taken by each step varies depending on the child's environment and personality.
@@kimifw58 90-95% of the time, me standing out in order to make friends involved hanging out near people who I was interested in being friends with and waiting until they were used enough to me that they invited me into their group. Then I would feel comfortable standing out a bit, but only when I was with them. This is also why I asked out only one of my crushes and only after a year of working up to becoming her friend, then another year working up to asking her out.
The last one really hit home for me. I took a creative writing class and my professor told us that we could only write contemporary fiction, I chose to write the prologue to my sci-fi/fantasy book instead. It’s just about the art of telling human stories in a fictional world
They choose contemporary fiction so everyone not only has fair grounds (As a lot of people have expertise on specific genres but not usually contemporary.) and so they have a standard making grading fairer, more accessible, etc. You can't grade or judge a historical 50s light-hearted romance and a sci-fi murder mystery similarly. It makes it easier for the professor to evaluate your writing for your writing.
Hear me out, I wasn’t a fan of present tense either, but then I read The Night Circus. Erin Morgenstern has a gift in present tense writing. I’ve yet to come across someone who does it as well as her, it’s magical. Literally.
@@Luka.shrekie A similar writer is V.E. Shwab. I’ve only read one of her books, Addie LaRue, but she’s pretty good in present tense as well. Her writing reminds me of Erin Morgenstern
Not saying that it can't be done amazingly, but I generally find it to be a hallmark of authors whose writing isn't very good yet. It's rarely done as a stylistic choice, but because it is easier and they lack experience or skill. When it IS done intentionally and well, it's a perfectly fine choice.
guys falling into the present tense trap is real as someone who wrote their first book in present tense and now unconsciously writes in present tense all the time 😔✊
This is the first time I heard bad things about present tense lol. I’ve written stuff in past tense and now my current work is present and I like it and there are others who do it. So it’s okay to write present tense
That last point really hit home for me. I remember when I took my first creative fiction writing workshop at college, the adjunct spent the first class basically criticizing anything that could be considered genre writing and told us it was beneath a true writer. She told us to instead focus on writing about “absolutely nothing”. What she meant by that I have little clue, but I imagine she was trying to be deep. Overall I still enjoyed the workshop as I met some great friends and learned the value of peer reviews, but the adjunct was bizarre.
Ugh, I don't get creative fiction lecturers who think like that either. Like, I could potentially see the value of encouraging someone who only writes fantasy to try writing contemporary fiction, but it would be just as valuable to encourage someone who only writes fiction to try writing fantasy. Writing outside your genre is a great learning experience, but just saying "ONLY FICTION IS VALID!!!" Is teaching people to be the opposite of creative.
I must've got lucky in my two creative writing classes. My professor encouraged us to write what we feel comfortable writing. We had so many different stories in different genres. We focused on making sure the stories we wrote were clear to the reader. Occasionally we would have to write something with a specific thing to focus on, whatever it was we were learning about that week, but story could still be up to us. I loved that professor!
What is wrong with present tense? I use it because I like to write my stories as though my readers are watching it all happen before them. I hate using past tense unless I'm purposefully going back in time with the use of a flashback. I mean. I used to write past tense after dialogue, because in my head, the dialogue was already said, so it is past. But looking on sites about writing, they say you can't write with both tenses throughout the book. So I was stuck between choosing past tense or present tense. In the end, I chose present tense because of how I like writing my action scenes.
I write in present tense and in 1st person, but the way she flames present is so funny 😂😂 Edit: I have zero interest in contemporary though, I'm more in the circle of sci-fi, fantasy, or horror 👻
Present tense and 1st person singular can work. But it has to fit the general tone and the style of storytelling. A fast paced, humoristic adventure story will work so much better with it than a philosophical epos.
The Handmaid's Tale, All the Lights We Cannot See, Hunger Games, The Girl With All The Gifts, A Man Called Over, Rising Sun, Room. Just some books that crush it with present tense
All present tense writing reminds me of that one Hunger Games line that's like "the soup is salty. it reminds me of my tears." so I simply can't take it seriously
Going to physical therapy for an injury and my PT and I are chatting and find out we're both writers. What does he ask? "Do you know Jenna Moreci?" Lol, yes. And then I get home and bam, a new vid is up :P
Once I started writing in present tense I found reading books in past tense just feels less exciting. You're removed from the action because it's already happened - in present tense, you're there - it's happening now and you're right in the middle of it. Of course, it has to be written well or it can sound as bad as Jenna describes it. I mean, if you've read the Hunger Games, you've read a great book in first person-present tense.
i agree. my biggest pet peeve is movies with narration in past tense, that shít don't make sense when we're literally WATCHING IT HAPPEN in the present
"Want to be normal" is more accurately "there is something special about me *that I did not ask for* that interferes with how I really want to live" -- and that's probably why you see it more in YA Fantasy. It's always something that they got unsolicited and that *is not social currency among their fellow teenagers.* The kid trying to get attention in TikTok at least is exerting agency to obtain attention.
I like present tense because it feels like it's happening now, and it pulls me into the story more. I don't mind past tense though. But you say "it's just a tense," so why bother hating it? 🤣
Jenna says she gonna be hating on contemporary in this segment Me: *writing contemporary 😥😥😳😳 uh oh Jenna: contemporary fiction Me: oh I’m good then😅 Working in contemporary fantasy/ alternate universe with enough people dying that Jenna might nod in approval
I'm someone who writes in both tenses and all perspectives (depending on the story, of course). The one thing I will say with present tense is that it is so easy describing something that happened in the past without needing to use a flashback unlike past. It looks like switching perspectives, but it's not since present tense is special. (Something like, "He walks down the hallway where, a week ago, someone decided to slam a penguin down his sock," vs "He walked down the hallway where, a week beforehand, someone decided to slam a penguin down his sock.") That said, I usually only use it for longer first-person and second-person stories since it seems to go with those perspectives better, but eh. And I've come across so many stories that don't utilize present tense to its greatest potential. People usually just adjust the sentences into present tense as if it was originally set in past tense, which grates on my nerves. Lol
@@august1837 well, she's her husband's caretaker and has made a video about it. So like, semi-in-the-know when it comes to various terms in the disabled community
Even outside of her personal connection to the disabled community, a lot of people in general have taken it on themselves to start becoming educated to the mistreatment of minority and marginalized groups in recent years. As someone who is trans, and has BPD, a pleasantly surprising number of people these days now at least talk like they've googled what it's like to deal with what I deal with. It's nice.
The only good "I just want to be normal" story I've read/watched was " The Disasterous Life of Saiki K". The main character - Saiki - is a psychic and has LEGIT reasons why he finds his powers annoying and more trouble then worth which he clearly demonstrates right away in the first episode and the rest of the series
I actually tried writing past tense for my horror stories but for some reason, it just doesn't work for me and it drives me nuts. I get confused during the writing process because it takes me a while to identify what happened in the past of story events vs now. I find writing present tense easier to write.
@@kevingreene6624 Omg yes exactly. I literally have zero problems reading past tense but when it comes to writing it....I end up screaming into the void 😅
I also dislike spoiled brat characters. But I do love reading a non-whiny and hard-working rich, popular character or even a bitch who enjoys their wealth but also shows the loneliness of not having love and friends in their life and the hardship of getting one because of their status, background and maybe even past.
'no one wants to be normal' 😬 Well thanks for informing me that apparently I didn't cry myself to sleep regularly for years as a small child, wanting to be neurotypical but not having the vocabulary to understand what that was. Thanks a bunch. Really. I guess I must've just made that all up. Oops.
@@danirei789 For me it's kind of similar, except that my political thriller's premise may initially start as a "nice guy," but with a twist: the main character fell in love with a girl after she was treating him like an equal person, unlike most of the people in that society that bullied the protagonist due to his low-status tribal origin. However, after making my main character believe that she doesn't support this tribal-based prejudice, the girl suddenly starts to date my protagonist's bully who is a strong supporter of such tribalism, which creates an identity crisis for my protagonist that later would have these effects when he would fight for power in his native country decades later.
To be fair, that seems like a personal pet-peeve. Some of the coolest timey shenanigans I ever saw was a series written partly in past tense from the view of a major character, and the other half in present tense when the narration "caught up" with the present. There were some hints throughout towards when the character is as he's retelling this, not enough to really spoiler you but enough to give you the the idea he's clearly not done with this adventure and to hint a tiny bit at something having happened.
"If you majored in Creative Writing, then you already know! I didn't because I knew better." You have no idea how validated I feel now not getting a creative writing degree.
"Why not write a love story about a disabled guy who kills himself in the end and we'll all say it was so, so beautiful" THE SHADEEEEEE I cant 😂😂😂😂 (also thanks, finally, someone said it)
I was just hunting through the comments looking for the book she meant. The closest I could think of was All The Bright Places, except the MC isn’t disabled (unless a personality disorder counts as a disability) Just read the synopsis for this and HOLY SHIT NO. That ending deadass validates the dude’s belief his life isn’t worth living anymore. How the FUCK was this shit published, it’s hecking dangerous
As a deaf person no one is an inspiration for dating me or being friends with me. And I’m not a inspiration for working or making music. I’m a person. I just have trouble hearing.
Oh god, that #10 hit hard. I took one creative writing class to learn to write fantasy and the llfar left teacher forbid anything that wasn’t “historically possible in our modern era”. It’s called CREATIVE writing for a reason
I'm doing my creative writing MA now, and even on my undergrad, we are encouraged to explore genres and write what we want to. As long as we can explain our reasons and use references from books of a wide range of genres, we can write whatever we want. But that could just be the University I am at.
Okay but I’m sending a clip of #7 to every single english teacher ever. Why is it this fits every single book they’ve made me read good lord how am I supposed to think when every story ends the same, I think it’s a better accomplishment to make me think and end on a happy note instead of how everything is going to end in tragedy life sucks just give up on all your dreams
i hate the glorifying abuse in romance. like after. 50 shades. twilight. gonna also diagree with your first choice. i write present tense because its easy for me to write and makes me flows easier for me. so, you probably won't like my book xD
for me i write present for first person protagonists only, i once tried present for third person and it just sounded awkward as fuck when i reread it lol
The contemporary world is not boring at all, contemporary fiction has no excuse! It's hard to avoid being political with real world examples so I'll just be blunt with it. One of the political parties in my country attempted an insurrection this year, and even most of their opposition is just treating it likes it's no big deal! The ex-president has been seen, months later, crashing weddings to insist he "secretly actually won" still. If that happened in a book, I'd think it was jumping the shark it's such melodramatic series of actions.
1. The whole novel is a train of comments to a Facebook post. 2. The hero is affected with COVID 19. 3. The protagonist installs Tinder in the beginning of the novel. In the end he uninstalls it because no one loved him. 4. The hero goes through a lot of adventures. In the end we come to know that it was just in the computer game he was playing. 5. Job loss, break up, Job, finding love, job loss, break up again. The end. 6. Guy uninstalls Tinder and finds love on pubg. 7. Romeo and Juliet; but with Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and a lot of COVID 19 deaths. 8. Break up, break up, break up...Finally finds love with a robot doll. 9. Some mythological characters trapped in the modern world. Magic vs. technology 10. Something you wrote when you were in quarantine. Trying to make it look meaningful by publishing it. No one buys it, of course!
I absolutely HATED Me Before You. My brother committed suicide and suffered from mental illness all of his life so seeing a book/movie that glorifies suicide was pretty gross to me.
@@hali_55 apparently it gets worse - there's a sequel "Me After You" which goes into how she's living the high life with her dead ex's money, and then she's trying to decide between two new guys, which one she'll date next - I seriously hated the first movie, but I couldn't actually believe the audacity of the author to write that as a second book.
I prefer present tense as a writer. However, I’ve been known to switch back and forth between present and past tense depending on which project I’m working on. I’m very weird, and I’m well aware that my love of present tense writing is strange. It’s my preference and also what I find easiest. It’s an oh well sorta thing. And I don’t write contemporary fiction. I write fantasy.
#3 needs to have special circumstances to work. The one's you've mentioned but also stuff like Anxiety or having a specific goal in mind (if you've got something you love and don't want to waste time doing something else like wanting to go to a championship or because you're lazy and you see the amount of work asked of you to be that something other than normal)
I’m late to this video but I’m glad you made it so thanks! I’ve not finished a novel yet but I’m close to finishing a contemporary and I’m reassured by your words. As a disabled, working class writer, I appreciate your words on class and disability. I’ve been learning the hard way how tricky those stakes are, and may have transitioned from boredom to utter madness. I’ve encountered madness in real life and figure if I write it well enough it might encourage someone to at least turn a page. Right now I feel like contemporary/realism is my thing. Yes, I plan to be poor forever.
#10...yeah. I took one creative writing course in college and the prof. was one of those who only looked at 'real' or 'contemporary' or the like. Anything outside of that wasn't worth her time to read and she graded accordingly. Since she was the only writing teacher at the campus, I stopped taking courses and stuck with writing what I wanted to write. Maybe I missed out 'learning' something important, but I couldn't take the snobbery and the efforts to force our creativity into one special box.
And that's what kills me! I bet lots of writing students who only write in their favorite genre would be willing to try writing contemporary fiction if they weren't constantly told "All genre writing is trash". Trying to write outside your genre can be a useful learning experience, but IMHO it's just as valuable for a fiction writer to try writing fantasy, for example. It's damaging to a writer's ability to tell them that only one type of writing is valid!
I write fantasy, sci-fi, supernatural...and in RP writing & fanfiction I've dabbled in romance and erotica. I've got one planned that is sorta a supernatural noir mystery type thing. I agree its valuable to push the boundaries and write outside of our comfort zones as a learning tool and its frustrating to have a teacher, in particular, invalidate the work of anyone outside of his/her 'preference'. How many writers end up discouraged and giving up that way?
i once knew a fellow writer who was convinced that stories with happy endings were objectively bad and absolutely refused to give any of their characters a good ending. I forget their exact argument against it but it made everyone feel really awkward with their happy stories.
I don't mind present tense if and only if it's in first person as well. Otherwise that's just weird. Unless it's in second person, but that's usually reserved for fanfiction. And I only don't mind it in first person because it can be like you're going on a little adventure with them. Also first person in present tense is just a challenge I am 100% willing to tackle. I think it's fun and challenging to write, since I usually do 3rd person in past tense. 's pretty cool. In first person exclusively (not counting 2nd person because that's primarily just x readers).
Apparently I'm also just indifferent to 3rd person present tense. I think that makes more sense than first person present tense in some cases in which the character is both hiding something and does not speak. But other than that it's just a tense if executed at least half decently. (Forgot a closing sentence)
That's exactly why I write in first person, other than what I posted as my own message. First person makes the readers think they are actually there in the world I am writing.
@Samara Hamilton No like, we are with them as they give us a very detailed narrative of what they are doing right at that moment and then suddenly it'll stop because they've died while they talk to us. Then I guess somebody else might narrate or something. Now I know this isn't often the case, but that's always what it feels like
Man the slam dunks. Not just the points themselves, but the meta within. This entire video makes me extremely happy. Also SO PLEASED to see so many creators like you who are promoting the Trevor Project.
In honor of your recent launch of Trevor Project, how about a video on respectfully writing LGBTQ+ characters? Avoiding stereotypes, offensive tropes, etc?
I'm a huge fan of lighthearted high fantasy (Middle Earth, Xanth, etc.), and I've had so many people talk at me about how it's "too goofy for adults," or "not mature enough to ever sell well." Yeah. Anyway, just wanted to say that before I dive back into my latest Discworld novel.
Hey Jenna, Sorry for posting this late, but I started watching you (and Hannah Lee) a month ago and you both help me with my writing. I've started writing a contemporary fiction my self. Im going to post a little bit of it here, if you would like to read it. It's in the antagonist pov. Oh, and Im in the LGBT myself, so when you talked about the project made my heart warm inside. One year later, his Senior year and his Father still blame’s him for his Mother’s death. Lucas has his devilish ways, late nights, and outrages. His only way to cope with it is by remembering this girl he met before he left, but not with good intentions. He’d changed for the good to worse. Now pinning all his anger on the girl he met two years ago. He does not know what his outbursts toward this girl were doing to her, only to find out. Not wanting to have her commit suicide, he thinks back to his Mother. Only to have feelings for her. He found out that he was too late. When his old friend of his had stolen her heart. Changing back to his old way, He tries to compete to win her heart.
I love your videos! I'm trying to write a historical fiction novel about a girl in the 1940s (the Blitz) who loses her parents and has to survive with her older brother. I've been working on it for a long time. How do I finish it. I love reading books, but I can't finish my own lol. (If you respond, please be nice about it. I'm 15, ok?)
#8 Whatever the hell John Steinbeck was doing. Seriously can't stand him as an author most of what he wrote was boring as shit and felt more a Wikipedia article thrown in the blender only to pick out the most sleep inducing parts.
I think you summed up why contemporary fiction doesn't do anything for me. If you love it, all the more power to you but give me a different world any day...
you know, since i started watching your channel recently, i've been seeing a lot of takedown, or at least, response videos about you. it's funny, the ones i actually checked out kinda made me like you more. yo, i seen you talking about crutch words, mine is kinda, but i know that one. i have one character, particularly wordy while obfuscating, but throws a lot of that stuff, you knows, and interjectional sorrys, and i love, just adore, seeing how far i can push it, how many kindas and kind ofs and sortas and sort ofs i can pack into his dialogue , and monologue. he's mostly first person, but sometimes he's more unreliable than others, or in a stupor, or not there, so... i know that's really less of a problem than my variable 3rd person perspective, and since your channel and others have brought that to my attention, i'm trying to examine it, but i'm not ready to ditch it entirely in case it may somehow aid a sort of impressionistic feel i may be going for in places. also see how that sorta creeps into my other writing but i love arthur's voice so much, and yeah, because it's a slightly embellished version of my own, and 90% of what passes for humor in my dark story is him lying to himself. oh, how am i not a man the way i nail the toxic two step, wink and nod?
Number 10 could be a holdover from the olden days where SciFi/Fantasy/Horror were viewed as "kid's stuff". On the other side I can see why a Creative Writing teacher wouldn't want to deal with Fantasy and other world building genres. The teacher would have to figure out the story's reality and then figure out how to grade it. It seems a daunting task.
I believe present tense can be used in first person limited and it's a great way to keep a fast paced action story. Like The Hunger Games or Skyward Sword. Though those are far from contemporary fiction (I think)
Currently I'm writing a high fantasy/romance in first person/present tense though it's only the first draft and it's just so I can get in the character's head while I write it. I'll probably change it up in rewrite.
Context is everything. While I would normally agree with you about telling a story in present-tense for no reason, one of my own books is a fictionalized memoir. The introduction explains how certain memories function like time travel, and then the reader discovers herself having dinner with my family in 1967. Use of the first person present tense makes the reader feel she is in my head, experiencing events as they happen to me, but 60 years ago. I originally wrote this in the past tense, but changed in order to make it feel more immediate; so the reader could feel that they'd literally been transported to another time.
the isolating effects of wealth can be a serious problem even for those of us who don't have, especially even. an examination of how even those of us at the top of an unfair system are prisoners of it too, and in their attempts to assuage their uncomfortable feelings through greed and power lust they impoverish themselves of anything true and sustaining while dragging the rest of us down a path toward doom could make an epic story
Another great video! I especially liked the last trope - Highbrow Bullshit. You ever notice how serious some of these authors look in their photos? They're either posing with their arms crossed over their chests, or seated at a desk with an actual quill in their hands. The Pulitzer, Booker, or National Book Award is just on the horizon for them... Bleh.
Hey, I'm graduated with a creative writing major (yes I'm wasting my potential on wattpad) and my stories were....well I was only one of two out of seven that wrote something that was inventive and fictional. Although #10, I combined contemporary with sci-fi, middle grade/magical realism, romance, vampire urban fantasy, and superhero action. My advice would be if you're writing contemporary, push the mundane to its absolute limit. For example: Slice of life: Go the Good Luck Charlie route, have your kid characters ransack and destroy a shopping mail. High School: Show how badly high school is, the mental stress and hurdles, kids created the ultimate cheating scam, go nuts with fights Introducing a Vampire or Fairy or other creature into the real world: Don't make them just bland attractive white guys with almost nothing that makes them stand out. Show their monster forms, have them struggle to maintain themselves in reality, let them live in an abandoned crime section of the city where all the lowlifes live so no one would suspect them, give them an antagonist who can mess with them psychological, give them a backstory that can relate to something that affects real people like tragedy, losing a loved one, being the lower class in their species, daddy/mother issues, or more. Automatically making them rich and with a loving family and have powers does nothing if you don't had some complexities too that. Or simply, take a genre you like, set it in the real world, and be creative with it the way you want it to. I'm too lazy to think, again, writing on wattpad for like 2 months back to back will do that to you, but those are some ideas if you're struggling with contemporary.
Years ago I started thinking about a story of a 15 year old who lives with his overproctive mom who did her very best to shelter him from the real world finallly gets to experience the freedom of the real world and promply becomes a nightmare to his mom as he begins to hate her. I have a plot point of she getting pregnant to make him "man up" and become a "responsible big brother" to which he responds to by joining a criminal operation with a "adoptive dad" and his (grown) friends and anoymously reporting property negligence which gets her house condemmed and leaves her homeless 😂
@@sxwriter8569 I haven't posted it anywhere because the beggining is super boring, watching these vids to find a way to make it more entertaining. Especially regarding the school he goes too (the teen has repeated 5th grade FOUR times by the time the story starts)
Great advice! And I agree, I really think a problem with a lot of books is that they simply don't use their genre to its full potential. "Contemporary" doesn't have to mean "boring". Fantasy doesn't have to stick to the same tropes that have been used by a thousand other books. I guess thinking up the interesting new ideas can be a challenge, though, Lol.
Jenna promoting the Trevor project fills me with so much joy🙌🏼 thank you!
1
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Same here!
@@rosikun 101 ...it's number for lol (haha! explaining jokes!)
I once read a book about a teenager who attempted suicide. The whole story was about him dealing with the disability caused by the failed attempt and all the psychological effects it had on the people in his life. It was fascinating. I wish I could remember the title.
Whoa, that's deep.
I think you’re talking about It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini just in case you’d like to find it again
@@fguzman1030 That's not it. The main setting is his neighborhood and regular school, not a psychiatric ward. I looked at the author's other books. They don't match either. But I think it was published about the same time as Funny Story.
@@kimifw58 That summary sounds very familiar. I think I know what you're talking about, but I can't remember the title either.
Commenting to see if anyone remembers the title, because that sounds interesting. Not sure if I can read it tho, ‘cause suicide tends to bother me
Related to the "I just want to be normal" trope, I don't see enough "character has life-long goals and the whole magic thing legitimately gets in the way." Like, what if Alice has always wanted to be a doctor and has been working hard at that since she was a kid? The fairies expect her to drop everything and be their queen, but she is studying for her MCATs. Or Leo has always dreamed of opening a business for assistive technology, but aliens abduct him the week before a big presentation. Basically no one "just wants to be normal" but plenty of people don't want the goals they're working toward to be interrupted because all the rules suddenly changed.
That... Actually sounds pretty interesting tbh 🤔
I usually get around the "I just wanna be normal!" trope with my patented method of "Geez, these magical powers are awesome! But this world _will_ kill me eventually, so pleeeaaase just let me go home!!"
@@midnight8341 My teenage protagonist doesn't want magic due to her disability, she's already had to fight to be recognized as a human being so it kinda sucks for her but she does want to be the person who has a huge purpose and now she does its just way more of a cost then she thought it would be.
Joe from Digimon Adventure in a nutshell :D
Or you could make it darkly ironic, like Edgar always wanted to be a detective, but he's failed at that and now just wants to get by in life, but he can't because now he's forced to be friends with a violent madman while investigating whatever magical weirdness is corrupting him.
Yeah, I mean, having the responsibility of being "The Chosen One" pushed onto you, particularly if it costs you something, is not always fun.
Remember how Aang's friends didn't want him to play in their ball games anymore after they found out he was the Avatar? And how sad that made him?
Now imagine how somebody would feel if they realized they are likely to have to sacrifice a lot of their personal happiness in order to safe the world.
It CAN suck.
But of course it needs to be written convincingly, not just for cheap whining.
To those of you who can't even keep up a constant tense, fluctuating chaotically between present and past, living the constant struggle to keep your writing consistent: I feel your pain. You're not alone.
Thankyou, I am not alone, I AM NOT ALONE..
I'd be happy if someone would tell me WHERE I'm fluctuating between past and present tense. I know I use past tense for paragraphs and present for dialogue, but other than that I get complaints about my writing.
@@meganthompson6676 That's a pretty solid rule of thumb; present tense for speaking, past tense for everything else. When I screw it up, it's usually that I've been writing dialogue and have forgotten to switch back. It is a huge pain to fix it, but more because it's an hours worth of delete-one-letter-type-two-letters than anything else. Let whatever you've written sit for a week or two before you edit it, and you'll be much more likely to notice any mistakes you've made, including tense shifts.
Atleast you could edit it
😢 yeah I hate it.
out of context quote of the day: "it's fine if you want to kill people, but for gods sake at least make it entertaining"
Today I heard a youtuber say
"All the chests must be grabbed !"
He was playing Final Fantasy, but that's a lvl 100 out of context quote.
I've been trying to develop a secondary character who is something of a flamboyant, pirate, jokester, warrior who speaks in a very upper class British accent. When I heard this line I immediately thought it would a be perfect line of dialog for him. 😀
I was just working on this character's profile yesterday, and when I heard Jenna say that line, it clicked in my mind that is exactly something my character would say, and exactly the way he would say it.
In middle school, the class was making person cut-outs and we were supposed to decorate them. My friend wanted to color a shirt and pants on ours, but then I loudly said "NO, I LIKE HIM NAKED". So thats quite an out-of-context quote, if the awkward stares I got were any indication.....
Lol
I think the day I write this also needs one, so here's the first line of my book that is currently being written:
Alright, just to make it clear: when I said I want to leave this earth as I came, screaming, covered in blood, I did not mean it LITERALLY!
“I opened that door for you once, so I am entitled to taking your V-card”
Yeah, I think nice guys would be better if writers got rid of the second part, like be nice for the sake of being nice.
@@sxwriter8569 Exactly, some authors just don’t understand that there are genuinely nice people who don’t expect anything in return lol
@@tp1861 exactly.
Selflessness is SO hot, I really don't see why people seem to struggle with this.
@@VictorSnider I’ve never agreed with anything more
I guess there’s an odd one in every group. As a teenager I never wanted to be noticed. I didn’t stand out. I kept to myself and quiet. I actively hoped people would not look at me and never tried to draw attention to myself in class. I purposely avoided doing projects that made me stand in front of the class and when I had to do them with a group I volunteered to hold the big the poster board so I could hide behind it.
I think a lot of teens at least want to fit in. And the ones trying to stand out are often doing it in ways that are socially trendy or lauded, so they're still trying to fit into what society thinks is "cool."
So, if you suddenly could talk to the dead or animals, or some other super power, you'd have said "no thanks"?
@@cmay7429 I never wanted to “fit in”. My complete lack of self-esteem and self confidence saw to that.
@@VictorSnider If I did get them I wouldn’t advertise. I’d use them as an outlet to express my feelings, kind of like a journal. And if they ended up getting tired of listening me, I wouldn’t have blamed them at all.
@@joelmavity1467 maybe I’m taking this too seriously, but I totally get not advertising the powers. Like, it depends on what the powers are, but I’ll use telekinesis in my example because they’re the best power.
If offered telekinesis (assuming there’s no immediate detrimental ramifications, like I run the risk of exploding my brain) I’d probably say yes. But now that I have them, if I show them off, what happens? Maybe the government tries to study/clone me, maybe I’m standing in the street and a car accident happens and they sue me because “she totally caused this with her mind powers.” It would be safer to keep them hidden from general public, but at the same time, I don’t know if I could keep myself from trying to help people if I have the power to (the age old “with great power comes great responsibility” dilemma). Which is technically vigilantism which is technically illegal and also I doubt I’m smart enough to not get caught. Which means I’d have cool powers but basically never get to use them and also worry about being a lab rat and possibly wracked with guilt from not helping that person who fell off that ladder and so forth.
I’d still almost definitely have telekinesis if I could though, it would make chopping onions so much easier
As a disabled writer, I really appreciate this. Thank you so much!
I am a disabled writer as well :)
Hey buddy. There's no such this as a disabled writer. In front of a laptop, or whatever instrument you use to write, all of us are writers. Whatever obstacle that is hindering you right now, I know that you can get past through it.
@@alvarezcharlesjoshuah.8086 No, no. I'm disabled. I have cerebral palsy. That's a disability. I use a wheelchair. Not a hindrance. I speak with a communication device. Not a hindrance. Disability is a part of life. Not a hindrance.
@@sarapyszka, I'm sorry to have make it more complicated. I must not have chose the right words to convey the essence of the message. (Well, it is something that I need to work on)
By the way, I wish you more success in life.
@@alvarezcharlesjoshuah.8086 Okay, how would you rephrase your message?
As someone with a disabled mother it was so incredibly damaging growing up and seeing every fictional representation that looked like my mum die. Every story. Every time it was "inspiring" suicide or "noble" sacrifice and it was so horrific as a teen. I still get very animated about it. I'm ND and just swerve a bunch of fiction for that as well, but the inspiration porn was the most harmful for me when I was younger.
What is ND?
@@marlonmoncrieffe0728 ND = neurodivergent
@@FaithTheFallen Neurotypical people tend not to like usage of abbreviations before revealing what they are.
Please take this advice in consideration for next time.
@@marlonmoncrieffe0728 Hi! I appreciate you thinking this is helpful and am going to assume this has come from a good place. It isn't helpful though. I know NT (neurotypical) people who are not used to dealing with the rest of us can find jargon and shorthand confusing. This is good though, because that means you get a sliver of our experience dealing with an over aggressive social expectation of understanding unspoken and undefined rules and emotional cues which are actually highly personal but no one chooses to explain. We have to Google things - you can too! There is a whole online autistic community that will assist with that as well, if you come in with a healthy level of respect and not talking down to people. I expect you didn't think you were talking down to me, but you are asking me to do labour for you, which you could have done in the same time it took to type your comments, for some reason. Consider what that reason may be. You are also "informing" me of what you consider to be broad preferences, which again I will assume comes from a good place but it assumes I am not used to dealing with people. My mother is disabled and I am a carer. I am used to dealing with people, I just expect them to keep up with the basics. Consider how you speak to people next time.
@@FaithTheFallen ...Do LABOR for me?
It is simple consideration to not use an abbreviation before establishing what you mean. Not only does it spare the reader confusion but also your time in explaining. ND could mean many different things after all.
I do not know how much or little you dealt with people. I was just saying that you should consider establishing the definitions of abbreviations first.
P.S. For the record, I do not mind abbreviations and use them myself; it is just inconsiderately confusing not explaining them first.
The last point reminded of a guy that i saw who was proud of himself bc he never read YA novels, not even as a teenager and that he went straight up to contemporary Adult books when he was like 12.
He kept acting like YA was inferior and that people who preferred YA novels had less reading capability. Needless to say everyone was annoyed by him.
Yeah YA does get a lot of hate but I don't get why. Sure it has a lot of 'bad books' but the category as a whole? Pffft.
@@VocaloidThalia Exactly. EVERY genre has plenty of bad books! Including high-brow literary fiction!
To be fair, there's a lot of bad and medicore YA and a decent part of the YA that gets popular and ends up in the library or in physical stores is pretty bad.
So while I do agree that writing novels for a certain age group off entirely is pretty arrogant, it's very possible the main exposure he had were bad books which he then assumed was the whole of YA which is understandable.
"She walks to the store. She sees the bird. She contemplates death.
- Score!"
I lost it😂
Lol
Sounds like the lines in The Hunger Games, but I literary like the series.
so so so funny. Pissed myself laughing
@@gk201993 Oh no no no😂😂
I like the semi-implication that she contemplated death because she saw the bird.
If you haven't yet, get on that skillshare class. It's worth sooooo much more than the cost of the membership.
I'm so glad you feel that way!
how did you comment 5 days ago when the video literally only came out a few hours ago???
@@lizgraham7004 Patreon supporters or people who join channels typically get to see videos before they are made public.
@@torrik-8722 ahh, interesting - thanks for letting me know :)
@@lizgraham7004 I'm on Jenna's Patreon and it's one of my most valuable investments. Her community is invaluable, definitely check it out!
I am 14 and I started writing stories and you helped me so much I love you
I am 13 and also have been really helped by her videos for writing stories
Aye y'all young, glad you all started writing. THe younger you can practice your craft, the better! Good luck!
@@sxwriter8569 thank you 💞💞
I’m 13 and her videos are so helpful
I’m 12
6:23 "Have you met a teenager? They are constantly stand out. To get noticed. To be famous." I guess I was the exception. I was perfectly happy not standing out and I hate the spotlight IRL.
Yeah, I think that’s her personal bias showing. A lot of people were perfectly content to fly under the radar. It’s the nail that sticks out that gets hammered down.
Same, though I think for teenagers it's a blend of "trying to stand out" and "trying to blend in." Like, there's a certain criteria for teenagers to "stand out" among their peers that they're trying to blend in with. Curious little paradox.
If I well remember my only year in children psychology studies, it's more of a cycle, varying from one another. You try to find the pieces of your future self in others, then you try to make something unique with them comparing the results with your surrounding; gathering pieces; building; gathering; etc. The time taken by each step varies depending on the child's environment and personality.
Even shy teens try a little to stand out. That's how you make friends and get your crush to notice you.
@@kimifw58 90-95% of the time, me standing out in order to make friends involved hanging out near people who I was interested in being friends with and waiting until they were used enough to me that they invited me into their group. Then I would feel comfortable standing out a bit, but only when I was with them.
This is also why I asked out only one of my crushes and only after a year of working up to becoming her friend, then another year working up to asking her out.
The last one really hit home for me. I took a creative writing class and my professor told us that we could only write contemporary fiction, I chose to write the prologue to my sci-fi/fantasy book instead. It’s just about the art of telling human stories in a fictional world
They choose contemporary fiction so everyone not only has fair grounds (As a lot of people have expertise on specific genres but not usually contemporary.) and so they have a standard making grading fairer, more accessible, etc. You can't grade or judge a historical 50s light-hearted romance and a sci-fi murder mystery similarly. It makes it easier for the professor to evaluate your writing for your writing.
My present-tense WIP that I've spent almost two years writing and editing: *smile through the pain*
She herself said it's just a tense, and I do it too, so keep doing you! 😀
Don't worry. I'm writing in present tense, too. 🤓
There's nothing wrong with present tense as lo g as it's written well. I read a great YA series in present tense. You do you.
Present tense is more in the moment
dw, a lot of people prefer present tense, myself included
"Present test writers are very protective of it" BECAUSE EVERYONE'S COMING FOR US!! LOL let us have our immersive writing!
Hear me out, I wasn’t a fan of present tense either, but then I read The Night Circus. Erin Morgenstern has a gift in present tense writing. I’ve yet to come across someone who does it as well as her, it’s magical. Literally.
I've out it on my list, I appreciate you sharing plausibly a great present tense example
@@Luka.shrekie A similar writer is V.E. Shwab. I’ve only read one of her books, Addie LaRue, but she’s pretty good in present tense as well. Her writing reminds me of Erin Morgenstern
That book was excellent.
Not saying that it can't be done amazingly, but I generally find it to be a hallmark of authors whose writing isn't very good yet. It's rarely done as a stylistic choice, but because it is easier and they lack experience or skill. When it IS done intentionally and well, it's a perfectly fine choice.
@@adde9506 so basically, a complacent decision versus an intentional stylistic decision. Am I getting that right?
#5: "I'm weird. I'm a weirdo. I don't fit in. Have you ever seen me without this stupid hat? That's weird." Or however that speech from Jughead goes.
guys falling into the present tense trap is real as someone who wrote their first book in present tense and now unconsciously writes in present tense all the time 😔✊
I feel your pain, my friend 🥺✊
@@cinthiacruzado2594 thank you 🙏🥲
I will take this advice and never do that thank you
Present tense is better
This is the first time I heard bad things about present tense lol. I’ve written stuff in past tense and now my current work is present and I like it and there are others who do it. So it’s okay to write present tense
That last point really hit home for me. I remember when I took my first creative fiction writing workshop at college, the adjunct spent the first class basically criticizing anything that could be considered genre writing and told us it was beneath a true writer. She told us to instead focus on writing about “absolutely nothing”. What she meant by that I have little clue, but I imagine she was trying to be deep. Overall I still enjoyed the workshop as I met some great friends and learned the value of peer reviews, but the adjunct was bizarre.
Ugh, I don't get creative fiction lecturers who think like that either. Like, I could potentially see the value of encouraging someone who only writes fantasy to try writing contemporary fiction, but it would be just as valuable to encourage someone who only writes fiction to try writing fantasy. Writing outside your genre is a great learning experience, but just saying "ONLY FICTION IS VALID!!!" Is teaching people to be the opposite of creative.
I must've got lucky in my two creative writing classes. My professor encouraged us to write what we feel comfortable writing. We had so many different stories in different genres. We focused on making sure the stories we wrote were clear to the reader. Occasionally we would have to write something with a specific thing to focus on, whatever it was we were learning about that week, but story could still be up to us. I loved that professor!
What is wrong with present tense? I use it because I like to write my stories as though my readers are watching it all happen before them. I hate using past tense unless I'm purposefully going back in time with the use of a flashback.
I mean. I used to write past tense after dialogue, because in my head, the dialogue was already said, so it is past. But looking on sites about writing, they say you can't write with both tenses throughout the book.
So I was stuck between choosing past tense or present tense. In the end, I chose present tense because of how I like writing my action scenes.
it's just a preference. i prefer reading and writing present tense too bc it's more immersive but it comes down to taste
I write in present tense and in 1st person, but the way she flames present is so funny 😂😂
Edit: I have zero interest in contemporary though, I'm more in the circle of sci-fi, fantasy, or horror 👻
I find that cool
I write in present tense too (it's about the ~immediacy~) but i was cackling the whole time. who hurt her??? LOL
I feel like present tense when it’s in 1st person can work well. I tend to eat these narratives up like Reddit posts. They flow so easily.
Never read present tense horror but it might be even more thrilling so I would be potentially interested in that 🤔
Present tense and 1st person singular can work. But it has to fit the general tone and the style of storytelling.
A fast paced, humoristic adventure story will work so much better with it than a philosophical epos.
The Handmaid's Tale, All the Lights We Cannot See, Hunger Games, The Girl With All The Gifts, A Man Called Over, Rising Sun, Room. Just some books that crush it with present tense
I hardly even noticed A Man Called Ove was in present tense! That book is a masterpiece. It handles disability and ageism with complete grace.
I never actually notice the difference between past and present tense, I thought it was the same lol
To me it's kind of like watching a movie in "letterbox" back in the old days... after a while, you stop noticing.
I'm still waiting for the day when Jenna shouts "Eat the rich!" and/or "Seize the means of production!"
Aren't we all
I would support that, even though I would prefer to yeet the rich, it's healthier
@@davidmauriciogutierrezespi5244 If we wait long enough looks like Elon Musk at least wants to yeet himself
Where is Jeffery Dahmer when you need him, lol Jk
@@ThrottleKitty dude has too much money to care. What is a few people on the Internet going to do against the backing of the US government?
All present tense writing reminds me of that one Hunger Games line that's like "the soup is salty. it reminds me of my tears." so I simply can't take it seriously
Going to physical therapy for an injury and my PT and I are chatting and find out we're both writers. What does he ask? "Do you know Jenna Moreci?" Lol, yes. And then I get home and bam, a new vid is up :P
Once I started writing in present tense I found reading books in past tense just feels less exciting. You're removed from the action because it's already happened - in present tense, you're there - it's happening now and you're right in the middle of it. Of course, it has to be written well or it can sound as bad as Jenna describes it. I mean, if you've read the Hunger Games, you've read a great book in first person-present tense.
i agree. my biggest pet peeve is movies with narration in past tense, that shít don't make sense when we're literally WATCHING IT HAPPEN in the present
I can't even keep a constant tense, sometimes it's present sometimes its past.
Yeah and sometimes future
I was waiting for you to tear up contemporary, now I can finally sit back with tea and listen
"Want to be normal" is more accurately "there is something special about me *that I did not ask for* that interferes with how I really want to live" -- and that's probably why you see it more in YA Fantasy. It's always something that they got unsolicited and that *is not social currency among their fellow teenagers.* The kid trying to get attention in TikTok at least is exerting agency to obtain attention.
I like present tense because it feels like it's happening now, and it pulls me into the story more. I don't mind past tense though.
But you say "it's just a tense," so why bother hating it? 🤣
As always, fast forward to 4:00 to skip filler :)
Jenna says she gonna be hating on contemporary in this segment
Me: *writing contemporary 😥😥😳😳 uh oh
Jenna: contemporary fiction
Me: oh I’m good then😅
Working in contemporary fantasy/ alternate universe with enough people dying that Jenna might nod in approval
I'm someone who writes in both tenses and all perspectives (depending on the story, of course). The one thing I will say with present tense is that it is so easy describing something that happened in the past without needing to use a flashback unlike past. It looks like switching perspectives, but it's not since present tense is special. (Something like, "He walks down the hallway where, a week ago, someone decided to slam a penguin down his sock," vs "He walked down the hallway where, a week beforehand, someone decided to slam a penguin down his sock.")
That said, I usually only use it for longer first-person and second-person stories since it seems to go with those perspectives better, but eh. And I've come across so many stories that don't utilize present tense to its greatest potential. People usually just adjust the sentences into present tense as if it was originally set in past tense, which grates on my nerves. Lol
Poor penguin.
@@destroyerofsouls9789 Yeah. The penguin definitely hates present tense too. 😔
@@slsthewriter1299 The real question is, how big is that person's foot?
@@destroyerofsouls9789 Depends on which penguin it is I suppose. Lol
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis is a great example of well-done present tense writing. I wish more writers would take readers into the present!
An able-bodied youtuber just said inspiration porn. My day is made.
I know right. I didn’t know people know this term outside of the disabled community
@@august1837 well, she's her husband's caretaker and has made a video about it. So like, semi-in-the-know when it comes to various terms in the disabled community
Even outside of her personal connection to the disabled community, a lot of people in general have taken it on themselves to start becoming educated to the mistreatment of minority and marginalized groups in recent years. As someone who is trans, and has BPD, a pleasantly surprising number of people these days now at least talk like they've googled what it's like to deal with what I deal with. It's nice.
I don't think that term is particularly obscure. I mean people also know motivation porn, landscape porn, ...
@@Alias_Anybody this is a disability studies term. I teach it. Most people don't actually know what it means.
The only good "I just want to be normal" story I've read/watched was " The Disasterous Life of Saiki K". The main character - Saiki - is a psychic and has LEGIT reasons why he finds his powers annoying and more trouble then worth which he clearly demonstrates right away in the first episode and the rest of the series
I actually tried writing past tense for my horror stories but for some reason, it just doesn't work for me and it drives me nuts. I get confused during the writing process because it takes me a while to identify what happened in the past of story events vs now. I find writing present tense easier to write.
When I read past tense it's fine, but when I write it, it seems off.
@@kevingreene6624 Omg yes exactly. I literally have zero problems reading past tense but when it comes to writing it....I end up screaming into the void 😅
Past tense feels awkward to me. But so does first person haha
@@joefawley9264 Third person present tense is underutilised. And I enjoy second person present tense.
@@kevingreene6624 that's what I'm writing now. Not sure I'll do it justice but I'll keep working at it!
I also dislike spoiled brat characters. But I do love reading a non-whiny and hard-working rich, popular character or even a bitch who enjoys their wealth but also shows the loneliness of not having love and friends in their life and the hardship of getting one because of their status, background and maybe even past.
'no one wants to be normal' 😬
Well thanks for informing me that apparently I didn't cry myself to sleep regularly for years as a small child, wanting to be neurotypical but not having the vocabulary to understand what that was. Thanks a bunch. Really. I guess I must've just made that all up. Oops.
I use these videos as a litmus test to see if I made a good plot 😂
Jaja yes! I think they only thing I did that Jenna doesn't like is present tense, but like she said, it's just a tense, so fuck it! 😂
Me too. Now, if I could just finish something, instead of getting mired down in self-doubt, that would be nice.
@@danirei789 For me it's kind of similar, except that my political thriller's premise may initially start as a "nice guy," but with a twist: the main character fell in love with a girl after she was treating him like an equal person, unlike most of the people in that society that bullied the protagonist due to his low-status tribal origin. However, after making my main character believe that she doesn't support this tribal-based prejudice, the girl suddenly starts to date my protagonist's bully who is a strong supporter of such tribalism, which creates an identity crisis for my protagonist that later would have these effects when he would fight for power in his native country decades later.
**glances sadly at w-i-p, written in first-person present tense.** Don't worry kiddo, I'm not giving up on you yet!
To be fair, that seems like a personal pet-peeve.
Some of the coolest timey shenanigans I ever saw was a series written partly in past tense from the view of a major character, and the other half in present tense when the narration "caught up" with the present. There were some hints throughout towards when the character is as he's retelling this, not enough to really spoiler you but enough to give you the the idea he's clearly not done with this adventure and to hint a tiny bit at something having happened.
"If you majored in Creative Writing, then you already know! I didn't because I knew better."
You have no idea how validated I feel now not getting a creative writing degree.
"Why not write a love story about a disabled guy who kills himself in the end and we'll all say it was so, so beautiful" THE SHADEEEEEE I cant 😂😂😂😂 (also thanks, finally, someone said it)
What book was she referring to? I couldn't figure it out >_
@@nalciel6577 me before you
@@Larucos Thank you!
THANK YOU for calling out Me Befote You. That book made me so angry that I killed a spider within its pages and then threw it away. Ughhhhh.
I was just hunting through the comments looking for the book she meant. The closest I could think of was All The Bright Places, except the MC isn’t disabled (unless a personality disorder counts as a disability)
Just read the synopsis for this and HOLY SHIT NO. That ending deadass validates the dude’s belief his life isn’t worth living anymore. How the FUCK was this shit published, it’s hecking dangerous
@@lillithb1661 Right?!?!?! I couldn't agree more! All the Bright Places had totally slipped my mind, but you're so right!
As a deaf person no one is an inspiration for dating me or being friends with me. And I’m not a inspiration for working or making music. I’m a person. I just have trouble hearing.
This made me rethink many of the tropes I’m including in my contemporariy romance, thank you!!!!
Oh god, that #10 hit hard. I took one creative writing class to learn to write fantasy and the llfar left teacher forbid anything that wasn’t “historically possible in our modern era”.
It’s called CREATIVE writing for a reason
I'm doing my creative writing MA now, and even on my undergrad, we are encouraged to explore genres and write what we want to. As long as we can explain our reasons and use references from books of a wide range of genres, we can write whatever we want. But that could just be the University I am at.
Thank you for helping with fundraising for the Trevor Project! It is one of the organizations I really appreciate.
Okay but I’m sending a clip of #7 to every single english teacher ever. Why is it this fits every single book they’ve made me read good lord how am I supposed to think when every story ends the same, I think it’s a better accomplishment to make me think and end on a happy note instead of how everything is going to end in tragedy life sucks just give up on all your dreams
Exactly how I felt when my English class finished The Great Gatsby and is why I despise the book now
i hate the glorifying abuse in romance. like after. 50 shades. twilight.
gonna also diagree with your first choice. i write present tense because its easy for me to write and makes me flows easier for me. so, you probably won't like my book xD
Same here. Past-tense has never flowed correctly for me. Present tense team unite!
365 Days is way way worse
for me i write present for first person protagonists only, i once tried present for third person and it just sounded awkward as fuck when i reread it lol
Jenna: "I basically dislike 95% of contemporary fiction. Kthxbye."
Well the genre needs some more innovation, even I can admit that
Me too. I basically dislike about 75% of it. lol
same
The contemporary world is not boring at all, contemporary fiction has no excuse! It's hard to avoid being political with real world examples so I'll just be blunt with it. One of the political parties in my country attempted an insurrection this year, and even most of their opposition is just treating it likes it's no big deal! The ex-president has been seen, months later, crashing weddings to insist he "secretly actually won" still. If that happened in a book, I'd think it was jumping the shark it's such melodramatic series of actions.
1. The whole novel is a train of comments to a Facebook post.
2. The hero is affected with COVID 19.
3. The protagonist installs Tinder in the beginning of the novel. In the end he uninstalls it because no one loved him.
4. The hero goes through a lot of adventures. In the end we come to know that it was just in the computer game he was playing.
5. Job loss, break up, Job, finding love, job loss, break up again. The end.
6. Guy uninstalls Tinder and finds love on pubg.
7. Romeo and Juliet; but with Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and a lot of COVID 19 deaths.
8. Break up, break up, break up...Finally finds love with a robot doll.
9. Some mythological characters trapped in the modern world. Magic vs. technology
10. Something you wrote when you were in quarantine. Trying to make it look meaningful by publishing it. No one buys it, of course!
"She contemplates death. SCoRe!" 😂
I absolutely HATED Me Before You. My brother committed suicide and suffered from mental illness all of his life so seeing a book/movie that glorifies suicide was pretty gross to me.
...whoa. I am so sorry for your loss.
@@sxwriter8569 thank you
Imagine a book written entirely in second person future tense.
Night y’all
God, THANK YOU!! I thought I was the only one who lost my shit over "Me Before You" and the dumpster-fire it was!
I hadn't read the book or even known about it before watching the movie. I HATED that ending.
@@hali_55 apparently it gets worse - there's a sequel "Me After You" which goes into how she's living the high life with her dead ex's money, and then she's trying to decide between two new guys, which one she'll date next - I seriously hated the first movie, but I couldn't actually believe the audacity of the author to write that as a second book.
Where I come from, many adolescents, expecially girls, try not to get noticed cause they think they would look awkward.
I prefer present tense as a writer. However, I’ve been known to switch back and forth between present and past tense depending on which project I’m working on.
I’m very weird, and I’m well aware that my love of present tense writing is strange. It’s my preference and also what I find easiest. It’s an oh well sorta thing.
And I don’t write contemporary fiction. I write fantasy.
#3 needs to have special circumstances to work. The one's you've mentioned but also stuff like Anxiety or having a specific goal in mind (if you've got something you love and don't want to waste time doing something else like wanting to go to a championship or because you're lazy and you see the amount of work asked of you to be that something other than normal)
I’m late to this video but I’m glad you made it so thanks! I’ve not finished a novel yet but I’m close to finishing a contemporary and I’m reassured by your words. As a disabled, working class writer, I appreciate your words on class and disability.
I’ve been learning the hard way how tricky those stakes are, and may have transitioned from boredom to utter madness. I’ve encountered madness in real life and figure if I write it well enough it might encourage someone to at least turn a page.
Right now I feel like contemporary/realism is my thing. Yes, I plan to be poor forever.
I love hearing about the tropes.
#10...yeah. I took one creative writing course in college and the prof. was one of those who only looked at 'real' or 'contemporary' or the like. Anything outside of that wasn't worth her time to read and she graded accordingly. Since she was the only writing teacher at the campus, I stopped taking courses and stuck with writing what I wanted to write. Maybe I missed out 'learning' something important, but I couldn't take the snobbery and the efforts to force our creativity into one special box.
And that's what kills me! I bet lots of writing students who only write in their favorite genre would be willing to try writing contemporary fiction if they weren't constantly told "All genre writing is trash". Trying to write outside your genre can be a useful learning experience, but IMHO it's just as valuable for a fiction writer to try writing fantasy, for example. It's damaging to a writer's ability to tell them that only one type of writing is valid!
I write fantasy, sci-fi, supernatural...and in RP writing & fanfiction I've dabbled in romance and erotica. I've got one planned that is sorta a supernatural noir mystery type thing. I agree its valuable to push the boundaries and write outside of our comfort zones as a learning tool and its frustrating to have a teacher, in particular, invalidate the work of anyone outside of his/her 'preference'. How many writers end up discouraged and giving up that way?
5:26 Aren't the protagonists of your novels all rich nobility who are all stunning models. Kinda hypocritical.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Once I was talking about the nice guy trope and the other person wasn't fully comprehending so I made them watch megamind.
i once knew a fellow writer who was convinced that stories with happy endings were objectively bad and absolutely refused to give any of their characters a good ending. I forget their exact argument against it but it made everyone feel really awkward with their happy stories.
6:30 Literally disses Tik Tok in the most subtle way I love it thank you Jenna
I don't mind present tense if and only if it's in first person as well. Otherwise that's just weird. Unless it's in second person, but that's usually reserved for fanfiction. And I only don't mind it in first person because it can be like you're going on a little adventure with them. Also first person in present tense is just a challenge I am 100% willing to tackle. I think it's fun and challenging to write, since I usually do 3rd person in past tense. 's pretty cool. In first person exclusively (not counting 2nd person because that's primarily just x readers).
Apparently I'm also just indifferent to 3rd person present tense.
I think that makes more sense than first person present tense in some cases in which the character is both hiding something and does not speak.
But other than that it's just a tense if executed at least half decently.
(Forgot a closing sentence)
That's exactly why I write in first person, other than what I posted as my own message. First person makes the readers think they are actually there in the world I am writing.
when narration is in present tense and it's first person narration I assume that character is going to die
@Samara Hamilton No like, we are with them as they give us a very detailed narrative of what they are doing right at that moment and then suddenly it'll stop because they've died while they talk to us. Then I guess somebody else might narrate or something. Now I know this isn't often the case, but that's always what it feels like
Man the slam dunks. Not just the points themselves, but the meta within. This entire video makes me extremely happy.
Also SO PLEASED to see so many creators like you who are promoting the Trevor Project.
The incel trope fit beautifully as a basis of a horror story
The movie the fanatic comes to mind haha
In honor of your recent launch of Trevor Project, how about a video on respectfully writing LGBTQ+ characters? Avoiding stereotypes, offensive tropes, etc?
A fantastic idea!!! This is in the works!!!!
I need that shirt print on everything I own
I'm a huge fan of lighthearted high fantasy (Middle Earth, Xanth, etc.), and I've had so many people talk at me about how it's "too goofy for adults," or "not mature enough to ever sell well." Yeah.
Anyway, just wanted to say that before I dive back into my latest Discworld novel.
Hey Jenna,
Sorry for posting this late, but I started watching you (and Hannah Lee) a month ago and you both help me with my writing. I've started writing a contemporary fiction my self. Im going to post a little bit of it here, if you would like to read it. It's in the antagonist pov.
Oh, and Im in the LGBT myself, so when you talked about the project made my heart warm inside.
One year later, his Senior year and his Father still blame’s him for his Mother’s death. Lucas has his devilish ways, late nights, and outrages. His only way to cope with it is by remembering this girl he met before he left, but not with good intentions. He’d changed for the good to worse. Now pinning all his anger on the girl he met two years ago. He does not know what his outbursts toward this girl were doing to her, only to find out. Not wanting to have her commit suicide, he thinks back to his Mother. Only to have feelings for her. He found out that he was too late. When his old friend of his had stolen her heart. Changing back to his old way, He tries to compete to win her heart.
The actual list starts at 4:00. I get it that you have to do sponsors but good Lord!
Tragedy: "they'll write a super boring story but everyone dies in the end." That's an Italian opera.
petition to get a "BUT JENNA?" shirt 👻
I love your videos! I'm trying to write a historical fiction novel about a girl in the 1940s (the Blitz) who loses her parents and has to survive with her older brother. I've been working on it for a long time. How do I finish it. I love reading books, but I can't finish my own lol. (If you respond, please be nice about it. I'm 15, ok?)
Comment from 5 days ago but the video just came out- was it unlisted or something?
I think it was probably one of her patreons since (I believe) they get them early.
Hiii! I was just looking for something to watch and this notif popped up!
Unacceptable…I want number 8.
#8 Whatever the hell John Steinbeck was doing.
Seriously can't stand him as an author most of what he wrote was boring as shit and felt more a Wikipedia article thrown in the blender only to pick out the most sleep inducing parts.
I think you summed up why contemporary fiction doesn't do anything for me. If you love it, all the more power to you but give me a different world any day...
you know, since i started watching your channel recently, i've been seeing a lot of takedown, or at least, response videos about you. it's funny, the ones i actually checked out kinda made me like you more. yo, i seen you talking about crutch words, mine is kinda, but i know that one. i have one character, particularly wordy while obfuscating, but throws a lot of that stuff, you knows, and interjectional sorrys, and i love, just adore, seeing how far i can push it, how many kindas and kind ofs and sortas and sort ofs i can pack into his dialogue , and monologue. he's mostly first person, but sometimes he's more unreliable than others, or in a stupor, or not there, so... i know that's really less of a problem than my variable 3rd person perspective, and since your channel and others have brought that to my attention, i'm trying to examine it, but i'm not ready to ditch it entirely in case it may somehow aid a sort of impressionistic feel i may be going for in places. also see how that sorta creeps into my other writing but i love arthur's voice so much, and yeah, because it's a slightly embellished version of my own, and 90% of what passes for humor in my dark story is him lying to himself. oh, how am i not a man the way i nail the toxic two step, wink and nod?
Number 10 could be a holdover from the olden days where SciFi/Fantasy/Horror were viewed as "kid's stuff". On the other side I can see why a Creative Writing teacher wouldn't want to deal with Fantasy and other world building genres. The teacher would have to figure out the story's reality and then figure out how to grade it. It seems a daunting task.
omg this is awesome! Thank you for supporting the Trevor project
I believe present tense can be used in first person limited and it's a great way to keep a fast paced action story. Like The Hunger Games or Skyward Sword. Though those are far from contemporary fiction (I think)
Wait, is there a book titled Skyward Sword, or are you mixing up the Zelda game with something else?
@@CarolineVMay It's only Skyward, from Brandon Sanderson lol. I guess I got used to add Sword for the Zelda game xD
How do you get lung cancer ironicly?
Currently I'm writing a high fantasy/romance in first person/present tense though it's only the first draft and it's just so I can get in the character's head while I write it. I'll probably change it up in rewrite.
Context is everything. While I would normally agree with you about telling a story in present-tense for no reason, one of my own books is a fictionalized memoir. The introduction explains how certain memories function like time travel, and then the reader discovers herself having dinner with my family in 1967. Use of the first person present tense makes the reader feel she is in my head, experiencing events as they happen to me, but 60 years ago. I originally wrote this in the past tense, but changed in order to make it feel more immediate; so the reader could feel that they'd literally been transported to another time.
Yep. "HOLY SH*T," is EXACTLY the thought that crosses my mind whenever I remember that "Me Without You" exists.
the isolating effects of wealth can be a serious problem even for those of us who don't have, especially even. an examination of how even those of us at the top of an unfair system are prisoners of it too, and in their attempts to assuage their uncomfortable feelings through greed and power lust they impoverish themselves of anything true and sustaining while dragging the rest of us down a path toward doom could make an epic story
4 minutes in before the advertisement kind of stops. That's a Trope.
3:56 to skip the intro
Another great video! I especially liked the last trope - Highbrow Bullshit. You ever notice how serious some of these authors look in their photos? They're either posing with their arms crossed over their chests, or seated at a desk with an actual quill in their hands. The Pulitzer, Booker, or National Book Award is just on the horizon for them...
Bleh.
LIKE YOU COULD EVER GET INTO A CREATIVE WRITING CLASS!!!
Hey, I'm graduated with a creative writing major (yes I'm wasting my potential on wattpad) and my stories were....well I was only one of two out of seven that wrote something that was inventive and fictional. Although #10, I combined contemporary with sci-fi, middle grade/magical realism, romance, vampire urban fantasy, and superhero action. My advice would be if you're writing contemporary, push the mundane to its absolute limit. For example:
Slice of life: Go the Good Luck Charlie route, have your kid characters ransack and destroy a shopping mail.
High School: Show how badly high school is, the mental stress and hurdles, kids created the ultimate cheating scam, go nuts with fights
Introducing a Vampire or Fairy or other creature into the real world: Don't make them just bland attractive white guys with almost nothing that makes them stand out. Show their monster forms, have them struggle to maintain themselves in reality, let them live in an abandoned crime section of the city where all the lowlifes live so no one would suspect them, give them an antagonist who can mess with them psychological, give them a backstory that can relate to something that affects real people like tragedy, losing a loved one, being the lower class in their species, daddy/mother issues, or more. Automatically making them rich and with a loving family and have powers does nothing if you don't had some complexities too that.
Or simply, take a genre you like, set it in the real world, and be creative with it the way you want it to.
I'm too lazy to think, again, writing on wattpad for like 2 months back to back will do that to you, but those are some ideas if you're struggling with contemporary.
Years ago I started thinking about a story of a 15 year old who lives with his overproctive mom who did her very best to shelter him from the real world finallly gets to experience the freedom of the real world and promply becomes a nightmare to his mom as he begins to hate her. I have a plot point of she getting pregnant to make him "man up" and become a "responsible big brother" to which he responds to by joining a criminal operation with a "adoptive dad" and his (grown) friends and anoymously reporting property negligence which gets her house condemmed and leaves her homeless 😂
@@rac1equalsbestgame853 HOLY CRAP, what the hell. That's definitely....interesting.
@@sxwriter8569 I haven't posted it anywhere because the beggining is super boring, watching these vids to find a way to make it more entertaining. Especially regarding the school he goes too (the teen has repeated 5th grade FOUR times by the time the story starts)
@@rac1equalsbestgame853 Damn.
Great advice! And I agree, I really think a problem with a lot of books is that they simply don't use their genre to its full potential. "Contemporary" doesn't have to mean "boring". Fantasy doesn't have to stick to the same tropes that have been used by a thousand other books. I guess thinking up the interesting new ideas can be a challenge, though, Lol.